The Long-Term Stock Exchange Comes to Life - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ltse.com/the-long-term-stock-exchange-comes-to-life-c497f29bbc73 <comment><USER2> _" Tenured shareholder voting power, meaning that a shareholder's votes would be proportionately weighted by the length of time the shares have been held"_

I wonder if we're going to see the rise of holding companies just to get around this rule. _" Our holding company owns shares in XYZ, and will never sell those shares ever. Instead of buying/selling XYZ directly, you can instead buy/sell shares in our holding company. We will confer voting power in XYZ, proportional to how many shares of our holding company you own, regardless of how long you've held them."_

I suppose one way to prevent this loophole is to grant voting power only to individuals, and not entities, but that would screw over index-funds, mutual- funds, foundations, non-profit-endowments etc etc.

<comment><USER3> Your concern is only the tip of the iceberg. Any set of rules will be gamed. The only way I can think of (and it can probably be gamed) that would really put the long term into the executives mind is to have most of their compensation based on the value of the company a few years after they're done. But given the existence of options and shorting stocks and any number of ways to mitigate risk or make money that don't depend on positive outcome for the average investor, anything can be gamed.

With a shift to long term outcomes, one could do any number of things that are short term bad to line their pockets and claim the benefit is further down the road. The problem isn't really about short or long term goals - does Amazon or Tesla give a rats ass about profit next quarter? No, and IMHO one of those is a solid company while both have high valuations.

In some cases I think the answer is to strip investors of control. They are the ones allegedly pushing short term profits at the expense of the long term. But what is ownership if not a form of control?

Another thought I keep coming back to is dividends. A proper investment gives returns without having to sell your stake. Lets provide incentives for companies to share profit rather than pump stock prices, then everyone can get excited about the right things. This has its downside too in cases where growth may require reinvestment. Perhaps forcing dividend payments for all cash equivalents above some threshold? I dunno, there are a lot of ways to approach this and none of them are good for all companies.

<comment><USER4> > In some cases I think the answer is to strip investors of control. They are > the ones allegedly pushing short term profits at the expense of the long > term.

Hopefully this was a very fleeting thought; when it comes to ideas about changing corporate structure you couldn't really come up with a worse one. It is a complete violation of the skin-in-the-game principle that has so successfully propelled capitalist society for more than 200 years.

If management aren't accountable to the wishes of people who have proven they can preserve or grow piles of money, there will be economic waste on a colossal scale compared to what we have now. Corporate management would be overwhelmed by fast talking con men.

Turn your attention instead to the forces that are making short term decisions the better ones. I'm no expert, but if short-term thinking has been going on for a long-term time then something is more fundamentally wrong than "gee, people with money must just be stupid!". People don't seem to like accepting quite how rationally intelligent markets are - the only thing markets have been shown not to do well is make sacrifices for moral reasons.

<comment><USER5> But when does 'short-term' become 'long-term'?

If i make good (short-term) decisions each quarter, then won't that just add up to be a good decision after 4 quarters? If it turns out that the 'good' decision last quarter turned out to be bad _this_ quarter, then you'd make a change to fix it for _this_ quarter_.

Rather than plan out a 10 year plan, which you can't possibly predict in advance what may happen.

<comment><USER6> Commodore is a wonderful example of how a number of "good" short term decisions turned into long term disasters.

E.g. one (of many) factor in Commodores decline and failure was that they at one point made a "brilliant" move of undercutting the competition in a way that drove massive sales while costing them dis-proportionally little in lost revenues from all of the hardware already in their channel.

Unfortunately it did that by cutting the feet under their dealer network by going mass market retailers and cutting the RRP in public, without giving retailers advance warning, and without giving their dealers rebates on product in their channel that had not yet been sold.

As a result their results looked good for a little while, but they bred so much resentment in their dealer network that it still haunted them years later when they suddenly badly needed that dealer network to push out the Amiga, which was released at a price point where the mass market discount retailers weren't suitable.

It took years for the total cost of that stunt to be visible, and even then it's hard to account for the total impact to the company even now, decades later.

It's not an easy problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "short-term pressures were driving their decision-making, often at the sacrifice of the long-term potential of the business."

This is a popular opinion, but I find it difficult to believe. It relies on the notion that stockholders are fools and unable to recognize when a company destroys its long term prospects for short term gain.

The trouble is, once the short term gain is there, who are the short termers going to sell to? A bunch of suckers?

And Wall Street richly rewards companies for long term behavior - there's no other explanation for Amazon's high P/E.

Lastly, the stock market returns for the last 50 years are excellent. If the corporations were all sacrificing long term for the short term, how has such sustained growth been possible?

<comment><USER8> I have experienced short-term thinking, driven by stock market expectations, very directly.

Working on a game, we had a build ready two weeks before the end of a quarter, but we weren't _quite_ done. We had just a few minor tweaks that needed just two more weeks to complete, and we in fact delivered a complete game two weeks later...that was ignored, because it was more important to make their quarterly goal than to release a better product.

Turns out there were several games being developed that quarter, and ours was the _only_ one to make it even close to under the deadline. But because they were doing quarterly reports, they were under tremendous pressure to release _something_ , and so an inferior product was released.

Oh, and this was the era of physical cartridges. No updates possible. We put in a ton of extra work to make it perfect and they _didn 't care._

The international versions were shipped later and included the improved changes. If anyone is interested in seeing the difference, you can probably find the ROMs and a Game Boy Advance emulator: Check out the US release of "Tetris Worlds" and any of the international releases (all include English, but the three different international releases each included other languages as well).

<comment><USER7> > We put in a ton of extra work to make it perfect and they didn't care.

The question is whether the game would have made more money for the company if it was perfect and shipped later. It is not necessarily true that making a product better and delaying shipping is long term better for the company.

<comment><USER5> > It is not necessarily true that making a product better and delaying > shipping is long term better for the company.

a perfect game released later may either become a classic that has huge long tail potential. A early-to-market game may produce a short hit/fad that passes.

It's almost random which will happen - as those doing these sorts of judgements prior to actually releasing have their own personal biases which can cloud their judgement one way or another.

<comment><USER7> Of course people can misjudge the details. But that doesn't mean they are deliberately sacrificing the long term for the short term. It just means they are mistaken.

<comment><USER9> rushing a product out, putting extra pressure on your engineers, squeezing them, is always a sacrifice and a risk. and it's always a long-term loser. you can get away with it a few times, if you do it every single time your engineers will burn out or revolt if the product failure doesn't do it for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> [https://www.wsj.com/articles/silicon-valley-vs-wall- street-c...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/silicon-valley-vs-wall-street-can- the-new-long-term-stock-exchange-disrupt-capitalism-1508151600)

In the linked WSJ article, that explains this quite a bit better than the medium blogpost. Basically, it appears that the main thing is that the voting power of shares win increase with the time the shares are owen. (Though there's talk of opting in to this process.) There's also going to be a prohibition on companies giving quarterly earnings guidance.

It seems like it's intended to reward founders and long-term employees of startups by privileging them over the more retail class of investor, and people with short-term goals, like activist investors. (But this is a mixed thing - it's more accountable than a setup with multiple stock classes where the founders retain all control.)

EDIT: Random thought: I wonder how this exchange would handle shorting stock, when it comes to the tenure requirement.

<comment><USER11> > _it 's intended to reward founders and long-term employees of startups by > privileging them over the more retail class of investor_

It will just prioritize investors with the sense to stick their shares in an SPV ( _e.g._ an LLC or trust) and then sell the SPV with the premium voting rights attached. (Also amplify the benefits of intergenerational wealth transfer.)

<comment><USER12> There is no "just". If someone can come up with that exploit in an HN comment, it would be incredible if there were no provisions to explicitly forbid this kind of share from being used in this fashion.

