Ask the algorithm: Human wealth advisers are going out of fashion - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21650292-human-wealth-advisers-are-going-out-fashion-ask-algorithm? <comment><USER2> Research shows that active managers rarely beat the market:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/15/your-money/how-many- mutual...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/15/your-money/how-many-mutual-funds- routinely-rout-the-market-zero.html)

[http://money.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/mutual- funds/...](http://money.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/mutual- funds/articles/2012/10/12/study-active-funds-consistently-fail-to-beat- benchmarks)

[http://money.cnn.com/2015/03/12/investing/investing- active-v...](http://money.cnn.com/2015/03/12/investing/investing-active- versus-passive-funds/)

EDIT: Disclaimer: I have the majority of my retirement assets in a roboadvisor (Betterment).

<comment><USER3> I have tried so very hard to outsmart the market, read so much stuff and this is the result compare to S&P500: [http://i.imgur.com/fEZvLod.png](http://i.imgur.com/fEZvLod.png) , for all my time & energy I could have just dumped all my savings into SPY and call it a day.

I am now solidly convinced that anyone who beats the market is either win-the- lottery lucky or has illegal insider info.

P.S., that falling blue-data in 2nd half of the graph is WholeFoods falling from about $65 to $31.... =/

<comment><USER2> Here's the breakdown betterment has me in for 90% stocks/10% bonds allocation:

[https://i.imgur.com/IEcWuYC.png](https://i.imgur.com/IEcWuYC.png)

<comment><USER4> For the record that is a very similar allocation to a Vanguard 2040 target fund.

[https://personal.vanguard.com/us/funds/snapshot?FundId=0696&...](https://personal.vanguard.com/us/funds/snapshot?FundId=0696&FundIntExt=INT#tab=2)

You might want to a) compare the price of betterment + those funds to the target fund and b) use that target fund as your benchmark.

<comment><USER5> Don't forget to take taxes into account. Vanguard's Target funds are not at all tax-optimized, no private wealth manager would put the total/international bond market funds in your taxable account. IMO this is one feature the roboadvisors clearly have going for them.

<comment><USER6> Target funds are also clearly geared towards people not yet at the point where that will make any difference. That's why they have such a low minimum.

They're a stepping stone until you have enough capital to qualify for Admiral funds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> All these robo wealth advisers that I know of are basically profiling their clients and segmenting them in broad categories that are then offered a combination of passive ETFs.

By having most of the capital in passive funds, active management gets easier, and so more valuable, so you want to pay for it.

So we might be seeing a flight towards roboadvisers, but the trend won't last forever, and the equilibrium point is in a combination of both roboadvisers and human advisers.

So, the human ones, they are not really going out of fashion. They just got a little competition, as a result of the lackluster returns of some of them. This is good news for the good ones.

<comment><USER8> > By having most of the capital in passive funds, active management gets > easier, and so more valuable, so you want to pay for it.

I'm not sure I follow. How does this make active management easier and more importantly how does that make it a better investment?

<comment><USER9> You can front-run the algotraders because you know what they're going to do. A simple example from Bloomberg View:

"Take American Airlines Group Inc., which joined the S&P 500 after markets closed on March 20. Because the addition of the carrier was announced four days earlier, nimble traders had plenty of time to get in front of the less fleet-footed."

The bigger the index funds get, the more easy money there is to be made this way.

<comment><USER10> > "Take American Airlines Group Inc., which joined the S&P 500 after markets > closed on March 20. Because the addition of the carrier was announced four > days earlier, nimble traders had plenty of time to get in front of the less > fleet-footed."

So, just to be explicit, is the suggestion to short AA right before this happens, then re-buy once the algotraders settle?

<comment><USER9> No, the suggestion is to buy AA before all the index funds tracking the S&P 500 are obligated to buy it at the same time after it's officially added to the index.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This article, published in May, is already somewhat dated, and demonstrates some fundamental misunderstandings about the market.

Human wealth advisors and robo-advisors only overlap for a limited number of services, notably asset allocation and rebalancing. Wealth advisors typically help their clients with tax and estate planning, and make introductions to other wealthy individuals of interest.

Robos apply algorithms to investments. I know, because I used to work for FutureAdvisor, a great YC startup that was bought by BlackRock a few weeks ago.

Secondly, human wealth advisers were never "in fashion" with most people, because most people do not have the $500K to $1M in net worth to meet their minimums. Human advisors earn a percentage of clients' wealth, have a limited amount of time, and have neither the incentive nor the time to accept middle- class clients. It's a tired refrain, but human experts don't scale. That's why robos exist. They are stepping into the gap left between the supply of human advisers and the demands of the so-called mass affluent.

Another fundamental flaw of the Economist piece is to talk about millennials. Outside of Silicon Valley and Wall St., millennials just don't have that much money. They are not a good demographic to base a business on, and they're not even the main customer base of many robos. Again, the middle-class, mid-career professionals who have been neglected by human advisers are...

</comment><comment><USER12> Systematically allocating your assets will only go so far. People don't seek out financial advisers for asset allocation, they seek them out for the sage advice that they'll offer for big financial decisions they have in life: should I go to grad school? Should I move in with my SO? Should I buy this house when I have $X in savings? A parent died, what do I do with their estate? etc. An algorithm isn't going to give you that kind of human touch (at least not yet). Traditional financial advisers aren't going anywhere.

<comment><USER10> > People don't seek out financial advisers for asset allocation, they seek > them out for the sage advice that they'll offer for big financial decisions > they have in life

I've been wondering lately: When is the right time or what are the right circumstances to choose to seek out a human advisor especially with regard to tax efficiency, offshore banking, etc.?

I spoke to one advisor (a friend) who manages HNWIs; he suggested a net worth of $100k-250k is when it starts to make sense. I'm still curious to find a general answer.

<comment><USER13> Offshore banking with 100k?!? You are off by several orders of magnitude there.

<comment><USER10> Sorry, just trying to clarify _some_ of the services they advise about, and when reaching out for that advise starts to make sense -- not suggesting that they're right for every client.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I chatted with a D. Edward Jones advisor years ago, shortly after I got a full-time job.

My expected wealth accumulation % increase for a while would be eaten up by his fees(and he was selling only one line of funds, to boot). I nodded politely, then at home, I did some studying signed up for ETFs based upon my financial needs.

When I have a large sum of wealth, I will have a lawyer, wealth adviser, and accountant on retainer in order to design appropriate strategies. I suspect that this will be > 1M USD.

</comment><comment><USER15> As the price of world class portfolio management approaches zero, the massive gap in investor sophistication between rich and poor diminishes.

Once the poor have access to this engine of wealth, the main issue becomes the paternalistic need to protect them from themselves... or put another way to declare morally acceptable risk characteristics of portfolios for those who might end up on social welfare.

So like motorcycle "helmet laws", we'll have classes of algorithms that are deemed acceptable and allow the non-rich to grow their wealth.

Our society still bows before investment oracles whose strategic investments seem to manufacture wealth... but now that human management is accurately viewed as inferior, the divide between rich and poor is less a matter of skill than a byproduct of paternalism.

</comment><comment><USER16> As the co-founder and CTO of Investmynd, I have strong opinions on the rise of the "robos". We are building a company based on the premise that high net worth clients are not just chasing returns, but can truly benefit from the overall financial guidance that a personal wealth advisor can provide. But in order to provide value, an advisor must truly understand their client. We offer tools to capture not only the traditional profiling data an advisor needs to collect from a client (risk tolerance, cash flow needs, long-term and short-term goals, etc.) but also behavioral finance tools to help both client and advisor understand the distinct personality traits that influence every individual's investing decisions. Are you the type of client that seeks to maintain a high degree of control over your investing decisions? Do you prefer to delegate? Are you unduly optimistic? Pessimistic? Are you a collaborator? Do you prefer to work alone? All of these behavioral tendencies influence how you invest over time, both at a micro-level (individual stock picking, buy and sell decisions, etc.) and macro-level (high level decisions such as switching advisors, moving to a robo-fund, etc.). We firmly believe that advisors can add value beyond the basic asset allocation services offered by a robo-fund, as long as they have the right tools to understand how to best serve their clients.

<comment><USER17> Thanks for sharing these insights.

Curious for your thoughts on the fees assessed by robo-funds compared to something super barebones like Vanguard's index funds that you can manage your own allocations on.

Do you see fees charged by these guys as largely overpriced for what they offer since they aren't offering these other services? Would you say the majority of the value you add is from these other services?

<comment><USER16> I'll just say that when it comes to algorithmic portfolio planning, I think there will continue to be downward pressure on the fees that can be charged. Basic portfolio planning and diversification services are clearly becoming commoditized. The traditional high-touch personal wealth advisor will still provide value to their clients, and both clients and advisors will ultimately benefit from the improved technology that handles the actual portfolio management chores.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> With the recent HN headline that the bond market could follow suit with the equities market [1] I do wonder about what seems like a growing shift to what I'll summarize as "The Bogleheads" approach of simple, diversified, low-fee ETFs.

