Nassim Taleb, Absorbent Barriers and House Money - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/ml-everything/nassim-taleb-absorbent-barriers-and-house-money-8b21cff2e338 <comment><USER2> Wow, the work he did on simulating his payout is almost exactly what I used to have people do as part of our interviewing.

IMHO It was one of the most telling tests I could give a potential trader, not necessarily for quants as this should be considered the quant equivalent of fizzbuzz.

Victor Haghani of Long Term Capital Mangement fame, yep those guys, did a similar experiment with bet sizing and betting on a loaded coin and sadly even people who should have known better, math majors, didn't fare very well in his experiment.

[https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2856963](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2856963)

<comment><USER3> Taleb has a lot of disdain for the LTCM guys:

"Mr Taleb argues convincingly that the spectacular collapse in 1998 of Long- Term Capital Management was caused by the inability of the hedge fund's managers to see a world that lay outside their flawed models. And yet those models are still widely used today."

"By many's reckoning, LTCM both defined and emboldened Nassim Taleb. The episode was a microcosm of everything he eventually stood for and against. His resentment against economists grew. He became convinced that they totally do not understand risk. He saw the fragility of the financial system and how dependent the entire ecosystem is on one another. He became disgusted when LTCM fund managers, despite the damage they have done, walked away from the fiasco relatively unscathed and went on to start more funds. He became the biggest advocate of having Skin in the Game."

<comment><USER4> Disdain for LTCM isn't exactly an iconoclastic, or even interesting, position to take. They're among the worst trading catastrophes in history.

A good book has been written about LTCM, but it's not Taleb's; it's Lowenstein's _When Genius Failed_.

<comment><USER5> _> Disdain for LTCM isn't exactly an iconoclastic, or even interesting, position to take._

How many people took that position before it blew up?

<comment><USER4> Famously, Taleb is supposed to have predicted LTCM. I've read FBR and Swan, but not recently, and took a couple minutes to try to track down the details of this prediction, with little luck. I found numerous references to his having predicted the demise of hedge funds "like" LTCM (my clock will also strike 4:23 at least twice in the next 24 hours). Does anyone have a good cite for this?

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure he called them out by name. If you read `Against VAR` [1] from 1997 (LTCM blew up in 1998) you see basically all the ideas of The Black Swan / Fooled By Randomness. LTCM was doing all the things that he says are risky. The guy who wrote "In Defense of VAR" on that same page subsequently wrote "Risk Management Lessons from Long-Term Capital Management"[2]. Also in Taleb's 1997 book "Dynamic Hedging", chapter 9 "Vega and the Volatility Surface" talks about liquidity as one of the pre-eminent risks of an option book (as opposed to individual option positions).

[1] [http://www.derivativesstrategy.com/magazine/archive/1997/049...](http://www.derivativesstrategy.com/magazine/archive/1997/0497fea2.asp)

[2] [https://merage.uci.edu/~jorion/papers/ltcm.pdf](https://merage.uci.edu/~jorion/papers/ltcm.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What Taleb shows is that people should become more willing to bet as they move away from the "absorbing barrier" of having so little money that they have to quit the game. But he phrases this in terms of justifying the fact that people are more willing to bet with "house money" (money that they have already won) than their own. This is clearly wrong because the starting point is always higher than the absorbing barrier.

I think Taleb is a bit too eager to criticise others, even when his mathematics isn't actually applicable to the situation.

<comment><USER8> "A bit too eager to criticize others" is a understatement. Taleb has a lot of interesting things to say, and some of them are even reasonably novel. Unfortunately his general "everybody but me is stupid" approach makes his message much less useful and accessible than it otherwise would be. This is a good example of that problem.

I find this really unfortunate, because Taleb's message about systems behavior being dominated by tail behavior, and about the risks systems not being designed to tolerate that behavior, are very interesting and broadly applicable. Unfortunately, the medium makes the message less effective.

I often think of Taleb as a sort of counter-example when thinking about how to teach and communicate difficult concepts.

<comment><USER9> Contrariwise, many people find his communication style refreshing and entertaining with his book sales being a solid exhibit in favor of that.

Also, most people are stupid compared to Mr. Taleb, that's just a simple function of his observably high intelligence. That said, I've never seen him treat someone as stupid who doesn't first act stupid, and he's demonstrably willing to engage with people publicly on fair terms.

It's a good test though: do personalities like Taleb and Dijkstra entertain you or do they offend you? Introspecting on why they do or don't is a great opportunity for personal growth.

<comment><USER10> I suspect that you may not be aware of this, so I'm commenting (partially with the hope that someone will figure out a nicer, more effective way to say this): You come across as condescending in a similarly offputting way to Taleb himself.

<comment><USER9> I do take my own advice about introspection and thank you for your concern.

Much like Mr. Taleb, I just don't see it as a problem. If my personality allows me to appreciate a communication style others have trouble with, without restricting me from appreciating other communications styles that they do not, then I have access to a broader and more diverse set of knowledge and interactions. I find the trade-off acceptable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The interesting thing I got out of this analysis is that, if you have a slight edge of 1%, having the constant percentage betting strategy is much better, if you have a large (100,000) number of bets. Having a log scale would be nice to see approximately where the two strategies returns diverge.

This got me thinking. One thing that is not discussed is that in real life trading one does not know what percentage advantage one has. Many successful traders rely on subconscious processes for part of their trading strategy that they have no way of examining, but seems to work(sometimes). If the only way to find out what your expected return is(your edge), is to bet and see what happens (maybe this is really the reason one needs "skin in the game") then ramping up your betting when you are winning is a really good idea. When you are losing money it is likely your expected return is negative and you should start scaling back your bets until you find an edge again.

It would be interesting to run this code with variable rates of return over time, including negative ones, where one scales the bet size not on your net capital but on (the percentage win on the last n bets)*(capital).

I'm sure this is all in some book written in the 18th century as people have been trading in markets for a long time.

<comment><USER12> Don't know about 18th century, but some what similar strategy is already mentioned by Taleb in the interview: Kelly Criterion.

<comment><USER11> I thought what I was saying was quite a bit different. If one is using the Kelly Criterion, one needs to know what the probability of winning and odds paid for a win. Traders generally don't know these at all and only can find them out by making the trade and seeing what happens.

Of course when the Kelly Criterion is known and constant, one can make the optimal bets and get rich, but those situations don't exist in real life (unless there is some kind of monopoly or external force being used to make people take the other (loosing side) of the bet). The iterative thinking of the the Kelly Criterion must be part of a traders mindset, but markets never understood well enough to where this formula can be strictly applied.

A bit strange to see Taleb talk about a casino situation to explain his thinking. Elsewhere he mocks such "casino odds" view of the world as very unrealistic an bemoans that such a view will cause one grief if you use those ideas with "skin in the game".

ps. I've only read "Anti-Fragile" and some of his blog essays.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The author quotes Taleb:

 _...Unless you engage in strategies designed by traders and rediscovered by every single surviving trader, very similar to what we call, something called the Kelly Criterion, which is to play with the house money. ..._

And later restates:

 _What Taleb said is we should be more aggressive with the house money._

AFAICT, the Kelly Criterion has nothing to do with playing with house money. Instead, Kelly tells you _how much_ of your wallet to wager given the payout and probability of winning. The source of the money you stake is irrelevant. Dice don't care whether your wager came from the house or your 401k.

For example, in a coin toss biased 60% to heads with a 2x payout for win, you should bet 20% of your wallet on heads and keep doing that no matter which way the flips go (2p - 1 = 2*0.6 - 1 = 0.2). If p ≤ 0.5, don't bet.

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

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4yzXbdq2DA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4yzXbdq2DA)

Playing this strategy optimizes your return and ensures you can never go bust, thereby missing out on the guaranteed payout over enough bets.

<comment><USER14> Is he actually arguing that "house money" is different from "your money" or is he just reusing existing terminology? IIRC, the idea of "house money" was invented by earlier researchers who tried to explain why people would bet more after winning. Obviously "keeping score of your wealth" explains the effect just as well as "playing with house money".

<comment><USER13> I'm using the definition of house in wide use: the profits you make on gambling or a trade. See:

[https://www.quora.com/What-does-Im-playing-with-house- money-...](https://www.quora.com/What-does-Im-playing-with-house-money-mean)

The idea that one should factor the origin of the money put into a bet is ridiculous. It's your money either way.

> IIRC, the idea of "house money" was invented by earlier researchers who > tried to explain why people would bet more after winning.

These guys, I think:

[https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1424076](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1424076)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I see too many of these. Write code to simulate something and obtain an inconclusive version of a result you can simply derive and prove definitively using statistics.

</comment><comment><USER16> I believe the response to this is that the actual increased willingness to bet is way higher than could possibly be justified by the paltry amounts won.

If e.g. your net worth is 10k, you win 500, and suddenly you're twice as willing to bet 500, something is off.

</comment><comment><USER17> This idea has a lot of legs if you examine it. One of the more interesting points I've heard from Jordan Peterson in one of his criticisms of postmodernism is this: Postmodernism observes that after centuries of trying, we don't seem to have an objective standard for ethics or philosophy (or at least one that we can all agree on). Postmodernism, to the extent that one can refer to the whole movement in a short sentence, then tends to assume that therefore there are no distinctions between moral frames or perspectives, and from there proceeds to go in a different direction and analyzes everything simply in terms of power, because they decided that's the only thing that matters since moralities and philosophies otherwise have no meaning.