<comment><USER11> It's an NP hard problem. Tracing beneficial ownership is tough to scale. That's why our system does it sparingly, _e.g._ when investigating malfeasance. Every past attempt at systematising this trace function has run into hurdles which are now predictable. They aren't easy to solve without creating unacceptable side effects, and it's easier for the beneficial owner to adapt than for an exchange to re-write its rules.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hey everyone, Eric Ries here. I'm the founder and CEO of the LTSE (and also the Lean Startup guy). Happy to see the discussion here and will try and answer a few questions. Unfortunately, a lot of the details of how the LTSE works are subject to regulatory approval, so I can't share too much while we are working out the details with them. Still, I'll do my best to answer.

Thanks for the comments and happy new year

<comment><USER14> I had a similar idea (x) a few years ago, but leading this kind of project is way beyond my capabilities. I'm thrilled to see people try to accomplish this, and you seem to have a fantastic team, congrats.

(x) My first idea was to create a market where you couldn't resell a stock until some (long) time has passed. Pretty much the exact opposite of algorithmic trading trying to pass orders at light speed. Another was to forbid any kind of option (not stock options, options) or any other indirect way of speculating over a stock. The idea was to try to ensure the stock owners that someone wouldn't be able to crash the stock of a company he doesn't have any interest in, just for profit.

All of those considerations stemmed from the 2008 crash of course, and all the irrational behaviors that followed. But i still think there should be a way to provide a "safer" place for business owners to attract new shareholders.

<comment><USER15> Shorting a stock still does show interest though. That you believe the stock is over valued.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > _The LTSE is designed to remove the short-term pressures that plague today's > public markets and reorient companies and investors around long-term > thinking._

While it's certainly a _popular_ belief... from my understanding it's not at all _proven_ , or even obvious, that stock markets encourage short-term thinking over long-term.

Indeed, theory would suggest the contrary: the value of a stock is the discounted entire future cash flow, which means the stock market should be focused on the long-term more than anybody else.

While managers, on the other hand, may only be around for a few years, and one could argue they have every incentive to pump the price of the stock as high as it can go in the short term, to maximize the value of their options -- to the detriment of long-term value.

Anecdotes are easy to find on both sides. But ask yourself which is more likely -- that investors are dumb and managers are smart and investors should just trust managers to do the right thing? Or that investors are smart and need to hold managers accountable because it's the investors' own money at stake, while managers are smart too but always want a longer leash to do their own thing regardless of whether it's good for the company as a whole (e.g. spend more resources on cool side projects)?

E.g. see [https://www.ft.com/content/23fd921e-3b75-11e5-bbd1-b37bc06f5...](https://www.ft.com/content/23fd921e-3b75-11e5-bbd1-b37bc06f590c)

<comment><USER17> "Anecdotes are easy to find on both sides. But ask yourself which is more likely -- that investors are dumb and managers are smart and investors should just trust managers to do the right thing? Or that investors are smart and need to hold managers accountable because it's the investors' own money at stake, while managers are smart too but always want a longer leash to do their own thing regardless of whether it's good for the company as a whole (e.g. spend more resources on cool side projects)?"

Given that most equity investors no longer make investment decisions and instead blindly buy indexes, there is an enormous opportunity for managers to make decisions that benefit them to the detriment of the investors.

<comment><USER7> If that is true, why do S&P500 index values continue to rise, decade after decade?

<comment><USER18> Hi Walter, this line of questions is not going to lead to a proof of your position. The S&P index removes failures, so your question fails to address survivor bias. Also, you argue the perfect over the good as a reason for status quo.

<comment><USER7> Proof, no but strong evidence. Yes, companies fail all the time. Is that due to short term thinking - or simply making too many mistakes? Sure, there are companies that sacrifice long term for short term. Their market caps tank because investors aren't fooled.

But the overall growth in the economy and strong long term growth of much of the S&P 500 is ample evidence that investment is not dominated by short term thinking, and that the S&P 500 is not a massive pump & dump scheme.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I like it conceptually but I'm not sure how different it is from schemes where the founders have 10x voting rights to big chunks of stock (like Facebook and Google). These companies, from a voting perspective, can't get bullied by activist share holders but it doesn't help.

The pressure on stock price and its desirability comes in part from using it as compensation (it goes up and your employees with ISOs stick around, it goes down and that 'stock offer' has no drawing power) and using stock to buy other companies (virtual capital). These pressures exist _outside_ the function of voting and are just as prone to creating 'short term thinking' effects. After all gaming the stock price is a universal executive sport and to get rid of that, you have to get rid of the association between high stock price and tangible short term benefit.

<comment><USER13> That's a good observation. Today's Dual class systems only protect the founders from a specific kind of short-term pressure. But there are still thousands of employees overreacting to volatility and jumping at shadows. Our rules are designed to address the full "user experience" of being an employee in a public company, with the goal of aligning the whole enterprise towards more Long-Term goals.

<comment><USER5> employees should not be compensated with stock. Stock based compensation creates incentives for such employees to increase just the stock price without increasing the underlying value generation mechanism. Paying in stock also means you're forcing the employee to 'invest'. While it's true that paying with stock is a form of hand-cuffing to make sure the employee's incentive aligns with the company, i feel it's just too easy to 'game' this stock metric.

<comment><USER20> How does someone "increase just the stock price without increasing the underlying value generation mechanism"?

So they have to fool an army of analysts that are generally very very good at predicting growth and profits? They have to fool institutional investors who are literally pros at filtering through BS filing gimmicks.

I've worked on trying trade automatically trade earnings reports (professionally) and the biggest problem was always the numbers didn't tell the complete story and investors caught on in literally seconds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It would be nice if they explained what it actually was. This paragraph has zero informational calories:

> _The LTSE is designed to remove the short-term pressures that plague today's > public markets and reorient companies and investors around long-term > thinking. Through brand new listing standards, software tools, and advocacy, > we're reinventing the public company experience with novel approaches to > executive compensation, shareholder voting, disclosure practices, board and > stakeholder policies, and community governance._

<comment><USER22> Thanks for posting that.

Have you found any reference to how they would handle short selling or derivatives? What if my ownership is of negative duration (naked short), how would that affect the average against which the seniority is measured (clearly I would have no title to voting). It has to be a relative measure since otherwise if everybody just bought the stock everybody's rights would be 0 and nobody could vote to control the company.

How would they handle options? How would they handle ownership by means of intermediate vehicles ( _e.g._ trust funds) that have themselves changed hands?

<comment><USER13> See above - our rules do handle derivatives and options elegantly (imho), but I can't say too much about how it works yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I applaud efforts to improve corporate governance and rationalize public market function. But I believe that this initiative to "...realign investors and companies around long-term value creation (LTVC)..." is a suboptimal approach.

First, who in the game really favors LTVC? As a generalization, I would say passive investors and/or those seeking income. For these parties, guaranteed dividends might be a more effective alignment tool than titration of voting power. The dividends would also provide more incentive for them to invest.

Second, the folks who actually run the companies – CEOs and Boards – often favor the current setup. Short term metrics mean near term personal wealth. In a world where CEO tenure can be measured in quarters, why wouldn't I want to take money off the table ASAP? And lots of it. I would offer that greed (big bonuses) overcomes fear (shareholder votes) for these players. Thus, the more powerful lever is to reduce (alter) the incentives, not dilute the fear.

So perhaps a market that limits both retained earnings and executive compensation would seem a better mechanism for alignment around LTVC.

<comment><USER24> There's also two other groups here: employees are very likely to value long- term value creation, since it would provide job security, an incentive to invest in employees, and a better chance of bonuses and raises. Second, communities where these companies are located: handing out tax incentives and cheap loans make more sense if the company isn't going to leave the community high and dry in a couple years. The advantages of long-term value creation aren't just fear-oriented: it's possible such a company will be able to hire people and rent office space more cheaply because it has that label.

If that ends up being the case, boards could easily start looking for CEOs willing to make the commitment to qualifying as a long-term company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This article is short on details.