Could we be setting ourselves up for a situation where things will crash much harder than they would if people weren't using these robo-advisors because Main St. investors will be more "homogenized" in their investment choices?

Not the most educated on these matters, so please feel free to tell me where I'm totally off-base with this.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10252166](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10252166)

</comment><comment><USER18> As far as 401k money goes, there is no measurable difference between robo advisor investment allocations and target date maturity funds.

If you have more complex investment goals, or constraints, with your money (e.g. mix in taxes and estate planning), I can see where robo advisors would add value. Of course, increase the complexity level too much and the algorithms might not be able to handle the assignment.

</comment><comment><USER19> Wealthsimple here in Canada.</comment>


"Why We Replaced Rails with Go," Explains George Clooney - <AUTHOR> http://cheekycoder.com/2014/09/clooney-on-rails/ <comment><USER2> This a pretty worthless blog post without any sort of analytics/measurements except for the author claiming the site needed 40 servers for Rails and 2 for Go.

<comment><AUTHOR> Satire.</comment></comment>


Subsistence Programming - <AUTHOR> https://blog.licensezero.com/2019/09/03/subsistence.html <comment><USER2> Why aren't these packages jointly maintained by the money-making companies that use them? A lone developer writing a library isn't taking advantage of any of the positive-sum advantages of open source, he's just a guy working for free.

<comment><USER3> Well, many serious open source projects _are_ heavily maintained by the money- making companies that use them - either directly as a company, or by "accidentally" happening to employ key maintainers of these projects and letting them loose on that, or by simply having their engineers do a significant amount of feature development, or by sponsoring the projects.

Where it does break down is with excessive fragmentation. A hundred small libraries each doing one thing will get much less corporate support than a single important library that does the same hundred things.

<comment><USER4> > Where it does break down is with excessive fragmentation. A hundred small > libraries each doing one thing will get much less corporate support than a > single important library that does the same hundred things.

I think you've nailed it; similar patterns have played out with news/blog sites, or even media like music and indie games. The internet has allowed for rich selections of micro-products to pop up, get created, get distributed. But we have yet to solve the problem of getting the money flowing the other way through the same ever-more-fine-grained tree.

It's not that people refuse to pay for their news, it's that they don't want to sign up for and pay for dozens of different sources which they might follow a link to once a month. It's not (primarily) that people refuse to pay for software, it's that people don't want to spend the energy tracking down how to donate a couple dollars to the 100 different NPM dependencies their project has. In all these cases, unless you're a household name, you're going to get lost in the noise.

Ads have traditionally been the workaround for this. They don't require any involvement from users, and they scale based on traffic. I supported Feross' experiment because I see (non-tracking) ads as a necessary evil until we come up with a better solution to this problem.

Proposed solutions include bundles, Patreon, GitHub Sponsors, and what Brave is doing for web content. None of these have changed the equation yet, though, and it's a really vital problem to solve in today's world of content creation.

<comment><USER5> What aboout a Spotify-like rev-share model, where the user only Subscribes once, Paying Whatever you want monthly, and then the platform redistributes that to your repo's deps on some way, make it easy to give extra tip's after nice interactions/issues-solved/pr's-merged/releases etc

<comment><USER4> Yep. Perhaps repositories like NPM run such a system, giving you perks for subscribing or maybe just framing it as a (cheap) donation, and then each time you NPM install a package they factor that in to how your fee will get distributed. Even if it were a $5 monthly donation they asked for out of the goodness of people's hearts, which automatically and granularly divvied itself up based on what you use, I bet it would go a long way.

<comment><USER5> I would have a problem trusting npm or GitHub (Microsoft) with my donation money because of the same issues I've with mainstream NGO who play ads on TV of famelic enfants to make you send a paid/premium SMS... of which the ISP gets more than a 30% of the cut to start, and probably most of it will end up spent in whatever the C-level people in such organization consier fun.

npm is very much a business, stuff like pnpm, an yarn exist for a reason!

<comment><USER4> That's silly. NPM's business relies on its thriving package ecosystem, and ecosystems like it face a very real risk from this problem. It would be in their interest to provide such a service, and it would swiftly become obvious if any funny-business were going on, at which point their reputation would be completely decimated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some people volunteer at a food bank or shelter and some people volunteer by writing/maintaining open source code. It's for the common good and volunteerism is a good thing.

<comment><USER7> You could argue that much open source work is like volunteering to serve food at the local country club. Sure, you're feeding hungry people, but there is something just a little bit wrong about that.

Personally, I'm getting more paid open source work than I have time for, all based on permissive licensing, but I might be something of an outlier.

<comment><AUTHOR> > You could argue that much open source work is like volunteering to serve > food at the local country club.

It's more like volunteering to pave the road in your neighborhood because you want to help your neighbors out, and also to make it easier for your friends to come visit you at your house.

But eventually, some local small businesses realize that they can use the road to get their commercial goods to the market faster. At first, you don't mind because they're not causing much harm. Why not let them use the road?

But eventually some international megacorps hear about the road and start to tell their trucks to use it too. After a while, some of the truck drivers start to loudly complain about the way the road was designed. "This road doesn't let us drive our trucks as fast as we want to. Please fix!"

Next time you're repaving the road, you spend some extra time to make it less curvy and easier for the truck drivers to drive fast, even though you don't own a truck and this doesn't really help your friends or neighbors.

Eventually, even more huge companies start using the road to bring their goods to market. Their complaints get more frequent. "This road isn't designed for our eighteen-wheeler trucks that we'd like to drive through here! Please fix it or we'll start using another road!" And on and on...

Eventually, you realize that you're working for free and this isn't about helping your friends and neighbors anymore. You start to tell friends in other neighborhoods who are considering building their own free public roads not do it (it's just not worth it). You recommend if they want to do it that they at least charge a toll to use the road. That way the road won't be overused by folks who complain and don't give anything back.

After word gets around and some time passes, the world has fewer public roads and the remaining roads require a toll to use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This person is complaining that subsistence isn't enough?

News flash: Open source doesn't exist to pay your bills. It exists because you want _others_ to benefit from your work. If you want to pay your own bills you should be selling something or working for someone who does.

<comment><USER9> By the same token, we should have very low expectations from open source libraries/projects that aren't backed by big companies, or where the authors aren't living off consulting.

I've stopped relying on them entirely, unless they're very simple.

<comment><USER10> I'd argue the other way: hobby code is a product of genuine enjoyment and is probably better than the paid alternatives created to earn money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This "article" appears to be an ad for a license selling business.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know where you get this idea. Just because this essay is hosted on License Zero's blog doesn't make the content less interesting or useful.

<comment><USER12> Conversely just because the content is interesting or useful doesn't mean that it isn't an ad

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Open source won't pay your mortgage or buy you that yacht. It won't get you a job. It isn't going to help your resume potentially.

And if you're doing it for any of those reasons, then stop doing it because you're missing the point.

Do it because you care about what you're building. Do it because you want to share your solution with the world. Do it because you want to contribute.

<comment><USER14> Why would anyone want to contribute solutions that others can profit off of for free? It seems really weird to me that there might be people who actually want to do this kind of charity.

<comment><USER15> In my case, even from a self interested point of view this makes sense: this only applies to improvements and bug fixes on some Clojure libraries, but: If I contribute back to a library I use, I can raise the probability that other people use it and contribute to it, thus ensuring that my dependencies keep fresh; and by sharing work I'd do nonetheless, I do not lose anything. On the other hand if I keep my changes to myself, then I do not gain anything, but I contribute to the withering of the environment Im building dependencies with.

<comment><USER14> Contributing bugfixes, sure, but that's different than providing a project you've written yourself for free to others and continuing to invest significant work in maintaining it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This has long seemed like a mug's game to me, and all the talk of "passion" and "community" and so forth strikes me as unconvincing.

It's such a scam, you work hard on something that tons of companies use for free. If you're lucky, you get a couple bucks in donations. Then, if you decide that you're wasting your life doing this, people yell at you because you transferred the project to the wrong person. And don't you dare mess with the license, you evil greedy developer! (Greed is ok for the companies that use your stuff, but not ok for the people whose efforts they build on top of.) The whole time people are giving you shit for not solving their particular issue, not to mention the crappy things people say about the `standard` project itself.

It's signing up to be treated like a donkey, branded as something virtuous and righteous. No thanks.

But somehow feross is the asshole. What a world.

</comment><comment><USER17> I guess the question is whether there SHOULD be developers who only make money as independent open source developers.

My gut instinct says no. Open source development should be funded by companies paying their developers to work on and maintain open source projects.

Developers are paid because what they write provides value to a business that will utilize that code to make money. This is true or open or closed source; many companies realize you get more value out of sharing coding resources with other companies to create shared, open source projects.

This is how most open source is funded, and that isn't bad.

<comment><USER18> > I guess the question is whether there SHOULD be developers who only make > money as independent open source developers. My gut instinct says no. Open > source development should be funded by companies paying their developers to > work on and maintain open source projects.

