Wait a Minute. How Can They Afford That When I Can't? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/your-money/financial-security-envy.html <comment><USER3> What's with the recent stream of low quality NYT articles? This reads like the author recently discovered Mr. Money Mustache and decided to publish some blogspam. There is 0 new information.

<comment><USER3> Suggestion for mods: replace NYT link with original: [https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/welcome-to-the- forum/the-'...](https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/welcome-to-the- forum/the-'everybody-seems-wealthy'-illusion-is-it-really-just-all-fueled-by- debt/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > _Not only do people want to play down their inherited wealth or money from > family "but they actively try to hide it," Mr. Conley said. "We have this > ideology of individualism and worshiping of the self-made man or woman."_

I have almost exactly the opposite mentality w.r.t. this scenario. I was always taught to not talk about money because it will only lead to problems, strife, envy etc.. (not that I'm rich or from a rich family but there's always people on both sides of you money-wise).

<comment><USER5> I think a lot of it too is that if you have money, people feel entitled to your time and money because you have it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I felt this when I joined a sales org as a Sales Engineer. I felt like I was making a healthy salary but couldn't believe the cars I was seeing driven by the reps I supported. Until one day I had a conversation about it with a few of them and found out they do everything in terms of payments. As in can I afford the payment with no concern about what that costs in interest etc. Eye opening experience.

<comment><USER7> There's a school of thought that when hiring commissioned salespeople, that you want to hire the ones who have a large monthly outflow they need to cover every month.

<comment><USER8> [https://www.saastr.com/your-1-sales-rep-should-be-driving- an...](https://www.saastr.com/your-1-sales-rep-should-be-driving- an-m6-convertible-and-not-buying-a-panerai-watch/)

Embodied with all the expected toxicity in this article.

<comment><USER6> Yikes. That's pretty much the reason I left the org I was referring to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> 'Image' versus Reality.

Some people are more concerned with displaying 'Image' than whether or not they can keep up with Reality.

This has been historically the difference between 'Old Wealth' and the 'Nouveau Riche'. The Nouveau Riche mentality is that if you have it, you must flaunt it ostentatiously. The people whose families have been wealthy for generations very often don't show it at all, or maybe they have some things that are 'very good' but 'old'. (To take that to its logical conclusion, think "a 40-year-old Rolls Royce".)

My sister always looks like she wouldn't have two cents to rub together, but she keeps several million dollars stashed away so that all of her (4) kids could be given a million bucks at any time if necessary. Note that if she can give it to one child, then she feels she should give it to all four as a matter of 'fairness'. Then again she has three houses, all set up with clothing and furniture and appliances, so that she just has to arrive and everything is available for her immediately.

</comment><comment><USER10> How can we get young people a better concept of money and wealth quantities and trajectories?

I remember having the light bulb go off for me—previously I had zero clue and tried not to worry about—that most of those around me doing very well around age thirty had had help with a house down payment and their college costs. So the difference was simply they had the nut to get into home ownership and they didn't have a monthly student loan.

</comment><comment><USER11> Save you time: "When people seem to be able to afford much more than their income would suggest, it's often because there is hidden wealth or hidden debt."

Then some extra stuff to try to make people feel bad for having wealth.

<comment><USER12> What else can one think? Either people have money to buy the things they buy or they don't and they borrow. I guess a few could be in illegal businesses or maybe has a sugar-daddy/momma. It's like saying, that customer who just bought a lottery ticket either wins or won't win. Yeah, I guess so.

<comment><USER13> _What else can one think?_

You could be wondering if you're getting cheated on your salary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Wait a Minute. How Can They Afford That When I Can't?

In debt over their eyeballs?

</comment><comment><USER15> Mirror to avoid paywall: [https://archive.is/ve4mL](https://archive.is/ve4mL)

<comment><USER16> Mirror to avoid paywall: disable javascript

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't really get the point of this article.

If you know how much someone makes, then you can deduce relatively quickly that they are either a.) in serious amounts of debt, or b.) have some other form of income that you aren't aware of.

</comment><comment><USER18> I remember when I first started dating my wife, I encountered a number of people she knew from the same immigrant community (South Korean) who were driving expensive cars and living in nice houses despite working fairly low- end jobs. I asked her about it and she explained that basically these folks were either:

a) up to their eyeballs in debt with no savings of any kind

b) involved in some kind of "scam"

c) were being floated by rich relatives or friends somewhere else, but the story there was complicated

My wife has always been very frugal so I found this curious, but she explained that having a "rich" appearance was very important in the tight night social community that most South Koreans found themselves in. These three versions of what was happening were often occurring at the same time. An example true story:

A person she knew, despite working two jobs as a cashier at a grocery and a dry cleaners, owned an expensive house and drove around in a luxury SUV. This person took payment, in part or in full as cash and often simply didn't pay taxes. At church, they'd chat up friends looking for business opportunities. When one was finally spotted (an investment opportunity), it was realized they didn't have any cash to participate. They then convinced a close friend to loan them basically their life savings upon which the investment was made with "a few percent" skimmed off the top as a finders fee to purchase a few luxury goods to keep the game going. There were multiple investors, and eventually somebody ended up stealing somebody else's identity, drained their bank account and fled the country. The investment ended up buying a large inventory of very poorly made products that were unsalable and it failed. The person she knew ended up with no serious money lost and just moved on to the next strike- it-rich plan.

The house was mortgaged under somebody else's identity who had good credit and income as a "favor". The main floor was furnished elegantly for parties and after church activities, the rest of the house was entirely devoid of furniture. The SUV was a car they bought from a mechanic friend after it had been totaled by the previous owner and had new bodywork and some engine work done at extreme discount -- it barely ran day-to-day.

This wasn't a rare story. It seemed to pervade a large portion of the community and everybody was inexplicably blind to it, and fell for the same money-lending, identity theft scams over and over again.

When the Russell Crowe movie "Cinderella Man" came out, there's a scene where his manager, played by Paul Giamatti, is confronted by the main character's wife at his apartment. It's revealed that the apartment, and fancy lifestyle are all a display to give him credibility. [https://youtu.be/e4fb7N_ICj0](https://youtu.be/e4fb7N_ICj0)

It was then that I really understood what the success signaling and veblen goods in my wife's immigrant community was all about.

<comment><USER19> I've seen this in the Persian community as well. I was dating a Persian woman and she was telling me how proud of her brother she was-- he had become a bank vice president and bought a home (at the absolute height of the first housing crisis, think 500k condo in Anaheim), and even purchased a Nissan GT-R (100k give or take). Eventually, it got out that he was making 80k, which I was making a multiple of and wouldn't even CONSIDER these extravagances.

I also have several Persian friends who seem to piss away money like it's not a thing, but that's the most egregious example. Still, love them to death :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Why is this a thing? My total, all-encompassing expenses are less than 15% of my income annually and I have zero debt. I rent a modest apartment because I am in my 20s & the loss on rent is, for now, less than the would-be loss of property taxes + HOA + home loan interest. I drive a nine year old Prius I bought when I was 18 - and I know that statistically everyone my age driving a luxury vehicle is either in debt, has outside income, or simply out-performed me financially - all of which are okay. This is just a youthful and inexperienced opinion, but it sure as hell seems like the root of the issue is not income inequality, or social theory, or any other problem requiring a solution but our national obsession of not minding our own business since people aren't at peace with themselves.

Mind you, these are sentient, presumably self-aware, humans doing this - <USER2> isn't the behavior of a bot in a game, but actual people. Yikes

<comment><USER21> You sound like you're managing things very well, and I don't want to discount that in any way.

I do suspect your income is relatively quite high. Where I'm at, a modest apartment alone is more than 20% of any 20-something's average income.

<comment><USER22> Right. I make $360k a year, and just living in a decent apartment already eats up 24% of my after tax income. Sure, if I had roommates and lived in a basic apartment, I could cut that down to 12%. Point being, it's hard to get by on only another 3%, and I'm making pretty okay money...

<comment><USER20> We are at roughly the same compensation. If you save 60k a year vs 120k a year, the time it takes to own a house is cut in half, the rent and interest bleed stops twice as fast.

Now you're saving 180k a year by reducing bleed even though your expenses are the same, etc etc. Compound finance is a helluva drug

<comment><USER23> Heck, if you save 120K per year and work for 2 years, you can basically retire to places like Thailand and live like a king.

<comment><USER22> On $250k in investments, you could only sustainably withdraw $10k per year. That's not even $1k per month. That's upper middle class in Thialand, which is not exactly kingly.

