Why you should consider moving your VPS from DigitalOcean to Linode - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/libhunt/moving-libhunts-vps-from-digitalocean-to-linode-improved-page-download-time-4-times-more-88c6740bb380 <comment><USER2> The only surprise here is i couldn't immediately find their Linode or Digital Ocean referral link.

> Of course, these stats should be taken with a pinch of salt, as the old VPS > was located on the East coast of the States, and the new one is located on > the West coast.

oh hey, that 4x performance gain? i think we found it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have VM's at Linode, DigitalOcean and RamNode. My VM's are long running (vs. bursty spin-up, do a job then terminate)

I prefer the UI and feature-set of Linode. I have found the technical staff of Linode to be superior to others.

I find the CPU and disk performance of Linode and DO to be about the same.

RamNode is cheaper with similar CPU performance, but their UI is qwerky and I have run into billing problems with them. Their support are always fast to fix, but they shouldn't have to in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER4> The issue that I have with this (and probably a good number of other people share this concern) is it seems to ignore these two things:

A. Linode has gotten hacked atleast once before

B. They were suffering from those constant DDoS attacks for a week or two a while back

Those two, and their resulting responses to those events have permanently made me have reservations about using their services.

<comment><USER5> Re the hack. It was a while back, but was troubling. However, they're willing to sign HIPAA Business Associate Agreements, which for my company's purpose mitigates those concerns... they're willing to be on the hook for host & physical security.

Re the DDoS. As a mitigating factor, the DDoS was rather intense. It actually took _their_ upstream provider offline. They supposedly have mitigated it with redundant connections and orders of magnitude more bandwidth at the two hardest-hit locations (Atlanta & Newark).

That said, time will tell. I love pretty much everything about their service (hardware, interface, bandwidth, cost), but I've got a business to run... if there's more extended downtime, I'm gonna have to move, though I won't like it.

Digital Ocean and Vultr were the two I was looking at, though don't really know much about the popular opinion of Vultr.

<comment> lloyd-christmas A hack is "troubling", and you deal in healthcare? I work in med-tech. If my hosting service was hacked and PHI potentially exposed, we'd have finished migrating away within a week. If your concern is only a business agreement to limit liability, do you mind sharing your product so I can never use it?

<comment><USER6> In Linodes case it's not about "a hack" it's about _at least_ 4 hacks within the past 5 years.

[http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/03/bitcoins- worth-22800...](http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/03/bitcoins- worth-228000-stolen-from-customers-of-hacked-webhost/)

[https://blog.linode.com/2013/04/16/security-incident- update/](https://blog.linode.com/2013/04/16/security-incident-update/)

[https://blog.linode.com/2014/01/19/an-old-system-and-a- swat-...](https://blog.linode.com/2014/01/19/an-old-system-and-a-swat-team/)

[https://blog.linode.com/2016/01/05/security-notification- and...](https://blog.linode.com/2016/01/05/security-notification-and-linode- manager-password-reset/)

I'm not even sure if they ever figured out the last one.

So yeah, hopefully ryebit was just kidding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> He mentions benchmarks but provides no statistics. The pageview times could be heavily influenced by few users, say the author repeatedly accessing his own site. There is nothing concrete enough here to make me consider moving.

<comment><AUTHOR> @samdoidge, I found the article with performance benchmarks I was referring to [https://joshtronic.com/2016/07/03/ten-dollar-showdown- linode...](https://joshtronic.com/2016/07/03/ten-dollar-showdown-linode- versus-digital-ocean-july-2016/) . A link to it could be found in the medium post as well now. I hope this helps. Cheers!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> No affiliation with either company (I use AWS exclusively now)

I will never use DO because I haven't forgotten about:

1) Their incredibly rude response to "we don't zero drives by default" on GitHub, effectively blaming the customer with "it's a feature."

2) Their censorship of a blog by an employee, at request of that employee's friend.

<comment><USER9> I'm unfamiliar with both of these events and just recently started using DO, do you have links?

<comment><USER8> [https://github.com/fog/fog/issues/2525#issuecomment-31335918](https://github.com/fog/fog/issues/2525#issuecomment-31335918)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7016735](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7016735)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > the old VPS was located on the East coast of the States, and the new one is > located on the West coast

> Ubuntu 14.04 on the first one, while it is a fully updated 16.04 now

Oh yes, what a completely fair and unbiased measure of response-time improvements, much like extolling the virtues of moving from apples to oranges.

<comment><USER11> Yep, if his site is built in PHP going from 5.4 to 7.0 would explain the decrease all by itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's a bit strange that the VPS would have something to do with it. What I mean is that Digitalocean is basically sitting side by side with google. I ping'ed google from the NY3 and I get really fast response time.

booteNg1iethahb8uh

Oops that was my password that I pasted... here is the good paste.

root@debian-512mb-nyc3-01:~# ping www.google.com PING www.google.com (18.104.22.168) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from lga15s46-in-f4.1e100.net (220.127.116.11): icmp_seq=1 ttl=59 time=2.36 ms

64 bytes from lga15s46-in-f4.1e100.net (126.96.36.199): icmp_seq=2 ttl=59 time=2.44 ms

</comment><comment><USER13> Interesting comparison. It's been a while since I did a shootout but I was really surprised and the huge differences between the different providers. We run a little Ruby thing and we tried benchmarks on like 10 different places 2 years ago and found Softlayer was the best performance for what we do for the money. That is to say we could run X apps on an X sized server that costs $X per month at Softlayer while it costs $X+$N everywhere else to get the same performance.

</comment><comment><USER14> I currently use DO with a $20 dropplet. I just checked pricing on both Linode and DO, you do get a lot more memory on Linode.

I remember Linode getting hacked a few years back. Also, how is the user interface on Linode?

I just don't switch providers overnight to save $20.

<comment><USER15> Interface is a bit dated but completely functional and not that bad to deal with. I do believe they are building a new Manager, but I feel like they've been working on it since before the DDoS attacks late last year. Not sure when we will see it or if it is even in development anymore

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wasn't it just last year during the holidays nearly all Linode hosts were offline, for like days? I'm a DO customer and there is absolutely no way I would consider switching to Linode.

</comment><comment><USER6> Publicly confirmed DO hacks:0

Publicly confirmed Linode hacks: 4 at least, probably more

Times Linode got caught trying to cover up the hacks: At least 2 (The HTP one and their most recent publicly acknowledged compromise)

</comment><comment><USER17> The underlying infrastructure within DOs system is dated and has several design flaws. It's amazing that it doesn't fail more frequently.

<comment><USER18> That sounds interesting. More info?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> For me, a couple things I'd like to see more of from some of these smaller VPS providers... block data storage that can be mounted to the filesystem, offering redundancy and backup space to target. DO now has this as an option... outside the big players (AWS, Azure, GC) I haven't really seen it.

Beyond this, is managed SQL option... I mean, I'd prefer PostgreSQL + plv8 at a minimum, but open to others. I really don't want to manage this.

The fact is, I'm not willing to dedicate hundreds a month to hobby and one-off projects, so continue to DIY, but would really like to see more options out there... maturing docker management is pretty compelling as well. It feels like AWS, GC and Azure aren't really even trying to compete, because the additional services they offer have no real competition.

</comment><comment><USER20> Linode is the best hosting company for the money I've ever used. $20.00 a month earns me thousands.

</comment><comment><USER21> Upcloud provides great performance for the price. Couldn't be happier.

<comment><USER22> What's Upcloud?

<comment><USER23> _ahem_ [https://www.google.com/search?q=Upcloud](https://www.google.com/search?q=Upcloud)

<comment><USER24> Rather than a link I think he was looking for some insight as to what sort of services/deals they offer opposed to the providers in the OP...

<comment><USER25> Or was making a joke, "What's Upcloud?" "Oh, not much, what's up with you?"

<comment><USER24> I didn't even think of that!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Startup Poker SF inaugural meetup (November 19th, 8pm) - <AUTHOR>

We're starting a Texas Holdem' Poker Tourney meetup for hackers and startup entrepreneurs in SF.<p>Check us out and tell your friends. http://www.meetup.com/startup-poker-sf <comment><USER2> Sounds like a good idea, although personally I think a cash game would be more fun than tournaments.

<comment><AUTHOR> We can definetly get a cash game going afterwards once people start busing out. Good idea.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Does a centralized supply coin like IOTA have any benefits at all? - <AUTHOR> Maybe I cannot picture the usecase, but my understanding is that IOTA is used to track data that a company themselves submit.
There is the obvious issue of GIGO, and makes IOTA feel like its literally a write only database.
Am I missing something? Can anyone find any purpose this could be used? <comment><USER2> They advertise themselves a permissionless blockchain ledger with no fees.

I haven't looked much into their technology but assuming it holds up one possible use case is un-reversible data storage.

What I mean by that is if I commit some data to the network. It gets passed to all nodes who keep a copy. The transaction that created the data has signatures so everyone knows it's me creating that data. No-one can overwrite that data.

