Removing Trending From Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/06/removing-trending/ <comment><USER2> Those "We apologize for fake news" ads on TV and the subway from Facebook seem really weird to me. Like FB thinks that the reason their numbers are down is because people are mad about them and some ads saying "we're sorry" will fix it. I think Facebook has been supplanted by a variety of better tools, some of which they themselves created, and it's now going to be a long term stagnation and decline

<comment><USER3> The thing that drove me away from Facebook is not fake news, but that there is news (and other viral content) at all, fake or not. 90% of my feed is content about people and events I have no connection to or care for. I thought to whole point of FB was to connect with people you know.

<comment><USER4> The feed thing is pretty easy to fix. You just have to tell Facebook you don't want to see posts like that (three dot menu). I did that a while back and don't get any memes or shared links on my feed anymore.

<comment><USER5> Just unfollow everybody. Believe me you won't miss your feed.

<comment><USER6> I use a stylish plugin which masks the feed entirely. It was useful when I was having to use facebook often to promote a brand. Nowadays though it's eliminated the vast majority of facebook's use for me. 95% of my notifications are random 'so and so invited you to an event' and 'so and so posted in some group'. I realized that the fb feed had become a content aggregator, much like that other website we all know and love(?), but instead your f&f were the contributors. Blacking out the feed of inane content effectively made fb useless for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Every day or two I see something new about facebook on hackernews front page, and pretty much all the discussion boils down to "how awful facebook is", "oh, I quit it five years ago, I don't understand those people who still use it; oh, they sell our data to generate so much profit". Facebook has more than a billion active users, and is probably the most used social network in the world.

I wish hackernews users stop repeating how awful facebook is and rather provide some constructive criticism.

<comment><USER8> see, you snuck in an entirely legitimate and factually true criticism in there: they sell our data. let's unpack that for a minute so we can put this "facebook criticisms are unreasonable" meme into its grave.

there's nothing non-constructive about faulting their core business practice of stealing user data and selling it against their consent and often without their knowledge whatsoever. nobody would opt into any of it if there was not the carrot of a social network provided to people well before they understood the consequences.

criticizing FB in this way is a propositional statement: IF a company sells my data, THEN that company is undesirable for me to interact with. that is a 100% actionable piece of information for FB. there is no higher form of constructive criticism.

FB has all the information about what people don't like. it's their job to have the information.

they don't care what the users like, is the thing. they don't sell to you, you are their product.

so yeah, it isn't that the constructive criticism isn't out there. it's that they rely on not hearing it and not putting it into practice.

<comment><USER9> That's not remotely "factually true".

Please tell me, where can I buy this user data you speak of? Do you have a Facebook URL you can share where I can spend money to buy user data?

I'm especially interested in buying _stolen_ user data from Facebook, too.

So please, if you can point me to somewhere that I can buy a giant zip file of stolen user data from Facebook, that'd be awesome.

I suspect what you actually mean is that I can run ads that are targeted based on aggregate user data, but that's not even _remotely_ the same as buying user data. It's not even close. I can't run ads against small audiences either, so if someone clicks on my ads I know some general stuff about them based on my campaign targeting, but I'm certainly not getting a data dump about them, there's no way for me to identify them, etc.

And none of that targeting data is "stolen", either. It's all provided voluntarily by the user to Facebook in accordance with their privacy policy.

Your contention is probably that people would never provide that data if they knew it was going to be sold, so it's basically "stolen".

My response would be that: a) it isn't sold, as we established, and b) people actually don't care that much about this. If they did, _they'd actually read the damn privacy policy they agreed to_. But no one does, because they don't really care enough to be bothered.

<comment><USER10> It's certainly true that Facebook sells access to user data! Though you're right there's no API. Facebook doesn't make it easy, the technical resourcefulness of a grey/black adtech company are required.

Much of this is non-obvious, even to web-savvy technical people.

> I suspect what you actually mean is that I can run ads that are targeted > based on aggregate user data ... so if someone clicks on my ads I know some > general stuff about them based on my campaign targeting

> but I'm certainly not getting a data dump about them, there's no way for me > to identify them, etc.

An effective way to personally identify someone who follows a link and loads a page (and nothing else) is through browser fingerprinting [0]. Fingerprinting is more powerful and ubiquitous than many on this site realize.

So, if a greyhat adtech company has data on a person's browser fingerprint history, then the Facebook targeting data can be _easily_ associated. Browser fingerprints should really, REALLY be considered as PII because that is how they are used.

The data is relatively limited, but invaluable for future ad-targeting off the Facebook platform. And, if there's already substantial information in the database on a person, the high quality Facebook data can be used for quality control for other data sources.

It's a tricky problem for Facebook to solve, but they have zero incentive to try. So they don't (that I've seen).

...and then there's the data they were selling via the developer interface. If anyone thinks Cambridge Analytica is the only example of this, I have a startup to sell them. One might notice that even Facebook is now branding the CA scandal as a 'breach' rather than 'system operating as expected', because of this criticism. Facebook may not have sold access directly, but by giving developers (and dark adtech companies) such unrestricted access to the data, Facebook pumped up their platform numbers which had a relative positive effect on the company's share price.

This has all been conscious on the part of Facebook leadership -- there's enough smart people at Facebook, you can bet some of them raised red flags over the years.

[0] [https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2017/02/now-s...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2017/02/now-sites-can-fingerprint-you-online-even-when-you-use- multiple-browsers/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> People think if they can control facebook, they can swing elections. Hillary just recently made that comment if she controlled facebook.

Look how Yahoo news and Google news pushes editorial pieces above news, almost like an agenda. Same thing was happening with facebook.

<comment><USER12> It seriously annoys me how major publications have editorial content on their main domain, on their main site, with the same template. Sure, it says "editorial" below the headline, but at first glance it looks like news. Washington Post, NYT, etc all put the full weight of their name behind content that's literally just a random blog from some random person with no fact- checking.

If I see a headline on HN or Reddit or Facebook that says "'Giant Meteor Likely to Impact Earth' \- NYTimes.com", how do I know if that's an impending disaster or just someone saying "NASA says it's theoretically possible"? The only way is to click the article and look for the "editorial" line, at which point the newspaper has already won.

<comment><USER13> WaPo has 3 Opinion sections, only one of which they label "Opinion" ([https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/))

The have /news/the-fix", something they call "Analysis", where they mix fact and editorialism [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the- fix/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/)

and they have "Perspectives", also filed under /news

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It was a constant source of bad publicity when offensive things would hit Trending. Once Facebook conceded that manual curation would be necessary, it was just a matter of time before they deemed it not worth the cost.

</comment><comment><USER15> All you need to know here is that where Trending is algorithmic, Breaking News is a flag set by a trusted set of content providers. On the plus side, this simplification should allow Facebook better control of how to steer its users towards revenue generating content.

<comment><USER16> Won't those providers be tempted to set the "breaking news" flag on every post, just like they do on their TV news channels?

<comment><USER17> Sure, but they might lose their privileges if FB doesn't like their choices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> We already did it for you with a custom uBlock rule, thank you.

<comment><USER19> I wrote a Greasemonkey script to pull apart the div element and replace it with a random image from an imgur subreddit gallery*. I'm certain far better javascript programmers could take this and improve on it. Calling myself a novice would be embellishing my skills.

[https://gist.github.com/GrahamBlanshard/d7211436088e0159164a](https://gist.github.com/GrahamBlanshard/d7211436088e0159164a)

I heard it conflicts in ways with the facebook chat sidebar which I never use, so if you're interesting in fiddling around with that on GreaseMonkey or TamperMonkey just keep that sort of thing in mind.

EDIT: Example of what it does on the sidebar for you: [https://i.imgur.com/Yqc2jdY.png](https://i.imgur.com/Yqc2jdY.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This move comes two weeks after they announce a new strategy to fight against "misinformation and foreign interference," namely, by partnering with the Atlantic Council, a think tank heavily funded by NATO allies, gulf states, and weapons contractors. While Facebook was never really the democratic information platform everyone assumed to be, this move seems like a death blow. Does anyone else view it that way?

</comment><comment><USER21> Please remove everything except Events.

</comment><comment><USER22> This was interesting: "However, it was only available in five countries and accounted for less than 1.5% of clicks to news publishers on average. From research we found that over time people found the product to be less and less useful. "

I've found it to be somewhat useful on Facebook - and LinkedIn has a very similar feature as well. I wonder if the clickthroughs on LinkedIn are somewhat similar.

</comment><comment><USER23> Facebook is now a newsertainment media platform. Same playbook as LinkedIn.

Neither have anything to do with 'connecting people' anymore.

I don't get it. News media is dying. Why would you want to copy them? How is this profitable?

</comment><comment><USER24> When I used to use Facebook, I had it filtered because I avoid any targeted news headlines. I think targeted news headlines are dangerous because they can be used as propaganda devices.

</comment><comment><USER25> >However, it was only available in five countries and accounted for less than 1.5% of clicks to news publishers on average.

"on average"

</comment><comment><USER26> Don't you think Facebook looks tired?

<comment><USER27> "Doctor! What did you say? Doctor!!!"

Amazing how the rumor spread from 1 person. Fiction I know but still amazing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> > and increasingly through news video

Well, yes, because Facebook's timeline is optimised to surface videos over other content. If you priorities one type of content, it's no wonder it becomes what people consume the most.