<comment><USER24> Yeah but you're living like upper middle class in Thailand at age 24 with no responsibilities in OP's scenario.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> How can they afford a NyTimes subscription? [https://web.archive.org/web/20191108011522/https://www.nytim...](https://web.archive.org/web/20191108011522/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/your- money/financial-security-envy.html)

<comment><USER26> NYTimes subscription is $10/month through the iOS app... it's not exactly in the same ballpark as even a single vacation :-)

<comment><USER27> "it's just $X/mo"

That's the mentality that often gets people into debt.

<comment><USER26> Budget monthly if you have that trouble, I run a monthly surplus without issues. $120 a year for news is not that much and is cheaper than paper newspapers used to be.

(Edit: obviously, yes, if you cant afford it don't buy it. News is a luxury too, just a much cheaper one. The only things people actually need are food, transportation, housing, &c.)

<comment><USER25> Paradoxically, the reason why I can afford things is because I don't buy shit I don't need just because it's "$120 a year" and "not that much". It does add up. And then it also compounds. As a rule, I try to avoid buying things with zero (or negative as in the case of NYTimes) residual value.

<comment><USER26> That's your decision. Go for it if it's what you need for your financial situation.

My only point was that it wasn't the same type of spending described in the article.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A deep learning visual search platform using TensorFlow/Django/Docker - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/AKSHAYUBHAT/DeepVideoAnalytics/blob/master/readme.md <comment><AUTHOR> Currently there are several libraries, models and datasets available for Computer Vision research. However its still difficult to apply a model to your own dataset without writing a non trivial amount of glue code. There is a need for a drop-in solution that comes with UI, algorithms and pre-indexed dataset ready to use out of the box. Deep Video Analytics aims to be the platform to enable this. Using Deep Video Analytics you can quickly index images, videos for visual search, detect objects, and soon recognize faces and incorporate large pre-indexed datasets via fast approximate nearest neighbors.</comment>


Britain "haemorrhaging" manufacturing jobs - <AUTHOR> http://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/britain-haemorrhaging-manufacturing-jobs/06/06/ <comment><USER2> I have two very raw ideas about this slowly taking form in my brain.

1\. Factories produce wealth. If you look at the nations doing good and the nations doing bad[1], factories, I think, make a difference. USA completely moved their means of production to Asia, thinking they could produce cheap and make huge profits. Works for Apple. Doesn't work for the consumer. These jobs are just missing. Nobody can buy. So people borrow. Until the lenders crash, because they can't pay back. But the banks have to lend, that's their business! And when companies don't borrow because they don't build factories, then the consumer has to borrow. Needs to, because he doesn't get payed well.

2\. With factories gone, our system doesn't work anymore. Forget Asia. Robots. And someday not even big robots in factories, but a desktop replicator. There is so many jobs that will just cease to exist. Sure, there will be new ones, but some researches claim that already today robots take more jobs than create. Especially combined with the low investments. Corporate profits are at an all time high, savings are at an all time high, money is cheap (negative interest rate!) but still investments are low. Companies aren't borrowing. Nations are still playing the ordo-liberal game and cut spending. Consumers are the only ones borrowing.

It's insane.

It's like capitalism forgot how capitalism work. Companies should borrow, invest, earn, pay their workers, and the workers consume. Now companies save, pull profits, cut wages and replace workers by cheaper means of production and the jobless borrow to consume.

Every couple of years this crashes because people can't pay their loans. Government takes over the debt to reset the cycle, but because their increased debt they have to cut their spending.

[1] I audaciously define good/bad in way that it serves my argument.

<comment><USER3> _If you look at the nations doing good and the nations doing bad[1], factories, I think, make a difference._

I'd like to know what your definition actually is because there seems to be very little connection. Some examples:

Italy and Japan are first-world nations with lots of factories but middling growth.

Bangladesh is a poor nation with lots of factories but weak prospects.

[Edit -- in my original post I referred to Switzerland because I misremembered the stats. It does have a smaller share of labor force in industry than neighboring Germany or Italy, but Swiss manufacturing is still very significant. Thanks to the posters who corrected my mistake.]

<comment><USER2> Well, Switzerland is rich because they have our tax-money. They also do have a lot of high-tech, precision engineering industry, don't they?

Japan is an interesting example - they have negative interest rates since a very long time.

Basically, I was talking about Germany. The German automotive industry plus the machinery section create a lot of well paying industry jobs (although the well-paying part is really hollowed out and wages rising way to slow in Germany). The political landscape is stable (although I despise the conservative government). Germans version of Trump/Brexit/Le Pen has about 8% in the surveys for the election. Gini-Index is way more healthy than in other nations (although getting worse).

But you are completely right, there is a lot of things missing in the picture (or wrong).

<comment><USER4> Since you were talking about Germany and jobs being a means of distributing wealth of sorts, what do you think about the taxes? Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Belgium all have some very high taxes on high earners compared to the US and UK, and more importantly, the progressive tax thresholds are much better adjusted for poor and middle class people to have more disposable income. Germany even has a solidarity tax on top of the normal income tax, which also goes into the country's budget. Correct me if I'm wrong.

And for some reason, these countries' rich people actually do pay their taxes for the most part, instead of hiding them using various means. That's either because of the education or the culture, I don't know.

<comment><USER5> In Belgium your tax rate is %50 (over 38,080eur[2]). That is totally insane I thought...

The US: For hn types, the tax rate would be 28% (fed) + 10% (state tax CA) + 9% (medical cost deductions per paycheck[1]) + 8% sales tax (ca) = 55%? (also subtract medical bills will seize all your property later in life though, and any private schools needed). I am sure Belgium has many other costs, hell add %10 to Belgium. It is still comparable.

[1] [http://budgeting.thenest.com/much-average-paycheck-gets- dedu...](http://budgeting.thenest.com/much-average-paycheck-gets-deducted- health-insurance-31197.html) [2] [http://taxsummaries.pwc.com/ID/Belgium- Individual-Taxes-on-p...](http://taxsummaries.pwc.com/ID/Belgium-Individual- Taxes-on-personal-income)

<comment><USER2> Add university. I graduated with 20k savings, Americans with 200k debt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> British manufacturing output has grown significantly over the last 40 years, despite a 60% reduction in manufacturing employment over the same period. We're making more and better stuff with far fewer people.

The union narrative of manufacturing having been "run into the ground" by neglectful governments is clearly bogus, as is the nationalist narrative that manufacturing jobs have been exported abroad. This is about automation and mechanisation.

[http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2803400/UK-m...](http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2803400/UK- manufacturing-output-increased-1978-ONS-figures-show.html)

<comment><USER7> Except OPs article laments the loss of jobs, not output. And, its not clear from your reference if the increase in output should be attributed to larger dollar goods (eg. Rolls Royce engines), or more smaller dollar goods. Likely the former I would think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Anecdotal: I walk into the centre of Birmingham through Digbeth across the river Rea in its little culvert most days and have done since around the late 80s. Used to go past small metal bashers and 'repetition' companies with doors open for ventilation. Metal baskets full of washers, and a galvanising company with a huge Victorian shed dipping parts into vats. Now, mostly garages, car scrap and rebuilding. A few hipster galleries and coffee bars.

Historical Note: Thatcher's administrations moved the UK economy from manufacturing to service industries. This has always worried me through the volatility of the service sector. Germany (then West Germany) went down a different path.

Numerical sideline: West Midlands (mentioned in OA) has a population of 5 million.

Breaking News: Jeremy Corbin is addressing a rally down the hill. Big turnout.

Background: GMB is a TUC affiliated trade union

[https://www.gmb.org.uk/](https://www.gmb.org.uk/)

[https://www.tuc.org.uk/britains-unions](https://www.tuc.org.uk/britains- unions)

<comment><USER9> I understand the sentiment but it's a little harsh to say Thatcher moved the UK economy from manufacturing to service industries (although that seemed her intent).

From 1970 - 1980 the percentage of GDP from manufacturing fell by 5%, from 1980 - 1995 it then fell by another 5%

[https://fullfact.org/economy/did-labour-decimate- manufacturi...](https://fullfact.org/economy/did-labour-decimate- manufacturing/)

<comment><USER8> Agreed, perhaps I should of said ' _nudged the rudder in the direction of services_ ' and later governments rolled with the course change as the path of least resistance.

PS: the geographical distribution of those GDP share reductions might bear investigation. The kinds of jobs available in the Black Country changed _radically_ in the 1980s.

<comment><USER9> I think manufacturing has been in decline since the late 50s but can't find data to back that up.

One of the challenges I see is that most of UK manufacturing has gone high- tech and become more automated so less opportunities for people in sheds!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The concern for Britain and other countries ought to be the loss of sovereignty that accompanies a decline in manufacturing of the magnitude the article describes. When a country's infrastructure and supply chain is dominated by imported goods a country's ability to make decisions in its citizens best interests declines. Its ability to make fair trade deals declines. Its national security declines.