Don't get too tied up in the details of that summary; I'm well aware of just how brutal that summary is. But the details of the summary aren't what's important; what's important is the observation that there are absorbent barriers in philosophy and especially morality. You can't pursue a morality that results in your death, especially if it results in a quick death. There's some others too, but that's biggest and the most obvious. Civilizational death is another one; more abstract, but also a rich vein of observations.

For example, there's a lot more people living people advocating for humanity to be killed off for the planet than dead people advocating for humanity to be killed off for the planet's sake. It is impossible for the living to observe any other outcome.

This does not lead us via simple, universally-agreeable philosophical steps to a universally-agreed upon morality. But it _does_ create distinctions between different moralities and philosophies, and once you admit that into the world, it once again becomes valid to study different philosophies and moralities again without having to accept the postmodernistic "throw your hands in the air and give up ever being able to determine anything, and then go study something else instead". It's still nowhere near a mathematically rigorous world by any means, but it's no longer hopeless.

(Bonus observation 1: No, this is not simply utilitarianism. Consider utilitarianism as a spectrum of "how concerned am I about 'utility'". Utilitarianism is the idea that we should be very far to the side of considering that, if not considering it solely; on a spectrum from 0 to 1, utilitarianism is that we should be close to or on 1. This observation is the complementary observation that we can _not_ be close to or on 0. But we might still be on, say, 0.5, which is not "utilitarianism" but may be enough to create philosophies that still keep us alive. This observation also does not depend on "valuing" life over death, because it is on a far more primal and brutal level than that. It is the factual observation that if you hit one of these absorbing barriers you are no longer a participant in philosophy, not a normative statement about whether that is or is not a good thing.)

(Bonus observation 2: This is the beginning of the path, not the end.)

<comment><USER18> > postmodernistic "throw your hands in the air and give up ever being able to > determine anything, and then go study something else instead"

You're arguing against a strawman understanding of postmodern ethics

<comment><USER17> Your criticism would sting more if I hadn't labeled it as such.

If you'd like another example of an "absorbing barrier", an HN comment has a limit on how long it is permitted to be. Therefore, all comments that would be longer than that are comments that can not be made. It is probably not unreasonable to state that even a slightly adequate summary of an entire philosophy would not fit within that limit. Therefore, no Hacker News comment can contain a true summary of an entire philosophy. Therefore it is not reasonable to expect a Hacker News comment to contain an accurate summary of an entire philosophy.

Besides, there's another "absorbing barrier" in that I'm not interested in writing that long of a summary anyhow, when they already exist.

Finally, postmodernism's very nature allows it to be a bit of a moving target, where any time someone makes any criticism of it a postmodernist can say with a straight face that that is not what postmodernism is, and no matter what you point at, nope, that's not where postmodernism is. I reject that. What I said may not be the totality of postmodernism, but it is accurate, in that there are definitely postmodernists who operate under the beliefs I described, and the existence of even a branch of postmodernism that believes what I said is sufficient for the point to be an interesting and valid criticism of those beliefs. Personally it is my considered opinion that this is a foundational belief of the entire philosophy and it falls apart entirely if it is destroyed, and there's just varying levels of how obfuscated they manage to make the fact that this is a foundational belief of theirs, but your mileage may vary.

<comment><USER19> What postmodernist books have you read?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> >>So, if you look at the world as repetition of bets, under condition of survival, then mental accounting is not only not irrational but is necessary. Any other strategy would be effectively irrational.

No, it's still irrational and it doesn't matter if there is repetition of bets or just one available. Depending on your total net worth, living conditions and values you have there are good bets and bad bets. A good bet is a bet which maximizes expected utility of your money. It changes depending on your net worth of course. It doesn't matter if you have just won or lost (this is mental accounting) it matters what's your total net worth is at given time.

>>Actually, what I'm saying is even stronger. I am saying that even if you have the edge, in the presence of the probability of ruin, you will be ruined. Even if you had the edge … If you play long enough.

He wouldn't pass 1st year college math course with that one.

>>Unless you engage in strategies designed by traders and rediscovered by every single surviving trader, very similar to what we call, something called the Kelly Criterion, which is to play with the house money

He doesn't grok what Kelly Criterion is either. Kelly Criterion determines a size of the bet which maximizes utility of money modeled as a logarithmic funciton. That's it. It doesn't matter if there is string of bets available or just one bet. If you have just won or lost doesn't matter either (only your total net worth at given point).

>>And this is called, playing with the market money or playing with the house money.

It's called being confused about basic math and economic concepts and then criticizing people who worked on those.

Typical Taleb: confused, wrong, having no new insights to offer but making up for those with new terms (absorbent barriers, really?) and a lot of words.

<comment><USER21> >> Actually, what I'm saying is even stronger. I am saying that even if you have the edge, in the presence of the probability of ruin, you will be ruined. Even if you had the edge … If you play long enough.

> He wouldn't pass 1st year college math course with that one.

Seems pretty straightforward to me. Let's say you play a game with an edge where you win 2x your money 99% of the time. But if you lose once, you lose all your money (1% risk of ruin). If you play this game 70 times, you are very likely to end up ruined.

It's a lot like smoking. One cigarette won't kill you, but add up the probability cigarette after cigarette, pack after pack, year after year and the probability starts to skyrocket.

<comment><USER20> >>Seems pretty straightforward to me. Let's say you play a game with an edge where you win 2x your money 99% of the time. But if you lose once, you lose all your money (1% risk of ruin). If you play this game 70 times, you are very likely to end up ruined

No one sane plays a game like that with all their money on the line. This is not because there are future bets available but simply expected utility of such a bet is negative. If you play for example with constant sizing your risk of ruin is higher than 0 but lower than 1. It's very often very close to 0.

>>It's a lot like smoking. One cigarette won't kill you, but add up the probability cigarette after cigarette, pack after pack, year after year and the probability starts to skyrocket.

But it's not like that. Risk of ruin doesn't skyrocket even if your plan is to make infinitely many bets. That is unless you do something very silly like double the bet amount every time you win.

<comment><USER21> First of all, some people do play games like that. But put that aside for a moment because it's immaterial. Look at what Taleb is essentially saying: if there is a chance you will be ruined, and you play long enough, you will eventually be ruined. Even if that chance is 1%, probabilities add over time. 1.01 __70 = 2. If the chance of ruin is 1% then after 70 plays the chance of ruin is 100%.

<comment><USER22> What kind of math is that? In your contrived example it should be 1 - .99^70. It's hard not to question your background in probability when you're involving 1.01 and 2..

<comment><USER21> Nice ad hominem attempt, but even though I accidentally switched a minus for a plus, the point the math teaches is the same: risk of ruin accumulates with the number of bets.

For more information check "Risk of Ruin" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_of_ruin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_of_ruin)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why I Like Mercurial More Than Git - <AUTHOR> http://jhw.dreamwidth.org/1868.html <comment><USER2> This article is well written, by someone with experience in both systems, and posits a solution for overcoming what he sees as a deficiency in the 'losing' system. From now on, whenever flamewars break out between zealots (of any technology, not just DVCS), I'm pointing them to this article as an example of informed, civil discussion.</comment>


Excellent notes from Eric Ries talk in Boston by Mark Bao - <AUTHOR> http://journal.markbao.com/2011/01/eric-ries-boston-notes/ There are so many goodies in here. Here is one that nails it: measure two things: value test: does it make value? if yes, does it have an engine of growth that is working?<p>Thanks Mark. I wanted but was too low on the waiting list. <comment><AUTHOR> There are so many goodies in this talk. This one nails it. "measure two things: value test: does it make value? if yes, does it have an engine of growth that is working?"

Thanks Mark for taking excellent notes. I was unable to attend since I was too low on the waiting list.</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone here using Karabiner on macOS to remap keyboard? - <AUTHOR> I found Karabiner tool to be really life changing with how I approach working on macOS now.
I have made every key on my keyboard into a modifier key, to the point that I never even use cmd/opt/ctrl keys any more as I use my `a` key as ctrl key instead or `e` key as cmd.
I wrote about how I use Karabiner in more detail here: https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/macOS/apps/karabiner/karabiner.html
I am curious, if anyone here uses Karabiner tool too in this way? Or if anyone here uses some other keyboard customisation tool. <comment><USER2> I just use it to turn my caps-lock key into an esc since I've been using vim as my go to text editor.</comment>


Filepicker.io JS V1 - Full filesystem API in Javascript - <AUTHOR> https://www.filepicker.io/products/javascript_v1/ <comment><USER2> Being able to write files to a filepicker url - which ends up in a users cloud account - is very powerful stuff. We're using it to automatically sync zip files that take a long time for us to process. Having a very easy to use layer of abstraction for all these cloud APIs is brilliant.

</comment><comment><USER3> This has probably been discussed before, but why the huge gap in price between free and "Pro"? Why not make "Free" a max of 500 uploads/month and a "Starter" tier that costs $10.00/month for 5,000 uploads?

<comment><USER4> My guess is it's more valuable to have the people with 500 < x < 5,000 uploads/month comfortably try it out for free, and possibly upgrade, than debate whether or not it makes sense to spend $10.