</comment><comment><USER29> They seem to suggest that it is being removed because it wasn't being used. Does anyone else find that hard to believe? Obviously it's totally antectodal, but I checked that EVERY time I logged onto Facebook.

Just because people don't click on it doesn't mean everyone doesn't read it.... Afterall it's visible right in the top right of the site. To be honest this kind of sounds like Facebook is trying to skirt around the real reason for removing it (it was contributing to promoting fake news).

Does anyone know if all of the trending items were reviewed by editors? If so, then I'd be more inclined to believe their explanation

<comment><USER30> Yeah, they want it gone because people are making a stink about the agendization of what news is shown on the feed.

I'd like to see trending reflect my geographical trends more than anything. What are my hometown friends talking about, and that sort of thing.

I don't give a shit about what the average person talks or thinks about, that's the whole point of only having my friends on facebook, or so I thought. Turns out I am supposed to read fake news, click ads, and shut up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Since it only includes a link and summary, no value added, why not submit original link? [https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/06/removing- trending/](https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/06/removing-trending/)

<comment><USER32> Kind of unrelated: when I click this link in Firefox, it seems to erase the history for the current tab, and the back button doesn't work. It looks like it works in Chrome though. What is going on?

<comment><USER33> Firefox's Facebook Container. Segregate any FB url from the rest of the browser state to minimize tracking etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Url changed from [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-01/facebook-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-01/facebook- says-it-s-removing-trending-feature), which points to this.</comment>


Martian Skies Clearing Over Opportunity Rover - <AUTHOR> https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7227 <comment><AUTHOR> What would storms of such duration mean for human base on Mars? Would they have alternative energy sources beyond solar panels? It's been two and a half months without Sun.</comment>


Google Offers OpenID Logins Via Blogger - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/18/google-offers-openid-logins-via-blogger/ <comment><USER2> Another good start, but I'd like to see Google (and Yahoo) allow me to use my non-Google (or non-Yahoo) OpenID to login to their services.

i.e. Google and Yahoo should be "relying parties" in addition to their current plans to be OpenID "providers"

</comment><comment><USER3> To this time the max. price people (thinking that domain is for sale) offered for my openid domain was $800. It could be much more interesting now :)</comment>


Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/stocks-plunge-oil-coronavirus-a0c07880-f299-4829-87b0-81f5c5e93661.html <comment><USER3> I notice that there are many commenters here offering opinions on the future price of equities. Note that nobody has any idea where equity prices will be in one day, never mind one year or ten years' time. As a retail investor (i.e. not extremely rich), you can't gain any advantage over the market that overcomes your transaction costs.

So relax. There's nothing to do here. If you're contributing to a retirement fund, keep buying. As the market falls, you're getting a discount. If you need to retire in the next five years, you should already have started moving out of equities. It's too late to change that now.

<comment><USER4> To help adopt a sober approach, it's worth watching this interview with Warren Buffett who shares his thinking re: market and Coronavirus.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvEas_zZ4fM&t=21s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvEas_zZ4fM&t=21s)

One of the points he makes is that you should think about stocks as businesses. Instead of "I bought a stock" think "I bought a business". That puts you in a better frame of mind and perspective for the long term. i.e., You don't buy or sell a farm based on today's headlines.

The real question is whether things have changed on a 5, 10 or 20 year time frame for the businesses you hold.

<comment><USER5> Two things make Warren different: (1) he is a professional money manager, which means that he is investing other peoples money. (2) because of (1), he never needed the money he is investing. It is much easier to have long time frames when you're investing money that is not yours.

<comment><USER6> Warren Buffet still owns 6% of Berkshire Hathaway. Maybe a more correct statement would be "If you have money you don't immediately need to spend, it is much easier to have a long time frame for investing". Hopefully the money in people's retirement accounts is this type of money.

Most money managers have extremely short time frame investment horizons and are just looking to get their 2 and 20.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Slightly unrelated, but why does the stock market close each night? If trading was open 24/7, we wouldn't have large spikes like this every morning. We'd only have them when certain news is announced.

<comment><USER8> So we can use garbage-collected languages in trading systems without turning on the garbage collector - just collect it all at the end of the trading day. I'm joking but this is a real technique.

<comment><USER9> It is, there was this HFT firm I interned at once that rebooted all their servers at the end of the trading day to make sure they would start clean and fast the next day.

<comment><USER10> It also ensures you can come back up after an unexpected shutdown.

<comment><USER11> This is the best reason. Knowing your business systems will simply come back with the power, and having that tested on a daily basis will quickly put everyone at ease.

<comment><USER12> Is this what is called chaos engineering?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Just to clarify the title:

Trading was halted for 15 minutes.

<comment><USER14> Correct. 7% decline is a pause.

If it drops 13% it will pause for another 15 minutes. If it drops 20% it will end trading for the day.

<comment><USER15> I'm going to say it. It can't possibly collapse 20% in one day... can it?

<comment><USER13> Based on the rules it cannot drop _more_ than 20% in a day :-)

There are examples of it happening in other countries though. Zimbabwe and Argentina come to mind for some crazy inflation and stock numbers.

<comment><USER16> > _Based on the rules it cannot drop _more_ than 20% in a day_

Asset pricing is not continuous. A single trade can take pricing from -18% to -X%, with X having any value between infinity and -100.

The breaker triggers at -20%. If the market crosses at -18% and then trades -25%, that trade will cross and _then_ trip the breaker.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It was not that long ago that the "experts" were saying the Boom-Bust Cycle had ended. [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-22/bridgewat...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-22/bridgewater- co-cio-bob-prince-says-boom-bust-cycle-is-over)

Buffett, Dalio and others have been preparing for this time for a while.

This is when money is made or lost. If you have the ability and the stomach for it. I'm not suggesting you buy today, I personally don't believe the worst is behind us. But an opportunity is coming.

<comment><USER18> As recovery approaches full employment ... soothsayers will proclaim that the business cycle has been banished [and] debts can be taken on ... But in truth neither the boom, nor the debt deflation ... and certainly not a recovery can go on forever.

Hyman Minsky

(From the wikipedia article posted last week "Minsky Moment: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsky_moment"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsky_moment")

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> So, children of summer (there are many here who have only known the longest bull market in the last century), let me give you some free advice.

If you're looking at this and wondering when to get in, to bargain hunt essentially, and you're asking yourself questions like "today? next week?", you need to step back and think again. Some points to consider:

\- If your time horizon is 10+ years out probably none of this matters

\- If your time horizon is less than 5 years out, you should really question if you should be in the stock market at all

\- Be familiar with the term "dead cat bounce". This is a temporary period of recovery followed by a steeper drop. You're going to see this kind of thing.

\- Large market drops often lead to or are because of a likely recession. This can go on for months or years.

\- After the GFC the markets went down and then sideways for over a year. You essentially missed nothing by waiting two years. This could easily happen again.

\- Learn what "reversion to mean" means. It means that at times the markets generally follow a long term upward trend. At times the market will go above or below that. This can be a useful indicator of whether equities are cheap or expensive. In a given cycle you have boom (above the mean when equities are overbought) to bust (an overcorrection to below the mean when equities are oversold).

Bear markets are paved with the blood of optimists.

<comment><USER20> The Nikkei is still ~50% below its 1989 high. Hasn't even approached that level since. Downturns can go on for decades.

<comment><USER19> I didn't think this could still be true but apparently you are correct [1]. Wow.

That being said, there are factors to contribute to this:

\- Essentially zero population growth [2]

\- A government and a system that propped up an insolvent banking system that likely extended the downturn significantly [3]

\- A massive asset bubble that we really haven't seen the likes of, not even in the subprime era. [1]: [https://www.macrotrends.net/2593/nikkei-225-index- historical...](https://www.macrotrends.net/2593/nikkei-225-index-historical- chart-data)

[2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan#Current_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan#Current_natural_population_growth)

[3]: [https://qz.com/198458/zombies-once-destroyed-japans- economy-...](https://qz.com/198458/zombies-once-destroyed-japans-economy-now- theyre-infecting-chinas/)

<comment><USER21> Yep, over half of GDP growth is tied to population growth. If 2% of humanity is about to die...

<comment><USER22> 2% of humanity is absolutely, in no way, shape or form about to die. The Korean numbers are approaching 0.5% case fatality rate, and those numbers continue to fall. It's about the same as the flu, and no, the flu isn't killing 2% of humanity either. Y'all need to settle down and get back to work.

<comment><USER23> South Korea's fatality rate will be somewhere between "deaths / confirmed cases" (currently around 0.7%) and "deaths / (deaths + recoveries)" (currently around 28.5%) - those numbers will eventually converge.

What really matters though is to keep the raw number of confirmed cases low enough so that hospitals don't get overwhelmed. If hospitals get overwhelmed, fatality rates go up. So containment is key.

<comment><USER24> How about "deaths / actual cases"?

This number would be smaller than both of the ones you mentioned, unless you think that somehow all actual cases are detected.

<comment><USER23> Yes, that's true - although I would expect that countries with widespread easy testing would have their "confirmed cases" number get pretty close to the "actual cases" number.

And "actual cases" would be the people that have the actual disease, not the people that just carry the virus. For people who are carriers but are not infected, they apparently don't want to mix those people into the numbers because that's not how other illnesses are counted either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> For reference, someone might want to post a chart of the gains the markets have made in the past 5 years. I would hardly call this a crash.

<comment><USER26> Hah not a crash? Well it kinda is, and if it keeps going further down it will definitely cause a recession. The oil price drop was a huge punch in the gut, and I wonder what happens to US oil production if it stays this low for longer. Or well any oil production that can't compete with these prices.

