Michael Lewis: shilling for the buyside? - <AUTHOR> http://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2014/04/04/michael-lewis-shilling-for-the-buyside/ <comment><USER3> Yeah, Michael Lewis' recent interviews do seem a bit suspect. He is yelling "Hey joe sixpack, Wall Street is eating your lunch!" and then when you hear the details of the supposed "fraud" it all revolves around companies like Goldman Sachs (who work with Katsuyama) whining that they're not getting a fair shake in the world. (Oh right, Goldman Sachs is managing Joe Sixpack's pension fund via two levels of indirection- Oh noes, poor Goldman Sachs!)

Plus, the interviews he's given on 60 minutes and Fresh Air never once mention the terms "market order" or "limit order". If you don't explain those two basic terms at the heart of the HFT controversy, you're not giving people information, you're only giving them disinformation.

That said, there's obviously lots of shady ass shit happening on Wall Street every day, but Michael Lewis is not helping the situation one iota, from the looks of it.

<comment><USER4> It affects mutual fund managers who many joe sixpack types do have a stake in.

<comment><USER5> "Joe Sixpack" is a terrible name for the average US stock investor. The median number of shares owned by the adult US public is exactly zero. Most people who own (publicly traded) stocks are already wealthy. "Joe Chateau Lafite" would be a better name.

Source: some Matt Levine article.

<comment><USER6> Even if this were true, so what? If you have to reach the 60th percentile, or the 80th, before Americans have stock amounts, why is that a big deal? It's clear that many Americans who are not the ultra-rich/utterly-financially- secure types own stock, and own stock in amounts that are relevant to their own financial health.

I don't think it's helpful to anyone's understanding of any situation to try to pretend that tens or hundreds of millions of Americans -- who are on the whole somewhat wealthier than average -- are mega-rich snobs who drink ten- thousand-dollar-a-bottle wine.

<comment><USER7> You need to distinguish between two ways people are affected:

1) Indirectly via mutual funds, pension funds, and so on.

2) Directly through buying individual stocks on E*Trade or the like.

The second amounts to an expensive hobby (in risk adjusted terms). Whether some people who aren't ultra-rich choose to indulge in such an expensive hobby is neither here nor there, the underlying fact remains that there's no good reason to care about or optimize for their benefit. Yet for some reason so many articles on this subject instead of talking about the funds that are broadly and rationally held, analyze the situation for the small retail investor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think "shilling for the buyside" is a bit strong. Lewis aggressively pursued a compelling and simple narrative in a market that doesnt have an easy story. I get the impression he didnt even recognize that the field he decided to plow was a minefield. The HFT debate is complicated and has serious implications: his treatment didn't respect it.

From acquaintances that knew Katsuyama personally, he was described as a genius marketer, not a technologist. Before even Lewis came along, he had crafted a large part of this narrative: the Thor matching technology succeeded on a compelling story. Lewis got sucked in.

The personal reactions you may have seen (William O'Brian on CNBC) are authentic: HFT participants (and those who deal with them) have been villified in an industry already viewed in a negative light. There are some bad apples, but there are also many who genuinely believe that they are doing a service for the market.

I don't blame Lewis for this. I just hope that there is an author that can create a compelling story that doesnt fall for the tired trope of the evil HFT trader. The story exists - it is just very technical and nuanced at times. Unfortunately, many HFT participants have been shamed away from standing for what they believe in so there are very few left to tell the story.

If you want to read a rebuttal and learn more about the markets at the same time, check out this analysis by Larry Tabb - a market research consultant prominent in the US execution technology market: [http://www.scribd.com/doc/215693938/No-Michael- Lewis](http://www.scribd.com/doc/215693938/No-Michael-Lewis)

<comment><USER9> > there are also many who genuinely believe that they are doing a service for > the market

You make it sounds like HFT is some sort of non-profit, community service vocation, like teaching, or fire fighters. Do people actually think this?

Regardless of the merits of HFT, that kind of argument seems very disingenuous. I haven't met a single person engaged in HFT who is doing it to smooth the function of the market or "provide liquidity". They may think it has that effect, but _no one_ is in it for that reason. If anything, it's what they tell themselves to justify skimming money from the other market participants.

<comment><USER10> You can replace the letters "HFT" in your comment with "any market maker" and come to exactly the same conclusion.

Liquidity has always, _always_ been subsidized by "skimming". The rake market makers take from trades is the cost of liquidity: ie, of being able to buy shares immediately without getting shafted because the only orders on the market are from large traders who are holding out for very high prices.

Have you ever tried to sell a house? That's what crappy liquidity looks like: there are buyers and there are sellers, but nobody is anywhere near agreeing about the price of the goods being traded, and so it takes months to get in or out of a position, and you sometimes have to do it at extremely unfavorable prices.

<comment><USER11> The problem is that market making is different than the critique, which is that having privileged access to exchange data centers is an unfair advantage that allows rent-seeking. To access information before the general public allows traders to inject themselves into transactions that don't require a market maker.

That fact that no one will defend this practice while vehemently defending "HFT" speaks to an impedance mismatch. We're not talking about the same thing.

<comment><USER12> They have faster access to exchange data centers because they paid for it. Anyone can pay for this access. They use this privileged access to provide faster and cheaper service to their customers (purchasers of liquidity).

It's no different than McDonalds paying a lot of money to buy a prime corner location to build one of their restaurants.

<comment><USER11> You can pay for a lot of things, but that doesn't mean it's in the interest of society or the market as a whole. You don't require faster access to provide liquidity, but it sure helps with arbitraging trading activity.

<comment><USER10> You can pay for a lot of things and that doesn't mean it's _not_ in the interest of society or the market as a whole either. The trading in any one instrument on an exchange is a zero-sum game, but the structure of the market and the relationship between exchanges, buy-side firms, sell-side firms, and retail investors doesn't have to be.

Before electronic trading, the specialists who executed orders on the NYSE floor ALSO paid shitloads of money for their access.

One difference between today and the heyday of the specialist system is that in the specialist system, middlemen skimmed _overtly_ from investors: the bid- ask spread was gigantic, and all that money went to the middlemen.

<comment><USER13> The increased liquidity/ reduced execution risk changes it from a zero sum game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> People ITT are not making a distinction between different types of HFT. Katsuyama and Lewis do not criticize all forms of computerized trading, but specifically computerized scalping that is aided and abetted by exchanges. Their chief complaint is that HFT uses more current prices than the exchanges themselves and they use this to scalp other traders.

[http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-04-03/bats-admits-ceo- lie...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-04-03/bats-admits-ceo-lied-about- hft-cnbc)

This is actually very simple. Natural buyers and sellers do not need intermediaries, but intermediaries do need the natural traders. So if the natural traders can coordinate, they should be able to set rules that favor themselves and disfavor intermediaries. I won't say that what HFT does is "unfair" (capitalism does not contemplate fairness), but I think it's highly ironic that HFT and their supporters are complaining how "unfair" it is that natural traders are working together, and yes, marketing their new exchange.

<comment><USER15> Very nicely put. Yes it's a bit hilarious.

The HFT folks seem to be saying "you don't have a right to add up all the total amount of asks at a certain price across all the exchanges and expect to get execution at that price" and with a bit of thought I might agree with them. But it is very counter-intuitive. If you see 10,000 shares for sale across 10 exchanges at $54.00 your VERY next thought probably isn't "oh that's actually 1,000 shares, but advertised on all the exchanges so it only LOOKS like 10,000" Once you understand how things works, sure fine.

The counter to that, though, is that the HFT folks don't have any right to have access to order flow. If market participants want to route their orders to a particular dark pool or exchange they have every right to. The "markets are always right" sword cuts both ways.

<comment><USER16> They do have every right to route their orders where they will. It's telling that most of the buy side prefers to route their orders to public exchanges rather than dark pools like IEX.

<comment><USER14> The buy side doesn't route orders. Brokers route orders, and they aren't required to tell their clients where they route the orders. (Some good brokers do allow traders to direct routing, but I believe it's not common).

Also, there is a network effect to overcome here. Try to give IEX more than a few months before writing their obituary. They haven't even fully launched yet (they are still a dark pool)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The market exists the benefit for the 'buyside' e.g. people who own stock, not for the benefit of the middlemen like exchanges and HFT marketmakers.

You may not like homeowners and think some of them are or should be convicted, but it's ridiculous to say someone is 'shilling for homeowners' when they point out that real estate brokers are overpaid and skimming.

Some more balanced discussion - [http://streetwiseprofessor.com/?p=8333](http://streetwiseprofessor.com/?p=8333)

[http://blogmaverick.com/2014/04/03/the-idiots-guide-to- high-...](http://blogmaverick.com/2014/04/03/the-idiots-guide-to-high- frequency-trading/)

[http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/04/high-frequency-trading- threat-o...](http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/04/high-frequency-trading-threat-or- menace/)

In a nutshell, people who run big portfolios don't want to give away information about what they're doing, and they don't want HFT types to be able to pay exchanges to get first crack at front-running them.

On the other hand there is a legitimate market-making function, and there's a tradeoff between transparent markets and forcing people to share info that lets other people trade against them.

<comment><USER10> The buy-side is buying liquidity. The sell-side is selling it. That's basically what the terms mean.

It's not particularly meaningful to say that the market exists "for" the buy- side. The real estate market exists for the real estate buy-side, too. But it takes 5 months to sell a house, because nobody is selling liquidity; instead, you have to work through an ineffectual sell-side agent who takes tens of thousands of dollars out of your hide for the privilege.