You can do the same on most crypto currency blockchains. i.e. put data in transactions.</comment>


Zeus - HTML Editor for Windows - <AUTHOR> http://youtu.be/VHnGFINukbk

<comment><AUTHOR> The latest Zeus beta includes additional support for HTML coding:

        http://www.zeusedit.com/html.html

The following You Tube video shows off some of these Zeus HTML features:

        http://youtu.be/VHnGFINukbk

NOTE: Zeus is a non-WYSIWYG HTML editor, is shareware, runs natively on the Windows and can run on Linux using Wine.

Jussi Jumppanen

Author: Zeus Editor</comment>


Hn-api: a simple, ad-hoc Python API for Hacker News - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/scottjacksonx/hn-api

<comment><USER2> PG has asked a number of times that people avoid scraping HN, because it thrashes the server.

HN is also running really pretty slow today.

<comment><AUTHOR> > HN is also running really pretty slow today.

Just my luck. As soon as HN took a little while to load for me, I _knew_ that someone would mention it in this thread.

I made hn-api understanding that scraping HN is frowned upon, but also hoping that programmers wouldn't do dumb things with it. As I [said][1], I minimised the number of requests hn-api makes to HN.

In the readme, I say that hn-api is unofficial and unauthorised. I also tell people to be gentle with making requests to HN. Is there some other action I should take? Ideally I'd like to keep my work up, but if pg tells me to take it down, I will.

Great, now I feel all dirty like The Pirate Bay.

[1]: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1112267>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Best run that with some delays in there or you will definitely hit the velocity checks and you'll find your IP banned.

<comment><AUTHOR> I hear you -- in fact, I think I'll put something in the readme about that.

<comment><USER3> see this thread:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=789469>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link.

hn-api only makes one request when it gets stories or one request when you get a user's karma -- that doesn't seem like too much. I knew there was a velocity check on IPs (and that I was making an _unofficial_ API), so I made it as light on HN as possible.

<comment><USER3> Can't you cache the users state ? It's not like you need karma updates every time you do a request to the API.

<comment><AUTHOR> > It's not like you need karma updates every time you do a request to the API.

Obviously.

When a request is made to get stories from HN, no HackerNewsUser objects are created (and thus, no karma gets updated). hn-api will only update karma when you, the coder, make a HackerNewsUser object or call the HackerNewsUser.refreshKarma() method.

Like I said -- one request when it gets stories _or_ one request when you get a user's karma.

<comment><USER3> I get that, I meant cached as in persistent across runs :)

Then you can specify some kind of time-out (say 3 days or so), after which it does get refreshed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, sorry. I didn't even think of that :)

I'll look into it. Or, if some intrepid volunteer would like to contribute to the project, maybe they could.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Python IAQ: Infrequently Answered Questions - <AUTHOR> http://norvig.com/python-iaq.html

<comment><USER2> I dunno why people think functional programming jobs are vanishingly scarce. They are not. If you can demonstrate skill in functional languages, you might even get recruited.

It's true there are more wage-slave code-a-day jobs, but those jobs can be easily filled by uninspired hacks who are in it for the money. If you're reading this, the odds of you being one of those hacks is very low. The job market is smaller, but the workforce of talented functional programmers is _much_ smaller, so the demand is still high.

And Clojure & Scala are even easier because you can get a java job and them worm them in. It's not difficult to make a compelling argument that Clojure & Scala are better at Java than Java is.

<comment><USER3> Functional programming jobs _are_ scarce, but that's because no-one is a "functional programmer" in the same way that you might be a "PHP programmer". Instead you get lots of jobs where you happen to write a lot of code in a functional programming language but you don't look like a programmer in an organizational sense - you're an "analyst" or an "engineer" or whatever. That's where F# is making inroads.

<comment><USER2> I really don't understand your point. What is the difference between a "programmer" and an "engineer"? Why doesn't "functional programmer" as a category include things like "F#", which you suggest _is_ a valid category.

As for me, I interviewed at several jobs that featured functional programming during my last jobsearch. I actually turned down offers that were _not_ devoted to functional (or at least hybrid object/functional) technologies.

<comment><USER3> If you are an analyst working for a bank, then your _job_ is to do financial analysis to inform trading decisions. That is what your title is, that is the result you are expected to produce, that is what you will see yourself as. But to actually do that, you might be writing F# 40 hrs a week. You wouldn't consider yourself a programmer tho'. The program is not a product in and of itself; it's just a tool you use that you happen to also make yourself 'cos it's easier than writing a spec document and waiting for "a programmer" to do it.

Similarly if you are an engineer working for Ericcson on switches for telcos then you job is to design and implement switches. The result you are expected to produce is a switch that is better than the current one. You will probably see yourself as an electronic engineer - but you might actually be writing Erlang 40 hrs a week. The code isn't a product either - it's just the means by which you tell your switch hardware how to behave.

Whereas if you are a "PHP programmer" someone has already decided that PHP is what we're doing and your role is to do PHP and your end product is a website built with PHP. Which is not a bad thing mind - but it _is_ why you see "PHP jobs" and you don't see so many "F# jobs".

<comment><USER2> I don't see how this has any bearing on functional programming jobs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great article, bad title. Someone with more kharma mind changing it to Python Infrequently answered Questions?

<comment><USER5> I don't get it anyway, if I can read this, why can I get a job in functional programming?

<comment><USER6> even worse for me, I clicked to find out why employers like citi and BofA in the financial sector were no longer able to afford vowels for their programmers.

<comment><USER7> Same here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Python infrequently asked questions, google cache at

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:norvig....](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:norvig.com/python- iaq.html+http://norvig.com/python-iaq.html)

Seems a bit out-of-date (upcoming Python 2.5?), not sure why it's here really.

</comment><comment><USER9> Is there much benefit to

        fact = lambda n: _if (n <= 1) (1) (lambda: n * fact(n-1))

over

        def fact(n):
            if (n <= 1):
                return 1
            else:
                return n * fact(n-1)

1 line vs 5 lines doesn't seem like an advantage to me when it takes pretty much the same amount of time to read and understand the complicated 1 liner.

Is there more optimisation possible?

<comment><USER10> Sometimes I put short ifs in one line, just personal taste

        def fact(n):
            if n<=1: return 1
            else:    return n * fact(n-1)

<comment><USER10> Which I guess can be written like

       def fact(n):
            return 1 if n<=1 else n*fact(n-1)

<comment><USER9> unfortunately not on python 2.4, which is the version we have on our production servers (2 yr old Linux)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Some of the responses are outdated, here's one of the things that is now part of python:

Python 2.5 introduced _defaultdict_ in the _collections_ module:

       from collections import defaultdict
       d = defaultdict(int)
       d['foo'] +=1 # look ma! no error!

For this application, if you're using Python 2.7 there's now a _Counter_ in _collections_ , you can do the same as above, just call Counter(). You can also do:

       c = Counter(iter) # iter is an iterable. It will count the elements!

</comment><comment><USER12> It's also worth noting that, in Python 2.6 and higher, we DO have a ternary operator:

        x = 3 if foo() else 6

</comment><comment><USER13> If u cn rd ths... then you may speak Hebrew or Arabic, which are basically written without vowels.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Regarding the "if thr wr any", and the rise of Haskell and Clojure, I wonder whether such caveat applies any longer.

As for content of the Python IAQ, I've enjoyed learning about two python idioms I had never known possible:

1\. The ternary conditional operator:

x = <result> if <test> else <alternative>

2\. Using _or_ to assign an alternative value when the first is False or None

x = <option> or <option>

<comment><USER14> It's worth noting that Peter himself mentions that most of the ternary tricks he describes are not very readable and wouldn't be considered Pythonic.

       Beautiful is better than ugly.
       Explicit is better than implicit.
       Simple is better than complex.

Personally I'd hate to see something like that in any real-world project.

       (test and [result] or [alternative])[0]

<comment><USER15> Depending on the language, it could be an idiom.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there any vimlike image processor? - <AUTHOR>

hi,some month ago,i have saw an article which introduce  a image processer which is cmdline interface and use like vim,but i cant remember its name , its name like vim + photoshop,i am not sure it,so if anyone who knows,tell me please,thx <comment><USER2> ImageMagick? <http://www.imagemagick.org/>

<comment><AUTHOR> nope,that is a batch tool for eg,a imagemagic is like ex editor but i need vi editor

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I can't find exactly what you described, but maybe these will help you along:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=268382> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=322262>

Also, mathematica can do image processing.

<comment><AUTHOR> i am sorry for my poor english what i mean is image process software and its under tty or cmdline and its keybind like vim is this clear? thx for the replying

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> up

wait for replying

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> up</comment>


Google OpenID API - taking the next steps - <AUTHOR> http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2009/05/google-openid-api-taking-next-steps.html <comment><USER3> I tried this out. Perhaps it's just Google's implementation, but if people get used to OpenID it's going to be a phisher's heaven. It appears that any site you log into with your OpenID could potentially proxy your provider, obtain your credentials, and impersonate you on every other OpenID enabled site! I'll pass.

<comment><USER4> It should be fairly obvious from the address bar if you're being proxied - <USER2> will show the proxying site's address rather than the site you use as your OpenID provider.

Also - I'm logged into my OpenID provider all the time, so I don't have to enter my login details in order to use a third-party site - so they can't actually capture anything at all.</comment></comment>


Hypermedia APIs on Rails - <AUTHOR> http://blog.stateless.co/post/38378679843/hypermedia-apis-on-rails-why-dhh-should-give-a-fk <comment><USER2> The convention that Django REST Framework (which is an add-on for Django, not part of the core) uses is to add a 'url' attribute to each resource to represent the cannonical id.