<comment><USER27> Almost nobody is drilling new oil wells, they stopped last year sometime. Almost nobody because there are still investors keeping one skeleton crew running just so they have expertise for when the oil price recovers.

Once a well is drilled the cost to drill the well is a sunk cost. You keep pumping oil if the cost to run the pumps is less than the price you get. Most people with oil are large enough to shut down some wells to keep the price up a bit - they harm their own profit in the short term though and still need to sell enough oil to break even.

<comment><USER28> OPEC has failed to reduce output to prop prices up, and they've crashed as a result.

<comment><USER27> Nobody being willing to make large cuts is different from nobody making cuts. The US is not a member of OPEC, nor are several other oil producing countries: they don't follow OPEC but may still reduce output.

There is rumor OPEC isn't cutting production because they believe they can undercut their competitors and put them out of business - I don't think that is their motivation, but it is something that can't be ignored.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Genuine question: They can just do that ? Issue a trading halt because they don't like the direction it's going ?

> "There's a reason why they have those circuit breakers -- it's to give > people time to come back from panicked feelings,"

Seems strange that the market is kinda able to be manipulated like that. I'm not saying this is a bad move, just surprised that someone can do it.

<comment><USER30> "They" don't do anything - this is called a circuit breaker, and is automatically triggered. There are three breakers:

L1 - 7% down before 3:25pm - 15 minute halt

L2 - 13% down before 3:25pm - 15 minute halt

L3 - 20% down - halted for the remainder of the day

Only a single L1 and a single L2 breaker can occur in a single day, e.g. the market falling below 7%, rising, then falling again will not trigger a second L1 breaker, but falling to 7%, up to 5%, then down to 13% would trigger an L2.

FYI this is the kind of thing you have to know to become registered as a securities representative.

<comment> jagged-chisel > Only a single L1 or L2 breaker can occur in a single day.

I don't follow. You'd hit 7% before 13%, so how would L2 ever execute?

<comment><USER30> Sorry - I meant that neither L1 nor L2 can trigger twice in a day, E.g. down 8%, up 2%, down 9% does not trigger a second L1 breaker.

<comment><USER31> Especially relevant today since after hovering around -5% for most of the session after the first halt, right now we're at -6.9% and threatening to push below 7% again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Trade safe. Historic times. Wouldn't be surprised if all the volatility shorts blow up and the S&P goes down 20% in a session.

<comment><USER32> The volumes on Vix futures are a fraction of what they were two years ago. Vix is shooting up but I assume it is following the stock market rather than the other way round.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Buy S&P puts as a hedge to save your account in times of extreme volatility.

I had 270 strike puts for April I bought on Friday for $6 that jumped to $15 today and got my account to break even even though the value of my stocks went down.

<comment><USER34> What is the end game with this strategy? If you sell the puts today to capture the profits, do you also sell your equities? If you don't sell your equities isn't there a chance the slide further? If you hold the puts to maturity why buy them at all?

<comment><USER33> The end game is to save the value of my account without having to sell holdings I want to keep long term for tax reasons.

I'm up 8% for the year instead of down 15%.

<comment><USER35> Maybe you really are more clever than the rest've us, and have beat the market. Or maybe you got lucky. Or maybe we're only hearing about the winning trades, and you've got some losers we're not hearing about... I suspect it's option 2 or 3. Regardless, this is bad advice.

<comment><USER36> It isn't bad advice to hedge your position with options, although doing it short term as suggested here is an active trading strategy and inherently more risky.

Contrary to popular belief that options = gambling, this is the #1 real utility of them. If 90% of your investments are tied up in S&P 500, it makes sense to hedge that with put options which provide a clearly defined max-loss over the contract duration of the option.

So in a period like this when those put options become valuable due to price drop and general IV, you can do as suggested and sell them to re-coup losses and maintain capital. It doesn't change the lifetime performance of your money placed in the corresponding security, but it most certainly improves the performance of your portfolio as a whole and limits the damage that can be done in any given downturn.

If you only hold securities, index or otherwise, your only recourse is time. I certainly wouldn't recommend trying to time the market, just like I wouldn't buy an insurance policy the day before a loss. That doesn't mean you avoid insurance altogether because you can't predict when you'll need it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The one takeaway I learned from 2007 is to buy puts when I feel like there is going to be a recession. It may just give me enough money to last a year or two if I lose my job.

Starting last week, I bought a put (just 1) in Chipotle (No particular reason, I just picked a random one) for 2000.

Its the one bet I hope I lose money on, but so far my position (2k investment) have grown to over 6k. (300% increase).

Its sad money because when the market goes down, my RSUs are dropping significantly more. The put are there to make sure if I lose my job and my RSUs, my put position will generate enough profits to last me 2 years without work. I only need 24k to get by / year.

Just wanted to put this out there in case someone else out there has alot of RSUs that are stuck and wanted to buy some positions to make some money in case of a recession.

</comment><comment><USER38> For those unaware, this is common practice -- it a control that is working as intended. The trading was halted for 15 minutes

<comment><USER39> When was the last time this happened?

<comment><USER40> Apparently in 1997, so it has been quite a while

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trading_curb#Instances_of_us...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trading_curb#Instances_of_use)

<comment><USER41> Way before high frequency trading, to put some things in perspective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> How valid is it to look to the past when there is so much cash floating around? With so much more demand for roi, I would think that in itself would bias the markets up. Almost like an invisible Keynesian injection eager to happen

</comment><comment><USER43> I wonder how different things would be if instead of those stepped halts, a super high granular delay is injected into the system. Like instead of halting, making it go on but in "slow-motion". And depending on the strength of the drop, the slow-motion factor to inject in the system.

I say this because halting tries to "cool down" emotion but it still "feels like" panic while making it all go slow would "feel kind of crappy yet normal" hence "buying" time to cool things down while still working.

Wouldn't that reward going up and penalize/protect going down?

<comment><USER44> > I say this because halting tries to "cool down" emotion but it still "feels > like" panic while making it all go slow would "feel kind of crappy yet > normal" hence "buying" time to cool things down while still working.

I don't think so. Halting would allow the traders to get a cup of coffee and switch to another mental gear. A slowdown would probably just keep them in gear and result in a lot of anxious refreshes and attempts to wrestle the system.

<comment><USER43> Immediately yes, it will keep them in gear, but it will have no consequence because the output would come forcibly delayed, so the result will come not so immediately. Hence being anxious has no payout and being cool does.

Wouldn't be that with time, the next generation of traders for example, they will relax more when things feel bearish and put the "normal gear" when it feels bullish?

<comment><USER44> > so the result will come not so immediately. Hence being anxious has no > payout and being cool does.

That's assuming people are way more rational and less emotional than they really are.

<comment><USER43> Actually no because the output (reward or penalty) is not selective on your rationale. You can be bullish or bearish. The the input and the output are both allowed, just working at asymmetrical speeds (slower for bearish).

Wouldn't overall cause a "sustentation effect" similar to the asymmetrical speed in the airflow in the wings of a plane?

I'm not convinced myself of this, but the idea made me curious and maybe worth of experimenting with in a limited context?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> (I'm not a trader) if I wanted to watch the market with a near-real-time dashboard, does that exist?

<comment><USER46> Koyfin:

[https://www.koyfin.com/home](https://www.koyfin.com/home)

<comment><USER47> Maybe not:

HEADS UP, YOU ARE USING A WEB BROWSER THAT IS NOT SUPPORTED BY KOYFIN This means that some functionality may not work as intended. We recommend using Google Chrome with our site.

<comment><USER46> I use Firefox and have no issues, though I only use it as a dashboard for the markets. There may be functionality that breaks that I'm unaware of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> The fact that these controls on the stock market have been triggered reinforces my doubts that our current "profits and growth over sustainability" view of how public companies should operate is in any way good.

Short of a huge change in COVID-19's mortality rate, few if any of these businesses will go under in the next year naturally. The fire sale of stocks due to short-term impacts to revenue, however, just might do what COVID-19 can't.

</comment><comment><USER49> This will be blamed on COVID-19, but the problems go much deeper. Last year the Fed lost control of the repo market. the event was widely discounted at the time as an end-of-tax-year fluke. It wasn't. Six month ago, the yield curve inverted. People who should have known better said "this time is different."

Speculators have been trained over the course of 10+ years to buy the dip. The Fed has your back.

What we're seeing is the beginning of the end of that resolve.

The last time this happened was during the GFC. It's not normal, and it's probably not a one-time event, either.

<comment><USER50> > _Six month ago, the yield curve inverted. People who should have known > better said "this time is different."_

How does your story jive with the fact that the yield curves went back to normal? Either they are an indicator or they aren't.

<comment><USER51> >Either they are an indicator or they aren't.

Third option is that it is an indicator as long as people aren't treating it as one, but once people react to it then it ceases having the power to indicate what is happening.

<comment><USER52> For the curious, this is known as Goodhart's Law.

<comment><USER53> also applies to psychohistory in asimov's foundation

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Despite all the blood, I see a bull case for Tech and the USA. In the last 5 years:

1- The Nasdaq has gained 99.77% until it's peak. It has corrected by 17.41% since the peak. Total gains till today: 64.9%.

2- The Dow Jones has gained 65% till the peak. Corrected by 21.71% since then. Total gains till today: 35.85%.

