To Know If the Election Was Hacked, Look at the Ballots - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jhalderm/want-to-know-if-the-election-was-hacked-look-at-the-ballots-c61a6113b0ba#.tuyhjzxvm <comment><USER2> If you want a candidate to win, use the most effective hacking tool available: social engineering. As a bonus, it's legal!

It might sound flippant, but I wouldn't be too surprised if the masterful politicians (in the USA or abroad) wouldn't consider illegal hacking just because it's too risky. Better to use shady-yet-legal tactics to shift opinions. The whole "fake news" issue seems like it could be a very smart campaign in this regard.

<comment><USER3> I've wondered why the fake memes don't result in fines - they didn't identify who was responsible as all other political ads must do.

<comment><USER4> That and freedom of speech is a protected and valued right in our democracy.

If fake memes are wrecking your country maybe it's not the memes that are the problem?

<comment><USER5> All citizens of high quality countries naturally just grew protection from propaganda, PR and psychological tricks, which evolved effortlessly for mass media/communication that reaches 100M people instantly. If that shit works on your "country", you probably need to see what's wrong with you people.

<comment><USER6> > high quality countries

Please define

> protection from propaganda, PR and psychological tricks

Yes, we here in Europe are blessed to represent the epitome of rational thought immune to all kinds of manipulation and fear-mongering. Alt-Right populism like the Front National, the Alternative für Deutschland and the UK Independence Party has no success here at all!

<comment><USER5> Brexit

But, it was a sarcastic post

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> From NYT Upshot's Nate Cohn:

\- _" Metro Wisconsin, where Clinton did well, uses paper; rural Wisc, where she collapsed like everywhere, is electronic. [https://www.verifiedvoting.org/verifier/#year/2016/state/55"](https://www.verifiedvoting.org/verifier/#year/2016/state/55") _ [https://twitter.com/Nate_Cohn/status/801217804783394816](https://twitter.com/Nate_Cohn/status/801217804783394816)

\- _Remember it 's not just Wisconsin here. 1. Michigan only uses optical scan. [http://www.michigan.gov/sos/0,1607,7-127-1633_8716_45458---,...](http://www.michigan.gov/sos/0,1607,7-127-1633_8716_45458---,00.html) 2\. The margin in PA is 65k votes. 65k._ [https://twitter.com/ForecasterEnten/status/80121914932638515...](https://twitter.com/ForecasterEnten/status/801219149326385152) retweeted by @Nate_Cohn

<comment><USER7> And Nate Silver:

\- _To follow: some _very_ quick analysis which suggests the claim here of rigged results in Wisconsin is probably BS:[http://nym.ag/2gI6YLP](http://nym.ag/2gI6YLP) _

\- _Run a regression on Wisc. counties with >=50K people, and you find that Clinton improved more in counties with only paper ballots. HOWEVER: [https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/801221546685661184/...](https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/801221546685661184/photo/1) _

\- _...the effect COMPLETELY DISAPPEARS once you control for race and education levels, the key factors in predicting vote shifts this year.[https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/801221907609579520/...](https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/801221907609579520/photo/1) _

[https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/801220813890277376](https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/801220813890277376)

<comment><USER8> Nate has a full article here that's likely better than a few tweets for discussing something like this:

[http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/demographics-not- hacking...](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/demographics-not-hacking- explain-the-election-results/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There have been several posts about this (e.g. [1] and [2]), downweighted by user flags and by standard penalties (e.g. for politics stories). But some thoughtful users have argued that it's more on-topic for HN than most politics, so we'll make an exception, even though HN probably ought to be in detox right now.

Edit: actually there was already at least one major discussion about this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13019333](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13019333), so technically we ought to be marking all these as dupes. But we'll leave this one open for now.

The moderation test in cases where there's an ongoing story and many follow-up posts is: have one major thread and bury the rest as dupes unless there's significant new information.

1\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13018675](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13018675)

2\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13023998](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13023998)

</comment><comment><USER10> I was having a discussion about security of the voting systems with my neighbor from Germany. He was of the belief that the mechanical machines without computers were more secure.

I like the type of machines we have in Connecticut. There is a paper ballot that is filled out and then scanned optically. We get a paper ballot that acts as an audit trail. There is always the possibility that the optical scanner contains a bug or something, but the 2000 election showed that even mechanical machines have flaws if not maintained.

I would not prefer the touch screen voting machines as there are always reports of the machines switching the vote. It just seems like more can go wrong with those machines.

<comment><USER11> The voting machine's viability is all about how easily a layman can verify its correctness. This is why any mechanical voting machines are theoretically "better" because the layman can actually SEE it working correctly or not.

<comment><USER12> Have you ever tried to inpelement a modified d'hont method manually? There are always computers involved. Counting hundreds thousands of votes manually will always yield an error that can be exploited. Voting as a concept has changed beyond what mr. Halderman is willing to admit. Let's say you have widespread electronic id and electronic voting. In isolation, this sounds mad. In conjunction with physical voting and common use of eid, not so much.

<comment><USER13> Seems harder to exploit manual counting of paper ballots than the firmware of some closed source system that's poorly understood by those deploying it.

The larger the election, the more manual counters you will have. Which means the more people you would have to influence in order to rig an election.

<comment><USER14> Ironically, Russia is particularly good at it.

<comment><USER15> Manipulating a manual ballot process is easy. Just stuff some ballot boxes. Doing so without leaving evidence all over the place is really hard.

Widespread vote manipulation of electronic systems much, much easier to keep a secret.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I read and saw many assurances by IT experts that the election couldn't be hacked and wasn't hacked (said much too soon for them to know) but I never heard a convincing argument or an indication of a serious analysis. Can anyone here provide one?

The only serious argument I heard was that it would be very complicated and expensive to hack so many local voting systems. However, certainly state- sponsored - and maybe other - attackers have the resources to do it, they can greatly reduce the cost by targeting only necessary systems (e.g. just a few voting systems in each swing state), they probably can find more ways to economize on a brute force attack, and most importantly: For them the massive return on investment - controlling who is the next President of the U.S., and possibly undermine confidence in U.S. political institutions - makes it worthwhile. It's arguably worth it to hack the machines, leave evidence, and not change the result

I worry that in their rush to refute Trump's allegations of rigging, the experts opened the door to attackers by preemptively blocking investigations; they are now politically very difficult, they will cost the experts' reputations, and they may cause more uncertainty among the public than they resolve.

The best security I can think of is deterrence: If they get caught, the attacker might be inviting a war with the U.S. But do Russia and China really feel threatened?

<comment><USER17> What makes you think it would be Russia and China necessarily, as opposed to just internet trolls?

<comment><USER18> That's one good argument against mass hacking: if it was as easy as it's being made out to be to manipulate the results, we should expect to see something obviously vandalized: a black county that voted 100% Trump, or a county where third party candidates get all the votes.

> There's no question that this is possible for technically sophisticated > attackers. (If my Ph.D. students and I were criminals, I'm sure we could > pull it off.) If anyone reasonably skilled is sufficiently motivated and > willing to face the risk of getting caught, it's happened already.

Surely there's someone on 4chan who ticks those boxes. The motivation doesn't even have to be pure vandalism: it would be a very effective way to call attention to the vulnerabilities in the system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's mind boggling to me that we don't automatically check the paper trails of an election and do several counts to verify the results. How will democracy survive if our mechanisms for implementing it are so far behind the changing world?

<comment><USER20> Here's a hack: you can fund Jill Stein to request the recounts. [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/23/jill- stein-e...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/23/jill-stein- election-recount-fund-michigan-wisconsin-pennsylvania)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> TLDR: _Were this year's deviations from pre-election polls the results of a cyberattack? Probably not. I believe the most likely explanation is that the polls were systematically wrong, rather than that the election was hacked._

<comment><USER22> Followed immediately by "But I don't believe that either one of these seemingly unlikely explanations is overwhelmingly more likely than the other."

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> If they have a serious argument backed by evidence, they should make it public. Hillary Clinton may have a personal concern about the issue but it's a very serious issue for all Americans (and the world). She shouldn't have a veto.

<comment><USER23> >She shouldn't have a veto.

Absolutely. Regardless of how likely or unlikely manipulation is, an independent group should be able to request an audit.

If for not other reason than she could be silenced by a tacitly threatening to endless prosecute and summon before congress on some unrelated matter if she makes any trouble.

<comment><USER24> Would you say the same thing about the Democratic primary?

<comment><USER23> What a curious default view of humanity and reality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I kind of don't understand why we can't vote through a web app. You can deposit checks and buy stocks through your phone. Why can't you vote?

<comment><USER26> Because voting is way more important than home banking.

And voting through a web app is wrong on so many levels:

\- "Electronic voting": Electronic voting machines already have a bad enough track record. If nothing else, it makes large-scale attacks easier. Voters have to trust the ballot operators (different from home banking, where (a) you can choose your bank and (b) manual banking wouldn't be better either).

\- "Electronic voting, at home": Assuming [1], it wouldn't be coercion resistant, wouldn't be independently verifiable, couldn't guarantee vote secrecy to voters and be susceptible to ballot stuffing, open against technical attacks (eg. as simple as DDOS, or malware).

\- "Electronic voting, at home, in a web app": No local (non-attacker- controlled) code means you must trust server completely. And its basically impossible to _really_ isolate the voting from everything else.

