Elo sucks – better multiplayer rating systems for smaller games (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/acolytefight/elo-sucks-better-multiplayer-rating-systems-for-smaller-games-8ca588ee652f <comment><USER2> The author didn't benchmark to see if this system is actually any better at predicting outcomes than vanilla Elo. That's how you determine if your implied win probabilities are accurately being derived from rating differences. The author seems to be under the impression that there's something fixed and concrete about an 1800 rating, but when you change the system, you also change what an 1800 rating means in the first place.

Some of these complaints are solved by existing systems, namely Glicko. For example, rating deviation helps with experienced players (low RD) losing points to newer players (high RD). It also has a built-in way to discourage inactivity. Players' RD increase over periods of inactivity, so they can be excluded from the leaderboard after reaching a certain point. That allows us to maintain their rating without decreasing it. After all, that's our best guess of the player's skill. It's just a less reliable guess over time.

<comment><USER3> My understanding was that the system consists of using the historical odds of winning (given the rating difference). If you benchmark that _using only past data_ , I think it is by definition the most accurate system. (The data is always a better fit to itself than a theoretical fit is.)

Naturally future data is much harder to deal with than past data. But even for future data it's not obvious that ELO (or any other theoretical fit to the odds of winning) will be more accurate than the historical odds.

<comment><USER4> Yes, the best fit for the data is the data itself, it's a tautology. Nothing wrong with Elo's exponential curve, it just can't beat the actual data.

You raise a good point in that I could've created a training set and a test set, that probably would be a better validation. But I don't know, I'm not doing science, I'm making a game.

On the topic of whether the future matches the past, the predictions were based on a rolling database of the past 100000 matches, which is approximately the number of matches played per 7 days. So my theory is that the data is quite recent and up-to-date and so should match, in general.

Of course I never tested this. In the end, I'm not doing science, I'm making a game. If the retention goes up, complaints are down, then I can't keep working on the rating system, there are 1000 other things to do.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I'm not giving advice on how you should do it. I was just unsure whether critics here had understood that measured data is probably better than any theoretical fit, even the revered ELO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Elo is great for what it was built for: ranking chess players. Chess is (1) extremely low-variance, (2) has an extremely high skill ceiling, and (3) is 1-on-1. Elo works great for chess, but it would _never_ work for something like Poker. Let's briefly go over these three points.

Most games aren't chess -- where the only variance is picking who's black and who's white -- in fact, they might include dozens of RNG mechanics (from critical strikes to ability rolls, to spawn points). These mechanics (while fun and well-designed) might pollute your "idealized" model. There's also the problem of RPS (rock-paper-scissors) mechanics or pick-counter-pick mechanics which will also heavily skew win rates. For instance, given a slow combo Magic deck, you will most likely auto-concede to mono red aggro (regardless of skill level). If you're using Elo, this will pollute your model. (Hint: you shouldn't be using Elo.)

Most games also don't have chess' high skill ceiling. Chess has such a high skill ceiling for a number of reasons -- it's one of the oldest games still being actively played, for one. Suppose your "game" is simply the flip of a coin (everyone wins 50% of the time). Zero skill involved. Trying to model win-loss-ratios using a sigmoid curve is silly. Obviously, no game is going to be a coin flip, but there's a world of difference between chess and DOTA.

TruSkill attempts to fix (3) by using clever Bayesian updating on a player-by- player basis[1] but in reality, it's a shit-show. Using Elo (or variants thereof) for team-based games where the team isn't really a team (more like 3-5 random people plopped together for one match) is incredibly misguided, but continues to be implemented in just about every modern multiplayer game (to the players' frustration). Of course, mixing and matching pre-made groups with non pre-made groups creates as many issues as you might imagine.

In short, why so many game devs are enamored with Elo when it comes to ranking is a bit bizarre.

[1] [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp- content/uploads/...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp- content/uploads/2007/01/NIPS2006_0688.pdf)

<comment><USER6> My wife was a champion table tennis player. This sport uses Elo as well, and I know from watching the sport over time that the rating system has real problems. It doesn't suffer from the weaknesses that you cite, but even so, the problem of "rating inflation" is widely discussed.

It seems that much of the problem comes from rating points brought in by newbie players (and note that, contra TFA, the problem isn't with experienced players losing to newbies, but the opposite).

A newbie is started off with some nominal rating; I forget the number, but let's say it's 800. Most likely that newbie is going to lose his first matches, and some proportion of those newbies will get frustrated and quit. For the ones that stay in the game, things probably work out in the long run. But for those that got discouraged and quit, in the course of their loss they caused a few points (not many, because they're likely way overmatched, but definitely more than 0) to be credited to their opponents. When they quit the sport, they're never going to reclaim any of the rating points that they lost initially. But those points are still in the system, having been added to their winning opponents.

It's hard to quantify because the Elo system is the only objective comparison we have, but over the course of the almost 30 years I've been watching my wife play, the Elo rating enjoyed by a player of a given hypothetical skill level has increased dramatically. Many are saying that for someone of the upper echelons, their rating is maybe 200 points higher than it would have been 30 years ago.

So back in 1991, my wife was in the top 30 women in the USA with a rating in the mid-1700s. Today, someone with that rating isn't even going to be in the top brackets of serious tournament.

Despite all that, the usefulness of the rating system keeps it in use as a valuable tool. It seems that the ability to match players who have never seen each other before, ensuring interesting matches, is part of keeping the game competitive for those in it. And table tennis is also, because of this, one of what I believe is few sports where men and women often play head-to-head (even though men generally have much higher ratings, on account of the sport requiring far more strength than you might suspect).

<comment><USER5> > It doesn't suffer from the weaknesses that you cite, but even so, the > problem of "rating inflation" is widely discussed.

Ah yes! Inflation is also a problem I've seen in competitive online games. Rating inflation was a serious issue with World of Warcraft PvP arenas circa 10 years ago (iirc Blizzard hard capped arena ratings at 3000 during WotLK). I don't follow chess much, and I'm not exactly sure how chess avoids it (or even _if_ it does).

<comment><USER7> By the point you're playing ranked matches in chess, you're generally invested enough to keep playing. However, chess has a (statistically) significant inflation problem, to the point where you can only compare scores within the same decade or so meaningfully.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> 1\. The sigmoid function is the closest thing to linear that makes sense on probabilities⁺. A purely linear function would cross 0/100% which, while the sigmoid flattens exponentially as it approaches the extreme values.

2\. The fit isn't as bad as the author claims. It looks like the biggest difference between the graphs is that the point differences are scaled differently (400 pts for 90% in elo vs 800 pts in the second graph).

A quick and dirty overlay of the two graphs shows a reasonable fit: [https://ibb.co/0YwYH9z](https://ibb.co/0YwYH9z)

3\. I like observations about player psychology. Satisfying the players is more important than having the mathematically best ranking system.

4\. Personally I like Whole History Ranking ([https://www.remi- coulom.fr/WHR/](https://www.remi-coulom.fr/WHR/)), but it's unlikely to be popular with players (the psychological criticisms the article makes apply to it as well, with some additional problems, like rank drifting without playing). KGS which uses ranking system similar to WHR (but more primitive) certainly draws a lot of criticism for its ranking system.

If I had to design a mathematically optimal ranking system, I'd start with WHR and make parts of it trainable/fittable.

\----

⁺ Bayes' theorem turns into addition when applied to logarithmic probabilities and the sigmoid function converts from logarithmic probabilities to normal probabilities. This property is why it (or its multi category equivalent softmax) is used when predicting probabilities using logistic regression or neural networks.

</comment><comment><USER9> Elo might or mightn't suck (imo it's a great ranking system). But the article sucks. Vanilla elo is built around chess and some adjustments to the scale and/or K-factor might be necessary to fit the circumstance. A quick change of scale to E = (1 / 1 + 10 ^ ((Ra - Rb) / 800)) and all of a sudden ELO very accurately reflects the games actual results: [https://imgur.com/a/rFP5U0g](https://imgur.com/a/rFP5U0g)

Meaning just that skill is a weaker factor in this game than in chess...

Edit: The 'actual' curve includes a correction for the obvious anomaly of ~55% win expectation at 0 point delta.

</comment><comment><USER10> Creating a custom system to suit your situations needs sounds great and the thought process was fun to read, but some of the claims lobbed here are pretty questionable.

Specifically, the claim that Dota's matchmaking system is "probably wrong" because the model chosen doesn't match your own findings feels like a reach. Sibling commenters have pointed out how skill variance is important to allow the ELO system to function in games like chess. Additionally, someone else pointed out that the sigmoid function is similar to a linear funciton close to zero.

