Ask HN White-Label service: How do I go about it? - <AUTHOR>

I've been asked by a client to create a White-label service similar to an existing product I have. The service will have the client's logo on it. The customers they bring to the service wouldn't be customers I would get to my service so I'm not losing out. I will host the service and they will point their customers at it.<p>Questions:<p>* Is it okay to charge for development costs when enhancing your own product?<p>* Is it okay to put a link on the white-labelled site such as "powered by mycompany"?<p>* What is a typical revenue split when providing a white label service?<p>* Or would it be more typical for me to charge the client a fixed monthly rate and they keep the revenue from the clients that use the service? <comment><USER2> 1 - Yes, its ok to charge for dev costs && keep the resultant product for your own use and to white-label to another.

2 - Its ok to do the "powered-by" thing. Best to add it and then put a config option for the customer to turn it off fairly easily.

3 - What to charge? Well if you have no idea what the wallet size of your customer is, charge about 2/3 of what you think it would cost him to write it from scratch (what it might cost him, not you) and then provide for hourly/daily rates for consulting work for mods and support.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Do you think it's okay to ask for a percentage of what revenue they take from the service? If so, what would be typical? I will host the service, they will point their customers at it.</comment></comment>


Project VGA – Home of the Low Budget, Open Source, VGA Compatible Card (2008) - <AUTHOR> http://wacco.mveas.com/ <comment><USER2> It's amazing to see this and the similarities to my Amiga VA2000 graphics card that I did many years later, but I swear I didn't see this before. VA2000 did HDMI output and some very basic 2D acceleration. It's now sold out.

I just completed the PCB design for ZZ9000 (firmware is in beta already), a bigger follow-up based on ZYNQ and using the ARM cores for some graphics and general purpose acceleration. It will be open sourced as well.

Do you think there is demand to spin an open HD framebuffer+ARM card for other platforms as well?

ZZ9000: [https://shop.mntmn.com/products/zz9000-for-amiga- preorder](https://shop.mntmn.com/products/zz9000-for-amiga-preorder) VA2000: [https://github.com/mntmn/amiga2000-gfxcard](https://github.com/mntmn/amiga2000-gfxcard)

<comment><USER3> How much did the HDMI license cost? Been looking for HDMI output for a retro system, but it DVI would incur no cost, while HDMI would require extra $5k.

<comment><USER4> You can output DVI using an HDMI connector and not pay the license fee. So "DVI output via HDMI connector" gets you around the license fee. The fee comes in when you use the actual HDMI spec and implement HDMI stuff like Audio, CEC and actually calling it HDMI.

<comment><USER3> DVI is indeed my approach to get around the issue. Like you mentioned, the downside is losing those nice extras, like audio.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can we get a [2008]? Interesting work but not a competitor for today's GPUs.

        PCI bus interface (32 bit, 33/66MHz, 3.3/5V compatible)
        Xilinx Spartan 3 s400 FPGA (aiming for ~100MHz)
        16MB SDRAM (aiming for ~166MHz)
        Onboard programmer with USB interface

<comment><USER6> If it supported ISA for the old DOS PCs that didn't have PCI bus it would be a good upgrade for the old school PCs out there. Monochrome MGA used a different address than VGA/CGA/EGA uses. So you could have two monitors in old school PCs.

<comment><USER7> Regarding the PC monochrome display adapter memory offset vs. CGA/etc. offsets, I wrote some direct memory write display code in Turbo Pascal to take advantage of that, which let me use two monitors in toy ways. But the only real use I recall hearing of the second display was for a debugger (at Microsoft).

<comment><USER8> i was never a turbo pascal user, but my first real programming environment was borland's turbo c, a close relative. it had a great debugger that would allow you to run your app on your primary color monitor, and display the contents of the turbo debugger on your monochrome display. turbo debugger was also great for single-stepping your way through other people's programs in the same way.

back in the day, i wrote a VGA-based game that, if it detected a secondary monochrome display, would put up a whole bunch of real-time-updating graphics statistics on it. that made performance tuning a lot easier.

<comment><USER7> I loved Turbo C, too. When TC came out, it put a good C compiler in the hands of some young programmers for whom the main Microsoft compiler was prohibitively expensive. Same with Turbo Assembler and Turbo Debugger.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We should try to work towards having viable open source hardware, such as for security, freedom to improve and share, and to prevent slippery slopes like HDCP.

This particular project, for example, could be one piece of a usable open source hardware PC.

</comment><comment><USER9> (2008)

If the author ever got this project working, there's no sign of it here. One of the last updates says that they got it to produce VGA _output_ , but not under computer control. None of their HDL appears to be online either.

<comment><USER10> The whole opengraphics.org thing doesn't seem to be up either. I checked on Archive.org [1] but couldn't find anything.

[1] [https://web.archive.org/web/*/opengraphics.org](https://web.archive.org/web/*/opengraphics.org)

<comment><USER9> I dug a little deeper, and it actually looks as though the project got a bit farther than I thought. Here's one of the less bit-rotted captures of their site:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20110226000747/http://wiki.openg...](https://web.archive.org/web/20110226000747/http://wiki.opengraphics.org/tiki- index.php)

Sadly, the source code still appears to be lost.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I was thinking it was project back on slashdot a decade ago.

[https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/08/05/21/2136243/open- so...](https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/08/05/21/2136243/open-source- graphics-card-available-for-advance-orders)

</comment><comment><USER12> It turns out it's possible to drive VGA by "bit-banging", even from quite low- end hardware. This is how the Gigatron drives its display ([https://gigatron.io/](https://gigatron.io/)), but it's been done a few other times: [https://hackaday.com/2016/12/08/bitbanging-vga-fits-in- under...](https://hackaday.com/2016/12/08/bitbanging-vga-fits-in-under-1-kb/) [https://hackaday.com/2011/05/10/bit-banging-vga-from-an- sd-c...](https://hackaday.com/2011/05/10/bit-banging-vga-from-an-sd-card- slot/)

<comment><USER13> No mention of bit-bang VGA is complete without a link to [https://www.linusakesson.net/scene/craft/](https://www.linusakesson.net/scene/craft/)

He has also done something far more minimalistic: [https://www.linusakesson.net/scene/bitbanger/index.php](https://www.linusakesson.net/scene/bitbanger/index.php)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is it possible to make a modern one on commercial FPGAs?

Perhaps simplifying it with a HDMI chip rather than implementing the protocol.

<comment><USER9> HDMI is actually pretty straightforward to implement on a modern FPGA. I'm currently working on such an implementation -- I've got low-resolution modes working with fabric serializers; currently working on an OSERDES implementation to make higher resolutions available.

<comment><USER15> What chip are you using? Kintex or Artix?

<comment><USER9> Neither! Spartan-6. (Which I suppose isn't quite "modern" either, but it's a big step up from the part being used by this project.) The relevant Xilinx documents [1][2] suggest that it's even possible on Spartan-3A parts.

[1]: [https://www.xilinx.com/support/documentation/application_not...](https://www.xilinx.com/support/documentation/application_notes/xapp495_S6TMDS_Video_Interface.pdf)

[2]: [https://www.xilinx.com/support/documentation/application_not...](https://www.xilinx.com/support/documentation/application_notes/xapp460.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Third sounds like a fun FPGA project, does anyone want to work on a similar one today?

<comment><USER15> Does it make sense? Xilinx AC701 or an older Altera Arria V dev Kit have all the hardware for this. Writing code for them might be interesting learning project, but there are more interesting stuff nowadays to learn.

<comment><USER17> Not sure what Arria V dev kit you're referring to, but the AC701 retails for ~$1.3k and is overkill for the target application.

<comment><USER15> What do you want to pay for it? Hardware alone might cost 300$, but you also need somebody that wants work for free. 900$ is realistic price assuming low demand for such niche application. Maybe even higher price like this one: [https://numato.com/product/nereid-kintex-7-pci-express- fpga-...](https://numato.com/product/nereid-kintex-7-pci-express-fpga- development-board)

I am not related to Numato, but getting 4k@60Hz requires mid range chip like this Kintex-7.

I also not sure, if somebody wants to open source more than schematics and Gerbers after putting few hundred working hours in such project.

<comment><USER17> Certainly not anything remotely close to $1k with unnecessary baggage. Where did you pull this imaginary 4K@60Hz performance requirement from anyways?

The original article discussed analog VGA with PCI host control. The GP said something _similar_. You're proposing high-bandwidth digital video and suggesting native PCIe dev boards...completely out of scope.

Take a look at the i.MX6 Rex project[1] designed by Robert Feranec and Martin Murin before presuming what people out there are willing to release. Comparatively speaking, a VGA over PCI video card is solo undergrad EE fodder.

[1] [https://www.imx6rex.com/](https://www.imx6rex.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Different for sure, but amazing that a $3-5 ESP8266 can output VGA (monochrome) with hardly any additional hardware: [https://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=564673.0](https://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=564673.0)

<comment><USER19> The ESP32 can do VGA colour with a few resistors:

[https://github.com/fdivitto/fabgl](https://github.com/fdivitto/fabgl)</comment></comment>


A Sociology of the Smartphone - <AUTHOR> https://longreads.com/2017/06/13/a-sociology-of-the-smartphone/ <comment><USER2> Technological advances don't seem to have an undo button, as far as I can tell. Once a technology of utility is unleashed, things keep advancing and the genie never goes back into the bottle.