Even better, when you hit the API with a browser, you can click around and explore the links easily:

<http://restframework.herokuapp.com/users/>

The docs talk about it a bit here:

[http://django-rest-framework.org/tutorial/5-relationships- an...](http://django-rest-framework.org/tutorial/5-relationships-and- hyperlinked-apis.html)

<comment><USER3> I like to take this one step further and return referenced objects with both their ID and their URL as actual objects instead of strings. This is incredibly helpful for working with the API in something like Backbone.js, because then there's no need for logic in determining if it is getting a list of IDs as strings or full objects. It's doubly helpful if the references are to objects of different types. The client simply loads the objects as given, and can do a sync if it's missing attributes it expects. (Of course, sending the full data in one request is usually preferable.) Also, the `url` property on the model just returns the `url` attribute instead of needing to duplicate the URL construction pattern.

So,

        …
        {
            'id': 123,
            'url': '/resource/123'
        },
        …

instead of

        …
        '/resource/123',
        '/resource/124',
        …

or worse

        …
        123,
        124,
        …

Also, Django REST Framework is easily my favorite REST API tool for Django. It's very straightforward to use just as much or just as little of it as necessary. In fact, it's powering the main views of the upcoming second draft of <http://marquee.by> (the entire site is effectively a browsable API).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _...I came up with a simple media type that adds linking on top of JSON_

Adding hypermedia reflection to JSON does amazing things to APIs. We've been doing this via oData for awhile, and it makes things so much easier on the client. Anyone building a hypermedia/REST API with JSON (or XML) would make good of using standard formats that incorporate this functionality and attitude.

</comment><comment><USER5> This doesn't need to be a Rails feature. Rails is for building web apps. There is a whole bunch of extra stuff Rails does that a web api doesn't need to care about. So, it really doesn't need to be a mvc web app framework feature.

Also, why tie this idea to Rails at all? Why not just make your own plugin or Sinatra app or frameowrk or whatever?

<comment><AUTHOR> Because rails is used for building APIs, linking is a good practice, and there's no need to reinvent the linking/embedding wheel every time you create an API.

Rails has API defaults which should include sensible linking defaults we can build tooling around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I blogged about this same idea in response to a different article 3 months ago. Seems like the hypermedia discussion keeps coming up. Here's my response article: [http://rtigger.com/blog/2012/08/27/discovering-the-value- in-...](http://rtigger.com/blog/2012/08/27/discovering-the-value-in- discoverable-apis/)

TL;DR - there's no value in discoverable (hypermedia) APIs short of some generic API browser that end users don't really want.

<comment><USER7> There are a benefits, but most people won't notice them without first actually using a hypermedia API.

* It's self-documenting. Client developers can find all the endpoints just by clicking around (instead of reading mountains of docs).

* Client apps don't need to keep a list of hard-coded urls for random access, removing one of the most brittle parts of client apps (they should know about rels of course, but those end up being easier to keep track of).

Once you actually use an API like this, other APIs feel like they're in the stone age and how to do things with them seems like a continual guessing game. And it's still simple as hell -- remember it's just json with links. It's not like that requires a lot of extra effort.

<comment><USER6> Fair enough - I haven't actually used a hypermedia API (short of OData). I really can't see the documenting point though. Sure, you get a list of actions that you can perform, but you get those in a response object. Some people compare this to "intellisense documentation", but really it's more like having to decompile the library to figure out what's going on. You have to do something extra in order to figure out what the next step is, rather than just having it available. Also, I'm pretty sure any API that is currently "discoverable" probably also has a full suite of documentation. Why do the same thing twice?

Not sure about other languages, but most of the client apps I make don't use hardcoded urls - they use a base API url, and then modifications for specific resources. The RestSharp library for C# is a great example of how this works, and even in javascript it's not hard to refactor things so they use a base url and append path & parameters based on the models you're working with.

I'm not arguing the simplicity of it, although it would be more simple to implement if we agreed on a standard like in the original article. I'm just arguing the value.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Isn't this what the Link header is for? Why put them in the JSON?

The only reason I'm aware of is for compatibility with JSONP. Github's API normally uses Link headers, but adds a "meta" object for JSONP requests: <http://developer.github.com/v3/#json-p-callbacks>

</comment><comment><USER9> For those of us not quite as embedded in the bubble as this author, what's this in response to?

<comment><USER10> It's in response to Rails being on the trailing edge of Hypermedia/REST API design, and not making moves to pull ahead. Rails's strength is in its sane and powerful defaults; the absence of a sufficiently sane and powerful default for API construction is a hindrance (especially now that ActiveResource is getting booted from core Rails).

DHH has simply never taken REST/Hypermedia seriously as a design philosophy. He, and Rails, have been content to move simple JSON serializations over the wire and leave it at that. This was good enough a few years ago, but is getting to the end of the runway for the present and future.</comment></comment>


JQuery TOOLS - The UI library for the Web - <AUTHOR> http://flowplayer.org/tools/index.html# <comment><USER2> Recent discussion:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=640479></comment>


Reddit Goes Open Source - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uo4O4T-7BiE

<comment><USER2> I seriously expected a Rick Roll. Thank you HN user pretzel. I know there's hope out there for humanity :)</comment>


Walmart reportedly telling partners/suppliers to not use Amazon Web Services - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2017/06/21/walmart-amazon-whole-foods/ <comment><AUTHOR> Here's the original WSJ article, but it's paywalled:

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/wal-mart-to-vendors-get-off- ama...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/wal-mart-to-vendors-get-off-amazons- cloud-1498037402)</comment>


The richest person ever was from Africa - <AUTHOR> http://www.biasharainsight.com/2016/01/the-richest-person-ever-was-from-africa/ <comment><USER2> Ruler of zamunda??</comment>


Microsoft finally made my favorite keyboard and mouse - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/3/7/14840846/microsoft-surface-keyboard-mouse-review <comment><USER2> what is the point of the numpad?

<comment><USER3> For entering numbers conveniently?

I'm not sure why, if you're going to take up the area for a full keyboard with all the keys (numpad, ins/del/pgup/pgdn, function keys), you would come up with yet another non-standard layout, instead of the time-tested IBM M design.</comment></comment>


Top Books for Entrepreneurs. List them. - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> This has come up a couple times before. However, specifically for entrepreneurs, the books to read are:

      1) How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
      2) Musashi's The Book of Five Rings
      3) Gonzo Marketing by Christopher Locke
      4) Getting Things Done by David Allen
      5) What Management Is by Joan Magretta

There are other books, but less relevant in a business context.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's been a while since I've flogged this:

<http://www.squeezedbooks.com>

I bought a lot of those books because they seemed good or came with recommendations.

</comment><comment><USER4> Smart Startups - David Silver

A great read for web entrepreneurs.

</comment><comment><USER5> The Four Steps to the Epiphany - Steven Gary Blank</comment>


Random holiday greetings - <AUTHOR> http://greetomatic.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Boo. Kind of resenting the title change of the submission title, here...

They are hardly random. We're crawling the web for names and returning personalized holiday greetings for our users. (We went so far as to preload the database with the 300 most popular North American names.)

Pfffft.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is my online development agency's Holiday card this year. I'd love to know what you guys think!

<comment><USER2> I don't get it.

But I do like the design/css.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, it was our first significant foray into non-flash web animation. I'm really pleased with the result.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> i dig it! nice work guys! Here is my fav so far:

"Strawberry very berry christmas time merry my homie Larry hit me on da celly fa dat peanut butta n jelly"

Merry Christmas!

</comment><comment><USER4> Love it!

</comment><comment><USER5> That's awesome!</comment>


China is working to silence critics of its prisonlike re-education camps - <AUTHOR> https://world.wng.org/2019/04/striking_the_messenger <comment><USER2> how is this news? China has a sophisticated government-social process to silence everything within minutes.

Media surpression was one of the ruling party's long term commitments.

<comment><AUTHOR> How is it not news?

The Chinese Communist Party, through actions such as this, shows it has no regard for human rights and will probably stop at nothing to get its way.

<comment><USER3> The particulars of these incidents are news. What isn't news is the fact that totalitarian regimes have no regard for human rights. That fact is no more novel or surprising than the fact that wolves prey on other animals--though if wolves had the same power and influence as the Chinese government, maybe we'd forget about that, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> >"prisonlike re-education camps"

Why the euphemism? Just call them concentration camps for ethnic minorities, which is what they are.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's funny how much Muslims help trample the human rights of other Muslims. Whether it's the Saudis or Iranians or the Yemenis... or the Central Asians. In the West we have achieved the fabled brotherhood of the Ummah through humanism where as in most Muslim countries are out for other Muslims' blood often using Islam as a justification.

<comment><USER6> Sorry, but I'm struggling to understand what this means, or how it relates to the article?

<comment><USER5> Kazakhstan a Muslim-majority country is helping China suppress the human rights of Muslim minorities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have difficulty believing the objectivity of a magazine whose editors have such a clear religious bias (and pushed compassionate conservatism, to boot).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_(magazine)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_\(magazine\))

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

<comment><USER3> Nobody is objective and everyone is biased. Once you accept that, you can start to price that in somewhat. If anything, it's counter-biased for evangelical Protestants to have strong concerns for the welfare of Muslim Uyghurs.