It seems _at least_ as likely that Acolytefight doesn't have a high enough level of skill expression present in the game to see top players "curve out" weaker players, rather than exponential functions mapping player skill to be useless or wrong.

Does elo suck? Maybe, but this hasn't convinced me.

</comment><comment><USER11> I remember a bit back the Go server that I play most of my go these days [OGS]([https://online-go.com](https://online-go.com)) changed their ratings from Elo to Glicko-2.

You can read their rationally for it in this forum: [https://forums.online- go.com/t/ogs-has-a-new-glicko-2-based-...](https://forums.online-go.com/t/ogs- has-a-new-glicko-2-based-rating-system/13058)

The key takeaway is this:

> Most of the shortcomings [of Elo] can be traced back to the fact that the > system is too slow to find a player's correct rank, and too slow to adapt > when jumps in strength occur.

> The problem of slow moving ratings is a well-known problem with Elo > implementations. In response to this, Prof. Mark Glickman developed the > Glicko, and later Glicko-2, rating systems which address this problem very > well and are fairly widely used

A few weeks ago they then made an update to their implementation of Glicko-2, where—during the announcements they summarized many interesting statistics on how the system has panned out for them: [https://forums.online- go.com/t/2020-rating-and-rank-tweaks-a...](https://forums.online- go.com/t/2020-rating-and-rank-tweaks-and-analysis/28649)

</comment><comment><USER4> Wow, I wrote this article ages ago, didn't expect to see it posted here today.

I just want to clarify the point of the article:

Why would you fit a curve to the data when you can just use the actual data?

That's the point of the article.

We're in the age of big data, we should use it to make better win rate predictions. Elo's exponential curve is fine, it's approximately right, it's just now we can have databases of millions of games and we can just do better. Elo was invented before the big data age and it is limited by that.

That's all I'm saying.

I shouldn't have included all the other stuff in the article, it just distracts from the point.

<comment><USER12> Thanks for writing the article and sharing your work with the world, I really enjoyed it! I think the central point you make is very interesting.

I'd be interested to know what fit you used for the red "line of best fit", why not a straight line? My main question here is do you actually expect a player ~210 points above another to win _less_ than if they were only ~190 points above? (the first dip in the red graph)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you're interested in evaluating and rating/ranking agents, it might be worthwhile checking out DeepMind's multidimensional Elo rating system ([https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02643](https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02643)) which attempts to solve some of the issues with Elo and Glicko. Most notably, the ability to handle non-transitive interactions (like rock, paper, scissors) and the presence of redundant duplications of matches that might erroneously inflate ratings.

Shameless plug, I've created an R implementation of it here: [https://dclaz.github.io/mELO/](https://dclaz.github.io/mELO/)

<comment><USER14> This is fantastic, thank you for bringing this up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm curious about whether the author tried to optimize Elo's K factor. It's often left at 32, which is not reasonable for all contests. It's essentially related to the standard deviation of player skills: if there is a large range of skills, it should be large, and if there is a small range, it should be small. It's easy to tune by optimisation, and it has a huge effect on predictive ability.

</comment><comment><USER16> The more obvious solution is to bring back custom lobbies and private servers and forget about ranking players at all. Gets rid of a lot of bad behavior too because servers can police their own communities and players won't get frustrated when a crappy teammate is dragging their ranking down

<comment><USER17> idk that makes extremely hard to find matches in games with a smaller player base

see war thunder, the simulation queue is a desert, high tier ships a wasteland, unless all the available player get forcibly lumped together matches will just not happen

compare with stormworks too, most servers are empty in my timezone and the populated one as password protected or spawn limited, it wouldn't take much to get known and partecipare in their community but for working games the time commitment is simply impossible.

same with arma3 I'd love to get into shack tac but timezone and commitments make it unavailable to me, and since most of the good players are sucked up in teams the public server are a mess of "what's left" of the community

<comment><USER16> Matchmaking without custom servers/lobbies makes finding a match even harder, since a minimum amount of users in a specific ranking/skill level/ship tier/whatever must all be online and searching for a match at the same time. Custome servers and lobbies allow just one or two players to start, and it advertises to other players that they are available to play. The initial players just need to wait until more people show up, and can play more casual game modes or with bots or whatever until more people arrive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > If we take a top-level player, and make them fight a high-level, mid-level > and low-level player repeatedly until we can become statistically confident > of their win rates against each, there is no reason why their win rates > would fit an exponential curve.

When I first read this, I thought to myself "well we get to pick the scores, so it's exponential by definition". The problem becomes more clear when you express it without any reference to the scores.

If Player A wins 80% of the time against Player B, and Player B wins 80% of the time against Player C, how often does Player A win against Player C? This is a question purely in terms of observables. Elo makes a prediction here (94.1% of the time) and it can be either right or wrong. If it's wrong, then there is no valid assignment of scores.

</comment><comment><USER19> Isn't a qualitative system possible? It would be really complex to create for a game such as dota2 or cs:go, but maybe not for a simpler game. I will give cs:go as an example only because I know it very well.. It would be possible, I believe, in theory, to measure player knowledge towards specific ingame- skills. New cs players for instance wouldn't know how to control recoil effectively. And 100% of global elite/pro players would be above a certain threshold regarding recoil control. On the other hand, you could say with a lot of confindence that a player that tries to achieve a high ground pressing only +jump multiple times with no success, when he would need a crouch jump instead because of height, is a noob. Elo or something similar could then be used to measure ranks within specific clusters only. And some form of mood/form on top of this, to allow for better experience (even though I have played cs for 20y now, it could happen that I abandon the game for a few months, or that I have a really bad focus because of external events).

I'm not sure if this makes sense, but what I know for sure is that as an experienced player, I can watch a player play a single game (sometimes a few rounds), and access his average rank/skill level with high confidence, with no need of information from his prior games whatsoever, or detailed statistics of his gameplay.

There's something else to remember for high skill-cieling games: winrate is not what really matters. A lot of times I will play a very good, balanced and fun game and lose. Sometimes it will even happen with very uneven scores like 16-5 or soomething...

</comment><comment><USER20> I am pretty sure the author is describing a well understood limitation of Elo, they just need a tiny bit of connecting to models.

Elo can be thought of as an approximation to item response theory models [1]. These describe skill as normally distributed, and whether one person will win using a logistic function (not exponetial).

I think what the author has keyed in on is that afaik in simple Elo there is no slope coefficient for the logistic, but in general IRT models there is (called item discrimination). So in Elo you can't learn that flatter curve they show.

[1]: [http://hvandermaas.socsci.uva.nl/Homepage_Han_van_der_Maas/P...](http://hvandermaas.socsci.uva.nl/Homepage_Han_van_der_Maas/Publications_files/papers/klinkenberg.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER21> Repeated Bernoulli trials give rise to Gaussian distributions which is where the e exponential comes from.

This an assumption and an approximation and is not necessarily a good fit. Pulling from actual probabilities would generally perform better.

The rest is massaging to better fit the different objectives.

</comment><comment><USER22> The "newbie suppression" mechanic doesn't make much sense to me. If you play against someone substantially lower in rating than you and lose, shouldn't you lose a significant amount of points? After all, you lost to someone you should have easily beaten.

<comment><USER23> I agree, and the proposed solution which is to limit point gains/losses to one point per game feels like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Specifically, convergence takes a long time, the result of which is that a very good player on e.g. a new account (smurf) will end up being the cause of a lot of unbalanced games for an awful long time.

Having played a lot of ranked LoL, I saw a few recurring but irrational gripes players had with the Elo based system:

\- "I get matched with bad teammates and they drag me down". On average your teammates are the same Elo as you. All players get their fair share of games where they are/aren't the underdog side. On average, it averages out. Deal with it.

\- "I've been stuck at the same Elo for ages but I should be higher". Nope, Elo only cares if you win or lose. It doesn't care about kill/death ratio, creep score or how many ganks you pull off. Focus on winning more. Incidentally, focusing on winning instead of secondary metrics like kills/CS was one of the biggest mindset differences between high/low Elo players.

"I should be higher Elo but I play support roles so can't climb". It may be true that you climb slower but here's the rub - think of your matchups as you being compared to the enemy team's support player. The other four roles on each team are actually a constant factor (by symmetry arguments you could not consistently find that your four teammates are any better/worse than the enemy support player's teammates). As a result, the only remaining factor in the statistical equation is you weighed up against the enemy support player. If you can provide even a slight statistical advantage towards winning vs them then you will climb the Elo ladder.

<comment><USER24> > As a result, the only remaining factor in the statistical equation is you > weighed up against the enemy support player. If you can provide even a > slight statistical advantage towards winning vs them then you will climb the > Elo ladder.