<comment><USER17> no, the buy side is long. the sell side is selling things like IPOs, etc. that the buy side might want to buy. sometimes they provide liquidity, sometimes they're just an agent and rent-seeker.

markets, trades, liquidity are a means to an end, not an end in themselves. every trade is a friction and a cost, and only happens because the two sides aren't happy with their portfolio.

"more friction in your machine is generally bad and just creates heat."

"oh, but that's not meaningful, people who make sandpaper and grippy tires are needed to create friction"

"..."

<comment><USER12> Your uses of the terms "buy-side" and "sell-side" do not conform to how the financial community (of which the author of this blog post is a member) uses them. It's not the buying vs selling of securities. It's the buying vs selling of financial services (of which liquidity is one).

<comment><USER17> Your definition is probably better but I wouldn't expect more than 20% of people in the industry to define it correctly that way. (and the buy side is selling financial services to someone too...the buy side holds portfolios of securities, sell side makes money generating transactions...distinction can get quite arbitrary when you have buy side strategies that involve lots of transactions and selling liquidity)

bottom line is... greasing the wheels of commerce good, making wonky wheels so some goofball can sell more grease services bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I am still reading the book, but it seems like Lewis' main criticism in the book (vs. interviews) is against the so-called HFT front-running of orders that get routed to multiple exchanges. He is careful to distinguish market- making/liquidity providing functions from the multi-market latency arbitrage and spends a good part of Chapter 4 exploring this distinction.

Perhaps his public statements in interviews haven't been so nuanced.

Also, these rebuttals to the book don't really address the front-running issue. Is it simply an unavoidable consequence of the physical reality of separate markets? Should anything be done about it? Is it even still occurring or has competition among HFTs and savvier buy-side order routing eliminated it? I would like to read a rebuttal that discusses this.

<comment><USER10> One of the more disingenuous things about Lewis' book (caveat: I'm only halfway through, because I'm listening to the audiobook and, on the advice of another reviewer, switched to the book _Dark Pools_ in midstream) is the rhetorical sleight of hand he plays with the term "front-running".

In Lewis' universe, the price movement that happens when an informed trader tries to piecemeal-fill a 100,000 share order is "front-running".

But in Larry Harris' universe†, not only is price movement during block shopping not "front-running", it is the fundamental reason for the existence of sell-side firms; in other words, the challenge of stealthily shopping 100,000 shares of thinly-traded product XYZ is the reason that Katsuyama made $2MM/yr.

Lewis posits that the natural state of affairs is that there's an NBBO for XYZ, and that Katsuyama should expect his equities desk to collect fat fees simply by accepting a block order from a client, pushing a button, and unloading it at the current best bid, whereupon at the completion of this order the price will change to reflect the altered supply/demand condition of XYZ.

But that is crazy. The presence of a 100,000 order changes the supply/demand conditions for XYZ. For RBC to expect to sell 100,000 shares at the current bid, it must expect to get something for nothing: to take the price hit for the increased demand of XYZ out of the hide of whoever is holding it right now.

Before HFT mania, "front-running" meant something very specific: it was a problem of agency. A client/broker relationship existed, and the broker exploited it by trading in front of their client's order. The client had a right to expect the broker to act in their best interests. But the markets as a whole aren't a positive-sum system; in the absence of a contractual relationship, nobody has an obligation to act in the interests of anyone else. A dollar you make on the market is a dollar someone else didn't make.

† [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7526783](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7526783)

<comment><USER14> The specific example given in the book is that an existing ask sized at 100,000 is already sitting on the order book when the buy order goes in at the ask price. The ask then disappears before the order executes. This is very different from the market moving in response to an order that has no market fill.

<comment><USER12> The 100,000 shares are sitting on the order book at different exchanges. It's not a single block being traded with a single order. That's a critical distinction.

<comment><USER10> If it were a single order in the book, I'm not sure I see the advantage HFTs would have conceptually had. They're not sniffing individual orders and then outrunning them before the original order hits the exchange; they're exploiting the individual piecemeal orders that are stealthily trying to move the block.

They're hunting down the orders of informed traders who are trying to exploit their own knowledge of the true price of products, and correcting the price on the market before those informed traders can take their knowledge out of everyone else's hide.

<comment><USER19> The institutional orders get baited to BATS BYX with "taker rebates" (on BZX the fee structure is the normal maker-rebate taker-fee, but on BYX it is reversed). It hits BYX first because the broker's router is programmed to send it there first for that rebate, but its only for a minimal amount of shares. And that's a signal which the HFT firms use to pull or front-run equivalent offers on the various other exchanges.

The other big scam seems to be HFT firms buying a broker's order flow - <USER2> hundreds of millions of dollars. For example, Schwab sold its order flow to UBS for 8-year contract in 2005, for $285 million. It was massively underpriced, Schwab is said to have left a billion dollars on the table. And UBS, in turn, sold Schwab's order flow to Citadel for an undisclosed sum. Why is the right to execute a broker's order flow so valuable? Nobody seems to have a good answer, but the obvious reason is that its easy scalping.

<comment><USER20> I see a lot of heat generated in this discussion, but I don't see an answer to your second paragraph. That's the answer I want to see.

<comment><USER21> It is the easy scalping he mentioned.

A market maker can only stay in business if they sell as much as they buy and if the average sale price is above their average buy price. They lose money if they provide liquidity in the way of market moving forces.

Market makers try to avoid informed and "toxic" order flow and broker flow is guaranteed source of small uninformed orders that are most likely going to be crossing the spread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This article seems like nothing more than an overly long ad hominem attack.

The only critique that matters is whether or not front running of buy orders by HFT traders is real or bull. Anything more is just an attempt to cloud the waters.

<comment><USER23> It was especially disappointing when he dismissed the front running as always having been there.

<comment><USER12> He didn't say front running has always been there. He said market making has always been there. Market making is a valuable service and it's great that it's cheaper than ever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This was a great article. I started reading the book. Early on, one of the examples given was "Brad talked to a friend of his at SAC Capital" about how HFT firms were taking advantage of information in the markets.

That is the kind of unintentionally ridiculous anecdote which undermines the moral center of this book. SAC Capital, after all, is the same fund which ran into one of the largest insider trading cases in history, which is also about taking advantage of information in a, let's say, special kind of way.

I know a lot about this subject, probably too much to let the judgment fall cleanly in one camp or another on HFT, but with all the hubub right now, I find it might be useful to get biblical for a second - let the person who is without sin cast the first stone.

<comment><USER18> Is the anecdote really unintentionally ridiculous? Lewis acknowledges SAC's later infamy in a parenthetical (quotation below). And the point of the anecdote is that even a party that went to great (and illegal) lengths to gain an informational edge didn't understand the new phenomenon of latency arbitrage by the HFTs.

Quotation: "He had a good friend who traded stocks at a big-time hedge fund in Greenwhich, Connecticut, called SAC Capital. SAC Capital was famous (AND SOON TO BE INFAMOUS) for being one step ahead of the U.S. stock market. If anyone was going to know something about the market that Brad didn't know, he figured, it would be them."

<comment><USER24> Of course it's ridiculous. The book makes no actual mention of what SAC did, to avoid cognitive dissonance. Perhaps SAC was infamous for dwarf tossing - not illegal but in poor taste. I don't think the 60 minutes audience would have SAC's transgressions on instant recall. Lewis declines to specify anywhere in the book that SAC was engaged in criminal violations of established securities laws, while he writes an entire book about the evils of HFT, which in large part is mostly an issue of what types of trading we want to permit and not widespread illegal activity.

And did Brad "figure" SAC would know because he knew that SAC pursued informational advantages to the extreme? Did he think that was unethical, crossed a line, so they would know about other activity that crossed the line? That seems like a really strange line of thinking.

It also seems strange that this super ethical guy would attack activity which is legal, but turn a blind eye towards known unethical or suspected illegal business. Did he know about the rumors of insider trading? Did he knowingly solicit business from a firm which he had reason to suspect was engaged in insider trading?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> If you think I'm a dork, or too much of a Michael Lewis hater, I encourage people to read this Amazon review, which gets into a lot of interesting small details Lewis got wrong:

[http://www.amazon.com/review/R3PJO6KJGRMWUE/ref=cm_cr_pr_vie...](http://www.amazon.com/review/R3PJO6KJGRMWUE/ref=cm_cr_pr_viewpnt#R3PJO6KJGRMWUE)

<comment><USER26> This is very close to the blog post I would write if I were going to write a critic of Flash Boys. I'd add the following:

IEXT has a few main selling points. 1 transparency, 2 simplicity, 3 looking out for "investors". The problem is that they aren't any of those things and it is obvious from a simple reading of their technical documents.

First transparency. Their marketing pitch is that as opposed to other dark pools, they are transparent about what is happening on their markets. Yet the first thing they say in their technical documents is "IEX will commence operation as a fully NON- ---DISPLAYED venue." What this means is that their order books is not available for outside audit. They are meeting the lowest hurdle to regulatory compliance by providing best bid/offer and no more. If you think that is ok, let me ask you. If I told you that there was 1 buyer willing to buy at 10.00 and 1 seller willing to sell at 11.00 what would you think the "real" price for that instrument is? What if I told you that there was 1 buyer at 10, 1 seller at 11, 100 million buyers at 9.99 and zero sellers at 11.01? If you think those markets should be priced the same way, IETX is for you. If not, realize that IETX would tell you those markets are the same thing.