All these problems for what? Paper ballots really aren't so bad. Especially if you eliminate two of the obvious problems US elections have: get rid of voter registration, and move votes to sundays.

[1] Assuming you don't use a cryptographic voting scheme; these have their own problems. It's an entire field of research that just can't be summarized in an HN post, but key problems are: a) impossible to understand by voters, b) some desirable properties are mutually exclusive, c) computationally prohibitively expensive (even with state level resources), d) some problems aren't technical in nature and can't be solved technically (think coercion).

<comment><USER27> > Because voting is way more important than home banking.

Most banking -- "home" or multi-millions -- is done electronically. It's safer.

<comment><USER26> You missed the point. I'm arguing for voting - not banking - to be kept on paper.

Banking is a completely different problem. The secrecy requirements are different - in fact, audit trails of all individual transactions are _expected_. Big transactions are typically individually reviewed by humans. People/organizations can choose their bank. There are multiple banks -> no single target. Transactions can be traced and rolled back, so coercion is less of a problem. Risk is mostly financial.

<comment><USER28> Coercion won't be a problem at all if voting places are just like in secret ballot voting. Online connection to a central server isn't even required. Just have an audited code and its verified executable run in a physically secured system.

<comment><USER29> > Just have an audited code and its verified executable run in a physically > secured system.

Do any of those exist? Is this possible in practice, in this decade?

<comment><USER28> If the runtime code is audited and compiled in a secure compiler then the executable is good and secure. Run it on a clean system(embedded system) which is also physically secure. Its not only possible it already exists. Many countries do have tried and tested such systems (am not sure if compiler is audited by them) used in production.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> A (dystopian?) future? One's birth certificate includes a cryptographic certificate used to sign and validate everything related to one's interaction with the government (replaceable by some protocol as cryto tech changes over time). One's vote is signed. However, subway cards and automatic highway tolls are signed as well.

<comment><USER31> This would enable both vote selling and tracking down the people who voted against you.

<comment><USER32> Not if properly combined with other technologies.

Cryptographically signed voting enables vote selling only in the same sense that requiring voters to present ID at the polling place already enables it.

<comment><USER31> Depends if you're signing the actual vote (Alice voted for Bob) or just their presence (Alice voted). I thought akeck was talking about the first one but you're right that the second one would not present the threats I mentioned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> My tongue-in-cheek solution: put the sysadmins in charge of voting machines. They'll make sure there are several backups, automate testing of all the machines, and an unwavering ambition to prevent data corruption and hacker intrusion. The heroes we need.

Full disclaimer, I am a systems engineer :p

<comment><USER32> How is it tongue-in-cheek to suggest putting a professional with relevant experience in charge of critical national infrastructure?

One of us has a misaligned Overton window.

<comment><USER33> I didn't mean to say that we shouldn't have knowledgeable people handling our voting machines (as pretty much any election shows, we certainly do). I just imagined sysadmins across the country saying "screw it, I'm taking care of this" and abandoning their normal jobs to take care of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> TL;DR

 _Were this year's deviations from pre-election polls the results of a cyberattack? Probably not. I believe the most likely explanation is that the polls were systematically wrong, rather than that the election was hacked. But I don't believe that either one of these seemingly unlikely explanations is overwhelmingly more likely than the other. The only way to know whether a cyberattack changed the result is to closely examine the available physical evidence — paper ballots and voting equipment in critical states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania._

He goes on to give an overview of voting machines' vulnerability and methods for resolving the problem.

</comment><comment><USER34> that was much less interesting than i thought it would be...

<comment><USER32> That was much more sane and reasonable than I thought it would be. Two sides of the same coin.

<comment><USER34> We've all known for quite some time that election system needs improvement, what's so different this time? Each and every election the losing side brings up the tampering bit, well yes if people cared enough, we should begin processes to make sure tampering election votes is extremely difficult to impossible. And maybe this is the beginning of real discussion, only problem is who will lead the effort, is this guy just another person with a megaphone?

Also to say paper ballots cannot be tampered seems silly . Unless we know the exact procedure and check points in which they are handled, how they are stored and secured even after the win for case of recount (especially if tampering happens afterward and recount is the plan to which the coin lands on the other side). Hell maybe even down to the specific type of paper a ballot is printed with. And I like what someone else said, scan them in as well... have machine and human come to the same total.

I expected the guy to have proof considering the hype around this, but I do appreciate he said it is unlikely the election was hacked...as if just to quiet those twitter echo chambers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Why does it have to be a foreign government hacking?

An election tech worker or contractor with an agenda, could easily achieve the same results without having to go to the great lengths of breaking into the network using malware etc.

</comment><comment><USER36> By the way, can we now discuss South Carolina?

Paperless touch screen voting there me and we have no idea who won any election.

Completely unacceptable.

<comment><USER37> What does this comment mean? Are you saying that the results of the election are unclear in the state?

<comment><USER36> Completely. There is absolutely no way to understand how the election result compares to voter intent.

The record of that intent consists of smudges on dirty touch screens.

We could come close to at least questioning with aggressive exit polling, but the real problem is no voter using those devices can ever understand their vote cast.

They walked in and did something. That's all they really know.

<comment><USER37> That really seems like a tin foil hat perspective. Sure, in the literal sense, there is no way for them to prove which way their vote was cast because it's managed by an opaque (for them) computer system, but the same is true if it were paper ballets that are handed over to a processing clerk. Once youve cast your vote, the collector "owns" the results, and their counting process is opaque in either case.

And with that said, I don't think it's fair to ,

<comment><USER37> My phone isn't working for some reason, second paragraph:

I don't think it's fair to say that the intent of the voters is unclear unless you're wanting to entirely throw out the results of the electronically collected and processed votes as completely invalid. That seems extreme to me.

<comment><USER36> Show me how it can be trusted, and I will agree.

Fact is, no voter in that state can actually tell you how their vote was recorded.

That's reality. How can we trust the election then?

<comment><USER37> Going back to my earlier point, how is this different from handing over a paper ballot? You have no record of your paper ballot, and can't prove how it was counted toward totals either. Sure there is a "physical" record of it, but I'm sure (or at least I would hope) there are logs for the voting system as well that could be analyzed.

If you're unwilling to trust a computer system counts in a non-corrupted fashion, I'd be surprised to learn you use them for anything at all. Heck, who knows how the messages you're typing in here are showing up for me? Who is to say there isn't a middle man re-interpreting everything you type? How can you have any confidence in any system, unless you wrote it yourself? And deployed yourself, and completely control 100% of the system it's deployed on.

Hyperbole, sure, but why trust any system if not your vote recording system? I'd like to think (and again, I have no research to back this) that these are maintained by relatively "non-partisan groups," and that they are audited to evaluate for any sort of corruption or tampering. But even if they aren't, I don't think that paper ballot systems are any more so. The qualifications to be a ballot worker in my area seems to be that you've reached the age of retirement and are white, which could very easily bias the vote here. Should I not trust my results?

<comment><USER36> There are a number of differences

First, the voter does know their vote record reflects their intent. They can't actually know that with a paperless touch screen.

Second, we do have the ballots and various things can be done to resolve an election, and they can be done in court, by humans. Trust can be established there too.

Now, we don't always need that, but it's extremely important that we have it, or the systems simply will be gamed. I would. What's to really catch me?

You bring up a great secondary point. Why trust computers at all?

In this case, both you and I have a dialog, and it needs to be sane. The machines could be coughing up a lot of garbage, but we both know they don't as the chat is coherent.

WHile this ambiguity has always existed with computers, most use cases get past it in similar fashion. Banking, by the way, resolves down to personally identifiable records, or at the least an account known by someone, and distributed copies of said records too.

All of that must make sense, or there are problems. It's subtle, but we catch a lot of trouble this way.

Voting is an edge case, and it's extreme as well as important, and a significant issue when it's not trusted.

Billions and Trillions of dollars can be impacted by votes. To think we aren't seeing manipulation is crazy.

In the case of SC, we don't actually have the means to catch this being done!

The niche case of voting breaks down to anonymity being coupled with no public record of the vote and this ambiguity of input.

In my State, Oregon, we use a hybrid. Voters do cast paper ballots and have plenty of time to do so. Individually, we can understand our votes are accurate.

They are verified by signature, which preserves the secrecy of the voters. It's damn tough to get data out of that part of the system specific to a voter.

We then publish voting and validity status for everyone too. So individually, and collectively, we can understand the votes are valid and will be counted.

For those who check, they can remedy things too.

Then, counting is done electronically coupled with blind audits done by hand.

This question is of paramount importance: How can you have any confidence in any system, unless you wrote it yourself? And deployed yourself, and completely control 100% of the system it's deployed on.

For most use cases, it's not an issue for reasons I've given. Votes are an edge case we do not bump into very often.

And that status makes this a difficult discussion.

Couple it with the strong incentives to control elections, and it's not something we should take lightly, and given we have plenty of time tested, cost effective, reasonable means to do this, we hardly require that risk be taken.

That it is consistently taken is a bother to me. There is no reason for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Pollsters predicted reality incorrectly => Reality was hacked

Man, those guys know how to spin the outcome.

</comment><comment><USER38> I don't know if Donald Trump is a tactical genius or surrounded in a cloud of luck. Remember when he said he wouldn't accept the election results if he lost and the outcry at his comments? Now all the pundits who question these results have tweets from a couple of weeks ago saying things like "You have to accept the result, that's how democracy works!" effectively invalidating their arguments today. If on purpose that is some Lannister level statecraft.