An alternative explanation is that the skill ceiling is lower for support players.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> If your curve is linear, it's because your game isn't that hard (or more formally, where winning and skill are less strongly correlated). This is tough for people to hear if their game is "designed to be a high-skill game".

The curve being linear means essentially that skill in the game confers less of a relative advantage. Chess is a good counterexample here, also rocket league. Both are games where difference in MMR is very strongly correlated with outcome, and both are games where skill is easily measured and highly correlated with ranking.

</comment><comment><USER26> Take a look at TrueSkill, a much better mathematically grounded, created at Microsoft Research and being used at scale in Xbox: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueSkill](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueSkill)

</comment><comment><USER27> TrueSkill definitely has a time decay term and I'm fairly sure it lets you fit the model to previous games. I wonder if the author actually tried it. (Though to be fair I'm not sure if there are open source versions of the latest version of TrueSkill.)

<comment><USER4> Yes, tried Glicko then TrueSkill, both generated huge amounts of complaints. New system produced few complaints. If the community had liked it, would've stuck with TrueSkill.

<comment><USER27> TrueSkill 1 presumably?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> How about coop games — what would you use to rate players where the goal is to win together?

</comment><comment><USER29> Wait why don't we use a deep learning thingy on this dataset and just back out a formula that predicts the wins based on just the relative numbers of the people?

</comment><comment><USER30> Nonsense - they're in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame after all! Jeff Lynne is a musical genius.

</comment><comment><USER31> Elo was in Age of Empires back when zone .com was a thing.

It worked and worked well. Points were calculated for each person. However Dots2 and lol don't implement Elo the same way, points are calculated for the team. So if you're Low score and you win against high people. In Dota and lol you won't gain many points.

I believe this is done to avoid being carried but it doesn't work because it just results in you being stuck in a Low tier for ages.

TLDR: elo works and it's great. No one implements it right.

Edit: In Age of Empires / Zone, if you had a 4v4, it used all 8 players to calculate the ELO on an individual player, so if you had in your team 1750 elo, 1550 elo, and anything in between. The 1750 may gain only 1 point, while the 1550 may gain 16 points (the highest gain lowered the more people who played) While on the losing side the lowest elo will lose the lowest amount of points and the highest will lose the highest amount of points.

dota / lol don't do this, the winning/losing team gains/loses the same amount of points. This is wrong.

This means a high elo player has the potential to farm points from low elo players with little risk. While low elo players get stuck not playing people in their own range.

</comment><comment><USER32> I recall at least one large previous thread about Elo but can't find it. Anyone?

<comment><USER33> Maybe [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16255910](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16255910)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is useful to increase plays by reducing "ladder anxiety"

</comment><comment><USER35> Isn't that a logarithmic curve?

<comment><USER8> It's a sigmoid, which converges to exponential far from 0 and is somewhat linear near 0.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why no oxygen generator or oxygen electrolysis projects? - <AUTHOR> There seem to be heaps of focus on hacking together ventilators (perhaps of questionable value without nurses and support to use them.) Yet I've seen zero solutions for generating oxygen, which surely would be useful if we have too many respiratory patients... <comment><USER2> Disclaimer: Not a Doctor

But: I think the ventilators used in Coronavirus treatment use regular (filtered) air and don't require an external oxygen supply</comment>


Apple to release 6.7 inch iPhone in 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://nypost.com/2019/11/27/apple-planning-to-release-biggest-iphone-ever-in-2020-report/ <comment><USER2> Why does it cost $599 to get the back of an iPhone XS max (with working screen) replaced and only $349 if your screen is totally shattered?</comment>


Bay Area Hiring: Stiff Competition for Mediocre Talent - <AUTHOR> https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/279976? <comment><USER2> _But, then, after a few months, I realized something a bit odd. Everyone I met was (in his or her own opinion) uniquely "special" in some way. Every salesperson I tried to recruit was the best on his or her team. Every speaker I heard was in the most demand for his or her specialty. Every startup founder had discovered the Next Big Thing. ..._

 _After my disillusionment wore off, I realized that in the Bay Area everyone had to be a rock star, because claiming to be anything less made them look relatively pathetic. All of this hyperbole about people and companies had built what I started calling the "Bay Area Hype Machine." Once everything becomes "epic," nothing less will do, so hype ends up everywhere._

That's when things began to go off the rails: when we started dividing people into two categories - "superstar" and "mediocre".

</comment><comment><USER3> Cost of living is through the roof, and companies prefer that you're already there (versus relocation) anyway. At some point it becomes a revolving door. There's no chance I'd uproot my family to move to the bay area for a career because pay simply doesn't match cost of living if you're used to a normal middle class lifestyle anywhere else.

Housing is a big problem, and the supply side needs to increase.</comment>


Duped by Innocence Project, Milwaukee man now free - <AUTHOR> http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/duped-by-innocence-project-milwaukee-man-now-free-b99386015z1-281852841.html

<comment><USER2> This is the kind of thing that happens when the victims family members are forced to rely on the prosecutors office and the courts, both of whom are far to effected by politics and media, to represent their wishes in court. A complete mess and pr disaster for everyone involved without a single consideration for thr victims feelings. They will never have peace.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this the same Innocence Project that usually uses DNA evidence or is the name a coincidence?

[http://www.innocenceproject.org/about/](http://www.innocenceproject.org/about/)

<comment><USER4> That one was founded in 1992, the one mentioned in this article was founded in 1999.

That's one heck of a "coincidence" right there, I'd say.

<comment><USER5> They should sue.

I immediately thought of the Innocence Project founded in 1992 when reading this article. The latter could severely damage the reputation of the former.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It seems a lot of America's 'justice' takes place in the absence of a judge or jury: in the presence of a prosecutor with a plea bargain offer. At least in third world countries, the coercion and bias is in plain view.

<comment><USER6> I just realized this comment is irrelevant. This is the most important bit about this article:

> We know now that the explanation was that Simon was snared in a trap set by > people who wanted to end the death penalty, no matter what the cost.

<comment><USER3> It's the same tactic, and according to the story people posed as law officers to carry it out so its fairly similar.

<comment><USER7> Is that legal in the US?

<comment><USER4> It varies from state to state.

<comment><USER8> No, I'm pretty certain it is illegal in every state to impersonate a police officer. In some states, it is also illegal to use equipment such as blue lights in a vehicle, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Seems to me Jack Rimland should be prosecuted and disbarred.

And I guess it's too late to re-arrest Anthony Porter, who presumably really did do it.

<comment><USER10> I have a hard time understanding why Protess, Ciolino and Rimland are not under arrest right now. Maybe that's still coming, but destroying the life of a person should not be without severe consequences.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> First thought reading this was IP's involvement in the Adnan case (Serial). Had no idea IP was this big.</comment>


Lost on Everest (1996) - <AUTHOR> http://www.outsideonline.com/o/outdoor-adventure/climbing/mountaineering/lost-on-everest <comment><USER2> Sorry, I'm confused by the "1996" in the post title.

The article deals with the 1963 American expedition to Everest, and seems to have been published in 2013.

Am I missing something here?

Interesting read anyway. I didn't know much about the first American ascent.

<comment><AUTHOR> _" I'm confused by the "1996"_

So am I. The post refers to the first American ascent in '63\. (In my limited knowledge) I added the post with the original title. I'd never heard of this attempt before and shows just how hard it is to get to the top.

Editors/moderators take note: I research the story and titles, don't change them unless you have bothered to read and understand the context of the post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Weird. We are in the same wavelength right now:

Just came from seeing the 'Everest' movie based on this incident I did read both the original article you are looking for, (not online) and the book.

I also watched the 2 seasons of the reality show Everest: The Death Zone- precisely based on Russell Brice's company.

It's brutal, and I guess people forget it from time to time for a very small number of years. But the Mountain Never forgets.

The movie is only worth a see on IMAX, enjoy the scenery. Pretty much follows the 'Into Thin Air' book, focused on the American clients + Scott & Rob

<comment><USER4> Wasnt there an IMAX movie about Everest in the 90's?

<comment><USER5> David Breashears filmed an IMAX documentary about climbing Everest. He and his film team were on the mountain during the disaster in 1996 and they abandoned the filming to assist in rescues. They were later able to complete the filming and release the film in 1998.

The film being released now is a "Hollywood style" fictionalized retelling of the 1996 disaster.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everest_%281998_film%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everest_%281998_film%29)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The free audiobook link was incorrect for me. Found it here: [http://media.outsideonline.com/designaudio/A%20Dangerous%20W...](http://media.outsideonline.com/designaudio/A%20Dangerous%20World%20Waits%20Above.mp3)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I was looking for the original Jon Krakauer article, _" Into Thin Air"_ [0] instead I found this article of which I had no prior knowledge. Compare the submitted article to Krakauers' latest article _" Death & Anger on Everest"_ [1] and you'll get an idea of how much easier Everest is too summit.