I found this one [1] with good details like, "what is different about this exchange?"

* Tenured shareholder voting power, meaning that a shareholder's votes would be proportionately weighted by the length of time the shares have been held

* Mandated ties at listed companies between executive pay and long-term business performance

* Additional disclosure requirements that allow companies to know who their long-term shareholders are and investors to know what investments the company is making

[1] [https://qz.com/704657/eric-ries-ltse-long-term-stock- exchang...](https://qz.com/704657/eric-ries-ltse-long-term-stock-exchange/)

</comment><comment><USER26> Why not just add friction to selling stocks soon after purchase, perhaps a fee % that shrinks for X years. I feel that be simpler to implement and would lead to a healthier market long-term.

The weighted votes method seems like it would have a more negative effect on liquidity and would disproportionately reward large institutional investors that can afford to stick around regardless of the financial outlook of the company, just to hedge their bets.

Another problem I see is that weighted voting would make older shares more valuable. By purchasing old shares you reduce the number of votes it would take to do anything. This is sort of similar to having a continuous rather than discreet set of share classes. What's interesting about this is that the vast majority of non-institutional investors never vote on anything. This means that, depending on the weighting function, individuals would actually be incentivized to sell their old stock and buy young stock. This would result in consolidation of more voting power in the hands of institutional investors and founders.

The biggest benefit I see of the weighted voting method against other alternatives is a bitcoin-like FOMO buy-in in the beginning.

<comment><USER27> Isn't that the same as how the capital gains tax currently works? The rate of tax you pay on a winning stock goes down over time until you hit the long term rate at a year.

<comment><USER28> No, there's just a single discontinuous tax discount at 1 year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The "blind" focus on quarterly reports is real.

It had me wonder what the opposite would be...

Imagine we forged a formula for 1000+ year projects. They would require more money periodically and the availability of new funds would have a strong influance on the value of previous cash injections. One could buy the "failing" project cheap then simply do the new cash injection yourself OR in case of success one could obtain the shares for less than their value.

We have so many papper driven games like this already. I see no reason why this one wouldnt work.

The fun questuon to ask...

What could we build that would take 1000 years?

<comment><USER30> You might be interested in the wonderful book series "The Three-Body Problem" by Liu Cixin. It explores (among countless other things) how huge expensive projects that last multiple generations could be implemented.

<comment><USER13> This book is wonderful even apart from its interest in Long-Term thinking

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Most people seem to be concerned about "gaming the rules" but are positing scenarios that can be modelled as acyclical directed graphs (ADG). I'm wondering if who framed the rules even _thought_ of general directed graphs with potential cycles (company A owns shares of company B that owns shares of company C that owns shares of companies B and A). It would seem that most manners of computing seniority would fail in such situations because of the lack of unique, non-ambiguous ancestry (but I might be wrong).

</comment><comment><USER31> Can't comment on the "long-term" success of LTSE, but I LOVE the philosophy.

Optimising for long-term benefits could help our civilisation become aware, and actively take steps towards the oncoming ecological disaster (because capitalism says if we're destroying the Earth, the solution isn't to stop "growth" and save Earth... Find another Earth instead!)

<comment><USER13> Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I was initially very skeptical of this idea and I still am. Like many threads have pointed below, long term strategy is super easy to game. Oh 'we haven't made any money this quarter because we are debating and finalizing our long term goals'. This could become the anathema of rapid iteration.

NVidia and FB are perfect examples of consistent performance Q over Q. That doesn't mean they don't have a long term vision. I'm sure there are many such companies that I haven't heard of.

Companies not going public has little or nothing to do with the focus on short term earnings. Companies are not going public because 1\. There are alternative sources of cheap cash PE funds etc. 2\. The cost of doing an IPO is incredibly high (in terms of time). 3\. Associated processes Sarbanes-Ox etc are a pain to manage.

CEOs are willing to sacrifice some equity to avoid all these hassles and remain private.

<comment><USER24> How is that gaming long-term strategy? That sounds like not having a long-term strategy, which would be terrible under any philosophy. If anything it's easier to coast by now, when no one bothers asking if you've thought past next quarter.

Facebook is a very long-term company, with a consistent mission, moonshot projects and "wasteful" spending all over the place. It gets to do that, though, because it's already dual class and not subject to the whims of the market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> An incredibly important initiative, although I'm wondering how it will catch up.

The current public trading framework has so many issues, it defeats the original purpose.

* amazing number of parasite intermediaries that create absolutely no value. Someone sells a day after they bought, how did it contribute to the economy or the company that tries to create the value?

* opacity required to keep the system "fair", and used to avoid responsibility

* populist decisions harmful in long-term because the management will be long gone after the effects emerge

and much more.

<comment><USER13> I guess we'll see. Thanks for the kind words

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Can someone tell me if this idea is crazy?

I've noticed that fundraising and liquidity are common problems for startup founders, and it seems to me that the public stock market could solve many of those problems. What if all startups were publicly traded entities right after incorporation?

Some of the benefits you would gain as a founder:

\- A larger pool of potential investors. You would have access to investment from anyone instead of just accredited investors. For example, it would be interesting if early adopters could invest in startups that they support just as easily as they can buy stock in Apple because they love Apple products.

\- Liquidity. You could buy and sell your shares of the company at any point. If you're a startup founder investing 100% of your time and capital into a business, it makes sense for you to diversify your assets at some point and not put all of your eggs into one basket.

\- Better incentives. If your company was publicly traded from Day 1, you would still be incentivized to raise the value of your business because you still own shares. Better yet, now you don't have to worry about building a billion dollar business to satisfy the economics of your investors, you can sell shares of your $20M business so you're not worrying about your exit strategy all the time.

There's been a lot of activity in this space with the new crowdfunding bill, the SEC loosening up requirements for small companies, and things like ICOs. Has anyone else ever considered doing this with their startups? Just curious to hear what others think.

<comment><USER35> There is a market for this, the OTC or pink sheets. At initial listing and if the company itself or its insiders or affiliates are selling, there are required financial disclosures.

I think there's resistance to public trading however because it generally requires more structured accounting (GAAP vs cash accounting), and invites external scrutiny and pressure.

<comment><USER5> > requires more structured accounting (GAAP vs cash accounting), and invites > external scrutiny and pressure.

aren't all these good things? Prevents both scamming, as well as ensuring that the founders take a careful look at their business, and that it isn't purely fueled by stock/investment, but is generating profit?

<comment><USER35> If I'm an investor, I want comparable accounting which means GAAP; if I'm a founder, maybe I just want to know what's in the bank account and don't want to deal with deferring recognition of income for long term contracts.

External scrutiny and pressure is a mixed bag. It probably reduces the chances of doing something stupid that destroys the company, but it also reduces the chances of doing something stupid that changes the world.

<comment><USER20> Non GAAP tends to be more informative though when looking for specifics on cash flow for example. I see more people using pro forma figures instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is terrible.

> Through brand new listing standards, software tools, and advocacy, we're > reinventing the public company experience with novel approaches to executive > compensation, shareholder voting, disclosure practices, board and > stakeholder policies, and community governance.

None of this reduces short term trading. Even if it did, reducing short term trading would make for a less efficient market and prolong bubbles.

<comment><USER13> Our goal is not to reduce trading

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> TLDR;

 _Currently, an investor who owns one share for a month, or even a day, has the same voting power as someone who has owned a share for years. Mr. Ries wants what he calls "tourists" — short-term shareholders — to have less voting power than long-term shareholders, whom he calls "citizens of the republic." Over time, shareholders of companies on the LTSE would gain more votes based on their length of ownership.