You can down vote all you want. Game recognises game. You don't have to support someone for that.

<comment><USER37> To be fair, (many of) those on the right thought Donald Trump was an idiot for saying he wouldn't accept the results, so it doesn't seem unfair for them to continue they're claiming "we won, leave it be" now. They would (likely) have asked Trump to do the same in the "we lost, leave it be" situation.

<comment><USER38> Agreed, but you also look rather hypocritical saying "The results are perfect don't question them!" and then a week later "I question the results."

This reveals partisan hacks on both sides of the aisle.

<comment><USER37> This reveals human nature on both sides ;) When you lose, it sucks, and you want to find a way to alter the results. When you win, it's great, and you don't want it taken away. I don't think this behavior is limited to politics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Election results must be beyond doubt. Clinton, Trump, and all Americans have a shared interest in this. It seems unlikely for the result of the election to change even if one state was hacked, so it's not like anyone's skin is even on the line.

Absolutely no one should doubt that Russia, and many other nations, have the capability to do what people are suggesting might have happened. The only question is whether they did, which would be almost unprecedented: the undermining of a mature democracy's electoral process by a foreign power would be a singular event. (Though, both the USA and Russia have done similar-ish things in the past, but often against immature democracies.)

Russia has shown interest in destabilizing the USA's electoral system throughout the year. The only question is just how far they are willing to go. We have the capability to determine whether they did this time. We should exercise that capability: if we don't, it will encourage our enemies (and our friends!) to do so in the future, regardless of what happened in 2016.

<comment><USER40> _It seems unlikely for the result of the election to change even if one state was hacked, so it 's not like anyone's skin is even on the line._

You don't seem to have followed this story. The whole point is that we have a very realistic possibility that Trump's unexpected win was due to manipulation of electronic polling machines. Possibly by Russia.

To be specific, Clinton was projected to win Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. If she had, she would have won the election. Instead Trump won all three by around 1% each. Across those states, Trump did about 7% better in precincts that used electronic voting than in ones that didn't. A recount of the ballots cast can tell us whether he really earned those votes, or the machines were manipulated.

This kind of manipulation of electronic voting is well within the abilities of US security experts. It is also within the abilities of countries like Russia. Russia had an obvious preference, and has demonstrated the willingness to use cyber attacks to manipulate elections.

<comment><USER41> 538 does a better job of debunking this than I ever could:

[http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/demographics-not- hacking...](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/demographics-not-hacking- explain-the-election-results/)

<comment><USER40> The articles don't debunk each other, they are in fundamental agreement on observable facts.

Both accept that it is possible for the Russians to hack the election. Both state that it is reasonable that Trump actually won. Both agree that the only way to be sure is to conduct an audit.

They do differ. The medium article digs into depth on the technical details of how doable the hack is. The 538 article digs into depth on the quality of the statistical evidence.

They come to opposite conclusions. The medium article concludes that we should audit because eventually someone will try to manipulate the election. 538 is more concerned with raising public concern about fairness. I am more concerned with actual fairness than perception, so I agree with the medium article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Does the HN team have any plans to increase transparency on flagging. Maybe a way to view flagged stories and how many users are flagging them?

<comment><USER43> I'm sure it's not your intention, but I read that question as "How can we make it easier for someone to game the system on hacker news?"

Making it more transparent would probably not be a good thing.

<comment><USER42> I'm surprised the value in transparency isn't obvious. I'll think more about how to convey my thoughts on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> >Election results must be beyond doubt.

It's been so interesting to see this turn of narrative after months "questioning the outcome of an election is undermining democracy." I wonder what happened between Sept-Oct and now that changed all that?

<comment><USER39> So, your point of view is that concern about Russian hacking of the US electoral process is stupid, because people were also upset Trump suggested he might reject the outcome of a legitimate democratic processes?

<comment><USER45> I think the OP was just commenting about the irony of the situation and that at the end of the day everyone doubts the democratic election process.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Halderman is a computer security professor at UofM: [https://jhalderm.com/](https://jhalderm.com/)

<comment><USER46> Many people on twitter linked him to Watergate's Halderman.

<comment><USER42> That would be _Haldeman_ : [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._R._Haldeman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._R._Haldeman) ?

<comment><USER46> Yes, somehow people are mistaking the two. I didn't know any of them before this affair.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Democrats were right when they said the losers of this election would refuse to accept the results.

<comment><USER47> I also find this interesting: in the week leading up to the election, Trump was asked repeatedly, "If you lose, will you accept the results?", to which he said he'd have to assess the results at the time. He was roundly criticized for this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I was excited to read this, thinking "Ok, finally! This is the _shit_ \-- the actual evidence that uncovers the actual conspiracy by a foreign government to elect Trump."

Then I read this:

> _Were this year's deviations from pre-election polls the results of a > cyberattack? Probably not. I believe the most likely explanation is that the > polls were systematically wrong, rather than that the election was hacked._

<comment><USER49> It's amazing how people can mock the idea of subverting elections as long as it's not their candidate who lost. Many similar concerns were raised during the election by people who hold very different political views than most HN readers, and yet these concerns were written off and publicly mocked. Now the shoe is on the other foot but nobody is willing to point out the partisan hypocrisy.

And yes, throwaway account because HN tends to get very uncivil about this subject.

<comment><USER22> Verified Voting the _non-partisan_ umbrella organization that connects many leading election technology experts (including Halderman the author of the piece; Ron Rivest and Philip Stark -- [http://news.berkeley.edu/2016/11/22/election-hacking- audit/](http://news.berkeley.edu/2016/11/22/election-hacking-audit/)) has been in the business of ensuring the integrity of the voting system since 2003. [https://www.verifiedvoting.org/about- vvo/](https://www.verifiedvoting.org/about-vvo/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I'm surprised to a see a professor of CS be so ruled by emotion. The Clinton team is likely to ignore this type of advice until actual evidence is shown. "I think she should have won" or "the polls all said.." is simply not good enough to overturn the entire process at this point.

<comment><USER16> What makes you say he is "ruled by emotion"? The article was nuanced, balanced, carefully reasoned and used unemotional language.

> "I think she should have won" or "the polls all said.."

Those aren't his arguments.</comment></comment>


Ask YC: Server cost estimation - <AUTHOR>

I am working on a startup's business plan and am having trouble estimating server costs per active user.
The closest model for server usage in my opinion would be Pownce or Facebook.  The product will be storing user submitted web content including photos, audio, and URLs.
I found an article that tries to estimate Facebook's server costs.  These numbers seemed somewhat high to me, however: http://fishtrain.com/2007/11/07/facebook-valuation/
Are there any online resources for estimating server capacity and cost?  Any educated guesses for the startup to use?
Thank you! <comment><USER2> I think that trying to gauge user load for a startup is about as accurate as figuring out the financials five years in advantage.

There are lots of questions: what will the servers be doing? Transcoding video is going to take lots of horsepower. Serving static pages is going to take less. Where are you going to cost? Managed hosting like Rackspace or doing-it- yourself Amazon S3.

In the story you linked to, they share this info: '2k active users/compute server, 20k active users/disk server'. I'd grab a number like 2k/server, factor in some Rackspace boxes and you're off to the races.

</comment><comment><USER3> Around $2k per year isn't unreasonable per server in a large data centre. This also roughly correlates with what a colocated server would cost.

The way fishtrain has based these figures is all around capital expenditure - most companies wouldn't actually do this.

Facebook is running order of magnitude 10k servers. So in that respect his "servers required for the load" figures are about right.

Taking $2k, then fishtrain's annual estimates for ~10k plus servers is too low - it would be more like $20m. Again, the way fishtrain has gone about it wrt to CAPEX is different.

The electricity consumption seems a bit high, but for a business plan it might not be unreasonable.

Bandwidth - well that depends totally on your application.

Commissioning a server isn't necessarily cheap - there is the cost of the server itself, the labour, networking, test, etc, etc. This can be a fairly significant one-time cost (and isn't capitalised).

People tend to worry about the ongoing cost of storage a bit too much, particularly if you're retaining a lot of data (e.g. keeping people's images). The fact is that the cost of storage steadily decreases, so this usually amortizes this in reality. So I'd say you'd only need to worry about the increments in most cases - unless your application is horrendously storage hungry.

</comment><comment><USER4> I would suggest you think about

1\. Web Cache Server $3k

2\. SAN $4k

3\. A nice Database Server $7k

4\. 1u dell machines for web serving $1.5k ea.

5\. Load balancer $3k

You need affordable bandwidth and sever colocation.I am not sure about in Ohio, but I utilize calpop.com with a half-rack and 10mbps bandwidth but they are in California.

<comment><USER5> Ever heard of Amazon Web Services?

<comment><USER4> Sure but if you are transfering terabytes of data around I am not sure if that is the right system to use. Better to have a dedicated line and a SAN.

But then again I live 10 years behind the times. One day I will stop using font tags, center tags, tables, Windows 2000, and ASP 3.0. But then again no need to change what works.

<comment><USER6> _One day I will stop using font tags, center tags, tables, Windows 2000, and ASP 3.0. But then again no need to change what works._

Words fail.