[0] [http://www.amazon.com/Into-Thin-Air-Personal- Disaster/dp/038...](http://www.amazon.com/Into-Thin-Air-Personal- Disaster/dp/0385494785)

[1] [http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/death-and-anger- on-e...](http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/death-and-anger-on-everest)

</comment><comment><USER7> I love the way they utilize the animation effects on the article's intro.</comment>


Statins have no side effects? What our study really found - <AUTHOR> http://www.badscience.net/2014/03/statins-have-no-side-effects-what-our-study-really-found-its-fixable-flaws-and-why-trials-transparency-matters-again/

<comment><USER2> I dream about a tl:dr button for content.</comment>


Record screen and take screenshot in modern desktop browsers without plugins - <AUTHOR> https://record.bewisse.com/ <comment><USER2> Looks useful (apparently written in Vue + Nuxt), and I appreciate the privacy section, being open about how things work (WebRTC, recordings stored locally), what is collected or not.

But in recent years I've become allergic to anything Google, so I don't feel comfortable giving the app permissions to my screens. Just honest feedback..

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your honest feedbacks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> thank you! this looks promising and should be useful in some cases! Good tool!</comment>


F# in 20 Minutes - Part I - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/chrsmith/archive/2008/05/02/f-in-20-minutes-part-i.aspx <comment><USER2> I found the tutorial to be lacking - some things taken too much time, but some like fancy unions not enough.

</comment><comment><USER3> That's a lot of hows. I'm holding out for the whys ;)

That said, it seemed like an interesting blog, and I have the feed added to my feed-reader now.</comment>


Comcast should stop claiming it has "fastest Internet," ad board rules - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/02/comcast-should-stop-claiming-it-has-fastest-internet-ad-board-rules/ <comment><USER2> "We have the fastest _local_ Internet" (because we have no competition).

<comment><USER3> Pretty much. I found their billboards to be rather infuriating when Google was planting fiber all over my city, but being blocked _almost_ everywhere by AT&T/Comcast near refusal to allow them to use the utility poles.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, sad that Google is giving up on fiber. With the new FCC chair, I doubt we'll see any innovation or competition in the consumer broadband space for the next few years. Same speeds, higher prices, lowest consumer satisfaction of any company in the US, and zero alternatives for many: it's C-O-M-C-A-S-T- I-C! Edit: hilarious how they rebranded as Xfinity and many people don't realize that it's the same company screwing them.</comment></comment></comment>


Why secure airports when it's planes that fly? - <AUTHOR> http://jyro.blogspot.com/2010/11/why-secure-airports-when-its-planes.html

<comment><USER2> Airports in the US are usually not secure, but the passenger terminals usually are. It makes sense to secure the passenger terminals instead of the individual planes to reduce the amount of equipment and staff needed. LAX for example has 150 gates across 8 terminals. Securing each plane would mean placing TSA agents, metal detectors, scanners, and X-Rays at 150 gates instead of just 8 terminals.

Come to think of it, US airport security is pretty weak compared to an airport like Manila NAIA (in the international terminal). Passengers get checked curbside for passports and tickets, and again at the door. Then they must pass through metal detectors and bag scanners to get into the ticketing area to get boarding passes. Boarding passes and ID are checked again at immigration. Then there is another bag scan and metal detector to get into the passenger terminal. The last check is the most thorough. To get to the individual gate, there is a checkpoint with one station where all carry-ons are opened and inspected, one station where passengers remove their shoes for inspection, and a final station for a pat-down by security. This last security check must be repeated every time you go to the bathroom or visit the shops or restaurants.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, the kind of security you describe at Manila airport, seems common in european international airports - I've seen it in Amsterdam, Frankfurt too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> An airport can contain a high number of boarding gates, not all of them are used 100% of the times. It would be very inefficient to allocate space and equipment for security check at each boarding gate.

Furthermore security checks can induce a variable amount of delays, it's better to perform them a little earlier than actual boarding in order to amortize for eventual delays.

One solution would be to have another waiting room after the boarding gate security check, and force people to pass to the "boarding security check" earlier than needed, forcing them to wait in the boarding room.

But there is no need to allocate a single waiting room for each boarding gate, as you can assume that each boarding gate security check is performed with the same criteria, you can have a single waiting area in order to optimize space. You will have then second level boarding gates for actual boarding.

And of course, since people are waiting there doing nothing, you can monetize them by providing shops, bars etc.... but wait, we are back where we started</comment>


Doing - <AUTHOR> http://andersonjr.com/2013/06/02/doing/

<comment><USER2> Marketing in technology is a complex task. The visionaries are generally poor at marketing and the marketers don't actually get the vision. That lending of vision from the entrepreneur to the marketer makes or breaks a startup.</comment>


Google adds over 30 new services to Google Home - <AUTHOR> https://9to5google.com/2016/12/15/google-adds-new-services-to-google-home/ <comment><USER2> Contrary to the author's opening statement, my biggest complaint is google killing services all the time.</comment>


A Woman Was Killed by a Superbug Resistant to All 26 American Antibiotics - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/01/a-superbug-resistant-to-26-antibiotics-killed-a-woman-itll-happen-again/513050/?utm_source=atlfb&single_page=true <comment><USER2> Can anyone comment on using phages to kill bacteria. I read the this was developed extensively in Russia during the Cold War.

<comment><USER3> Phages are being researched. This literally comes up in every single HN thread on antibiotics, so once more, posting my "Why Phages Aren't the Answer" shortlist. Note that I love phage therapy - this is the problems as seen by someone who doesn't think it's a dead end:

Phage therapy is neat, it really is, but there are a couple major issues:

\- There is no such thing as a "broad spectrum" phage. You can't do empirical treatment using phages, and there's not really "off the shelf" phage therapy - it tends to be a bespoke creation for a particular infection.

\- There's some serious regulatory problems, similar to those experienced by fecal transplant treatments. We're not yet really equipped to think about handling evolving, custom microbes as a treatment. - Because of the first, it's going to require a considerable amount more lab capacity than most clinical settings currently have, and considerable delays until treatment.

\- There's also some biosafety issues around phage prep, but those are easily solvable. It's a great way to treat particularly resistant or hard to treat infections, but it's not a particularly great general solution. There's a reason it was abandoned in countries with easy access to antibiotics - they're just roundly superior in basically every respect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I find it almost impossible to take any article seriously that uses the term "superbug". Journalists, please stop using it. People can understand words like multidrug-resistant bacteria. Also shame on the reporter for not even listing the species of the bacteria. I had to click another link to see that it was Klebsiella pneumoniae.

<comment><USER5> Also the term "American Antibiotics". I didn't realize that antibiotics were citizens of specific countries.

More to the point, I wish these scare tactics would stop. Resistant bacteria is nothing new and its true that we need ongoing constant research into antibiotics and antibiotic-like substances but that's about it.

<comment><USER6> You are correct: resistant bacteria is not new. Resistance to /all/ antibiotics is.

The problem is that this was resistance can spread to even relatively unrelated bacteria via horizontal gene transfer. This means that it is not unreasonable to expect an increasing number of such fatalities.

The reason people are worried is that this literally puts us back to where we were 80 years ago, in which a cut could actually kill you. Obviously we've come a lot further in understand how contamination occurs, and how infections spread so i suspect that it won't be as bad overall (reduced amputation, faster correct response) but it won't be smooth sailing as usual.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My bet is on the Chinese with their enormous pig farms which feed every pig a constant cocktail of antibiotics to ensure they grow faster to be the ground zero for an antibiotic-resistant epidemic.

Edit Source: A Chinese government official in charge of a meat-producing SOE boasted about it during a presentation seeking foreign investment

<comment><USER8> The same practice is used by meat producers in the US.

In fact the practice was invented here. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibiotic_use_in_livestock](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibiotic_use_in_livestock)

<comment><USER3> Though we're not particularly heavy users of colistin in livestock, unlike China, which is specifically called out in the article.</comment></comment></comment>


Wizards of the Coast – Notice of Recent Security Incident - <AUTHOR> Dear Wizards Community: We are writing to let you know about a recent security incident at Wizards of the Coast.<p>What Happened? On November 14, 2019, we learned that an internal database file from a decommissioned version of the Wizards of the Coast website login had inadvertently been made accessible outside the company. We believe that this was an isolated incident, limited to a legacy database and unrelated to our current systems. Based on our current investigation, we have no reason to believe that any malicious use has been made of the data. However, in an abundance of caution, we are sending you this notice to let you know what happened, what steps we are taking as a result, and what steps we are encouraging you to take to protect yourself. <comment><AUTHOR> I received this email in the middle of the night. I haven't played Magic for about 15 years, so every detail on their records if (understatement) outdated. I wonder how many of us had an account with them that is dormant.</comment>


The Long-Term Unemployed Are Doomed - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/12/11/long_term_unemployment_doom.html <comment><USER2> I live in the part of the country that the article author recommends as a place to go to find work if unemployed. The long-term unemployed persons I know best came out of high school with very limited job skills (barely literate or numerate) and have spent their free time while unemployed mostly pursuing hobbies that do not further develop their job skills. (Some of the saddest cases I know are people who had problems with alcohol or other drug abuse in the early years of their working life.)