3- CAC 40 has gained 20% in the last 5 years till the peak. Corrected by 22.12% in this sell-off. Total returns are -6%.

My thoughts:

\- Tech used to go up more and down more. Now it went up more and down less. This is likely to encourage and push traditional investors to invest more in tech. They were afraid from tech because of the bloody downturns. Now tech holds better in a downturn, so that argument is no longer there.

\- Europe is likely to be hit harder from this crisis since they rely a lot on Tourism. That means a harder recession. Europe tech sector is weak and unlikely to match its American counterpart growth in a EU slowdown.

\- China might be the biggest loser in this. The world might realize we are depending too much on China. The US government might force company to build locally or outsource to friendlier countries they want to boost. China is not going to the dark ages but might face a slow down; though a social revolution is definitely not out of the question.

\- The oil crisis, if prolonged, is going to change some countries. Look at Venezuela. Russia, Middle East, Algeria, Canada, etc... These countries might face budget challenges they have never been through before if oil goes below $20 for an extended time.

\- The US tech sector being the only good-yield field and becoming a safe haven for investment in a world of worry and chaos will boom into a bubble of untold proportions.

Disclaimer: Not a professional advice. Might lose part of your money or all of your capital. Might be a total hopium from someone is the tech sector seeing lots of red today.

<comment><USER55> The practice of referring to increases in the price of an instrument as "gains" but any decline as a "correction" is bizarre.

<comment><USER54> It's not. It's trading lingo. If the pricing was on a downturn "losses", then an upward move is a correction.

<comment><USER56> Except that in practice nobody says that. I've worked with both large financial institutions and tiny hedge funds going back nearly 30 years, traders are cognitive bias on legs. There's a reason Wall Street has a statue of a giant bull but not of a bear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> This is creating one of the best buy opportunity ever. It's just sad that only the rich will benefit. The poor will just get poorer.

<comment><USER58> It's still less than a year of growth. Were you urgently buying a year ago?

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> > The cash equities market is subject to circuit breakers established by the > New York Stock Exchange in the wake of the 1987 Black Monday crash. Trading > will halt for 15 minutes if the S&P 500 falls 7% to 2,764.3 at any time > before 3:25 p.m. in New York. ...

That's less than a 1% drop from here.

Right now, all eyes are on the Fed and the size of the bazooka they'll be deploying.

Anything short of outright stock purchases is not going to be received well. Despite the desperation that move smells like, the Fed would be merely following ground already trodden by the Bank of Japan, which now owns around 80% of the Japanese ETF market.

Edit: only 5 points to go.

<comment><USER59> The circuit breaker was already triggered when the market opened this morning at 9:30 AM EST.

<comment><USER49> You're right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> I don't know if it was a good bet but I moved all my 401k into money market accounts for the time being last Thursday. I feel like those who say I should ride the wave down are probably not telling me the truth. All indicators seem to suggest a 25% correction or more before the end of the year.

I've been buying stocks heavily on the latest dips and so far that is all down around 20%. I diversified investments in cruises, airlines, real estate, banks, tech and more. It feels like 2008 is happening all over again.

<comment><USER61> Good move, Dec I moved 33% to Bond, 2 weeks ago I moved another 33% to Bond. I'm kicking myself for not moving the rest, but I can stand to be in the market for a very long time. Most knowledge that say rid the wave is rubbish. Get out if you know that things will be down so you can live to fight another day. If you have $100 and market goes down 50%, you have to wait for it to come back 100% to break even. Most folks don't understand that movement isn't equal in either direction. Market goes down 10%, comes back up 10% most folks think it has balanced, but it hasn't.

<comment><USER62> aren't you timing the market though? if it's down 10% today, you moved to bonds, then it's up 20% due to recovery and you missed the upswing, then you are in a worse spot compared to if you haven't done anything?

"but I can stand to be in the market for a very long time" -> isn't this the reason to not do anything? So you can recover and buy more while everything is on discount?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> first time since the 2016 U.S. presidential election after they fell more than the daily limit of 5%

<comment><USER64> Those were futures the night of the election...

Futures have a hault at 5%

Normal trading hours have the 7% stop

<comment><USER65> And from what I read, the futures did halt at 5% yesterday. So it was already sort of expected that the 7% stop would be hit today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> I would recommend anyone looking for long term guidance about what comes next read this article from Bloomberg's excellent John Authers.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-03-09/oil- cr...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-03-09/oil-crash- coronavirus-is-just-the-start-of-market- shocks?cmpid=BBD031020_AUT&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=200310&utm_campaign=authers)

</comment><comment><USER67> Considering most wealth is in old peoples hands, they are most affected by this virus. They are most susceptible to fear-mongering too.

</comment><comment><USER68> Like others have said, this was just a 15 minute halt when the Dow/S&P 500 dipped to -7%. This can happen again at -13% and trading will flat out stop at -20% [1]

[1] [https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/circuitbreaker.asp](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/circuitbreaker.asp)

</comment><comment><USER69> US stock trade (artificial) limits might have existed before but I don't remember them. You see these in other countries and commodity markets. Limit down. IMO they cause a faster drop in a down market because you don't know when you'll be able to exit. The market can open limit down within seconds. This can continue for weeks.

<comment><USER70> IIRC there were limits in 2008.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> The market was up over 30% last year, but GDP growth was certainly not 30%.

<comment><USER72> GDP is not a perfect indicator.

<comment><USER73> The point, though: Neither is the stock market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> [https://www.wsj.com/articles/lessons-from-the-dot-com- bust-1...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/lessons-from-the-dot-com- bust-11583192099)

</comment><comment><USER75> A lot of comments are saying that a recession is probable.

Can anyone shed a light on why that is/could be the case?

<comment><USER46> A recession isn't probable, it's _inevitable_. It's just a matter of how much sludge builds up in the economy before the over-leveraged have to unwind. That's the business cycle.

Covid19 and the ensuing fall in global demand is simply another blob on the pile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> Serious question, is anyone watching this carefully and trying to determine when things will bottom out (perhaps in a week or two), to buy stocks, ETFs, and such at the bottom of the dip?

Hindsight is 20:20 of course, but there's a number of equities that one could have purchased shortly after the 2008 financial crisis that proceeded to make significant gains between 2009 and 2019.

<comment><USER77> No one will be able to time this. We don't even know if this is the start of a [global?] recession or depression.

If you haven't already, put your retirement into bonds and hold on. Honestly it might be a good idea to grab some cash from the bank to keep at home - <USER2> runs are not outside the realm of possibility, although we have credit cards and other internet based payment methods now so it's probably less of a concern now.

Edit: let me just preface my advice by saying if you have extremely high risk tolerance, now is a good time to buy, but be prepared to lose. If you are near retirement, now is probably the time to pull all of your funds out of the markets and into something safer. Based on the 100 year history of the DJIA, and the fact that the virus is just starting to spread in the U.S., the floor could be much lower.

<comment><USER78> > If you haven't already, put your retirement into bonds and hold on.

Are you advising to sell equities right after they've taken a beating? Sounds awfully close to "buy high, sell low".

<comment><USER77> If you look at the 100 year history of the DJIA, there's still a LOONG way for it to potentially drop.

It's about minimizing risk. Those with high risk tolerance I would advise to buy now, but be prepared to lose everything. If you're close to retirement you lose nothing by pulling out now.

<comment><USER35> > Those with high risk tolerance I would advise to buy now, but be prepared to > lose everything. If you're close to retirement you lose nothing by pulling > out now.

If your risk tolerance can't handle what's happening, your asset allocation was already wrong. Trying to "fix" that now, as a response to this downturn, would very likely be a mistake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> To be honest , the market was in dire need for correction, BUT wonder where we will be when companies starts reporting their quarterly results and impact of that.

So far this looked more like a correction than a precursor to the recession. To make things worse, OPEC dropped bombs which spread the wildfire further..

<comment><USER80> Why was or is the market in need of a correction? What is your evidence for that statement?

<comment><USER81> Take this with a train of salt because I'm not an economist, but one of the most often touted general points of the need for a correction is the cyclically adjusted price to earnings ratio being elevated [1].

In other words, stocks are more "expensive" and thus ripe for a correction

[https://www.multpl.com/shiller-pe](https://www.multpl.com/shiller-pe)

<comment><USER82> Note that that's the Shiller P/E ratio, which (even after today) is still at 26, which is quite high. The regular P/E is still only around 20, which is at the upper limit of reasonable.

The whole point of the Shiller ratio is that it's supposed to do a better job predicting overheated markets, and it may well be doing that here. The regular ratio is based on recent earnings, which will be uncharacteristically high during a bull economy.

That's not to say it's incorrect. I was just noting that your link indicated a higher value than I was expecting, and that's why. (It implies that the market could easily fall another 25% before reaching reasonable territory.)

<comment><USER81> Correct. I deliberately chose the longer CAPE terminology because I thought it was more descriptive than the term Shiller PE. But thank you for adding a better explanation

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> In a world with zero-to-negative interest rates, unlimited margin available for the big players and a generation of boomers sold on the idea that stock appreciation (not dividends) is going to fund their retirement, what's the value of any company? Who knows?

Until dividends are tax advantaged vs. capital gains, the insanity will continue. Leverage, huge risks and various shades of fraud, rather than responsible business stewardship will continue to dominate the financial system.

<comment><USER84> What is the best way I can contribute to making dividends tax-advantaged vs. capital gains?