As far as simplicity, Flash Boys and the IETX marketing materials make a big deal about all of the order types that provide advantages to market makers, yet they remain silent on those order types that are explicitly there for large institutional investors. Lewis rages against ALO orders yet doesn't even mention iceberg orders which the sole point of is to hide the amount of shares a participant wants to sell. Then he extols the virtue of IETX for only offering 3 order types (which has since risen to 4), yet doesn't explain that in those 3 order types are many variants that only benefit large investors. IETX has literally removed all of the order types that allow market makers to do their jobs, while leaving all the order types that allow large institutions to hide their order flow. One of the most controversial order types out there is an ISO order, which is literally a legislative exemption for large block buyers that allows them to circumvent regulation about the national ticker. IETX offers those sorts of orders, but you will be happy to know they don't support "esoteric" orders.

The most egregious problem in Flash Boys is Lewis' use of the term "investor". He uses this term to make his readers think he is talking about them, after all anyone who is not an HFT, who is long holding a stock is an "investor". Yet the practices he describes as predatory, are really simple market dynamics. If an "investor" wants to buy or sell an extremely large block of shares, that should move the market price. No other marketplace would think differently. If McDonalds buys all the cows in America, beef should cost more. We all understand that. But the giant hedge funds of the world hate this. They want to use their privileged information of demand to make money, and not change the prices of the things in demand. They used to be able to accomplish this because the markets were dumb. They aren't anymore. Price discovery is an extremely efficient (and cut throat business). IETX does its gosh darn Canadian best to undercut that. Literally every rule they have is an attempt to hide demand and undermine price discovery. It's possible that bad pricing is an overall societal good. I'm not smart enough to weigh in on that. I will ask, if they are looking out for the little guy though, why do they have a special order type that insures that big investors don't trade with them (min. qty orders)? They will respond that it is protection against predatory HFT. I ask you though, if the huge hedge funds of the world don't want to trade in small volume with the rest of the informed markets, at the lowest prices conceivable, who do they want to trade with? The answer is large dumb funds, who don't care about trading at inflated costs. I.E. pension funds.

<comment><USER12> As much as there are a lot of people in the world (many of them right here on Hacker News!) who don't care about the mechanics of how liquidity is provisioned in markets and consequently have kind of backwards views of HFT most of these people aren't, you know, trading stocks.

So here's my question: since the people that are trading do tend to understand these things (if for no other reason that they'll go bust if they don't), won't liquidity providers run away from IEX as fast as they can? How do Brad Katsuyama and his partners think they'll actually scare up enough liquidity to get maintain a functioning market?

I'm a little befuddled by this.

<comment><USER26> I've actually been thinking a lot about this. So, every other dark pool in existence, has started with the same premise as Brad and his merry band. That is, "man our big investors are getting killed due to good pricing in the markets". So the first thing they do is come up with a variety of schemes to obfuscate the order flow of these big investors. Invisible order books, ice berg orders, preferential routing, min. qty. orders etc.

These schemes succumb to 1 of 2 problems

1) they are trivial to game by market makers. That is, the exchanges make their money on fees, the market makers make their money on finding inefficiencies in the markets, who is better positioned to find the places that a market protection scheme falls down? Of course it is the market makers. This is why you see stories of HFT "pinging" black pools, or creating routing tables, or whatever other wild information advantage that they can come up with. At the end of the day, big brokers/ibanks still get to eat if their schemes don't work, market makers don't.

2) If an exchange actually does find a way to limit market maker profits, they simply stop trading there. The liquidity dries up and the dark pool has to figure out some way to justify it's existence. Usually by relaxing their rules and allowing the tricks described in 1) or by negotiating a preferential deal with a couple of HFT firms that have some sort of price protection involved (which may be as shady as, only screw my clients I don't care about).

Brad, Lewis, and the IETX backers have figured out another strategy. Convince enough of the "dumb" money to demand that their trades be routed through IEX that they can create a self sustaining dark pool. They actually don't care about retail investors. If a couple of thousand of them call up and demand that their broker get on IETX that's fine. They've made the barrier to entry cheap enough that it doesn't cause a lot of overhead. But what they are really looking for is the uninformed institutional investor. The East Gary Fireman's Booster Union, needs to unload 65k of GOOG that some shady Morgan broker sold them. They think of IETX first. There sits Einhorn and his fund ready to hit it for all he's worth. No intelligent liquidity provider there to take any of his execution costs.

It's sort of brilliant and shows why I'm a dumb HFT market maker technologist instead of a billionaire (or millionaire in Brad's case) Wall Street type.

<comment><USER12> You think they'll succeed with this third strategy? Are there enough gullible East Gary Fireman's Booster Unions to make it work? It still seems a little far fetched to me. How much will regulations protect Mr. East Gary from shooting himself in the foot when the IEX price moves away from everyone else?

PS: You've probably already watched it, but if you haven't you should really watch the YouTube video on the iextrading.com homepage. It's...really something.

<comment><USER26> I don't know what their success criteria is. Do I think that they will sweep the markets and become the dominate exchange? Absolutely not. Do they have a chance to drive enough volume to the dark pool to keep their backers execution costs + investment less than their execution costs on other exchanges? Maybe. If they do that though they may have another class of problem. Other investors looking to back them. If broaden that pool it gets harder and harder to keep their execution costs down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> An interesting study on the topic concluded that HFT helps retail investors and hurts institutional investors: [http://qed.econ.queensu.ca/pub/faculty/milne/322/IIROC_FeeCh...](http://qed.econ.queensu.ca/pub/faculty/milne/322/IIROC_FeeChange_submission_KM_AP3.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER27> You don't have to agree with Michael Lewis' views or buy into the story line 100% in order to enjoy the book. The fact is that this is a well-written book that is full of mini-stories and anecdotes that present very realistic descriptions of how electronic markets and Wall Street in general work. Statements like "the market is rigged" are obviously over the top but that doesn't mean that the book on average is not true to reality. Most books about electronic trading suffer from extreme sensationalism, poor writing, and the inability of the authors to understand the subject matter that they are writing about. Michael Lewis does a better job than everyone else. He is a great writer and he is a smart guy who has some financial background and has a pretty good understanding of financial markets. Yes, there is some sensationalism here (he has to sell a good story after all) and there are many errors in the book, and, yes, the author's biases are quite evident, he's picked a side and he's sticking to his story. On aggregate, though, this is probably the best book about the world of electronic trading that I've read.

(Some people mentioned "Dark Pools" by Scott Patterson. Although also interesting, that books was often quite painful to read because it was quite clear that the author did not understand basic financial and programming concepts. "Flash Boys" is much better, in my opinion. Although if you are really interested in the subject, you should read both.)

<comment><USER12> You basically just said that people should read the book because, even though it's mostly wrong, it's well written.

Isn't that kind of crazy?

<comment><USER27> I'm not saying that it's mostly wrong. I am saying that it's a biased perspective, but most of the contents is factual. You can learn interesting things about the markets, and about the individuals and the companies involved. However, this is one side of the story. Michael Lewis' facts were gathered from people that were close to him and the people that he could get to speak to him. It's one circle of people with their own agenda. But there are many other views out there. So he is presenting the facts that he knows about and that he thinks are important. But there are things that he is perhaps omitting on purpose, and things that perhaps he just doesn't know or understand. The book is not the whole truth. As with any good book or article, you can learn a lot without having to agree with the author's conclusions or his personal views.

<comment><USER26> I'd be happy with that outcome if that's what happened.

Instead I've spent the last week explaining to people (including my mom) why the opinions of an exchange bought and sold by folks with a vested interest in not allowing price discovery are painting me as evil.

Add to that the very real fact that for whatever reason, incompetence, bias, or laziness, Lewis has literally misrepresented the way the markets work, and the way participants thought it worked for many years and you can under stand why some of us are upset.

<comment><USER14> I've seen this argument advanced several times now, but it doesn't make sense to me. Looking at the investors of IEX -- David Einhorn, Dan Loeb, Bill Ackman, Capital Group -- these are some very, very smart people. They're not idiots that were sold a bill of goods by a lying, bumbling team of Lewis and Katsuyama. And while they may have a vested interest via their investments in IEX, it's dwarfed by their interest in reducing slippage on their own trades. IOW, it doesn't seem like they are talking their book. It seems like they are really seeking a fairer market. (Obviously, what's "more fair" to one party may be "less fair" to another)

<comment><USER12> If something is "more fair" for David Einhorn, Dan Loeb, Bill Ackman & Capital Group, who do you think it's "less fair" for?

<comment><USER14> I was simply pointing out that fairness is a matter of perspective, and in a sense, arbitrary. If I were an HFT I would no doubt think that IEX would be unfair to me.

I will claim that the proposed solution (IEX) creates a fairer market for the vast majority of market participants.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> If your ISP packet sniffed your network and traded against your positions in advance of them coming to market would you have a problem with it? How about if they put up an MITM to get your credntials and then installed a key-logger to make it more effective and faster? One could argue that once you hit "sell" or "buy" your electrons are public information. But others might consider them NPI. I don't think that the issue is completely cut and dry, at least no just yet.

</comment><comment><USER29> Seems like this book is causing quite the ruckus with certain brokerages: [http://pressroom.aboutschwab.com/press-release/corporate- and...](http://pressroom.aboutschwab.com/press-release/corporate-and- financial-news/schwab-statement-high-frequency-trading)

Yet they are more than happy to sell their order flow to market makers who use HFT. (To allow them to trade against it before going to the exchange - as is customary - nothing wrong with that) [http://www.schwab.com/public/schwab/nn/legal_compliance/impo...](http://www.schwab.com/public/schwab/nn/legal_compliance/important_notices/order_routing.html)

Seems like they are jumping on the populist bandwagon by claiming "HFT bad!" but I think what they mean is "HFT bad - unless it's from one of the firms we sold our order flow to!"