I suppose technology _can_ go backwards, but only by way of generation- spanning disaster. The fall of Rome is an obvious example. I guess this means we'll be dealing with this constant technological overload for the rest of our natural lives, huh?

<comment><USER3> It won't be long before smartphones are in our heads.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, that's worse, not better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wouldn't it be a treat if this article were presented to prospective buyers of smartphones rather than a bland ToS?

Sign right here to strike this Faustian bargain.

(Disclosure: I own and operate a smartphone.)

<comment><USER6> Is it Faustian? Not to say there aren't tradeoffs, but the metaphor of damnation I find perhaps excessive.

<comment><USER5> The author describes users becoming automatons living lives that are divorced from each other and motivated by extreme personalization.

Is it excessive?

<comment><USER6> It's not eternal. People still die, and always will. They are unlikely to continue using smartphones thereafter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For all the 'power' these smart phones have given us, it fills me with confusion, pity and annoyance when I walk in to someone's house only to see all the inhabitants looking down at their phones. Occasionally, they'll be engaging on the same content/media, reacting digitally and sometimes (as it's usually humorous) verbally. I've banned phones at the dinner table (mine only) and for a future vacation, will set out very clear 'acceptable usage' limits to my wife. I'd like to think I could give up mine but still a sucker for a good meme to lift me times are low.

<comment><USER8> For all the 'equality' civilization has given us, it fills me with confusion, pity and annoyance when I read someone 'set out acceptable limits' to his wife. I'd like to think I'm not being generous and you're referring to your own phone only but I'm not so sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> There's a lot wrong with this article. Do people actually use their phones for transit? I have transit cards from like 10 cities, and transit cards don't run out of batteries. Cards/cash don't run out of batteries either, and you can use them to refill your transit card, and I don't see those getting replaced any time soon. (Germans still use cash for like everything, which feels weird in an EU country).

And we still have plenty of phone booths ... if you need to take a piss. I'm pretty sure that's the only thing they're used for in London. Seriously don't touch those; they're disgusting.

Do people actually meet legit partners and friends from apps? I've never met anyone off Tinder (I'm not all that cute really), dating websites are a wasteland and all the people I've had meaningful relationships I've met at things I like to do. Sure we have meetups, but they really just facilitate what we use to do with flyers/posters before. Meeting people still takes work. No one meets of Internet chat rooms like in the AOL/Seinfeld era. The Facebook generation of social networks wants you to only connect with people you already know.

Smart phones, cell phones, affordable laptops, the Internet, television, radio, magazines, news and print media ...

Every advancement is huge. Every advancement initially supplied free and open speech. Printing presses pre-civil war were less than $10k USD to setup (in today's money). Papers crossed the country and spread news and opinions. Large media, advertising, the pony express (incredibly expensive but necessary for consolidating news) caused the price of starting a viable news print service to over $10 million in today money, by the 1930s. Same thing happened to Radio...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JP_3WnJ42kw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JP_3WnJ42kw)

Are phones a much bigger revolution than many of the previous ones? Yes. It's more power than a Pentium4 laptop, in your pocket, and always connected. But it wasn't unpredictable. Engineers at MIT in the 90s/2000s had bulky wearable with eye monitors and small hand keyboard (we still haven't see an viable version of this concept, like the glasses in Back to the Future, except maybe the Google Glass). Old Sci-Fi books have people typing messages on their wrist computers.

It's a big deal yes, but a lot of what we see today is "get off my lawn" and "those dumb [millennials, boombers, gen-x] are so entitled." Adam Conover does a GREAT commentary on the problem with generation labels: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HFwok9SlQQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HFwok9SlQQ)

..and he says that we try to blame the media (radio, televisions, phones) and all the same things we say about phones today we could see in magazines applied to TVs decades ago. It's not that media is changing things, it's just more media.

Look back at videos from the 1960s in big cities. People still didn't talk to each other on the trams, the subways, the rails .. they had out their newspapers and their magazines. Jump to the 1980s and the nerdy kids and adults had their walkmans. Jump to the 90s and everyone had a walkman or discman (that ate batteries).

Today phones have replaced a lot, but they have added to the ability to be minimalist. They need to be built to last longer (I would rather keep a phone for 5 years .. planned or negligent obsolescence is insanely wasteful. Most of those old walkmans on eBay still work), but I don't think they've changed things as significantly as the author suggested.

We don't look in at TVs in store front windows to watch the news, but we still watch sports together in bars. We're still getting news from huge monolithic sources, but now it's in our hand instead of on the news stand. We no longer have to wait in a parking lot and be like, "Where is Nick?" "I just called his house on that payphone. His mom said he left like 30 min ago." "arg I wish he'd get here. I wanted to start at 9am!" .. we get lost less, we organize people better, we no longer have to send mail to "general delivery" at a post office if we don't know someone's address.

We have all this communication, but futurists predicted these types of advancements would come. The privacy aspects .. yes those are frightening. Yet it's just an extension of what we were doing in the 80s with the earliest credit reporting and financial computers (See Adam Curtis's Hypernormalization).

I don't think articles like this do us a service because they're not presenting the advancements through a meaningful lens.

<comment><USER10> > There's a lot wrong with this article. Do people actually use their phones > for transit? I have transit cards from like 10 cities, and transit cards > don't run out of batteries.

Yes. In Oslo, Norway at least, it's become preferable for many (most?) people.

I used a transit card until the day I stood there about to catch the bus, and I'd forgotten to renew my monthly ticket. I had the app already, and the bus driver just let me get on the bus and buy a new monthly ticket on the phone there.

Since then I've used the phone.

If you've run out of battery, the bus driver will generally let you on (on the regional buses. inside the city proper they don't check anyway). If there's a control, the inspectors keep a power bank to let you start the phone to show that you have a valid ticket.

I guess what's different from many cities here, is that with all the transportation except regional buses, you don't need to verify a ticket before boarding. They trust people to buy tickets, and just do regular checks to discourage cheaters. Since implementing mobile phone tickets, I think the number of cheaters have gone down a lot.

I suspect that if mobile payment becomes ubiquitous, I may stop bringing my wallet around. There's not a single thing in my wallet I need anymore (I can even access the doors at work with the phone, although I do prefer the card so far), except perhaps ID/drivers license.

<comment><USER11> In London you can use a contactless card (VISA, Amex...) and there are daily, weekly and monthly caps after which you automatically travel free. It's much less painful than having to plan ahead and buy monthly tickets, and I wish it was the same everywhere.</comment></comment></comment>


Who stole your idea? - <AUTHOR> http://www.weblicht.at/2010/12/who-stole-your-idea/ <comment><AUTHOR> Reading this makes me think of a similar experience I've had which really emphasised the point "Ideas are worth nothing without execution" for me. These days, people say it all the time, but to experience it is another thing.

I'm starting to think it's very powerful (as far as necessary?) to go through an experience like this.

One thing I'm pretty certain of is that this experience will change Leo's thinking forever.

Related: Derek Sivers - "Ideas are just a multiplier or execution" - <http://sivers.org/multiply>

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm starting to get very tired of this way of thinking.

Ideas are VERY important. They give you the direction and aiming point that your 'execution' will eventually be built from.

If the google guys had had the idea to let you search dog shoes instead of the entire internet (even though the idea had been floating around for a while), even if they executed it to perfection. They would NEVER have succeeded. Unless they 'pivoted' (got another idea/direction).

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree there's a lot of this talk happening right now.

In my view, the point here isn't that ideas are worthless, it's that ideas are worthless _without execution_ \- this guy had an idea, and didn't act on it, and then saw a very similar idea succeed.

I think ideas are very important, but I think persistence is even more important, and I like the fact that the initial idea doesn't need to be perfect since you can pivot (yes, another increasingly overused term!), e.g. Microsoft, Paypal, Flickr.

<comment><USER2> Agreed.

The problem is that its intention often is misunderstood and it ends up just misleading people. It's supposed to be motivation for lazy entrepreneurs to DO something about their ideas but can be miscontrued and made to seem like any old idea, well executed, will win. Which from my limited experience so far, is just not true.

<comment><AUTHOR> > can be miscontrued and made to seem like any old idea, well executed, will > win

I completely agree. Though I guess it depends what you define as "well executed" if it's just executing the tech behind the idea, then it's likely you end up with something potentially technically very good but which nobody wants. If we define "well executed" as involving tech and also customer development, then I think executing a bad idea well must entail pivoting and therefore you actually could end up with a winner. What do you think?

<comment><USER2> I think that a bad idea becoming a good one is rare and almost like playing the lotto. Though i do agree that pivots rarely have anything to do with the tech involved.