<comment><USER83> Well, my plan would be to treat dividends as tax deductible to the company and then flow through to the owner, as with LLCs. Capital gains would be taxed at a windfall rate (e.g. the highest marginal income tax + payroll tax rate + 10%).

The nice thing about this is that the progressive income tax system then makes equity ownership very attractive to lower-income households, and less attractive to rich people, thereby distributing ownership over a larger and more economically diverse group.

I have no idea how to get people to buy in to this idea. I have had no success convincing even my own family that this change needs to happen, and my parent post is being downvoted. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

<comment><USER84> Are there any disadvantages you can think of?

<comment><USER83> Yes: it punishes reallocation of capital and makes moon-shot style companies less viable. You would have a less dynamic economy with organic growth being the norm. I would allow for in-kind exchanges within a given trading year to make it easier to get out of bad positions (as well as tax free exchange with gold at any time, so gold becomes the medium for non-productive savings.)

Now, let me tell you about my banking system proposal...

My family loves me at the dinner table, why do you ask?

<comment><USER84> If you actually have a banking system proposal, I'm still curious.

<comment><USER83> lol fine:

Banking shouldn't have a reserve ratio. Rather, banks should have to show that they have a claim to each dollar they have loaned out for the period they have loaned it. This means they have to lend short and borrow long.

The insight here is that the problem with banking since time immemorial is rooted in a lie: multiple people have claims of ownership on the same dollar at the same point in time. Rather than using a reserve ratio to paper over this lie, we should simply ban lying. Banks offer CD like products that lock up money for a certain amount of time, and that money can be loaned out for a period less than or equal to that amount of time.

Practically this would imply a balance curve for a bank at time T, B(T) and their loan curve L(T) would need <= B(T) for all T. You would be able to see if a bank was in trouble way out in advance.

Again, this would mean that banks would not need a reserve ratio. A dollar could theoretically be lended out an infinite number of times, so long as the dollar was put back into the bank at a term longer than the next demanded loan.

Finally, I would make banks a special entity partnership, where partners were held liable for losses up to a certain % of revenues.

Yes, I am this much fun at parties.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> It seems to me that _falling_ 7% is qualitatively different from _opening_ down 7%. Oil fell 30% over the weekend because of OPEC issues, and it seems like this could just be a response to that. "Plunge" implies a sort of velocity (as opposed to falling 7% over several days) which wasn't really the case here.

</comment><comment><USER71> Is there any evidence that a temporary trading halt will help to stabilize the market?

</comment><comment><USER86> Currently only 6% down, perhaps (anecdotal) evidence that halts work?

<comment><USER87> Days with a large pre-market drops often follow this pattern. As the end of the day approaches the selling often becomes panicked again.

<comment><USER88> Yep, that is due to order flow from retail investors. They always put their orders in at the open (that is why Mondays can be risky) or at the close.

You can see this by looking at the difference between the return on stocks in the first/last hour against the return over the rest of the day. I have no idea if this effect still exists today but you used to be able to print money from this (and I am sure it still works in places like China with lots of retail investors).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> how is this "circuit breaker" meant to help? surely it will just fuel emotions and make things worse if people can't get rid of stock they don't want?

<comment><USER90> I thought it was more about kicking automated trading bots to the curb for a while. Stop an algorithm-driven flash-crash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER91> And if the media would stop writing alarmist articles, there would be far less panic. We're in the golden age of yellow journalism. I've learned, in general, panicking creates more problems than there were to begin with.

</comment><comment><USER92> My first thought was the dead cat bounce from last week.

Hang onto your butts...

</comment><comment><USER93> _Looks like stock 's back on menu boys!_

</comment><comment><USER94> Bloomberg has view limits now? [https://outline.com/7grdK6](https://outline.com/7grdK6)

<comment><USER95> disable JavaScript

</comment></comment><comment><USER96> Already blow past 7% on downside.

</comment><comment><USER97> vix is approaching GFC levels - good time to sell some delta neutral condors

</comment><comment><USER98> It seems Mr. Market doesn't get to visit as freely or stay as long as he likes sometimes.

</comment><comment><USER99> It did the trick. Everyone is talking about it and my friends are buying.

<comment><USER100> I dont think its time to buy yet. If we have a multiple month disaster that requires quarantining most of the population the market will fall further.

<comment><USER101> Don't buy after the first big city is quarantined. Maybe after the second or third... But know you are taking an incredible risk unless you are using funds you can hold in that position for years.

<comment><USER102> > But know you are taking an incredible risk unless you are using funds you > can hold in that position for years.

Isn't that the case whenever one buys equities? Why is now special? It's definitely less risky to buy now than it was in January.

<comment><USER101> Yes, but I don't want to be the source of somebody doing something stupid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> TLT,GLD buy buy buy

<comment><USER103> TLT is screwed long-term by the fed causing massive inflation. I have a ton of money in puts on this right now.

<comment><USER69> TLT has gone up +11% in three trading days. It does really well when the Fed cuts rates and the S&P goes down. Inflation is a problem that GLD fixes.

Edit: It sucks you have a bunch of puts. You are most likely going to lose them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER104> Asia sneezes and America gets a cold...

</comment><comment><USER105> #hodl

</comment><comment><USER106> Let's call it what it is, the start of the Trump recession. Move your money to FDIC insured if you value it.

</comment><comment><USER107> Free market - until it is not

</comment><comment><USER108> But buy buy. All long term investors should be buying here imo. I'm not a big player but I'm picking up some shares at these lows.

</comment><comment><USER109> Well, according to a Harvard epidemiologist, 40-70% of humans will contract this virus, which implies 120-168 million people will die. That's going to impact economic activity and so will a Saudi / Russian oil price war. It's going to lead to the dreaded "R"-word and usually sinks whomever happens to be the current POTUS and their chances for re-election.

<comment><USER110> Hmm. It might also boost Sanders with respect to Biden...</comment></comment>


The Joys of Being a Late Tech Adopter - sneeze-slayer https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/28/technology/personaltech/joys-late-tech-adopter.html <comment><AUTHOR> Besides phones, other applications:

\- Wait for movie hype to end to avoid crap movies with great marketing. I usually wait to borrow them from the library.

\- I buy all my computers used from Craig's List. I'm typing on one I paid $500 for that would have been $2,000 new.

\- Latest news about "superfoods" or nutrition. I heard about someone who waited 5 years to act on food trends. None lasted that long before more latest nutrition news superseded it.

\- Reading daily news. Doesn't improve my life nor make me better informed.

I still check my email too much.

<comment><USER2> It shocks me how many people get upset when you tell them that you avoid following the latest daily outrage that the news media presents us. A while back I realized that exactly nobody spends time "catching up" on daily news if they are required to unplug for any significant amount of time, so why should I bother to follow it in real time?

<comment><USER3> They are shocked you are not like them, you are shocked them are not like you.

The loop feeds itself unless one of the parties ceases being shocked. I've found it easier to cease being shocked on my end, than waiting for the universe to change to suit my fancy.

<comment><USER4> Great perspective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I just wish that smartphones had a more standardised OS.

Old laptops are fully usable in exactly the same way as a modern machine. They might be slightly slower.

Well, I mean, it's getting more difficult to deal with 32bit hardware, but that's about 10-15 years old now.

My 32bit atom netbook is still usable; still gets security patches; runs the latest everything (it's just very slow, and e.g. some distros dropped 32bit support).

I think that the phone manufacturers, Google, etc, should address the fact that they are creating mountains of e-waste for no good reason. The last new phone I bought was partly because old software stopped running on my version of Android. That's really a shame.

I'm keeping an eye on the progress of the Librem but that's a tiny niche market for nerds like me and doesn't address the wider problem.

<comment><USER6> > I think that the phone manufacturers, Google, etc, should address the fact > that they are creating mountains of e-waste for no good reason. The last new > phone I bought was partly because old software stopped running on my version > of Android. That's really a shame.

this might be naive, but I do suspect we are getting close to an inflection point with the two year phone lifetime. up until the last few years, phone hardware was advancing rapidly and major features were being added to the mobile OSes every year. no one who could afford to _wanted_ to keep a phone more than two or three years. now that mobile tech is more mature, they will start having to cater to people who want to buy a quality device and keep it for longer. arguably apple is already doing this; iOS 13 will still support a phone from 2015.

<comment><USER5> I'm not so sure. We need an "IBM PC" of the smartphone world.

It's not a matter of the hardware manufacturers "supporting an OS". It's about the lack of standardization, hardware drivers, fragmentation etc.

Samsung don't support my 15 year old laptop, but it works and works fine, because it's a PC.

If the kernel drivers for my phone were mainlined that would be a huge step.

<comment><USER7> We need a tech recycling law and oversight. Many valuable materials are put into phones never to be seen again nor properly disposed. Standardized components would help. There will never be market pressure to recycle nor standardize without a mandate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think particularly with phones, 5-10 years ago it was necessary to get a flagship model to get something that at least wasn't awful, and you wanted to upgrade that flagship as often as possible to get to 'good' as soon as possible.

The last 5 years we reached 'good' for all flagship models, and so you bought one to get that but could then just keep it until it broke.

Now, and going forwards, I think we're in the phase where non flagships are reaching 'good' too, so it's really compelling to just get something that's cheaper and more of a commodity device.

As the article points out, it'll be fantastic when we reach the point of having good phones that are perfectly nice to use day to day, but if we occasionally lose or break them the reaction is 'ah well, I'll just go buy another one tomorrow' because they cost $50 brand new.