<comment><USER10> Nothing in the article suggests there has been a decline in manufacturing output in Britain but a decline in jobs.

I don't know the situation there enough to know what is happening, but in the USA for instance the decline of jobs in manufacturing wasn't accompanied with a decline in output, quite the opposite.

<comment><USER11> Depends heavily on how you measure. U.S. manufacturing looks good _by value_ of the manufactured products, because it remains strong in a handful of high- value manufacturing segments. That's an important measure, but may or may not capture what everyone is interested in. Besides employment, other measures may include, for example, how dependent is the country on imports for items vital to national security? An exclusive dependence on imported steel can have downsides even though steel is now a low-value commodity. Another measure is the diversity of the overall manufacturing industry. Does a country manufacture a whole range of products, or is it highly specialized in a few segments? The latter can still be good by value, but may be more brittle, and make it harder to start new companies in certain fields due to a lack of a local ecosystem (the U.S. has nothing like the Shenzhen ecosystem in electronics, for example).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Isn't the world "haemorrhaging" manufacturing jobs? Isn't this just mechanization?

<comment><USER13> Not really. This is actually a side effect of GHG policies.

Traditional British industries like steel production can't possibly compete with China when they have to pay carbon offsets and their competitors don't.

So British factories are being shut down, even if they are more carbon efficient.

<comment><USER14> That's... a vast (and very inaccurate) over-simplification.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I buy RaspberryPi stuff and cheeses that are made in Britain. I also have a nice vintage Burberry trench coat that I treasure. I'm not sure what all they make there. The article talks about "manufacturing jobs" without any examples. Examples for such an article, especially including changes that exemplify the claims of the article that manufacturing is down, would be really nice.

</comment><comment><USER16> Employment in manufacturing has been falling since the sixties, this isn't a recent occurrence.

</comment><comment><USER17> _The West Midlands has lost almost 100,000 manufacturing jobs._

The coal pits of the Midlands are no more. The last deep coal mine in the UK closed on 18 December 2015. Many heavy manufacturing jobs went down with them.

</comment><comment><USER18> Post-Brexit this will be...

Britain "haemorrhaging" jobs

</comment><comment><USER19> First they say that it's been happening for over a decade, but then they blame Brexit at the end, this makes no sense.

<comment><USER20> Could you point me towards that bit where they blame Brexit?

I can only find the part where it says

> "If this sad decline is not addressed then post-Brexit Britain and the next > generation will surely pay the price."

...which is a fair statement, I'd say.</comment></comment>


Tik Tok Statistics - <AUTHOR> https://mediakix.com/blog/top-tik-tok-statistics-demographics/ <comment><AUTHOR> I have two main questions about Tik Tok that I figure the Hacker news audience will have insight on.

How is Tik Tok comparable financially to Facebook Instagram Snapchat or Youtube when "29% of monthly users open TikTok every day." compared to > 90% for each of the former apps. Moreover, "TikTok's user base is largely based in India at 43% of all users," which is a low ROI zone as it is. Evan Speigel of Snapchat once said that "Snapchat was only for rich countries" when referencing India because the bandwidth verse revenue per user did not check out.

Tik Tok's bandwidth ought to be higher than Snapchat's no? Does Tik Tok just have excellent compression software or some unique value proposition on the technical side?

If not, what is the long term plan for Tik Tok? Given retention rates in Western nations it makes me wonder what a video platform can or will do</comment>


For as Much as We Know About the World, There Are Still Dark Spots on the Map - <AUTHOR> http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/new-views-maps-unknown-oceans-power-transmission-distance-cities <comment><USER2> I've done some reasonably in-depth (hah) oceanographic GIS work.

we know _nothing_ about the oceans. Even the things one would think are pretty easy are known at very, very coarse granularity. "what shape is the ocean floor? what's it made of? how deep is the sediment here?" are questions that, for the vast majority of the ocean, we have answers for at a resolution of about one data point per square mile or worse, and that survey data is decades old.

The last "proper", "get on a boat for 6 months and count animals" surveys of marine mammal populations in some high risk areas of the ocean (like the gulf of mexico) are almost 40 years old for some species.

etc.

<comment><USER3> Yet many argue that we are overfishing and depleting our ocean's fish? What evidence can those individuals use to prove this is true if our knowledge of the oceans are as limited as you say they are?

<comment><USER4> By looking at how much fish is caught? It's pretty easy to measure: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overfishing#/media/File:Surexp...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overfishing#/media/File:Surexploitation_morue_surp%C3%AAcheEn.jpg)

<comment><USER5> That could be because fish are moving into other areas or learn to avoid the nets. Fishing yields can't be the only source of data.

<comment><USER6> Modern factory fishing fleets use sonar and track movements of fish populations over vast areas. It's highly unlikely fish have learned to evade sonar, or nets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This reminds me of a line from "Bill Nye the Science Guy" from when I was younger. Here's what my fuzzy memory recalls:

We know more about the moon than our oceans. Getting to the moon is easy, all you need is a few billion dollars, a rocket pointed at space, and a space suit to keep you pressurized.

In the ocean you have to deal with such unimaginable crushing pressures that push the limits of human engineering. Whats insane is that there is life there! There is so much left in the ocean to explore because humans have not been able to get there yet.

<comment><USER8> The pressure difference between 1 atm and the moon is exactly 1 atm. It's less than the difference between the inside and outside of most car tires.

The pressure difference between 1 atm and the bottom of the ocean is hundreds of atm, and the deepest spots can go over 1000 atm.

Put this way, it's easy to see why the ocean is so much tougher.

Luckily, the ocean is much closer than the moon, and the same gravity that is responsible for the tyranny of the rocket equation actually helps you get to the bottom. We've been to both places: the moon with Apollo landers, and the bottom of the Mariana Trench with bathyscaphes. I hope we'll keep returning to learn more about both. Of course, this will be much easier with robots that don't need to stay at 1 atm.

<comment><USER9> Not sure the robots help that much (apart from not dying when things go wrong).

As you said in some parts pressure is 1000atm, if we can pressurise the robots to 50atm that still leaves 950atm to deal with, I'm curious what happens to electronics at 100atm, 500atm and 1000atm. I'd imagine some components wouldn't handle that very well.

Of course robots have other huge advantages, duration (no messy waste problems, no need for oxygen/carbon dioxide handling systems, no need for (as much) heating) I guess.

<comment><USER10> It is much easier to keep electronics working down there when empty space is filled with liquid instead of pressurised gas (usually nitrogen). It is not the pressure, but pressure difference, that matters and liquids are not as compressible as gas is.

Edit: just adding a note that I have worked with submarine electronics[1] for a while and can say we even do not know much about what is happening near the shore, not to even talk about the unexploredness of oceans. Quite a lot of HW/SW in use by scientists is far from modern. We need more initiatives like the Ocean Discovery XPRIZE[2] to bring attention to the field.

[1] [http://www.flydogmarine.com](http://www.flydogmarine.com)

[2] [https://oceandiscovery.xprize.org](https://oceandiscovery.xprize.org)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The obvious emphasis of the maps is on the vastness of oceans and how much remains unknown, but I would stress also surprising is how little we know about the biodiversity of land. The 'remoteness from cities' map highlights places based on how few humans live there, but many of these areas (dense tropical forests) are home to the majority of species on the planet. We are barely now starting to see some consensus on estimates for how many species of land-dwelling arthropods there even are (several million). We know nothing or next to nothing about the vast majority of these. This is pretty amazing to me.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm a little disappointed that this article makes such a big claim but actually states in the last map that all land is discovered. First of all I don't think it's true. At least some spots will be visited so infrequently or only by a disconnected tribe of people that it's basically unexplored. And second the whole discussion doesn't make sense if all land is discovered. Of course there are undiscovered pieces of water (maybe including small islands) somewhere. For lack of importance they don't count though.

<comment><USER13> It doesn't say that all land is discovered. It only shows data about oceans; it's called "Unknown Oceans" and shows data from the Census of Marine Life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is a deceptive title. The maps presented are interesting, and the article touches on related points of where infrastructure is located, and where people live, but aside from noting that parts of the deep ocean have not been mapped in detail, this article does not show that any "dark spots" exist on the map.

<comment><USER15> There are actual black smudges on a map that represent, based on the map's key, unexplored areas. So both literally and figuratively, this article shows "dark spots" existing on a map.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I find myself wishing there was more contrast between 24hrs and the days scale on the remoteness chart. The scale goes up pretty quickly from 2 days to 10 days and it's really hard to tell what would be more than 24hrs of travel time. I say this because I was looking at the chart thinking anything dark was 10 days which was weird that certain parts in Australia would be 10 days when, next to them, was just hours but it turns out the darkness is just present for lower numbers.