<comment><AUTHOR> Accurate. Also, the free plan is very generous at the moment as we want to reward our earliest users. A small tier might make a lot of sense later on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> whoa. you can read and write on their urls? pretty slick as it actually looks like a js file system.

It's super interesting; javascript is okay, but any shortcomings seem to be solved by other people.

Inconsistencies and ease of use- Jquery Filesystem- Filepicker Code organization - Backbone etc.

</comment><comment><USER6> I really wanted to use your service in the past but I couldn't justify paying so much just for image conversion.. I see it now comes as standard! Thank you!

</comment><comment><USER7> From the documentation it appears that you can write to any file if you have filepicker.picked it. Is this true even if the file was outside the browser file system sandbox? For example I select /home/me/myfile.txt ? Assume the file has write permissions for anyone. Can you write directly to myfile.txt? Or is a push to S3 + download involved.

<comment><AUTHOR> There are some files where it is not possible to write back. Local files is a good example of this. We throw a 409 HTTP error for files like that. You can of course write to the s3 copy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Saw that you guys changed your pricing to per file (specifically, it says per FPURL created). Does that mean if I have a user upload a file, and then convert that file by cropping/resizing it, each time I convert it that also counts as a "file" toward my monthly quota? Or are conversions of uploaded files "free"?

<comment><USER9> we don't charge on conversions of uploaded files. Let me know if you have more questions at adass at filepicker.io and I'd be happy to help.

 __ _EDIT_ __Ah. I misunderstood. While we don't charge on conversions, we do create a new filelink for each conversion which is counted under your quota.

If you're on the free plan and think this will hurt you ability to test us out, let me know. If you're on the pro plan and it's hindering your ability to use us, also let us know. We'll work something out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm reading through the docs, but not quite understanding the architecture. Is Amazon S3 specially privileged over the other cloud services, or is it just being used as an example? Do all file requests mediated by the Filepicker.io servers, or can one go straight from browser to 3rd party storage?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi there.

Currently S3 is the only support backend storage. More are on the way. We take requests from customers seriously and so far we've heard rackspace, google, and dropbox. Feel free to send me an email at firstname.lastname@example.com with your preference.

All files are mediated by fp.io. This lets us do interesting thing like implementing tcp/ip on tcp/ip. That is, we chunk up large files into manageable bits, retry, and reassemble on our servers.

</comment></comment><comment> matthew-wegner Any guidance on upgrading to the V1 API? I'd love to use the file extension limits instead of the MIME types (which can't target some files like *.ipa)...

<comment><AUTHOR> Should be pretty straightforward. If it's not, shoot me an email and tell me where I messed up ;D

getFile is now replaced by the more explicit calls: pick and store.

If you're using the widget, data-fp-extension is now available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nice work FP.io team!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. The support of the community is really encouraging and keeps us going. Always be shipping. :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> More great stuff you guys!

</comment><comment><USER13> Where's creat?

<comment><USER14> Being able to create arbitrary files without asking the user gets into some nasty security issues, so we went with "export" instead. Once the user selects where they want to save the file to, you can then perform .read's and .write's on it

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> would this work in node.js?

<comment><AUTHOR> No reason why not. Give it a spin and let us know how it goes. Also happy to help if you run into issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is there any way to block YC posts?</comment>


Ask HN: How Fast Is Swift Compared To Other Languages? - <AUTHOR>

I was wondering if there's a current way to tell (or if it's already been figured) how fast Swift is, to say, C. C is the primary language I'm interested in comparing it to, but it would be nice to have some sort of nice chart with many languages on it, including compiled and scripting languages. <comment><USER2> Language speed is notoriously hard to compare.

Benchmarks often highlight one fast or slow component of a language and don't give a good idea of actual performance.</comment>


The Shrinking World of the Stamp Collector (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://themidtowngazette.com/2012/11/the-shrinking-world-of-the-stamp-collector/ <comment><USER2> A question for anyone who does collecting of stamps/coins/baseball cards, etc.: How do you deal with / feel about the trend of the creators of the collected items making things specifically to be collected?

A while back I picked up a few cheap pre-WW1 German coins -- fun to have a bit of history for not that much money. I haven't pursued coin collecting because I could imagine going down a rabbit hole of spending way too much money on it. But when I see, say, the US Mint releasing special commemorative coins specifically for collectors, my whole interest in the field dries up. It takes a hobby that, in my opinion, would be about discovery and the individual search for something and turns it into merely another consumer product to consume. Same with so many stamps nowadays, being designed and released specifically for collectors to gobble up. And then there's baseball cards and Magic cards and "colllector's editions" of video game boxes that are all designed as these mass-market products that satisfy the collecting urge in a cynical way.

If I did end up really getting into collecting, I'd think it would be more enjoyable to collect interesting rocks found during travel, or historical items like coins/stamps that were all made before the trend of marketing to collectors.

<comment><USER3> I am not a collector myself, but my grandfather was a "stamp collector". I heard all through my childhood about the stamps he had collected since the 1950's, how big and presumably valuable his collection was. He passed almost 20 years ago, and when we finally went through his (admittedly large) collection about 5 years ago, we discovered that everything he collected was the type of stamp you describe - made to be "collectible", not actually particularly interesting or rare. Essentially worthless in terms of monetary value.

However, he enjoyed his lifelong hobby, so, who can say?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The funny thing is that I buy unused stamps off EBay. Some recent deals I got were for about 43 cents on the dollar. But usually they go for 50-60% of face.

Been doing this for the last 15 years with no real change in pricing (which really means a loss every year).

Mostly 30-50 cent stamps (this is Canada). But ranging from 8c to $2.5

I use the smaller ones on regular envelopes. Usually I have some $1 or $2 stamps to make up any balance on packages (or just buy it from the post office).

It's quite a bit of extra profit when I sell stuff.

Though my packages probably look a little... Unabombery.

I'm sure the receivers get a little laugh when their package arrives covered in stamps.

<comment><USER5> haha, I do the exact same thing but only for buying first class stamps.

<comment><USER6> In the UK, this is generally fraudulent – the stamps aren't really unused, they just weren't franked properly, or had the ink removed somehow.

<comment><USER4> Those are available, but the ones I buy are still lick and stick. Sometimes still with the commemorative stuff around the perforations.

<comment><USER7> I think this is where the confusion comes from. lick and stick haven't been generally available to regular buyers for some years now (i.e. go to a store that sells stamps and you get a book of 6 or 12) and the available ones are generally self adhesive. Great fun when my toddler finds a fresh book of "stickers" to stick all over the house... The situation is different with sheets of stamps that the post office has but most of the time they just print a generic postage label with the exact denomination required so it's rare to get issued as a punter a lick and stick. as a result any "unused" UK stamps on ebay are ones that have been successfully lifted from unfranked letters (yes it's possible, despite the tear-holes cut into them)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's an excellent time to collect super rare stamps. Common stamps declined in value and a lot of abandoned collections are sold for next to nothing so it's easier than ever to look for some hidden gems. In 10-20 years, when all the random collections disappear it'll be a super specialized market with high prices again based on scarcity. Some years ago when I was into cars, I could buy any beaten up BMWs for less than €1000 including E24 6-series or E9. Sometimes I'd find a gem in super an excellent condition, and it still followed price trend with an abundance of similar cars for sale. Now with all these cars junked to buy a parts E24 you need to have upwards of €7000.

<comment><USER9> Not sure about that: When the next generation doesn't know what a stamp is, and the fascination, getting a message from someone, getting glimpse into the world, has no basis, who will 'collect'?

I think it's similar to collecting old guitars; people in their financial prime buy a connection to the music and bands of the 60ies and 70ies; their children may have grown up with electronic music and can't relate.

Cars might be relatable, since you can still drive around with it, but the current fashion of having 'vintage' things may be over in 10 years.

<comment><USER10> More like vinyl collections: it becomes valuable only after it goes through a period of being untrendy enough that a lot of the stock gets thrown away.

<comment><USER9> ...before it finally fizzles out, along with the Hipsters that brought it back in the first place!?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A light HN story... Stamp collecting (or was it the Kool-Aid stand) might've been my first "startup", in early grade school. I casually collected stamps myself, and would get duplicates of interesting-looking ones. So I turned my duplicates into stamp collecting starter kits and supplements, packaged in glassine envelopes with handwritten labels and prices, packed them into my little kid's blue suitcase (traveling salesman's case), and brought them to school, to sell to other kids. I don't recall whether I got any sales.

Another stamps-related early sign of disturbing startup inclinations was when, in early grade school, the class would occasionally be put to work, for a fund-raiser, trimming out stamps from boxes of envelopes. I suppose the trimmed parts were going to a company, to soak off, press, and sell. Well, I don't know how I'd even heard this was a thing, but I also trimmed out the addresses from the envelopes, then presented a pile of them to one of the mothers helping out in class, saying we could use them to assemble and sell a mailing list. I might only recall that because one of the mothers told my mom, probably in a "you'll never guess what your child said this time" way, and I guess it was a mix of funny and embarrassing to my mom.

(After that, there were several non-stamp-related, more-credible childhood "startups", until I lucked into a hardcore software engineering job. They used to say that stamp collecting was a great way to get children started learning history, but it got me started learning business.)