<comment><USER9> I agree that we've reached "peak phone". The newer models don't have any features you particularly need so keep using your existing one as a commodity until it breaks. The sales cycle is now looking like it's supposed to skip a generation of users. Unless you are getting it for free that 1000 or 1200 dollars you spend on a flagship could be used to enhance your life, either through having more disposable income, a holiday or investment. Enjoy your life and don't be a slave to devices.

<comment><USER10> The foldable ones look to bring 2x the screen size. It's like having a tablet in your pocket.

But I'm a late adopter too, so I'll wait until that tech is robust enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> drevil-v2 I treated myself to the 2019 Kindle Oasis and compared to my two year old Kindle Paperwhite (which has been donated to a grateful family member) it is miles ahead. The larger warmer screen is just incredible and I have no regrets.

On the other hand I am quite happy driving a 15 year old car and would not spend money on a brand new fancy car even though I can afford it. No Tesla or BMW or Merc for me.

It's different strokes for different people.

<comment><USER11> A couple years ago I bought an almost new video iPod circa 2005. It was my first Apple product so I didn't have the cable to charge it. I went to a Sprint store near my apartment and asked if they had a cable. They told me that they didn't carry "budget items" and that maybe I should try the Walgreen's next door. Ten short years this iPod was center stage at an Apple keynote and considered the best in the world, and it still worked just as well as it did when it came out. It just goes to show that the value of tech is relative to the times.

I'm waiting for the day when I can pick up a cheap Tesla that "only" goes 200 miles and "doesn't even drive itself". I'm already seeing Craigslist ads for Teslas where they have to state no autopilot. No car ad five years ago that would have to say that.

<comment><USER12> > I'm waiting for the day when I can pick up a cheap Tesla that "only" goes > 200 miles and "doesn't even drive itself".

I just sold my first-generation 2016 Model X to a dealer at 80% of its original cost 3 years ago, which to me indicates a profound level of delusion in the marketplace about the long-term reliability of Tesla vehicles. Going through my own personal experiences and following stories of what Tesla owners have had to go through when they needed repairs, I've finally accepted what my friend said long ago about Tesla cars being repair-hostile:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11233898](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11233898)

Speaking as someone who has gone through 3 years of repairs with a brand new Tesla (fortunately all being under warranty), if your objective is to buy a car that will be reasonably reliable and easily and cheaply repaired as its aging parts break, an old used Tesla would be the absolute last car I'd ever consider.

<comment><USER11> The Model X is a luxury vehicle. Luxury vehicles have always been expensive to maintain. Example:

Front strut for a 2016 Ford Fusion, $92 [1].

Front strut for 2016 Mercedes S550, $1,406 [2].

So I'm hoping the Model 3 will be different since it's a high production vehicle.

[1] [https://www.autopartswarehouse.com/sku/Ford/Fusion/Monroe/Sh...](https://www.autopartswarehouse.com/sku/Ford/Fusion/Monroe/Shock_Absorber_and_Strut_Assembly/2016/SE/TS72638.html) [2] [https://www.autopartswarehouse.com/sku/Mercedes_Benz/S550/Bi...](https://www.autopartswarehouse.com/sku/Mercedes_Benz/S550/Bilstein/Shock_Absorber_and_Strut_Assembly/2016/4Matic/BIL44240004.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I always wanted a MacBook (the 2015+ Retina one), but they always seemed too expensive once the storage was upgraded, and sadly this year Apple discontinued it. But last month I happened to look on the right Amazon site and hey, they have unsold brand-new stock for the latest model with the upgraded storage in the colour I want, discounted several hundred euros. Finally a good price :D

<comment><USER14> Note that the 2015 MBPs are a great buy - you can upgrade the SSD yourself using a $10 adapter: [https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/upgrading-2013-2014-mac...](https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/upgrading-2013-2014-macbook- pro-ssd-to-m-2-nvme.2034976/)

Grabbed a used 13" model with 16 GB RAM, and put in a 1 TB drive myself. Couldn't be happier upgrading from a 2010 edition

If they release new models with fixed keyboards next year, I might upgrade and shell out for the SSD and RAM upgrades.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> _"We're in the golden age of smartphones," he said. "Your smartphone from two years ago still works great and will continue to work for a while."_

If this is where smartphones peak - usable for two and a bit years - we need to take ourselves out to the car park for a strong conversation.

<comment><USER16> I'm still on iPhone 6. 4.5 years old. I want to upgrade for bling factor, but it just doesn't die. I'll probably try DIY battery replacement once next iPhone is out. Either I get to brag about my battery replacement skills or I have a reason to upgrade.. Win-win!

<comment><USER17> With people looking forward to upgrade their mobile and hand-held devices for multiple reasons (including the "bling factor") I can't help but think about the current e-waste management policies and mechanisms in place. Especially in third world countries where new electronic devices are pouring in as gifts or imports (thanks to the migrant workers and inflow of remittance) and older devices are just being dumped as normal trash. The environmental impacts of the improperly discarded batteries just pile up becoming severely unmanageable day by day.

<comment><USER18> I only recently moved from an iphone 5 to a 6. I actually consider it largely a step down due to the larger form factor. The 5 worked fine except for some applications I needed moving passed 32 bit support. If not for that I never would have upgraded. I'm always amazed at how people just must have the newest phones. Other than my issue with the 32 bit I saw no reason to change.

<comment><USER16> Why not iPhone SE? It was possible to get it real cheap in clearance sales.

Fingers crossed for iPhone SE2 in iPhone5 shape :|

<comment><USER18> Well I never bought either phone. Both were from family members that had them left over. Beggars can't be choosers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Most of the authors examples involve buying a generation or two older and buying used. I would certainly expect previously owned gadgets to cost substantially less. While there is a lot less early adopter risk in this, most of the savings are realized from buying second hand.

</comment><comment><USER20> Funny how it uses the original iPhone as it's example. I also got the original when released (though I used the buy from store and don't activate workaround). In my case, it didn't bother me at all when the next model came out, I just kept using my just as useful as when purchased it. Less true today as OS updates accelerate obsolescence.

Where I agree is with product updates. Version 1 can be significant as it was when I got my first iPod (Apple's first killer product). I got subsequent generations but not every one, mainly to increase storage, and never regretted any purchase. The difference between having an iPad or no iPad around the house is greater than having the prev gens iPad or the current.

<comment><USER21> The question is whether the extra year of having the first usable smartphone was worth the price, and the answer in my case was an unequivocal yes. Nowadays smartphones have reached a point of good-enough sufficiency, and that's why upgrade cycles have risen to one every three years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I think Apple knows this perfectly. I'm not even sure whether the "I'll wait for the S upgrade" people (myself included) outsmart Apple or it's Apple who created the market for those who want to _feel smarter_ than the rest.

At the end of the day, the economics of major upgrades vs. incrementals is very straightforward: major upgrades do bring significant new convenience features (e.g. once you are used to Face ID you don't want to go back) and if you want to own them today, you pay more. There's nothing smart about not benefiting from the new features today for the sake of saving a few hundred dollars.

<comment><USER23> > There's nothing smart about not benefiting from the new features today for > the sake of saving a few hundred dollars.

Sure there is. For every life-changing new feature, there are a dozen that end up not going anywhere. For the ones that are, their true advantages and disadvantages only become clear after they've been in the world for a while.

I'm thankful for all of the early adopters out there that hapily deal with the churn and find out what's actually good so that I don't have to— I can spend that time focusing on what's important to me and still get most of the benefits, if only a year or two later.

<comment><USER24> "For every life-changing new feature, there are a dozen that end up not going anywhere"

"3D Touch" (IIRC?) would seem to fall in to that camp, no? I've never had a device that offered it, and the folks I know that do didn't realize they had it.

<comment><USER25> I left Apple phones before that feature came out, and because of that feature I feel like I have no idea how to use a new Apple phone. I want to say it's just error but I really feel like they just forced a bunch of UI into that feature too hope it would catch on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Meanwhile the battery in my trusty and otherwise-perfectly-functional Sony Xperia Z5 Compact just swelled up and popped the back cover off. Just like what happened to my Z3 Compact. And apparently replacing the battery is an exercise in completely disassembling the phone and re-assembling it, which can take an experienced repair technician over an hour of time. The process also has a high failure rate, since it involves disconnecting and reconnecting both front and rear cameras, the loudspeaker, the LCD screen, and the NFC antenna.

I'm particularly salty about this because not only does this ruin a perfectly good device, but it can actually be quite dangerous.

[https://www.macworld.com/article/3162109/beware-the-bulgy- ba...](https://www.macworld.com/article/3162109/beware-the-bulgy-battery- lithium-ion-batteries-removed-from-laptops-can-still-be-dangerous.html)

</comment><comment><USER26> I generally buy products when I need to than when I want to.

For other products I usually wait 3 months or more for all of the tech reviewers to get in their 2 cents on each product.

Although, waiting for longer periods of time might be more beneficial because then you know more information about the devices long term durability.

I have started to buy used Macs due to a bad experience with buying a Macbook Pro 2017. I think I may have had some processor issues at that time. The other problem was that during repair my laptop was lost for a few weeks. I had other concerns on the long term durability so I sold it for a large loss.

I have a Desktop computer that I use as my "lab" computer. I generally use it for video games but I have also used it to do some freelance work in the past.

I try to avoid version one of any product that I could own also.

</comment><comment><USER27> Does this argument hold up when the next generation is significantly different? I would take an iPhone 6 over a 5S any day.