</comment><comment><USER17> May it _EVER_ be so...!

</comment><comment><USER18> Not what I was expecting. I was hoping for a dark spot on the map that might harbor an island with dinosaurs still roaming. Sad.

<comment><USER19> maybe there are sea dinosaurs :) don't give up hope!

<comment><USER2> We found them in the 30s. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coelacanth](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coelacanth)</comment></comment></comment>


DHH: Mainstream precludes cool - <AUTHOR> https://m.signalvnoise.com/mainstream-precludes-cool-506885f5f837 <comment><USER2> +1 I couldn't agree more.

The idea that growth and rapid change is always required is wrong.

I used to write about a possible distant future when a large fraction of the software that runs the world is ancient open source code: thouroughly debugged and error free, and meets requirements so well that there is no motivation to change it.

</comment><comment><USER3> So basically, DDH has #TIGERBLOOD and is #WINNING ?

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd prefer he engaged on the actual technical criticisms

<comment><USER3> He's a salesman not a technology guy.

(Currently. Obviously in the past he came from tech. But most of his fame is from blogging and salesman, not tech).</comment></comment>


The Drugging of the American Boy (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.esquire.com/features/drugging-of-the-american-boy-0414 <comment><USER2> The comments here don't seem to capture the importance of the "Boy" part. Imagine we were mostly drugging girls. The headlines and reactions would be greater.

The story recalls how when Michelle Obama publicized #BringBackOurGirls, laudably promoting saving many innocent girls from kidnapping and worse, Boko Haram had been burning alive and hacking to death many innocent boys for years to little western outcry.

We keep changing our culture from the world our emotional systems evolved to handle. Then we declare groups sick who can't handle the change, which happen to be boys mostly, and drug them.

When we create problems for girls, we ask "what have we done?", recognize we're hurting them, and try to change the culture we created stop hurting them. We may take time, but we don't want to hurt them.

When we create problems for boys, we say "we'll fix you," as if they were broken. If boys' behavior was adapted to a different world than sitting in rows for most of the day, why don't we change the culture we created to stop hurting them?

<comment><USER3> The question I would have here is, what has changed in the last century or so that would make it that way? Regarding sitting in rows for most of the day, school methodologies I don't think have noticeably changed; at least, from what I see, it doesn't seem like a school in 1950 would be that much different than a school today.

From my perspective, the root of this is more yet another case of medicine being over-sold well beyond their intended purpose. In this case, energetic boys are the ones that get caught in the cross fire. But this seems overall like a systemic problem of current medicine, well beyond ADHD medicine... ranging from the over-prescription of antibiotics, to the roots of the opioid addiction crisis. Our medical system just plain and simple seems to dish out too many pills, even when the chances of help is marginal.

I'm guessing (to be fair) that many times this is due to patient demand, I just wish doctors would sometimes push back sometimes. People are looking for easy solutions to life's problems, and don't necessarily realize the whole picture that comes from medication (side effects and whatnot). Your child is energetic and a handle sometimes, right? That's often _normal_. You don't need to necessarily give your child powerful stimulants, what is essentially commercialized speed, to "cure" this, unless you are _really_ sure of the diagnosis, in my opinion.

<comment><USER4> I think a pretty obvious starting point is the supposed decline of recess in schools. I couldn't find any numbers on how many schools had recess as a normal part of their day or rates. However it does seem as though in many schools, certainly more than ever before, there isn't any recess time.

Which is sad because a very common trope (especially for young boys) is recess being their favorite "class". It is also pretty well documented to help in all kinds of behavioral issues as well as being a valuable learning environment in its own right.

[http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/131/1/183](http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/131/1/183)

<comment><USER3> This is definitely a starting point. I'm not finding any hard numbers for a "decline" either -- the one table I found (from 2005) indicated the average was about 27 minutes a day. ([https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2006/nutrition/tables/tab15.asp](https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2006/nutrition/tables/tab15.asp)) and this hasn't changed too much recently (see 2017 data -- [https://www.aft.org/ae/spring2017/ramstetter_and_murray](https://www.aft.org/ae/spring2017/ramstetter_and_murray)), but I'm having trouble finding any studies with past data from, say, the 1950s and 1960s. Little nuggets of data I'm finding suggest more that the problem is inconsistency -- half an hour might be "okay", but some schools don't even implement any recess at all... which for many little children sounds like it would be awful.

Most of the research out there seems to support the idea that recess or other unstructured play is quite beneficial, for quite a number of reasons, so it's quite possible that half an hour is not enough. I'd certainly suspect more recess would do a lot more good for energetic children than powerful stimulants!

<comment><USER4> Hmm, that seems like an odd way to represent how much recess time kids have. I'm not familiar with elementary schools, but I'd guess that class periods are somewhere between 30 minutes and an hour. The average kid is getting less than 30 minutes of recess time which seems to indicate that this average takes into account kids who don't get recess time at all.

If recess periods for schools that have it are an hour long, then less than half of the kids actually have recess. Anyway, what a frustratingly useless statistic since I didn't know how they got it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article, like nearly every other article on the subject, is about _over_ diagnosis. Fine. But readers miss that overdiagnosis doesn't mean always wrong. And it's important to remember that.

It's easy to dismiss the value of these medicines if you've never felt saved by them. It's hard to understand how painful and frustrating it is for a child to not be able to complete an exam because when he gets a few words into a question he has to start over from the beginning again and again and again and again and again because the words just keep slipping away from him. It's hard to explain that, no, extra time doesn't actually mean a special edge against other children who don't have the same problem. It's hard feeling really bad at subjects that you're actually really good at because you can't keep your thoughts together. It's hard to walk out of an exam room crying because you can feel yourself starting to lose your grip. It's hard as an adult to say "this saved my life" to another adult who doesn't understand it. But it's just weird when adults who are perfectly happy to drug themselves on the regular for no other reason than because it feels good are like "yeah, but..." when there are kids out there who will gladly take negative side effects over the alternative.

<comment><USER6> I'm sorry, but every time I read shit like this I have to wonder if I'm reading from some big pharma social media bot.

Concerta doesn't magically give you attention abilities you didn't have before. It's a nervous system stimulant. It makes you neurotic, trapped in your own head. Maybe this makes it easier for some people to focus, but I have enough experience with it to explain why. It forces your attention from the world around you to your own mind. You will be more physically still and "studious", only because you are mentally struggling more. It makes you feel sick. Food seems abhorrent. You will eat a small fraction of what other kids your age eat, you will be below the 99th percentile in height and weight for your age and you will stay that way for the rest of your life. You will be paranoid and anxious, more than ever before the meds. When things are illogical, when you see other people make bad decisions that seem so simple to you, you will be ANGRY. You will be inhumanly smart, but you will be inhuman.

<comment><USER7> Here's where anecdotes run into trouble. I experience mostly the opposite. I no longer need to lock myself away from the world in order to focus. I can have a single, main thread of thought and focus and allocate other threads for dealing with external information. I've always been good at synthesizing 5-6 bits at a time (smaller than average working memory), but now I can perform in the 7-9 bit range. I can start the alphabet from any point, without relying on my chunking heuristics from childhood.

The food, yes, the frustrations with illogical decisions, yes. I'd never recommend the drugs to a child, just run them outside until they wear out, but for adults who have trouble keeping multiple plates spinning; yes, use science to overcome your random genealogical assignment.

<comment><USER8> >yes, use science to overcome your random genealogical assignment.

There is no proof that social disorders like ADHD/ADD are genetically deterministic. Which is why the diagnosis relies solely on social observations rather than biological tests. That is of course not to say that drugs can't enhance desired brain functions.

<comment><USER9> Well, there are some possible genes:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2854824/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2854824/)

<comment><USER8> From your source:

>Finally, one of the key goals of genetic studies of ADHD is to understand its aetiology and mechanisms. The challenge undoubtedly will not only be in identifying risk factors but more importantly testing causal mechanisms.

Again, there is no proof, only hypothesis. This is in stark contrast with actual biological pathologies which have proven genetic causes, such as sickle cell anemia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I was diagnosed with ADHD as a child and given medication which made me feel numb and completely changed my personality. After a year or so my father decided to stop giving me the medication and I returned to normal which must've been hell for my teachers.

Besides science classes, I received Ds in every class through my sophomore year. At the time I looked like a failure but today Id consider myself happy and successful as I've travelled the world, become a father and started a number of innovative businesses.

ADD is a gift as it has enabled me to make creative connections that others simply don't see.

If you have kids please focus on their long-term well being. Please love your kids and support the things they find interest in. Getting good grades being well behaved in class aren't everything are not necessarily an indicator of future success.