<comment><USER4> If your webpages work in Netscape 3 they are likely to work in all browsers.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Open offices can lead to closed minds - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/business/2018/07/28/open-offices-can-lead-to-closed-minds <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17627130](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17627130)

</comment><comment><USER3> The idea that open offices will increase meaningful interaction has always seemed strange to me. Usually I find that it makes it impossible to find a place to actually have a conversation. New "conference rooms" start to appear: outside tables, wide parts of the hallway, stoarge closets. In one office, I had to book time in the reception area to have a weekly one on one with my boss.

<comment><USER4> That's because it's post hoc reasoning to justify a cost-saving measure to people who have no say in the matter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > At the first company, the authors found that face-to-face interactions were > more than three times higher in the old, cubicle-based office than in an > open-plan space where employees have clear lines of sight to each other. In > contrast, the number of e-mails people sent to each other increased by 56% > when they switched to open-plan. In the second company, face-to-face > interactions decreased by two-thirds after the switch to open-plan, whereas > e-mail traffic increased by between 22% and 50%.

This has also been my experience.

</comment><comment><USER6> I believe cost-cutting was the real-driver and everything else was bravo sierra. Pretty much everyone in an open office wears a headphone to shut-out distraction, and prefers emails/chats to face-to-face.

</comment><comment><USER7> Investing in noise cancelling headphones dramatically increased my productivity and well being. Not just in the office but using them to dampen urban environmental noises during the commute.

The other side benefit was that it created a nice ritual for getting into the zone whenever I need to.

I'm sure managers love open offices because they can keep a pulse on office activities but anything that requires thinking really benefits from less noise and random intrusions.

</comment><comment><USER8> As with most things, the right answer is a combination of things. Cal Newport describes a plan called the Eudaimonia Machine in the book Deep Work, which seems it would make a great office space. Offers a open plan for when you need to do rote work / bookkeeping, and a solo sound proof office when you need to concentrate. Think the Basecamp office is also built this way, with a central open plan hub with private offices as spokes.

<comment> ben-schaaf Sadly this only works when everyone is using a laptop. I can't as easily move my workstation setup to a solo office whenever I need to concentrate.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, that's true. My current setup is an iMac in the concentration room and an iPad for slack, writing notes and meetings, but that's not going to work for everyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As I type, some guys are having a contentious and noisy meeting to iron out a few kinks in their application right at the end of my row of desks. So now I'm killing time on HN until they go away and I can concentrate again.

</comment><comment><USER10> While I'm leaning to open-office and willing to keep this article in mind for future office set up, some part of the article reminds me how you can use same event to derive a complete opposite conclusion.

"Open office is a clear message to employees that they are just cogs in the system". And here I am thinking that cubicle set up is such a message.

"Open office is like a flat". What? I feel cubicle is exactly like a flat.

I like the survey and factual parts of the article. It would go better without the latter opinionated assertion parts.

</comment><comment><USER11> I am the most productive in my home office. There I can control the interruptions, but go into the office when I do need the face to face.

<comment><USER12> Home offices are great, especially for ignoring managers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> [http://archive.li/6Jd7s](http://archive.li/6Jd7s)

</comment><comment><USER12> Open plan offices lower productivity. You are constantly interrupted by people who seem to think they're question is my priority. Please email me as you don't need an instant answer. This in particular to dumbass managers who don't like being told to get lost.

</comment><comment><USER14> I hate our open office setup. I usually commandeer our one office to get some peace and quiet so I can concentrate.

It's definitely a deal breaker for my next job.

</comment><comment><USER15> So many studies are finding open offices to be bad for various reasons, but I can't help but love them. I felt so much more creative and motivated with people working around me.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is bull. I love open offices. They make conversations happen that would never would with privacy.

<comment><USER17> To each his own. I think that open office or cubicles kill any kind of conversation that works for me. I prefer one-on-one or small group discussions outside the public view. I used to work in small team rooms (2 to 6 people) and I can say for sure that I had many more good conversations in that setup compared to the cube farm I am sitting in now. Due to the noise most people wear headphones making even approaching them awkward.</comment></comment>


Kardashian index: a measure of discrepant social media profile for scientists - <AUTHOR> http://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13059-014-0424-0 <comment><USER2> I would make a counter-case that scientists don't get much credit from the scientific community for communicating with the public, which funds their research, engages potential students, etc.

An extreme case is Issac Asimov who dropped out of the rat race of academia and writing Sci Fi with L. Ron Hubbard for a penny a word and wrote decades of monthly essays about science for the public that were a big reason why I went for a PhD. He didn't contribute hugely in terms of research or traditional teaching, but his impact was immense.

Also, Carl Sagan's involvement in Cosmos and the books he wrote overshadows a completely solid career in space and planetary science.

</comment><comment><USER3> Odd as it may seem, I think Kim is a highly intelligent woman who could have if she had been so inclined become a solid scientist.

Crazy? Not if you think of her as using applied psychology to acquire and retain attention in a world where attention is the scarce resource. She has a finely tuned sense of how to stay in the news and fascinate the world.

That takes intelligence and social savvy. I'm sure she could have directed it to more scientific endeavors if she wanted.

<comment><USER4> I think you may be mistaking the individual for the brand. I'd be willing to bet that the applied psychology and ability to retain attention across the world is more the work of her PR team than any individual intellectual skills she may (or may not) possess.

Also, at the risk of sounding sexist, I'd be willing to bet that if Kim Kardashian wasn't a sex symbol (we remember how she initially got that attention, correct?) I imagine she'd get significantly less attention.

That being said, I do agree she could have used her star power to improve science... yet I'd be curious how many followers she'd have now if she'd spent the last 5-10 years sending smart science tweets instead of sexy selfies.

<comment><USER5> [https://twitter.com/KimKierkegaard](https://twitter.com/KimKierkegaard)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The original article is old, and also a bit cringey in trying to be hip and sardonic. And obviously it's an argument and opinion not meant to be taken scientifically. No scientist would voluntarily include a K-index (ratio of citations vs. twitter followers) on their twitter profile unless they felt they deserved larger recognition.

That said, there's this growing clique of scientists on twitter and as the clique grows in spread and weight, it's becoming harder for new scientists to jump in. What used to be a safe place to air laundry and commiserate about academia is now kind of like regulated hivemind where you can only air 'certain' topics that the twitter cabal approves.

I've heard this from more and more scientists approaching social media/openness/the internet, that twitter is not as flat as it's been portrayed to be. I think this stems from the main conflict of popularity vs. legitimacy, and in science buzz it's so easy to game the system once you have the minimum amount of recognition.

All of this points to the conclusion that twitter is not a natural home for scientists, but rather scientists have adapted their behavior to twitter and shrewd ones have capitalized. Some of it's good, some of it's not good, and in that regard I agree with the author.

</comment><comment><USER6> Here's an example of the Kardashian index applied to the specific field of marketing academics: [https://analyticdashboards.wordpress.com/2015/10/08/from- kar...](https://analyticdashboards.wordpress.com/2015/10/08/from-kardashian- to-nye-krauss-for-marketing-scientists/)

Credit: Koen Pauwels

</comment><comment><USER7> Someone should try this with Github commits/repo-stars and Twitter followers. There a good number of productive developers who don't have much of a social media following.</comment>


How Designers Can Earn a Seat at the Table - <AUTHOR> http://firstround.com/article/How-Designers-Can-Earn-a-Seat-at-the-Table-2

<comment><USER2> This had some great advice.

One specific thing I have seen is that someone from the design world is perfectly comfortable in the subjective world of how a particular product or design makes you 'feel'.

The disconnect I have seen is when a designer takes the feeling approach when talking to a business stakeholder saying things like "I just feel like..." or "It just doesn't feel right".

Granted, someone from the business world has their own way to describe subjective feelings with words like "That doesn't scale". So a designer learning how to speak about their subjective feelings in terms of a business stakeholder is a powerful tool that I have seen many designers use to gain their seat at the table!</comment>


First Preview of Android N: Developer APIs and Tools - <AUTHOR> http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2016/03/first-preview-of-android-n-developer.html <comment><USER2> Woah:

>Improved Java 8 language support - We're excited to bring Java 8 language features to Android. With Android's Jack compiler, you can now use many popular Java 8 language features, including lambdas and more, on Android versions as far back as Gingerbread. The new features help reduce boilerplate code. For example, lambdas can replace anonymous inner classes when providing event listeners. Some Java 8 language features --like default and static methods, streams, and functional interfaces -- are also now available on N and above. With Jack, we're looking forward to tracking the Java language more closely while maintaining backward compatibility.

<comment><USER3> I find the fact that streams and functional interfaces are not backwards compatible almost a deal breaker. Using Java 8 streams makes so many things easier that once you start using it, there's no going back. Now you're not going to be able to use it in production till 2019.

<comment><USER4> When you say "not backwards compatible" do you mean that the streams and functional interfaces aren't compatible with Java in Android N or do you mean that they're not being to be ported to previous versions of Android?

<comment><USER5> Maybe in general, Java 8 generated bytecode won't run on earlier JVMs, but a lot of shops are still on Java 6/7\. (Allegedly.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Besides finally saying something about Java support, I found other items interesting.

ART will recompile applications based on profiling data.

Introduction of support to hardware keystores, with the mention that one use case is to prevent jailbreaking.

Prevent the NDK users that ignored the documentation and linked to non official platform libraries to keep doing that.

<comment><USER7> > ART will recompile applications based on profiling data.