<comment><USER12> Great story.

Do you think you'll give up programming for a more sales-oriented gig one day?

<comment><USER11> Thanks. I'm absolutely not a salesperson, nor any kind of CEO material. After I outgrew my childhood innocence sales boldness, I'm clearly better-suited to be a startup technical co-founder/contributor (maybe also providing a bit of not-totally-naive business sounding board to the startup CEO), developer, researcher, and maybe also startup dev leading.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Same deal with baseball cards (and all sports cards), they had enormous print runs but then the collectors went away so now everybody who wants a Don Mattingly rookie card already has 7.

After finding them completely unsaleable I ended up giving my collection to a family friend who still just enjoys the cards.

<comment><USER5> hahaha, this is so funny because I was cleaning out my closet and noticed the same thing. Even though the cards were 20-30 years old...they were basically worthless. I live in a high cost of living area so to me there is no point keeping them around taking up space. I must've tossed well over 10,000 cards into the trash.

Moral of the story: teach your kids how to invest in the stock market instead of them "investing" their money into collectibles. Teach your kids the value of investing early and encourage them to do it. They can still buy collectible toys but make sure to remind them that they won't be worth much in the future and to encourage them to buy stocks if they want to invest their money for the future.

<comment><USER14> Invest in a collection because you like the collection. If you love baseball cards, the fact that a few years ago you paid $100 for a card that you could get for $1 today doesn't matter because you had that card to enjoy for those few years. Note that love is different from fad. If you just buy the card because everybody else is, with no enjoyment, then it is a loss.

My life is better for having a few collectibles around now. I could have instead invested the money spent, and it would have already doubled, and it would double a few more times before I die - since I don't enjoy collecting money in my bank account it would be a waste.

Don't get me wrong: I to enjoy financial security. I can't retire today (well I could, but I couldn't afford to live the life I want), but the money I'm setting aside for retirement is planned to be used to enjoy life when I retire.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've got a decent coin collection going, and a few legitimately noteworthy pieces like ancient coinage and what I call my conflict diamonds (South Vietnam, Japanese occupation currency, Somali coins, etc.), but I think it's ending up a lot like stamps. Except for the very high end museum quality collections, little of most personal collections is worth very much (except in currency its face or bullion value), and I do it purely for the historicity of the artifacts.

</comment><comment><USER16> Vinyls, film cameras, typewriters, camper vans, and other objects which have been superseded by the ever turning wheels of progress have known notable regains of interest lately.

I wouldn't be surprised if Urban Outfitters started selling vintage stamp collections.

<comment><USER17> The difference between all those and stamps is that the former offers an experience. UO sells a lifestyle, and objects like stamps don't convey a particularly exciting narrative within that.

<comment><USER18> Not only that they provide an experience, they are also subject to wear and tear while doing so. The supply in historic stamps is a lot more stable than the supply in historic mechanical things that some may actually want to use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> A couple of months ago I was cleaning out a closet and I found my old stamp collection from when I was a kid. It was fun to look through and see so many stamps from nations that no longer exist.

I looked on some auction sites, and it seems like you can buy the collections of the recently deceased at pretty cheap prices. I don't know if they're worth the money, but if you're just collecting for fun, and not for profit, it seems like a good way to beef up your collection.

<comment><USER20> A local coin/stamp person was completely uninterested in my old stamps from like 35 years ago. I think the shrinking number of collectors is outstripping the number of collections getting thrown out, and the whole idea of collecting stamps is just fading away.

<comment><USER5> Yup it is exactly that. The big problem, in contrast with precious metals, is that stamps have basically no intrinsic value. They're just pieces of paper. At least with precious metals, the coins can be melted down to create high technology.

<comment><USER21> Cryptocurrency will take its place :) Millennials will flock to alt coins just as the old people went into stamps

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This story is 6.5 years old. Wonder how that store is doing now

<comment><USER5> Still in business apparently. They seem to sell themselves as NYC's only stamp store. Based on the yelp reviews...it appears their biggest customers are women looking to buy vintage stamps for wedding invitations lol

[https://www.yelp.com/biz/champion-stamp-co-new- york](https://www.yelp.com/biz/champion-stamp-co-new-york)</comment></comment>


Do We Need Specificity in CSS? (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://philipwalton.com/articles/do-we-actually-need-specificity-in-css/ <comment><USER3> I feel like this article is just another: "CSS is hard, and instead of learning, use this clever method that works for me."

Maybe I'm just old school because I learned CSS2 by reading the docs, and not as CSS in JS.

<comment><USER4> Not only approaching the "problem" of learning CSS by eliminating things to learn, but starting from bad assumptions (e.g. that combining stylesheets is a problem and not a solution) and never questioning them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A rebuttal: [https://codepen.io/davidkpiano/post/the-simplicity-of- specif...](https://codepen.io/davidkpiano/post/the-simplicity-of-specificity)

<comment><USER6> Oh wow, I barely remember writing this 4+ years ago!

I still hold to it - specificity is a necessary mechanism, and if it's hard, it's because we're unnecessarily over-complicating it, just like anything else considered "hard" if we misuse it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Using SASS or LESS makes specificity a great tool

        .something {
             .tells {
                  .me {
                      content: 'we do';
                  }
             }
        }

If you think of specificity as a kind of inheritance or scoping, then it makes a lot more sense.

Also it's very powerful to extend a generic component:

Framework:

        button.red { background: red; }

User code:

        button.red.disabled { background: grey; }

<comment><USER8> For me, it's actually the exact opposite. When I use scoping like that, my normal expectation is that I'm saying "Only style .me if it's in a .tells that's in a .something". I'm doing it for selector behavior. I don't want to have to consider if I later scope a

      .something_else { .me: content 'we don't' }

it won't work because it's less specific, meaning cascading isn't working as expected. It isn't SOLID

<comment><USER9> exactly. more specific selectors are edge cases, which is a usually-acceptable heuristic for rule priority but doesn't correspond 1:1.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Warnings seem like the way to go for this? i.e. having a static analyzer to check that the specificity matches the declaration order. (Assuming that's possible... it's not obvious to me if there are theoretical roadblocks.)

<comment><USER11> Stylelint actually has this already! [https://stylelint.io/user- guide/rules/no-descending-specific...](https://stylelint.io/user- guide/rules/no-descending-specificity)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I maintain sites with thousands of CSS rules and over a dozen style sheets, some of which are hosted on external domains that I have no control over. Having to manage CSS rules based upon order would be a nightmare.

It does seem that specificity isn't well understood, as I often see people abusing !important.

<comment><USER13> Agreed.

The article claims that "Importance also makes a lot of sense" but actually, the way it was implemented in CSS makes no sense because eventually, given a sufficiently old stylesheet, all styles end up being marked with !important and then you're back to relying on source-ordering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Specificity and cascading become redundant once we talk css modules. I work with CSS modules so I can't remember the last time I had to_ cascade_ style sheets, or _think_ about specificity.

</comment><comment><USER15> In my experience, very, _very_ few Web designers actually use specificity _(UPDATE: I should have added "properly," as was pointed out)_.

It works extremely well, _if everyone follows the rules_ , which is uncommon.

That goes for most of CSS; not just specificity.

CSS is incredibly powerful, if used properly, and specificity, when actually used properly, is very cool.

About ten years ago, I wrote this series: [https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/stylist/introduction...](https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/stylist/introduction- to-specificity/)

It's still absolutely relevant nowadays, and just as few people follow that workflow now, as they did then.

CSS, in general, is too complicated (IMNSHO), but that complexity is also what makes it so powerful.

I've always enjoyed Stu Nicholls' CSSPlay site, for examples of extreme CSS: [http://www.cssplay.co.uk/menu/](http://www.cssplay.co.uk/menu/)

<comment><USER7> I find this really hard to believe. Specificity is baked into CSS at such a fundamental level that you can't not use it. Maybe you meant like they don't use it consciously of effectively?

<comment><USER16> there's using it deliberately as a tool, and running into it unexpectedly and doing absurd things to work around it like it's an obstacle to overcome. i see much more of the latter than the former; squarely i think because most css is written by people who don't know how to use specificity - so they come up with things like BEM, or css in js frameworks to force specificity away like it's a flaw in the system. all this work goes in because module scope is an easier mental model to grasp than specificity, which i suppose works more like traits. but, having been in this web making game long enough, it seems like a return to table based design and font tags. just with different syntax.

<comment><USER15> People have been freaking out about table-based design for twenty years. It's a great foil, and much of the criticism is merited, but it's not the end of the world.

You can fairly easily turn tables into blocks: [https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/stylist/another- reas...](https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/stylist/another-reason-to- use-table-based-layout/#dont-tell-mom)

Also, I use _"display: table"_ all the time in my work. It's the best mode for layout that fits content.

<comment><USER16> you're kind of missing my point. which is fine because i didn't spend a whole lot of words explaining it.

i am not saying table based design is _bad_. but we did originally move away from it for legitimate reasons that seem to have been largely forgotten, and as a result we now have developers who build json theme files and react frameworks that wire "darkmode=true" individually through every component instead of just using css for what it was designed to do: to exactly be a theme configuration format.

a lot of where things have gone wrong is CSS started to be used for layout, which was originally a hack, abusing the float property to do things it was never designed to do. and css has never gotten good at it, because fundamentally layout is about relationships between elements, while CSS is stuck only ever specifying properties ON elements. sure we have display table, flexbox and css grid, but css is an incredibly awkward and unnatural way to express those concepts. app frameworks deal with layout seperately from colors and fonts, which is how it should be done. and so this is why it's all hacks and workarounds in css land. it doesn't have to be this way. but it's how it is.