What you're describing is a future where open source is driven and controlled _solely_ by corporate interests, and anywhere user needs or desires or freedoms run counter to corporate interests, they go unserved by open source.

That strikes me as a highly undesirable future.

<comment><USER12> > That strikes me as a highly undesirable future.

I imagine that is largely because the corporations here bring to mind faang and their ilk who use software to ensnare their users to whatever purposes they need.

But what if the corporations were of wider spectrum, more Fortune 500 and less silicon valley, whose goal is to create a good computing environment for their companies to flourish in. Then I think the scenario should seem much less dystopian.</comment></comment></comment>


Who will pay for the bailout? If you're under 50 and working, you will - <AUTHOR> https://fortune.com/2020/04/20/who-will-pay-for-stimulus-package-checks-sba-ppp-loans-debt-us-coronavirus-bailout/ <comment><AUTHOR> Archive: [http://archive.md/4s1kX](http://archive.md/4s1kX)</comment>


Show HN: Another visualization ping utility - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/yittg/ving <comment><AUTHOR> some compatibility issue to those(go without modules) fixed, would someone give a try, thanks.</comment>


Why the Apple IIe is the Best PC Ever Made - <AUTHOR> http://revitalsalomon.blogspot.com/2007/09/10-reasons-why-apple-e-is-best-pc-ever.html

<comment><USER2> Two reasons why the C64 was even better:

1\. Us poor folks could afford one.

2\. Everything the Apple IIe did, the C64 did better. Better games, better high res graphics modes, dramatically better sound, and more software (because it was cheap, it sold more units, bigger market share, more third party applications).

Bonus reason: The case was a third the size of the Apple IIe, making it much easier to haul over to friends houses.

<comment><USER3> Based on your description of the Apple IIe, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum was better still. Better high res graphics, similar sound capabilities (on the 128k model) and more software (at least in the UK).

Bonus reason: The spectrum was a fraction of the size of an AppleIIe, about the size of a small book. But the rubber keys did suck.

<comment><USER2> As I recall it, the 128k model of Spectrum didn't launch until the 8-bit era was coming to a close and 16 bit boxes had been out for a few years. The first-gen Spectrum was horrid (1k, worse than chiclet keyboard), though the second gen was acceptable (but not comparable to either of the 64 k machines in question). One could buy a C128D or an Apple IIc by the time the 128k Speccy existed, and those machines were at least comparable, and the Amige and Apple IIgs (or Macintosh) would blow the Speccy away.

Not saying Spectrums weren't awesome (I don't really know; the only one I ever owned was that 1k first-gen model with a 16k expansion; it was miserable), just that you kinda have to compare Apples to...umm...not Apples.

And, of course, the C64 is the bestselling personal computer of all time.

(I should admit that you're arguing with an 11 year old SwellJoe here...I _loved_ my C64. And, crazy as it sounds, I also bought some C64s on eBay over the past few months for use in composing chiptunes. Thus, evidence indicates I might be mentally unstable with regard to the C64. Backing away slowly might be the best option.)

<comment><USER4> You'd think that someone who owned a ZX Spectrum would know that the minimum spec memory was 16Kb, not 1Kb. :-)

<comment><USER2> Actually, what I owned was a Timex Sinclair 1000, which was a rebranded ZX-81. Apologies for the confusion. The rest of the Sinclair Spectrum line never made it to the states, as far as I know...so my knowledge is limited to what I read in magazines back then, and what I've read on the net since then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Forgot the most important one:

1\. Completely open hardware, Apple encouraged hacking.

Contrast that with the iPhone and ... well ... sigh.

</comment><comment><USER6> Built-in BASIC. That was key for me. No need to find the disks or install anything. You could be up and messing around with a small program within a minute.

</comment><comment><USER7> The correct name is Apple //e .. Only the original Apple ][ and ][+ used the squared brackets in the name.

<comment><USER7> Also, that picture is an Apple ][. This is a //e [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/Apple_iie...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/Apple_iieb.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> So `apple = PC` now? after all those years of telling people that they were different? Hmm.

<comment><AUTHOR> "A personal computer (PC) is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end user, with no intervening computer operator." (Wikipedia)

<comment><USER8> Yet Apple like their "I'm a Mac; I'm a PC" stuff.

<comment><USER9> It's the fascinating history of branding. Apple invented the PC, but they poured their energy into selling the brand _Apple_ rather than the term _PC_. IBM then came along with a machine _called_ "the IBM PC", which sold a lot of units and was the subject of a lot of marketing. With the word _PC_ as the actual name of the machine, the tendency to associate that term exclusively with IBM machines began.

(As I recall, the generic term for a non-IBM PC tended to be "microcomputer" or "micro" rather than "PC".)

That trend then leapt forward when Compaq started making PC clones. The clonemakers needed a word for what they were making. There was a time when you could call them "IBM compatibles", "PC compatibles", or "PC clones", but once IBM switched to PS/2 and OS/2 -- and proceeded to fade from dominance -- continuing to associate the word _IBM_ with these things made little sense. Meanwhile, Apple wasn't trying to contest the term _PC_... instead they invented their own exclusive brand name, _Macintosh_ , and sold the hell out of that.

So in the end the word _PC_ ended up meaning _a generic Intel box that runs Microsoft Windows or Linux_.

<comment><USER6> Nobody bought the IBM PC because it was called a "PC". They bought it because it was IBM, and in the 1980s there was a saying: "Nobody ever lost their job buying IBM".

<comment><USER9> Yes, that's right. What I'm saying is that IBM successfully sold the term "IBM PC" because it contained the magic letters I-B-M. But then the magic slowly spread to the other half of the phrase _IBM PC_ , to the point where _PC_ eventually became synonymous with IBM.

<comment><USER6> No, it was because of Compaq.

Compaq won the white-room reverse engineering suits against IBM, opening the door for dozens of manufacturers to make clones of the IBM PC/XT/AT.

Eventually the term "PC Clone" got shortened to "PC" when referring to anything that was compatible with the PC-AT standard.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Quora's Horrible Mobile Experience (In the name of "growth") - <AUTHOR> http://fmathieu.co/post/56604904227/quora

<comment><USER2> I expect many if not most around here wrote Quora off some time ago [0].

As I recall the site is quite popular in India. I wonder if Quora's shenanigans are somehow more acceptable over there?

0: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4377181](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4377181)

<comment><AUTHOR> That was another issue that they corrected a while ago. I hope they also correct this one.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Me and my wife are really pissed when it happens. Decided to post this to let them know how it sucks.

</comment><comment><USER3> No way to adjust type face or size, difficult to read walls of text.</comment>


Itemsy (email links to read later = personalised newsletter) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@itemsyapp/itemsy-introduction-b0e0111c000b <comment><USER2> I've been using it for a week. Well executed. Still don't understand why it's needed though. Why not simply save to say pocket, or bookmark...</comment>


SurgeMQ: MQTT Message Queue at 750,000 MPS - <AUTHOR> http://zhen.org/blog/surgemq-mqtt-message-queue-750k-mps/ <comment><USER2> It's good to see new MQTT servers. As one of the developers of IBM's product in this space I'd like to mention it: [http://www-03.ibm.com/software/products/en/messagesight](http://www-03.ibm.com/software/products/en/messagesight)

I'm biased and MessageSight has existed a lot longer so it's not fair to compare them but if people want to see numbers our performance report is here: [http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg24035590](http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg24035590) (that report is for 1.1, the equivalent for 1.2 released a couple of weeks ago isn't out yet).

Good luck and a fair wind to everyone in the MQTT space!

</comment><comment><USER3> These numbers are great, but they are also highly dependant on hardware architecture and a strong coupling with network architecture. Another big contributor to messaging is in the message size. One can claim 10M messages/sec but for 1 byte messages, 10m messages/s is hardly impressive.

I can say that on today's hardware, achieving 3-7M msgs/sec in a single- stream, guaranteed, in-order messaging is possible. This us also with 120 byte messages, which amounts to about 3-7Gbps if sustained messaging in clusters of 2 to 200+ machines. What do you need to achieve this?

* Kernel bypass network architecture e.g. Solarflare 10/40gbe

* 10gbe switches

* decoupling of transport layer into a dedicated processor cores

* busy-polling processes

* business logic placed on dedicated cores.

* use of shared memory and/or memory mapping to transport messaging between processes.

It all sounds fairly convoluted to throw up processes and burn a core on rx/tx, but if you need to process millions of messages a second at fairly low latency, this is about the limit of where it goes. Using traditional application and socket tied to a single process will get you to around 1 million messages/sec with some very large buffers and efficient business logic, but thst eill be about it. The next step would be to start sharding streams, but that comes with its own complexities.

<comment><USER4> I think you are overstating the difficulty of achieving good network throughput on modern hardware. Architecture definitely matters but saturating 10GbE is pretty achievable without going to extraordinary lengths. While doing kernel bypass for networking is more efficient (and preferable for other reasons), it is not necessary for pushing a huge number of messages in my experience.