They went back to having a JIT in addition to AOT - which means there is no AOT when the app is installed. When the device is idle/charging then AOT will selectively precompile the used portions of the app and optimize it further using the profiling data. So faster app installs (boon for FDE devices with slow NAND write speeds) and no optimizing apps step after system update.

<comment><USER8> > no optimizing apps step after system update.

That is fantastic news. Every single time my Nexus 6P gets an update it feels like it takes at least 15 minutes to "optimize apps". Every. Single. Update.

<comment><USER7> The effect will be even more amazing for non-nexus/carrier devices with bloatware - my work phone (VZW M8) just got Marshmallow and it took couple hours to complete - most of the time was spent on twice optimizing 303 apps! (Only 30-35 out of those are things I installed.)

<comment><USER9> Well, those devices rarely get updates anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Extremely interested in the multi-window support. With phone screens getting bigger than ever, this could be a very useful feature for multi-tasking

<comment><USER11> I found Samsungs implementation very useful on my Galaxy Tab S 10.5. I would read a pdf for example and take notes in the other. I tried using it for simple development as well, running a local dev server. Unfortunately js ides were still lacking on Android last time I tried, but it's clearly something that could be improved.

Definitely super excited for Android itself to have this feature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wish they'd add grouping to the window switcher, something similar to what's in WebOS. Because it's somewhat difficult to implement tabs without cluttering the UI in appssuch as web browesers, reddit clients, mail clients, etc.

</comment><comment><USER13> the $150 discount on Pixel C is really telling. It's clear that revenue is higher for tablet optimized apps and games and Android really needs to step up to compete with Apple.

I'm just a hobby developer, but the last four-ish months have been really exciting. There's a been ton released and polished in the developer console alone.

</comment><comment><USER14> I was really hoping for something more exciting. Like maybe native support for a new, different language (like Apple did with Swift).

It would be absolutely amazing if Google came out with a mechanism for building native apps in, say, Rust.

<comment><USER15> To do that, all they'd really need to do is have a mechanism to build native apps in C, after which various language communities would be able to write simple wrappers that would allow them to use said C API.

To an extent, that partially exists in the form of Android NDK, but that's not really a full solution. If and when Google makes it possible to easily create your entire app natively (with a clean C API), then you ought to see a surge of libraries/toolkits/frameworks coming out that will enable you to write Android apps in most common languages (Rust likely included).

<comment><USER16> It's easy to run other languages on Android (see Go binaries). It would be a huge effort (and some would say a distraction) to port the Android SDK to another language. It would also fragment the developer ecosystem if that language was not compatible with Java libraries (reducing your choices to Scala, Clojure, etc).

While the NDK is hard to use, it is enough to enable alternate modes of Android development. For instance with Unity you can develop and Android app using C# and the Unity graphical editor. That's a very powerful option for certain classes of apps.

<comment><USER15> OTOH, that same fragmentation also means competition. Allowing for multiple independent languages to run on the platform means a plethora of developers to whom the platform is now accessible.

Having an API that is easy to use would really open up the ecosystem. Also, having much faster, machine targeted code (ie: compiled with CPU architecture and model specific optimizations and instructions) in C, C++, Rust, Go, etc. would mean better performance and less battery usage in some apps, which overall would translate to a superior user experience.

<comment><USER17> > which overall would translate to a superior user experience.

Only for users of devices that the dev bothered to put out binaries for. I guarantee you most devs that use the NDK are not building for all 8 ABIs that the NDK supports. ARMv7-neon may be the most common arch but it is far, far from the only one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wonder why the Pixel C developer discount is us-only.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm disappointed to see that it will take Android N for the Doze feature to be practical [0]. As it currently stands, Doze only activates when the device is stationary. My phone never leaves my pocket, since I'm paranoid about setting it down, so the gyrometer being engaged is enough to prevent Doze from triggering.

[0] [http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/03/09/android-n-feature- sp...](http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/03/09/android-n-feature-spotlight- doze-will-now-work-whenever-the-screen-is-off-even-when-the-device-isnt- stationary/)

<comment><USER17> You sleep with your phone in your pocket?

That's really the thing doze is great at. If you forget to charge your phone, you wake up with still decent amount of battery left. Or for tablets sitting around on tables/desks.

<comment><USER19> No, I don't, but I don't often forget to hook up my phone to the charger.

I _do_ however, sit/stand at my desk for 8-9 hours a day and maybe pull the phone out less than once an hour. I would like the phone to be in Doze mode when it's in my pocket, rather than forcing me to have to put it on my desk. As I said, I don't like leaving it unattended, even if it's simply to step away for a few minutes to the watercooler.

<comment><USER17> Sounds more like you want a setting of "syncing is not important to me"

Doze backs off sync period, trading timeliness for battery life. That's why significant motion prevents it from happening, it assumes that if it's on your person then syncing is important. Which is a generally true assumption.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Hope the faster release will also show in a faster update cycle for vendors. Or some kind of guarantee that devices who got/get M, will also get N. The quick reply API and notification tweaks are pretty great and doze is now useful (seems like a something like Sony Stamina mode).

</comment><comment><USER21> So Java 8 support is finally here. I think this is the effect of Android moving to OpenJDK.

<comment><USER22> They've been adding Java 8 features to ART and Jack in AOSP for many months now, even before the OpenJDK move.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I really wish they would get the camera and gyro APIs on par with iOS so Instagram could port Hyperlapse

<comment><USER24> Microsoft Hyperlapse works quite well [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft.hyperlapsemobile)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's blatantly going to be called Nutella.

</comment><comment><USER26> I guess I'll take a look at the APIs in 5 years, when it has enough market share to be worth considering.

<comment><USER27> Ice Cream Sandwich, which is 5 years old, has about vanished.

Jelly Bean still has 30% market share, but are owners of 4 year old phones a significant portion of app revenue? I'd wager the people spending money have at least KitKat.

Lollipop, at a year and half old, has another 30%

<comment><USER26> KitKat is three years old at this point. And I still see new phones and tablets with 4.1 or 4.2 on sale.

Digital Signage platforms especially (the part of the Android market I actually care about) seem to be largely stuck on 4.1.

<comment><USER28> How much does a digital sign really benefit from tracking the most recent releases anyways? Other than the obvious issue of security fixes, it doesn't seem like that is a domain that would really care that much about trying to keep up.

<comment><USER26> Security fixes are reason enough.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Final Builds of 10.8.2 and 10.7.5 Maintain OS X Battery Life - <AUTHOR> http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/final-builds-of-10.8.2-and-10.7.5-maintain-os-x-battery-life <comment><AUTHOR> Just finished three days of repeat testing on the final builds of 10.8.2 and 10.7.5. Good news is that battery life remains restored in Mountain Lion compared to the developer builds.

I have to say I was a bit worried it wouldn't last, given Apple's recent software missteps (i.e., the battery life in the developer builds was restored by disabling critical underlying code, etc). Glad I was wrong!</comment>


Turkey blocks Twitter, YouTube over hostage photo - <AUTHOR> http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkey-blocks-twitter-youtube-facebook-over-hostage-photo.aspx?pageID=238&nid=80638&NewsCatID=339 <comment><USER2> The first time around it didn't get adequate attention in the US media.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's ban of YouTube occurred after a conversation was leaked between Head of Turkish Intelligence Hakan Fidan and Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu that he wanted removed from the video-sharing website.

The leaked call details Erdogan's thoughts that an attack on Syria "must be seen as an opportunity for us [Turkey]".

In the conversation, intelligence chief Fidan says that he will send four men from Syria to attack Turkey to "make up a cause of war".

[http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/turkey-youtube-ban-full- transcript-...](http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/turkey-youtube-ban-full-transcript- leaked-syria-war-conversation-between-erdogan-officials-1442161)

<comment><USER3> Great find, but unfortunately often there is a good reason that such things don't get mentioned much, because there isn't much evidence for it.

How trushworthy is ibtimes?

<comment><USER2> The reason they banned youtube is because the evidence was on youtube. You need to re-evaluate your assumptions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > In a 2010 meeting with the Austrian Foreign Minister, United States > Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said "With respect to Turkey, the United > States, along with many other countries in Europe, support the membership of > Turkey inside the EU. I know that it is an issue that divides the European > Union. We don't have a vote, but if we were a member, we would be strongly > in favor of it."[176]

> European Union During a televised debate on May 20, 2014 for the 2014 > European Parliament Elections, President of the European Commission > candidates Jean-Claude Juncker and Martin Schulz (of the EEP and S&D blocs > respectively) both argued that they would "promise" that Turkey would never > join the European Union while either one of them were President, with the > view that Turkey has turned its back on "European democratic values".[177]

* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accession_of_Turkey_to_the_Euro...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accession_of_Turkey_to_the_European_Union)

updated: broken link

<comment><USER5> Turkey in the EU would be great for Turkey and its citizens, but probably not the EU. Turkey doesn't have its house in order with regards to corruption, and their labor is too cheap (which becomes a problem because they don't have the tax base required to support EU initiatives). Labor prices won't rise as long as Syria is in turmoil, because Turkey is flooded with refugees who are a source of cheap labor.

Turkey would quickly become another Greece, only likely with a violent Islamist opposition instead of a violent Fascist opposition.

<comment><USER6> The fact that the EU considered Turkey was hypocritical, they've been occupying half of Cyprus for over 60 years now.

Sadly it no longer seems that there is much hope for Turkey, in the 90's and early 2000's they seemed to make so much progress but now they seem to be just fine with devolving and going completely away from the path that Ataturk set for them after the fall of the Ottoman empire.