Sidenote: Speaking of ideas, i just checked out yours, MyOnePage, i had a different idea that, strangely enough, i think could work well with it. I'll send you an email in a mo explaining it (didn't find your email add in your profile. Send me a shout at t[at]thesketch.org or reply here) i'll contact you asap. :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


PRX Quantum, a new Physical Review journal with open access - <AUTHOR> https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/updates/prx-quantum.cfm <comment><AUTHOR> The first issue was published today (Sep.3) so I thought this might be interesting.</comment>


Show HN: Inquiry – a thought-provoking article, video or podcast per day - <AUTHOR> https://inquiry.substack.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey all -

I started Inquiry [1] to share a thought-provoking article, podcast, video, or other link every evening that shares a new way of looking at the world.

Simply put, I try to share smart people discussing interesting things, regardless of whether or not I personally agree with them. I think there's a gap in curated content that is genuinely interesting and thought-provoking.

Over the past few weeks we've covered futurism, public health, charitable giving, policing, medieval warfare, cancel culture, happiness, investing, finance, geography, math, and much more.

Wanted to share with HN as well!

[1] [https://inquiry.substack.com](https://inquiry.substack.com)</comment>


Ask HN: Can Anyone Explain What's Going on with Amazon Shipping Times in DC? - <AUTHOR> Amazon free 2-Day Prime Shipping is showing delivery dates over a week away (if I ordered today it shows a delivery date of Wednesday, Nov. 14). I've contacted customer support about it and I was told they would refer the issue to a technical manager. My wife just had an order cancelled by Amazon with a refund. I'm genuinely curious about what the root cause of these shipping delays might be.
According to a Reddit post, the issue is widespread in Washington, DC and could be caused by tornado damage to a warehouse.
https://www.reddit.com/r/washingtondc/comments/9uf3ko/anyone_else_have_issues_with_amazon_prime/ <comment><USER2> I would bet that it is related to the tornado. It was pretty bad, pretty much taking out an entire Amazon warehouse in Baltimore, Maryland (outside DC) and killing 2 employees.

With that said, if this is the case, it is curious that Amazon doesn't have contingency plans in place to avoid significant disruptions in service such as extended delays. I can understand a slight hiccup/delay, but weeks seems a bit odd. Might be more going on than just the tornado issue.</comment>


Ask HN: Deep technical forum community to follow - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN,
I believe that most of the programmer, when they where learning, used to hang out in some online community where they asked the most basic question about code, loops, etc...
Of course such communities start to get boring after you have learn your skill and when there are already other skillfull programmers to lead the younger.
Now that we are grew up, what communities are worth following ?
I am looking for some project/language agnostic community where to discuss deep and wide topics about code...
Any ideas ?
(Other than HN, of course...) <comment><USER2> That used to be Usenet, which you can still read either via Google Groups, or one of many other paid providers.

For example, comp.lang.* [https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=%22comp.lang.*%22](https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=%22comp.lang.*%22)

Usenet: [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=usenet&t=lm&ia=about](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=usenet&t=lm&ia=about)

The nice thing about Usenet (or "news" as we used to say) is that, like email, it's a protocol and so it's not controlled by a single hyper corp (except to the extent that you let Google do exactly that).

Usenet used to be an expected service at universities, ISPs and a few corporations. But you can easily get your feet wet via Google Groups, and you can also easily pay a commercial provider for access.

</comment><comment><USER3> IRC freenode #$YOUR_LANGUAGE_OR_TOOL_HERE

But that's pretty niche. About a generalized chat, I agree with you. I wish there was a Slack channel used exclusively and extensively by hackers in my city (London).

Maybe you could start one?

</comment><comment><USER4> reddit?

<comment><AUTHOR> Which subreddit ?

r/programming is a clone of HN and honestly not pretty deep...

<comment><USER5> r/<my_programming_language>

r/MachineLearning

r/NeuralNetwork

r/kernel

I am pretty sure you can find a subreddit for every topic you can think of. The real question is whether that topic is going to be active or not.</comment></comment></comment>


Steve Jobs Probably Won't Return To Apple - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/160266/steve_jobs_probably_wont_return_to_apple.html <comment><USER2> Jobs and Apple constitutes a good example of Ayn Rand's individual vs. collective conflict. There is no "collective mind". There is only the individual mind. Apple is the product of the mind of one individual, Steve Jobs. It is not the product of a committee. The greatest innovations seem to arise from individuals, not "group-think". Hopefully Mr. Jobs returns to Apple. But if not, Apple needs to try and find another creative innovator like Mr. Jobs, somebody who can think outside the box, somebody who beyond computer science and business, is also and ultimately an artist.

It is the Howard Roarkes and Steve Jobs of the world that drive the economy. Were Ms. Rand around today, she would surely see Mr. Jobs as a Howard Roarke of today. For the sake of Apple's shareholders, I hope they can find somebody else similar in the event that Mr. Jobs cannot return.</comment>


The 10 Most Profitable Businesses To Start - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/entrepreneursfinance/2008/01/17/small-business-sageworks-ent-fin-cx_mf_0118mostprofitable_slide_2.html?thisSpeed=30000

<comment><USER2> Enough Forbes articles already!

...I never knew Steve Martin went into insurance.</comment>


We Change Our Minds Less Often Than We Think - <AUTHOR> http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/10/we-change-our-m.html

<comment><USER2> Interestingly in today's SD, [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071004134103.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071004134103.htm)

Getting participants to think about shopping influenced their travel plans.

There is a phase in the "thinking process" that can be swayed without any conscious perception of such a process (priming, for the most obvious example). Of course, by the time an impulse reaches higher-level processing, it seems reasonable that the subconscious has already fixated on what it needed to fixate on. In a priming experiment, one would "decide" to choose one picture over another; even with any observed hesitation, the results are predictable. It doesn't imply that a "mind changing" process ever occured though, because the result was deliberately and externally suggested without the participant knowing at all. When the colleagues were asked to assign probabilities, this is already very late into conscious processing.

So the keyword here is "think." Whether that is attributable to high-level reasoning or some limbic impulse changes a lot; consequently I find this post so much less informative.

</comment><comment><USER3> More concrete evidence of the importance of first impressions.</comment>


Ask HN: What would you tell a new graduate on how to negotiate their salary? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Just ask for a small percentage more than offered and plan on changing jobs after a couple years for your first real raise (20%+). Most places will try the 'you've been super awesome so you get the full 3%' trick, which is basically just the inflation rate. Don't expect miracles. Don't try to use an offer to try and get a better one somewhere else. It's kind of unprofessional. just say 'I really need $x to accept your offer'.

</comment><comment><USER3> Your salary this year isn't nearly as important as it seems right now.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you're really right but I think the big fear is asking for too much. I have a genuinely difficult time valuating my worth (salary) because I have no frame of reference. It isn't a matter of importance but rather self valuation comes with experience and most grads don't have any. I'm just afraid of getting "ripped" off. In the end, I want a position that I love regardless of pay. I know that means that eventually I will be doing my own start up.

<comment><USER3> You can say that. Like stonemetal said, you don't want to throw out the first numbers, but you can say:

"I am looking for a salary that is consistent with the responsibilities and duties of the position."

Good employers know that if they rip you off, you will leave in a year for a big pay increase. You can ask around after you get an offer and see if it is acceptable. (And you should always sleep on an offer anyway).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, that is quite helpful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Noel Smith-Wenkle salary negotiation method:

<http://infohost.nmt.edu/~shipman/org/noel.html>

</comment><comment><USER5> Don't name a number first.

Do ask for more than their first offer.

<comment><USER6> A rule of thumb that I read is to add 20% to their intial offer, that is about the max of what they are willing to pay you. If that number is much lower than what you want then you probably should look elsewhere. Also, don't be afraid to ask for non-salary benefits like extra vacation days, life insurance (if you have kids), no-travel clause, etc as the company negotiator often has more leeway on these things and a hard "no higher than x" limit on the salary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Agree with not offering the first number. Also tell them, 'money is important, but more important is the opportunity and the people I'd be working with.' If this fails and they offer you a low number, tell them, 'I'll have to think about any offer less that X, however, I'll accept right now if you can somehow offer X.'</comment>


Show HN: Eth.events – Query Ethereum with SQL - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com/query-ethereum-with-sql-c3da1c01870f <comment><USER2> Here is the documentation and how to access the data [https://docs.eth.events/en/latest/](https://docs.eth.events/en/latest/)

</comment><comment> crypto-crack great, thanks! - makes it easy even for me to actually work with blockchain data

</comment><comment><USER3> great job, thanks</comment>


Almost 11 years in, dnet rc5-72 is expected to hit 3% tonight - <AUTHOR> http://stats.distributed.net/projects.php?project_id=8

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks to faster processors and GPU clients, the pace is increasing. The project hit 2% just less than 2 years ago. Project info here: [http://www.distributed.net](http://www.distributed.net).</comment>


Computer program helped searchers find autistic man (alive, lost in woods for 7 days) - <AUTHOR> http://www.startribune.com/20746999.html

<comment><AUTHOR> What I love about this story is that a Lieutenant in an out-state Sheriff's department saw a hard problem that needed solving and wrote software to help solve it and save lives. The guy is one of us and probably doesn't even know it.</comment>


Snowdrift.coop: Funding for free projects - <AUTHOR> http://lwn.net/Articles/625051/

<comment><USER3> Looks like a lot of the same ideas behind the Internet Archive, but focused on asset creation rather then preservation.