<comment><USER8> It is perfectly understandable for christians to be concerned about the welfare of all people.

<comment><USER3> Sure, but if these particular Christians are driven by the "bias" of being concerned about the welfare of all people...that's not really a bias anymore, is it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Where is the nerdy connection? The other anti-China thread on the front page at least is about social media [1] but this one has no connection to tech at all or science or whatever. It's purely political, and the particular issue of religious minorities suppression in Xinjiang has already been on hacker news in form of an excellent NYT a piece a few weeks back [2].

The ASML story from yesterday was beautifully on-topic for example [3].

I get it, the Chinese government is authoritarian and mean and much worse at that than the US government was in the last 30 years. But why repeat this message over and over?

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19712564](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19712564)

[2]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19570594](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19570594)

[3]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19703909](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19703909)

<comment><USER10> There always seems to be a pro-China backlash in the comments of HN articles critical of China. I'm slowly coming around to the idea that this looks like an organized effort to control the narrative. What gets me most is the universal weakness of the points made in the pro-China posts. You would not have had to think very long to realize this is a reasonable submission for this site, but here you are anyway.

It wouldn't stand out so much on reddit but here this stuff really sticks out like a sore thumb.

Everyone with an interest in technology and freedom would be wise to pay attention to what is going on in China right now. With the opportunities presented by our rapidly changing technology, they are pioneering new and disturbing means of oppression that should be of great concern to anyone accustomed to a free society.

I'm not assuming bad faith on your part, but I am asserting flatly that your post is indistinguishable from it. If you are not a part of a coordinated effort to minimize discussion of such things than I suggest you try harder to understand why other people care about them.

<comment><USER9> > There always seems to be a pro-China backlash

Please, read my comment. I'm not pro-Chinese oppression. I hope I made it very clear that the ASML story was on topic and that it was very good to cover it, etc. This thinking of "either you are my friend and agree 100% with me or you are my enemy" is dangerous and I recommend you try to change the general thought pattern. You'll be a better person afterwards. There is nuance in the world!

> Everyone with an interest in technology and freedom would be wise to pay > attention to what is going on in China right now.

I definitely do pay attention but the anti-China posts are literally everywhere by now. Every one of my news sources is constantly running anti- China pieces. As I've pointed out there is already a anti-China story on the frontpage. Isn't one enough? There have been anti-China pieces on this page constantly. Is hn the Chinese revolution headquarters?

Your idea of a coordinated effort to push an agenda might not be wrong, after all Russia has been doing this so why not China, but note that your argument works in the other direction as well: maybe the reason for all of these anti- Chinese news stories is because of the US-Chinese trade war. It's well known that the USA doesn't care much about human rights in countries that do what the USA wants. Instead, the big "let's gift them freedom" idea mainly comes up when they happen to be unaligned with Washington foreign policy. The US mass media has, let's put it mildly, always been patriotic and supported that pattern with suiting news stories. This old alliance works greatly, even despite the war between Trump and the media. This particular story is just part of that pattern. Just wait, by when US-Chinese relations improve, these stories will disappear from the frontpage and other news outlets again.

Again, I fully agree that the Chinese government is a big threat to freedom and democracy. I've said so in multiple comments on this page.

<comment><USER10> > As I've pointed out there is already a anti-China story on the frontpage. > Isn't one enough?

Two different posts about unrelated subjects concerning China is one too many to you? Do you think there is a quota or something? We share and upvote things we find interesting. If there were ten posts on the front page covering ten different anti-Chinese-government subjects that would still in no way support your claim that these posts are the result of a US trade war conspiracy. It speaks more to the breadth of startling activities being performed by the Chinese government than anything else.

I also find it interesting that you call discussion of oppressive actions undertaken by the Chinese -government- to be "anti-China." A subtle but meaningful distinction. I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt but you are making it difficult.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ultra high-speed broadband is coming to Kansas City, Kansas - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/ultra-high-speed-broadband-is-coming-to.html

<comment><USER2> As soon as I saw the release, I immediately considered what might be like moving to Kansas City, Kansas (aka KCK).

Given that a large percentage of the city will soon have access to Gigabit Broadband, I wonder if we could simply consider the entire City to be one large LAN.

<comment><USER3> If you're considering moving just for gigabit broadband, you might consider Chattanooga, TN. We already have it.

<comment><USER4> Don't tempt me, my brother in law lives in Murfreesboro and it's absolutely gorgeous down there. Beautiful brick homes all over the place, and very mild weather. Throw in gigabit broadband and you've just about got me convinced.

<comment><USER3> It's a beautiful part of the country. I love it down here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Living nearby in Overland Park, this is pretty exciting stuff. It will certainly be nice to see someone big give Time Warner and AT&T a little competition.

It's a little surprising that they would pick Kansas City, Kansas over the much-bigger Kansas City, Missouri, but then again, there's probably a lot less politics and red tape to cut through when dealing with a smaller community.

Sprints headquarters are in Overland Park -- does anyone know if they have their hand in this?

<comment><USER6> I'd say the Kauffman Foundation had a big hand in it. A smaller community may have been more attractive for a project like this because of logistics.

<comment><USER7> But doesn't UPS serve just about everywhere?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd love to hear what some of the business implications of this are from fellow HN'rs. (Good and bad, is there a downside?) What sort of local community problems can you solve with an internet that's 100 times faster?

I'm in Kansas City, Missouri. My office is about 1 mile East of the state line. I'm pretty excited about the community impact of this and I only live and work _nearby_.

<comment><USER8> A 16dB+ panel antenna and Ubiquiti Networks Bullet2HP radio, and a suitably high location, would shorten that distance for you very nicely. ;)

From my own experience working on a community wireless project in St. Louis, the benefit of a 1Gbit/s fiber uplink (or several) would be that you could use newer 5GHz radios with MIMO features to build out >=50Mbit/s distribution for that uplink over a few square miles. So, 1Gbit/s could be parted out to 20 end users getting 50mbit/s each, and with an infrastructure cheaper than running fiber or some other wired medium directly to those 20 users.

<comment><USER9> Upvoted twice for UBNT. Downvoted once for math:

50mbps x 200 users = 10,000mbps

Arithimetic aside, Ubiquiti is quickly changing the Wisp world. At Freenet, we switched from Canopy and upgraded our backhauls to Ubiquiti Airmax and saved money in the process. I am typing this now from a mesh node connected via a NanoStationM5!

Given my experience with city-wide wireless in Lawrence, ubiquitous WiFi in KCK really needs to happen, IMHO.

<comment><USER10> Sadly, plenty of ISP's use that math. (Users * Bandwidth / 10) = uplink.

<comment><USER9> I can't disagree too much, upload speeds are really disappointing. As one other poster pointed out, this can have a negative effect on entrepreneurs trying to bootstrap businesses from home.

As for why upload speeds are awful, my experience has been that it is a trade- off that has been calculated by the ISP. But not in the way I suspected. Any link level device that uses a single (simplex) medium (wifi, fixed wireless, mobile wireless, cable modems, DSL modems, etc. as opposed to Ethernet, which is generally duplex) only has so much bandwidth available.

At the WISP I worked for, we used to use Canopy 900mhz radios to provide fixed wireless service as well as backhaul for our city-wide mesh network. Since these radios only had ~3.3mbps aggregate bandwidth, we had to decide how to allocate it. In our case, we chose something like 5:1 download to upload ratio. This was a conscious choice about how best to use the available spectrum/bandwidth. I _believe_ the same is true for cable/DSL media. Please feel free to correct me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> One of the best things, from my perspective is that it will give Kansas something that is positive for a change. There is lots of good tech here in Eastern Kansas, but all anyone knows is about our issues around teaching evolution and Fred Phelps. Sometimes makes it hard to convince a client on the coast that we really do know what we're talking about and aren't running a consultancy next to a barn.

<comment><USER9> Yes! All of my family and friends give me crap about choosing to live in KS. I would be hard pressed trade Lawrence/KC for another location. Unless, you know, there was no snow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Probably largely because the Kauffman Foundation is there.

<comment><USER8> And nearby Sprint HQ, as mentioned in the other HN post about this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> There are quite a few interesting possibilities with Google coming in. The 3rd largest stock exchange, BATS, is based in Lenexa, KS. As others mentioned, Sprint is located in a suburb. Cerner, the largest healthcare IT company, is rapidly expanding into KCK. Garmin is in Olathe. KCMO has has a lot of biomedical firms and research firms including Stowers Institute, TEVA, etc. Kauffman Foundation has been pushing local startups more and more.

A lot of this though is beyond 2012 and would only be connected with an expansion of the fiber network. KCK has a NASCAR track, an MLS Stadium, Minor League Baseball Stadium, an outdoor mall and some factories...

</comment><comment><USER14> I can't really say I'm that impressed. They'll be charging $350/month for the gigabit plan. That's about 10 times what the same service costs in Hong Kong or 5 times what it does in Tokyo. And that service was available in 2009.