What people seem to forget is that the majority of their population is very rural, uneducated and really in opposite with western and European values and their power base since the latest regime change just been growing, the "Islamist" opposition you speak off is not an opposition any more it's the ruling party.

They seem to be much more of a mix between Iran and Russia in their form of government than a the disorganized EU nation like Greece or Italy they were in the 90's and It's a shame. Turkey could have offered a huge boost to the Eurozone they on a steady path to become one of the largest individual economies in the world.

<comment><USER7> I don't really take any issues with your comments about the outlook of the political situation in Turkey in relation to the EU, but the hypothesis that this is related the influence of rural populations can't be right. The percentage of the population living in urban centers is roughly 70%, on par with Germany, Austria, Czech Republic et al. [1]. Furthermore about 1/3 of Turkish people live in cities with over 1 million people [2], which in a sense makes Turkey even more urban than most of the big European countries. To reiterate, I don't think this means your points are wrong, only that the reason that they are right must lie somewhere else.

[1] [http://www.geohive.com/earth/pop_urban.aspx](http://www.geohive.com/earth/pop_urban.aspx) [2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey#Demographics](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey#Demographics)

<comment><USER6> Well "rural" wasn't the best choice, i didn't want to use "backward" or "traditional" because it really doesn't reflect the exact situation either and i didn't want it to come out too negative or condescending.

Turkey has the lowest educational attainment in the OECD, only 32% of adults have high school education, and amongst the younger generation it's still bad as less than 40% of it's male populations and less than 30% of it's female population completes a high school equivalent education, and only a fraction of that get higher secondary education.

Much of it's population is really on opposites sides of current western values and the government crackdown on free press, opposition parties, taking control over the courts and legal system, dismantling the (for once in a life time remarkably positive) influence of the military, and just the complete mockery of all attempts at democracy just put it on a completely different course than it used to be only 2 decades ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yet another series of tapes maybe?

<comment><USER9> No. Read the article.

<comment><USER8> I know. Already read the article.

Just wanted to point out some speculations out there.</comment></comment></comment>


Rich Dad Poor Dad... Worst Personal Finance Book of All Time? - <AUTHOR> http://finchblogs.com/2012/02/07/rich-dad-poor-dad-review/ <comment><USER3> I disagree.. the most important message in the book is that business and entrepreneurship is the path to success, NOT being an employee and staying in the rat race. While it may be common sense to someone who's been in business for a while, or read a lot of similar literature, it's far from obvious to most people.

I'm not ashamed to say Rich Dad Poor Dad has been one of the most influential books I've read in my life. At 20, I had very little idea about business - <USER2> thought my path was clear: graduate with a degree, get a job, work up corporate ladder, etc. Reading this book was completely mind-blowing and eye- opening.

Yes, most of the advice is trivial, as I look at it now.. But there's certainly great value in the book - business vs "rat race", building assets vs liabilities, learning to sell, active vs passive income, what you can't afford your business can, value of financial literacy, and much more. But most importantly this: you can very rarely get rich working for someone else.

<comment><USER4> "the most important message in the book is that business and entrepreneurship is the path to success"

No, it may be one of the best paths to wealth and independence --unless you're born into wealth already -- but it's not necessarily a path to success.

My parents worked themselves to the bone in business, were repeatedly screwed by business partners and banks. It didn't give them one bit of gratification.

My mother went back to university and got into not-for-profit microcredit and was reborn as a happy person.

My dad spent time with his kids and neighbours, when he passed away he had three times as many people come to the funeral as we had space for.

Entrepreneurship has a lot going for it, but it is very hard and given the barriers that can be thrown in your face, it can be just another rat-race for lots of people.

<comment><USER5> I think history tends to be written by the winners when it comes to entrepreneurship. It's a lot harder- and a lot more luck involved- than many would admit.

<comment><USER6> Survivorship bias and narrative fallacy pervade almost everything, it seems.

<comment><USER7> Not necessarily. Only a very naive entrepreneur would fall for this and they would be sorted out rather quick. People fail or know/realize the huge amount of uncertainty and still choose to do startups. Different people have different levels of risk aversion and there is no common goal/value system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I disagree with the review. The book doesn't contain a complete and perfect path to personal wealth for anyone. But what book could ever accomplish that?

Disclaimer: I read it several years ago. But the takeaways of the book that stayed with me to this date are:

* Don't get emotionally attached to the concepts of money and debt. Money is not worth anything by itself and debt is not bad by itself. They are simply tools that you use and you can use them wisely or foolishly.

* Try to invest your money and time in a way that creates recurring income. I.e. a house is a very bad investment because it creates recurring costs rather than income. Of course you need somewhere to live but don't get emotionally attached to the idea that happiness equals living in a fancy house or driving a fancy car.

* Debt is nothing more and nothing less than a tool for creating recurring income as long as the costs of the debt are lower than the income it creates. Discounting for risk etc.

* The way we teach our kids "the value of money" is creating exactly the emotional ties above that will lead them to making bad decisions about their personal finances, and ties their happiness to how much money they have in the bank.

I don't know if these points are what the book says, simply because I don't know how much of it is my own interpretations. But reading this book allowed me to come to a number of conclusions that have been very helpful ever since. I can think more clearly about what money, income, debt and costs really are.

<comment><USER9> Agreed entirely; I enjoyed RDPD as well. The review is indignant sputtering, as vague and insulting as the book is claimed to be. "Common sense looks like genius when it's viewed from a cesspit of stupidity"? The reviewer's final attack is to admit you may learn something from the book, but only if you're stupid.

Every time someone (like the reviewer) uses the phrase "beat the market," I sigh and shake my head. To hear some people talk, you'd think getting a job was "beating the job market"; riding the bus is "beating the transportation market." Somewhere out there, phantasmic figures are matching opportunities with takers perfectly, so that every prospect becomes break even; every creative, individual, independent action you could take is rendered pointless by unseen forces. You might as well sit on your ass. It's efficient market theory turned demotivational wisdom.

Surely, if there were so much value to my being across town, it would cost me more than $2 bus fare. Or a professional trader would have already found me, told me where to go, and made a profit on the transaction. You can't beat the market.

I only developed a head for business in my 20s, but I imagine that if I had been running lemonade stands and mowing lawns as a kid, I would be immune to thinking that opportunities were for others to discover, or were already exploited, or that being enterprising only brings risk. This is the kind of lesson taught by RDPD, and I wonder if the reviewer has learned it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The best way to make money? Sell advice/a book on how to make money. It seems to me that some of these investment opportunities are limited(real estate bargains, etc) so why would you tell the world to leverage them and remove competitive advantage?

It seems to me that if you have to buy infomercial time to sell advice, it isnt very good advice, or it isnt going to work. The Rich Dad, Poor Dad books seem to me like a Don Lapre pitch wrapped in a slightly nicer presentation.

<comment><USER11> Another website: <http://www.johntreed.com/Kiyosaki.html>

Kiyosaki added a note about fictionalizing, which caused a stir.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm always fascinated as to why people on this board fervently defend scammy self-help books. Tim Ferris' completely phony 4-hour series provoked a similar reaction.

<comment><USER13> Reading self help materials has been one of the major turning points in my life.

Without self-help materials I would still have been a somewhat gifted kid but also a total mess of a human being. Thanks to self help I am becoming more and more self-realized every day.

I am not going to downvote you, because I am genuinely curious what you have against Ferriss. Care to tell me more?

<comment><USER14> What self-help materials do you recommend?

<comment><USER13> There's a lot of different ones of course... off the top of my head: No more Mr Nice Guy by Robert Glover.

I also like Personal development for smart people by Steve Pavlina.

Tom Butler-Bowdon has a series of books that summarize all the major works in psychology/self help/prosperity/success/etc. Those are a good way to get up to speed and learn what's out there in the genre.

<comment><USER14> Thanks, I'll look into them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> When I read this book, I was a busser at a hotel restaurant. Some customer I was talking to had recommended it to me. He made me promise him I'd read it (seems kinda lame in retrospect).

I ignored a lot of it (like the risky real estate stuff), but what I took away from it was that you can't get rich working for someone else because you can only work so many hours in a day; you need to start your own business or invest to make lots of money. That seems like common sense now, but it wasn't for me at the time.

I'm not exaggerating when I say this-- I saved up and bought a Mac, bought books on HTML/CSS, PHP, Ruby, MySQL, Photoshop, Illustrator, design, etc., bootstrapped a SAAS company, and now I make a solid living off of it. This took me about 5 years because I started from scratch, but I can say I'm definitely a lot happier with my lifestyle now, than I was before I read the book, as cheesy as it was. Just my two cents.

</comment><comment><USER16> It's written extremely poorly in my opinion (reads like a self help book), but the positive take-aways I got from it when I read it years ago... 1) Understand the difference between assets and liabilities (according to the author most people don't, which is shocking) 2) Take advantage of US taxation of corporations to spend money pre-tax as opposed to post tax (do this within the confines of tax law though) 3) You'll never get rich just doing what most people do, which is go to school, get a job, and work for 40 years. Starting a business is how the rich get rich.

<comment><USER17> RDPD author's whole point about assets/liabilities centres around home- ownership and how many people see it as an asset or investment rather than a liability or cost-centre. It's the only good example of a common confusion in the book and it's really not that shocking in light of the market as most people will have experienced it and the marketing around refinancing and home- equity loans in the past decade.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I agree - Kiyosaki is full of hot-air generalizations that will just as easily put you into huge financial headaches (e.g. huge investment losses, tax penalties, shot credit) as build wealth.