I also like to see more people moving into the Patreon-style market - <USER2> has probably figured out a lot of the pain points and will probably rightfully hold some permanent market share for being first, but I think the ability of nonprofit/coop projects to be more agile and respond better to user needs due to the general lack of ulterior motives will be valuable for this specific business model in the long run.

<comment><USER4> Patreon wasn't actually first. Gratipay (formerly Gittip) was around well before Patreon and "be a sponsor" via an ongoing monthly or annual membership is a concept that has existed for centuries. Online, Paypal has offered ongoing donations for years. Patreon is just the most prominent and so far successful of several dedicated platforms for the idea of ongoing sponsorship.

In the Snowdrift.coop review of hundreds of existing sites, they even list a handful of other subscription-style sites [https://snowdrift.coop/p/snowdrift/w/en/othercrowdfunding#su...](https://snowdrift.coop/p/snowdrift/w/en/othercrowdfunding#subscription) (most with no real success, but many of which were around before Patreon).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> And just to minimize friction, the crowdfunding campaign itself: [https://snowdrift.tilt.com/launch-snowdrift- coop](https://snowdrift.tilt.com/launch-snowdrift-coop)

I gave a while ago. For me, it isn't that I necessarily 100% believe this is guaranteed to work, it is that it is good enough to be _worth a try_. My long- term hope is that this takes off enough and attains enough credibility that I can go to my employers and say with a straight face that we ought to be participating to a significant degree, but with life and the world working as it does, the project is first going to have to bootstrap the credibility to do that before I can even bring it up, let alone get it approved.

</comment><comment><USER6> Snowdrift is written in the Haskell web framework Yesod [https://github.com/dlthomas/snowdrift](https://github.com/dlthomas/snowdrift)

<comment><USER7> They also said they were looking for some help with the coding, so if anyone is interested it could be a nice project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I liked the overall idea, and I like that they're trying to fund the project via their own platform, and that they are a non-profit (right?).

So I had a look at their site — and apparently they're building their own forum, wiki, blog, and issue tracking software. This seems like things that can take a tremendous amount of time, and derail them from their main mission. And I'd guess the results would be average at best in comparison to what is produced by other teams that dedicate all their time on one thing, e.g. Discourse for new forum software.

Their model that calculates how much money that is paid out to each project feels like the opposite to what I would prefer. One would get paid something proportional to the number of supporters ^ 2. But if I wanted to donate money to something, then, if few other people donated, I would want to donate more, so that the project got a reasonable amount of funding. And if many people donated, I'd want to automatically donate less (not more), because I don't want the project to get more money than what it actually needs.

With Snowdrift's current model, I'm afraid a few projects will get a lot more money than what they actually need, and won't be able to use that money efficiently. Whereas most projects will get like $0.1 a month.

I'd love to see that their ideas work out well despite the things above :-) Best wishes to you the Snowdrift team.

<comment><USER4> No projects should take more than they need because the requirement is that funds go to ongoing development. Thus, a project can specify when they are adequately funded and not take extra. Projects that don't show good use of funds over time won't keep getting people funding them. Anyway, if the system actually gets to where projects are adequately funded, it will already mean the system is a success.

Yes, there's a natural _intuition_ that you should pay _less_ if others join you, but that only makes any sense after a project already has adequate funding. Anyway, the intuition is a failure in reality. Why should I add my donation if it just means others will donate less? The question to think about is: "what will most encourage others to donate who aren't donating now?" And the answer is definitely in matching as a big factor.

Anyway, the whole snowdrift dilemma is about the fact that you would indeed like to donate as little as you can and have everyone else donate as much as they can. The point of Snowdrift.coop is to acknowledge how that thinking is destined to be a failure for the project, so we have to make people adjust their thinking.

The mission-creep concern is totally valid, but there's pros and cons as well to having a more integrated system. I happen to agree with you that wheel- reinvention is a big problem in general. And Discourse is indeed pretty nice for what it is, and no way would it be easy for someone else to quickly whip up something comparable.

<comment><USER8> Re "Why should I add my donation if it just means others will donate less?"

They wouldn't donate less, that's not what I had in mind. I'm thinking the other people are supporting many different projects, in addition to project X that I start supporting. Now, when I support project X too, they'll contribute a little bit less to project X (but the net effect should still be that X gets more money). However, then the other people will get some money over, which the system will distribute among the other projects they support.

I'm thinking I'd prefer a money distribution model that tended to divide money evenly between many projects, rather than one that favored a few popular ones.

Anyway I'm thinking that the model you currently have in mind can be changed later on if needed. You could perhaps support more than one model. Or even let people choose themselves which model should be used when their money is being distributed.

<comment><USER4> Of course there's room to adapt as things evolve, yes.

The immediate challenge is that most projects are severely underfunded.

Anyway, I still would be _less_ likely to donate to a project if the effect was "I donate $5, and the project only gets $1 extra, and I'm freeing up $4 of other patrons' money so it can go to other projects." That's _worse_ for my goal of wanting this project to succeed than plain unilateral donations. If I want a project to succeed, I'd rather send them my entire $5 with a simple Paypal option than to do that screwy thing where others give less. Your version _does_ mean, "others give less [to the project I support] when I donate." And that would make people want to skip that system and just donate unilaterally.

It's actually far _better_ for the overall ecosystem if popular projects actually get adequate funding and less popular ones die than for all the funding to be split among all the projects regardless of popularity or worthiness. Yes that's two extremes. The ideal may not be either extreme.

Think of it this way: It would be way better to have two or three GNU/Linux distros that got enough support to completely outdo Mac and Windows in _every_ respect than to have every GNU/Linux distro out there get an extra $100 a month. It's perfectly reasonable to argue that it's basically _negative_ for GNU/Linux that there are so many distros and confusion. Consolidating the community and the funding around the most deserving projects is a _positive_ effect.

That said, the goal is that if people want to support the popular projects and many others, they should _add_ more funds, and up their overall budget when they see the value. People wont' keep to an absolutely fixed budget for the system. I might put in $100 at first, but if I knew the rest of the world would truly join me to build a truly better entire world, I'd put in my life savings. So, there are real limits, but don't assume this has to be a zero-sum game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> mike-cardwell Any chance you can add an RSS feed to your blog so I can follow the project?

<comment><USER9> Until it can be arranged, here's a version built with Yahoo! Pipes: [http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=ff5133ba1971595f95...](http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=ff5133ba1971595f95eda66d287c67ab&_render=rss)

Feel free to clone it and fix any issues, if you want.

<comment><USER10> For the ones wondering, you can clone / fix it here : [http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=ff5133ba1971595f9...](http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=ff5133ba1971595f95eda66d287c67ab)

<comment><USER9> Oh, right, thanks. I also want to say that I have no affiliation with Snowdrift, so the feed is in no way "official".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> They are still pledging fake money, I presume? I wonder when they will finally launch for reals.

<comment><USER12> Still fake money, yes. We'd like to launch ASAP, of course. Early 2015 seems realistic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Here's an idea: PTE (Publicly Transparent Entities); every transaction is posted (down to the bits) and known to the public; no convolution; nothing to hide

</comment><comment><USER14> Love this! Great job on the launch!

</comment><comment><USER15> So you on a .coop and your not sure that you actualy a coop?

Open, voluntary membership.

Democratic governance.

Limited return on equity.

Surplus belongs to members.

Education of members and public in cooperative principles.

Cooperation between cooperatives.

<comment><USER4> .coop is a sponsored TLD. It's not possible to have a .coop without being recognized as legitimate by [http://nic.coop](http://nic.coop)

Anyway, for Snowdrift.coop, it's planned as non-profit so there is no equity or return on equity. All revenue must serve the non-profit mission.

The rest of what you mention is affirmed in the Bylaws (which are still only a draft, pending legal review): [https://snowdrift.coop/p/snowdrift/w/en/bylaws](https://snowdrift.coop/p/snowdrift/w/en/bylaws)</comment></comment>


What are Lagrange points? - <AUTHOR> http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMM17XJD1E_index_0.html <comment><USER2> You can model these points yourself by drawing a gravitational potential map around the two large bodies (eg. the Earth and the Sun).</comment>


Space Heater: Scientists Find New Way to Transfer Energy Through a Vacuum - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/space-heater-scientists-find-new-way-to-transfer-energy-through-a-vacuum/ <comment><USER2> Previously posted: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21781412](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21781412)

<comment><USER3> Plus this one has a terrible headline. Discovering an existing, impossible to avoid physical property is hardly "finding a new way" to do anything, unless you figure out how to exploit it.