<comment><USER30> I would disagree that this would be considered jumping on the populous band wagon, if you've read the article, you'll see that Schwab originally released an Op-Ed in the summer of 2103 echoing similar concerns.

He took a public stance on HFT a full year before the book was released.

Taken directly from the release you linked-> As we noted in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal last summer.

[http://blog.themistrading.com/talk-to-chuck-about- hft/](http://blog.themistrading.com/talk-to-chuck-about-hft/) [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732358290457848...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323582904578484810838726222.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Can someone explain how HFT would "provide liquidity", which seems to always be the pro-HFT response? To use an analogy, if I want to buy a house and someone is selling a house, how does a third-party buying the house first and selling it to me a slightly higher price provide liquidity?

<comment><USER32> Saying Alice wants to sell a house, but she needs to sell the house now, and is willing to take slightly less money to get it sold. That's when the HFT comes in says, "Okay we'll buy your house for slightly less than market value, since we're taking the risk that we can resell it." That's Alice crossing the bid-ask spread, and paying for liquidity.

Suppose Alice doesn't want to pay for liquidity. She can just as well say, I'm going to wait for a buyer willing to pay the ask price. She doesn't trade with an HFT and instead takes the risk that a buyer never shows up or that the market moves against her. This is equivalent to an add-liquidity-only order. She won't be crossing the spread, and she therefore she won't pay the bid-ask spread.

It's the same thing if you're buying. If you don't want to pay for liquidity you don't have to. You state your price, say you'll only add liquidity, and when a seller comes along who's willing to give it to you at that price, you'll be matched.

<comment><USER33> Let's unpack that a little. For most publicly traded stocks, there are always going to be willing buyers and willing sellers, for the right price. Those prices, respectively, are the bid and ask prices. So for example, if you want to trade shares of some stock, the bid might be $100.00 and the ask might be $100.10, i.e. someone will buy from you at $100.00 and someone will sell to you at $100.10.

Obviously if the buyers and sellers hold fast then no trades get made: The buyers are offering less than the sellers are willing to accept. If you want to make a trade then someone has to cross the spread -- either the buyer has to pay $100.10 or the seller has to accept $100.00. This leaves room for speculators: When a seller decides they want to trade right now and they cross the spread, the speculator can buy the shares and then hold them until a buyer comes who is willing to cross the spread, and then the speculator profits by buying at the bid price and selling at the ask price. The speculator is taking the risk that in the meantime the price of the stock may go down and they'll lose money, and that risk is what earns the profit.

But HFT isn't that. HFT is having fast computers sitting in Chicago and New York, so that when a buyer crosses the spread in Chicago at the same time as a seller crosses the spread in New York, the HFTer can arbitrage the transactions with the foreknowledge that both trades will clear immediately. The HFTer is not taking a risk proportional to the profit but rather is profiting from trading with superior information. Moreover, the HFTer is only holding the shares for milliseconds. How does that provide any useful amount of liquidity? Why can't we arrange the exchanges so that if a buyer and seller both cross the spread at approximately the same time, they split the difference and no third party takes anything?

<comment><USER34> The HFT is taking risk though. Like everything else in markets, nothing they do happens at the same time either. They could miss on one side of the trade if another player is faster, and then they're stuck in a position they might not want.

Also think about this in terms of what happened, the two counterparties got to interact without being in the same place or product. Yes, they could have traded if they were both in the same place, but they weren't. Surely providing that service is worth something. You could buy your meat wholesale, but the grocery store isn't ripping you off by selling it for $1 more a pound somewhere closer to home.

Think about what would happen to others if the HFT wasn't there, too. Prices would diverge and traders on one of the exchanges would be trading away from the real value. By keeping prices in line, information is transmitted from market to market more efficiently. A trader who isn't concerned with cross- market arbitrage doesn't need to connect to and watch multiple markets to get a fair price.

HFTs are obviously motivated by profits, but the level of profit is extremely low for the amount of service they provide. Virtu trades over 5% of the US markets and made slightly over $100 million. They only have a couple hundred employees. Think about how many people were required to make markets globally before technology. Only a fool would argue that we should go back to that system.

<comment><USER33> > Think about how many people were required to make markets globally before > technology. Only a fool would argue that we should go back to that system.

Who is even suggesting that?

Distinguish between the result and the method. Having prices be the same on all exchanges is obviously desirable. But why do we have to reach that result _in this way_? Why not instead have the exchanges talk to each other and have trades on any exchange automatically go to all the other ones, so that prices are always the same programmatically without having to pay any third party to keep them that way?

<comment><USER12> Because [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAP_theorem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAP_theorem).

It's a distributed system. You want it to keep working (be available) all the time right? Guess what, you're gonna have to lose some consistency.

<comment><USER33> For extremely high availability systems like this it is generally better to choose both consistency and availability at the expense of partition tolerance and then mitigate the possibility of partitions with meshed multiply redundant interconnects.

Moreover, you don't strictly need a distributed system. You could instead elect one exchange at any given time as the primary and clear all inter- exchange trades through that exchange.

<comment><USER12> It's really fun watching you turn into such a pretzel that you want to somehow get around the CAP theorem and/or go back to the days of monopoly exchanges all to get away from the horrible evil of a cost for liquidity of less than 0.1%.

Don't miss the forest for the trees.

<comment><USER33> Citing the CAP theorem as a reason not to have a distributed system is like citing Arrow's Impossibility Theorem as a reason not to have a representative democracy. Proving the impossibility of a platonic ideal doesn't tell you anything about whether one imperfect system is superior to another in practice.

And you can't hand wave away the fact that the implications of the CAP theorem are minimal on a distributed system with a high level of interconnect redundancy. If you can ensure with high probability that there will not be a partition in the network then you don't need partition tolerance. If against all odds you have a partition anyway then you lose availability, but that isn't a characteristic unique to the CAP theorem or distributed systems -- any system will lose availability if enough redundant components fail simultaneously.

<comment><USER34> Exchange gateways fail, network lines fail. This happens all the time. In the current system I can still trade if NASDAQ goes down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> My concern is that Michael Lewis and his books have great popular appeal. Furthermore, he is jumping on the popular bandwagon of bashing HFT. They lay person will look at these facts and simply conclude that he's right. The problem can easily extend to other buy-siders who dont really full understand (or care to understand) how market microstructure works in the US.

</comment><comment><USER36> I suppose one could add this book to

The Blind Side -- the story of how one of Michael Lewis's classmates as an Ole Miss booster, gave impermissible benefits to a high school recruit and got away with it.

Moneyball -- the story of a GM with 0 World Series appearances and a .530 WP.

</comment><comment><USER37> Always good to start out an article critiquing the argument in a new book by showing a picture of the author and making a snide remark about his appearance. Immediately gives you credibility.

</comment><comment><USER38> I stopped reading at _' potato-wog'_.

<comment><USER14> Why is this downvoted? There are multiple comments in the article based on racial stereotypes which are not only completely unnecessary but reflect negatively upon the author's judgment and credibility. Very ironic considering the article seeks to suppress Mr Lewis's speech.

<comment><USER26> I also found the racial commentaries problematic and unnecessary. That said, the author is in no way trying to suppress Mr. Lewis's speech.

Disagreement is not censorship.

<comment><USER14> Only by implication. Calling someone a shill could be considered "only" an attack on credibility, but it's also an implied argument that the speaker lacks the right to speak on that subject.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I wonder how many people commenting here have actually read the book? Or have they just been reading articles about it?

<comment><USER26> This is a very good point. I finished the book today. The most interesting thing to me is that the book pretty clearly (from the perspective of an HFT engineer) comes down on the side that HFT is not actually a villain and that the large banks (especially Goldman Sachs & Credit Suisse) are pretty much the devil (giving Goldman a pass for their last year of non-deviltry).

Yet all the interviews, press junkets, and face time on the Daily Show are saying the exact opposite (to the point that Jon Stewart of all people is extolling the virtues of Goldman).

It says way more about the book selling/exchange building business than it does about HFT.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> As an aside; I have been thinking it would be useful to have two new levels of capital gains taxes.

In addition to long term capital gains, and short term capital gains, there would be "intra-day" capital gains and "sub-second" capital gains.

I was thinking the intra-day gains Federal tax rate would be 50% and sub- second capital gains Federal rate would be 90%, but these values are arbitrary.

For both new types of capital gains, LIFO trade accounting would be used.

</comment><comment><USER41> It seems this guy isn't the intended audience for the book. I, for instance, know that Netflix performance is bad on certain ISPs because of throttling and peering agreements but if someone wrote a narrative about this I wouldn't berate them for telling the public at large about it in words they would understand.

<comment><USER42> There is a real and meaningful difference between popularizing and fictionalizing though. Some amount of gloss is needed to keep things tidy but if/when that crosses the line then the author is doing a disservice to his audience. This is doubly bad when the book in question is an indictment of the status quo with what amounts to a "call to action" in favor of some new business venture.

If the book was presented as non-fiction "based on a true story" that's one thing, but If the b

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I haven't read the book, but I've followed the chatter and have been listening to Lewis on Bloomberg. I get the impression that many justify HFT by comparing current or past alternatives, however his argument is that HFT is corrupting an otherwise fairer market place. In other words the market should improve and lessen these side businesses that victimize participants and add to the discredit of the exchanges.

If anyone thinks that these side business do not victimize participants you should look back to examples like Knight Capitals glitch that most certainly caused retail investors to lose trust and pull their money from the market, taking a loss. The introduction of non-relevant code is an unnecessary risk that does corrupt the system and does victimize your average investor.