Mr. Ries also takes aim at compensation plans. He wants companies that list on his exchange to have stock vesting programs of at least five years and recommends 10 years, even for executives who leave the company._

This is from: [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/business/dealbook/ipo- cha...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/business/dealbook/ipo-chamath- palihapitiya.html?ref=dealbook)

</comment><comment><USER38> Their about page is kinda weird. Unless there are a bunch of people not listed, it seems like there are only 3 people in the company who aren't a manager of some kind. For example there are 2 software engineers, a software engineering manager, a VP of technical operations, and a vp of engineering.

<comment><USER13> Indeed. We don't list most of or employees to protect their privacy. This is a pretty controversial project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> So if I understands correctly it's intended to be a place where one can only go long on shares? Why would some company list here? Why would investors use it? That post was 2 paragraphs long and explains nothing.

<comment><USER40> > it's intended to be a place where one can only go long on shares? Why would > some company list here?

The obvious theory would be "they think they're a scam, and they don't want other people to realize that".

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I hope they have a long breath.

Actually, I expect them to give birth to a few amazing unicorns (not value wise but in terms of innovation), but at the same time it will take some time before there will be any visible results.

</comment><comment><USER42> Well, I like the general idea, but am not sure about their implementation. Obviously have to wait for details, like SPV vs. real-person ownership.

But I wonder about their approach -- couldn't any public corporation, any time it wants, put long-term goals into its "constitution" or whatever you want to call corporate goals? Though perhaps their exchange will eventually put pressure on corporations to do so.

</comment><comment><USER43> I find some irony in that the frequently stated mission of the LTSE is, well, long term thinking, and yet the most recent Dec 7 medium post is about how excited they are to be accelerating their launch by pairing with an existent platform.

<comment><USER13> It's a paradox of startup life that the best way to sustain a long-Term vision is via rapid experimentation. Amazon is a great example of this, if you want to see it at scale, but there are many others. So I don't see any irony here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Is the intent to compete for listings against NYSE, LSE, SEHK, NASDAQ, etc.?

<comment><USER13> Yes, although companies can dual list too

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Very much looking forward to this idea coming into fruition. The post doesn't give much information though. I'd so wished, that a service like Robinhood and this too were available in Europe.

<comment><USER13> Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Another question - how does the exchange make money if the rules seemingly discourage trading?

<comment><USER13> Even incumbent Exchanges make money a lot of other ways today

<comment><USER46> Trading fees? Market data costs? Colocation fees? All things that suffer if you discourage active trading.

<comment><USER47> To be successful, it doesn't have to make as much money as the other exchanges. Just enough to continue to operate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> when I saw the title I thought this would be a decentralized exchange since it seems to be a hot topic nowdays. I am still trying to find more information.

</comment><comment><USER49> Will the exchange support debt instruments?

<comment><USER13> Unlikely

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> To counter HFT?

</comment><comment><USER51> Unless this was launched by State Street or Vanguard how would anyone think this was a good idea or effective idea

More like Zero Liquidity Stock Exchange am I right?

<comment><USER13> The way the LTSE is designed allows it to participate in the same level of liquidity as conventional exchanges. There's absolutely no difference from that POV</comment></comment>


"Factory Farms" Producing Massive Quantities of Organic Milk and Eggs - <AUTHOR> http://www.cornucopia.org/2014/12/investigation-factory-farms-producing-massive-quantities-organic-milk-eggs/

<comment><USER2> I'm a vegetarian for moral reasons (In that I don't believe in the suffering of animals for whatever reason), if I do eat Dairy I always buy organic, but if crap like this is as common as the article makes it seem, I might genuinely consider going Vegan. How have they got away with it for so long?

<comment><USER3> Sadly, 'USDA Organic' hasn't really meant much useful right from the beginning. It's been determined by large food industry and farming corporations. I recommend Frances Moore Lappe's book _Hope 's Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet_ for background on food marketing and regulatory regimes. [https://cmdev.com/isbn/1585422371](https://cmdev.com/isbn/1585422371)</comment></comment>


America's Achilles' heel: the Mississippi River's Old River Control Structure - <AUTHOR> http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/show.html

<comment><USER2> Key point: The Mississippi would rather not go through New Orleans anymore, it only does so because the Corp of Engineers forces it to. That apparatus is about to get a severe test.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you enjoyed this, you would enjoy reading the extended article by John McPhee about the control structure, linked to in the article above:

[http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1987/02/23/1987_02_23_039_T...](http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1987/02/23/1987_02_23_039_TNY_CARDS_000347146)

This and 2 other essays by McPhee were collected into a book, "The Control of Nature". The other essays, also quite long, were about debris flows in the LA basin, and about stopping an Icelandic volcanic flow which threatened a town and a port by spraying it with sea water. It's a fantastic book.

<http://www.johnmcphee.com/controlofnature.htm>

</comment><comment><USER4> Huh, actually the Old River Control Structure being damaged and creating a massive disaster was the premise of an xkcd post, and the alt-text is about Jeff Masters having read good analysis on disaster scenarios

<http://xkcd.com/748/>

<comment><USER5> And a followup blog post recently: <http://blog.xkcd.com/2011/05/08/michael- bays-scenario/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Anyone know what the long-term decade-scale plan is? Sooner or later we have to let the river move, because if I understand this correctly, over time it simply becomes arbitrarily harder to force through the same channel, without bound.

<comment><USER7> Whatever the plan, expecting successful negotiation with the river seems unrealistic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think they're opening the Morganza spillway around 2:30 CT today. <http://www.ustream.tv/channel/morganza>

<comment><USER9> People in the chat are now saying 3 CT.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This doesn't sound promising: [http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/14/us- flooding-states...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/14/us-flooding- states-idUSTRE74D1L420110514)

</comment><comment><USER11> Amazing

</comment><comment><USER12> I posted this link yesterday - it is a well-written expose on a massive engineering product, that I didn't know anything about.</comment>


Ask HN: Examples of beautifully designed php applications - <AUTHOR>

Can anyone recommend a great example of beautifully/elegantly designed php application.
Disclaimer:
I can't comprehend how wordpress, joomla, drupal, xoops, or oscommerce can be considered good code. Mainly because they don't employ MVC and I love MVC.
Why MVC?
I think it makes an application dead simple and beautifully elegant. One of the biggest reasons being clean and descriptive urls. MVC essentially turns the browser bar into a command line.
## www.mysite.com/store/cart/show_items
I love the clarity you get from being able to access methods from a controller in such a ridiculously clean way. This also eliminates dirty/cryptic urls. Why are "clean urls" still an option?
Then there's "include/require". MVC (Kohana) elimites includes from your app logic. Wheras non mvc projects (like the ones mentioned above) have include/require absolutely plastered throughout every function of their code. Needless to say it makes reading source impossible.
It's impossible (for me at least) to guage the scope and bearings within a non-MVC system.
Am I alone on this? Is there something I'm missing? Are there pros to NOT using MVC? I learned coding through learning kohana/MVC so it's all I know. But I'm ready to learn so I am looking forward to great examples of well designed applications, MVC or not, thanks! <comment><USER2> Your definition of beautiful code and mine differ. I don't care which buzzwords the code is compliant with. I care that it is easy to modify, easy to read, well-documented, and well-maintained. Drupal is most of these things, Joomla is none of them. Wordpress is a mixed bag. OSCommerce has had too many maintainers with too little experience get hands on the codebase over the years.

I agree with you on the insanity of URLs in a lot of applications...but they are an _option_ because many Open Source projects want to run on as many systems as possible, and not all deployments have permissions needed to rewrite URLs or to run standalone application servers and setup proxy rules. Drupal, at least, makes the URL mapping completely painless. Joomla has perhaps the worst native URLs I've ever seen (index.php?option=com_ugly&task=view&id=2985&Itemid=33), and the URL mapping modules do hateful things and end up generating an infinite stream of different URLs depending on how someone got to the page. When we moved from Joomla to Drupal, we literally shed a couple hundred thousand URLs, without losing any content (we actually have about 50,000 individual pages, counting forums, issues, and docs).