Article itself is good tho.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder if this will have any relation to the Quantum Vacuum Plasma Thrusters that NASA Eagleworks was investigating.</comment>


Wireless capability disabled in Vice President Cheney's implanted defibrillator - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbsnews.com/2102-18560_162-57608256.html The part of the article I wanted to point out is this:
In 2007, when Cheney needed his implanted defibrillator replaced, Dr. Reiner ordered the manufacturer to disable the wireless feature - fearing a terrorist could assassinate the vice president by sending a signal to the device, telling it to shock his heart into cardiac arrest.
Jonathan Reiner: And it seemed to me to be a bad idea for the vice president to have a device that maybe somebody on a rope line or in the next hotel room or downstairs might be able to get into-- hack into. And I worried that someone could kill you.
It might sound farfetched, but years later this scene from the SHOWTIME drama "Homeland" showed just how it could be done to the fictional vice president.
Sanjay Gupta: What did you think when you watched that?
Dick Cheney: Well, I was aware of the danger, if you will, that existed but I found it credible. Because I know from the experience we had and the necessity for adjusting my own device that it was an accurate portrayal of what was possible. <comment><AUTHOR> The part of the article that's interesting is the concerns about security of embedded devices:

 _In 2007, when Cheney needed his implanted defibrillator replaced, Dr. Reiner ordered the manufacturer to disable the wireless feature - fearing a terrorist could assassinate the vice president by sending a signal to the device, telling it to shock his heart into cardiac arrest._

 _Jonathan Reiner: And it seemed to me to be a bad idea for the vice president to have a device that maybe somebody on a rope line or in the next hotel room or downstairs might be able to get into-- hack into. And I worried that someone could kill you._

 _It might sound farfetched, but years later this scene from the SHOWTIME drama "Homeland" showed just how it could be done to the fictional vice president._

 _Sanjay Gupta: What did you think when you watched that?_

 _Dick Cheney: Well, I was aware of the danger, if you will, that existed but I found it credible. Because I know from the experience we had and the necessity for adjusting my own device that it was an accurate portrayal of what was possible._</comment>


A virus that kills cancer: the cure that's waiting in the cold - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/9508895/A-virus-that-kills-cancer-the-cure-thats-waiting-in-the-coldc.html#

<comment><USER2> This is a classic example of the reality distortion field that efficiently separates science journalism from science.

The article title: "A virus that kills cancer: the cure that's waiting in the cold".

The researcher's explanation: "Our results are only in the lab so far, not in humans, and many treatments that work in the lab can turn out to be not so effective in humans."

To the uninitiated, "only in the lab" means _in vitro_ (from the Latin "in glass", meaning in a test tube or Petri dish), not in any living creature, and certainly not a human being.

This means that the "virus that kills cancer" hasn't ever been called on to kill cancer in a person suffering from cancer. Just saying.

There is nothing so tempting to an unscrupulous science journalist as marrying the words "cancer" and "cure" in an article title. To do this, they often turn their back on reality, as in this case.

The research may deserve support, but sleazy journalism like this can only hinder the work, and science.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yesterday's submission

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4463519>

gained no comments (although more upvotes than this submission so far) and I see that today's submission has a no-op # character at the end of the URL, which is considered bad form for a resubmission. I did some looking up of other sources on the profiled researcher and on the general issue of research related to adenoviruses and cancer yesterday when the first submission came in. I liked the article and its overall tone more than (apparently) some of today's commenters liked it, but didn't upvote it because it is too preliminary--wild speculation about cancer cures happens every day. The particular researcher profiled in the article (who seems cautious and sensible, as quoted by the reporter here) is obscure. The research on adenoviruses and cancer is vast, going on in many laboratories in many parts of the world, and so far has been disappointing in its results. This is too early for front-page news here.

As I typically do, here I once again recommend the article "Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation"

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

by Peter Norvig, Google's director of research. Every day on Hacker News we see news articles submitted announcing a "cure" for this or that dreaded disease. Before believing such eagerly awaited stories, check out their research base and find out if other researchers have replicated and verified the same research results.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about the # no-op. Either my browser or the source did that and I didn't notice.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The author appeals to millionaires to fund this promising research which drug companies won't invest in because it can't be patented due to previous publication. But can a kickstarter guru help get this off the ground?

<comment><USER4> I love the idea of a kickstarter!

I'm just wondering what "direct" reward can be given in exchange for a donation. While most of us see the benefit of such a drug to the "human race" I really think the success of kickstarter is due to its premise that your donation is reciprocated by the recipient.

With that said, wow, this drug 'sounds' extremely promising, and I hope to everything holy that it can do the miracles it advertises.

<comment><USER2> > I'm just wondering what "direct" reward can be given in exchange for a > donation.

The majority of true science proceeds without thought of compensation, except in the sense that science advances and humanity benefits. Such is true in this case.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Tips for someone considering Android app development as a profession? - <AUTHOR>

I'm considering starting getting into Android app development as something I could do on the side until I could build it up enough to leave my current job. For those that have developed Android apps part-time or full-time, how much would a developer with several years or more Java dev (web apps and services) experience most likely make a year (at least based on your past experience in Android app development) for either/both (1) developing their own apps for sale on Android Market, and/or (2) developing Android apps for others on an individual contractor basis (not yet incorporated)?
In addition, do you have suggestions for pricing apps? The following indicates average price at ~$3.50 USD: http://techcrunch.com/2010/01/26/android-market-pricing/ (I know it depends on the app's functionality and perceived worth to customer, but I also imagine people would be much less likely to spend $39 USD for an Android app than they would for an OS X/Windows application with similar functionality/intent.)
Finally, is it realistic to develop solely in an emulator without having a real device, and if a device is needed, what would you suggest as a lowest cost option to start with? <comment><USER2> I'll give you my opinion about whether developing on an emulator is enough.

Initially ... sure, but if you're seriously considering making this your profession, you will only benefit by actually developing for a device you've used yourself. When you use a phone today you become aware of what you like about it, what you don't like about it, and also get a good sense for which problems have already been solved by other developers. I don't think these are things which you'll be able to get the same experience with an emulator, so if you continue to be interested in pursuing Android development after some initial tinkering, I'd say you can only really succeed by using Android as your daily device.

</comment><comment><USER3> _Finally, is it realistic to develop solely in an emulator without having a real device_

No. Even if you're not using any hardware features, the emulator gives you no idea of what performance will be like on real devices. Get a Nexus One if you don't want to be tied to a contract.

<comment><USER4> To expand, you really can't determine if a touch UX works or not by looking at it on screen and interacting with a mouse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Making money in these app markets is not really a technical challenge, but a marketing/social challenge. It is definitely not easy to reach $1k/mo+

For whatever reason, most people are happy to drop $200 on the phone but are really cheap about buying apps, especially on Android. OTOH the 160k+ new phones per day help compensate for the ultra low conversion rate. Enough to support your lifestyle? I dunno.

</comment><comment><USER6> How much can be made in a year? Who knows. iFart on iPhone makes a lot of money without much technical difficulty. Angry Bird makes a lot of money as well but with more sophistication. You will find out that it's not just coding that makes an app successful. Market trends, ideas, design, art work, coding, and luck all come into play.

Phone apps seem to have price-anchored from $0.99 to $5.00. Users expect prices in those ranges.

Android developers are in great demand, for working for the man. I've seen heavy recruitment from companies.

Developing on the emulator can be done, but depending on the functionality of the app, more difficult if you have unusual input control or unusual UI. The trick is to mimic the screen size correctly on the emulator. It allows you to scale the screen. Make it about the same size of a real phone. Screen dimension can be tricky. There are devices out there with unusual dimensions, like 320x570. Make sure you test with different emulator screen dimensions.

</comment><comment><USER7> These are just my opinions...

Don't target any one specific platform, write your app to be as portable as possible and target multiple devices (android, iPhone, webos, etc.. ) Larger markets have more customers, smaller markets have less customers but much less competition.

Price it at $4.99 and then have sales to experiment with different, lower price points. Find the best price and then have a perma-sale at that price.

Use the emulator to get started, and once you get your feet wet, develop on the device. The emulator is not enough for serious work.

</comment><comment><USER8> Could he be an Android consultant instead of selling apps? Does anyone have experience with that?

<comment><USER9> I've seen ads looking for Android consultants on Craigslist before. I bet there's a market.</comment></comment>


Kilogram conflict resolved at last - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/kilogram-conflict-resolved-at-last-1.18550 <comment><USER2> Discussion seems to be happening over here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10385758](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10385758)

<comment><AUTHOR> The vagaries of HN submissions :)

<comment><USER3> In this case a spurious query string did it. Anybody want to suggest a general way to tell if a query string can safely be stripped (i.e. without changing the page the URL points to)?</comment></comment></comment>


HTML5 and The Future of the Web. Bring this future here, now. - <AUTHOR> http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/07/16/html5-and-the-future-of-the-web/ <comment><USER2> I can't help but cringe everytime I see screenshots of Google Wave.

<comment><USER3> I love the way it looks, nice clean layout very easy on the eye IMO, but I guess its very subjective.

<comment><USER4> It's very busy. Very non-linear. Lots of space is taken by panels that _aren't_ important for whatever has your current focus.

And when they squeeze in ads, it will be even worse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The web as we know it today is a scrollable web. I'd like to see also a flippable web in the near future.

Where long documents are presented in one page and you can flip pages back and forth, instead of scrolling up and down, accommodating content depending on its font size and viewport.