The biggest bottleneck tends to be the computational cost of parsing the protocol format. Nonetheless, I've seen GeoJSON documents moved over networks at per node messaging rates similar to those in the article.

<comment><USER3> In my experience, just passing messages around w/ dummy logic should be yielding numbers about 10x greater at around 10x the reduced latency.

With architectural tuning, the messages/sec in the various scenarios can be increased 5x (~4M msgs/s) while decreasing the average latency of processing a message to the theoretical minimums of around 5-6 microseconds to get from wire to application memory and back out to wire.

Even with efficient protocol formats (mold64), one reaches ceilings too soon. The fact that the author mentions that they are neither CPU bound or network IO bound leads me to believe that they are probably bound by memory IO and lost efficiencies to context switching.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's some typoes and broken links. I like the code, though, lots of work has been done.

It's worth bearing in mind that messages per second is important, but it's easy to get fixated on benchmark porn.

Different queueing systems have different guarantees, disciplines and semantics. These affect user-facing behaviour, which tends to be more important at first blush than throughput.

I like zillions of messages per second as much as the next fellow. But frequently you need to worry about things like:

* Are messages delivered once and only once?

* Are messages are messages delivered at least once?

* Can messages be dropped entirely under pressure? (aka best effort)

* If they drop under pressure, how is pressure measured? Is there a back-pressure mechanism?

* Can consumers and producers look into the queue, or is it totally opaque?

* Is queueing unordered, FIFO or prioritised?

* Is there a broker or no broker?

* Does the broker own independent, named queues (topics, routes etc) or do producers and consumers need to coordinate their connections?

* Is queueing durable or ephemeral?

* Is durability achieved by writing every message to disk first, or by replicating messages across servers?

* Is queueing partially/totally consistent across a group of servers or divided up for maximal throughput?

* Is message posting transactional?

* Is message receiving transactional?

* Do consumers block on receive or can they check for new messages?

* Do producers block on send or can they check for queue fullness?

And there's probably a bunch more I've forgotten.

The thing is that answers to these questions will fundamentally change both the functional and non-functional nature of your queueing system.

For example, a queue system giving best-effort, unordered, non-durable behaviour is going to run a _lot_ faster. It also pushes a lot of work onto the application programmer. On the other hand, once-and-only-once, durable, consistent queues are lot slower and screech to a halt under most partition conditions. But they also fit what most application developers expect to happen upon the first encounter with queueing systems.

I work on a section of Cloud Foundry in my day job, and other teams have seen that different tasks require different queueing approaches.

For example, stuff like metrics is is still useful under conditions of dropping messages, out-of-order messages and so on, because what's interesting is the statistics, not any one single measurement.

But a message like "start this app" requires much higher guarantees of ordering, durability, delivery certainty. People get mad if your PaaS doesn't actually run the application you asked it to run.

So, just remember: queues are not queues. You need to compare delivered apples with lossy oranges.

As a note, the author observes that MQTT provides an option to select which delivery semantics you prefer (at-least-once, at-most-once / best-effort, once-and-only-once), but I can't see which one the benchmark is run for.

<comment><USER6> Author here. A bit of a pleasant surprise to wake up and see this on HN.

Thanks for the detailed response. Here's some answers hopefully can help clarify things a bit.

* Are messages delivered once and only once?

A: MQTT allows QoS 0 (at most once), 1 (at least once), and 2 (exactly once.) The performance numbers in the blog are for QoS 0.

However, SurgeMQ implements all three and there's unit tests for all three. I just haven't done the performance tests for QoS 1 and 2.

* Are messages are messages delivered at least once?

SurgeMQ supports it though the numbers posted are for QoS 0 (at most once)

* Can messages be dropped entirely under pressure? (aka best effort)

No. Currently no messages are dropped.

* If they drop under pressure, how is pressure measured? Is there a back-pressure mechanism?

See above.

* Can consumers and producers look into the queue, or is it totally opaque?

Not sure what this means..sorry..

* Is queueing unordered, FIFO or prioritised?

Ordered, FIFO...MQTT spec requires that messages from publishers to delivered in the same order to the subscribers.

* Is there a broker or no broker?

Brokered

* Does the broker own independent, named queues (topics, routes etc) or do producers and consumers need to coordinate their connections?

Brokers uses topics to route. Publisher publishes to a topic, subscribers subscribe to multiple topics w/ optional wild cards.

* Is queueing durable or ephemeral?

Ephemeral currently. Though MQTT spec requires that any unack'ed QoS 1 and 2 messages be redelivered when the server restarts or client reconnects. So once SurgeMQ meets that spec, it could be considered somewhat durable.

* Is durability achieved by writing every message to disk first, or by replicating messages across servers?

N/A

* Is queueing partially/totally consistent across a group of servers or divided up for maximal throughput?

Currently SurgeMQ is a single server w/ no clustering ability. However, MQTT spec does mention the bridge capability that is a poor man's cluster. Not yet implemented.

* Is message posting transactional?

QoS 1 and 2 starts to be more transactional. QoS 0 is strictly fire and forget.

* Is message receiving transactional?

See above.

* Do consumers block on receive or can they check for new messages?

Block on receive.

* Do producers block on send or can they check for queue fullness?

Block on send.

<comment><USER5> Great reply.

I wasn't expecting to make you fill out a survey. I was just trying to show off scars I and others I know have accumulated over the years :)

<comment><USER6> Heh. No worries. Excellent list of questions. Like antirez, I am evernoting (is that a verb now?) this for future references.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How does this compare to RabbitMQ?</comment>


How do I edit a jupyter notebook ipynb file with python? - <AUTHOR> I wrote a simple note taking application that automates a few things for me when writing notes in markdown style. I can share the gitlab link if need be but perhaps a small description of my problem might be enough...
My python application which is very dumb and simple (does what I want) accomplishes a few simple tasks like...
* Inserting a markdown style timestamp for each new entry which links to a table of contents section name
* Logging complex commands from your bash_history at the end of the day
* Automatically archiving notes in a file using a markdown style table of contents
* Automatically syncing your notes (using git) with a remote repo on a hosting service like GitHub.
This all works fine if I'm taking notes using a simple .md (markdown) file. However, if I want automate this in the same way with a jupyter notebook ipynb file it becomes extremely more complicated. The ipynb file looks like it's in a json'ish format where some of it looks enrypted and apparently i need to have a notebook server running to open it??
Much of my text that isn't code in my personal jupyter notebook is formatted in markdown. I have a markdown style table of contents very similar to how I mentioned above. Therefore, it would really be nice if I could open a ipynb file like i do with python, sort it, write a line of text to it. How do I accomplish this?
Currently, I do something like the following when I want to insert some text into a .md (markdown) file. Which is simple...
with open(somefile, 'r') as f:
lines = f.readlines()
lines.insert(lineNumberToInsertAt, someText)
with open(somefile, 'w') as f:
f.writelines(lines)
I can't just open a ipynb file like this and write to it so how can I accomplish this?
Also I'm new to this site and noticed that there are some links that say "Ask HN: Some question". How do I appropriately post questions versus clogging up the main page which is more for articles? <comment><USER2> Install PyCharm then pip (or pip3) install jupyter.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks suff ~ I'm having a hard time wording this question but I know how to install jupyter notebook and edit it using the jupyter notebook application. That is easy. My question was how to automate the tasks of..

Open the notebook file Grabbing the current time and inserting it into the file at line (x). Saving and closing the file.

I want to automate those three tasks using the python language.</comment></comment>


A beautiful new article template for LaTeX - <AUTHOR> http://www.latextemplates.com/template/arsclassica-article

<comment><USER2> It's nice, but there are a lot of fonts used at the same time so I'm not sure I like it...

Isn't there a design rule-of-thumb not to use too many fonts?</comment>


Working shorter hours may also be good for your health - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/01/working-hours?src=hns <comment><USER3> causation or no causation. we need to rethink the whole idea of work anyway. at some point something went seriously wrong.

how can people accept that it's right that we get taught in a certain mental pattern for almost 20 years and then we are to work for 40 years in that pattern so that we can spend the last 15 years of our life in peace anyway?

i spend ridiculous amounts of time trying to get great at things - you know, human nature.

but the times i spent in traditional work structures i actually got lazy and stupid, because they encourage you to create things that are just good enough at a slow pace, because if you actually perform too well you become a liability.

<comment><USER4> Correction, if you own what you create and perform too well, you become rich.

It's when someone else owns it and has given you no incentive to perform well (99% of startups) that you become a liability.

<comment><USER5> _Correction, if you own what you create and perform too well, you become rich._

Correction, it depends on where you was born and where you have lived.

<comment><USER6> Also where you was grammared.

<comment><USER5> Exactly!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Methinks some causation and a large degree of correlation. There's quite a bit of spread until 2050 hours or so.

Most workaholics I know neglect their health, they stop exercising, and they are generally miserable.