<comment><USER21> The non-S are usually a much bigger improvement over their predecessors than the S. Almost as if Apple have an A-team working on the non-S and a B-team refining them into S with minor iterations.

<comment><USER28> However, the S is almost always the version I prefer; your so-called "B-Team" are the ones who polish the designs, and the results are clearly superior.

As the saying goes, a trifle makes perfection, but perfection is no trifle.

<comment><USER29> This rings true for me, I got a iphone 6plus at launch and hated the large form factor.

it broke and I bought a used 6s (non-plus) and it was so much more refined.

Not to mention the smaller size was way more practical. The only time I wished for a larger screen was to watch movies on flights and an iPad is way better for that anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This may be sensible advice if being educated is not an option you're not interested in.

Blanket advice is great for dummies. We have the internet, with every opportunity to become knowledgable. You don't even have to read! Youtube alone has a dozen excellent tech channels that'll break it all down for you, in a somewhat entertaining manner too.</comment>


Slime Molds- single cell organism solves shortest path algorithm - <AUTHOR>

Scientists arrange food sources around a slime-mold as major cities in Japan. The slime-mold grows and creates a nutrient transportation network that's almost identical to the rail-system in Japan. Mind blowing.<p>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNAxrpzc6ws&feature=player_detailpage#t=3830s <comment><USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3728933>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3477746>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1071568>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3757527>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1072876> <\- Comments

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3970427> <\- Comments

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1071533>

There are more:

[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=title%3A%28...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=title%3A%28slime+mold%29)</comment>


Study Finds Engineers Far More Likely than MBAs to Build and Run Companies - <AUTHOR> http://blog.identified.com/2012/01/new-identified-research-reveals-engineers-far-more-likely-than-mbas-to-build-and-run-companies.html <comment><USER2> I think most MBAs are looking to work for a large company, climb the ladder and so on. The training focuses on that -- it's not called a Masters in Business _Administration_ for the heck of it.

<comment><USER3> Exactly. MBA programs (traditionally, things are changing slowly) aren't really designed to create entrepreneurs, either.

<comment><USER2> That's not necessarily a bad thing. Large companies need at least some specialist management types.

<comment><USER4> Right, you really need people who can say "OK, no more bullshit on these status reports, just say what happened so we can tell how things are going".

Also, good quantitative skills, and a good understanding of scaling and system behavior are important.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Their data doesn't support that conclusion. Actually, you can't make any conclusion without knowing total number of MSinE vs MBAs.

Update: <http://www.cgsnet.org/portals/0/pdf/R_ED2008.pdf> (p.16) suggests there are a lot more business masters vs engineers masters (23.4% vs 7%). So at a first glance it does look like the conclusion is right.

<comment><USER6> MBAs and engineers are not mutually exclusive groups. I have an MBA+MSc myself and quite a few people in my MBA class had at least an undergraduate degree in engineering.

In my experience an engineer with 10 years of work experience + 2 years of MBA is much more rounded than an engineer with 12 years of work experience. Given the choice between an engineer or an MBA without an engineering background, I'd pick the engineer though.

<comment><USER7> I agree. I've got a BS in Computer Science and an MBA, which is very common. A third of the class had undergrad engineering degrees.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm not sure they're doing good stats...

A better first question is, "What % of advanced degree engineers become founders?" and "What % of MBAs become founders?"

From there you can go on to questions of size and success.

As listed, the answer tells us nothing. For all we know there are 30x as many engineers as MBAs. Or vice versa. The conclusion could be the same as stated too.

<comment><USER9> I compiled the statistics for this whitepaper. We do not attempt to quantify success or company size. We aware that our data set is biased toward smaller companies, namely start-ups.

We simply examined CEOs at a certain time period and their degree composition.

<comment><USER8> Before complaining about success and size, it is important to know what % of college grads have each of these majors. Without knowing this, the conclusion of "Engineers with advanced degrees are more likely to become CEOs than MBAs" is suspect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> johnx123-up I like quoting pg here:

      So if you want to invest two years in something that will help you succeed
      in business, the evidence suggests you'd do better to learn how to hack
      than get an MBA.

\-- <http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html>

</comment><comment><USER10> I've heard this a number of times anecdotally. I remember once going to the head of my university's business school as an alumni and he said you're one of the few that came out of this school that actually started a company. To which I replied I didn't, I came out of the school for Electrical Engineering. He laughed and said well that makes sense.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think that selection bias does a lot to discredit any conclusions drawn from the data. The data is drawn from facebook profiles. The founder of the plumbing fittings factory down the street from me is a lot less likely to have a facebook account than a web startup founder. Moreover just because I say I am a founder/CEO or that I have a phd/mba/xyz in my profile does not mean it is true...

</comment><comment><USER12> This is definitely food for thought. However, I'm not sure it tells the whole story. I'm interested in the size/valuation of the companies in addition to a count. I'd argue that it's a lot easier to found a tech startup and call yourself founder/CEO than it is with more traditional MBA-geared companies. Also, the survey sample is probably pretty skewed since it uses Identified and Facebook.

<comment><USER9> Hey kthyqn, I put to together the statistics for the white paper. Our data is necessarily skewed and is not a perfect reflection of reality. Our data is comes with several caveats, namely we probably somewhat over represents startups and under represents large companies.

Nevertheless, it is largely a reflection of reality. A study from Harvard Business School was recently released that came to the same conclusion.

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020336350457718...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203363504577187243985486970.html)

*Looking for correct link, please stand by

EDIT: Linked to the wrong HBS study xD, corrected

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I find it odd that the data was mutually exclusive. They didn't find a single CEO with both an MBA and engineering degree?

<comment><USER14> I think they cast anyone with a MBA into the MBA category. I know of one CEO who has both an engineer degree and MBA. The CEO of Adobe.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shantanu_Narayen>

<comment><USER3> It's pretty common for engineers to enter an MBA program in effort to accelerate their careers into management.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The title and the article do not match. The study looks at 'Founder/CEO' and the title says 'Build & Run'.

Being a founder is very different than coming into a company several years later and being a CEO. They are different phases in the businesses life.

I'm an engineer. I plan on getting an MBA someday. My dad is not an engineer, but does have an MBA. He has been the CEO of 3 companies in his career. The first company was 100+ years old. The 2nd company was 200 years old. The 3rd (and current) company is 2 years old and he just joined it as CEO this week. In the first two cases he grew the business substantially. But he will never put 'founder' on his resume because that would make no sense. So by this study he wouldn't count on the MBA tally.

In the beginning, a startup is mostly about making a product and finding product/market fit. But later on once you have an established product it comes down a whole lot more to sales, marketing, operations, partnerships, etc. My dad has a psych/business undergrad & a marketing MBA. All of his work is on improving the sales force, making new ad campaigns, opening new distribution channels, etc etc etc. Things that as engineers we probably don't really want to deal with, but are the difference between being #3 in an established market and #1 in an established market. And that's ultimately what an MBA is aimed at helping you do - growing larger businesses.

So this data doesn't really suprise me.

As an interesting data point - my dad largely runs company in the 100-150 person range and has been in the chemical industry for a while. He noted that almost all of those kind of companies would prefer someone with an engineering undergrad and an MBA because ultimately you oversee sales, marketing, engineering, manufacturing, finance, etc. So if you are blind to the factory you will not be an effective CEO.

</comment><comment><USER16> This isn't too surprising to me. An MBA doesn't teach you how to build anything, an Engineering degree does. The things that are important early on in most startups are the engineering things, not the business things.

<comment><USER17> I wouldn't say that exactly. "Business things" are incredibly important, particularly sales. But the very word Administration in the title MBA indicates that MBA is about shepherding a successful business, not bootstrapping one from scratch. In this light, an MBA could be the most important person because if they are good they could take a company from 10m to 20m just based on improving efficiency, but that's of little use if your revenue is only 10k.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Here is the difference:

        Engineers = Build First, Sell Later.
        MBAs = Sell First, Build Later.

</comment><comment><USER19> Engineers use instincts, gut feelings and optimism when they find a opportunity and jump in often to be a entrepreneur. MBA's on the other hand evaluate risk and unknowns.

Engineers often create the companies and MBA's help them grow it to their potentials

</comment><comment><USER20> Coming from a business background, it's very difficult to create a product if you don't have engineering skills. It's the reason I learned how to code. Knowing how to sell isn't a useful skill if you don't have a product to sell!

</comment><comment><USER21> This is not an independent study or a "white paper". This is marketing for Identified. The study may be right or it may be wrong. But one thing is for sure: Identified has a vested interest to attract hackers to become members of Identified. So they publish headlines like this to make their way on to places like HN in the hopes it gets attention, and results in a membership bump. And by the 180+ upvotes I see as I type this, it's working.

You can trust that had the study resulted in MBAs being more likely to build and run companies, that this study would never have seen the light of day on its blog.

</comment><comment><USER22> I think the key word is "build". As someone with both a Master in CS and MBA and have previously been a CEO where I was hired to run the company (not a founder), and now starting my own business, I can attest that its the engineering side of me that pushes me to be a founder and build something from the ground up.

Although, I will say that some MBA schools are promoting entrepreneurship as a viable path more now than before. My alma mater (BYU) now has an Entrepreneurship major I believe.

<comment><USER23> Entrepreneurship is still a minor in the MBA program but can be majored in by undergraduates. The Business Plan Competition <bpc.byu.edu> and Business Model Competition <bmc.byu.edu> are pretty cool from an entrepreneurial perspective as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> People that are trained to build things are more likely to start companies that build things, than those that are trained to _administer_ businesses?