Again, I support BOTH models, so it is up to the content creator where to use each.</comment>


Using genomics to help avoid a second coronavirus wave - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01573-5 <comment><USER2> This is great! It reminds me of the genetic changes they're making to mosquitos.</comment>


Is 'Early Adopter' Pricing Effective? - <AUTHOR>

As a small startup, we're about a month (or less, I hope!) away from launching our product. I've worked out a business model and run it by about 5 potential users. Each of them was confident that the 'price is right' however I'm not 100% sure.
I've seen a few companies (e.g. Recurly) do 'Early Adopter Pricing' where they offer a certain price to people who sign up early. That price will be grandfathered forever.
Has anyone here experimented with this? Is it better to just set a price then change and grandfather people? Or does the 'early adopter' discount drive sales? <comment><USER2> I wouldn't worry too much about what Recurly did - they seemed to constantly change their mind on how their pricing would work. Now they've given up and are holding out until to July to announce new pricing.

What I would take away from Recurly is that it can be hard to get it right first time, and changing your pricing once customers are signed up will upset some of them.

</comment><comment><USER3> Every company do early adopter pricing, sometimes they announce it as such, sometimes they don't. I don't know if telling it is better, but at the beginning you really need to have some feedback about your product, and your first customers may have to put up with initial troubles, so this is fair.

My opinion is that if the paiement is a one time fee, it doesn't matter, but if this is recurrent you should tell people before, otherwise you'll get a revolution when you increase the price like zendesk ...</comment>


Ask HN: Why be an option/futures/day trader when it is zero-sum? - <AUTHOR> Many very intelligent people whom I admire, such as Nicholas Taleb, are speculators. But isn't it very irrational considering that it is provably zero-sum?  I also would have moral qualms about doing it as well considering that I am not using my energies to produce wealth in any meaningful way.
Nicholas Taleb talks about jobs that "scale well". But isn't it more important to have jobs that are non-zero sum? If you have a job that is zero-sum, you have to keep working to stay ahead, whereas if you have a job that is less competitive you can relax. There will always be jobs available even for bad programmers because they at least create some wealth, whereas bad speculators would quickly lose their money and bad baseball players would starve in the streets.
I think it is as a rule irrational to enter a zero-sum game. When you enter the game, you are assuming that you are better than at least half of the other players. But everyone else is thinking the same thing. Clearly someone has to be wrong, and is going to be sorry. Is there any reason to believe that it is not you?
What do you think about this? I have been thinking a bit about getting into option trading, if you have any experience with it, please share. <comment><USER2> The irrationality you are referring to is called the self-serving bias (SSB). I wrote a thesis on overconfidence for my master in behavioral economics, and the two are related. SSB is a well-documented bias. For instance, 90% of American drivers think they are in the top 50%. It's hard for people to fully appreciate this fact. Allow me to illustrate. Do you still consider yourself, even after reading this statistic, to be in the bottom 50% of drivers? If so, then you're a minority, my friend ;-) (10%, to be exact)

<comment><USER3> 90% (actually, about 98%) of American drivers _are_ above average, owing to a statistical quirk. There are 6 million car accidents in the U.S. each year, out of roughly 240 million vehicles. At a minimum, that means that 97.5% of drivers get in _no_ accidents that year. They join the big bulge of people who are "average", having perfect driving records or only an accident a decade or so.

Accident frequency is a power law distribution - a large percentage of crashes are caused by a small number of drivers who habitually violate traffic laws, drive drunk, or otherwise engage in risky behavior. One of the distinctive features of power law distributions is that there's this long tail of people with very small values, and then a few people who make up most of the curve. So (made up numbers) you might have 60% of the population who has _never_ gotten in an accident, then 35% who has gotten in one, then a tiny fraction of 1% who's been in a dozen. Over an 80 year lifetime, that 6 million accidents/year results in 480 million accidents, or 2/person, so with the hypothetical percentages above, 95% of people are above the mean and 60% are above the median.

Just goes to show that you can't assume everything is a Gaussian. ;-)

A similar phenomenom occurs in many, many other fields. The average (median) wage-earner actually makes below average (mean) wages, because the existence of Bill Gates and Carl Icahn skews the distribution upwards. The median sale price for a startup is $0, because over half of them fail. The average test scores in Palo Alto or Weston, MA or Hunter College High School really _are_ above average, because those places already preselect for bright kids. It's quite possible for Lake Wobegone to exist: you just need to compare _your_ kids with _someone else's_ average.

And none of this invalidates SSB, but you picked a bad example to illustrate it. When 90% of drivers think they're in the top 50%, they're right.

<comment><USER4> Sure, but that only works because you've chosen a discrete measure of how "good" a driver is. If you defined a "good" driver by some other measure (say, a function of risky behavior and fuel consumption), then 50% of drivers would be above the median and 50% would be below, by definition.

<comment><USER5> All 3 of you are right.

<comment><USER6> Lies, damn lies and statistics :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Speaking as a trader at a major Wall Street firm... if you want a job that will allow you to relax, or if you aren't interested in "working to stay ahead," it's best to stay away from trading. Seriously. The hours aren't quite as bad as the investment banking/corporate finance guys, but I work 13+ hours a day, and my hours are not atypical for a junior guy. If you aren't going to work as hard as the competition, you'd better find some way to be smarter than them.

If you are interested in getting into option trading, make sure you understand it cold. Know what delta, gamma, vega, and theta are. Understand the relationship between these parameters and the price of an option: be able to explain it intuitively, and be able to derive the relationship from an option pricing formula. Understand implied volatility and the connection between vol and option prices. Build a simple Black-Scholes pricer to allow you to compute your own implied vol. Know why the vol surface has the shape it does. Make sure you realize that volatility is directional: vol goes up when markets go down. If you are playing index options vs. single-name options, make sure you understand your correlation risk. The list goes on and on.

Options are interesting, though, because they allow you to trade volatility. Vol is a more complicated thing than simple price movement, so if you understand it well you could have an edge over your competition.

Finally... I think trading is a good job choice for young, ambitious, and numerically minded people. Seems like there are a lot of readers like that here... maybe I'll write a more detailed article about this sort of thing later.

<comment><USER8> Please do so. That would be interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> First, options and futures involve a sub-zero game. Money leaks out via commissions.

Second, there are two types of players in this game. The first group is the speculators. They play the game for profit from the game. The second group is risk managers. They play the game for risk reduction. Speculators serve the risk managers. The speculator's strategy is starkly different than the risk manager's strategy. The speculator can profit by optimizing his strategy.

EDIT: The assumptions made by Black, Scholes, and Merton are highly idealized. There is much research to still be done in the area of behavioral finance and the game theoretic approach to derivatives pricing.

I've thought about conducting graduate research in this area because the mathematics are truly fascinating in this branch of finance/economics. When you start exploring this area from a game theory approach, you can start to understand why John Nash won the Nobel.

<comment><USER10> My understanding is the "speculators" create liquidity for the risk managers, thereby assuming their risk.

Why does the money leaking via commissions necessarily make the game sub-zero sum? Is it because we aren't looking at the big picture where everyone wins?

It seems like the risk managers must have a positive incentive to sell their risk on the marketplace instead of assuming it themselves. I.e. hedging another investment like someone else said already.

<comment><USER9> I was thinking about how to better answer your question concerning the sub- zero game statement I made. Let's remove ourselves from finance for a minute into something that is more traditional in the game theory studies--namely poker.

If the game is played where the players arrange transfers face to face such as in a home poker game, then the game is zero-sum. Your losses are my gains. No money is created. No money is destroyed. It stays inside the game. The minute we go to a casino to play the same game, the game becomes sub-zero due to the rake. You lose X to me and Y to the rake. I gain your X and lose Y to the rake.

Your cash flows: -X - Y. My cash flows: X - Y. In a zero-sum game your cash flows are the negative of my cash flows. This implies -(-X - Y) = X + Y. This is a contradiction. Therefore, the game is not zero-sum.

<comment><USER10> I was thinking that, because the market created value, it couldn't be zero or negative sum. Now I realize that it's negative sum within the scope of the market itself, even though it may create value in a grander scheme of things.

<comment><USER9> To truly understand the implications of game theory applied to the financial markets, you should look up the concept of Pareto improvements and Pareto optimums.

<comment><USER10> Good call. My roommate and I are about to start an econ discussion site. Shoot me an email if you're interested in helping us get conversation started or just have any suggestions for us.

<comment><USER9> Email?

<comment><USER10> See profile, forgot that it doesn't show.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have a Series 3 (futures/forex) license and worked in that industry for about 6 months. It was like the bad parts of Boiler Room. I left when I realized the shop I was working for had no problem ripping off retail clients and allowing them to speculate with money they didn't have; clients had to sell their homes to cover their obligations.

Bona fide hedging is a lucrative business for the companies involved, whether that's hedging against currency or commodity price fluctuations. It's also more "buy side" than "sell side" - you're dealing with companies rather than 'raising money' from new clients who get blown out over the course of 3 months.

I know a few successful options traders. It's highly lucrative (high 6 figs base after a few years), you just need the pedigree and the intellect to pull it off. If you're in a position to do that, though, you might try to get an analyst job, get on a path to assistant portfolio management, portfolio management, keep a good track record and start a hedge fund. That's all buy side and would allow for some flexibility in the strategies you implement.