You can't underestimate the gullibility of the masses when a book starts getting some good initial publicity - the wave becomes its own animal with everyone repeating all of the good things previously said of the book, no matter how right or wrong. Sad to say, I bought and read the book a few years under the same guidance.

Product being up-sold like a time share? Superlative claims like a male enhancement product? Partnering with Donald Trump's hair? Check, check and check.

</comment><comment><USER19> I find it funny how the author of the article is bashing the book for offering no real ways of _value creation_ , when he is an internet marketer... The very definition of no value creation.

I once got a book from this Warrior Forum (an online marketing forum) he speaks of, that would supposedly teach you how to earn money online. The main point of this book was that if you want to sell online, you must first find people who are willing to buy online, such as on (you guessed it!) the Warrior Forum _itself_! Funny enough, on that forum all the praises were positive, suggesting that people are too ashamed to admit they were cheated (or the admins, who took a large cut of all sales on this forum, deleted all posts that could have a negative financial impact). Thank god I downloaded the book!

I know that ad hominem argument is a logical fallacy, but I find it hard to believe the personal opinions of dishonest people.

<comment><AUTHOR> You realise I mentioned the Warrior Forum in a negative light, right? I think it's probably the worst forum in the world on the subject of wealth creation. Hence, the cesspit of stupidity.

For your information, Internet Marketing has much more to do with value creation than you probably think. It's a multi-million dollar industry. But if you confuse Internet Marketing with what you see on the Warrior Forum, I can see how it's easy to make that mistake...

<comment><USER19> Hm... My bad, then. Could you possibly point me to another resource so that I could get more informed? All I ever read was either affiliate marketing (which has certain value, but the better the product, the less it's needed) and the internet "get-rich-from-your-couch" schemes which are very... appalling.

<comment><AUTHOR> Honestly, I think what you saw on Warrior Forum is pretty representative of the grand majority of info products floating around there on Internet Marketing. The good ones are few and far between, primarily because anybody can claim to be an expert. There's no barrier to entry.

When I refer to Internet Marketing as my profession, I don't mean slinging info products in the form of a pyramid scheme. I simply mean working with brands to sell and promote their products online. Big brands though, brands you've probably actually heard of, with legit products that have nothing to do with the Internet! Unfortunately, Warrior Forum is a circle jerk driven by gurus who actually know very little about marketing brands online. They only market their own crappy products.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> <http://www.johntreed.com/Kiyosaki.html>

Is probably one of the better resources regarding Robert Kiyosaki.

<comment><USER3> While it doesn't say anything about his arguments, it should be noted that John T. Reed is far from unbiased, he's Kiyosaki's direct competitor.

<comment><USER21> Certainly not unbiased, but there's very little in his criticism I've read that doesn't seem accurate. Regardless of who is making the criticism, Reed seems to have some pretty good points of criticism, and I've never heard/read good rebuttals to his points, other than "well, he's _biased_!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> A couple months ago there was an article about people in NY who wanted to charge $3K+ to teach others how to program in Ruby. HN went ballistic, "How could you charge so much when you can learn it all on the Internet?"

Yet for some reason when the field isn't exactly an area of expertise for most HN readers, and the author of the book is giving only common sense financial advice, you get tons of people here saying that the book is pretty decent because it reaffirms common sense financial advice. Never mind that you can find most of this advice on the Internet... For Free!

So my question is, why isn't there more outrage that Robert Kiyosaki wrote a book and charges $11-20/book for common sense advice, but when people try to charge money to teach Ruby, people on HN get angry? Is it the price? Wouldn't you say that to someone who knows nothing about either subject, that a $3K class that teaches you a skill is worth more than a $20 advice book?

<comment><USER23> "A couple months ago there was an article about people in NY who wanted to charge $3K+ to teach others how to program in Ruby. HN went ballistic, "How could you charge so much when you can learn it all on the Internet?""

A good personal tutor goes much further than reading something on the Internet. Especially something that could increase your yearly salary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I think the book is 90% full of just filler text, i wish it was shorter. The advice i think is valuable which i took from the book was to concentrate on cashflow.

Analyse all the things you pay each month and try to get each of those payments to be less, this is especially easy for things like mobile phone contracts, gym memberships, TV subscriptions, etc. Then you have more money each month. If your cashflow is greater each month, you'll be better off.

I think this advice is applicable to most people and more importantly, its actionable.

</comment><comment><USER25> "Personal self-discipline is the #1 delineating factor between the rich, the poor and the middle class"

The main takeaway point for me, and the most influential. Fresh out of college, I make several times the amount of money my entire family was raised on.

I have not played my hand at entrepreneurship yet (I have a regular job), but discipline is exactly what my poor family lacks. They are very gifted in terms of talent, passion, strong work ethic, but without financial discipline times were always tough growing up.

</comment><comment><USER26> From the point of view of the article, I think two of the major points aren't crap.

1) > 1\. Education is important, but always second to financial literacy. People turn out poor because they're not taught financial literacy.

The first one is apparent. I definitely agree that his books, especially the later titles are scammy. However they are not completely without any value. Kiyosaki is more like a motivational guru than a finance expert. I think the message that it's better to produce than to consume is pretty successfully conveyed.

3) >Pay yourself first. Even if the government comes knocking on your door, you deserve to be paid first. The best way to do this, in Kiyosaki's opinion, is to hide under the umbrella of a corporation. The author fails to recognize the difference between business expenses and personal expenses.

I admit that this is bad advice, but for different reasons. It's something I wouldn't do myself, because it isn't ethical and not because it's not effective. Chances are if you're making below 500k, you can get away with this tactic. Even if the IRS does audit you, there are just so many ways to still make it out alive. (One of my friends used to work for a law firm specializing in taxes.)

</comment><comment><USER27> Haven't read Rich Dad Poor Dad but from what I got out of this article and several of the comments here is that the main point is disconnecting your personal time from your wealth generation.

Your time is better spent generating products/investments that generate wealth independent of your own input. It's really really hard to get rich as a consultant or even as an employee (though both can generate the capital to kick-start the real wealth generation).

A concept that was illuminated quite brilliantly to me when I read How to Get Rich by Felix Dennis.

However, I personally think intelligence and "balls" play a far bigger role in our ability to generate wealth for ourselves then anyone seems to give credit for. You can read all the books on finance you want, if you're an idiot, you will probably fail to get the returns you want. Same goes if you're a coward.

Personally, I'm lacking a bit in the balls, and hope I'm smart enough. We'll see in the next 10 years or so.

</comment><comment><USER28> Here's the thing. His rich dad is fictional. He doesn't make money the way he tells you to. He's not a real estate mogul. He make money selling books and seminars. If the advice he gives were so great he'd be Donald Trump ten times over.

<comment><USER29> Kiyozaki has made a lot of money in real estate.

And he does cooperate a lot with Trump: [http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Want- You-Rich/dp/B0013MN78Q/ref...](http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Want-You- Rich/dp/B0013MN78Q/ref=sr_1_sc_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1328811353&sr=8-3-spell)

At the very least they have written several books together.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I recommend Felix Dennis' book "How to get Rich" as a good alternative to Rich Dad Poor Dad. Felix doesn't sugar coat his advice, he points out the sacrifice that will typically be involved in getting rich if that's what you want.

<comment><USER31> I've read both and Dennis book is much better, plus it is also more authentic.

As has been pointed out, Kiyosaki made up his rich dad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I use this book as a barometer (scale) of how bad a person's business sense or money sense is. If he/she considers the Rich Dad series book of any value - that's a measure of their ignorance and gullibility.

</comment><comment><USER33> This post missed the entire point of the book.

Time is wealth. Spending time how you want is being rich. Money is the tool that allows that.

How we earn money decides how rich, and wealthy we are. There is a better way to earn money than simply, and only working for money in exchange for our time.

Money you earn in exchange for your time will never be as much as what a business you setup can earn with out you.

This book teaches the difference between working "on" your business instead of in a business, whether it's your own, or someone elses. The E-Myth Revisited drives this point home even further.

Learning that there's another way to earn an income without your time is a powerful lesson. One that I think this post misses.

This book speaks to how there is no such thing as job security. While we in tech might be used to it, the majority of folks aren't.

Learning the only real job security is the security we create ourselves via multiple streams of income is often a troubling lesson to face, realize, accept, and adapt to.

These are huge, key, fundamental lessons that you either get, or you don't.

You can't wake up someone who doesn't know they're asleep, and as is evident here, sometimes we need to remember to learn to take the best good from everything.

Living in a world of possibilities is nothing like living in a world of doubts that accrue to seem insurmountable. We shouldn't live blindly faithful, or blindly doubtful, neither are fruitful.

</comment><comment><USER34> A lousy critique. RDPD is far from perfect, but it has a few good nuggets. The author barely scratches the surface what he actually dislikes about it, and instead angrily slings poo and expects us to agree and join in the ridicule.

In short, unconvincing link-bait submitted by the author, using a tactic just as sleazy as what he condemns Kiyosaki for. Would downvote if I could.

</comment><comment><USER35> What these simplified self help books do well: they wrap important concepts into sound bytes that you can take with you wherever you go.