But, you're conflating two orthogonal issues by assuming that MVC naturally maps to good URLs while other approaches do not.

</comment><comment><USER3> out of curiosity, if you learned coding through MVC-based frameworks and its all you know, why do you feel qualified to make judgment calls on wordpress, joomla, etc.? how can you truly say that you're intelligently choosing MVC because it is the best option when you've not done any development under other design patterns?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well hence the question. I am anxious to hear from people better than myself. I tried come off as un-snide as possible. The disclaimer is about why I think MVC makes code easier to read and why so far all the open source php projects I've come across, have been hard (for me) to understand, digest, and of course, develop for, and it just so happens I see none of the things I deem "simple and clear" as when I do when I'm working with MVC.

I'm obviously drawing conclusions relative to my personal experiences, and I fully acknowledge that those experiences are limited, but what else (aside from posting this thread, which I've done) can I do?

<comment><USER3> MVC has little to nothing to do with how clearly code is written.

i've seen my fair share of barely readable MVC source.

MVC helps, MVC is a useful tool, but MVC is not the sole reason why good code is good code; MVC is not the Kwisatz Haderach

<comment><AUTHOR> Point taken. Thank you for your insight. Do you have any projects you'd recommend as good code?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ballmer Calls Facebook A Fad? - <AUTHOR> http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2007/10/02/ballmer-calls-facebook-a-fad <comment><USER2> Link to the original source next time: [http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sect...](http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/technology/article2573297.ece)

"There can't be any more deep technology in Facebook than what dozens of people could write in a couple of years. That's for sure," he said.

If he really thinks Facebook is about the technology, he is completely missing the point.

<comment><USER3> _If you go to a VC with a new idea and ask him to invest in it, one of the first things he'll ask is, how hard would this be for someone else to develop? That is, how much difficult ground have you put between yourself and potential pursuers?_

<http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html>

For facebook the question "how hard?" is meaningless. There are a 1000 replicons already waiting to take its place. The only thing wrong with what Ballmer said is that it isn't "a couple years", but "right this very moment".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I remember having this conversation at Startup School last year with some very smart hackers over dinner. The overwhelming majority felt that Facebook was exactly that, a fad like MySpace or Friend or whatever, that it won't be around in 5 years, that they don't have any real technology, etc. I was the only person who disagreed.

I argued that they have an amazing team, that they control the most accurate and real social graph on the planet, they are cooking up something big with it, and they will without a doubt not only be around, but be much bigger in 5 years.

6 months, 1 platform, 5000 apps, and 50 million users later, I'm feeling pretty comfortable about my stance, I don't know about the other guys.

<comment><USER5> _they control the most accurate and real social graph on the planet_

Hm, if Google analyzes the content of e-mail as much as people say they do, they can probably get a much more accurate social graph.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Marc Andreesen on Steve Ballmer on Facebook: <http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/10/on-steve-ballme.html:>

"I think these things [social networks] are going to have some legs, and yet there's a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people," Mr. Ballmer told Times Online yesterday.

Ballmer subsequently added:

"I think these things [television shows] are going to have some legs, and yet there's a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people."

"I think these things [talking motion pictures] are going to have some legs, and yet there's a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people."

"I think these things [rock and roll music] are going to have some legs, and yet there's a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people."

"I think these things [hip hop music] are going to have some legs, and yet there's a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people."

"I think these things [fast food restaurants] are going to have some legs, and yet there's a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people."

"I think these things [video games] are going to have some legs, and yet there's a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people."

"I think these things [digital music players] are going to have some legs, and yet there's a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people."

"I think these things [search engines] are going to have some legs, and yet there's a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people."

"I think these things [the Internet] are going to have some legs, and yet there's a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people."

And finally:

"I think these things [personal computers] are going to have some legs, and yet there's a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people."

<comment><USER6> Marc boy seems still upset that MS crushed his darling to dust. But then again it was Marc who had the biggest mouth back then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> GeoCities => Friendster => MySpace => Facebook

Wake me up when there's news. I bet all those stupid Microsoft investment stories were planted by Facebook's PR firm.

<comment><USER8> facebook and its giant hype-ridden PR push will probably backfire and they won't be able to get an investor/buyer at these ridiculous valuations. They'll have to go the IPO way and IPO will not do well (at least not at the valuations they're suggesting).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> You can accuse Ballmer of being a lot of things but stupid he ain't!</comment>


Why corporations should stick to maximizing profit - <AUTHOR> http://www.professorbainbridge.com/professorbainbridgecom/2011/02/obama-preaches-the-false-religion-of-corporate-social-responsibility.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Please ignore the title/first paragraph, which are the only political points in the article. That's just a jumping off point into an otherwise interesting essay pushing the thesis that corporate "social responsibility" is a bad idea.

<comment><USER2> Encouraging immoral corporate behaviour is really where you want to go?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "The social obligation of business is to sustainably maximize long-term profits for shareholders"

Exactly. Part of being sustainable, and doing it for the long term can involve being socially responsible.

For example, a publisher might focus on literacy programs which would increase the base of readers who could consume product in the future.

Secondarily:

"targeted legislative approaches are a preferable solution to the externalities created by corporate conduct. "

Exactly. Well placed and properly functioning legislation can improve long term sustainability and growth.

What's bad is when companies use their money to muck up politics and bend the rules to their own ends, to the detriment of society, which happens all too often, such as in the case of big tobacco and subsidies for the oil or automobile industries.

</comment><comment><USER4> Requiring corporations to act responsibly is different from wanting a world where they do.</comment>


White Hart Lane's movable football pitch in three pieces - <AUTHOR> https://www.ingenia.org.uk/Ingenia/Articles/a57524c7-215a-484d-9ffb-94c16030f3fc <comment><USER2> At the very end of the article is a video explaining how it works: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmeljNpIV1k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmeljNpIV1k)

</comment><comment><USER3> That's really interesting (and an amazing piece of engineering), but I'd like to have seen more detail on how the rails in the underlying NFL pitch are hidden/appear - the engineering of them alone (to hold the weight of the turf pitch) must be immense.

<comment><USER4> Video isn't very clear on this but it _seems_ to infer that the artificial pitch below must either:

a) be itself also split into strips which space out sideways to reveal rails just below the surface, or

b) be removed entirely as an unshown step between "NFL" and "rails are exposed"

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> So, why do they have to cut the field in three pieces? Lack of a football- field-sized-and-shaped space outside the stadium? Doesn't look like the reason, looking on iOS Maps (which has newer imagery than Google Maps for me); the new field is almost a full pitch length south of the old one so they could slide it away (but not fully out of the new stadium) to the position of the old field.

<comment><USER6> I believe it's to do with support columns under the stands. The outer third set of the pitch move outwards before retracting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yet, they still play on Wembley

</comment><comment><USER8> Why not just use projectors or LED tiles to change the game being played? Seems like mechanical engineering is a bad abstraction for this problem.

<comment><USER9> > Why not just use projectors or LED tiles to change the game being played?

Use projectors or LED tiles to do what?

The problem is American football is played on artificial grass, and Association football is played on real grass. No amount of projectors or LED tiles will switch between those two, will they?

> Seems like mechanical engineering is a bad abstraction for this problem.

How do you change artificial grass to real grass without any mechanics?

<comment><USER5> _"The problem is American football is played on artificial grass, and Association football is played on real grass."_

Not necessarily. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_National_Foo...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_National_Football_League_stadiums#List_of_current_stadiums) shows about half of current NFL stadiums use natural grass or hybrid surfaces.

Also, association football is played on artificial surfaces, but not, I think, in the Premier League. Tottenham seems to play on a hybrid surface, though ([http://www.dessosports.com/sports/football/football- projects...](http://www.dessosports.com/sports/football/football- projects/tottenham-hotspur-whl-stadium-uk))

A big reason to have multiple surfaces is that one wants to use the stadium frequently. A NFL match would cause too much wear and tear on a grass surface to have a quality surface for a soccer match a week later, for example. It also takes weeks to remove the NFL logo from a natural surface.