I used to be all three. These days, I prioritize the first two points, but I'm still occasionally miserable when the work is tedious. If the work is engrossing, it's hard to pull me away from it because it feels more like I'm exploring than working. I've gone to great lengths to make sure my work is interesting. My longevity will hopefully provide a useful data point.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is a typical article that everyone here will feast on. Another of a long list of "the answer to your problems" to make people who are in a rut feel better about themselves.

For the last time "work" and the amount of work doesn't mean the same thing to everyone to begin with.

It depends on what you do, how much you like doing it, why you need to do it and a host of other pressures and things that you deal with every day.

I work everyday and enjoy what I do. Other people can't wait to get out at 5 and take the train home. (When I was in high school it was that way for me because of the type of jobs that I had when I wasn't doing my own thing which I typically did (side businesses)).

I have a shore place. I get bored on the beach. You know what I do? I get off the beach and go answer emails and "check in". I enjoy doing that better than sitting on the beach. I do the same when I am on vacation. Some people like what they do and it's not work. It's actually relaxing.

That said this idea that you need to find something that you enjoy to earn a living is not true either. Because sometimes you can't it's not that easy. I had to do many jobs that I didn't like to get to the point of doing a job that I do like and enjoy to do.

Yesterday I had to review a legal contract and truly despised doing so. So I'm glad I'm not an attorney because if I was the stress of that job would certainly make it hard for me to "work all the time". But if I have to I do that work and just make sure that I reward myself with doing things that I need to do that I enjoy (like writing a shell script..)

Everyone is different.

<comment><USER8> > _I have a shore place. I get bored on the beach. You know what I do? I get > off the beach and go answer emails and "check in". I enjoy doing that better > than sitting on the beach. I do the same when I am on vacation. Some people > like what they do and it's not work. It's actually relaxing._

That's lovely for you, but please understand that you are atypical as humans go. For most people, most of the time, work causes stress and stress reduces health/lifespan. Outliers are definitely worth considering, but they don't disprove the accuracy of the average data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> For the last 4 months, my daily goal has been 'no client work before lunch' [1]. I'm happier, healthier, and more focused on the important things than I have been my entire professional life.

1\. [https://garrickvanburen.com/archive/no-client-work-before- lu...](https://garrickvanburen.com/archive/no-client-work-before-lunch/)

<comment><USER10> What do you do before lunch and how late in the day does this cause you to work? Did the stopping time of your work day change doing this?

<comment><USER9> Before lunch is everything else: gym, writing, work towards long term goals, administrivia, new business development. I always stop between 4:30-5p.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This runs the risk of winning a "No shit Sherlock" award.

<comment><USER12> Yet, thre are plenty of people doubting it here.

<comment><USER11> There are many employers here. This would obviously be bad news...

<comment><USER13> Nah, its not that, its that there are not enough controls to make the claim. Lets create a strawman and see if it works for you, lets say your "job" was fitness equipment tester, and the more you worked the more exercise time you got in. Historically there is a sort of bell shaped impact on health here where exercise increases your overall health up to a point at which point too much of a good thing starts impacting your health in a negative way. If you were at the global maximum on that curve, either working more or working less would cause you to be less healthy.

For people where they are more 'at risk' at work than they are not at work (say 'deployed soldier') working less is statistically safer, for folks who have the reverse (say submariners) the reverse is true.

The discussion usually comes around how do you narrow the claim to make it either provable or disprovable. Is it true for all programmers? how about for 'all java programmers' or 'all java programmers in the bay area'. See the challenge?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In other news, water is wet, fire hot, and the Pope shits in the woods.

It is just so wearying that there are people actually arguing with this.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm more of the mindset of who would want to work 40 hours a week? I work on projects that I find interesting and I still only do about 20-30 hours a week of work. I've done the whole work yourself to death thing, 75 hour work weeks and work until dawn every night for a month. F#%k that!

</comment><comment><USER15> If you work at a startup though, you'll die a glorious death.

<comment><USER16> The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long.

<comment><USER17> I want more life f*cker! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjbAgwdBaTI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjbAgwdBaTI)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> That graph is confusing, it clearly shows that if you work somewhere between 2300 hours and 2500, rate of premature death is the lowest.

<comment><USER19> Come on Economist, realize that we're plotting averages of averages and then fitting that average. Not too scientific. Let's break down the underlying formulae, solve to carry through the dispersion of the underlying data, and then add the confidence bounds on the sides of that bestfit. If they did, we'd see much lower confidence around those 2300-2500 hour points.

But wait, we've got an R2 of 0.2! Let's keep in mind that at best, high hours of work are not the dominating factor that killed you.

<comment><USER20> At least they explicitly admit there are Hungary and South Korea outliers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Can someone points to the actual dataset? The OECD website seems very busy at the moment.

<comment><USER22> [https://web.archive.org/web/20140228211614/http://www.oecd-i...](https://web.archive.org/web/20140228211614/http://www.oecd- ilibrary.org/sites/health_glance-2011-en/01/02/index.html?itemId=/content/chapter/health_glance-2011-5-en)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20140228211746/http://www.oecd-i...](https://web.archive.org/web/20140228211746/http://www.oecd- ilibrary.org/sites/health_glance-2011-en/01/02/g1-02-01.html?itemId=/content/chapter/health_glance-2011-5-en)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20140228212020/http://www.oecd-i...](https://web.archive.org/web/20140228212020/http://www.oecd- ilibrary.org/sites/health_glance-2011-en/01/02/g1-02-02.html?itemId=/content/chapter/health_glance-2011-5-en)

<comment><USER21> Thanks but those are not the complete dataset. It seems like we should be able to get it at [http://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?queryid=24879](http://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?queryid=24879), but I keep getting an error.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> If you want to impress an employer as someone who will work until they die on the job, your answer to the question "where do you see yourself in 5 years?" should be "dead."

</comment><comment><USER24> A blanket 'work less hours' policy across professions might actually be bad because doctors, scientists, researchers, etc work longer hours to advance medical knowledge which benefits everyone.

This is pure speculation but I don't believe anyone who is at the frontier of human knowledge will ever expand it by working less hours than usual.

<comment><USER25> But what if instead of working more, they spend time educating others and their peers in the free time and brought more into the field - then they all work less... thought capitalism make take a bit of a whack out of that concept.

Parallel working, not serialised :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm not sure how to interpret this chart:

For an average annual hours of 2000, how can we know if that person works 40 hours a week during 50 weeks or 66 hours during 30 weeks ?

Also what jobs are represented here ? For instance for firemen or soliders it seems logic that statistically the more hours you work the more premature mortality will happen.

<comment><USER19> > it seems logic that statistically the more hours you work the more premature > mortality will happen

But many of the most dangerous jobs, say fighter pilot and Alaskan crab fisherman, are actually very short bursts of intense work. The pilot might log several hundred hours in a good year and the fisherman works in seasons that are only several weeks long.

Trouble here is the mononumerosis, aka the need to boil a whole range of values down into a single number.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Correlation studies are fine, but I do worry about national GDP as a confounding factor.

Maybe poorer countries have lower life expectancies, (or whatever PYLL measures is higher), and work longer hours.

I would like to see this graph broken down by quantiles of national GDP.

</comment><comment><USER28> I know this isn't on-topic, but am I the only person who tried to read this who didn't already have an account with the economist? Apparently, I have "reached my article limit".

<comment><USER29> I got the same message. Deleting the economist.com cookies solved the problem.

<comment><USER30> Private Browsing or Incognito mode works too, in case you don't want to bother deleting cookies (or would prefer to keep them).

<comment><USER31> Or just google the title of the article and click through.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> hopefully the robots will work for us soon... this path might be easier than changing a system where competition and success are a lot based on spending more time working.

</comment><comment><USER33> R-squared of 0.2? Not a stats major, but that seems like a pretty low correlation to try to draw conclusions from, even though it may be statistically significant.

<comment><USER34> R^2 of 0.2 is actually quite high for real-world data. It means that a full 20% of the variation of one variable is completely explained by the other. It's a big deal to be able to account for a fifth of what you're examining.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Since it's not clear, it seems to be that PYLL on the y-axis of the graph is measured per 100,000 population.

</comment><comment><USER36> Correlation is not causation.

Far more likely an explanation is an inverse correlation between work hours and wealth, intelligence, and education, as those are shown correlated to health and life expectancy with better and more plausible mechanisms for causation than those waved around for work hours.

<comment><USER37> I am pretty sure people are just finding different ways to say "Stress shortens your lifespan".

1) Find item/activity that creates stress 2) Graph that vs. life expectancy to see how stress = death

The chart they cite in the first place seems to have a few different trends existing where they take on a polynomial curve upwards (one just passed 1800, one ~2300) and I would personally be more interested in seeing if there's any correlation there.

<comment><USER38> One reason why the graph has multiple trends is that its multiple time series dumped on top of each other (the article entirely glosses over it being data from different points in time which would potential exhibit independent trends in premature deaths).