I guess for people used to paying way to much for really slow connections it might be worth the $350, but it's certainly not a deal I'd be bragging about.

<comment><USER15> Where have you heard that price?

<comment><USER14> It's on their site: [https://epbfi.com/you-pick/#/fi-tv-essential&fi-speed- in...](https://epbfi.com/you-pick/#/fi-tv-essential&fi-speed-internet-30)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow, so close, and yet so far. I'm just a few miles away, but I'm not moving to KCK ;-). I wonder if they will eventually spread out from there within the metro, that would be awesome! We need more options than AT&T and Comcast, that's for sure.

</comment><comment><USER9> KCK Mayor and Google Kevin Lo on KCUR right now, speaking about Google Fiber in KCK. <http://www.kcur.org/uptodate.html#Thursday>

</comment><comment><USER16> From the musical/stageshow Oklahoma:

"Everything's up to date in Kansas City They gone about as fer as they can go"

</comment><comment><USER17> woooo can't wait to switch out of time warner in a few years

-hopeful socal

</comment><comment><USER18> Once I've ultra high-speed broadband, the first thing I'll probably get is an iPad2 :).

</comment><comment><USER19> Really exciting for a KC native like myself, even though I'm far away now. We've been considering a move back in that direction and this only makes it that much more likely. :D

</comment><comment><USER20> Facts about 3G/4G networks [http://www.pcmag.com/print_article2/0,1217,a=251336,00.asp?h...](http://www.pcmag.com/print_article2/0,1217,a=251336,00.asp?hidPrint=true)

</comment><comment><USER21> This pisses me off. There was a stronger response from Austin, and our govt. petitioned Google to do it here. What a letdown.

<comment><USER22> According to Wikipedia, Austin is 10x larger than Kansas City, KS. Google is planning on jumping into this with a test group of over 100,000 people, which is ambitious. It's likely that Google is taking a pragmatic engineering approach to this, like they are so famous for doing with all their products.

<comment><USER21> If Google is taking a pragmatic engineering approach with this, then why did they even bother asking communities if they wanted this? According to <http://www.google.com/appserve/fiberrfi/public/list#KS> Kansas City didn't even bother responding.

<comment><USER23> Yes they did, it just shows up as Wyandotte County. Kansas City and Wyandotte County share a unified government.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Big Tech's Years-Long Manipulation of American Op-Ed Pages - <AUTHOR> https://bigtechnology.substack.com/p/inside-big-techs-years-long-manipulation <comment><USER3> As opposed to everyone else's manipulation of op-eds...? 'Manipulation of opinion by editorial' is kind of the point of 'opinion-editorial' sections. If we go through the NYT op-ed page for the past 5 years, would we find more positive or negative mentions of Google and Facebook?

</comment><comment><USER4> This kind of thing is rampant in Big Pharma also. Fake grassroots organizations, fake op-Ed's, constant attacks on anyone who isn't inline with them, ghost publishing in "prestigious" journals, reputation laundering everywhere, and just straight buying people off. Look at the article from the other day in the bbc about losing someone to cancer conspiracies theories. Good chance that article is planted. The actual title was just false. People die most of the time on treatment for cancer anyways (usually with a lot of pain and side effects of chemo) as people who have lost loved ones know. But the bbc wants to make sure we crack down on misinformation that MAY be killing you. Pure BS. On the other hand you never see articles about how breast cancer screenings in young women actually increase the death rate (proven) or anything critical of Pharma. Anyone who knows anything about these areas knows that the level of corruption and sometimes evil is astounding.

<comment><USER5> That breast cancer screening leads to higher mortality is a big claim. Any evidence? A web search on this topic seems to show that, at worst, screening has no impact on outcomes.

<comment><USER4> This article is from a book review about the subject but it has enough in there. The reasoning is pretty simple. Early intervention doesn't help that much because treatments don't work. And false positives in diagnosis lead to over treatment which is incredibly dangerous. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3563917/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3563917/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can anyone point me towards more general discussion about the topic - <USER2> Op-Ed pages are used by influential groups to sway opinions. Looking at individual instances seems like playing whack-a-mole, would be interested in the more general approach to solve the problem.

<comment><USER7> In my experience this is standard practice in the PR industry and isn't seen as a problem to solve or viewed as any sort of ethical dilemma.

In the industry these articles would be talked about as a "3rd party op-eds", and the general practice of finding "3rd party advocates" is a key element of any issues advocacy campaign.

The practice doesn't stop at op-eds. PR firms or in-house corporate communications teams cultivate a roster of business leaders, academics, politicians, etc that can be called upon to speak on panels at conferences, participate in media interviews, be featured in documentaries and show up in other creative ways.

In the PR world it's a taken as a given that "your message is most powerful when it comes from a respected third party" so this practice is pervasive and impacts every conference you've ever attended, op-Ed pages on a daily basis, and many of the media stories you read.

As for solving it, I'm not aware of any groups dedicated to that cause. Raising awareness is one step — ham-fisted astroturfing made public is embarrassing for a company, but 3rd party advocacy is generally more subtle and not viewed as astroturfing by PR pros.</comment></comment>


Bill Gates: Ctrl+Alt+Del was a mistake (2013) - github-cat http://www.importstatic.com/article/1380256075-Bill-Gates-%3A-Ctrl%2BAlt%2BDel-was-a-mistake <comment><AUTHOR> BTW, this is from 2013, and mentioned in the Wikipedia article on "Control- Alt-Delete".

> Later in an interview, Bradley said he didn't understand why Gates and > Microsoft decided to make it a login feature, adding that "I guess it made > sense for them."

I thought it was because it's a secure attention sequence to prevent login spoofing, since that cannot be emulated software in userland. Certainly the WP page suggests that.

<comment><USER2> That was my understanding and I see no problem with it.

<comment><USER3> Indeed, it was an important security feature. I think Bill is just saying that they should've got PC manfacturers to add a "Log On" key to the keyboard which they could've caught in the OS in the same way as Ctrl+Alt+Del.

I think the only other key that has this low-level trap feature is SysRq (usually Alt+PrintScreen), which, of course, Linux uses for [Magic SysRq]([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_SysRq_key](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_SysRq_key)).

Now that I think of it, "Press 'System Request' to log on" has a nice ring to it. A shame it was it in the shifted position on IBM PC keyboards.

<comment><USER4> There's no special "low level feature" when your keyboard hangs off a serial bus (as did pm keyboards from the start. XT, AT, PS/2, USB...) As far as I know also C-A-Del was just the default in the original bios keyboard handler to trigger a quick reboot.

Windows, for example, has a (by default disabled) feature to trigger a kernel panic on Ctrl+Scroll lock. Also purely software based and just as arbitrary in its choice of keys. And also very useful to recover from an otherwise stuck system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't see a problem with using it for the reasons they used it.

In a related video, if you've never seen it, this one is great, with the original Ctrl-Alt-Delete programmer (David Bradley) on stage with Bill Gates...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_lg7w8gAXQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_lg7w8gAXQ)

</comment><comment><USER6> Gates provides an odd answer, and somewhat shifting blame.

He's essentially saying he would have preferred a single "Reboot" key on the keyboard, then would have used that to begin the login sequence?

<comment><USER7> Yes, a single hardware SAK would have been much preferable. Given Microsoft's predilection for adding buttons for all other sorts of things in the 90's, I don't understand why this never happened.

<comment><USER8> What is a 'SAK'? (EDIT: Oh, michaelt ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9987050](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9987050) )'s link points out that it is a 'secure attention key'.)

> Given Microsoft's predilection for adding buttons for all other sorts of > things in the 90's, I don't understand why this never happened.

Probably because those other buttons were 'just' meant to _add_ functionality, so that users without them would just get a less-assisted-but-still-functional environment; whereas requiring a special key on a keyboard just to log in would have left legacy users unable to do so, a situation which (they and therefore) Microsoft would surely find untenable.</comment></comment></comment>


Homemade 'Star Wars' RPG for a Toddler - <AUTHOR> https://geekdad.com/2016/05/homemade-star-wars-rpg/ <comment><AUTHOR> I just wanted to point out about a fun and creative way to engage in structured thinking and rule optimization at a young age. The notes and trial and error are appreciated from the author.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you invest your money? - <AUTHOR> /r/personalfinance has turned me on to the idea of investing for retirement.<p>How does HN invest their money?<p>- Passive robo-investing with Wealthfront/Betterment?<p>- Actively searching for stock on the rise/timing the market?<p>- Real estate purchasing then renting those out? <comment><USER2> While investing is important (personally it's 50/50 stock index fund and US treasuries), another important thing to do is reduce your expenses.

1\. The lower your expenses the less money you need on an ongoing basis. This means you need less savings to fund your lifestyle.

2\. The lower your expenses the more money you have left over to save and invest.

The combination means you have more money _and_ it lasts longer. This is pretty important career-wise because it makes it much easier to find a better job: when you need to quit or lose your job you have much longer to find a good job, you don't need to take the first one you find.

Expanded version here: [https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/08/08/living-below- your-me...](https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/08/08/living-below-your-means/)

<comment><USER3> You missed an important benefit: expenses are mostly post-tax, so reducing your expenses by $1 may reduce the amount you need to earn by $1.50 - $2.