The fact that any given concept might not be revolutionary to _you_ in particular is irrelevant.

The perfect example is "pay yourself first". It is catchy and simple way to wrap up the concept of "you can expense things that help you make money to a business".

</comment><comment><USER36> That is the beauty and curse of entrepreneurship, there is no clear goal post, no absolutes, just approximations. It takes a lot of toughness to go through the emotional roller coaster of excitement and enthusiasm to frustration and disappointment. That is why most fail, that is why most don't even start. Resilience is the name of the game.

</comment><comment><USER37> Ironically this is one of the first books I read that spurred my interest into Personal Finance. Ha.

</comment><comment><USER38> The thing is - there is no recipe to become quickly wealthy. Everyone will have their own road and no one can use someone else's experience to get to the same place.

What this book gave - overall excitement about possible future, that's it. It should not motivate, not educate.

</comment><comment><USER39> "Worst of All Time"? I would have thought one of these would at least be a contender for that title.

"Turning Your Ordinary Photos into Your Lifetime Employees" - [http://www.amazon.com/Automated-Income-Ordinary-Employees- eb...](http://www.amazon.com/Automated-Income-Ordinary-Employees- ebook/dp/B006VSOHEK)

"Getting Started in Property Flipping" - [http://www.amazon.com/Getting- Started-Property-Flipping-Thom...](http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Started- Property-Flipping-Thomsett/dp/047003937X)

or even: "Watch TV, Get Rich" - [http://www.amazon.com/Jim-Cramers-Mad-Money- Watch/dp/1416537...](http://www.amazon.com/Jim-Cramers-Mad-Money- Watch/dp/1416537902/)

</comment><comment><USER40> The quote I always remember from the book goes something like, "The average dad, also the poor dad, tells their children to work hard in school and get a steady job in a good company. The rich dad tells their children to start a company."

</comment><comment><USER41> Don't really get the arguments.

Don't spend more then you earn. So why is it bad to destroy your credit rating? Advise is not using credit.

Maybe he wrote the book for Europeans? We don't have a credit rating. Just if you fuck up you get blacklisted and don't receive any credit.

But we don't have a personal bankruptcy system either ;)

Actually it's not that bad to pay yourself first and the government later. You have to eat and make sure you can work. Here we have to pay taxes on invoices even when we didn't receive the money of the invoice yet. So I did the same and didn't pay the tax yet and postponed. It's a bit like taking credit from the government when late you pay interest.

So in some contexts maybe good advice?

<comment><USER42> The UK is in Europe, and we certainly have credit rating agencies and personal bankruptcy.

Laws differ between countries in Europe. Please don't try and generalize unless you're certain there are no exceptions, otherwise it may give people incorrect information. Instead, mention your country specifically.

<comment><USER41> UK doesn't have the euro to start with. They have their own monetary system so it differs from all the other countries in the EU. Yes you live on an Island and are special ;)

The other EU countries just do an audit of existing loans, employment history, income, ...

If you miss payments you end up getting blacklisted for loans in the future. So we use some form of credit rating.

<comment><USER42> Out of the 27 countries in the EU, 10 still retain their own currency. The UK is in the minority, but it isn't the only country outside the Euro.

So given you've gotten that little detail wrong, forgive me if I'm a little dubious that the UK is the only EU country with personal bankruptcy and credit ratings!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> No, it's not. The book is pretty basic and the author might be scam but the book is good enough for the average person who does not have a clue of finance management.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm very interested in the metaphysics of wealth. Does anyone have any tips on that?

I have a copy of Georg Simmel's "The philosophy of money", which is supposed to be about that.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Simmel#The_Philosophy_of_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Simmel#The_Philosophy_of_Money)

</comment><comment><USER44> Does anyone else confuse Robert Kiyosaki with Guy Kawasaki?

</comment><comment><USER45> i find a similar but very much better book is "the millionaire next door" which shows the traits of an average millionaire

</comment><comment><USER46> Rich Dad Poor Dad was not meant to be a Biblical be-all end-all; in one of his talks, he mentioned that the original manuscript is supposed to be a manual for the game he invented, "Cashflow 101," which was trashed by the first testers for being a long and complicated game, but anyway.

The author nailed down the first point, about financial literacy being critical, and people turning out poor because of the lack of it. If this were not true, most if not all summa cum laude graduates would own, instead of just work for, a company; they succeeded in traditional education, but know nothing about finance.

The two others are completely off. RDPD was never meant to be an instruction booklet on how to become rich, much less how to get rich in real estate. He also misunderstood the concept of "paying yourself first" to mean "don't pay your taxes," which is simply false. He made it sound like Kiyosaki is some selfish person who is demanding the rest of the world to be the same; but if you read the rest of the book, he actually points out that rich people are very unselfish, because they give what other people want: jobs, products, services, etc., as opposed to those who just want to be paid more despite being mediocre. He also said that if you want to be rich, you have to give other people what they want.

Kiyosaki's example about being "inspired" by the screaming of creditors and the government is nothing more than that: a personal example. He didn't say everyone should follow that example. In fact, he said a couple of paragraphs later: "If you do not like financial pressure, then find a formula that works for you." And he said a few paragraphs prior: "If you cannot get control of yourself, do not try to get rich. You might first want to join the Marine Corps or some religious order so you can get control of yourself." He's clear about the dangers of falling to the temptation of spending on consumer debt and using investment to cover it up.

Also, that little bit about child labor is odd. It's not like Rich Dad was trying to make millions from his son and his friend. It was more of a lesson to show how employees live their lives; personal experience tends to be a more powerful teacher, after all.

Saying that, I admit that some of the stories in some of his other books were simply repeated from this one. It must be kind of him to assume that the readers of his other books haven't read the others, but it can get annoying reading the same story.

</comment><comment><USER47> Such angry article is a funny way to sell the book (and get his Amazon affiliate commission).

</comment><comment><USER48> I think it is a good book. I agree it is really bad written, but also provides a different perspective over a few important areas, like owning(second) houses being liabilities instead of assets for most people, and them not realizing that.

</comment><comment><USER49> im my opinion this blog post is kind of a very clever marketing FOR the book

<comment><USER50> Note that the link to the book contains the blog owner's Amazon affiliate referral code, so even if you disagree and click through to Amazon and buy something, he gets a cut. I'd love to see the economic benefit of this post to the author (along with the number of orders of the book the post actually induced).

This is not a moral judgment of linking to products you disavow, just intellectual curiosity about the results of such a counterintuitive marketing approach compared to affirmative recommendations of other popular books.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> This person severely misread the book. I could give quite a few examples from the writing. For instance, the child labor issue he brings up is ridiculous - "Rich Dad" obviously didn't benefit from this labor in any financial way.

The premise of the book is solid; invest in assets that make money for you without you having to be there. He specifically says in the book a few times that he doesn't necessarily advocate real estate investing, but to invest in what makes financial sense, as long as you invest in something. He gives this as a representative list of such investments:

1) Businesses that do not require your physical presence I.E. a web app that you have someone program once and people pay $10 a month for

2) Stocks

3) Bonds

4) Mutual funds

5) Income generating real estate

6) Royalties from intellectual property

7) Any other recurring sources of income

<comment> T-hawk "Rich Dad" does seriously advocate real estate, not to the exclusion of those other options but certainly above them. Real estate stands out mostly because of the leverage that a mortgage can provide: you can control the income and appreciation of a $250,000 asset with only $50k of actual capital. You can't get 5-to-1 leverage on stocks or other such passive investments.

That said, real estate is certainly no magic bullet. You certainly take on risk, of depreciation and vacancy time and deadbeat tenants. And it's hard work to keep a property maintained or expensive to hire someone to do it. It's not for everyone. These are the points that "Rich Dad" doesn't make and must be included for a balanced perspective.

<comment><USER52> _You can't get 5-to-1 leverage on stocks or other such passive investments._

Not exactly true. Derivatives have significant leverage, often times way more than 5-to-1.</comment></comment></comment>


Your own version of the Barbara Streisand song - <AUTHOR> http://www.gobarbra.com/

<comment><USER2> This is pretty sweet, however I don't think most people know the original song. It's a big hit for dance/electronic fans.

Link to the original - <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu_zwdmz0hE>

</comment><comment><USER3> This site seems to be set up simply for the purpose of promoting a certain text to speech software. I fail to see what is so HN-worthy about it. Could anybody enlighten me on this matter?

</comment><comment><USER4> this is gonna be a hit! It has it all: fun factor, social networking, great UX design

<comment><USER5> or: this is gonna be a shit.

It's exactly the kind of submission I'd like to see downvotes for, like mentioned in the discussion on how RiderOfGiraffes left HN.</comment></comment>


Google updates meet tiled view to display 16 participants - <AUTHOR> https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/productivity-collaboration/introducing-tiled-view-and-other-top-requested-features-in-google-meet <comment><USER2> I'm really excited for Chrome 83 which will include webRTC CPU improvements.</comment>


Taser Company Ignored SEC Emails Because They Were in a Spam Folder - <AUTHOR> https://firenewsfeed.com/finance/625703 <comment><USER2> The SEC released their initial email via EDGAR after the company didn't respond: [https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1069183/000000000017...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1069183/000000000017028251/filename1.pdf)

I'm not an accountant, but it seems pretty mundane.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would think that they would communicate entirely through paper mail like the IRS. Just due to the possibility of fraud. Like this isn't that unexpected</comment>