1\. [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfina...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/9475292/Knight- Capitals-440m-trading-loss-caused-by-disused-software.html)</comment>


The Android Font: Roboto - <AUTHOR> http://developer.android.com/design/style/typography.html

<comment><USER2> It's worth noticing that this font is licensed under the Apache License Version 2.0.

So it's ok to use it in personal or commercial projects (by including a copy of the license an propper attribution).

The font can be found in the folder data/fonts on the Android SDK 4.0 / r14, and also the Readme file that states the license.

<comment><USER3> I don't understand why they haven't added it to the Google Web Fonts directory yet.

<comment><USER4> Probably because they don't really want people to use it. I imagine the license has to be fairly open to allow for unencumbered distribution with android, but it's a part of the android brand. Every time it gets used outside of android makes it a little more generic and dilutes the android brand a little bit.

<comment><USER5> If it were visually distinguishable from Helvetica, maybe. But it's really not. It's more modern, more complete, and probably "better" in some typographical way that I don't understand. But it's really not. What this represents to the free software community is a repackaging of a Helvetica-like font in a way that doesn't suck. To anyone concerned about the "Android brand" it's a wash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have to say, that Android Design minisite is full of useful nuggets of information on app design. It's worth a look regardless of your thoughts on Roboto.

</comment><comment><USER7> I wish that google would add this font to GDocs already. Love it.

</comment><comment><USER8> Roboto is Google's Arial.

It's the result of intellectual property licensing.

It's pointless comparing Google to Apple here. Apple has learnt that it's more important to license fonts from the legitimate IP holders instead of generating dupes that are just different enough to avoid a damages case. Even when creating custom typefaces based on existing fonts, Apple have engaged the original IP holder to create the font (see Apple Garamond.)

Roboto a chimera of existing popular typefaces and the problem with that is that it's a poorly assembled "frankenfont", the borrowed sections are obvious and poorly connected, this creates an inconsistent aesthetic. Namely a shitty typeface.

However, just like Arial, everyday users don't, and won't care - there is no point fussing over it, the only thing this shows is that Google hires lame design agencies, and is perhaps not as thoughtful as championed.

The problem with Hacker News is that there is a demongraphic of two faced users who gush over their preferred tech companies, while scorning others. Note here that Microsoft did similar with Windows 7 and the dialogue was far different to what I'm reading today.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm not a Roboto fan. I think Gruber sums it up the best: <http://daringfireball.net/2011/10/font_hipsters>

<comment><USER10> I have no idea how much you know about type design, but I get the sense that the vast majority of people disparaging Roboto don't actually know shit about typography, and are just parroting what's been said by a handful of bloggers (many of whom also aren't particularly well versed). If a lot of these guys were asked to rate a bunch of unnamed fonts without the benefit of the internet to tell them what they think about them, they would probably make some terrible font snob faux pas.

I'm not an expert of typography, but to my eyes, it's a nice, clean, readable screen font. So is the Droid font family. It's not my absolute favourite, but there are more pressing issues in the world.

<comment><USER9> John Gruber is extremely well versed in typography. He talks at great length about typefaces in his podcast and has worked for Bare Bones Software on BBEdit, a well known text editor. I would tend to trust his judgements on this matter.

<comment><USER10> Gruber does seem to know a lot, thought I'm not sure that talking about type on your podcast or working for a company that develops a text editor exactly proves that. That said, he's clearly got a snarky agenda about Android, which makes me take anything he writes about it with a grain of salt.

What annoys me is not so much Gruber or other bloggers having an opinion, it's the followers who take what they write as fact. Roboto probably isn't a font for the ages, but it seems to do what it set out to do very well. The people who worked on it aren't idiots.

Android has its issues, but I'm sick of the little cabal of Apple writers who portray it and everything surrounding it as a trainwreck.

<comment><USER11> Gruber knows a lot according to Gruber. And his legions of fans.

<comment><USER12> It seems the word "only" was omitted from your comment.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Modern meteorology was born 60 years ago - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/04/modern-meterology-was-born-60-years-ago-today/ <comment><USER2> The introductory chapters of James Gleick's _Chaos_ are about meteorology. When I read it I was blown away by the fact that these mathematical systems had sensitive dependence on initial conditions to such a degree that there was fractal complexity.

Very cool! I had this belief that if I get another decimal point in in the observations I would get closer to the truth, but if 1.25 and 1.2 could yield diametrically opposing results that doesn't work. Threw me for a loop, honestly.

<comment><USER3> As Fry Richardson wrote:

"Big whorls have little whorls/ Which feed on their velocity,/ And little whorls have lesser whorls/ And so on to viscosity."

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Lewis Fry Richardson was the person who first attempted numerical modelling of the weather. He spent his free time on the front line of WWI as an ambulance driver trying to complete a single 6 hour forecast. Unfortunately his source data was noisy and ruined the result, but it was his efforts that enabled computer generated weather forecasts - he wasn't a bit player.

<comment><USER4> I believe the problem was his numerical method was unstable, and blew up.

Somewhere in this talk by Philip Roe [https://youtube.com/watch?v=uaH91P665PI](https://youtube.com/watch?v=uaH91P665PI)

<comment><USER3> I understand that his method was rerun by the Met Office and when they excluded the bad source data they got the correct answer.

[https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/who/our- history/celebr...](https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/who/our- history/celebrating-100-years-of-scientific-forecasting)

<comment><USER4>
      limitations with the data
      method was eventually... proved correct

Does sound like they're blaming the data; though his "method" could well refer to his general method, not to every exact detail.

Philip Roe is himself a famous pioneer in CFD, so I lean towards trusting his version more... he said the forecast was of extraordinary 100mph winds, pretty specific. The bad data would have to be wildly bad to yield that! OTOH it inevitably happens with instability.

However, I really don't know. Maybe it's become a folktale, to illustrate instability, since it's a big deal in CFD!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can't remember exactly which episode of the "Omega Tau" podcast it was, very likely "Weather Forecasting at the ECMWF", but in it it was stated that we're adding one day of reliable forecasting for every decade of research on the topic.

[https://omegataupodcast.net/326-weather-forecasting-at- the-e...](https://omegataupodcast.net/326-weather-forecasting-at-the-ecmwf/)

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm skeptical about the claims that Tiros-1 was useful, compared to ground station and radiosonde data for forecasting.

It would be useful for hurricane tracking, though.

Source: worked on Crays for a national weather lab.</comment>


The Mu - Folding UK 3-pin → USB plug - <AUTHOR> https://www.themu.co.uk/

<comment><USER2> To quote:

"Yes – the Mu® USB Adapter has been tested by recognised certification organisations and has the full pre-requisite approvals for CE certification."

What approvals and organisations? Sounds like bullshit. That's the most evasive paragraph ever in the history of time.

Proper UK mains plugs are incredibly over-engineered for a good reason. Excellent mechanical stability, no arcing likely, touch-safety, earth pin, built in fuse and TBH you could beat an elephant to death with one. Add to that, the sockets don't like giving the plugs back which is a good thing!

That thing is flimsy, requires manual twiddling, has zero earth pin - it's plastic (what is the USB port grounded to?), will break in two minutes flat and fry someone.

I very much doubt it's been tested or approved or will be on the market for more than a few weeks.

Also, a small added rant: I can see design awards galore splurged all over it. The designers are positively orgasmic over the thing, yet us engineers are crying. Take the hint.

<comment><USER3> Class II (double insulated) appliances don't require an conducting earth pin. It's only needed at all to open the shutters that cover the live/neutral holes in the socket.

>>> That thing is flimsy, requires manual twiddling

Have you tried the product yet?

>>> I very much doubt it's been tested or approved

They've stated that it's been independently tested, which is sufficient for self-certification for the CE mark. What makes you think they're lying?

>>> us engineers are crying

<strike>I doubt you are an electrical engineer.</strike> Edit: apologies.

<comment><USER2> I've never worked with appliances so please excuse my ignorance on the subject. I retract that part of the rant. You are correct and I've upvoted you accordingly.

My comment regarding the flimsy nature of it will be proven. A rotating mechanical joint which needs to be pulled HARD (UK plus need to be pulled very hard) will fail rapidly and expose live wires. Not only that, the profile of the unit is very narrow and a small knock on the side of the device will most likely weaken the rotating joint resulting in complete failure.

With respect to the testing, similar devices have appeared in the past and have not been approved. I don't have a reference at hand but there was one around 2003 which was removed from the market rapidly after they lied over testing.

I was an electronics engineer until 2002 (specialist VLSI/FPGA/Avionics equipment).

<comment><USER4> I've got a Mu plug. I'm quite impressed by it; while it probably _is_ less robust than a regular plug, my gut feeling is you'd have to hit it side-on with a hammer to stand a chance of breaking it while it was in a socket. The fold-out shield around the pins is reinforced and angled to deflect side- impacts. A USB cable seated in it pulls out long before it can exert enough leverage or force to pull the Mu's pins out of a socket. The rotating pin arrangement feels solidly built.

While I think it's a bit gimmicky at this point (and: £25 for a USB charger?!?) it's better designed than a lot of the crappy kit you see out there, and shows promise for something better to come.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the objective review.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is a 2009 concept, finally becoming a product <http://www.reghardware.com/2009/06/24/folding_uk_plug/>

</comment><comment><USER5> Output: DC 5V 1Amp

Isn't that going to mean that a lot of devices (iPad?) charge slow?

I mean, I think it's more expensive to get rated for higher amp-age but they could have gone for 3 amps, right?

</comment><comment><USER6> I couldn't find any information about whether or not this contains a fuse ... Isn't that mandatory for UK plugs?