Many of those people would indeed be employable in St. Cloud, Minnesota or Mankato, Minnesota in entry-level, manual-labor jobs, but unemployment benefits have, till now, provided enough income to allow living independently without having to go to work each day. I'll see what happens to the people I know best, locally, when the "emergency" extensions of unemployment benefits at long last cease. There are definitely employers in this frigidly cold state that are still on the lookout for willing workers, and I wish well to everyone seeking work. There are probably quite a few opportunities yet available to the people who will look for them.

<comment><USER3> Most of the cities are in North Dakota jobs are assuredly oil field related. As such, in some sense they are an unemployment paradise if you don't have a family, because it's low-skill, subsidized housing (and often food) work, and easily pays 3 times what you would get at mcdonalds.

<comment><USER4> What do you think is keeping people from moving to North Dakota? I actually don't totally know the answer, are the travel expenses just too high?

<comment><USER2> Historically, North Dakota hasn't been a fun place to live, and it has lost population to other states during most of my lifetime. The oil boom is a new phenomenon there, and the "cities" near the oil fields have few fun places at which to spend the money earned by the oilfield workers. This may change over time if the oil production and natural gas production is sustained, and infrastructure development continues there. So an early comment of mine for more details.

[http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5072755](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5072755)

P.S. The cities in Minnesota mentioned in the article that was submitted to open the thread are not particularly close to North Dakota and are not tied to the petroleum economy. They are college towns and rather pleasant to live in.

<comment><USER3> ...and few women. People complain about Silicon Valley being low on women, those people have never witnessed an oil boom.

I wouldn't be surprised if Minnesota's economy was experiencing at least partial boom due to North Dakota in any case. You have tons of weekend warriors who drive 6+ hours a day routinely that aren't afraid to drive 6 hours to civilization, and even though the oil fields have infrastructure, they're still sourcing it from wherever they can get it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> People need to move to where the work is. Maybe the government could offer a tax break or stipend to get people to move (and somehow try not to let that get abused), I'd be surprised if the transportation industry isn't lobbying for it already.

For generations, people moved. To Oregon/California just because the east was too crowded and didn't have much opportunity. To the midwest to work in the tire, steel, and auto plants. To the south for the new auto and manufacturing plants.

And now it will be to the plains for jobs in the construction and energy industries.

How long can people use the excuse "I can't afford to move", when you can't afford not to? How long will they use the excuse "I'm upside down on my mortgage?" when they aren't going to be right-side up anytime soon and aren't working as it is?

Pack your shit up and move and send money back home to your family if you don't want to bring them. The long-lasting unemployment benefits just keep 'workers' stuck where they are, and as a result it keeps their families and future generations stuck in the same place.

<comment><USER6> > How long can people use the excuse "I can't afford to move", when you can't > afford not to?

For this post, I will be a hypothetical long-term unemployed person.

Moving to even a low-cost area is going to be at least $1000 for deposit on an apartment and utilities, plus the first month of rent. I'll also need groceries and transportation or gas.

Keep in mind that my credit, assuming I even have any, is maxed out because I have already been using it to supplement my living expenses and job hunt for the past few years.

I can't afford to move, and that is not a fucking excuse.

<comment><USER7> As a frequent mover, it is interesting that people just say "move!" without considering such things. If you don't have the capital to move, then it's likely not going to happen. Thankfully we're not to the point of people moving to a new area to essentially be homeless in hopes of finding a job.

<comment><USER8> > Thankfully we're not to the point of people moving to a new area to > essentially be homeless in hopes of finding a job.

Depends where you are.

The UK has a problem with migrant workers getting stuck - they come here for work, don't get work, can't afford to go home, can't get help to get back home because of legal complications.

<comment><USER7> You are correct, I'm speaking of the US. Although I guess it's fair to say we have a touch of that with our immigrant friends here as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It would be interesting to see what the socioeconomic/educational attainment breakdown of the long-term unemployed looks like (Link anyone?).

I think the assumption is that most of people in this group are unskilled high-school drop outs but I wonder how many of them "have some college" or a degree and are just unwilling to "lower themselves" to working on an oil pipeline or any other kind of work associated with being blue collar. The assumption that people will take any job they can get, at least in my experience, is just plain wrong. For instance (I know this is just anecdotal) but I know quite a few people in NYC who attended elite schools that are perfectly happy to collect unemployment while they wait for a high prestige job opening (e.g. "I'm waiting for the New Yorker to have a job opening"). The thought that a government grant would get these people to go work in an oil field in South Dakota is absurd most of them are horrified at the thought of leaving Brooklyn. I was thinking of this article from Mike Rowe:

[http://profoundlydisconnected.com/cnn-viewer-has- questions/](http://profoundlydisconnected.com/cnn-viewer-has-questions/)

"Right now, in the manufacturing sector alone, 600,000 jobs are currently available."

If that is indeed the case there is something else going on.

<comment><USER10> At what wage? That's what I say to those claiming that hundreds of thousands of jobs are unfilled in any sector, be it IT consulting firms clamoring for h1-bs or agriculture firms looking for cheap fruit pickers.

<comment><USER11> If immigrants can survive on (and desire) the income provided by the jobs which you deem to be 'low wage', why should Americans disdain and forgo the positions?

Put another way, you seem to suggest that because people cannot find jobs they want, they should be considered unemployable; Why is this true?

<comment><USER10> I think it generally helps to follow the money. The big money is in big business increasing the bottom line by lowering wages in the economy. They can do that by increasing the labor pool enough so that there is a critical mass of workers that will accept employment at a lower wage than the current market prevailing wage. That is why the minimum wage, for example was legislated in to action.

<comment><USER11> That is the commonly stated reason for the enactment of the minimum wage, the so-called 'baptist's reason' (in the bootleggers and baptists paradigm [1]). Historically the minimum wage has been used to discriminate against minorities and other targeted groups by making their wages higher than their value to an employer[2], this would be the so-called 'bootlegger's reason'.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootleggers_and_Baptists](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootleggers_and_Baptists) [2] [http://www.amazon.com/State-Against-Blacks-Walter- Williams/d...](http://www.amazon.com/State-Against-Blacks-Walter- Williams/dp/0070703787/ref=la_B001H6W1VW_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1382102288&sr=1-5)

edit: if you follow the money on the bootleggers side, you will see that unions and companies with high capitalization support increasing minimum wages.

<comment><USER10> Companies with high capitalization? What do you mean by that?

Some corporations support raising the minimum wage only in the sense that it would bankrupt their competitors business models. (cf Costco vs Wal-Mart). Although as someone in support of a higher minimum wage I don't see that necessarily as a bad thing.

Unions are less than 7% of the private sector workforce and shrinking, their influence has been quashed, for the most part ever since Reagan dismantled PATCO in 81.

Economically, a minimum wage sets a price floor for labor. At higher levels it also can induce demand by increasing the velocity of money through the bottom rungs of the labor force. Especially since the poor spend a much higher % of their income than the wealthy do.

And with respect to your [2], I counter with [0]. Minimum wage actually has very little if any empirical affect on unemployment.

[0][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Funnel_Graph_of_Estimated_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Funnel_Graph_of_Estimated_Minimum_Wage_Effects.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm from a country with a welfare state, where if you are unemployed the government pay your rent and give you a small amount of money to buy food until such time as you are employed again. Not understanding how the American system works, I find this article confusing. It sounds like there is a time limit on how long someone can claim unemployment benefit? So what happens after this time runs out, they just get kicked out of their home and starve/freeze to death? Even if you don't care about them on a human level, that sounds like it would be massively expensive in terms of increasing crime levels and providing hospital care for all the dying people. Honestly it sounds like something out of a dystopian cyberpunk novel.

<comment><USER13> There are other welfare support programs besides unemployment insurance. They're just not all wrapped up in a neat bow by the central government. There's housing and food assistance and other programs at the federal and state levels, as well as charities, church food pantries, etc.

In reality, very few people end up on the streets to starve and freeze to death.