<comment><USER17> > a lot of where things have gone wrong is CSS started to be used for layout

The layout is part and parcel of the style. CSS gives you 7 different layout modes to choose from (normal, table, float, positioned, multi-column, flex and grid). There is more than enough here to implement any sort of layout problem you face, from using 15 year old table and flex hacks to cleaner modern approaches like flex.

> while CSS is stuck only ever specifying properties ON elements

The "position: relative" (CSS1), float and flex are all about positioning elements relative to one another. Other properties like margin, align and float are also about positioning items relative to one another.

> but css is an incredibly awkward and unnatural way to express those concepts

I think CSS is pretty easy and straightforward to reason about, once you decide that it is worth investing some time and effort in learning. It really always surprises me how some really smart people just do not get CSS, and I think it is not about ability, but attitude. CSS is dismissed as "that thing for designers", and calling CSS a programming language is usually met with smirks. That is the real problem with CSS, its reputation.

<comment><USER16> "float" and "normal" (what?) aren't layout modes. the rest didn't exist in css until relatively recently. postion: relative exists, yes, but it doesn't do what you say it does. - it sets the top, left, bottom and right properties to be relative _its own_ natural position. it doesn't specify any relationship to any other element. the other properties you say specify layout relative other elements- don't do what you think they do either. align and margin only effects an element's content, margin only refers to other elements in edge cases, and float was only ever supposed to let you embed figures that text would wraparound. it's use for layout was an abuse and not what it was designed for. Though i can see how it can seem like those elements seem like they refer to other elements, but that is just a consequence of the properties interacting with the document flow algorithm, which is there with or without css.

while css now does have real layout modules: flexbox and grid, CSS wasn't designed for layout and it just isn't very good at it, especially if you compare it to say, cocoa autolayout, or the flexbox model in UI frameworks that were designed to do this stuff at the start instesd of having it awkwardly bolted on. and just what is document flow? is it a layout algorithm? no, it's a greedy word wrap algorithm applied to boxes. that's it.

finally, 15 year old display: table and flex hacks? what are you smoking. ie8 was released in 2009 and didn't uproot ie6 and ie7 until many years later. i had to have fallbacks for ie7 up to 2015. flex only became _usable_ after 2015. it existed before that but not in _all the browsers_.

the closest thing in css to what I am talking about is position:absolute, which implicitly refers an element to its nearest parent with either position relative or position absolute. i don't get to identify which element or elements i would like to refer to directly.

the only other thing is percentage unit which refers to a percentage of the paren's width or height depending on which property it appears in- which was annoying enough they almost fixed it with vw and vh units which refer specifically to width and height of the _viewport_ , but if i want a proportion of any other element's dinensions my option is to use javascript or eat a bag of donkeys.

<comment><USER17> > "float" and "normal" (what?) aren't layout modes.

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/CSS/Layout_mode](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/CSS/Layout_mode)

> the rest didn't exist in css until relatively recently.

Out of the 7 layout modes, only the last two came into existence recently. The point is, when CSS was being designed as a declarative, domain specific programming language, it was designed to handle EVERYTHING to do with how things appear on a browser. Even when you specify styles using JS or directly in HTML, those are simple handed over to the browsers CSS engine. The HTML engine deals with markup, while the JS engine deals with behavior. If you want to talk directly and powerfully to the CSS engine, use CSS. That what it was designed to handle: everything to do with what you SEE in a browsers screen.

> position: relative exists, yes, but it doesn't do what you say it does. - <USER2> > sets the top, left, bottom and right properties to be relative its own > natural position.

If I want to position elements absolutely within a container element, one way is to have the container "position: relative" and the child elements "position: absolute". The same effect can be achieved via flex or grid layouts.

> it's use for layout was an abuse and not what it was designed for.

I am honestly flabbergasted by this assertion. The layout of something is part of its style. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_design_elements_and_pri...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_design_elements_and_principles) CSS was designed to handle all that. Layout is all about shape, space and form.

> CSS wasn't designed for layout and it just isn't very good at it, especially > if you compare it to say, cocoa autolayout, or the flexbox model in UI > frameworks that were designed to do this stuff at the start instead of > having it awkwardly bolted on.

Whenever anyone dumps on CSS, HTML and JS, I simply remind them that they run the web, and the web is the most successful, open, flexible and used platform in existence. CSS is doing exactly what it was designed to do, and will outlive and outperform all those UI frameworks as it breaks out of the browser into desktop and mobile app space.

<comment><USER16> look, i love CSS. Not dumping on it. but you have a bit of stockholme syndrome going on here. sometimes loving something means realistically looking at its flaws and limitations. and you seem to have a distorted view of history, and what a "stylesheet" is. (they existed for decades before CSS was invented, and come from the tradition of printing and writing, not design so much. they do not, generally speaking, specify layout. layout specifies layout.) from the start, browsers didn't have a css engine. css was added _later_ , and has never fully exposed every piece of the browser display engine. some of the browsers needed to be rewritten from scratch for this to even be possible. as for layout, from the start and for a very long rime, the position of the w3c and browser authors is that website authors _shouldn't want_ layout and refused to implement any layout capabilities. in their view, layout should be left up to the client, and a website author should focus only on writing plain semantic documents. they told people to stop using floats for layout because it got in the way of client decisions about layout. they have only been added grudgingly, and after the forced removal of the people who were blocking it. i for one welcome these layout capabilities, and am glad the old farts didn't get in the way. that doesn't mean we're up to par with the best layout engines though.

your link makes only one reference to style: "style of shape", and a passing reference to [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Style_guide](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Style_guide) with regard to keeping non layout elements consistent, and that page in turn, which makes no reference to layout.

<comment><USER17> > look, i love CSS. Not dumping on it. but you have a bit of stockholme > syndrome going on here. sometimes loving something means realistically > looking at its flaws and limitations.

I find that very hard to believe, sorry. And I could write a whole book about the flaws and limitations of CSS, and then another about its elegant power and gradual evolution over the years, but you most likely wont want to read it. You are stuck in 2002, completly fixated about the origins or the languange and what it was meant or not meant to do 20 years ago.

> and you seem to have a distorted view of history, and what a "stylesheet" > is.

Right now, I am honestly not interested in the semantic meaning of the word "stylesheet" or its etymology, or the history of computing and printing. Am here to discuss CSS.

> from the start, browsers didn't have a css engine. css was added later, and > has never fully exposed every piece of the browser display engine.

Is this not obvious? A browser is made of three main engines JS, CSS and HTML. Being a GUI, all parts will influence the GUI. That does not change the fact that the CSS engines domain is what you see. The JS domain is interactivity (what you do with what you see) while HTML is about data and structure.

> some of the browsers needed to be rewritten from scratch for this to even be > possible.

Can you name even one thing in computing that's over 20 years and has not changed or evolved? If your problem with CSS is that browsers had to be rewritten 20 years ago to evolve with the language, then that problem applies to every other successful language and GUI framework or system under the sun.

> website author should focus only on writing plain semantic documents. they > have only been added grudgingly, and after the forced removal of the people > who were blocking it.

Semantic documents are under the domain of HTML. This has nothing to do with CSS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I feel like source order should be the thing that is done away with. Specificity allows me to style something, and trust that style will style correctly no matter what my build system does, or what order my stylesheets load, or what my co-worker adds later for their fancy new CTA button.

</comment><comment><USER19> Nice.

Facepalm slap. Just like other matching algorithms. How did I not notice that earlier?

Order independent specificity is like longest match rules. Regex, lexing, URL routers, etc.

Order dependent matching overrides (correct phrase?) is like Packrat & PEG.

Which is better depends on ambiguity, meaning how well your "matcher" algorithm can process whatever input you have.

I've done my fair share of scraping. (I usually default to my own globbing implementation. Generally more simple than xpath or css expressions.) Now I'm feeling pretty stupid that I'd always hard-coded precedence resolution.

</comment><comment><USER20> While this is an interesting thought experiment, and the outlined problem is a real issue, I don't think the outlined solution is a good way to resolve it. The main problem here is predictability: maybe it's simply that I'm not used to thinking about CSS this way, but the proposed CSS rewriting parser means it's not immediately obvious how what I write maps to the end result.

It's entirely possible that I'm missing some of the benefit here, but it seems to me that scoped styles etc largely already solve this problem.

</comment><comment><USER21> The simple solution is delete before you add more specificity. Cut it back to the common denominator and cascade from there.

Of course, you can sometimes inherit a system that is one big specificity mess.

</comment><comment><USER22>
      Specificity isn't intuitive, and—especially for new developers—the results can often seem like a gotcha rather than the intended behavior. I'm also not sure there's an equivalent in other systems or languages.

It is widely used as a conflict resolution strategy in production systems. I've never encountered a student who found specificity to be a difficult concept to grasp.