Seems quite "daring" to launch something like this for only the UK. Sure, it's a big market, but I hope they're looking at modularizing the plug part internally so they can instantiate the Mu for other markets, too.

<comment><USER7> It seems rather unlikely they'd be selling this if they didn't comply with UK regulations!

I'm also not sure why you think it's daring to launch a product for, in your words, "a big market".

<comment><USER6> I just meant that while big, it's still more or less one country. But, as other commenters have pointed out, the purpose of the product is to make the clumsy UK plug more managable, so perhaps there is no market in other regions for this product. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It is a (design-wise) shame that the UK plug design forces adapters to be so big.

Europlug USB adapters are much more slicker [http://www.alibaba.com/product- gs/339903558/_Euro_Plug_USB_T...](http://www.alibaba.com/product- gs/339903558/_Euro_Plug_USB_Travel_Charger.html) .

<comment><USER9> I think that depends on the angle you approach the issue from. Having spent the last three years in Japan after growing up in the UK, I find the general lack of respect towards electricity as a deadly force that is encapsulated in the flimsy plug design quite startling.

While the UK plug design is unwieldy in comparison, it also features a huge number of cleverly designed elements intended to provide the utmost protection to the everyday user.

Put another way, no. of shocks in Japan: 3 in 3 years. No. of shocks in the UK: 0 in 27 years (16 of which were as a child).

<comment><USER10> Japan may be on the other side of the scale, I also find their plugs look flimsy (as an European).

But the UK plug is just an artefact of the dangerous series circuits in many houses built during copper shortages. Such circuits are dangerous anyway, the remaining such houses should be fixed instead.

<comment> excuse-me There's nothing about ring mains that makes them any more dangerous.

The UK pugs probably are needlessly safe - but so are aircraft and cars these days. I can't see a big campaign to remove earth pins, shuttered sockets, fuses and switches to increase the number of accidents getting much public traction!

<comment><USER10> But one could see a campaign to have the same plugs as the rest of Europe, perhaps.

They aren't any less safe (especially Schuko ones) to use. The problems are inertia and national pride.

<comment> excuse-me Indeed - the same problems have stalled our attempts to make the rest of europe drive on the correct side of the road.

<comment><USER10> Exactly, because it's Europe (the majority) that has obviously made the wrong choice on both matters :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In the UK one of the first things most people with any sort of interest in DIY or technology learn is how to 'wire a plug'.

Is this a UK specific thing, or is it common in other countries as well?

<comment> excuse-me In the US it's almost impossible to get a re-wireable plug except for industrial extension leads.

Most Americans have no idea which pin is 'live'

<comment><USER12> There's no need for Americans to know which pin is live. (The correct answer is "both", by the way.)

Americans who do DIY electronics / electrical systems all know that black is hot and white is neutral, bare or green is ground. Plugs come with cables, so there is no need to know which pin is which, and I'm not sure what the benefit of rewiring a plug is except in the very rare case that the plug is damaged.

For the record, the bigger prong is neutral, which is exactly what you'd expect.

<comment> excuse-me True, and all new products in the UK have to have pre-wired sealed plugs now. Although you can still buy replacements plugs - I don't know hoe much longer for.

It's just part of the lost art of being able to fix things, now you throw away the Walmart appliance rather than replace a plug. Soon you wont be able to fix your car and will have to scrap it when the dealer decides that support has expired.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> For a smartphone product, their website is remarkably mobile-hostile. Can anyone figure out a way to get their "click and drag" photo navigation to work on an iPhone?

</comment><comment><USER14> I wonder if this device supports the USB charging port standard (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Serial_Bus#Power>). Are D- and D+ shorted? Their FAQ doesn't seem to say.

</comment><comment><USER15> Regardless of the pros and cons with this and UK plugs in general, £25 for one 1A USB socket is £20 too much. And that's allowing £4 for the gimmick-factor.

It's not even _that_ much smaller than the newer micro-USB chargers that Nokia and Samsung have.

</comment><comment><USER16> I have one. I really like it. It works and feels reasonably sturdy. The only thing I don't like is that the earth pin sticks out when the flaps are closed :-(

</comment><comment><USER17> The only good thing about the UK plug is that it's possible to push a standard 2-pin EU plug into the socket.

<comment><USER18> I've had a plug disintegrate inside the socket. (the metal prongs somehow detached from the plug). So, don't do this!

I'd argue that the _really_ good thing about the UK plug is 1) the switches in the sockets and 2) that the devices are all well-grounded. The EU one is usually just 2 contacts, with an optional 3rd one for ground. That's bad, anyway I look at it.

<comment><USER19> _I'd argue that the really good thing about the UK plug is 1) the switches in the sockets and 2) that the devices are all well-grounded_

There are quite a lot of safety features built in to UK plugs. Other ones I'm aware of are the holes being shuttered until a plug is inserted, and the internal design meaning that if you pull hard enough on the external wire, pulling it out, the internal wires will disconnect in a safe order.

<comment><USER20> At an old workplace, we had a piece of equipment with a European plug that we regularly had to shoehorn into a UK socket. It was a case of shoving a screwdriver or a pencil into the earth hole on the socket to simulate that pin being inserted and unlock the others, then fumble the EU plug into the live and neutral holes. (All while the socket was powered down, of course.)

Not particularly safe, and the result of someone who found you could buy equipment cheaper from Germany!

<comment><USER21> Why didn't you just buy a converter? One side is the UK plug, other side allows you to plug in a variety of different plugs (including the continental one) and they are very cheap.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


OpenEmbedded Layer Index - <AUTHOR> http://layers.openembedded.org/layerindex/branch/master/layers/ <comment><AUTHOR> Excerpt from: [http://www.openembedded.org/wiki/OpenEmbedded- Core](http://www.openembedded.org/wiki/OpenEmbedded-Core) :

"The original OpenEmbedded repository (also known as "OE-Classic" or "oe-dev") grew organically over the years to more than 7500 recipes, covering approximately _300 machines and 20 distros_. Trying to maintain this amount of metadata with machine and distro overrides scattered throughout was very difficult, and near to impossible to support commercially. Like many other OE forks that were created to solve the same kinds of issues, Poky was forked as a cleaner and more supportable version of OE in 2006. Fast forwarding to the present, Poky is now maintained as a reference distribution under the Yocto Project with the support of the Linux Foundation. OE-Core was split out from Poky in 2011 to allow collaboration around a relatively small and easily supportable base, with real machines, distros and other items removed..."

Related: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yocto_Project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yocto_Project)</comment>


Show HN: We made Supermodel.js to track Backbone model relationships - <AUTHOR> http://pathable.github.com/supermodel/

<comment><USER2> Related slides from my BackboneConf talk yesterday are at the url below. :)

<https://speakerdeck.com/u/braddunbar/p/lumbar-support>

<comment><USER3> (Disclaimer: I work for Pathable)

So braddunbar doesn't have to toot his own horn, he's also second[1] only to jashkenas in commits to backbone.js proper.

[1] [https://github.com/documentcloud/backbone/graphs/contributor...](https://github.com/documentcloud/backbone/graphs/contributors)</comment></comment>


Y Combinator Site Info - <AUTHOR> http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/ycombinator.com#trafficstats <comment><USER2> Is it possible to get information older than a year from alexa? I have a site that got to 970th in 2005 and I would like to see exactly when.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The following made me smile: _Ycombinator.com is particularly highly ranked in the city of San Francisco_</comment>


Ask HN: how do you organize your workspace to work more efficiently? - <AUTHOR> My question to you guys: how do you organize your workspace and workflow to work more efficiently, especially for web developers?  I'm using Rails and I prefer to have a lot of windows opened at the same time , but this question is not just for Rails developer.  Obviously there's a lot of smart and awesome programmers hanging out on HN so I really want to hear from you.
My approach is to find ways to optimize my workspace, including tools, windows, and shortcuts to make the workflow smoother.  My definition of "workflow" is the common and repetitive tasks of switching back and forth from one program to another, or to perform a certain set of steps.  I really aim to reduce the windows switching, mouse movements, and maximize using shortcuts.
I have a dual screen setup with a Dell 24" connected to my 13.3" MacBook.  I use the 24" as the main screen with TextMate and other windows opened, and the Mac to open the browser for quick Cmd R previews.  Since TextMate does not support split-screen, I open up different files as new windows (see screenshot: http://alexle.net/screenshots/dw/nuia8w3eo0c8k.png) so that I can switch to them quickly.  Usually I have the the main file opened in the TextMate main project, then frequently updated files in their own windows.  (I tried Vi/MacVim with NerdTree but never quite get it to work smoothly so I still remain a TextMate user, and a VI-wannabe)
To manage the different windows, I use Divvy to help me quickly organize the opening windows, including TextMate files and Terminals.  Here's the screenshot of TextMate and 3 different Terminals windows (organized with Divvy and shortcuts): http://alexle.net/screenshots/9o/g6ugj2fps8wks.png.  With Divvy, I started to notice that I reduced my usage of Cmd ` quite a bit.  I no longer have to switch between windows of the same application (e.g. Terminals), since I can quickly organize all of the views.  Everything is just there.  I don't even need to use Spaces or Exposé.  In my opinion, Divvy with a large screen is a killer-combo for huge productivity boost.
Also, I increasingly find screenshot utilities indispensable.  Literally these utilities change the way I communicate since I can quickly share a screenshot with friends and co-workers.  I used TinyGrab, almost bought a license, but then found out Scrup (http://github.com/rsms/scrup).  I already have a 1and1 $10/month hosting plan that hosts my personal blog with 100GB of storage.  So now I have an ad-free, unlimited, and awesome screenshot-sharing tool.  Cmd Shift 4 has never been so sweet!
I also use PTHPasteboard for clipboard management.  It's not free, however I didn't have to pay for it.  But I know there are free alternatives.  The only downside is PTHPasteboard doesn't allow fuzzy search within the clipboards.
Shortcut-wise I remap a certain set of keys to make it more consistent between TextMate and Terminals (e.g. switching tabs), and turn on Full Keyboard Access:  http://alexle.net/screenshots/cc/ttawsf788c8ww.png
Coming from 10+ years of using Windows, I have to use USB Overdrive to fix the mouse acceleration curve.  I have a Logitech gaming mouse and it was almost unusable with the default settings on the Mac.  With USB Overdrive, the curve is fixed and my mouse runs as smooth as babyskin.  http://alexle.net/screenshots/9d/6grmom180scwg.png (I had to add a custom mapping to Button 4 to support "Back" button)
So how do you organize your workspace?  What's your philosophy?  What works for you so far?  I'm really interested to hear from you guys.
This is the first time I post a question to HN, so bear with me :)
Cheers!
Alex
(I also have a similar workflow setup on my Windows laptop, but I don't have Divvy to nicely manage the windows layouts.  However, the same principle applied:  multiple split windows to present all the data and reduce windows switching with Alt Tab.  I also use a bunch of other utilities like Launchy, x2 explorer for file management, Notepad++ for light-weight editing, E TextEditor for Rails -- e is the best editor on Windows, even better than TextMate since it supports split-screen beautifully!, Cygwin, BeyondCompare, Ditto for clipboard, etc.) <comment><USER3> I've been using XMonad for the past year which has made the biggest improvement to my productivity since dual-monitor. I still use dual monitors (22" and 19"), while I'm considering getting a larger main monitor I find anything larger than 19" on the side to be distracting. Also tried triple monitor, but I found that with the amount of control XMonad gives me - <USER2> really don't need that much screen space.