<comment><USER11> Can confirm. I'm an American male and was diagnosed with ADHD in elementary school in the mid 1990s. I took Ritalin, Adderall, and Concerta for something like seven years. It totally changed my personality and suppressed my appetite, but I did do very well in school for awhile (advanced placement classes etc).

High school sucks and everything is weird and I was depressed at some point. Eventually I decided on my own to stop taking the medication and it was like I woke up. I started enjoying life, surfing, going to concerts, being creative, etc. I've also traveled all around the world since then and been very successful.

I don't think I'd change anything about my experience, but in retrospect I think I was probably misdiagnosed. Also it's important to realize that everyone is different and we need to try to accept that.

<comment><USER6> Dude holy shit. I wish I could've woke up. I woke up a tiny bit, but I'm still mostly subdued by all the negative thoughts that crept in while I was taking it. These sold-for-profit pills took my adult body away. I can't believe nobody is seeing through this, but big pharma seems to have an incredible PR arm. You can't find discussion of these drugs without someone singing the same old praises, and I have a hard time believing it every time when it was such a definitively HARMFUL experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> When a full 20% of the population is diagnosed with a disorder, that's either a serious epidemic or there's something wrong with the term disorder. Teachers and parents want tractable kids...just sayin.

<comment><USER13> There's a combination. Psych sets it's cutoff for disease at traits that seriously hamper your ability to function successfully in life. It has a very tough time grappling with questions like, "what if the problem is with modern life, and not with the patient?"

Which is why so much failed social policy ultimately ends up in the ED getting sedated into pliability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The most frustrating thing about this subject (to me) is that it is all about _doing_ education _to_ children.

If children weren't _forced_ to sit in classrooms 7 hours a day, 5 days a week (or similar), ADHD, ADD, etc. would not get the negative focus it does.

Just because education is A Good Thing™ does not mean we should ignore the detrimental effects of its implementation

<comment><USER15> > _Just because education is A Good Thing™ does not mean we should ignore the > detrimental effects of its implementation_

I have long believed that education and schooling are not as linked as society pretends.

Children aren't served by locking them in a room with barred windows for hours on end and telling them to pay attention and not fidget and do your work and go home and do several more hours of work and then repeat.

Distraction is a part of being a child. There are productive distractions and unproductive ones, but the solution is not to pump children full of drugs. You're robbing them off their natural connection-making process, and of the chance to learn how to handle distractions as they grow up in a society of smartphones and advertisements.

And all that is assuming that we're even trying to educate the kids while they're in school. [https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament....](https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf)

<comment><USER16> Its interesting that if you have legacy baggage and technical debt, you can't NOT lock kids in cages for a whole day and all that industrial era foolishness, which would actually be pretty valuable if we ever get sent back thru a one or two century time warp. We have the best 1850 education system money can buy; of course its useless in 2010s but whatever.

At least for boys, if you grassroots up from first principles and implement what works pragmatically, rather than what we've always done or whats in the union contract, you end up with something like cub scouts or boy scouts.

Given the wildly divergent goals of school and scouts, where school exists to perpetuate and expand the bureaucracy and scouts exists because organized screwing around provides more learning opportunities than disorganized screwing around, they will continue to diverge until they're unrecognizable. But at least in theory boys learn at both organizations. Much more at boy scouts than at school of course, but they are kinda similar.

There exist merit badges in boy scouting for semi-academic topics like electricity or programming. The time investment has to be limited but its intellectually interesting to imagine that someday the only way to teach a boy geometry would be a boy scout geometry merit badge. Unimaginable amounts of time and money will be spent in schools on a line item named "geometry" but the legacy school system does not have any goal of teaching boys geometry so ironically thats the one thing boys will definitely not learn in geometry class, they'll have to go to scouts to learn.

I have no personal experience with girl scouts because of their "no male leadership" rule, which is about as appropriate as the now removed "no gay leadership" rule in boy scouts; My lack of praising girl scouts is due to a lack of girl scout experience not implying its bad or wrong. Its possible, even likely, girl scouts is just as good for girls. I do find the ratio bizarre where per capita girl scouting is around ten times less popular than boy scouts, that might indicate a problem in girl scouting.

<comment><USER17> Originally, scouts exists, because founder thought that young UK boys are not raised to be ready enough to be soldiers.

More modern version of scouts have focus on boys doing proper boyish activities and girls doing proper girly activities. E.g. boy version is more about camping and tracking, girl version developed from traditionally female crafts. They are not equivalent in terms of child raising goals.

<comment><USER14> The BSA is much less about gender distinction now. They are even letting girls join the program now, which is great progress considering their history. Young women have also been working at scout camps for decades.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is not _just_ about ADD/ADHD medication, or about "boyhood". This is about the unnecessary prescribing of psychoactive drugs with powerful side- effects to people who cannot consent.

I am yet another person who, around 7, was prescribed strong stimulants. Yes, it turned me into a robot, and yes, I did better in school. For a while. Until finally I grew so bored of pointless academic striving that I completely gave up doing any school work. At the same time, I discovered the computer.

When I first told my mother "I don't want to live anymore", she asked me, "Good lord, why would you want to kill yourself?!" We had just recently moved back to the states, to a place I didn't know or like, to a school I didn't like. My parents fought, partly over us. My brother despised me. Due to my medicated existence, I had no real emotional connection to anything. At fourteen, I didn't see much value in life. "I don't want to die," I said, "I just don't really want to keep on living. There's no meaning to life. It's just pain."

Soon there was the anti-depressants, and when those didn't work, the anti- psychotics, and more stimulants. Sometimes I couldn't sleep for weeks. Sometimes I couldn't stay awake for months. I needed blood tests to make sure my kidneys weren't failing on new medications. I was kicked out of schools, and was unable to complete any work. The only thing I noticed about this time was the kids at public schools were somewhat nicer, and the work was somewhat harder. I remember reading Ray Bradbury's short story collection and thinking, wow, maybe there is something to life.

Dropping out of high school and not attending college, I was pretty fortunate to have found a medium for my attention that was both intellectually and fiscally rewarding. I doubt the rest of the kids who endure chemical tinkering at the hands of unscrupulous "doctors" are as fortunate as I to make a good living after a normal mental/emotional childhood is taken away from them.

</comment><comment><USER19> I had trouble in high school. I fell behind because I did not have glasses, and I didn't find the material motivating enough, and because things were kind of tumultuous at home, and so on. By the time my dad caught on, I was 3 months behind in Physics.

So he sat me down after work, and we went through the material together. It took less than a week for me to catch up.

It makes me wonder what a kid could accomplish with a little bit of individual attention. I am not the dumbest person in the world, but I am also far from the smartest. Compared to the rest of the class, I was probably about average.

<comment><USER20> > It makes me wonder what a kid could accomplish with a little bit of > individual attention.

I thought the same thing as I read through these comments. Perhaps the attention deficit is not that of the child, but that of the parents/teachers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Compare:

[http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa...](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2012/09/sex_selection_in_babies_through_pgd_americans_are_paying_to_have_daughters_rather_than_sons_.html)

> Many fertility doctors say that girls are the goal for 80 percent of gender > selection patients. A study published in 2009 by the online journal > Reproductive Biomedicine Online found Caucasian-Americans preferentially > select females through PGD 70 percent of the time.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/14/well/family/the-fear- of-h...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/14/well/family/the-fear-of-having-a- son.html?_r=0)

> a 2010 study [] discovered, among other things, that adoptive American > parents preferred girls to boys by nearly a third. [] Adoptive parents are > even willing to pay an average of $16,000 more in finalization costs for a > girl than a boy.

<comment><USER21> This is one of those times where I'm going to ask about the downvotes.

<comment><USER22> Let's just stick to the facts related to the argument. The article was not about comparing girls to boys except a small side-note about diagnosis ratios and the increasing expectation that children sit quietly at school. Your comment is a non-sequitur about boys being undesirable, which is not relevant to this particular discussion.

<comment><USER21> So, we've got two stylized facts:

1\. In modern American culture, young boys, but not girls, are diagnosed with personality disorders and drugged into submission at rates so alarming that skeptics refer to things like "Youthful Tendency Disorder". ( [https://www.theonion.com/more-u-s-children-being- diagnosed-w...](https://www.theonion.com/more-u-s-children-being-diagnosed- with-youthful-tenden-1819565754) )

2\. Also in modern American culture, there appears to be a very strong preference for having female children over males.

But you don't think these could be related?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> >> The children in the study—forty-four boys, four girls, all diagnosed with ADHD—were given varying doses of medication and behavioral therapy, and researchers monitored their episodes of "noncompliance" each day.