</comment><comment><USER23> I really admire [http://tachyons.io](http://tachyons.io), with its principles of _shallow cascade_ and _low specificity_.

( It really sucks to have to jump in and work with some project's massive blob of vestigial, conflicting styles. )

</comment><comment><USER24> I always write the specificity in the same order as the cascade. Could probably write a tool that compares the specificity vs the cascade to find errors!

There is however a small problem if you want to use many CSS files - that you need to link them in the correct order.

edit: Also I don't use ID's in CSS.

</comment><comment><USER25> But what if you put your styles in multiple files?</comment>


When did "&" stop being taught alongside the alphabet? - <AUTHOR> https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/53546/when-did-stop-being-taught-alongside-the-alphabet <comment><USER2> Uh, it never was? I didn't learn what the ampersand was until middle school.

I knew how to interpret the symbol ( _because relatives and teachers corrected me when I mistakenly read it as a capital letter "A" when looking at newspapers, as early as kindergarten, while trying to demonstrate my ability to read_), but I was taught to avoid using it as part of handwriting. I knew what to call it, and that it means "and" but was encouraged to use the plus sign (+) if I needed to use punctuation for such purposes, although even that was frowned upon, as improper and informal.

During middle school, we were taught to type using computers, and so learned some of the more common symbols. While typing, shorthand was tolerated with greater sympathy, since printed or typed writing was clearly legible, and not subject to the harsher criticisms of penmanship, where abstract symbols might look like childish scribbles.

I didn't develop my ability to write an ampersand by hand until high school, when I was forced to take notes in class, and use of shorthand was acceptable, as long as I could read my own note taking, and recite a reasonable summary of classroom lectures if called upon. My notes never actually lived up to that criteria but at least I could write an ampersand.

<comment><USER3> Did you read the question? Unless you're well over 100 years old your personal experience is irrelevant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> More importantly as not discussed, the '&' character also derives also from the french word 'et' which refers to 'and' in English. Something we can call a Norman influence.

<comment><USER5> The ampersand goes back farther than that. It comes from the Latin _et_ (unsurprisingly also meaning _and_ ) and dates to the first century AD.

<comment><USER6> Hence why you sometimes see 'et al' rendered as '& al' (although it doesn't look right at all with the crappy ampersand in the font firefox is using here)

<comment><USER7> &c. is my favourite :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Faraday Future's first production car, the FF 91 - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/03/here-is-faraday-futures-first-production-car-the-ff-91/ <comment><USER2> Looks like it can't decide whether it wants to be a car, or a Model X-like crossover SUV. If you're going to build something with high ride height, go all the way up and make a capable 4x4. If you're going to build something fast, make it lower (at least with the ground clearance of an ordinary Toyota Camry sedan) and make it a _car_ , not a crossover. I don't know what that blob is supposed to be.</comment>


Making OSv Run on Firecracker - <AUTHOR> http://blog.osv.io/blog/2019/04/19/making-OSv-run-on-firecraker/ <comment><USER2> Great work, I was thinking about this a while ago but then I had to study OSv.</comment>


In Silicon Valley, Founders Fight for Control - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052702303292204577519134168240996-lMyQjAxMTAyMDEwMDExNDAyWj.html <comment><USER2> Didn't know Google now has a class of stock with no voting rights. We should start calling it "Wall Street Class Stock", which is meant for professional investors that know nothing about building businesses and running companies.</comment>


The state of full text search in PostgreSQL 12 - <AUTHOR> https://fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/postgresql_the_state_of_full_text_search_in_postgresql_12/ <comment><USER2> Thank you so much for your interest in my FOSDEM talk!

Slides link: [https://fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/postgresql_the_state_...](https://fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/postgresql_the_state_of_full_text_search_in_postgresql_12/attachments/slides/4138/export/events/attachments/postgresql_the_state_of_full_text_search_in_postgresql_12/slides/4138/FTS.pdf)

Slideshare: [https://www.slideshare.net/vyruss000/the-state-of-full- text-...](https://www.slideshare.net/vyruss000/the-state-of-full-text-search- in-postgresql-12-226820234)

Video will appear under these URLs after mirrors are synced:

MP4: [https://video.fosdem.org/2020/H.2214/postgresql_the_state_of...](https://video.fosdem.org/2020/H.2214/postgresql_the_state_of_full_text_search_in_postgresql_12.mp4)

WebM: [https://video.fosdem.org/2020/H.2214/postgresql_the_state_of...](https://video.fosdem.org/2020/H.2214/postgresql_the_state_of_full_text_search_in_postgresql_12.webm)

</comment><comment><USER3> In the later part of the slides, I learned that Postgres 12 now supports case and accent insensitive collations. [https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/collation.html#COLLA...](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/collation.html#COLLATION- NONDETERMINISTIC)

For the many simple cases where a grep-like search is enough, my little experience with pg was far from satisfying. MySQL is simple to use for this thanks to the awfully named `utf8_mb4_unicode_ci`. With Postgres, searching for "étranger" won't find "Etranger" and "Étranger" unless you put some hard work into your database search system.

Unfortunately, it seems that PG12 won't change much in that aspect. From the link above, you have to create the collation (which is already a heavy restriction) and then "certain operations are not possible with nondeterministic collations, such as pattern matching operations." Looks like uncharted territory.

On a side note, I've always seen Solr, SphinxSearch and such specialized tools used instead of the DB's FTS. The main drawback is keeping the data in sync, but it has many pros.

<comment><USER4> CREATE EXTENSION unaccent;

begin; CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION public.insensitive_query(text) RETURNS text AS $func$ SELECT lower(public.unaccent('public.unaccent', CAST($1 AS text))) $func$ LANGUAGE sql IMMUTABLE; ALTER FUNCTION public.insensitive_query(text) OWNER TO [your user that has create rights on the database]; commit;

To use in a query:

WHERE insensitive_query(some_table.name) LIKE insensitive_query('%Étranger%')

<comment><USER5> If you use a function like this, it will need to be run for every entry; doesn't that invalidate the whole point of having indexes ?

What you can do is storing the unaccented, simplified version of a word. Which I'm sure pg already does in a way.

<comment><USER6> > If you use a function like this, [each query] it will need to be run for > every entry

<comment><USER7> No; if you create an index for the item: `insensitiveQuery(some_table.name)` and you then attempt to run: `SELECT * FROM some_table WHERE insensitiveQuery(name) LIKE insensitiveQuery('Étranger');`, the engine would run the `insensitiveQuery` function on the string `'Étranger'`, and then look up that result in the index directly, which is O(nlogn) or faster. If you have a million tables, that'd run the function only once (on `Étranger`) and do about 20 lookups in the index before finding you the qualifying row(s).

<comment><USER6> Cheer. I did not get the index-on-a-derived-value bit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The actual slide deck (that is easy to miss) is here:

[https://fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/postgresql_the_state_...](https://fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/postgresql_the_state_of_full_text_search_in_postgresql_12/attachments/slides/4051/export/events/attachments/postgresql_the_state_of_full_text_search_in_postgresql_12/slides/4051/FTS.pdf)

<comment><USER9> Really well put together- I learned several more things about PG text searching from this.

From my personal experience working with dozens of California tech companies of varying sizes, I'd say around 80% of the time I see ElasticSearch being used when the product could have just used their existing PG cluster (and existing team experience). I.e. so many companies pick up ElasticSearch only because they lack of full-text search capability awareness of PG. Of course, ES does have its advantages, but I feel it's in very specific use-cases.

<comment><USER10> Postgresql is awesome, but I don't see any advantage when you need to add like 40 aggregations plus joining to 10 tables.. (easy if you denormalize to elastic)

<comment><USER11> I can think of a bunch off the top of my head that mostly stem from a serious reduction in complexity:

\- having one data store instead of two

\- no data store synchronization and related consistency headaches

\- the ability to easily join/restrict based on business logic (especially access control)

\- easier deployments

\- easier qa/local setups

\- fewer failure scenarios

\- although non-standard, you're dealing with sql and can explain/analyze your queries with tools one already knows if one understands postgres

\- the ability to extend my existing (Spring Boot) integration tests to test new searching logic without having to worry about a separate test db.

I've been building a travel blogging platform as a side project that has about ~250 users. Through a couple of choice materialized views to create search documents from a number of different tables, Postgres FTS, and some GIN indices, I was able to make a lighting fast search with intelligent suggestions(ie using user specific restrictions such as follower/following, places a user has posted, etc).

Is my search perfect? No. I could do a better job normalizing diacritics, stemming could be improved, etc. But it was dead simple to implement well enough in a very short amount of time. I'm very happy with my current solution. There's a time and place for a dedicated search solution but it's certainly not in fledgling systems without massive load.

<comment><USER12> Ever consider doing a write up of how you implemented your Postgres FTS? Sounds like you've had a good experience with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This sounds like it's about the problem of: I have a column filled with the last names of lots of people and I want a text search that will find these names, but, which takes into account all the various ways people end up writing that name. So, a search for 'mueller' should also find 'Müller'.

However, that problem sounds nearly intractable to me.

In basis it sounds like you just 'canonicalize' everything. You store, alongside 'Müller', also the string 'mueller' (the rule being: first transform all characters into their asciification, with the asciification of ü being defined as 'ue', then lowercase that.