On the text editor side I've been using Vim, which even after two years I'm still learning things. I use it for all kind of things besides coding, once you've gotten used to writing powerful macro's with it -- it really can give most things a productivity boost (converting HTML tables => SQL inserts, etc). In terms of plugins NERDTree, Surround and BufferExplorer are the main ones I use.

I tend to spend Sunday afternoons reading up on Vim/XMonad/etc. Recently I installed Vimperator for Firefox (I had tried before and switched back) and I'm finally beating my productivity with purely text based browsing.

Also use Workrave against RSI which isn't really a productivity booster (quite the opposite really). But I generally spend the breaks thinking about what I was working on, and how I could be working more effectively. Quite often it actually makes a decent difference - and I don't have to be on the keyboard for that time.

I use the Kinesis advantage keyboard (<http://www.kinesis- ergo.com/images/kb_adv-blk720x471.jpg>) with a whole lot of custom bindings. It took me about two months to get used to it, but worth it in every way (and I love the 'wtf' look when people see my keyboard).

I barely touch the mouse any more :)

<comment><USER4> I'm running a similar stack, although I'm only using a Thinkpad T410 at the moment.

Arch+Xmonad+urxvt+tmux+emacs+git and a lot of reading and tweaking gives me a machine that is fine-grained for how I like to work, and allows me to be so much more productive than I've been able to accomplish with other stacks, it's ridiculous.

I use OSX at work, and it's not too bad, but I'm still slower. I'm sure there's an argument to be made about how I'm just not using OSX to it's fullest, but frankly knowing that I can't actually change the way anything works if it disagrees with me makes me assume that I'm not going to be capable of maxxing out my productivity on that OS.

I haven't run into RSI yet, but I've been thinking about picking up a Kinesis advantage when I start fleshing out my home-coding space. It looks wonderful.

I too almost never touch the mouse. It's wonderful.

<comment><USER3> I'm running my setup on a Thinkpad T510 :), its a great laptop. Since I move around quite a lot, and generally for months at a time - I really needed a laptop. This one has dual-screen capability, and to be honest you really don't need much power to run XMonad w/ FireFox (and the amount of power Vim and XTerm require are negligible).

If you're using Qwerty now my best recommendation is to switch to Dvorak on the Advantage. Since its a completely different keyboard style, it doesn't mess with my muscle memory at all. I can jump to a plain qwerty keyboard at any point and still have 80% of my old typing speed, while I get to use Dvorak on the Advantage keyboard.

<comment><USER4> The thing I'm going to be most concerned with when switching to the Kinesis, regardless of whether or not I also switch to Dvorak on it, is making sure that I'm actually using my fingers "correctly".

Right now, I type mostly correct in QWERTY, but I know that I have some bad habits (using almost only left shift/alt/ctrl for one), and I haven't found myself very capable of breaking them.

Do you have any advice for making sure that I'm doing the "right" things with my hands, either on the Kinesis, or on normal keyboards?

<comment><USER3> Not really :/, part of the reason I switched was because I was having the same problem.

Just when you switch, "switch properly". Find a set of exercises for moving over and do them properly. I never finished every one because it got a bit excessive after a while, but my typing style would've been a lot worse without them.

Once I notice a rather bad habit (such as using left shift for : - uncomfortable on a dvorak kinesis), I simply bound the combination to an exclamation mark so I'd notice every time I did it.

<comment><USER4> _Once I notice a rather bad habit (such as using left shift for : - uncomfortable on a dvorak kinesis), I simply bound the combination to an exclamation mark so I'd notice every time I did it._

That's a really good idea! I might bind some bad-habit key combos to system beep because I _hate_ the system beep.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My principle of organization: Only see the objects you need to complete a task. Keep it simple. If a tool is irritating or slows you down, don't use it.

Workflow: There are only two things you need to know. First, know the 'critical section' of your work process, and learn to NEVER TOUCH THE MOUSE. It's OK for web browsing, but you want to minimize context switches in your inner loops. Second, learn the GNU toolset, like find, grep, cut, od, and the rest. You'll find them arcane, but when someone asks you to change the group on all of the files you own on the remote server, you'll spend 3 minutes instead of 3 days :)

Workspace: Maximize Emacs, split the screen into quarters. I prefer gnome- terminal or Cygwin to Emacs' built-in shell support, since alt+tab is easier than `C-x b buffer-name`. When in Visual Studio on Windows, I keep open the project view and the error console while programming.

Physical desk: The space in front of my monitors is work-related (or edible). As items become unused, they get pushed out to the sides. Once a week, I throw stuff out or shove it in a drawer for long-term storage

Computer desktop: Bare essentials. Files get downloaded to the desktop and moved accordingly. There's never more than a few things in my face. On Linux, I use Gnome + multiple desktops to sharpen my focus to just the windows I need. Browser on Desktop 1. Emacs + terminals in Desktop 2. Chat programs in Desktop 4.

<comment><USER6> _NEVER TOUCH THE MOUSE_

I've tried. I keep a very small logitech wireless mouse between my thumbs when i'm pounding on the (Matias) keyboard. About a 3" reach, doesn't work so well with Apple's wireless mice.

\</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

My other tip: a guitar (Ibanez electric) or MIDI keyboard (M-audio or Axiom) and a book of exercises (Hanon, Czerny, or guitar aerobics. Regular guitar/piano breaks fire something into the brain, serotonin, epinephrine, endorphins, ...something. A tenor sax would work too but can't really be played quietly through headphones.

[http://www.amazon.com/Guitar-Aerobics-One-lick-per-day- Devel...](http://www.amazon.com/Guitar-Aerobics-One-lick-per-day-Developing- Maintaining/dp/1423414357)

</comment><comment><USER7> Mac Developers might like to take a look at my project: Optimal Layout. It gives you very flexible keyboard commands to control windows as well as a window switcher:

<http://most-advantageous.com/optimal-layout/>

It includes an option to re-arrange a whole group of windows in one go with window tiling and I've got an update coming in the next week to make this process much simpler and more customizable.

</comment><comment><USER8> Under Linux, the best window manager I ever used was ion:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_%28window_manager%29>

It was like emacs turned into a window manager. It cut my mousing down by at least an order of magnitude.

On OS X, a simple free app, ShiftIt, provides a similar experience:

<http://code.google.com/p/shiftit/>

It lets you quickly move and resize windows into quartiles and halves with a few keystrokes.

At the console, I log my activity to a database and then data-mine my console history to discover which tasks have become repetitive; then I replace them with a shell script. Blog post with source code here:

[http://matt.might.net/articles/console-hacks-exploiting- freq...](http://matt.might.net/articles/console-hacks-exploiting-frequency/)

<comment><USER9> If you are ok with paying a few bucks on OSX sizeup or divvy are much more mature projects. Though you could always add what you want to shiftit because it's opensource.

I personally use Sizeup but I might try divvy because it seems to be way more customizable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Software

</comment><comment>==

Most of my time is spent in here: <http://cl.ly/1gfY> using emacs with Slime, Swank, Clojure-mode, Text-mate.el and M-x split-window-horizontally. I, as someone pointed out below, mapped my caps-lock key to command. Much better.

When I just need to interact with the filesystem of a remote computer, and eschew sftp,p I use Transmit 4. It's handy.

For screenshots and sharing links etc, I generally use CloudApp (getcloudapp.com) for a nice, free and extremely convenient Mac OSX utility.

You can see the other apps I use with any regularity here: <http://cl.ly/1gRQ> on my dock. They include 1Password, MarsEdit, WriteRoom (for when I want nothing else going on–else I use TextEdit.app), Pixelmator for mockups and designs (I got rid of Photoshop as soon as I could–this is so, so much better), Tweetie.app (though it's getting long in the tooth) and more that you can see there.