<comment><USER12> Was the acting as bad?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Don't some people, especially big organizations buy options/futures as hedges for another investment?... so it might not be a true zero sum game in the sense that some of the players aren't really playing to win.. they are just putting money in for insurance

<comment><USER14> Correct. There is a big difference in leveraging options when you own tons of stock in a company vs. using options as a high class lotto ticket.

Example: Mark Cuban used options to guarantee he would be set for life no matter what happened to Yahoo's stock after they bought Broadcast.com for $5 billion (in stock mostly).

<comment><USER15> > Mark Cuban used options to guarantee he would be set for life no matter what > happened to Yahoo's stock

Care to explain further, or point me to where I can read more?

Edit: I think the "equity collar" article linked below sorted me out.

<comment><USER14> <http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/63/fasttalk.html>

"The basic worry that comes with having lots of money is no different from what worries everyone else. Whether you've got $100 or $100 million, you don't want to lose it. After we sold Broadcast.com, I hedged my stock with synthetic indexes, in case the market cratered in the six months before I could hedge my actual Yahoo shares. It cost me $20 million, but I protected what I had. Todd Wagner and I had a credo: "Pigs get fat; hogs get slaughtered.""

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "When you enter the game, you are assuming that you are better than at least half of the other players."

I think the difference is - at what point does that assumption become atleast somewhat provable. Shaquille O'Neal was probably an athletic 6'10" 280 lbs in high school. Just because the game of basketball itself is zero sum, does that make it irrational to think that he would become a decent professional basketball player?

My favorite part of Taleb's book is when he describes the investing world as if all player's had a random 50/50 shot of making money each year. There are millions of investors, by random chance thousands will do really well, a handful will do really, really well over the course of decades. How do you know Warren Buffet is not part of that handful that is successful purely by chance? It's been awhile since I've read the book, but I remember his philosophy being something like if you have a logical investing/hypothesis that gets proven results, then maybe we can say it's not by chance.

So to answer your question, if you think you have an objective theory/algorithm/etc for option trading and have done blind historical tests or have successfully paper traded for a year+, then you might be on to something. If you think you are just smarter than everybody else, or maybe had a couple successful stock trades, it's probably not a good idea.

</comment><comment><USER17> Competitive sports are also zero-sum games. Traders are banking "jocks." They are traders because it is a zero sum game, and they think they have what it takes to win.

</comment><comment><USER18> As a person that has been on both the positive and the negative side of the sum, I can tell you that most people don't really think about this when they get into the speculation.

1) Serious quant trader types are rarely good at anything other than mathematics. Even if they are, if they are getting $500k+/yr it would be hard to start as an entry-level engineer for $60k. So most people don't really have an option once they get started in trading.

2) It's addictive. The top hedge fund manager in the US is paid to the tune of $1.7 BILLION per year. On January 2nd the next year, he's back in the office. Once you get in the quickpaced environment of trading everything else looks very boring.

3) It's usually a collective game, so your particular performance is not as important as the performance of the firm. You could do excellent, but somebody else could tank the whole bank. Similarly, you could have a bad year, but if the company is doing OK you'll still get a decent bonus.

After all, the same applies for startups. If you don't assume that you are better than most people at what you do, there's hardly a point in doing it.

</comment><comment><USER19> Short answer: No, don't do it.

Long answer: For anyone interested in this stuff I highly recommend the book Trading & Exchanges by Larry Harris. The book is about market microstructure, and the knowledge applies to any market whether it's equities or options or online gambling like intrade.com. It's a textbook, so not riveting reading, but great information.

As other posters have pointed out, it depends on how you define zero-sum. Trading is zero-sum, when you compare it against market returns. However, as a trader you are providing services such as immediacy and liquidity. My AAPL stock is more valuable to me as an investor, since there is an active market, and people are willing to sell it to me and buy it from me on short notice, even though I am losing some money to them through the bid-ask spread and execution costs. The other comments about options being useful for spreading out risk are true as well.

As far as the rationality goes, it's rational if you're an expert, you have better information than the market, if reading the above textbook kept you up late at night, etc. Your intuition about the odds are correct, though, so keep your pessimism handy.

So why is my short answer 'no'? Well if you don't have the patience to read the whole post then you definitely shouldn't do it, since learning all the math behind it is going to be way more boring. You've read Taleb which is a good sign. Now that you're at the end the answer is 'maybe', but your wording concerns me: what do you mean by "getting into" options trading? If you're going to get some intensive training and learn from professionals working at reputable investment firms, then great. If you're going to read a few articles off the internet and then dive in, then that is definitely not a good idea. Trading is all about having an edge against the person you're trading with, so a few articles don't improve your odds much.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm just a undergrad college student. I read a few articles online and decided to try the options trading simulation at cboe.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think it has to do with the "superstar" phenomenon that Taleb discusses in Fooled by Randomness & The Black Swan. Being a dentist, you are not likely to see a multi-million dollar salary - yet you can definitely live comfortably.

What I believe Taleb's philosophy _was_ (he now remarks in bold text: "Finance is for philistines!" on <http://fooledbyrandomness.com/> ) that by exploiting the random nature of markets he could "swing for the fences" by placing many small extremely risky bets that if they paid off -- even infrequently -- would guarantee him a lot of money.

From the little that I know/think I know: Options are a good way to leverage small amounts of capital into potentially large gains. If the price of the underlying security doesn't behave as you expected you can let your option contract expire worthless - meaning you have a defined risk which is what appealed to Taleb. Even in the worst case he knew how much was at stake.

<comment><USER8> That changes when you start to write options i.e. be the counter-party which does not have the right to buy/sell but the obligation.

</comment></comment><comment> daniel-cussen In theory, a good speculator allocates money more efficiently. In 2004 this might have meant shorting Bear Stearns and buying stock in Google. Google could then sell stock to raise money, or take out a loan with its own stock as collateral, to pursue projects with the money. In theory, a good trader lends money to the companies that deserve those resources the most. So, as far as I can tell, it isn't a zero-sum game.

If the entire stock market does its job like this, money gets to googles more easily than it gets to pets.com. The economy uses capital more efficiently, and grows more than it would otherwise.

Of course, that's all in theory. In practice, being an investment banker is rough.

<comment><USER21> This is exactly right. By making money day trading in the market, you are creating very needed services - adding efficiency and liquidity. Without these things, the markets wouldn't exist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Options trading is not zero sum because the utility of money is not linear. When a rich person gives money to a poor person, the net gain is positive because the poor person can use the money to satisfy more basic needs that the rich person has already satisfied, and thus would otherwise have spent the money on something with a smaller return.

As brentr already pointed out, some people trade options for risky gains (such as selling an uncovered call), and some people trade them to offset risk (such as buying an underwater put). Acting in the latter category is like buying insurance: even though your expected return on money is negative, your expected return on utility might still be positive. Acting in the former category is like selling insurance: you run the risk of taking a big hit, but your expected return is still positive.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's not uniformly irrational or unprofitable to enter a zero sum game. I made a great living for over 5 years playing a zero sum game, and know lots of people who have done it for far longer. Not options trading though. That one in particular I can't speak to.

It's often not that hard to prove within a reasonable certainty that you are a winner (or at least were one), depending on the variance. I haven't looked into the coefficient of variation of options trading though. I might one day.

Also, whether or not something is competitive has nothing to do with whether or not it is a zero sum game. It is generally just a factor of how much money can be made. The software industry is not zero sum, but is highly competitive. Low stakes poker tables are zero sum, but are not competitive at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> But wouldn't the lose leave the game, leaving the previous winners to battle amongst themselves?

<comment><USER12> Nope. Any game involving variance allows one to chalk up bad results to bad luck for a very long period of time. And new losers join every day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'll save someone the task of googling Nicholas Taleb. I think this link has been here before, but even so, it's a good one:

<http://www.gladwell.com/2002/2002_04_29_a_blowingup.htm>

</comment><comment><USER24> It isn't zero sum, any more than manufacturing is zero sum because all you did was expend energy rearranging the same old atoms.

Trading well requires you to synthesize information that other people will act on. If oil is too cheap, you buy oil, this raises the price and alleviates the problem. The fact that this causes some people to lose money is material, but it just means that trading is a way to redistribute wealth from people who are usually wrong to people who are usually right. I do not see how anyone could believe that this isn't socially useful.

<comment><USER12> That doesn't make sense. Manufacturing is not zero sum because you're taking things people don't want (raw materials) and turning them into things they do. It's a zero sum game at the atomic level, but not at the wealth level.

Options trading is zero sum because every dollar made by one options trader is lost to another (or to a commission). There's no net wealth generation.

<comment><USER24> Of course it makes sense. Trading options takes something people don't want (a particular exposure to a particular set of cash flows) and turns it into something they do want (a different kind of exposure to a different set of cash flows). If people they were indifferent to sets of cash flows, markets wouldn't work.