The problem is, of course.. that searching for 'MULLER' should also find this person. And now we're more into trying to get this done by first deconstructing the unicode into ascii + accent marks and then just wiping out the accent marks.

But once we state that 'mueller', 'muller', and 'müller' need all be 'equal' to each other, where does it end? A last name can be from any of a thousand languages, each with their own unique conventions on how these things are asciified, and any given asciification must match any other. Sounds like a combinatorial explosion.

One could disregard this notion and say that 'muller' does not match 'müller'. However, note that generally, Sjögren's syndrome tends to be asciified as 'Sjogren's syndrome', probably because Sjögren was norwegian and I assume that the norwegian asciification of ö, is o. The german asciification of ö is oe however; and I can't tell from a last name if it is germanic in origin, norwegian in origin, or from the land of fairytales and flying pandas, such as Haägen-Dazs.

Just by thinking about this for a while I have concluded that it's hopeless, but perhaps I'm missing some fancy trick to at least try to make this problem dealable. So far my attempts to look for solutions tend to come down to advice to use unicode normalization and then get rid of all accents, then lowercase it, which obviously doesn't work at all (with that strategy, mueller would not find müller), or heuristic solutions (if a lot matches, good enough), which are their own can of worms.

Is there a solution to this to me seemingly impossible problem?

<comment><USER13> Have you looked into Soundex or Metaphone? I myself have not used them. I just saw them mentioned in PHP's function list and thought they might be useful some day.

\- [https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.soundex.php](https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.soundex.php)

\- [https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.metaphone.php](https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.metaphone.php)

PostgreSQL has an extension, fuzzystrmatch, that uses the same algorithms:

\- [https://www.postgresql.org/docs/12/fuzzystrmatch.html](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/12/fuzzystrmatch.html)

But it warns that the functions "do not work well with multibyte encodings (such as UTF-8)." So maybe first translate any such characters to ASCII?

<comment><USER14> These only work with English, so not a general solution. There are more modern, better tools for the problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The video should be uploaded soon. See the FOSDEM video status page: [https://review.video.fosdem.org/overview](https://review.video.fosdem.org/overview)

<comment><USER16> Thanks. I was just about to comment that the article seems to be missing a video!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Anyone here using [https://github.com/zombodb/zombodb](https://github.com/zombodb/zombodb)?

<comment><USER18> I hooked it up and had a quick play around with it for a proof of concept project at work, unfortunately that project never went ahead in the form that would have used Zombo, but during testing it was a breeze to setup and seemed to do everything it promised more or less straight out of the box.

I'd definitely give it another, proper go if I got the chance.

<comment><USER17> Thanks! Looks like I'll invest some time into setting it up. Doing the current tsvector with the English dictionary for stems and zombodb seems closer to what I want.

<comment><USER19> ZomboDB developer here. With ZDB you don't need tsvector at all. With a properly defined mapping, Elasticsearch can do the stemming for dozens of languages, including English.

ZDB exposes darn near _everything_ ES supports.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Still no relevance algorithm support ?

Bm25 or tfidf would be welcome

<comment><USER21> Would like to see this work integrated: [https://github.com/postgrespro/rum](https://github.com/postgrespro/rum)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This looks great! Been considering moving from SQL Server to Postgres for our .NET Core apps' storage and search, rather than use a separate service like Manticore or Elastic. I wish Microsoft SQL Server had easier and better full- text support, now that their cross-platform development framework and tooling has improved so much.</comment>


Google to give political parties anti-hacking tools in time for EU elections - <AUTHOR> https://finance.yahoo.com/news/google-political-parties-anti-hacking-070000522.html <comment><USER2> Google, and S.C. as a whole are really the 'Grandchildren' to the 'Grandpa' American Political system.

Changing the status quo in that environment is like steering a barge through honey. They're so resistant to change, it's stunning.

While this is marketed(?) as a anti-hacking tool, this is just a reverse proxy. It's a good step, and it doesn't smell too badly of 'google'. They aren't offering to 'host' political party data, as far I can tell, and they aren't running voting machines. They're just stepping in as the 'kid next door that is good with computers' so that Grandpa stops getting Russian viruses.

<comment><AUTHOR> I couldn't agree more with you.</comment></comment>


I declined nearly $10k to teach for an Ivy League school for a week in Shanghai - <AUTHOR> http://joshuaspodek.com/turned-10000-shanghai <comment><AUTHOR> Here's the original June 2012 Hacker News thread that started the process: " _I Just Gave Up $4000 Per Month to Keep My Freedom of Speech (mrmoneymustache.com)_ "

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4144621](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4144621)

And the post it linked to: [http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/06/21/i-just- gave-up-400...](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/06/21/i-just-gave- up-4000-per-month-to-keep-my-freedom-of-speech)

</comment><comment><USER2> TLDR; Guy didn't take the gig because flying in a plane makes a lot of pollution.

So why not just buy a carbon offset, take the flight, and make $10k?

<comment><AUTHOR> Carbon offsets don't take CO2 out of the atmosphere, as far as I've found. Some may result in some trees being planted, but they mostly replace trees that were cut down. They don't undo fossil fuels removed from underground.

The carbon capture I'm aware of only stores it for a while, usually to reuse in a way that puts more CO2 in the atmosphere, like pumping new oil out of the ground, plus the capture process uses energy. If that energy comes from fossil fuels, it doesn't remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

As best I can tell, offsets don't lower CO2 levels. On the contrary, I think psychologically, they motivate people to contribute more greenhouse gases than they would have otherwise.

I'd love to find out I was wrong, but I'm not aware of any existing process that net significantly removes CO2 from the atmosphere for the long term. If anyone knows otherwise, please let me know. I'd love to find out I was wrong.

Also, jet fuel emits more than CO2. Pollution is a separate issue from global warming.

> _So why not just buy a carbon offset, take the flight, and make $10k?_

That's what the post answers -- how learning one's values experientially and living them created a better life.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is the smallest possible language? - <AUTHOR>

I've been thinking about languages recently, and I'm wondering what the most simple Turing complete language needs. By this I mean flow control (if/else) and recursion or loops (or the beloved Y combinator). What would be a list of these features? <comment><USER2> The mov operator in x86 assembly is technically Turning Complete onto itself [1]. I believe you'd be hard pressed to get smaller then that.

[1] [http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sd601/papers/mov.pdf](http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sd601/papers/mov.pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm impressed. What I'm thinking more of is what types of functions and specific functions do you need? So also add, subtract...

<comment><USER3> Nothing about Turing completeness requires the presence of functions. You're probably looking for a _useful_ language, but you'll have trouble making that criterion rigorous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This type of language is called a Turing Tarpit: [http://esolangs.org/wiki/Turing_tarpit](http://esolangs.org/wiki/Turing_tarpit)

<comment><USER5> Why the SKI "programming" language is not included in the list of examples? [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SKI_combinator_calculus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SKI_combinator_calculus)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A fair amount of research has gone into this question. A number of very simple Turing-complete languages are known.

valarautical mentioned x86 mov. Another is an assembly-ish language with two instructions: (1) decrement and (2) branch if <= 0. Another is the Lambda Calculus. The only thing it has is lambda (and variables and function application, if you want to consider those to be _things_ ). Lisp with only QUOTE, ATOM, EQ, CAR, CDR, CONS, and COND is another example (and perhaps even that list is not minimal; I'm a little vague on this).

<comment><AUTHOR> The lisp example is actually exactly what I'm looking for!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Are you familiar with Brainfuck? [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck) It has just 8 symbols and looks like gibberish when you actually write it. I think you'll find it to be an amusing example of a very small Turing complete language.</comment>


Volatility ETFs Are Broken – $XIV Down 70% in After-Hours Catastrophe - <AUTHOR> https://ibankcoin.com/flyblog/2018/02/05/volatility-etfs-broken-xiv-70-hours-catastrophe/#sthash.XDX285Tk.dpbs <comment><USER2> I mean leverage and inverse ETF's aren't broken, they are behaving as desired.

You just should never, ever hold one overnight as per the SEC guidelines due to how they reset each night.

[https://www.sec.gov/investor/pubs/leveragedetfs- alert.htm](https://www.sec.gov/investor/pubs/leveragedetfs-alert.htm)

I can't think of a single valid reason to hold a leveraged ETF overnight. If anyone has one, please let me know:)

The awesome KidDynamite blog goes into how these ETF's are re-balanced and how they can "rip your face off" if you don't understand them.

[http://kiddynamitesworld.com/leveraged-etf-trading-flow- case...](http://kiddynamitesworld.com/leveraged-etf-trading-flow-case-study- gold-miners-gdx-nugt-dust/)

[http://kiddynamitesworld.com/leveraged-etfs-and-high- school-...](http://kiddynamitesworld.com/leveraged-etfs-and-high-school-level- mathematical-truths/)

<comment><USER3> Nothing too mysterious in the examples in the SEC Alert link. One just has to keep in mind that these ETFs leverage the daily return and then take into account the compounding effects. If you have an index with normally distributed returns with mean m and volatility v, then the long term compound return c is

c = m – 0.5 v^2 .

An ETF which leverages k times will have returns with mean km and volatility kv. The ETFs long term compound return e will be

e = (km) – 0.5 (kv)^2 = k m – k^2 0.5 v^2 = k (m – 0.5 v^2) – (k^2 – k) 0.5 v^2 = k c – k (k – 1) 0.5 v^2.