I also use Alfred.app as a quick app-launcher (<http://www.alfredapp.com/>), among other things. It's in active development, and it's wonderful!

Next up: XMonad and getting a nice setup on ArchLinux on my local machine, not just my servers. Learning Haskell and getting my modes in Emacs set up for that. Figuring out what the fuss is about with Paredit (I think it's crap: I often write deeply nested structures from the inside out, and Paredit.el makes that hard; yes, I do break them up later.)

.

Hardware

</comment><comment>===

I generally use the Apple Macintosh wired keyboard, and a Logitech Mx15 gaming mouse (I've had it for so many years, I am just used to it). My computer is a 2008 MBP 17" that sits up on a stand.

I wear Denon AH-D5000's with a Boa D2 amp; I'll be getting PX450s soon to handle noisier workplaces.

That's about it. Next up hardware wise is a 27" IPS screen from whoever releases one soon: I've missed having two screens.

</comment><comment><USER11> I have the same dual screen setup and I have to say that it really boosted my productivity.

I was looking for another monitor to add but I found extreme difficult to put together a triple monitor setup on a macbook.

Also I mastered exposè, active corners and personalized mouse gestures for quick tasks (Magic Mouse is not bad at all). One desktop for file upload, one for coding, one for monitoring etc.

Then Terminal.app is my best friend, I use it to script everything: from cleaning my desktop to send mail alerts, ftp, ssh etc.

<comment><USER12> Did you try a USB display adaptor on the Macbook?

I ask because I've got a Mac mini and am semi-seriously contemplating a third monitor.

<comment><USER13> I use a ViBook (<http://www.villagetronic.com/vibook/index.html>) at work in order to have two 22-inch monitors hooked up to my MacBook. Performance is surprisingly good, especially for low-intensity tasks like text editing. Watching videos on it absolutely kills the CPU, but having another monitor for terminals and text editors is great.

<comment><USER11> Nice stuff! Onestly I only found DVI switchers and they were not well supported. Price was also a constraint.

Thanks for the suggestion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> One of the biggest productivity boosts I've found working with something like Rails (I use Python but any web development system that involves starting up a local app server would be the same) is having an easy way to start up the entire application stack. For example, I have to start around 10 different services to run the app I work on. In Emacs, I've created small functions to start them up within some shells (all within emacs) and that lets me not only get started quickly, but quickly go to any of the services I'm focusing on for checking logs, viewing exceptions, copying output, etc.

On a more personal preference, my Emacs usage lead to use StumpWM and Conkeror (web browser) which help to keep all my keybindings very cohesive. A tiling window manager is really helpful b/c you never have to slightly move or resize windows. It sounds like Divvy does a similar thing.

That said, I bet if you take some time to commit to something like Vim (or Emacs!) it might eventually be more productive than TextMate. Emacs helps to keep everything within the editor (email, IRC, shells, etc.) while Vim helps to keep you in a terminal and to use standard *nix tools. Both tactics are very helpful IMO.

</comment><comment><USER15> I like to maximize my windows, but that's because I spend 50% of dev time in Emacs. Some sort of split-screen is important for maximizing to work well. With Emacs, I never close my files. I choose between the files I want to switch to by typing the file name, and Emacs tries to find a match (sorted by recency). The effect is I can go to the files I need 90% of the time in under 3 key strokes. This is especially true for files I frequently need.

This is not to advocate Emacs (well, maybe it is pimping), but that an editor you can customize can be very helpful if you spend the time.

I use iTerm and Chrome. I put the most important tabs in the first 3 tabs, so i can cmd-{1,2,3} to access these tabs.

I use launchbar to switch between programs. I type "Em" => emacs, "Ch" => Chrome, "it" => iTerm, "iTu" => iTune. I turn off music when I need to focus.

I work both on my MacAir and my 27" iMac, and the work follow is the same (not limited by screen size). I never found the need to have dual monitors.

<comment><USER15> the other weird thing I do is remapping the meta keys,

cmd => caps lock ctrl => cmd

so they are waaaay more accessible. Emacs used to hurt my pinky, because I had to curl it in a weird way to access to ctrl key. Now I use my thumb for the ctrl key, and ring finger for the cmd key. It works well for me, like a poor man's kinesis. I NEVER EVER use the ctrl key at the bottom left corner of the keyboard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Before I clicked the link, I thought you meant physical workspace, and I immediately thought of my best physical workspace hack: every day, I try to focus on one big important thing. I write that thing on a post-it and attach it to my main screen. It's a huge productivity improvement for me.

</comment><comment><USER17> It's very important for me to have multiple displays that are matching size/resolution. Anything else just feels awkward to me. I use Spaces only to segment my work tools from everything else. I don't usually actively juggle multiple Spaces while working. A little too confusing for me. Another trick I use is having multiple browsers installed. My work browser doesn't include all my wonderfully entertaining bookmarks that might distract me -- just work stuff. I have to admit I never really got into advanced keyboard shortcuts that much. I feel like in a GUI environment (especially OSX) it's so hard to avoid using the mouse often so I just kind of accept it. Remembering all the different keyboard shortcuts is more difficult to me than just using the mouse most of the time.

</comment><comment><USER18> Ruthlessly de-clutter when I notice any sort of clutter is accumulating.

Headphones if in a public space, music with pretty seamless transitions that I've heard enough to phase out - usually Tool's Lateralus album, Massive Attack's Mezzanine, Gorillaz's Demon Days, Moby's Play, low key classical music, or some relatively subtle minimal techno or house.

<comment><AUTHOR> what's your last.fm profile page? Massive Attack's Mezzanine is awesome, definitely put you in the mood for coding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm a Rails developer as well: I currently use Coda for pretty much everything.

The fact that you can have tabs for files/shells means that everything stays very neat. I generally have a shell open for Git, a shell for testing, file tabs and a browser open and that's it.

Coda is here: <http://www.panic.com/coda/>

</comment><comment><USER20> _I also have a similar workflow setup on my Windows laptop, but I don't have Divvy to nicely manage the windows layouts._

Divvy is nice and all, but Winsplit Revolution on windows and Compiz Grid plugin on linux blow it out of the water, if you're after similar on either of those environments can highly recommend.

</comment><comment><USER21> I used to think that mousing was a waste of time, but now that I used Eclipse (instead of Emacs) a little bit, I start to realize that a little bit of mousing lets me work a lot longer without pain that I'd get from doing everything with the keyboard.

</comment><comment><USER22> -2 Screens

-Tight headphones

-5 Terminals

-1 Browser

-Things/Email

- _Most important_ : The understanding of those around me I am not to be disturbed.</comment>


New York is a network. Boston is a community - <AUTHOR> http://techinboston.co/post/102542823716/getting-smarterer-about-hiring

<comment><AUTHOR> (Audio) interview with Sarah Hodges, VP of Marketing at Smarterer. Thought she had an interesting take on Boston vs. New York.</comment>


Ask HN: How much time per day is needed to onboard a new skill? - <AUTHOR> I realise that this is completely dependent on the person. However, if you were looking to pick up a new skill like expanding your development knowledge or learning design theory, what would be the best strategy for consistent learning in out of work hours time? <comment><USER2> There's no good answer. How long it might take you to learn a new skill depends on what you want to learn, how deeply you want to master the skill, your experience and knowledge of related or more fundamental skills, and your personality. Learning to program might take 10,000 hours of practice. Learning a new language if you already know one or two should take less time. Learning how to manage a web server might take a few hours or a few months, depending on what you already know.

For any non-trivial skill, starting from scratch, expect to spend a lot of time practicing. Finding a mentor helps. Reading books and articles online helps but there's no substitute for practice, preferably in something resembling a real-world environment. I find I learn new things a lot faster when I have something at stake, like a deadline, a contract, or my job.

</comment><comment><USER3> Checkout the Ultralearning book by Scott Young.

I think this idea of having a project or being immersed in a situation really helps you learn a skill faster.</comment>


Options for Parallel Compression  - <AUTHOR> http://teddziuba.com/2010/01/options-for-parallel-compressi.html <comment><USER2> p7zip's LZMA can be parallelized, and it has plenty of tuning knobs. There are other LZMA implementations, too. You want Markoff chains for really repetitive data.

The big disadvantage is that p7zip doesn't really _do_ unix pipes, courtesy of its dosbox heritage.

Shameless self-promotion, though weblogs are different than database dumps:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1060821></comment>


Comparing Fusion Tables to Open Source CartoDB - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cartodb.com/post/21264086445/comparing-fusion-tables-to-open-source-cartodb

<comment><USER2> A totally different post will be needed to discuss about the differences on pricing, but for the most obvious there was some previous discussion in here about Google Maps not being free anymore: [https://plus.google.com/118383351194421484817/posts/foj5A1fU...](https://plus.google.com/118383351194421484817/posts/foj5A1fURGt)

</comment><comment><USER3> Guys, really great stuff! Only missing piece for me was some comparison on the scaling and performance differences between CDB and GFT. I saw a PostgreSQL slide at FOSS4G-NA showing 350k QPS with 100 concurrent requests in v9.2. Maybe a totally different post though. :)

</comment><comment><USER4> Carto CSS rocks my socks

</comment><comment><USER5> Open source ftw!

</comment><comment><USER6> Pretty amazing

</comment><comment><USER7> Nice

</comment><comment><USER8> +1</comment>


Tips for Building Your Work Network - <AUTHOR> https://letterstoanewdeveloper.com/2019/03/04/tips-for-building-your-work-network/ <comment><USER2> What has worked for you the most on LinkedIn?

All I get is spam messages pretty much. Though, I know it could be worth spending some more time into it.</comment>