Also, 50% in treasuries seems overly conservative for most investors, especially if they're young. That's basically just going to match inflation. You may have your reasons, just wanted to point that out :)

<comment><USER4> Being 50% in treasuries right now is not particularly conservative. The Schiller P/E ratio was only higher in 1929 and 1999:

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

So, broadly, equities look like a pretty bad deal right now.

<comment><USER5> The Schiller P/E has historically been pretty useful, but it's not a great tool for comparing pre 2001 and post 2001 market valuations because of changes in GAAP. Check out [http://www.philosophicaleconomics.com/2013/12/shiller/](http://www.philosophicaleconomics.com/2013/12/shiller/) for a more in depth explanation.

<comment><USER2> There's also q, which has same result as Shiller P/E 10 but is calculated very differently: [http://smithers.co.uk/page.php?id=34](http://smithers.co.uk/page.php?id=34)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I invest using mutual funds through Vanguard. Some percentage US stock fund, some percentage US bond fund, some percentage international stock, and some percentage international bond. This is by far the simplest and easiest approach. I currently invest using VTTSX which is a Vanguard fund that does this splitting for me.

You can read more about this investment philosophy here: [https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Three- fund_portfolio](https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Three-fund_portfolio)

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm not convinced there's any passive investment that will beat a Vanguard S&P 500 index in the long-run. 99% of people would be best-served to just dump 100% in that.

I've made some pretty incredible returns researching and investing, but in retrospect even though I did very well I would have been better off spending that time earning more money rather than investing it. My net worth isn't big enough that an extra percentage gain moves the needle that much.

<comment><USER8> S&P is too US-scoped. One bad president pick and it will be all gone. It's better to diversify 20-30% worldwide and a little into assets with different source of value like gold, real estate, crypto, oil, whatever. Just S&P is not going to cut it forever. I know central banks are buying it now too, so it may find itself being very political soon.

<comment><USER7> > S&P is too US-scoped. One bad president pick and it will be all gone

Respectfully, if that were true it would all have been long gone a long time ago :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There's a tension between "invest in what you know" and avoiding correlation between your financial investments and your job.

Most HNers know the tech sector better than other sectors. But investing (long) in tech would not be a great idea from a diversification perspective. If the tech market tanks, your job prospects will suffer (you could get fired/furloughed, your startup could stagnate) and your portfolio will drop simultaneously.

One way to resolve this tension is to take short positions on tech trackers and long positions on particular stocks that you think will outperform the sector. On days when everything goes up, you won't win as big. But on days where everything goes down, you'll be glad you have the hedge.

<comment><USER10> I remember explaining to my mother in the mid 2000s that Qualcomm owned the vast majority of the technology powering CDMA, which would power billions of smart phones in the future. So she bought QCOM. I was right about smartphones, yet the stock did nothing... What you know about tech and what Wall Street thinks about a company is entirely two different things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Read /r/financialindependence (better than personalfinance, and more appropriate for this subject), and also the Bogleheads forum [1] and wiki [2]

[1]: [https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/index.php](https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/index.php)

[2]: [https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Main_Page](https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Main_Page)

<comment><AUTHOR> I read /r/financialindependence and daydream haha, that's where I learned about all this stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Here's Warren Buffett's advice for people with this question from the BRK Letter to Investors:

"My advice to the trustee could not be more simple: Put 10% of the cash in short-term government bonds and 90% in a very low-cost S&P 500 index fund. (I suggest Vanguard's.) I believe the trust's long-term results from this policy will be superior to those attained by most investors – whether pension funds, institutions or individuals – who employ high-fee managers."

</comment><comment><USER13> Advice like just buy Vanguard or US treasuries is not really all that great of advice.

One of the biggest mistakes people make in investing is country concentration. Telling people to "dump 100%" into Vanguards S&P 500 is just, well I'll use misguided but I should use stronger language.

Telling someone to invest just in the US equity market if you live and work in the US there is just an broader way of telling someone to invest everything in the company they work for.

You still have risk like 2008 where you can have the double whammy of both your company and your investments both getting beat up at the same time.

Everyone should have exposure outside of their own country, especially American's. Or Put another way, if your whole investment portfolio is based in one country that's better than investing in a single company but not too much better in that you're still making the same investment mistake of significant portfolio concentration

<comment><USER14> isn't that the point of having a three headed fund? 50% spy, 25% bonds, 25% international?

<comment><USER13> Not sure what a "three headed fund" is, but the sample you gave would diversify out of the US, assuming the 25% bond fund doesn't just hold US debt.

You really shouldn't care about the number of funds you hold, assuming you don't take it to extreme levels, just that you don't hold only exposure to one country.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I use Betterment. While I agree that for the upside market periods it won't be any better than a Vanguard ETF, but for volatile or downturn periods I was able to save quite a lot on their automated tax loss harvesting feature. Also automatically using slightly different portfolios between regular and Roth accounts to get yet another tax advantage is a nice touch.

</comment><comment><USER16> * Bogleheads investing philosophy -- [http://bogleheads.org](http://bogleheads.org) \-- the single best financial forum on the internet (and praised as such by none other than John Bogle)

* Vanguard index ETFs, mostly.

* International investing in proportion to market capitalization -- i.e. the market portfolio. The truly passive choice.

* Buy and hold, low-cost tax-efficient strategy.

As for where my ETFs are actually located: Merrill Edge. They have commission- free trades on all ETFs/equity with a sufficient balance. And the credit card rewards with Bank of America are tough to beat.

<comment><USER17> > Vanguard index ETFs, mostly.

Is it safe to have most of your money in funds handled by one company? Are there scenarios that are at least remotely plausible where one could lose most of one's money in a Vanguard index fund where a similar fund at, say, Fidelity would be fine, or vice versa?

<comment><USER16> That is safe to say.

Such a scenario is not remotely plausible, in my opinion. The commonly claimed scenario is fraud at Vanguard, but I'm highly skeptical that this is possible given that Vanguard doesn't hold the stocks in the funds; they are held in trust at (last time I checked) JP Morgan.

The bigger concern is massive sustained outflows (for some reason) from Vanguard, triggering capital gains distributions which would hurt me tax-wise. I have thought about switching to pure ETFs rather than the dual share structure that Vanguard has with their mutual funds, for this reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18>
      house       8.1%
      US stocks   36.6%
      Intl stocks 12.8%
      bonds	      16.0%
      real estate 4.6%
      P2P lending 3.5%
      vc          6.4%
      college 529 6.7%
      cash        5.4%

</comment><comment><USER19> Passive equity ETFs across all major regions, weighted by contribution to world GDP. A minor portion in various cryptocurrencies, so I can do some active 'trading' (really just losing money), but on a smaller scale, without getting anywhere near the ETFs (studies found that people who buy ETFs often fare poorly _in practice_ because they start to actively trade them).

</comment><comment><USER20> I max out my 401k, and then once I have over $X in my bank account I transfer more into my Vanguard account, buying enough to rebalance based on my asset allocation spreadsheet (US Stock, International Stock, US Bond).

I limit myself to investing a max of 10% in individual stocks.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm a federal employee so I put it into the Thrift Savings Plan (think 401k). The tax advantages are huge.

Taxes, taxes. Taxes will eat you alive. Find the best tax reduction vehicle you can, and then get into it and keep your costs low.

After all, if you had to read something on /r/personalfinance, then "Actively searching for stock on the rise/timing the market?" is not something you have the expertise to do; "Real estate purchasing then renting those out?" is not something you have the passion or expertise to do. As for wealthfront/betterment, I have no idea what those are, but if you have a tax advantaged vehicle available like IRA or 401k, use that first. Taxes taxes taxes.

<comment><USER7> What vehicle you use and what you invest it in are different questions. You could put your whole 401k in JNUG (a 3x-leveraged gold miners ETF that will regularly have 20% up/down days).

So 401k is very good advice, but then you have to determine what your 401k is invested in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22>
      Vanguard index funds & Berkshire Hathaway
      LP real estate investing
      AngelList and VC

If you are new I'd recommend Arcten's Three-fund approach and don't forget to rebalance annually.

</comment><comment><USER23> I suggest you do some reading before getting started with investing for retirement.

Bogleheads wiki and forum has good information and knowledgeable forum participants. [https://www.bogleheads.org](https://www.bogleheads.org) [https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Main_Page](https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Main_Page)

In addition, following books will give you good fundamental understanding of why and what.

Your Money or Your Life, Vicki Robbins ...

Millionaire Next Door, Thomas Stanley

A Random Walk Down Wall Street, Burton Malkiel

</comment><comment><USER24> How you invest depends on many factors: e.g. your age, your family status, income, locale, tolerance for risk, and above all your investment goals.

I live in Vancouver, so real estate investment would be crazy for me. Since I don't like to dedicate time and energy to investing money, I'm just going with broad ETFs. More info: [http://www.pesfandiar.com/blog/2015/05/01/how-i- invest-my-sa...](http://www.pesfandiar.com/blog/2015/05/01/how-i-invest-my- savings)

</comment><comment><USER25> Vanguard.

Whatever the question is, the answer is vanguard, as long as you are American.

</comment><comment><USER26> To be honest, insider trading.

</comment><comment><USER27> Because I don't have serious money to invest, I invest in building my network, "buying" time and then... relaxing.