<comment><USER14> That depends on what you mean by "not very many." Accurate numbers are hard to come by, but as of the mid-2000's there were an estimated 750,000 homeless people in the U.S. That number is almost certainly higher now.

Most of them manage to survive without starving or freezing because food and shelter are sporadically available. But it certainly doesn't extend their life span.

<comment><USER5> A large amount of our homeless are mentally ill and live on the street by choice. There are shelters in most places, and the 'smart' homeless people hitchhike somewhere warm. It's a much easier time being homeless in California than it is in Minnesota.

<comment><USER14> > A large amount of our homeless are mentally ill and live on the street by > choice.

Yes, that's true (though "choice" is a little bit of a misleading term to apply to a mentally ill person -- their "choice" is often between the street and some mental institution which is not much different than a prison). But I don't see what that has to do with the topic at hand.

> There are shelters in most places

It is an extremely rare shelter that is not already heavily oversubscribed, especially when the weather turns nasty.

> the 'smart' homeless people hitchhike somewhere warm

That's true too. But the crop of folks who will be hitting the streets in the next few years as a result of unemployment benefits coming to an end are probably not very street-smart.

But your point is well taken: we will probably not be seeing dead bodies of homeless people being hauled away by the truckload. But (I predict) we will be seeing a lot more homeless people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This kind of skirts the problem. There are more unemployed than there are jobs. There are _far_ more under-employed people working at McDonalds that would like better jobs.

Those jobs don't exist. They just don't. The jobs are in China or they are being done better by mechanical sorters at Amazon.

Even if we figure out a relocation plan, that solves a minor part of the problem. Worse, those low skilled, high risk employees are now in another part of the country, first to be laid off and with no social network once they are.

There is NO solution that doesn't involve either make work programs OR a guaranteed income OR people homeless and starving.

<comment><USER16> > There is NO solution that doesn't involve either make work programs OR a > guaranteed income OR people homeless and starving.

I think that's a pretty narrow view. There are other possible alternatives, like: new businesses opening; completely new industry forming that doesn't require high skill levels from its workers. Given an individual situation, I don't think it would be too difficult to imagine additional scenarios.

I'm not trying to trivialize the difficulty the long-term unemployed are facing, but I don't think it's constructive to throw up your hands and despair, either.

<comment><USER15> I can imagine that happening but it's seems silly to base policy on some imaginary scenario where a new industry starts up that that needs literally millions of lower skilled employees to function.

When was the last time that happened? Every current industry is shedding employees. New industries are either small or require a high skill set.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Ames, IA. NCAA Div I university.

Columbia, MO. NCAA Div I university.

Lincoln, NE. NCAA Div I university.

Iowa City, IA. NCAA Div I university.

Fargo, ND. NCAA Div I university.

Waterloo/Cedar Falls, IA. NCAA Div I university.

Mankato, MN. NCAA Div II university.

St. Cloud,MN. NCAA Div II university.

Rochester, MN. The town Mayo built/healthcare.

Notice a pattern here? At least a third of the "metro" locations mentioned are homes to NCAA Division I or II universities. Low unemployment? Yep. Low-paying jobs (even for technical positions)? Yep. (A friend of mine from one of the above Div. I "metros" says semi-tongue-in-cheek: so many grads love the area and want to stay, a convenience store job requires a Masters).

Rochester is essentially healthcare through Mayo. If you're not a healthcare professional, good luck. IBM used to have a major presence there, but I don't know how much now.

<comment><USER18> What's most interesting about this is that higher education (through student loans) and healthcare (through medicare, medicaid, social security, etc) are two of the biggest industries subsidized by the government.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> "...Mailing unemployment insurance checks to people who aren't so much unemployed as unemployable is obviously not an ideal public policy. But simply doing nothing for them is cruel and insane..."

Let's look at our choices presented by the author. 1) Each of us gives money from his pocket to pay people to do things nobody else wants them to do, whether sitting on the couch, sweeping the streets, whatever, or 2) Be insane and cruel.

Certainly such a discussion must have a bit more nuance than that, right?

I'm not going to dive into the argument, because there will be plenty of it, mostly non-productive. I just wanted to point out the premise the article is written around. Such premises do not make for good discussions by people of varying opinions.

<comment><USER11> The author is obviously presenting a false-choice.

One option he does not even mention is that there could be an open an honest public debate about what to do, and at least make a new program (not UI), which would specifically and accountably address his issues.

Another thing which is not directly addressed is that when UI ends, people get jobs. There is a large amount of literature to support this. In many cases, it is simply not worth it for people to find a job, because UI and other benefits can pay up to 90% of someone's fully employed salary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Long-term unemployed have always been doomed.

However, a high unemployment rate (suppose 15%) means that the average person is out of a job 15% of the time. In most cases, this is _not really that devastating_. The problem right now is the unemployment benefits last so long that you can stay out of a job to the point that you become irrelevant.

Learning new skills takes effort, and usually requires you to take a pay cut as you get an entry-level job in a new field. Everyone can do it, though. Instead, though, we are incentivising long-term laziness by granting money to people who aren't working. I know at least two people who are just living off their unemployment checks and not making any effort to find real work.

If the unemployed are getting a check, then people who are employed should get that same check while employed. I think that's the only way to keep the incentive to work. (This goes back to the idea of a minimum guaranteed income)

<comment><USER21> Apocryphally, most people are only a couple of paychecks ahead of their bills, and would have to default on something when faced with 15% less income.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The idea of relocation assistance has always been something that interested me. I often split time between Vermont and NYC, and don't totally get why there aren't more programs to help people living in a rough, low-income housing projects get to VT (or one of the other areas), where you can easily find jobs and a nice place to rent for $300/month.

<comment><USER18> It sure would be nice if there was a mass transit system that could get people from NY to Vermont in a few hours without requiring a month's wages to do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> We'd probably save a lot of money in the long term if we helped people with mental illness. Many who are long term unemployed or out of the work force all together, are so because of addictions or depression.

Then again, there actually are some legit lazy people that will only ever work enough to buy hydro and a roof over their head.

<comment><USER23> Or too old, or out of date skills and don't know/have resources to learn new ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> If unemployment continues to drop or even accelerates its downward trend without a corresponding drop in the labor force participation rate, can we at least consider the possibility that some fraction of the "long term unemployed" would always remain unemployed up until the moment when they ceased being paid not to work?

Or, if you want to be more generous, ceased facing a massive effective marginal "taxation" rate on their first couple thousand dollars of monthly income.

I don't mean this as a moral judgment. I can imagine a host of situations where being paid $20,000 a year or so to evaluate your employment options and otherwise spend a lot of time doing non-wage-earning activities like spending time with your kids would make perfect sense.

I know that one condition of receiving unemployment benefits is to be looking for work, but I'd be surprised if that is hard to fulfill.

<comment><USER25> "I know that one condition of receiving unemployment benefits is to be looking for work, but I'd be surprised if that is hard to fulfill."

I was on unemployment for a little over a year. I had to apply to 2 jobs a week and every so often (only twice) I had to spend 3 hours (I felt a waste of time but I am sure there were people who did need the help) at employment services to some sort of meeting (called something like 'workforce re-entry evaluation') where they gave advice on how to fill out applications etc. They also had classes there that counted towards the job search requirements (learn to use web, word, excel, etc).

You had to bring your job search records for them to look over also. I know there are people who just sit on their ass but I really would have preferred to be earning some money. I felt bad enough but then to have people say 'just get a job' like I wasn't even trying. Half of them didn't believe that the gas station send a rejection letter (at least they had the courtesy).

One of the problems was that this area isn't a tech hub. The bigger cities are but just not paying the bills so you can move away and see if a job works isn't a good solution (driving 6 hours for an interview at your own expense is always fun though).

I got way less than $20K that year. At least it helped show how little I could live^H^H^H^H survive on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Historically Oil booms help too. Most the places he mentioned are going through a fracking renaissance. More importantly, it's low skill and high pay, but often cold and demanding work (say Midland isn't cold to the roughneck wrestling with the well in January.)

</comment><comment><USER26> It's comforting to know that this, along with so many other things that most people have to take for granted, doesn't apply to software developers.

Our little corner of the world is still so employee-friendly that it's really hard to damage your career in any meaningful way if you're truly, provably good at what you do. Certainly not by taking the odd five years off to start a startup, travel the world, or play pickup basketball.

You'll still have your network when you decide to come back. Those guys will be nicely distributed across dozens of tech companies, all of which need developers like they need air.

