A Profitable and Legal Way to Game the Stock Market - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-07/the-hugely-profitable-wholly-legal-way-to-game-the-stock-market <comment><USER2> I expected to see (1995) tagged to the end of this article.

I personally know 3 people who run their own money ( <5 million ) who do this as their sole form of income.

Having said that, this isn't exactly easy. You need to know

1) if a stock is going into the index

2) when its going into the index

3) how much the index will buy

4) how much the index buy will affect the price of the stock

the first 3 are trivial for some index funds, though most have rules that allow them some leeway here so there aren't always sure things.

The 4th is where you make your money.

And it isn't like there aren't other's doing this, the article makes it seem much easier than it actually is.

If you play the game theory through you'd realize that if you knew the stock is going into the index then you are probably too late to profit from it as someone else will speculate the stock is going to go into the index the week before and already move the stock.

Funds can't really avoid this, and to be honest they don't really care to avoid it. It doesn't affect them at all, they are just supposed to mimic the index. Though you do start to get into a strange feedback loop whereby the index fund that is supposed to track the index starts to dictate how the index moves, we'll call this the "index inception" effect:)

<comment><USER3> It's a nice, clear example of the anti-inductivity of the market: [http://lesswrong.com/lw/yv/markets_are_antiinductive/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/yv/markets_are_antiinductive/)

The very act of noticing that something is a good strategy, and beginning to trade on it, will over time drain away the utility of the strategy, until it is useless or worse than useless.

Tracking indexes is "big", and has some brute simplicity about it, but eventually the market will eliminate that as a viable investment mechanism. (But that won't stop your metaphorical Dad from swearing up and down you need to buy index funds....)

<comment><USER4> Show me an actively managed portfolio that consistently beats an index fund and I'll believe it. Until then, you guys can pretend to have all the inside information you want, but numbers don't lie.

<comment><USER5> Don't the top hedge funds consistently outperform the market?

<comment><USER6> Yes, the top funds consistently outperform the market. No, the top funds are not the same year-to-year. Predicting which funds will out-perform is the hard (aka impossible) part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is well known known effect. S&P rebalances it index through out the year and there are always people trying to predict adds and drops and make some money.

The real diseconomy happens in the Russel indexes. They are rebalanced annually with the methodology for adds/drops announced ahead of time. Various funds that are pegged to Russel are forced to rebalance at this time buying and selling huge baskets in one day. To avoid large stock market movements and capitalize on them traders try to predict the changes to the index and prebuy the rebalance trade. Their actions through the market leading up to the rebalance and agreements to sell the rebalance trade to the Russel pegged funds reduce price swings on the day of the rebalance.

Trading desks that engage in the Russel trade spend the entire year preparing for it, modeling the methodology, acquiring clients for the rebalance trade, and prebuying the trade. Their profit comes from the difference between the closing price (mostly governed by Russel adds/drops) on the day of the trade and the price that they prebought at. Essentially their ability to accurately predict the rebalance add/drops and acquire clients to sell the rebalance trade to. There are desks that make $10s of millions this way on that day. There may be desks that make $100 of millions this way.

PS. I may not have stated it clearly, but funds that are pegged to Russel indexes make agreements with external traders to handle their rebalance trade for them at a fixed bps to the closing price. Traders are able to make money on this because they can take on risk and prebuy the trade; something that the Russel indexed funds can not do.

<comment><USER8> Russell

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Even in the worst case -- Vanguard doesn't lose anywhere near this premium -- we're talking 20-30 bps, or .25%. It's one of those scenarios where one has to choose what is less bad. Sure, an active manager could play with the index a bit more to help avoid this, but you'd be paying a lot more than .25% for his effort.

It might, however, be a good enough reason to side-step this issue and use Total Stock Market (VTSMX) instead of one based on an index that frequently drops/adds stocks.