</comment><comment><USER28> I worry about passive investing. Does it turn into winner take all?

If most everyone puts there money in a index tracker it would go up or down based on contribution and withdraw rates versus actual results of the market.

So, while there is more contributing than withdrawing it continues to go up which would attract more money to it.

<comment><USER29> Index funds are therefore the next bubble?

<comment><USER28> Assumptions:

* index funds are larger and larger share of investing

* Median Baby boomer about 63

* 1/2 Americans in stock market

* In 2017, over 62 million Americans receive SS benefits

* US Adult Population 247,773,709 = 123M in stock market

* Only 25 M generation X

* Millennials don't invest in stocks [http://www.businessinsider.com/why-so-few-millennials-invest...](http://www.businessinsider.com/why-so-few-millennials-invest-in-the-stock-market-2016-7)

Conclusion Drain of stock market as sellers begin to out number buyers

<comment><USER30> This ignores just how skewed towards the rich stock ownership is. The liquidation of stocks owned by the middle class will not move the needles much. And the very rich don't need to liquidate their stocks to maintain their lifestyle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Just a piece of advice here. Buying stocks on the rise is no better than momentum chasing in stocks and you end up with stocks which are not worth it. It is advisable to find good businesses to invest in if you have time and inclination to do so. If not passive index investing is great.

<comment><USER32> Conversely.. I wait for a wait for a stock to rise - it's another signal that others have come to the same conclusion, and I'm ok with leaving some money on the table as a payment for that information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> In my USA job's 401K, I pick the closest thing to low fee index fund that captures tracks the stock market. In my personal retirement, I use Wealthfront. I do not like actively investing, and so these approaches work well for me.

<comment><USER34> is maxing 401k for someone who won't stay in the US longer than 4 years wise or dumb?

<comment><USER33> Does your employer offer free matching? If yes, you're turning down free money if you don't make contributions. Also, might be worth looking into rolling 401K over into your home country's equivalent, which may or may not be something you can do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> There is no investment. There is only speculation!

Question should be how do you speculate with your money?

\- stocks \- Real estate \- bonds

I wonder how different these answers are from the answers Back in 2007?

We are almost 10 years into this bull run. Nothing lasts forever...

</comment><comment><USER36> I go for bluechips in sectors I understand. Yields 6-7% YOY

</comment><comment><USER37> Index funds.

</comment><comment><USER38> [https://intelligent.schwab.com/](https://intelligent.schwab.com/)

The best robo offering available atm imo.

<comment><USER39> or just invest in Schwab Target Index Funds which acomplish the same thing at 0.13%, without the overly complex "customized for you" coat of paint, and have only $100 minimum.

[https://www.schwabfunds.com/secure/file/P-9430864](https://www.schwabfunds.com/secure/file/P-9430864)

Buy SWXKX. Done.

<comment><USER40> They've lowered the ER on their target retirement mutual funds to 0.08%, SWYNX would be the equivalent.

<comment><USER39> thats an institutional share. requires employer funded account or 10 million investment. said rate you cite is laid out in the link I provided.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Vanguard and the non-market etf ~ Berkshire Hathaway.

</comment><comment><USER42> Does anybody know the equivalent to Vanguard but for Europe (not UK)? Or, can I buy Vanguard from Europe?

<comment><USER43> You can. Some mutual funds are available depending on countries.

But in any case you can just buy the ETFs, either in the US stock exchanges (same as you would buy your FB or AAPL shares), or they also have some UCITS version trading in european stock markets.

The UCITS version may have some advantages depending on your country of residence (since they are EU based, and follow EU mutual fund regulations). There are also some downsides (e.g. you might be losing a bit of US tax that might be recovered otherwise depending on dual taxation treaty). Also US stock would be subjected to potential estate tax in case of death (detail will also depend on dual taxation treaty).

Overall the largest difference between the various options is going to be tax, and since it can be significant, it is worth spending some time.

As to the original question, there are also a lot of other similar ETF to the Vanguard ones (e.g. from BlackRock/iShares/UBS/etc.). The fees will be different, but as mentioned before, the tax implication might make a bigger difference.

(you can research the ETFs on sites like justetf.com)

Edit: and depending on your country, some special retirement account might have much much better tax treatment, compared to simple ETFs, also worth researching.

<comment><USER42> Thank you very much for your answer.

I'm more inclined to index funds than to ETFs, though. What you have said about ETFs also apply to their index funds?

<comment><USER43> In case there is a misunderstanding: There are a lot of ETFs that are exactly the same as another mutual fund, especially among index funds.

The only difference is that one is traded in an exchange, while for the other you buy shares from the fund provider, other than that they behave the same.

(I would assume that in Europe, there is a lot less access to mutual index funds, than to index ETFs)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Main portfolio:

70% - VTSAX (total US stocks)

20% - VTIAX (total international stocks)

10% - VBTLX (bonds)

Taxable:

Wealthfront

</comment><comment><USER45> I buy twinkies and freeze them, just in case they go bankrupt again, laugh now.

</comment><comment><USER46> RSP Guggenheim S&P 500 Equal Weight ETF

</comment><comment><USER47> Stocks, XIV, selling covered calls

</comment><comment><USER48> TheBaseCode.com

</comment><comment><USER3> Everyone is going to have their own opinion and 2 cents about what you should do, so I'll add mine to the mix.

First of all, most importantly, you'll never find a better investment than yourself, up to a point. Whether it's education, new skillsets, saving time, starting a new business, etc, you're likely the best investment vehicle you have. Don't read this too literally, it's not a science, but I'd add it to your thinking. Ask yourself regularly how you can invest in yourself and grow your earnings.

Second, related to the above, I think it makes sense to spend a bit of time optimizing and automating your finances (I'm a fan of "I Will Teach You to Be Rich" by Ramit Sethi, despite the scammy title), but from then on, spend 20% of your energy on keeping expenses low, and 80% on growing your income. You can only cut expenses so far, but income is essentially unbounded.

Third, I would spend a lot of time educating yourself on finance and investing. As has already been mentioned here, the /r/financialindependence subreddit and the Bogleheads forums are both great places to go from here. Read lots of books (both of those places will have recommendations), blogs, listen to podcasts, etc.

Fourth, in terms of the stock / bond market, I'd recommend just doing index funds with Vanguard. I could go on and on about the reasons, but basically it comes down to it likely being the best way for you to get the highest returns in the public markets. You can't beat the markets in the long run, and almost all the non-index-funds out there can't either. Vanguard popularized index funds, they're owned by their investors, and they have the lowest cost funds available.

Fifth, if you're likely to get overwhelmed by options, just do a lifecycle fund to start with. It'll handle all your asset allocation and rebalancing for whatever your time horizon is. If you're _really_ likely to get bogged down, consider Betterment or Wealthfront. You'll pay a bit more in fees, but in return for convenience and a fancy dashboard that makes you feel good :) Better than never getting started!

Sixth, I'm bullish on real estate in good cities with long-term growth, but I'd recommend you have a decent pile of cash, start slow, and invest for cashflow. Keep in mind that buying investment real estate is just buying a small business. It just so happens that for a bunch of reasons, you can borrow 75% of the purchase at pretty favorable rates, and it's lower risk than buying many other types of businesses. It is _not_ passive :) Biggerpockets.com is a great community for learning more about real estate investment.

Seventh, going back to the first point, beyond public stocks / bond and real estate, you could also look to invest in private companies, either your own, as an angel investor, etc. There are some crowdfunding sites that have popped up recently for doing angel investing in startups, investing in real estate, etc. You can also look at things like Prosper or LendingClub, where you're lending money on a marketplace to other individuals. Lots of options.

My advice would be to focus your energy on the big three that people have almost _always_ used to build significant wealth: public stocks, real estate investments, and your own business. The others are exciting and interesting and can work, but generally carry a lot more risk.

My own (unscientific) approach is to keep them all below 10% of my networth. Same with picking individual stocks, if you're into that.

Hope that's helpful!

</comment><comment><USER49> 1\. Maxing my 401K

2\. Buying a home

3\. Dumping everything else in index funds

<comment><USER50> Not only do I share the same investment strategy, but my phone is named the same as your HN handle.

<comment><USER49> Hahaha awesome!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> In my hobbies

</comment><comment><USER52> buy bitcoins

that is all

<comment><USER53> That is _terrible_ advice.

"Divide your fortune into seven, or even to eight, for you do not know what misfortune may occur on the earth." \- Ecclesiastes 11:2

<comment><USER54> Not worse advice than buying index funds which is strongly correlated to the globally connected over-leveraged bond market.

I'm not against diversification, but cryotocurrencies are a good non- correlating asset class

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Bet on your beliefs, you either get wiser or richer.

I personally have

\- Precious metals (physical / stored / miners)

\- defense values (stocks)

\- crypto currencies

\- cash

Guess I'm not an optimist</comment>


Read 2 Me - <AUTHOR> https://read2me.online/ <comment><AUTHOR> Instantly convert articles from your favorite websites (Medium, New York Times, anything that's in English) into podcasts.