The article does mention that "the outlying figures to the right are those for South Korea". If I'm interpreting that correctly, it's the neat little chain to the right hand side which shows South Korea's working hours rapidly declining and potential years of life lost also falling over time; but if working hours decline you'd expect a spurious correlation to appear even if there was no causal link since healthcare standards also steadily improve over time. To the extent there is a causal link between the two in South Korea - <USER2> opposed to coincidental secular trends over time - it's probably more down to economic development than stress.

I'd expect a publication called the Economist to know how to handle panel data...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I love when these multi-million dollar studies come out and the only thing that hits the news is a headline that could've been inferred by a 10 year old.

</comment><comment><USER40> no shit

</comment><comment><USER41> Good. I don't really enjoy living anyway.

<comment><USER42> Possibly because you work so much.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: The best current CRM solution - <AUTHOR>

I wanted to get peoples take on the currently available CRM management systems and what works well for everyone.  I know salesforce is the "best" but it is very expensive.  Is it work investing in?
Here are my facts.
1. I'm going to be dealing with a lot of customers / cold calls.  roughly 300 - 600 a week. 2. Everything will be web based i.e email, forums 3. I will be managing a team of 10 which needs to hit 10 hot leads per day. 4. I will need good reporting and graphs for management to evaluate my progress. 5. I will need social media integration and finding across all networks.
Any ideas? <comment><USER3> +1 for Salesforce.com.

About two years ago I worked on a Salesforce implementation for a political organization. Prior to SF.com, everything lived in Excel spreadsheets on network shares. After some research we went all-in on a SF.com implementation. 65 'sales' staff used it (all with 'unlimited' licenses), with between 200-300 users on an in house application at any given time pushing data into SF via the API. Overall, I was quite happy with SF.com.

The dashboards and reports are generally quite powerful, and AppExchange is great for hooking into 3rd party apps. If an app isn't available on AppExchange, you can always write custom code and deploy it to SF.com - <USER2> we did quite a bit of. SF also has campaign functionality built in - so if you have 250 hot leads you want to work through, you can dump them into a new campaign and just assign calls from that.

I recommend getting a SF.com developer account (they're free and you don't need to talk to a salesperson) and trying out some of the functionality. It'll have test data already in there so you can get a feel for how SF envisions you using their product.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think the only real negative with salesforce is the price. It's currently around $100 per person over in the UK and the one we have been looking at is called nimble.com which is only $15 a day.

Now really I think money shouldn't be an issue here but it always is.

Ill take a look at batchbook too. It's hard to know what to get until you have started using a few.

</comment><comment><USER4> Check out <http://batchbook.com>. It's a nice application with a focus on integrating email and social networks rather than replacing them. Fairly priced too.

</comment><comment><USER5> I may be biased* but have you looked at SugarCRM?

* I am biased, as I do in fact, work at SugarCRM. That said, I used the product before I came to work here, so I actually think its pretty good.</comment>


EMail alert if you have more than usual visitors - <AUTHOR>

If you got TechCruched or get similar effect you got email. You could setup yourself how many people to have at one point to get alert. Ideally that tool would pause all current A/B or MVT tests. Anyone? <comment><USER2> You could use something like <http://ifttt.com/recipes/30651>.</comment>


Code as if everyone is the thief. - <AUTHOR> http://financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/001496.html <comment><USER2> flagging this because it's blogspam - original: [http://thecodelesscode.com/case/140](http://thecodelesscode.com/case/140)

i know etiquette says not to post a comment, but the reason did need to be communicated somehow.</comment>


Some Uber drivers make so little, they have to live in their cars - <AUTHOR> http://curious.kcrw.com/2017/07/driving-for-uber-living-in-your-car <comment><USER2> What I don't understand is why the free market doesn't correct for this. If Uber drivers make less than what they need, they'd stop driving for Uber, causing some kind of price correction, no?

(BTW, I'm no fan of Uber, but I don't understand how Uber is to blame here.)

<comment><USER3> Uber is clearly the best option these people believe they have.

Knowledge is not perfect, and efficiency is not instant.

<comment><USER2> Yes, I agree, and I see that these cases are clearly outliers -- nevertheless, it doesn't seem reasonable to blame Uber for this.

<comment><USER3> I agree that this is not Uber's fault. I was only tackling the "why the free market doesn't correct" aspect.

On that point: The free market is not obligated to correct for the lack of demand for humans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is sensationalist nonsense and should be voted down immediately. No one is forcing these people to keep their jobs for Uber and them having to live in their cars has nothing to do with Uber. It has to do with them not making a sustainable income living in one of the most expensive parts of the United States. Take your car, drive is somewhere cheaper and look for a job in an area you can afford to live. Don't shift the blame to Uber.

<comment><USER5> Uber was misleading drivers with deceptive advertising regarding how much drivers would make. How _couldn 't_ you blame Uber?

[http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/19/technology/uber-settles- driv...](http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/19/technology/uber-settles-driver- lawsuit/index.html)

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/janetwburns/2017/01/23/uber- mus...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/janetwburns/2017/01/23/uber-must- pay-20m-for-luring-drivers-with-inflated-wage-stats/#6bf20dbf191d)

<comment><USER4> ...because no one is forcing these people to continue working for Uber? This article makes it seem like these people have to live in their cars because they're somehow bound to Uber. If they can't get another job, then Uber is income that they wouldn't otherwise have. I don't see how that's Uber's fault.

<comment><USER5> So it's alright that companies lie and it's the employees fault for not knowing they were being lied too? Brilliant. Another thought, if Uber wasn't completely incompetent in managing it's finances and didn't hemorrhage money like a rich cocaine addict in Bolivia, they could probably afford to pay fair wages.

<comment><USER4> Umm... they are not Uber employees. They're Uber contractors. I'm not saying that Uber is a saintly company with only good intentions. I'm saying that it's misguided and silly to blame Uber for the fact that this person has to live in his car. Without Uber, he would be getting no income whatsoever and would be living in his car anyways. At the very least, he could drive to another city while Ubering and picking up fares and improve his situation. Blaming Uber is not only wrong but doesn't actually fix his situation _at all_.

<comment><USER5> Lets exploit the poor. Awesome.

<comment><USER4> What? So we should blame Uber because some of its contractors are poor? What are you even on about?

<comment><USER5> What am I on about? The new era of the robber barons and how it hurts our entire industry as a whole. I've been in the tech industry for 20 years now and the Ubers of the world make all of us look bad. We shouldn't reward bad behavior or the Machiavellian idea that the end justifies the means. Uber will fail and the new tech bubble will burst. They've proven time and time again that they're incompetent and so far have squandered billions in investments. This will scare investors away from the tech industry just as it happened in the early 2000s. It took years for our industry to recover and here we are again repeating history. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I gotta say that maybe part of the problem is the two guys they mentioned with car payments are paying more in a month than I pay for my rent in Montana.

</comment><comment><USER7> Anyone driving for Uber is really dumb, these people simply take the cake.</comment>


America's Jobless Future? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/201003/jobless-america-future <comment><USER3> It is important to note that roles which are automated only require a shift in skill set. Cashiers may turn into Uscan machines, but Uscan machines require more administrators and support staff.

With the money saved with the automated, the retailer may choose to cut prices, or reinvest in their business. If they cut prices, consumers now have money to invest in other industries, the demand spawning new positions. If they reinvest in their business, these positions, not previously open, will also be available.

If they simply take their savings, and pay it out to share holders / keep it in the bank, this allows more capital for investment.

The more steps that are automated, the more abundantly we will all live. It is a great thing in terms of material desires.

<comment><USER4> fast forward: there is one person who is producing all our food and one person who is producing all out clothing. they trade with each other and the rest of the people have nothing to offer in return for food.

<comment><USER3> In this scenario, if there is only one person providing food, at that point it becomes economically viable for individuals and consumers alike to produce food, and fill that void.

You didn't include it in your comment, however it is important to note how _much_ each producer is producing. With economies of scale, it is likely both producers create enough goods to exceed the demand of either consumer. Rationale being if "food producer" became efficient enough to put all other food producers out of business, they likely can feed more than just the clothing producer.

<comment><USER4> They could feed everyone but why would they? The rest of the people have nothing to offer in return.

The reason why competing food manufacturing would be impossible to start in the era of absolute automation is that you need the machines to do that, in other words you need the capital. Who in their right mind would provide capital to manufacture food for people who have nothing to offer in return?

I'm stretching the argument here, but only to illustrate the problem that I see - automation satisfies needs and thus destroys jobs tied to satisfying those needs. I see only two ways out of this - create new needs (which we've been doing successfully so far) or exert the power of the state to take the products from producers (progressively heavier taxation).

<comment><USER5> _They could feed everyone but why would they? The rest of the people have nothing to offer in return._

You're implying that, in this (dis)utopian future, luxury goods don't exist?

Once you have those three things, you have an entire economy. Heck, arguably _clothes_ are a luxury good, so all you need are food and luxury goods.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In America, you are either self-employed or you're not.

So-called "unemployment benefits" are taxed as income meaning you are actually self-employed while receiving them. It's a matter of perspective. Where does your income come from and how much is it?