When I read about studies like that I like to imagine two scientists in lab coats, one with a clipboard, the other with a complicated piece of equipment, looking at a kid throwing a wild tantrum:

\- Dr Smith, what does the Noncompliance-o-scope say?

\- It's off the charts, Dr Brown. Off. The. Charts.

Except -alas- there's no such machine that can tell you how much, or when, a child is non-complying so I have never any idea what those studies are supposed to be, you know, actually measuring.

<comment><USER24> I hate to laugh at such a scenario but you may want to consider standup comedy as a fallback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Got hauled to the school psychologist in elementary school for calling my teacher an idiot. Was prescribed Ritalin. My parents told them absolutely not and I've had a great life without it.

I'm sure there are some people who need these medications. But realize that the incentives of the system are to give you pills. It's not even as debauched as bribery or kickbacks -- it's simply that a person who studies psychoactive medications rather than parenting will, when asked to solve the problem of an unruly child, naturally come up with medications as the solution rather than alternative parenting.

<comment><USER26> Wow, that's insane that a kid would ever be prescribed medication by a school doctor/nurse. That seems like a doctor's visit a parent should book & not just be informed afterwards that thier child was prescribed a dangerous stimulant like Ritalin.

<comment><USER25> I think a doctor did come in but on school grounds. And there was a meeting with my parents where they told him to fuck himself. This was also 30 years ago

</comment></comment></comment><comment> castle-bravo I don't have kids and I don't know anybody who has kids on ADHD medication, so I'm ignorant about this, but I have a hard time believing that people put their kids on stimulants without knowing what these drugs are and what they do; especially when it's possible to look up the Wikipedia article on Adderall and see that it's nothing but amphetamine. I'd be further surprised if none of these parents were interested enough to try out their kids' prescriptions on themselves; I would be.

It's awfully cynical, but I think that a lot of parents have a good idea what they're giving to their kids and do it anyway because they think the stimulants will give them a competitive edge in school, college admissions, and ultimately lead to higher incomes. The cost of not drugging your kid might be that they don't fit in, are singled out for punishment by school staff, and end up handicapped by their negative experiences in school. It's a very tough decision, even if you know what's in those pills.

I just wish the dosages were lower. Having tried a few of my friends' prescriptions over the years, I've found that even "low" doses get me high and then leave me with a hangover. I might be particularly sensitive (I get euphoric from taking 30mg of pseudoephedrine), but I'm a 180-pound adult. I can't imagine what an 18mg dose of methylphenidate does to a prepubescent boy. At worst, the 'high' from taking these drugs therapeutically should be subliminal.

<comment><USER27> _> I just wish the dosages were lower_

Two things.

First, the first 1-2 days of ADHD meds can have a _dramatic_ effect that have you thinking "this can't be right". It's normal, expected, and goes away very quickly. You should be warned to expect it by the prescribing doctor. After 3 days or so you barely know you're taking them.

Second, the dosage and effect on a non-ADHD person is entirely different to that an ADHD person will get. That's presuming it's the right med for them[0]. _You_ will have a stimulating, speed, effect. An ADHD person (well most) will get little to no stimulation, and a calming effect, and might sit down to do their homework, or even just sit _still_ for a couple of hours - for the first time ever. Amphetamines don't do that to normal neurology, thus you can't compare.

The dosage is putting them closer to typical, but putting you far _away_ from typical. If you were normal vision or long sighted and tried your friend's short sight prescription glasses you wouldn't wish their glasses were weaker, would you? Same principle.

It's also common for one or other parent to discover they have it too after they have tried their child's meds.

[0] Getting the right medication is a bit of a trial and error minefield, but should be a standard part of treatment. Not all doctors are as willing to switch medication or titrate dosage as they should be.

<comment><USER28> Amphetamines affect physicality for everyone in similar ways. Heart rate, metabolism, blood pressure, etc. Please don't spread misinformation.

<comment><USER27> OK, the specialist at the ADHD centre may have advised me incorrectly, and I am imagining the effects. Effects that are basically the opposite of what you and hnuser1234 describe in the thread above, and rather like huffmsa and many others have reported. For example, I have never once experienced "a cold robotic mind space" on medication, or anything close, even on the very first day. Which variant of ADHD do you have btw?

Not surprising there are a range of effects, when it's fairly common to need to try 3 or 4 different drugs before finding one that works. For a minority, none work.

Perhaps it's not "misinformation" but an attempt to honestly report what I gleaned from the specialist, and what I and others have experienced.

<comment><USER28> A stimulant isn't a therepeutic drug. It's a hard drug with straightforward effects. Increased pleasure and increased activity, via dopaminergic and norepinephrine pathways, respectively.[1]

If you aren't having those effects you are most likely taking close to a maintanence dose, to avoid the rebound effect that comes with physical dependence.

If a person has trouble sleeping due to self control issues, should they just patch it over with addictive drugs like benzodiazepenes? Or should they try to discipline themselves by adapting to their unique brain and body, for lasting change?

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphetamine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphetamine)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7484204](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7484204)

</comment><comment><USER30> I think this is a product the space we raise children in.

Kids spend hours casually absorbed in phones, tablets, and consoles (basically the heroin of screen-based entertainment), and then we sit them in a room for eight hours. So they get restless. And we drug them.

What's the right thing to do here?

The only defense I have against "girls have tech, too; why aren't they on speed" is that boys spend more time on screens, which is just a casual hypothesis.

</comment><comment><USER31> Much of Glasser's emotional problems seemed to be because he was abused as a child rather than because he has ADHD.

Praising children for proper behavior instead of just punishing bad behavior is good and what schools are moving towards (search for PBIS) but it's not the same as teaching coping skills to people with reduced executive functioning. Having ADHD isn't the same as having emotional troubles to work through.

</comment><comment><USER32> What struck me about the article was the throwaway line:

        listened to your brief and vague report that he seemed
        to have trouble sitting still in kindergarten,

Where I live, where my three boys went to kindergarten (barnehage her in Norway), pre-school is all about physical activity and socialisation. It's not like school, there are no lessons to sit still for; instead there are things to do, painting, cooking, laying tables, climbing frames, mud to be crawled in and puddles to splash. The children are of course expected to not be disruptive and the staff will work with the children to ensure that they behave well.

The end result seems to be, on the whole, self-confident, well behaved children who can be taken anywhere with little or no risk that they will be disruptive.

As far as I know the kinds of diagnoses that seem common in the US are rare here.

</comment><comment><USER33> If you find this article interesting or compelling, please check out _Boys Adrift_ [0]. You may not necessarily agree with all of Sax's conclusions, but if you have boys of your own, it should be required reading.

[0] [http://www.boysadrift.com/](http://www.boysadrift.com/)

</comment><comment><USER9> When we're giving something to one in fourteen people, it seems crazy that the healthcare system should be wasting money determining who should and who should not be allowed to have these drugs.

</comment><comment><USER34> I've always wondered if it is related to discipline not bring enforced as harshly. I'm NOT saying it was good to do that, just wondering if that is a cause...

<comment><USER28> Its a mixture of slow/stupid kids (low IQ) and rebellious, impulsive kids. Personality and performance undesirables. Back in the older days, there were more manual labor and mechanized jobs that anyone could learn to do if they just followed instructions. These days, every parent wants their kid to goto an ivy league, and get a "smart job." So they put their kids on performance enhancing drugs. Stimulants like amphetamines alter the brains reward system - dopaminergic synapses. So the asshole kid becomes a little bit nicer because the potential energy to do harder and undesirable tasks is now decreased both mentally and physically. Thresholds changed. Speed of mental quickness and physical dexterity also improved..so the slow kid is now near average level intelligence because he is overclocked on stimulants. Better hope the parents give their kids a good liquid cooling system and feed them more, need a bigger PSU when your system is clocked so hot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Too late!

</comment><comment><USER36> From 2014, though the AMP version linked to does not reflect this. [https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a32858/drugging-of- the...](https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a32858/drugging-of-the-american- boy-0414/)

<comment><USER29> We changed the URL from [https://www.esquire.com/news- politics/amp32858/drugging-of-t...](https://www.esquire.com/news- politics/amp32858/drugging-of-the-american- boy-0414/?__twitter_impression=true).</comment></comment>


The Google black hole: What happens to startups when they're bought by Google? - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2197434/pagenum/all

<comment><USER3> It's interesting--Google has the best reputation among techies and AOL probably has the worst reputation.

But so far my experience has been very positive. I still have near-absolute control over the development and creative direction of the site.

<comment><USER4> Maybe Google think they know everything and AOL just feels lucky to have found such a beautiful jewel?

<comment><USER3> That's somewhat true--I've noticed that AOL is very aware of their uncool image and they don't overtly brand their properties with the AOL name (e.g., TMZ, MapQuest, Moviefone, ...).