<comment><USER27> It won't last forever. Software development and deployment is becoming easier and easier every day. Between open source, infrastructure in the cloud, PaaS & SaaS, and the plethora of new tools/libraries/frameworks/languages that debut to address specific problems with lightning focus, it has become trivial for an individual to pull off what was impossible for a team 15 years ago. This doesn't even consider the explosion of packaged software targeting business needs directly. I don't think we're so far away from a world where software developers can only realistically find work at software companies as demand for software developers is displaced by... software.

In addition to that, increased competition from a global remote work force as well as increased immigration sponsored by the tech lobby is going to crush western developer affluence.

In another 15 years, things may be looking pretty grim for the average developer.

<comment><USER28> > It won't last forever. Software development and deployment is becoming > easier and easier every day. Between open source, infrastructure in the > cloud, PaaS & SaaS, and the plethora of new > tools/libraries/frameworks/languages that debut to address specific problems > with lightning focus, it has become trivial for an individual to pull off > what was impossible for a team 15 years ago. This doesn't even consider the > explosion of packaged software targeting business needs directly. I don't > think we're so far away from a world where software developers can only > realistically find work at software companies as demand for software > developers is displaced by... software.

Couldn't you have said the same thing 15 years ago? I don't think anything significant has changed since then.

Another problem with this thinking is software is never done, it just evolves and changes. It also needs some serious maintenance. Even if the job of software developers will be done by software, someone still needs to maintain and improve that software (unless we get self-writing software, which I don't see any time soon).

Another thing that keeps changing is hardware. Switching from computers to phones and tablets and the web created completely new markets for phone and web apps (written in Java/JavaScript) which weren't there a few years ago. Who's to say there aren't going to be new markets a few years from now? (For example, we'll need developers to write Google Glass apps).

In addition, even after all this evolution, current frameworks and languages are still horrendous. The most popular languages right now are C++, Java, JavaScript and PHP, all of them horrible to program in (more or less). I think there's still plenty of work to do in this direction.

<comment><USER27> _Even if the job of software developers will be done by software, someone still needs to maintain and improve that software_

Of course; my point is that you need a lot less programmers overall. Where a team was once required, now a staff of one or two will suffice, and this trend will continue as it becomes easier to do more with less. I'm not saying that the professional programmer will cease to exist, rather, I'm suggesting that the employment prospects for developers will inevitably fall in line with other industries.

 _Who 's to say there aren't going to be new markets a few years from now? (For example, we'll need developers to write Google Glass apps)._

I don't think there is much longevity in a "apps for yet-another-platform" future. To-Do lists and tower defense games have lost their novelty and useful/interesting apps are pretty rare. I do see platforms like Google Glass and Occulus Rift as potentially huge markets, but the _cost_ of producing software for these platforms continues to fall right along with the discretionary income of all your potential customers who aren't employed as software engineers. It's a rapid race to the bottom.

 _In addition, even after all this evolution, current frameworks and languages are still horrendous._

Except for the burgeoning movement of hip languages and tools you wouldn't describe as "horrible to program in" that has driven the hype and growth behind the contemporary software golden age.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> "What it has gotten you is a UI check. Take away the check, there's no point in bothering"

Wait, the sole reason these people were looking for a job was to get a steady unemployment insurance check?

<comment><USER15> Yes. They are not getting jobs. They can't get jobs because there are few jobs and those jobs aren't going to the long term unemployed.

But, to get UI you MUST be looking for a job.

So, they are fruitlessly searching for jobs they know they won't get solely to get the cheque. They will stop wasting their time once there is no cheque.

<comment><USER30> "They will stop wasting their time once there is no cheque."

Will they really? Would you take your family out into the streets?

I suspect they'll double down on their efforts and possibly take a job that they suspect was "below them".

For the rest, it's off to the welfare line.

<comment><USER31> >a job that is "below them"

This is absolutely not why people are not getting of UI to take a minimum wage job. Right now, if they were to accept a minimum wage job, they would lose UI and get paid less for the job then they are getting from UI. _It is financially advantageous to stay on UI in those cases._ Without that incentive, they would take the low wage job, but they would have to get on welfare/food stamps which the rest of us have to pay for.

So, tax payers are either paying for UI or subsidizing the difference between what those employees are paid and a living wage.

The solution to this mess is simple: Make companies who are profiting billions share those profits and pay their employees a living wage. You do this by raising the minimum wage. With a higher minimum wage, it would become a financially sound decision to get off UI and work a minimum wage job, and taxpayers wouldn't have to pay the difference.

<comment><USER30> "You do this by raising the minimum wage."

I don't mind this, but I don't see it to be the solution. These multi-billion dollar corporations will find a way to cut out the labor using more automation in workflow or they will out-source this work.

What I'd like to seee is tarrifs go up considerably. If you want to offshore your labor then we'll make up the difference at the dock when you offload your goods.

<comment><USER18> That automation costs money (read: labor) to develop. It also costs money (read: labor) to maintain. Either hire unskilled people at the higher minimum wage or hire skilled people to install and service your automated stuff. Either way, you're hiring people.

On another note, if we're going to be a progressive society, we need to start being more progressive with the way regulate businesses with things like the minimum wage. Making McDonald's (1.8mm employees, $27.5 billion revenue) pay the same minimum wage as Fred's Burger cart (3 employees, $73k revenue) is ridiculous. Small businesses should be able to pay a lower minimum wage than bigger businesses, if we're going to be a progressive society.

If we're not going to be a progressive society, then there's no reason to talk minimum wage in the first place.

<comment><USER30> Many McDonalds locations are franchises, so they are actually individual businesses. They aren't paid by McDonalds but by the franchisee.

<comment><USER18> I don't think this changes the point. A single McDonald's franchise would pay its employees a different minimum wage than McDonald's Corporate, and Fred's burger cart would still be paying a different minimum wage to his two employees than both.

If you find there's some legal manipulation that could go on so larger companies could avoid paying the higher minimum wage, well, then that's no different than every other progressive law on the books.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This article fails to recognize that there are more ways to earn an income than "get a job" . Write a (book|song|game|movie), grow some food, sell a service, invent something, sell some clothes.

One year I was laid off and "employed" 3 days later because I became a freelance contractor. For the right price many many skills are marketable.

I as a businessman would never turn away someone who had the nerve, need and drive to come to me and say "I'll bust my ass for half my usual price, just dont let me starve".

<comment><USER7> I'll take a shot at addressing your suggestions.

Write a book, song, game, movie? For income? Are you serious? Even if you are of the type to pull that off, how will you support yourself as you create these things? It's not the same as a job with a weekly income.

Grow some food? Actually, more people should do this. Hopefully the local government won't stop you from doing it because your neighbors whine about you growing tomatoes by the side of your house.

Sell a service? Plausible, if you have a skill that fits a niche because otherwise you're probably already entering a highly competitive and low margin industry. Also, depending on the service you sell, the local government may want to have a word or two with you which will likely require capital.

Invent something? See the part about writing a book, song, game or movie above. Same thing, if not worse because lawyers.

Sell some clothes? True, you could sell just about everything. In some cases that might be ideal because you might be able to downgrade your lifestyle just a tad to lower your expenses.

But good for you that you had a skill that translated into a freelance contractor market. That doesn't work for everyone. I've never heard of freelance contractor cashiers for instance. I guess they could learn a skill first but, again, how do you support yourself during this time?

It's good for you that you're willing to exploit someone's skills at half their value but not every business looks at it that way. I would imagine most managers would not want to hire someone at lower value or being over-qualified for because often that means the job is often a stepping stone to a better job. They see it as a risk of losing the investment they made in an employee that left at the first opportunity.

Not that I'm saying your suggestions are necessarily bad ideas. It's just not always so easy a solution, such as people who suggest just picking up and moving to where the jobs are. With a little thought one can see that things are not always as simple as what they sometimes should be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> > The country failed these people first by letting the labor market stay so > slack for so long that they became unhirable, and now we're going to fail > them again.

This seems suspect. People lose jobs for specific reasons. Maybe a specific sector is shrinking. Maybe automation is replacing workers of a certain skill set. Maybe cheap labor elsewhere caused your employer to move.

Blaming "the country" for failing these people "by letting the labor market stay so slack" is meaningless in its vagueness.

<comment><USER24> I'm also curious how Yglesias would explain the lack of "slack" in the labor market after the recession of '01-'02\. A milder recession to be sure (though you wouldn't know it from the political rhetoric at the time), but one that nonetheless hit employment hard. Within three years net employment was back where it had previously been, and the unemployment rate was back down in the 4%'s. There hadn't been massive spending; most of the deficit increase was lowered taxes and lowered revenue.

<comment><USER34> > I'm also curious how Yglesias would explain the lack of "slack" in the labor > market after the recession of '01-'02.