Also, did you know that the majority of mba students are engineers?

I am not sure why they needed a study for this. I was told this fact in engineering school in 1994.

</comment><comment><USER25> Makes sense to me, MBAs would be looking for companies to run, engineers build things and find themselves running companies.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm an engineer and have studied several MBA courses as part of my engineering management degree. MBA courses are heavily corporation oriented and have limited value for founders of organically grown start-ups.

Majority of the management techniques taught are economic only when applied at corporate scale.</comment>


City-owned Internet services offer cheaper and more transparent pricing - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/01/city-owned-internet-services-offer-cheaper-and-more-transparent-pricing/ <comment><USER2> I remember in North Atlanta a huge problem to competition was access to utility poles. Comcast and other entrenched monopolies preventing companies like Google access to those poles. Is this still an issue?

<comment><USER3> I'm guessing "it depends" on the locality but in general there's nothing magical about being an entity that can sling cable around the town on poles. There are already typically two providers doing so (besides the electricity utility) : phone and cable tv. If you want to you can start a company and do it too, if you live by their rules, man. Rules include things like using qualified people to attach stuff to poles, be insured appropriately, other kinds of "government over-regulation" stuff, and of course that there be space available on said poles. In our very small town there's a retail store that has their own fiber between two of their locations. I suspect they contracted its installation to one of the regional fiber maintenance and installation companies. That's probably how you'd do it too unless you like owning bucket lift trucks and being on-call to come out and repair fiber when someone drives into a pole.

Now, in some cases the city has issued a "licence" to a provider to deliver some service city-wide (e.g. cable tv). That agreement might include some non- competition provisions, on the basis that said provider spent $$$ installing their system and is only willing to do that if they are guaranteed to not have competition. This might be viewed as "not allowing access to poles" even though it actually isn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seems ridiculous to me that the researchers chose to abide by telco website dubious terms of service restrictions, resulting in less complete research.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16152194](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16152194) is discussion of the research this story is reporting on.

</comment><comment><USER5> Could the federal government "force" cities to offer fiber services? that might speed up the process... (they would offer grants based on city population density... lower density = more money (Build It, They will come!))

<comment><USER6> And which federal entity will over see this? Considering it's a Communications service, perhaps a Federal Communications Commission?

We have one. Have you seen what they've been up to? What's the likelihood this policy would ever be enacted under the current administration?

<comment><USER5> Maybe we need a new federal entity... one that doesn't allow lobbying. Maybe it could be called: For The People.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Article links to this site which also has a lot of relevant info: [https://muninetworks.org](https://muninetworks.org)

<comment><USER8> And from there, this map: [https://muninetworks.org/communitymap](https://muninetworks.org/communitymap)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Most of the municipalities listed in this table are located in the Southeast Appalachia area. Does anyone know why community owned fiber is biased towards this part of America?

[https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp- content/uploads/2018/01/muni-...](https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp- content/uploads/2018/01/muni-broadband-prices.jpg)

<comment><USER10> might have something to do with hydro electric dams and cheap electricity, so they can subsidize the costs

(Just guessing)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> In news that will shock only Americans, it turns out the government is better than the private sector at offering public utilities. :)

<comment><USER12> In news that will shock only Americans.. After regulations imposed by govt at all different levels (state, fed, municipal), it turns out the only ones capable of competing in such an environment are the ones who restricted and closed the market to competition in the first place..

ftfy

<comment><USER13> It's not about regulation, providing internet service over cable is capital intensive and all the incumbent has to do is lower prices, drive the new entrant out of the market and raise prices again.</comment></comment></comment>


Twitter, make your choice, acquire a media sharing service or launch your own - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2010/12/28/image-upload-twitter-difficult/

<comment><USER2> What she wants is Tumblr. And, from a developer perspective, look how they are coping with downtime. (Horribly.)

I think Twitter already pissed off enough developers by publishing their own free Twitter client. A free, integrated photo service would not appease a lot of people. I can still remember when TapBots touted their upcoming, secret iPad app, which, as it turned out, was a paid Twitter app. Ouch.

<comment><USER3> A free, integrated photo service would not appease a lot of people.

Except for people who aren't web developers (aka Real Users®)

<comment><USER2> The phrasing was a little misleading; a lot of people will be annoyed at such a move, but that is not to say that many other people will embrace it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Light grey text on a white background scalds my eyes.

<comment><USER5> [http://viewtext.org/article?url=http://thenextweb.com/twitte...](http://viewtext.org/article?url=http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2010/12/28/image- upload-twitter-difficult/)

<comment><USER6> Thank you for this. I had no idea what I was missing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is exactly what my wife struggled for this very moment. It was so hard for her to use Twitpic or Tweetdeck when all she wanted to post a photo from Twitter site. They should really just add their own photo sharing service or integrate seamlessly to other service from their current web site. Their iPhone app is quite good, wish they can bring that experience on their web site.

<comment><USER8> The app was an acquisition (and a good one) ... my guess is that none of the current services are good/polished enough to do what they want.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I really miss Pownce for this. I loved it because I could share anything I wanted with my friends. :)

</comment><comment><USER10> Twitter is not for sharing photos. That's the whole point of twitter.

<comment><USER11> but it is for sharing information and i'd argue that information can come in the form of photos, video, documents, links etc..

<comment><USER12> That's kind of a slippery slope though. Information is data and data is anything!</comment></comment></comment>


Tell HN: Somebody should make a rock and mineral identification app - <AUTHOR> Imagine this: You're out camping or hiking, and you see a particular stone or rock that captures your fancy.  You take a picture of it on your smartphone.  Now, it identifies what kind of rock or mineral you're looking at, and takes you to the Wikipedia page for that rock or mineral.
How could you make this app?  Well, first you would make a database of all known mineral compounds, then you'd download all images that Google said were related to it.  Once you've got all of that mess, feed it to a machine learning algorithm.  Use the results of that to identify newly photographed images.
It probably won't be that good at first (maybe it would give a statistical percentage for a match, like there's a 66% chance this is Calcite, etc.), but with more time, it might get better...
Why do I want something like this?  Well, it would have applications ranging from mere appreciation of stones and mineral compounds to maybe something could help you if you were trapped on a desert isle, to future space travel and planetary exploration...  does anyone agree? <comment><USER2> I'm working on something similar to this for prospecting. Unfortunately a major issue is that even minor impurities can radically alter the appearance of minerals. Google corundum if you want a good example. Another issue is that people tend to post pictures online of exceptional samples which are pretty much by definition very different from what one would expect to find in nature. Finally, visual inspection is often not sufficient to determine what mineral something is, even if you know exactly what to look for; other tests such as scratch tests or chemical tests, etc are used to make the final determination.

All in all you're probably not going to be able to make a general rock identifier that gives useful results for everything. You may get away with something more limited, but even then you're going to need a better database of images than google for training. I agree though it would be cool to have.</comment>


The Ins and Outs of IBM's Power9 ZZ Systems - <AUTHOR> https://www.nextplatform.com/2018/02/15/ins-outs-ibms-power9-zz-systems/ <comment><USER2> And here I was thinking that Apple charged too much for memory. Ouch that's some steep prices. I wouldn't mind hearing from real customers how it compared to x86 server costs for them.</comment>


The Strongest Predictor of Men's Well-Being Isn't Family or Health - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/work/1474562/what-makes-men-happy-a-study-by-harrys-says-job-satisfaction/ <comment><USER2> > The results showed a clear trend: The strongest predictor of men's happiness > and well-being is their job satisfaction, by a large margin—and the > strongest predictor of job satisfaction is whether men feel they are making > an impact on their companies' success.

I wonder how much of this is evolutionary? Perhaps it harkens back to the days of hunter-gatherer tribes where the motivation to succeed, as well as healthy competitiveness, increased viability for the tribes' survival. Perhaps that is the reason happiness for men is tied to job satisfaction?

It's an interesting one to dissect from many angles. The article mentions the study was weighted, and I wonder how much 'job satisfaction' really just means 'higher pay' or positions of power. As it states, men are not a monolith, individuals all can have very unique motivations, etc. Also, what makes us 'happy' generally changes over time from individual to individual.

One thing I do tend to think is that younger men, in particular, function better when they have a clear purpose or meaning (let us compare that to 'job satisfaction' in a way). This is purely based on my own generalised anecdotal experience and observation that younger men who have strong interests or hobbies tend to be happier and more motivated then those with no hobbies or interests - that's when you start to see more destructiveness in their behaviour, in my opinion.</comment>


Prediction: The scooter startups will introduce a subscription fee - <AUTHOR> Their basic economics aren't working with all of the competition. And cities won't allow the scale to support their valuations. They will introduce monthly subscription fees to participate in the scooter shares. That will be the first indicator that things are going south. <comment><USER2> Haha yes, I agree. Same thing happened with the health insurance industry in the United States. There was too much capital risk and illiquidity in letting people pay ONLY for whatever medical services they wanted or needed...

...so the government forced you to buy an ongoing subscription instead (your monthly premiums, which are usually $600-2000 per month unless subsidized by employer or government program)</comment>


So, Should I Use a Carousel? - <AUTHOR> http://shouldiuseacarousel.com/ <comment><USER2> Carousels are one of the few things I dislike more than infinite scroll in modern webpages. They can look really good though.</comment>