<comment><USER9> > Not necessarily.

I didn't say it was necessary. I said that's what they're doing. At this stadium they play Association football on grass, and American football on artificial. If they want to swap between them then they need a mechanical system to do so.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any proper way to reduce pain when I wake up in the morning? - <AUTHOR>

I really hate wake up in the morning. It's cold and it is very painful to wake up, even if is not cold. I've searched on Google about ways to reduce pain, but I didn't found anyway. Can you give me any solution?
I wake up because I need to go to work.<p>Even if I go to sleep earlier the same happens every day. <comment><USER2> What did your doctor say when you talked to them about it?

What type of pain are you getting? Is it pain in your shoulder from laying on it? In my case, it is because I need to drop some weight (about 30 lbs or so). This can also apply to back/neck pain, esp. if you notice increased pain the more you sleep in.

Do you have a regular exercise routine? That may help (although the pain will probably increase when you start a routine -- make sure you don't over do it). Doing some stretching after exercise will help with this. Also a hot bath before bed to relax the muscles.

If you have joint pain, such as feeling pain in every bone in your feet, that goes away with a hot shower (or after getting some movement going), this is due to lack of lubrication in the joints. Some people have had luck with Glucosamine -- that's something I'm going to try shortly.

Oh, and again, if the pain seems to increase with more hours in bed, and you can't find the right mattress, then you could try breaking your sleep into two 4-hour shifts -- sleep when you get home from work, then get up at midnight, and go back to sleep between 2 and 6.

Finally, some pain is normal, but may feel a lot worse if there is any depression issues going on. But real bad pain (absent of any depression) isn't really normal -- you should talk to a doctor about it.

<comment><USER3> In addition to (and potentially in place of) the glucosamine for joint pain, I very strongly suggest trying this:

[http://www.amazon.com/Genacol-Bio-active-Collagen- Capsules-c...](http://www.amazon.com/Genacol-Bio-active-Collagen-Capsules- capsules/dp/B00465XUP2)

I rarely take supplements, had never had joint pain before this year, and this worked like a miracle drug for me. Had nagging runner's type ankle pain, tried all sorts of recoveries (eg eccentric exercises), this product removed maybe 2/3 of the pain and inflammation.

<comment><AUTHOR> well. I shouldn't have said pain, it's more like don't want to wake up pain... How I might explain it better?

<comment><USER2> Ah, so it is a motivation issue. One way, is to have something you do in the mornings that you look forward to. For some people, it is making an enjoyable breakfast. Others, a morning jog.

How about this -- if you have a TV in your bedroom, don't watch it before you go to bed -- instead, watch some of your favorite shows starting an hour or so before you have to get up. I figure if TV can cause issues getting to sleep properly, then maybe you can use that effect to help get up. After an hour of watching a couple sitcoms, you may be ready to face the day.

<comment><AUTHOR> great idea. I don't watch tv nor I have one in my room, when I go to sleep I turn off all stuff. But I have to think of something that motivates me to wake up even earlier. I've tried something like this but didn't work the last time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Set an alarm for the same time every day, weekend or not. Regardless of when you go to bed, wake up at the same time every day. Don't use the snooze button. Don't set an alarm for earlier than you expect to wake. Don't drink caffeine within 8 hours of your bed time. Don't use your phone/electronics before bed. For me the quality of sleep often affects my ability to wake. So, if I drink coffee too late at night or I'm in a bad mindset for sleep, I might be able to sleep through the night but it's not as restful (deep) of sleep and it's miserable trying to get out of bed.

</comment><comment><USER5> May be worth it to look into having a sleep-study done.

Turn up the heat if you're cold. I keep my house around 75 and most people complain it's too hot, but I like it, and I also quit getting sick--ever. Sure the electricity bill went up but I consider it worth it to be comfortable.

Other options include, a better bed / pillow, flannel sheets in the winter, a nice warm blanket. Sleep is like a car, sure you can drive any car, but when you get QUALITY, it's so much better. ..I say as I drive a 99 Olds Cutlass...

</comment><comment><USER6> For me one thing that has helped is to get some vital nutrients in soon after getting up. for me it seems a slight bit of salt in water and some olive oil (not much). I take that and I usually feel the difference withing minutes if not immediately.

For you, maybe you are lacking in some other basics, keep track on how your body feels and what you've eaten beforehand. You might discover a trend.

</comment><comment><USER7> I suggest you see a doctor.

This is not medical advice. I have no medical training. You might want to look at CBT. This is used for cancer patients to help them manage pain. It's first line treatment for people with some mild to moderate mental health problems in the UK.

</comment><comment><USER8> Do you feel like you have 0 energy in your body ? Because I feel this every day even tho I take B6 and B12 vitamins.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you use more or less in shell? - <AUTHOR> What is the reasoning behind using one or the other? <comment><USER2> See this: [http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/81129/what-are- the-d...](http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/81129/what-are-the- differences-between-most-more-and-less/81131)

TL;DR: Use less.

As a side note, I've never seen anyone actually using more.

</comment><comment><USER3> more is a basic pager, which allows you to scroll downwards, one page at a time. Only downwards.

less is also a pager, but has addition functionality to scroll upwards and downwards through the input, in addition to several other extensions.

[http://superuser.com/questions/310137/less-is-more-is- more-l...](http://superuser.com/questions/310137/less-is-more-is-more-less-im- so-confused)

TL;DR : Use less</comment>


Working on TypeScript 0.9: Generics, Overload on Constants and Performance - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/typescript/archive/2013/03/25/working-on-typescript-0-9-generics-overload-on-constants-and-compiler-performance.aspx

<comment><USER2> I like strongly typed languages and generics, but I see generics as adding a complexity to a type system in order to get around the limitations of the type system.

Javascript, on the other hand, is duck-typed. Everything is the equivalent of generic already. Adding generics to the Javascript wrapper feels awkward and overcomplex and somehow suggests that a point has been missed. Perhaps you feel differently?

<comment><USER3> How do you guarantee that what is added to a list (for instance) is a Dog, and not a Cat?

If you want strongly typed language support (and I do), then generics make it vastly easier to write maintainable code.

A generic doesn't mean "anything goes" - it means "You will definitely get the thing that you specified".

<comment><USER2> In Javascript or any other duck-typed language, you don't have that guarantee.

You don't actually care that it's a Dog BTW, just that it has a method called Bark(), if that's what you call on it.

You make sure that your code only puts dog-like objects into the list, either by writing tests or by reading the code and praying. But the system of putting objects into lists is really, really simple.

I see the benefit of strong typing and I use it all the time. Generics are an epicycle that IMHO sits poorly with JavaScript.

<comment><USER3> Exactly. This is _not_ Javascript. It's Typescript, which compiles into Javascript, but adds in guarantees that, for instance, what I'm getting _is_ a dog.

<comment><USER2> Typescript is not JavaScript, but all JavaScript is TypeScript, including JavaScript that works as discussed above. It's just a bit funny that in Typescript are both a language that benefits from having generics and a language that doesn't need them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The overload on constants pattern matching is an interesting feature.

</comment><comment><USER5> How are they planning on structuring the collections methods? Is map going to be on Arrays, and Maps and Lists etc? Or will they utilize some sort of typeclass approach and have them as modular as possible?

<comment><USER6> They aren't planning to add collection methods, just to provide a means for existing methods like Array#map and Array#filter to be typed. Right now there is no way to write a type signature that says, given an array of numbers and a function from numbers to strings, Array#map returns an array of strings. This allows that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks like some great improvements. In some ways having to declare the generics may slow down coding but will improve quality greatly.

</comment><comment><USER8> meh. While some constructs are great (class , modules , ...) some others dont make sense at all, unless you are using Visual Studio. Is typescript a javascript for Visual Studio or a language you can really use without MS tools ? Also the fact that you cant compile to 1 file automatically all your scripts and you need either AMD or Common JS defeats the purpose of having modules for client side scripting.