I'm an optimist. I believe growth in the production and movement of goods and services (the economy) will come from millions of people acting in their own self-interest. A massive collection of interconnected garages, basements, home-offices, libraries, schools, etc. -- all making stuff.

Government can stimulate all it wants, but the heart and soul of our success has always come from individual initiative.

<comment><USER7> Don't forget the economic role of cheap liquid fuels at relatively stable prices. Those days are over, probably for good. Any economic recovery is vulnerable as long as rising GDP triggers severe oil price volatility.

 _Edit_ can the person who down-voted this please explain why?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It seems to me that we have the resources and technology to solve a lot of problems for good, but a permanent (or even just "better") solution would get in the way of profit. (I saw the documentary "who killed the electric car" recently, which describes one instance of this.)

There was a discussion here on HN a few weeks back about automating and simplifying taxes <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1072955>

Automating and simplifying certainly seems like the right thing to do - <USER2> lots of people would lose jobs. On the other hand, they would be free to do something more productive (in the larger sense, producing value instead of papering over the cracks) and certainly more interesting!

Why can't we just automate away the boring stuff, and just work less? I'd be interested to see if it were possible to open source more than software. (Open source organic farming, anyone?) I know, I know, this is utopian and unrealistic and probably plain silly.

I'm not trying to suggest that we should all go create a hippie commune and get rid of money, but _not_ solving a problem right because of some legalese or pure profit just seems _wrong_ to me!

Another thing that I find perplexing is that the depression doesn't only put people with automatable jobs out of work. My father is an extremely talented craftsman. He builds traditional log cabins, wooden boats, furniture, beautiful houses... Right now he is living in a van, and not-quite eeking out a living picking fruit. He sells a couple hundred lbs of fruit a few days a week. He also shoots deer every once in a while which provides protein.

He's this great resource, but hasn't had a job for well over 2 years. If he didn't have to worry about food, he'd work for the sheer pleasure of creating something useful and beautiful. The thing that confuses and frustrates me is that my father would be delighted to work for free provided that his needs were met (seriously! Food, a beautiful view, a sauna, and some poetry. Seems simple enough, right?)

He loves to build beautiful things, and certainly there are people who need houses (even small log cabins would be an upgrade for many). I don't know what the solution is (obviously). It just seems strange that legal tender or lack thereof could get in the way of creating real value.

<comment><USER9> It's not about legal tender; that's just a way to exchange value. It's a brutal truth, but worth is defined by what resources people are willing to give up for something. If they are not willing to trade their resources for yours, you have NOT created real value, but destroyed it, by consuming resources that people would pay for and creating something they won't.

In the same vein, railing against profit is ridiculous; Profit is the difference between your inputs and your outputs. If you don't create a profit doing something, you are again destroying value. (It's perfectly legitimate to have a profit in non-monetary terms, though. In that case it's you who is making the decision to trade more resources for less, because the process or result has value to you; You decide on its worth, and pay the price.)

<comment><USER8> I'm not railing against profit in itself, I just find that sabotaging a good solution that would profit many people (but not you in the short term) is illogical.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think it's really tragic what is happening to the youth in america. they have no power, no wealth, no experience, no education, no skills, no credit... nothing. People who are older have worked and gathered all the above and still, congress gives them more. More drugs to keep them living longer and sapping the system. Free health care. Social Security, reduced taxes in the form of mortgage credits, dividend and capital gains discounts...

It's really pathetic.

Until the younger generation combines their voting power (if they'll start voting at all), they will not be listened to and will continue to suffer. With even 10% pooled voting power, they can control the outcome of nearly every election in the nation, local and national.

If all people aged 18 to 35 vote for the same person, that person will win. If a person caters to that demographic and listens to them and makes the future of America and the world better for _them_ then it will be better also for the older generation.

But the older generation votes and the younger generation does not.

</comment><comment><USER11> There's an arugment in favor of elite brand-name degrees, presumeably over state universities, or vocational degrees:

"The research of Till Von Wachter, the economist at Columbia University, suggests that not all people graduating into a recession see their life chances dimmed: those with degrees from elite universities catch up fairly quickly to where they otherwise would have been if they'd graduated in better times; it's the masses beneath them that are left behind. Princeton's 2009 graduating class found more jobs in financial services than in any other industry. According to Princeton's career-services director, Beverly Hamilton- Chandler, campus visits and hiring by the big investment banks have been down, but that decline has been partly offset by an uptick in recruiting by hedge funds and boutique financial firms."

</comment><comment><USER12> I read the book "New Ideas from Dead Economists" when I was in college. It's a great read. One of the recurring themes is how economists seem to always predict gloom and doom.

<comment><USER13> 100 years ago they were predicting that the world would starve to death because of the industrial revolution. "All the people are moving off the farms, who will grow food to feed us? We will all starve to death. More and more babies are being born. The sky is falling!!!" They did not count on technology increasing food production and making it more efficient. Today, food is so plentiful and convenient that we're all too fat.

To hell with economists and meteorologists too. Both groups attempt to predict the unpredictable. Why believe anything they say... ever?

<comment><USER14> I think that we should also have a look at the quality of food. While the quantity of available food has increased and you can find cheap food, it's quality has decreased dramatically.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Another scenario of the automation vs jobs is, very unstable economy job-wise, for long terms. many many people would experience large periods of unemployment , a constant need to shift jobs and professions , and all the psycho-social negatives that come with this.

This might become a basic nature of the economy as automation becomes more rapid. some might even say it's already happening.

I think we would need to optimize economies for well being , instead of GDP to solve this.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm going to go out on a limb here. This is the inherent weakness of the capitalist system. Eventually productivity outstrips need. The process is kinda backwards but that seems to be the truth. In my world, a manager lays people off to save money. Then they realize work isn't getting done because they have less people. So they use automation to fill the gaps. Those jobs don't come back.

<comment><USER17> I assume you've been downvoted because there's a somewhat reflexive faith here that new classes of jobs will always be created to fill those that have been taken over by increased automation/productivity. That _may_ be true, but for anyone who believes that, I recommend at least taking a look at the arguments Marshall Brain presents in his"Robotic Nation." One of his conclusions is that -- unlike with previous revolutions where new classes of jobs appeared to replace the ones that were destroyed (industrial for agricultural, for example) -- no new class of jobs appears to be on the horizon _that is also not automatable._

<comment><USER18> I can't recommend the book "Economics in One Lesson" highly enough. It answers this question.

Full text here: <http://jim.com/econ/>

I think it should be required reading for everyone during high school. This chapter is relevant:

"The Curse of Machinery" - <http://jim.com/econ/chap07p1.html>

Long story very short? We'll be okay. It's been a worry for a long time, and it's always been false. But the chapter of the book says it much better than me, and it's a short read. Actually, I'm going to submit this now as a separate submission. Really, highly recommended, very insightful stuff.

Edit: Submitted here if you'd like to discuss: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1127345>

<comment><USER17> _It's been a worry for a long time, and it's always been false._

And therefore it will always be false?

<comment><USER19> The "TL;DR" doesn't cover it, but in the chapter the previous commenter references, he does explain why it's a logical fallacy. At the risk of putting something incomplete and/or incorrect, TL;DR summary of the explanation of the fallacy is that the productivity saved by automation is always available to fuel further production.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The reason America is jobless is because everyone is in debt. People (talking majority) spend more then they make. They take out 3 year financing on toasters (exaggerated but sadly not much). To be in debt is a way of life. People buy things on credit long before they have the money to pay it off. Thats why America is in a recession and jobs are closing.

If people (again majority) had common sense as most on HN seem to have then America would be fine.

The second major reason IMO that America is going to be jobless is because the overhead cost of everything is far to high, especially in government. It takes so many people to sign off for anything that it will end up costing way more then it should. Take a look at large government states vs small government states and tell me which is doing better. (ie Cali vs Texas) Cali has to raise taxes to pay for all the overhead which causes business owners to pay more which causes them to not hire more people.. Pretty easy to see what needs to happen.

<comment><USER21> _To be in debt is a way of life. People buy things on credit long before they have the money to pay it off._

Like, say, houses? Or a college education?

The problem isn't debt, per se - it's reaching a _level_ of debt that can't be easily serviced by future earnings. Debt/credit is useful to invest in assets that return benefits to you over the period of paying the debt off. The ability to make these investments are a cornerstone of why the West has been so successful over the past 3-400 years.

<comment><USER20> I meant smaller things then houses or and eduction. Things such as TVs, PCs, Ovens, ect. Items that are not as expensive as college or a house but are in the under $3k range.

I agree that some debt it unavoidable and did not mean to come across that ALL debt is bad and should be avoided because well some of it cannot (ie the house). However buying many of these sub 3k items that are not needed then paying them off over 3 years is crazy. Thats more what I was getting at.

<comment><USER21> In that case, you're mostly right, but I think the "using credit to buy assets" point is worth reiterating. Books, training courses, tools, etc, are usually under $3K but could be a "good" use of credit. If someone without much disposable income has the opportunity to take credit to become, say, an MCSE to find a better job, that seems a reasonable use of credit.