<comment><USER5> Wow I had no idea Mapquest was owned by AOL. I'm sure there are alternatives but usually thats the service I use...I don't think I'm so shallow as to switch services just because its AOL though. A good service is a good service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the google + youtube worked out because they let the community continue unhampered. Even today you can get a youtube account without a google account. That is smart.... We can't pretend to know google's intentions with some aquisitions though, ie measure map getting blended into google analytics.

<comment><USER7> Ironically I bet a lot of that is because of all the illegal content on YouTube. They needed it to remain pretty separate for their lawsuit defenses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> When Google hands over six or seven or eight figures for something, they obviously have a plan for how the technology and team fits into their "master plan".

Why is it surprising that, at least some of the time, they aren't actually interested in the original web site?

<comment><USER9> _they obviously have a plan_

That's not actually true. The thing about giants that acquire startups, is that a) they had the resources to build this thing themselves; b) they didn't.

So ask yourself why didn't they build this thing. It wasn't lack of resources. It wasn't lack of intelligence; they keep tabs on everyone and they go to SXSW too. There were forces that stopped the giant from innovating in this direction. Some of them are technological, but the real issues are usually cultural and political.

Once acquired, the startup is now exposed to all these forces -- with double intensity, since it is an outsider and has few friends in the organization. Unless it's already profitable, has a large userbase, or has big fans among the top execs, it has very little power.

I think these recent articles about how giants "ruin" acquisitions do not take culture and politics into account. The technical issues are not the problem.

<comment><USER8> The depth/extent of the plan is surely debatable, but folks like Larry and Sergey and Eric Schmidt would not make the decision to pull the trigger for an acquisition unless they knew what they wanted out of it. They are smarter than that .

In the case of MeasureMap, for instance, they knew they wanted that technology integrated into Google Analytics. They may not have been able to answer the "how" part of "who, what, when, where, why, and how", but surely they knew the "who", "what", and "why".

I understand that the startup built the technology and the acquirer didn't. That's the beauty of how this system is set up - a company like Google with piles of cash and stock can has so much money it can buy anything it wants.

Well then how do they decide which startups to buy (MeasureMap, Feedburner, etc.) and which startups to pass on (Digg)? That's the "master plan"..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interestingly, they don't mention Blogger (which is how the Twitter co-founder went into and came out of Google). Which seems to be doing just fine.

[http://siteanalytics.compete.com/blogger.com+livejournal.com...](http://siteanalytics.compete.com/blogger.com+livejournal.com/?metric=uv)

I don't see the problem, if you start a startup to make a shitload of money and you do make a shitload of money, then, mission accomplished right? (or, as DHH would say: Profit!)

There will always be companies that get screwed up in the acquisition process, just like there will always be companies that don't. But, let's fuel the rumor that Google kills all that it consumes, why not?

<comment><USER11> I think the article states that it isn't always a shitload of money. Sure it beats your part-time gig at Starbucks but why sell your app for 5-6 figures when it could be worth 7-8?

If Google is interested in your application now, why wouldn't someone else snatch it up 6 months later when you have more users for a higher price?

Sometimes winning the buyout lottery is selling yourself short.

<comment><USER12> And sometimes your hot company flames out and you'll regret not taking the money and running for the rest of your life.

This is what managing risk is all about isn't it? You just plain don't know!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The problem with Google is it has very, very little focus as a whole. This is a good thing internally, they seem to develop and release so much stuff without much bother, but in my opinion, joining Google would FEEL like a black hole. Your working on your own project but also have to concern Google about everything, as well as moving your app to Google technologies (in most cases). How can you continue to innovate in that situation?

The same goes for Delicious too I think, they were doing fine, brought by Yahoo, and then went back to being a stealth app while they rewrote everything in C++/PHP. Would they have done that without Yahoo input? Nope, I dont think so...

</comment><comment><USER11> Excellent article, I didn't know that so many startups went to Google just to rot away under mountains of management and infrastructure/policy hell.

If you have any chance of making it on your own, I'd turn down Google money in an instant after reading this.

<comment><USER14> The thing about Google money is that a dollar Google gives you is worth one dollar.

Personally, I would evaluate "Google" money based on the numbers.

<comment><USER15> Indeed. From the perspective of a developer, I can see not wanting your baby to be ignored in a corporate bureaucracy. But investors don't normally think that way. I don't know what founders are "supposed" to think here, but if it were me I'd take the money and find a new baby if I had to.

<comment><USER16> _I don't know what founders are "supposed" to think here_

Founders are supposed to take into consideration their product's role after acquisition when they're talking about getting bought out?

This isn't rocket science - once you sell your company to Google (or whomever), you don't own it anymore. That's why you get all those shiny coins.

<comment><USER17> I wonder what types of questions the founders are asking of Google pre- aquisition? As a founder, I would think you are concerned with what is Google's "vision" for your product/company. I could also see just the shiny things being enough to make me not worry about the vision.

Also, there are successes. Writely - > Google Docs seemed to be a pretty big success. I'm sure there are others.

<comment><USER18> Keyhole -> Google Earth was a big success too.

The thing is that we tend to forget the successes a little bit because they got to merge so well with Google. Looking at the list of acquisitions on Wikipedia (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_acquisitions>), I can only think about Blogger but I have no experience on if it changed for the best. As far as I can tell, it looks like it's still working fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It seems like this type of article shows up at least once a month recently. There's nothing really new here.

I have to ask though, given that most M&A's don't end up working out is google's failure rate really any worse than anyone else's?

</comment><comment><USER20> There is some prior art on this concept. <http://www.paulgraham.com/mit.html>

Speaking of cool places to work, there is of course Google. But I notice something slightly frightening about Google: zero startups come out of there. In that respect it's a black hole. People seem to like working at Google too much to leave. So if you hope to start a startup one day, the evidence so far suggests you shouldn't work there.

<comment><USER21> Friendfeed came from former Google employees.

<comment><USER11> Key word being 'former'. Seems the brilliant work comes either from people who aren't yet an employee, or already were and left.

Is Google just a giant Y Combinator?

<comment><USER9> No, what you are seeing is that individually creditable work occurs in the pre- and post-corporate employment stage. Which is practically a tautology.

There are plenty of epic technical achievements within Google. In fact, it's practically expected. The rest of the world just hears about these innovations, on average, three years after they happen. If they ever hear about them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "shut down to new users" just means "taking their sweet time porting to a google backend"

When things are Google products, there is a certain level of reliability, security, and performance that is expect. Google tries harder than anyone to avoid the Fail Whale.

It takes a long time for large software systems to be ported, security reviewed, integrated, and tested with Google's custom stuff.

From what I have seen, being acquired by Google means that you go dark for 18 months and then emerge as a Google product.

</comment><comment><USER23> Yeah you would think Google would learn its lesson by now.

<comment><USER24> Arguably that's what AppEngine is for.

<comment><USER23> not really, its just another case of Google getting into an industry because they see someone else have success in it. If it works? Good. If it doesn't? No biggie, they only lost 2 days of revenue in the investment.

<comment><USER25> I hope it's not "getting into an industry because they see someone else have success in it" because that reminds me of Microsoft and I don't think it's worked out well for them.

<comment><USER26> Are you crazy? How has it not worked out for Microsoft? As of 2000 it was estimated that Microsoft had produced 10,000 millionaires. Sure, they've produced tons of crappy software too, but as long as we're measuring success in terms of money then I'd say the strategy has worked perfectly. They've been by far the most successful software company to date. They could care less about the quality of software as long as it's the best selling software. Google is no different. They see a revenue opportunity and they grab it.

<comment><USER27> All of MS's profits come from Windows and Office. The odd quarter excepted, everything else they do operates at a loss.

For any other company, habitual 9-10 figure losses would have heads rolling on the floor.

<comment><USER24> Visual Studio and SQL Server as well?

<comment><USER28> Visual Studio is not profitable for Microsoft (from what I've heard from MS employees) but that is also not its purpose. It's there to guarantee the success of the Windows desktop and server platforms. Microsoft knows development and ease of development has been a large contributor to the success of Windows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm not sure if it's fair to pick out specific cases with the number of acquisitions Google does ... sure, some aren't going to be perfect - <USER2> founders won't understand Google infrastructure, others will lose interest in their products, etc.

</comment><comment><USER29> I remember reading about the infrastructure hell with both Google and Yahoo. I think I've read stories from founders of companies acquired by each. It seems to me Ev (of Blogger.com and now twitter) wrote or spoke about these same issues.

</comment><comment><USER30> I still use Feedburner. I love it.