<comment><USER9> It's possible to instruct tsc to compile into called-closure style modules, then concatenate them if you really want that.

<comment><USER10> That is exactly what we are doing with an in-house TypeScript framework that we have written. The compiler checks the dependencies recursively and then concatenates them in a single file. It is careful not to duplicate dependencies, too.</comment></comment></comment>


Things No One Ever Told You About Being Successful - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-mission/35-things-no-one-ever-told-you-about-becoming-successful-387f91d36611 <comment><AUTHOR> Although the title sounds kinda clickbait-y, Benjamin Hardy puts some real effort into his blog posts and backs them with many great quotes. It's rare to find success-related lists that don't come off as cliche rehashes of the same old advice.</comment>


Why do developers use what they use? - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/akashdeepsingh/why-do-developers-use-what-they-use-337j <comment><USER2> I'm writing this comment on a new MacBook Pro which I purchased in order to write Xamarin mobile applications (including iOS, hence the Mac). In the case of iOS apps you have to have a Mac and Xcode installed and up to date. As for the rest of the existential "why do you use that" the answer is mostly "because they are the best tools given the job requirement" and I take the jobs because they pay well and are fun.

Perhaps a better question is: why are you drawn to the area of programming that you are? For me, the idea that my apps are used on PERSONAL devices and are HELD AND TOUCHED by the end users is a powerful thing. Line of business web apps have the antiseptic separation between the screen and the user: you need a mouse to proxy your physical gestures to the computer. Mobile apps have a sense of being __with __you at all times as opposed to something on a desk. In a world of decreasing personal interaction, creating mobile apps seems like a very high-touch and personal way to affect people.</comment>


Ask HN: Is it worth saving electricity at off-peak hours? - <AUTHOR>

Power stations continue to generate electricity at a fixed rate isnt it? Say a 100MW power station that is facing a peak load of 110MW at say 1PM. It faces a load of 70MW at 7PM.<p>Are power stations designed to produce lesser power during off-peak timings? Or in case of hydro-power plants will it continue to generate 100MW ? then it does not make sense to save electricity at 7PM because the saved electricity can not be stored and used later it will be wasted any ways. <comment><USER2> _Or in case of hydro-power plants will it continue to generate 100MW_

Usually hydroelectric plants are placed near a dam, so that during periods of low demand, the dam can be partially closed to slow energy production, and when demand increases, the dam can be opened again. A closed dam is essentially an energy storage device. So it does make sense to conserve electricity during off-peak hours, so that the power grid can store more energy for peak hours.

For natural gas and coal plants, for maximum efficiency, the plants should run at more or less a constant rate. This is similar to a car, which gets maximum MPG during constant-speed driving. Since technology for storing electrical energy isn't advanced enough at this point for mass scale storage (we're there for phones and laptops, almost there for cars, but not houses or cities), there is a lot more waste during off-peak times from these types of plants. There are wacky plans to use plug-in hybrids to store energy overnight when electricity demand is low, and feed it back into the grid during the day.

EDIT: here's a good Wikipedia article on it: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_energy_storage>

</comment><comment><USER3> _Are power stations designed to produce lesser power during off-peak timings?_

Depends on the type of power station. Hydro plants are in the best position -- under normal conditions, they are limited by the amount of water in the reservoir, so they can make power almost 100% fungible by cutting off the water flow to some turbines.</comment>


Zynga's Profits Down by 95% - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamepro.com/article/news/223371/zyngas-profits-down-by-95/ <comment><USER3> Good. Suck it. This company is pure slime. I pity their acquirees. And it's totally worth my karma hit to just get this off my chest.

<comment><USER4> Can you expand on why you feel that way?

<comment><USER5> Probably something similar to what's described here: <http://bit.ly/qAb7nM>

Perhaps they've changed their tune, but early on Zynga had a questionable ethical reputation

<comment><USER6> Shortened URL = <http://www.sfweekly.com/2010-09-08/news/farmvillains/>

Try not to do so (HN rules and all that)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Since their revenue was up, this doesn't mean much without knowing more about "higher than normal spend on hiring, acquisitions and international growth."

<comment><USER8> Well their daily active users were down despite hiring and acquisitions. Pre- IPO, I would say that a declining user-base is not a selling point for a social company.

<comment><USER9> Could this just be a gap in between new games? Zynga games do seem to be sticky and addictive but there is going to be a lot of attrition the longer a game is around.

<comment><USER8> Yes, I imagine that could definitely have something to do with it. I also think part of it is that others (Sims Social) have shown they can build sticky and addictive games as well and Zynga is no longer the sole owner of the space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Disclaimer: I was previously a Zynga employee and I am presently a holder of Zynga stock. I have no knowledge of Zynga's current internal state - <USER2> following is entirely speculation.

</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>===

There are many forces at work here that need to be brought to light.

* Macro Trend #1 - Facebook's web traffic is in decline[1]. These users are shifting to mobile as their primary consumption channel for Facebook. No facebook app developer has presence on the mobile app.

* Macro Trend #2 - Zynga's game launches are smaller than ever. For many reasons, it's getting harder to launch a 5M+ DAU game.

Zynga is responding to these trends in several ways.

* Leverage their warchest[2] to make acquisitions. This lets them launch a higher volume of games and help them get a foothold in mobile. Zynga has made a LOT of acquisitions this year[3].

* Further monetize their existing base. They've been pushing partner deals really hard recently, doing deals with Lady Gaga[4], Amex[5], and Capital One[6]

Zynga's games are more high quality than ever. Gone are the days of "fuck innovation", two of Zynga's most recent releases are the best they've ever built. The issue is that the market for FB games is in decline - the next big wave is mobile. If Zynga can become a player by launching a hit or acquiring a large chunk of the space, they'll be doing better than ever. But so far, Zynga's mobile releases have flopped.

TL;DR - Zynga's profits are a sign that they have doubled down on acquisitions to counter-balance a market shift from web to mobile. Their future prospects lie in their ability to generate hits on the iPhone.

=====

[1] - [http://www.insidefacebook.com/2011/06/12/facebook-sees- big-t...](http://www.insidefacebook.com/2011/06/12/facebook-sees-big-traffic- drops-in-us-and-canada-as-it-nears-700-million-users-worldwide/)

[2] - [http://www.insidemobileapps.com/2011/08/11/zynga- credit-1-bi...](http://www.insidemobileapps.com/2011/08/11/zynga- credit-1-billion-acquisitions/)

[3] - <http://mashable.com/2011/05/18/zynga-dna-games/>

[4] - <http://mashable.com/2011/05/10/zynga-gaga-gagaville/>

[5] - <http://www.zynga.com/about/article.php?a=20101130>

[6] - [http://blog.games.com/2011/09/19/farmville-cityville- pioneer...](http://blog.games.com/2011/09/19/farmville-cityville-pioneer- trail-capital-one/)

<comment><USER11> You forgot to mention that Zynga is one of the major reasons _why_ Facebook is starting to decline in the U.S. People _hate_ Farmville and Mafia Wars and the associated spam.

That said, Words With Friends is an excellent implementation of Scrabble and it's actually social, not alienating like that Farmville garbage. It's quite well-polished. I respect the attention to detail.

<comment> brown9-2 Why would non-Farmville-playing users leave Facebook because they are tired of it's spam when they could just hide posts from it?

<comment><USER12> Consider the majority market of Facebook users, many don't know how to "hide posts" and will often be turned off whent their facebook wall begins to look like their hotmail account.

Don't always assume the average user has the know-how you do and don't always assume they're interested in solving the problem either.

<comment><USER13> And even if you know how it seems like every time I log into facebook (admittedly rarely) there's a handful of new spam games making the rounds. It's a little frustrating that there's no blanket option of block all of the stupid game spam, or switch from a blacklist to a whitelist. I'd much rather un-block specific games than have to block every game ever made.