I'm not sure how Yglesias would, but to me the answer is obvious. The 2001 recession (official dates are still, IIRC, March-November 2001, though there was, around 2004, talk that the start date maybe should have been pinned somewhat earlier, I don't think it was ever actually revised), was, as you note, much shorter and, in part because there was a lot more access to credit, which supported a quick rebound of aggregate demand and a return to expansion and better top-line employment numbers (a number of factors, include tax policy changes which shifted the distribution of gains upwards, made it a fairly hollow expansion in which the bottom three quintiles all saw income declines and the next quintile was flat, however, which, help set the stage for a deeper recession with a much slower recovery when the bottom fell out of the housing market, since it was a lot harder for demand to rebound.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> We're living in a 21st century economy with 20th century ideas on work. The economy doesn't need 40+ hours from everyone to produce what we need. I agree with some others here that a Basic Income at a reasonable level would help out a lot.

</comment><comment><USER35> You also have older workers although well educated a nd skilled, pushed out of the economy via ageism but still far from retirement.

</comment><comment><USER36> I don't get. Just create more jobs! There are plenty of things that need to be done and those unemployed shouldn't be left in the cold so we are going to pay them something anyway. The only "valid" reason there are able and unemployed people is "to scare the shit out of the middle class".

<comment><USER23> Who will create these jobs, part of the issue is that no one is willing to pay the amount it takes to create the jobs (pay rate, training, taxes, insurance). Unless absolutely necessary, companies don't want to hire extra people just to 'create jobs'.

<comment><USER7> The usual answer is government. Many people have a negative view towards such things but can be useful if done correctly. Such as infrastructure projects that need to be done anyway. But alas, some people in the system don't agree with such a thought.

<comment><USER23> It would be ideal, but the government has no money, and cities are going bankrupt. I would think some sort of tax incentives (or other something) for on job training, make hiring cheaper/easier or moving offshore jobs to local would be the better solutions.

<comment><USER7> True, usually only the federal government can support such projects because they print their money whenever it is needed.

Tax incentives only go so far because the cost of having jobs local go beyond just those taxes. Payroll and its associated taxes can be expensive. Those tax incentives would have to somehow offset those costs as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> the majority haven't been looking for work.. I was long term unemployeed.. I sent out a minimum of 10 resumes everyday until I got a job.. it paid shit, but at least i was no longer on the tit of america.

The problem with long term unemployment is the same issue I ran into the other day on an elevator.. One girl asks another girl, "did you get a job yet?" the girl responds, "Giiiirrrrrl, da gubament gonna give me 2 hundred dollas a week, why i gonna get a jerb?"

Get em off the tit and get em working or they starve and die.. either way win win for us all.

<comment><USER38> Nice self righteous racial stereotyping there - thanks.

<comment><USER7> It's not stereotyping if it's a quote, but then again, we don't know the accuracy of the quote.

<comment><USER39> Ok, but "quotes" can be used to further sterotypes, tho. in addition to accuracy there is always context...I'm sure the nazi's quoted a couple of jews in their day.

<comment><USER7> Well, sure it could. But to me, if a quote from a person somehow reinforces a stereotype of a group the quoted person is labeled as part of, then that implies more about the person hearing the quote than the person stating the quote.

A person can use a quote out of context all day long but it doesn't truly reinforce the stereotype until a person hearing the quote agrees with the out- of-context usage.

For example, if a person from Mars says something stupid and someone provides me with a quote. Do I say to myself; "That person is stupid" or "Martians are stupid"? If I go with the second then the problem is within me, not the quote nor the person who provided it.

So, did the Nazi's quote Jews out of context to further their aims of denigrating them? I'm sure they did. But it only worked for people who agreed with the idea in the first place.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google Gets An Absurd Patent For Its "Google Doodles" (Mar 2011 - old) - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/google-gets-an-absurd-patent-for-its-google-doodles-2011-3

<comment><USER2> The ending of this article pretty much sums it all up.

"as long as everybody else is playing the patent game, they have to do it as well."

This is a sad and sorry truth. Things in the patent system are not going to change until some of the big guys stop playing the game.

<comment><USER3> Even worse, the patents that was originally intended to be used defensively can later be used offensively. It actually happened to Amazon, for example (there are several Slashdot articles about it).</comment></comment>


Regulate the Internet like the real world or the real world like the Internet? - <AUTHOR> http://nickgrossman.is/post/76566568384/should-we-regulate-the-internet-like-the-real-world-or <comment><USER2> In every discussion like this I've ever read on HN, the implicit assumption is: all the companies who take advantage of the new regulatory system will be like Uber.

Why is that a valid assumption? The Internet is full of sleazy companies utterly undeserving of anyone's trust.

<comment><USER3> No, that's not the assumption at all.

The assumption is that any business that's not deserving of trust is very easy to detect and kill in the internet era, solely through the distributed actions of consumers with good access to information.

And this _distributed_ form of regulation is significantly less corruptible than centralized, political regulation.

<comment><USER4> Sadly, it seems that "good access to information" is the weak link in this chain, which can easily be broken by SEO, astroturfing, and the like.

<comment><USER5> Can you imagine someone building an Uber scale business built on SEO, astroturfing, and the like and people continuing to use it? I can't.

<comment><USER4> I can definitely imagine an incumbent company using SEO and astroturfing to prevent people from knowing a would-be Uber-sized company exists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting post, however I have two things to bring up.

1) The author works at Union Square Ventures, which has a vested interest in '2.0' regulation. A quick search shows that although it might not be directly related to Uber, it is certainly in the ride-sharing space to the tune of $30 million [0]. I am sorry, but whenever someone (not the author personally, but still...) has that much money on the table, it's hard not to take what they say with a grain of salt.

2) What exactly is meant by the "real world"? Just because the Internet is not a thing we can touch or see, that does not make it "not real" and thus things that apply to the real world equally apply to things that are on the Internet and vis a vice (which is a nice point the author does make).

In either case, I do agree that something needs to be changed and there is something obviously foul with some of the things I have read recently such as that NYC had has gone from 10,000 to ~13,500 Taxi medallions over the past 30 years, which is just bupkis. Throw that in with the fact that American-born taxi drivers are a rare thing, the average taxi driver makes less than minimum wage and the owners of the medallions make a killing imply something is wrong. Please let me know if you'd like sources for what I just said, I'm sure I read most of this on HN though.

[0] [http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/24/uber-rival-hailo- reportedly...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/24/uber-rival-hailo-reportedly- set-to-close-30m-funding-round-as-it-expands-in-the-u-s/)

<comment><USER6> Just another thought, I have grown to completely mistrust any 'well-used' rating service and thus must say Uber and the like has a long way to go before I will trust their ratings by one iota.

I remember a friend once opened up a bakery and sent out an email to friends and family to review it on Yelp. So within a week of opening, there were 100+ 4-5 star reviews. I've stopped using Yelp since then and have found a great new review since then that I hope businesses don't discover, and so far they haven't, and so far the reviews are spot on.

The role of government (in theory) is to serve the people and it will not make any extra profit (aside from bribery, which again, leads to job loss) and in fact lose their "elected" jobs if their regulations fail to protect people.

Uber and other companies have _a monetary incentive_ to squelch and play down bad reviews. In a pure capitalistic system, one should simply follow the money and realize that '1.0 regulation' doesn't sound so bad compared to '2.0' regulation by companies that have a vested interest in manipulating it to their means.

<comment><USER7> What's the review site? I won't tell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As a side note I hat the terminology used here and I hate that it's so common.

The internet _is_ the real world. Period.

</comment><comment><USER9> "Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others, shall be the whole of the law."

<comment><USER10> Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

<comment><USER9> Some may prefer Postel over Crowley.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How about neither?

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't see what this has to do with the Internet. Just because a _business_ uses a web site or app in place of the telephone doesn't imply it needs more or less regulation.</comment>


Craft - <AUTHOR> http://notes.unwieldy.net/post/35958973262/craft

<comment><USER2> My girlfriend and I have been watching the PBS series: Craft in America[0] it features some amazing craftspeople and goes to show that while craft isn't as prevalent as it might have been in the past, it's still alive and well.

[0] <http://video.pbs.org/program/craft-in-america/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Simple but profound. If America has lost a cultural "step", it is surely this. I love reading stories about people who still believe in craft. If there is any hope for us as a people, it is the renaissance of this concept.

<comment> mkr-hn There's plenty of craft here. Mindless, nostalgic pining based on imagined loss is a favorite.</comment></comment>


Irish Government sued for not having blocking laws on the books - <AUTHOR> http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/01/12/0141219/music-industry-sues-irish-government-for-piracy

<comment><USER2> This will be fun to follow since now the Irish gov will have plenty of data on how this does nothing to prevent the problem</comment>