</comment><comment><USER31> seems like this guy hasn't heard of talent acquisitions, which is what Jaiku was.

<comment><USER32> If it was a "talent acquisition," why'd they pledge to limit the service only for a limited time, and to add a slew of wonderful features?</comment></comment>


New Digg algorithm angers the social masses - <AUTHOR> http://valleywag.com/348338/new-digg-algorithm-angers-the-social-masses <comment><USER2> It takes just 2 points (one vote from one person) to get something to the front page on hacker news.

Are you planning on increasing the threshold/required criteria, paul? It's not really necessary at this point, but do you have a plan in place for when it does become necessary?

<comment><USER3> Sometimes you can get a story on the reddit frontpage (for about 3 seconds) from one vote if you upvote the instant it was submitted. It'll go the same way here, where one vote just gets you to the front page for a very short time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [http://smartstartup.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/01/digg- offer...](http://smartstartup.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/01/digg-offers- to.html)</comment>


Show HN: Send notes via video ads. Today, ads are targeted to US swing-states - <AUTHOR> https://www.adanybody.com/ <comment><USER2> Why not just send the money straight to the Clinton Campaign Office?

1USD for 10 second ad displayed once is pretty expensive to be honest.</comment>


An Education Debate for the Books - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/26/AR2009082603408.html?hpid=topnews <comment><USER2> A liberal education is great, but you don't need to attend an obsolete, inflexible university and pay through the nose to get one.

Ask yourself this question: If, after you finish your college program, you will not receive proof of having obtained a degree, would you still pay tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for your "education"? I suspect, for most people, the answer is no.

So we have two functions here:

1) Education 2) Credentialing

We should think about them individually instead of just pretending they're the same.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you're going to get a liberal arts education and are self-motivated and dislike cancerous bureaucracy, St. John's Annapolis is a great place to do it. Committed faculty and students make all the difference.

<comment><USER4> I agree. It's really easy to overlook how important peer-effects are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> St. Johns College in Santa Fe, NM (their second campus) is an awesome school; I've met a number of interesting and intelligent people there.

My best friend's step-father was also a professor there, an absurdly smart dude.

I am, however, pre-disposed to the autodidactic route; while University/College is a fun idea, nothing beats the satisfaction gained from self directed learning.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> A liberal arts education seems worthwhile, but also quite possible to pursue without a status-seeking payment of $50k per year for a degree. What exactly are you paying for- most of the great books are free with your library card.

<comment><USER6> You're paying for some external motivation, for one thing. The pace of learning in a typical university is pretty fast. You'd need a whole lot of self-motivation in order to learn as much, and as fast on your own as you'd learn at a university.

Another thing you get at a university is teachers (hopefully great ones, if you're lucky enough and have chosen well). Great teachers can not only explain things in ways that make learning easier than learning from books, but they can inspire as well. Many of the interests that I have now I credit to having some great teachers (though great books count for a lot as well).

Then there's the fact that you can't really ask questions of a book. Books are just not very interactive, despite some of them containing questions/answers for the student.

At a university you also get a community of peers that can both inspire and help you as you work towards a common goal.

This is not to mention the social opportunities you'll get at a university that all but the most social people will never dream of getting if they're stuck at home all the time reading books. Many friendships are formed at universities that last a lifetime.

And if it's cost that worries you, consider going to a university abroad. They tend to be much cheaper than US universities. If you only speak English, you should be pleased to learn that many foreign universities are growingly switching to a curriculum taught in English. If you know a foreign language, all the better. You'll get to practice it and get exposed to a whole new culture. Of course, sometimes the high cost of a US university might be worth it, but other times foreign universities offer just as good or better education for a much, much lower price.

So I'd think twice before rejecting school for home-study. It can be done, if you're very self-motivated. But you're going to be giving up all sorts of advantages that schools offer.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess my point was more around the return on investment- not a point against universities in general, but a point against paying a lot of money for a subject where the proof that you have learned something is simply not there with a degree. I claim that most of the benefits to oneself from a liberal arts education can be garnered without the fee.

"You're paying for some external motivation, for one thing." What is the external motivation- that I have sunk $50k into the year of school so I should try learn more? That I will get a bad grade? I think it still takes self motivation to learn.

I am not for home study, but a liberal arts education is sometimes more of a dilettante's dalliance than a useful economic move. The status associated with such a degree appears to be dropping, and hopefully the price will follow.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Tofu -- (Yet another) C web framework - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/AlexBio/Tofu

<comment><USER2> I've also had good success hacking a bare-bones routing infrastructure on top of mongoose, a single-file threaded HTTP/HTTPS server.

I've had to read or step through the code a few times. It wasn't too painful.

I like Mongoose. :)

<http://code.google.com/p/mongoose/wiki/Features>

<comment><USER3> Another +1 for mongoose, it's great for adding a quick web interface to a c/c++ program quickly (ie. status or quick admin interface)... but I wouldn't use it as a web-framework for serving multiple users or to the public on the web though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I realize it's a bit nit-picky and off-topic, but it was interesting to see C written with spaces around the "->" (access structure field through pointer) operator.

What is almost always written as "a->b = c;" is written as "a -> b = c;" in the Tofu code.

I guess doing so makes sense if you also promote writing "a = b + c;" (which I do), but it was still novel-looking, to me. I guess you can treat -> as any other binary operator.

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually find "->" with spaces cleaner and easier to read (just like with almost all the other operators). The "->" operatore without spaces around is very popular (also in Perl code AFAICS), and I sometimes wonder why people do put spaces around e.g. "+" and "=" but not "->".

<comment><USER5> I always figured it was due to it's similarity to the . operator, which never has spaces around it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not to criticize unnecessarily, but what would anyone want to code web apps in C? I'm not saying rails, etc. are the be-all-end-all, but why C? To seem extreme?

</comment><comment><USER7> I've never really seen the benefit of using frameworks... are they as highly customizable as php, when it comes to html code? because if not, I can save myself a lot of work by writing the whole html by hand and then use ajax calls to retrieve all the dynamic content... unless of course page generation is absolutely crucial and I want as few http requests as possible...

could someone elaborate on this?

<comment><USER8> What you're describing sound more like the definition of a CMS than of a framework. With frameworks you no longer have to manage your own sockets/sessions/connections (some servers take care of this also). Instead of you calling on a socket to send data to clients, the framework calls your functions that simply return the data. More elaborate frameworks come with "helper" functions that, for example, cleans up input data for preparation of saving to the database, (preventing SQL injections), abstracts away the database models. i.e write only one set of models in python, so you don't have to rewrite your database tables when you switch from MSSQL to PGSQL. Each framework come with their own set of design patterns. While this might reduce the flexibility in terms of the architecture design, a framework has been tested and used many times, so the patterns a framework comes with are usually quite suited for what the framework is designed for. e.g. with Django web framework, you (must) use an MVC architecture. Although it is quite difficult to diverge from the MVC pattern, the MVC pattern is a suitable choice for web applications.

Frameworks abstracts away the bare metal of the HTTP protocol, the database, and allows you to concentrate only on the content and logic. A framework is basically a semi-built application; Look at your past websites, what are the common things between all of them? If you abstract all of that into a 'library', you might have some sort of framework there.

Of course with PHP, a lot of that is already taken care of. One thing I remember from PHP was that you write your code in a .php file, and the name of the file becomes part of the URL the user must type into the browser. Well, a framework can abstract away that too, so you can write your own urls and redirect to the appropriate function/file to handle the 'visit'.

 _I might have overstated what a framework can do here, I rarely go without it so perhaps maybe running with only a server can still provide some of the above described functionality, especially with regards to connections and sockets._

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've recently looked at extending Nginx for my own gains. This has several advantages over such frameworks. For example, you can serve both flat files and dynamic (C) content using the same server. I suspect, security is slightly better too, since Nginx manage process security etc.

<comment><USER10> Another possibility is to make your C program handle requests over ZeroMQ and stick it behind Mongrel2:

<http://mongrel2.org/>

<comment><USER9> I'll look at this in the future, however, there are a few issues on GitHub that I would like to see solved first, including the abolition of all warnings on compilation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So, is it super fast?

<comment><USER12> not indicative of anything, i was able to compile check using "ab" a "hello world ap" with eventhttp;

\- sinatra request per second 442 \- tofu requests per second 5909

Note that it is not indicative of anything; just a simple quick test for curiosity on my vaio laptop with ubuntu 11.10.

Which other C web frameworks could you suggest? Which Sequel-like ORMs for MySQL could you suggest? I am especially curious on sinatra or rails-like frameworks with MVC or similar architectures.

<comment><USER11> I can't suggest any others - I've never tried any.

Thanks for doing the benchmarking, though - that's fast!</comment></comment></comment>