For k > 1, the second term will always be negative so the ETFs return will always be less than the leveraged compound return of the underlying index.

Whether the leveraged ETF return will be more or less than the underlying index return depends on whether

c > (k – 1) 0.5 v^2 <=> m – 0.5 v^2 > (k – 1) 0.5 v^2 <=> m > k 0.5 v^2 <=> m / (0.5 v^2) > k.

In other words, the leverage k has to be kept less than the m / (0.5 v^2) which is the well known Kelly Criterion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't know if this is a recent phenomenon or if I just haven't known where to look before, but after the stock fall I'm seeing links to remarkably unsophisticated "investors communities" of a kind I'd only seen for cryptocurrencies before.

The description of these XIV derivatives just screams "run" to me, they're pretty much guaranteed to eventually drop to 0 if you hold them long term. Maybe they have some sort of hedging purpose in n-dimensional financial chess, but there's no way they should have been part of someone's personal portfolio. And yet I've heard multiple tales of people trading them, even on margin!

I'm reservedly optimistic about trading platforms like Robinhood, but maybe in the end they'll turn out to be just another way to funnel dumb money into a bubble.

</comment><comment><USER5> XIV is dead.

[https://www.marketwatch.com/story/credit-suisse-announces- pl...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/credit-suisse-announces-plan-to- liquidate-xiv-inverse-volatility-etn-2018-02-06)

</comment><comment><USER6> I just don't get it. Broken? The darn thing has done almost exactly what it was designed to do. VIX futures went up after hours, way up, and XIV went way down. That is how an inverse VIX futures product is supposed to work. I would buy some right now if they hadn't announced liquidation.

People are acting like the ability of a product to go to zero, or close to it, should be a deal breaker, i.e., that such products should not exist. That is crazy. Individual common stocks go to zero (bankruptcy) all the time.</comment>


The End of Theoretical Physics as We Know It - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-end-of-theoretical-physics-as-we-know-it-20180827/ <comment><USER3> > The next step of this shift away from purely mathematical > modeling is > already on the way: Physicists now custom design > laboratory systems that > stand in for other systems which they > want to better understand.

Wait, what? This has been a standard approach for a long long long time - <USER2> for instance the original "computers", which used analog circuits to solve differential equations for things like artillery guidance.</comment>


On the Origins of Bitcoin's Polarization - <AUTHOR> http://www.geekceo.com/entry/bitcoin-s-polarization

<comment><USER2> So first of all this mostly reads like an incoherent and rambling onslaught of non-sequiturs. Second of all the tldr here is basically: if you disagree with Bitcoin you're simply not smart enough to get it, which is an argument that is simultaneously offensive, naive and arrogant.

There are some very well defined arguments suggesting Bitcoin may not be viable that are advanced by people who actually have an understanding of economics and finance. You should try reading up on it.

In particular, seek out the intellectual maturity to understand that the fate of Bitcoin as a currency is not so much about the blockchain as it is about the underlying economics. There is no full faith and credit backing to Bitcoin's value. The network is vulnerable to majority control by well- financed parties with malicious intent. If Bitcoin ever were to threaten major reserve currencies, swift action would be taken to regulate it out of existence (and you're a fool if you think otherwise).

Bitcoin is little more than a Ponzi scheme orchestrated largely by salivating investors and sheeple like you are playing right into their hands.

<comment><AUTHOR> There are at least 5 blaming statements in your comment. You'd do well to stop speaking for others and simply speak your mind. It's pretty hard to tell exactly how you feel about it, other than angry. I get that you are angry about it and my post. Fine.

Out of curiosity, do you trust the technology and do you trust the stored values in the blockchain? Talking the ledger here, not the value of Bitcoin on a given day. I'd like to say I know the answer to those questions, but frankly your vitriol is getting in the way.

Regardless of your response, I thank you heartily for proving my point Bitcoin is polarizing. It is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Oh great, another Bitcoin rant about how the common person _just doesn 't get it_, but Bitcoin really is a great technology - they laughed at Galileo!

Maybe, just _maybe_ , Bitcoin actually is a shitty technology and that's why people don't trust it?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, what I actually said was that the common person was currently unable to understand how the network implements something that can be trusted by them. There's a significant difference between 'going with the flow' (getting it) and fully understanding how something works, especially when you are considering the need to trust it for financial purposes.

Regarding your last claim, do you really think that everyone that doesn't like/hates Bitcoin really thinks it's shitty technology? Because, if you do, that would imply they understand how it works. I realize 'how it works' means different things to different people here, so to clarify, we're talking about how it arrives at consensus with the ledger.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Wrote this today in the hopes of inspiring others. Enjoy!</comment>


Getting Started: Choosing Your Business Name - <AUTHOR> http://webworkerdaily.com/2007/08/10/getting-started-choosing-business-name/ <comment><USER2> Nice post, I think you have to be inspired to choose a name, it has to be something easy to remember and related to your business. Creating a logo for your business is also difficult, try a lot (and I really mean a lot) of colors and a lot of fonts. Finally you have to be proud of your creation.</comment>


Ask HN: We launched our startup (GroupieGuide) today. What do you think? - <AUTHOR>

We requested feedback on HN when we first launched our private alpha.  We launched publicly today with a new interactive theme designer, group subscription with integrated e-mail, and a bunch of usability fixes. What do you think? <comment><USER2> First of all, the picture on the homepage is hilarious.

But I would need to be convinced why I should use these groups instead of Facebook Groups, when my friends and I are already all on Facebook.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, we probably need to emphasize this a bit more. We are trying to convince people that GroupieGuide offers groups a fully-functional customized website that they can call their own. On Facebook, Meetup, Google/Yahoo Groups, groups aren't able to express themselves with their own design and branding. GroupieGuide only has a single link back at the bottom of the group page.

<comment><USER3> Does a book club or happy hour group need, or want, custom design and branding?

<comment><USER4> Need? No. Want? Maybe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> <http://groupieguide.com/>

</comment><comment><USER6> I clicked on the five thumbnails located below the main image with the expectation that something would happen - maybe a larger image of whatever it's a thumbnail of, or some more description of what _integrate email_ , for example, means.

Likewise with the six sample uses under _create a website to_ \- if _recruit readers for a book club_ is listed as a suggested use, and it's visually presented as a button-shaped thing, I expect to be able to click on it and see a demo (either live example site or screenshot) of what it would look like if I chose to use your site for that purpose.

Having a GetSatisfaction link on individual group pages is unclear - is the user being invited to give feedback on the individual page, the group, or the service in general.

When editing a group's page, have some easy way to see what the thing will look like when viewed by a normal, non-logged in user - the same idea as Facebook's feature to see what your profile looks like when viewed by someone else.

Also, maybe some more explaining what the service is. Until I got to the screen below the fold, I thought the site would be a way for a band's groupies to organize themselves, or for the best strategies to become a groupie.

<comment><USER4> Good point, we will be making adjustments to the front page shortly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Quick feedback / pet peeve: You've done a great job of making it easy and quick to see how to create a group, but I'm curious about what the groups look like & do. Screenshots or a link to an existing group would do just fine.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, here are some groups:

<http://thegroupies.groupieguide.com/> <http://fixie.groupieguide.com/> <http://cohitre.groupieguide.com/> <http://stptraining.groupieguide.com/>

</comment></comment><comment> cool-RR And I thought it would be a guide on getting groupies.

</comment><comment><USER8> The site is very well designed and put together. I was pretty confused by the landing page though. I should be able to understand your product in 5 seconds and that didn't exactly happen.

Also I'm curious to know what problem this solves or how much demand is really out there for this product. Need a site? Google Sites does the job well. Need a discussion group? Facebook Groups has that covered. Need to collaborate? Google Docs, Google Calendar, E-mail, all fit the bill fine.

If you're main pull is to provide custom design/branding, then why are users held to the GroupieGuide domain? Doesn't it defeat the purpose?

I interact with a research group on a day to day basis, but I simply did not see enough value for me to create a presence on your site. Maybe I missed the point--in which case you need to make it more clear why your product is not for me.

<comment><USER9> I think you hit the nail right in the head when you mention all these different services. There are many products out there that expand our features, however using and mashing these products together ends up with a complicated and difficult to setup service.

We picked features that are useful for non-techies and made them accessible through a single interface.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Some might ask how is this different from Ning.com or Tangler.com?

What are you going to say? How are you going to win? How will you overcome the customer lock in at established competitors?

<comment><USER9> We think that there are many users that want a web page for their group but don't want to interact online. GroupieGuide is a gets out of the way solution where most of the interaction can be done over e-mail. Visitors don't need to navigate to get the information that they need.

Both ning and tangler focus on building online social interactions through the website. We are trying to cater to the users that have been ignored by social networks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I really like the visual design of the whole thing. Good job!

It looks very polished and professionally designed.

</comment><comment><USER12> How does this make money? You were compared to Ning.com or Tangler.com, asked how will you get their customers. I think calling them customers is a stretch, none of them make money.

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently we don't make any money :) We have some thoughts on how to monetize it in the future, but at this point we are just focusing on building an awesome application that people would actually find useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The background pic is a little confusing to me</comment>