In terms of needless consumer goods that return little value, however, right on. The problem, then, is you either have to ruin credit for everyone (good or bad) or you need to find a way to reduce "bad" borrowing.. which is seemingly next to impossible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm over 3/4 of the way though the article and it just keeps getting more depressing. Somebody please hide all the sharp objects!

I've felt for a while that high unemployment (20-30%) is the normal state of affairs. 20% of folks should probably be engaged in some sort of sustenance living. It wouldn't really have to be that bad, like digging in dumpsters or anything, but just living in a commune, farming, and building their own debt- free shelter.

<comment><USER23> Comfortable high-tech subsistence farming is around the corner. Efficient local renewable energy, RepRap machines, domestic robots... it's going to be a very interesting century.

<comment><USER24> Farmers are the original pioneers of "renewable energy." Their main energy source is sunshine, converted directly to foodstuffs by some amazing works of generic engineering (a.k.a. "plants). Biofuels? Yeah, they've been burning corn and vegetable oils for decades. Robots? How about _biological_ labor aids -- horses, herding dogs, chickens, etc.

Regardless, there's a reason you seldom hear "comfortable" and "subsistence farming" in the same sentence. Growing enough food to feed yourself is a full- time job, even _with_ modern agricultural tech. Yeah, there could be a singularity-style event that makes traditional farming obsolete, but RepRaps and Roombas ain't it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> _Ultimately, innovation is what allows an economy to grow quickly and create new jobs as old ones obsolesce and disappear. Typically, one salutary side effect of recessions is that they eventually spur booms in innovation. Some laid-off employees become entrepreneurs, working on ideas that have been ignored by corporate bureaucracies, while sclerotic firms in declining industries fail, making way for nimbler enterprises. But according to the economist Edmund Phelps, the innovative potential of the U.S. economy looks limited today._

He had me until the end, where Edmund Phelps declares innovation in America is "limited". HAH. Watch our smoke, Ed!

<comment><USER5> He's probably pulling from the brain-drain problem we've been having since schools started to go down the creek. Arguably, our environment is also hostile to newcomers many times, due to patently absurd patent laws and higher business taxes than many places (not all, mind you, just many).

<comment><USER25> Brain drain problem? What, all the entrepreneurs are moving to India and I didn't hear about it? ;-)

The US may be "hostile" to newcomers -- you're right, we do have stupid patent laws and some of the business taxes can seem ridiculous -- but then again, most countries have stupid patent laws (see the WIPO) and many many countries tax business at much more aggressive rates.

Even more importantly, if we're talking about technology: Silicon Valley has never been replicated full-scale. Yes, there are pockets. But what draws people to Northern California -- aside from the unique culture, natural beauty, and the weather -- is that there has been an innovation pow-wow going on since Hewlett and Packard took to the garage. People want in on that, especially if they're into innovation themselves.

There are more startups starting up right now, especially here in CA, than I've seen in years. Not all will innovate, but many will, and at least some of that innovation will stick and maybe even change the world.

No innovation? Really? Has this guy seen the frickin' iPod? Oh, and heard of Twitter? (Just to name some easy examples.)

<comment><USER5> The startups recently are probably partly due to the decline, and the projected improvement. People with money can capitalize on cheap locations to do what they want, because the people who don't have money are gone.

And they're not all moving to one place, and of course there's evidence both ways, but smart people _typically_ want to educate their kids well. Our schools have been slipping a _lot_ for quite a while. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is catching up rapidly for the first time in who knows how long. How much you equate to coincidence and how much to causes A-ZZ varies by person, of course, but I really do think this is _part_ of it.

<comment><USER26> > And they're not all moving to one place, and of course there's evidence both > ways, but smart people typically want to educate their kids well. Our > schools have been slipping a lot for quite a while.

What definition of "our" are we using?

Are Palo Alto's public schools slipping? Are the private schools in the valley slipping?

Or, are you talking about universities? How many countries have 4 schools that would be considered top 50 in the US? How about 10?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


My Interviews with Airbnb, Dropbox, Posterous, Reddit, Weebly and Wufoo - <AUTHOR> http://foundersatwork.posthaven.com/my-interviews-with-airbnb-dropbox-posterous-reddit-weebly-and-wufoo-circa-2010 <comment><USER2> If you haven't read it yet, Founders At Work is, IMO, the most informative book I've ever read as far as what the early days of a startup are like.

The most fascinating part to me is realizing that few, if any, of the founders realized they were really on to something. I'm sure they all had plenty of self doubt and wondered if they were crazy at times. They believed in what they were doing, of course, but there's a period of time before a company becomes a breakout success that isn't sexy enough for most people to pay attention to. We tend to skip past the whole "working and building" part to the "look at how successful they are." That, in my opinion, can be dangerous.

I'm very grateful that Jessica is going through all of the work documenting these stories for us. Thanks, Jessica.

<comment><USER3> At least once per week, I have an hour or two where my idea seems hopelessly stupid. You just have to power through it.

Like doing heavy squats. You don't have to like doing them, you just have to do them. A fun game is to think of as many excuses as you can to not do the next set. The next set is one rep for each excuse on your list. Unless you don't have any excuses, in which case you do the set (there's no excuse not to, right?)

Observe/acknowledge the emotion and get back to work.

<comment><USER4> Good analogy, when I'm walking up to a heavy bar I still get nervous and think "Do I really have to do this?". But when I'm not squatting I miss it. The endorphins probably explain this a bit.

<comment><USER3> @mlrtime: That's not nervousness, that is your body preparing to do something difficult, i.e. physiological arousal. Of course it has a cognitive component.

let your thoughts do whatever they want. You are not your thoughts. Recognize that this is how you prepare to do the squat. Then do it.

You of course know that heavy lifting builds strong bones. Ever realize that building bone strength increases mental strength? Bones are an important part of the endocrine system, they produce lots of interesting chemicals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > _I 'd like to find the time to do more (and work on improving my on-camera > interview style)._

For anyone interested. There is a great breakdown of how this works, gear, lighting, interview style, sound, etc @ [https://vimeo.com/101128416](https://vimeo.com/101128416) (interview section starts at 2:30). The guys entire channel is packed with useful bits about photography, how to get exactly what you need out of the scenes, sounds quality, etc. Could literally spend hours and hours getting tips and tricks in there. If you are at all interested in this type of stuff, well worth checking out, and the quality of advise pretty much speaks for it self.

</comment><comment><USER6> I would LOVE to see a Founders at Work 2.0 - so many incredible companies have been built since that book was published. The iPhone had just been released, for instance.

<comment><USER7> It's not exactly Founders at Work 2.0, but I'm working on a book that's been heavily influenced by Founders at Work, as well as pg's "Do Things That Don't Scale" essay.

It's called Unscalable: [https://www.inkshares.com/projects/unscalable](https://www.inkshares.com/projects/unscalable)

</shamelessplug>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Anyone who looks at this style show and wants to do it, please let me know. We're looking for beta testers for a new product that makes these style of shows much simpler.

</comment><comment><USER9> As a side topic to this, can anyone recommend "interview style" podcast from the startup world other than Mixergy or the TWIT podcasts?

I have recently discovered From Scratch [1]. I really like this as it also discuss the person as well as their startup. More human..

[1] - [http://www.fromscratchradio.org/show/](http://www.fromscratchradio.org/show/)

<comment><USER10> It may not be exactly what you're looking for, but I have a show interviewing people in tech and design. The focus is on longform copy, but I produce a podcast and video with each interview. [http://signaltower.co/](http://signaltower.co/)

It might be worth checking out. I've got interviews with VP of Design, Cap Watkins and Telescope Creator, Sacha Grief in postproduction right now.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for hint. I subscribed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It would be great to have this in interview transcript form, like the Founders at Work book. I push that onto all sorts of people. Founders at Work 2.0 is definitely a must-do project, even if it's just a blog series and not a dead- tree publication.

</comment><comment><USER12> These are great. I would of loved to see the end of the Reddit one before it got cut out.

<comment><USER13> Wanna AMA about the founding of reddit? Go for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Thanks Jessica, I added these to a timeline I created of your interviews and speeches: [http://newslines.org/jessica- livingston/](http://newslines.org/jessica-livingston/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks, Jessica, listening to founder stories is a huge help

</comment><comment><USER15> In dropbox video, 13:30 Jessica Livingston in on mute.

<comment><USER16> Yes, there were so many technical snafus with my set-up that I eventually wound up giving up on these.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Awesome! Thank you! No doubts that will help a lot!

</comment><comment><USER18> This is great. The Mixergy stuff she's referring to, though, is incredibly badly delivered. No I don't want to subscribe to a newsletter to receive a mp3 file in my inbox and then move that file to my phone so that I can listen to it. Why not a podcast feed?

<comment><USER16> Part of what inspired me to dig these up today was the spamwall.

<comment><USER19> Thanks for posting these JL!</comment></comment></comment>