<comment><USER14> Probably time to block a few of your friends.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm not a fan of their games, but I do want them to do well....not sure why. Maybe it's because I feel that out of all the latest IPO's and IPO rumors, they have the closest to an actual business, or because I want a gaming company to do well since I make games.

Either way, 95% is a lot, and this doesn't bode well at all for anyone lower in the food chain.

<comment><USER16> Have you played a Zynga game? In Zynga games, you cannot complete the core objectives without recruiting other people to play the game or by paying money. Zynga's products are pyramid schemes masquerading as games.

<comment><USER15> I don't doubt that, but they seem to make people happy judging from my FB feed. I think they found a way to make non-gamers feel good about gaming, which I'm for. Maybe Zynga can be a gateway drug?

<comment><USER17> Why do you want non-gamers to "feel good about gaming"? Why do you care? Why is this kind of thinking so prevalent among the gaming community? You don't see golf enthusiasts concerning themselves with the general population's interest in golf. You don't see golfers applauding courses opened up with the sole purpose of getting everyone on the planet to golf (in fact it's often the opposite).

Not everyone has to play video games or want to.

<comment><USER18> Let the man care about what he cares about. If he wants more gamers, that's his right. Unless he's actually impacting your life, live and let live.

<comment><USER17> What the hell kind of comment is this? It's a discussion forum, we're discussing.

I care more about gaming than I probably should, and I'd welcome a larger community as well, but not if it means gaming comes to resemble the lowest- common-denominator shit we get from Zynga, et al.

<comment><USER18> Well, to paraphrase your own comment above, golfers don't care that there are many other shit golf courses being created around the world. They just play golf on courses they like. Why do you care if others are playing shit made from Zynga? You have a lot of opinions about others comment styles, what they care about etc, but frankly economics doesn't care whether you like games or not. If there's a market, it sells.

<comment><USER17> I suspect golfers would start to care if mass-market trends impacted the quality of their own courses.

Maybe you should stick to articulating your own opinions, rather than expanding on another's for him? I don't care if people play whatever rubbish issues forth from the bowels of Zynga's marketing department, but I'm not going to celebrate it in the name of getting more people playing games, either. At any rate your beef seems to be that I commented at all, or that you think I was rude, or just that I posted something you don't wholly agree with, or that I was criticizing someone's 'comment style' whatever that means (I think the pot might be calling the kettle black on that one). Not sure really what your problem is with me personally but my patience for your pointless sniping has worn thin so I think I'll conclude with 'fuck you' and be done with it.

<comment><USER18> Your reddit personality is leaking. You seem to have forgotten the 'be civil' aspect of HN. <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

Feel free to bring the issue up again when you see ducks and poker in the latest FPS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If Facebook was banking on expectations that they'd see a 30% cut of Zynga's revenue this does not bode well for a Facebook IPO.

<comment><USER20> Sure it does, Zynga's revenue increased over the same period.

<comment><USER19> Short term, yeah. But Facebook needs its ecosystem to be healthy too. That said, you're correct -- I conflated "profits" and "revenue" and shouldn't have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is it just me or is it meaningless that profits are down by a certain percentage? Suppose a company is just about breaking even. Last quarter it made $1,000,000 (of a revenue of $100M). This quarter it makes $1,000. Profits fell 99.9%. So what?

<comment><USER22> It no longer made as much money to be redistributed to shareholders or invested in future growth. To be sure, it depends on _why_ the difference between expenses and revenue rose by $999k.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> judging a gaming company by quarter?? ok, zynga is not exactly a traditional gaming company, but can you even imagine if we judged blizzard or bioware (when they were independant) by quaterly figures?

<comment><USER24> Publicly traded game companies are judged by quarterly figures... In the case of Blizzard and Bioware, Activision and EA stock are hugely affected by their revenues. Its not right, and it leads to games being shipped too early to attempt to improve quarterly revenues (I worked on a THQ project where this happened), but it happens all the time.

<comment><USER25> There's no reason we should tolerate that.

(I'm a gamedev, not a player.)

<comment><USER26> What can you do about it?

<comment><USER25> Nothing. The world is as it is. I've come to accept that.

But -- here's the thing -- your moral/ethical compass shouldn't be influenced on account of the world. Think back through history, and at every point, people have been essentially crazy. So the only thing we can do is to have the confidence to know "what's good", and then strive to make our personal lives reflect that. (Without becoming judgmental of others. </irony>)

If you're asking what _I'm_ going to do about it, well... I'm just like everyone else. I train myself for years in every aspect of game development, am building an entire multiplayer game from start to finish without relying on anything except my creativity and capabilities, and will be done around age 39. :) Then I'll use the proceeds to form a company and hire a few likeminded people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Zynga's having a hard time getting new players, according to this - [http://blogs.reuters.com/mediafile/2011/09/27/zynga- herding-...](http://blogs.reuters.com/mediafile/2011/09/27/zynga-herding-its- users-like-sheep-from-game-to-game-data/)

</comment><comment><USER28> "Zynga has reported year on year profits that were down by approximately 95%"

"Zynga's total revenues for the quarter were up by 15%, though this was slower growth than the previous quarter, which jumped up by 24%"

Perhaps it's just a little too early to handle basic concepts, but if revenues are up, but profits are down, doesn't that just mean costs are significantly greater? Isn't THAT the big headline here?

</comment><comment><USER29> I guess the real question is this indicative of a general trend or is this only a one time event? Does this bode well for people who want to write apps for Facebook?

</comment><comment><USER30> Does anyone know what Zynga did Q3 2010? Doesn't really make sense to measure profitability in succeeding quarters as it does to look at the YoY, right?

</comment><comment><USER11> The electronic games field is currently flooded with a bunch of one-trick pranksters and bike-shedding assclowns and "gameification experts" who haven't designed a game and flat-out have no clue what they're talking about. I thought the domination of Corporate (post-3D) was the death of decency in electronic gaming, but this "social" dreck makes EArts at its worst look saintly.

If Zynga can reinvent itself as a company that gives a shit about game quality, then I'll cheer for their success. What they represent now is something of which I can whole-heartedly say that I'm glad to see any signs that it's starting to die.

In 1995, _Chrono Trigger_ (a game built by a team of leading artists and designers, not based on "analytics" regarding how to sap the energy and attention of half-bored people) came out. It had a story, there was a sense of progress because the game kept evolving and the challenges got harder (imagine this!) and after 50 hours or so, the game was completed and you went the fuck outside and rode your bike or went swimming. You could New Game+ to beat Lavos at different points in the story and level up to 99 if you _really_ cared, but that was pretty rare and even then, the game came to a close. Also, the game involved a lot more thought than the mindless click-here-click-there of these Games For Idiots like _Shartville_ and _Mafia Whores_.

<comment><USER31> Is there a problem with having diversity in the market? Whilst I can always wish that every development studio were developing games to suit my needs and tastes; obviously it's far better that there are a range of studios producing a range of titles, a large number of which I won't like. I might not enjoy the games that Zynga produce, but it seems pretty clear that there are plenty of people out there that do enjoy them very much; and I'm not sure that more people "playing" generally is a bad thing.

More people playing more games from more companies is only ever going to be a good thing for the industry.

<comment><USER32> My feelings on this are hard to put into words -- Zynga is the equivalent of churning out crappy romance novels, soulless pop music, kitsch art, or even junk food (made to be addictive, incidentally "nutritious").

"Art" is undefinable, but one heuristic is something genuinely meant to evoke feelings in the audience and perhaps teach them something as a result.

For me, it comes down to intent. Zynga & friends are building "compulsion loops" which aren't meant to entertain, they're meant to addict. I don't have a problem with a diversity of games, everyone has different tastes, etc. but... some things just feel skeevy.</comment></comment></comment>