My first web app :P</comment>


28 Hour Day - <AUTHOR> http://xkcd.com/320/ <comment><USER2> Nice idea. But the mom things was a little over the top.</comment>


Millennials Tried to Kill the American Mall, but Gen Z Might Save It - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-25/are-u-s-malls-dead-not-if-gen-z-keeps-shopping-the-way-they-do <comment><USER2> I might be reaching here, but it's interesting that the largely Baby Boomer owners of physical retail use language like "millennials _killed_ the mall".

Almost as if their business model is entitled to succeed forever, and millennials are these antagonists hell-bent on destroying it, when in reality they're simply choosing the commerce experience most convenient.

It just continues the narrative that the Boomer generation only loves the free market when it benefits them. I wonder if the silent generation wrote articles claiming the baby boomers are __killing __public transit by preferring cars /highways.

<comment><USER3> Why are you so offended by the use of the word kill? Where does that imply entitlement or the assignation of moral blame? Millenials stopped going to malls, ergo millenials killed the mall. That's just a neutral statement of fact.

<comment><USER4> > Millenials stopped going to malls, ergo millenials killed the mall. That's > just a neutral statement of fact.

It's not neutral at all. I could just as easily say "Boomer-age owners of retail failed to adapt to changing tastes, ergo boomer-age owners of retail killed the mall." Totally different implications based on wording.

<comment><USER5> I guess Millennials killed every single thing that they stopped using.

Public libraries were _killed off by millennials_.

Video killed the Radio star. That I can undestand. But saying consumers killed the radio by choosing video? What a weird word choice.

<comment><USER3> That's a pretty standard figure of speech. Why do you think it's a weird word choice?

<comment><USER6> > That's a pretty standard figure of speech.

You're implying a consensus that the downvotes readily disprove.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Once more unto the breach, dear millennials, once more. This coming Generation would sweep away our victory, should we relent in commercial battle.

In your shopping bags, take only free samples. The blood of mall retailers is necessary to refresh the gears of war.

What baby boomers boomed, we will destroy. The way of the millennial is economic savagery.

As long as there is one American Mall left standing, there can be no mercy, no patronage to the culture that we inherited.

</comment><comment><USER8> So they survey 13-19 years olds, who mostly don't have credit cards, and find that they prefer shopping in physical stores. Does anyone expect that to continue once they no longer need to ask their parents' permission to shop online?

<comment><USER9> Plenty of 13 to 19-year-olds have credit cards. I got my first credit card when I was 17 (I applied the week after I got my Social Security number [they weren't assigned at birth back then]).

I would not be surprised if every teen-ager on my block had either their own card, or one that draws on their parent's account in their name. I know the parents at work talk about re-loading their kids' pre-paid cards.

<comment><USER10> A tiny minority of teenagers have credit cards. Like maybe 10%.

<comment><USER11> Most would have a debit card, though, which is not notably different in terms of ability to purchase things online.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Millennial here. I didn't try to kill the American Mall. This article has such a garbage headline.

I'm in my adult life now and don't have a lot of free time. The last time I went into a mall (6 months ago?), I went to three different stores to buy a pair of training shoes. The stores were kind of empty, yet, the staff couldn't care to help me at all.

Between the time driving to and from and walking into each of these stores, waiting for someone to help me, only to learn they don't have my size in what I want, I wasted at least 2 hours.

I didn't kill any mall. If these stores provided a better experience and actually tried to be competitive the slightest, it would be worth my while.

Instead, these places offer a third rate experience. You don't even try to be competitive and then you blame your failure on a whole generation of people. If anything, you've put the nail in your own coffin. I'll buy from Adidas directly or use Amazon.

<comment><USER13> An individual millennial != millenials. One is a irrelevent single data point from which no genratiles may be stated. The other, an aggregate providing probalities of traits. And thus basis for generalities.

<comment><USER14> The key word is "tried". No one, alone or in a group, is "trying" to "kill" the American Mall.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It doesn't seem that shocking to me that teenagers and young adults spend more time in shopping malls than people who are in there 20s and 30s.

<comment><USER16> Millennial headlines are somewhere near Florida Man headlines. Also wait till Gen Z is knee deep in debt for the reversal headline.

<comment><USER17> Gen Alpha will have fixed the News media by then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What are they going to blame millennials on next? We just go and kill everything!

I live in a sales tax free state (New Hampshire) and I happen to be right on the border with Massachusetts which has a sales tax. I can tell you on any given weekend the mall is PACKED with millennials! Not even just on holiday season.

Now that I have a kid I find myself going every weekend since my 3 year old loves the indoor playground area and walking around all the stores.

Anecdotally, I suspect people dislike of malls will change quickly once online stores are forced to start collecting sales tax in non-nexus locations. I don't agree with it (it's cross border commerce and states shouldn't be able to force businesses to remit tax to them if I don't live there) but it's coming.

Also, truth be told the millennial group is far too large. I am an old millennial and I share very little in common with the younger millennials.

Edit: also, I agree with some of the other commenters. Maybe it is different now but I couldn't get a credit card until I turned 18 and even then I had to have my parent co-sign. Though debit cards are easier to get, I think.

Edit 2: Fixed an ambiguous sentence where I was accidentally switching from a consumer voice to a business voice.

<comment><USER19> I am in IL. I had to pay taxes on online purchases during tax filing.

<comment><USER18> As you should but it is a bit of an honor system and a lot of people don't even know you are supposed to do it. I see tons of Massachusetts plates at the mall and I guarantee you most of them won't be writing a check to the MA Department of Revenue. The process of having the seller withhold the tax is much more effective in getting people to actually pay and that is the system a lot of states that rely on sales tax are pushing for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Didn't the mall owners kill them? "Going to the mall" was a thing for Gen X; then younger people were explicitly unwelcome... Did anybody think kicking the customers out of your store was a good marketing strategy?

<comment><USER9> Store owners felt the pressure from online retailers and optimized the shopping experience.

The numbers showed that Gen-X bought stuff, while millennials just hung out, looked at merchandise in the stores, and then bought online.

The short-term result was to try to keep sales to Gen-X and above from eroding. The long-term result was that millennials thought malls were boring and dumb.

But Wall Street doesn't care about long-term results, and backs whatever pony wins the race to the next quarter.

<comment><USER21> Malls have been pretty lame for me since mall bookstores stopped being a thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If by "millennials" you mean "Amazon", then sure.

Most millennials probably grew up in malls and would prefer they survived if given a choice, but it's hard to support them when they're filled with overpriced clothing stores. Maybe it's just nostalgia clouding my judgement, but I remember malls having a lot more variety in the '90s.

</comment><comment><USER9> _three-quarters of them said going to a brick-and-mortar store was a better experience than online_

Considering the current state of online shopping, I'm not surprised.

What was supposed to be a golden age of universal consumer choice has become an AI-optimized circus of hucksters and flying monkey poo.

I used to buy almost everything online, including groceries. This year, I can count on one hand the number of online purchases I've made. And with the exception of two from Amazon, they've all been from mom-and-pop brick-and- mortar stores.

[Edit: Corrected spelling of "monkey poo."]

</comment><comment><USER23> Let's stop with the stupid labels already.

</comment><comment><USER24> AKA: "Mall owners rested on their laurels while online shopping arrived. Those that didn't go bankrupt now realize they need to improve"

<comment><USER25> How do you improve when you don't have much room for stock? Mall bookstores were usually extremely constrained for space. There was no way they could compete with an online bookshop that has a whole warehouse full of books, and which can deliver the product straight to do your door in a couple of days. The same could be said for mall CD or DVD shops, with the added pressure that physical media sales dropped drastically as everyone switched to buying online, streaming or YouTube.

<comment><USER26> I dont need access to every book. I want to know what the best books are. Amazon initially did great at this. But now there is so much crap it is becoming difficult to tell what is good.

If a store can actually develop expertise in its inventory and make suggestions that are actually good, and create a great experience around its merchandise then they can thrive.

I doubt most will be able to execute on this.

<comment><USER25> > I dont need access to every book. I want to know what the best books are.

Reading is such a personal thing that the "best books" for you are probably not the best books for other people. When tastes are so disparate, when the cultural space has fragmented so greatly, then a shop cannot succeed by stocking just a certain set of books. They need an ability to sell to everyone of whatever taste, and online bookshops have an advantage there that malls don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> _" Around 95 percent of them visited a physical shopping center in a three- month period in 2018, as opposed to just 75 percent of millennials and 58 percent of Gen X, according to an International Council of Shopping Centers study."_

I don't see what's specific to Millenials here. In 2018, most millennials finally have jobs, after completing their ten-year-degrees in bozonomics. Same for the X'ers, except a larger part of them has given up on leaving their homes at this point. Only the Generation Z still has time to waste at the mall. That doesn't mean they're _buying_ much, they're mostly teenagers. Hence, the mall remains doomed.

</comment><comment><USER28> You can tell from what perspective this article is written, and who the audience is: boomer retail investors and retail industry people.

I'd love to see an article about what millennials actually wanted and why the mall didn't address it.

</comment><comment><USER29> If Amazon reviews and search gets any more useless, I might join them.

</comment><comment><USER30> You can probably guess who in the comments is a millennial by the level of bitching about sensitivity and labels.

Both of my kids are teenagers. They and most of their peers see the hyper sensitivity in millennials as something strangely fascinating.</comment>