Here is one incredibly obvious way that you're wrong: if you ran an airline, you might be worried that a sudden spike in fuel prices would bankrupt you. They could use futures to speculate that prices would go up, so they'd be indifferent to price changes -- an increase of $X in fuel costs would give them an increase of $X in futures profits. Suddenly, they are a more stable company -- people are more willing to work for them, banks are willing to lend them more money, passengers are more likely to participate in frequent flier programs, airports would be more likely to consider them for long-term spots, etc. Somehow, everyone on that side of the transaction benefits. And lo! The speculator on the other side, betting that prices will go down, is able to do so directly, rather than by indirect means such as buying stock in an unhedged airline and exposing himself to the vagaries of that industry. Even if he loses money in the end, he has what he wants when he makes the trade. However, I needn't restrict myself even to people making business decisions through the futures markets: even a compulsive gambler trading pork bellies is not a compulsive gambler getting drunk at casinos or playing illicit card games. In short, it's a very sanitary sort of gambling (this was not always the case -- in the 1920's, traders at the then-outdoor American Stock Exchange drank constantly to keep warm. This explains a lot).

It is trivial to declare that some business is zero-sum or negative sum. Even retail is a series of zero-sum transactions: I had $5 and the restaurant had a burger, now I have $5 worth of burger and the restaurant has $5 worth of cash. Even, minus time and taxes. And yet, for the most part, our bias is to quite correctly assume that when people voluntarily hand over billions of dollars, some of them becoming poorer and some of them become quite richer in the process, they may be doing something rational. The fact that rich countries develop stock exchanges, and that the development of stock exchanges correlates with future wealth, is not a coincidence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Has anyone else read "Nonzero" by Robert Wright? It's one of two nonfiction books that have noticeably improved my understanding of the world, with almost daily benefits. (The other is The Black Swan.)

</comment><comment><USER26> Being a quant has a certain appeal, but nothing (to me) is as appealing as creating tools that people use to accomplish things.

Gambling on anticipating/creating the future is not an easy way to make money. However I agree that there is no wealth creation resulting from this (the increased liquidity of the market due to new kinds of derivatives may increase the efficiency of the market, but I think you are talking about "simple" trading.)

</comment><comment><USER27> Zero-sum depends on your perspective. Speaking strictly in theory here: a successful speculator creates value in the same way a hunter creates value when he sharpens his spear. By taking decision making power (money) away from people who make wrong decisions he "sharpens" the market and makes it a more useful tool when other people use it to create value.

<comment><USER27> Of course I totally missed the point of the question. It strikes me as just a matter of personal temperament. I, personally, have no interest in jobs that involve going into battle againt other people every day. But if that sounds appealing to you then I think you should go for it, even if probability says you won't succeed. Passion > reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wrt to the "why" of the market, without speculation, liquidity is far lower. Take a look at the Chicago Climate Exchange's (CCX) price fluctuations compared to a fall expiring wheat contract on the CME/CBOT - you can move the CCX with a small amount of money.

</comment><comment><USER28> I am not sure that traders don't create value. Their job is to allocate money to the most useful company, I suppose?

<comment><USER29> Except the companies don't see any of the money once the IPO is finished.

Of course, the only reason the IPO can proceed is because people who buy shares know that they can sell them to other people later. So I suppose in that sense they help. However, once the market already exists, no extra value is created by an extra trader entering it.

As others have pointed out though, there genuinely is value created by the options trading market, since the existence of options allows risk to be spread.

<comment><USER30> Well, companies do sometimes make further public offerings.

Stock trading also provides a somewhat objective measure of the value of the company. For instance, if MS wants to buy Yahoo, how much should they offer? Without the stock market, it's tough to tell if they are lowballing or paying a premium.

<comment><USER9> You're spot on that the market is a means of both creating information and disseminating information. Information is key to game theory. That's where sigma algebras and filtrations start to creep into theory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Trading long is positive sum.

<comment><AUTHOR> For stocks, yes, but not for options/futures.

<comment><USER31> I am talking about stocks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> speculation done right consists of creating knowledge about what resources will be in what demand in the future, and then saving resources that are cheap now but will be expensive later. doing this raises the price a bit now (b/c you buy a bunch) and lowers it then (b/c supply is higher then). you make money smoothing out price fluctuations. this is a valuable service -- price fluctuations can really hurt people or companies that don't have spare money at the moment.

there is a limit on how much total money can be made doing this. the more people do it, the less price fluctuations are available to even out.

but anyway, there are good types of trading.

<comment><USER9> I'm guilty of not creating a distinction between speculation and investing. Technically, investing done right consists of creating knowledge about what resources will be in what demand in the future. A speculator plays a mere hunch. The distinction lies in the amount of information processed in the decision formulation. A good discussion of the dichotomy between a speculator and an investor can be found in Graham and Dodd's Security Analysis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is human nature. It happens everywhere, the most commonplace example is a lottery ticket: that is a negative sum game. Venture capital is also a negative sum game (EDIT: I'm actually not sure about this, the winnings of top VCs might outweigh the losses of the majority).

Risk hungry people will pay a premium for increased upside. For example, they will prefer a win 20-lose 30 game over a win 10-lose 0, because 20 > 10.

<comment><USER10> Venture capital is not an example of this phenomenon. VCs accept high risk/variance in order to achieve high expected value, and it is not a negative sum game.</comment></comment>


The U.S middle class is on the brink of extinction - <AUTHOR> http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/the-u.s.-middle-class-is-being-wiped-out-here%27s-the-stats-to-prove-it-520657.html?tickers=^DJI,^GSPC,SPY,MCD,WMT,XRT,DIA

<comment><USER2> Blogspam. Here is the original: [http://www.businessinsider.com/22-statistics- that-prove-the-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/22-statistics-that-prove- the-middle-class-is-being-systematically-wiped-out-of-existence-in- america-2010-7#83-percent-of-all-us-stocks-are-in-the-hands-of-1-percent-of- the-people-1)

Also incoherent. The author doesn't even define "middle class", and yet some collection of disparate statistics is supposed to tell us the middle class is vanishing?

</comment><comment><USER3> Excellent stats. Thanks for posting this. The picture is pretty bleak. According to CIA's World Book, 1 in 8 Americans live at or below the poverty level. Only 6.24% of the working population older than 25 make $100k+. The average income for the same demographic is around $32k. So, yes, all the data says the same thing: there is a massive economic polarisation going on in the US.

<comment><USER4> How long does this keep on going for? Is there some process or mechanism within the system that will put the brakes on this? Another measure of wealth disparity is the Gini index. We should forget GDP (or GDP with PPP) (or GNP) per capita as a metric. If I live in a country where there are only two people, one of who (not me) earns $1,000,000 per annum and the other (me) earns $10,000 and I'm told that the GDP per capita is $55,000 I'm not going to be impressed. But if the Gini index for my little two person country states that there is a massive imbalance in the distribution of wealth then I'll prefer that index.

What I'm trying to ask is: how long can this keep going on before some sort of underclass revolution kicks in. Or, are the poor in the US not _really_ absolutely poor (like rural farm-hand in China poor) but relatively poor (as in 36" LCD TV instead on 50").

You know what would be a cool hack? Solving this economic train-wreck.

<comment><USER2> _Or, are the poor in the US not _really_ absolutely poor (like rural farm-hand in China poor) but relatively poor (as in 36" LCD TV instead on 50")_

Bingo. The poor of today are what used to be described as "middle class" (in terms of living standards) except with vastly more leisure time.

[http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2004/01/understandi...](http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2004/01/understanding- poverty-in-america)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They neglected the impact of property taxes, which are regressive (independent of income). Here in NJ for example, my property taxes are now at 25% of my income, and that's before other taxes and fees (income tax, sales tax, gas tax, tolls, etc.). As homeowners go bankrupt or walk away from their homes, the tax rate is raised to keep the local fiefdom's income level stable.

<comment><USER6> The opposite of "progressive" taxation (tax rate is linked with income) is NOT "regressive". It would be something like "non-indexed", I guess.

Are you suggesting that the taxation of property should not be tied to its market value?

<comment><USER5> Regressive is the term used here for describing property taxes. While not entirely appropriate, for the sake of communication commonly agreed upon terminology is used by politicians and the media.

Yes, the taxation of property needs to be tied to market value, but it needs to be capped in some manner to prevent abuse. For example, pro-rating the tax against a sliding scale based on income.

The problem is that people get old. Bizarre concept, I know. Once people retire, their incomes tend to be fixed. As property tax rises uncontrolled (and unpredictably) year to year, the people that are the foundation of the community are forced out. Friends and neighbors leave - not because they want to - but because they have no choice. When the taxes on your home become 30%, 40% or more of your gross on the home you've lived in all your life, what do you do?

It still might not be so bad if new people moved in. However, if the taxes are too high home sales in a recession become difficult or impossible. Homes sit empty as people walk away from the properties. They become run-down, and the neighborhood degrades. To compensate for the loss of revenue, local government raises the tax rate continuing the cycle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wouldn't this just be an adjustment to something that occurred due to lack of free trade and globalisation/ ease of communication in the past? If someone in China or elsewhere really can do a job just as well as someone local to a company and capitalism dictates that a company should maximise profit then it makes perfect sense to outsource.</comment>


The FBI Just Seized Backpage.com - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/j5avp3/fbi-seized-backpage-sex-trafficking <comment><AUTHOR> According to the article, Backpage might be very well be the first casualty of the, as-yet unsigned, SESTA-FOSTA bill.</comment>