<comment><USER10> But don't those Total Stock Market indices have some kind of weighting for each stock? Wouldn't changes in the weightings just leave you with the same problem? Or maybe I'm missing something?

<comment><USER9> They do, but Vanguard (and probably other fund companies) take a number of steps to help prevent frontrunning. For one, Vanguard recently moved its benchmark provider to FTSE Group (CRSP) for many funds, which takes more of an averaged trade-price approach to determining weights. They also delay trades and "packet" securities between indexes and buffering small changes in market cap from predicting trades.

It's not impossible for someone to squeak some money out of the predictability of an index, but it's not something that makes a ton of material difference with a company like Vanguard.

Some info: [http://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Stock_market_indexing](http://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Stock_market_indexing)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So, the writer of this article failed to give any proof other than citing the case of one specific stock (American Airlines). Even then, it failed to give any useful comparison (sure, the stock gained 11% in 4 days, but how did the rest of the market do?)

It would take a bit of effort to grab the data for all stocks entering the S&P for the last (say) 5 years, and then compare how these stocks did between the announcement and the joining of the index, but this data is vital to making the case that there is some market inefficiency here. Since the author doesn't bother to do this work, how can they justify their conclusions?

They can't even manage to get the 'easy route' right (letting someone else do the work). They cite 'one estimate' of a $4.3 billion cost but don't bother to tell use who made that estimate, giving the readers no chance to check its validity.

Lazy, lazy journalism IMO. At least quote your source, Bloomberg!

<comment><USER12> The source for the $4.3B is given later in the article:

"Over a course of a year, front-running -- of stocks going into and coming out of indexes -- costs investors in S&P 500 tracker funds at least 0.2 percentage points, according to research published last year by Winton Capital Management Ltd., a quantitative hedge fund that analyzed data from 1990 to 2011. That's equal to $4.3 billion in lost income in 2014."

That paragraph includes a link to [https://www.wintoncapital.com/assets/Documents/WWP_HiddenCos...](https://www.wintoncapital.com/assets/Documents/WWP_HiddenCosts_final_revised.pdf?1405926282)

<comment><USER11> Oops, I completely missed that, I have no idea how :(

That paper is good, it answers all my questions that the original article left unanswered. My dumb mistake for not reading it properly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is there a "Index Frontrunning" fund which I can invest in? (The fund would automatically frontrun all index changes, and so keep management fees to a minimum.)

<comment><USER14> I'd be more interested in a "Index Frontrunning Frontrunning" index, actually.

<comment><USER15> No no no, you're behind the times. Index triple frontrunning is what's hot.

<comment><USER16> This is one of those Calc II problems where it turns out the profit limit as the number of frontrunning funds -> ∞ equals something like e/log(2)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I suspect this is more complex than just frontrunning. An article from the Fed Reserve Bank of NY from 2011 discusses the whole process of being listed on an index. Firms selected have been outperforming the market for several years at least, and their metrics have been improving even before selection is announced. This may be why these companies were chosen to replace others that are failing.

The Fed report found that there is no long term impact of being chosen to be on an index.

[http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/staff_reports/sr484.pdf](http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/staff_reports/sr484.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER18> Sure some people get rich, but for buy and hold investors it's mostly a non- issue. The expense ratio of an S&P 500 index is still very small. A total market fund won't have the same front running issues and the expense ratios on those can actually be higher than the S&P 500 index funds.

IOW the overhead here is in the noise IMO.

<comment><USER19> The point of the article is that owning an index fund is NOT buy-and-hold -- the indexs sell to rebalance, and do so in poorly timed ways (that is, in hige fixed batches, contrary to standard advise to "drip"), exposing investors to trading waste that the indexes are designed to avoid -- undermining the purpose of the index fund.

0.2% waste is huge compared to the overhead fee of an index fund. VTSMX fee is 0.17%.

> higher than

You mean "lower than"

<comment><USER18> I did mean higher than, but that is because I incorrectly included the overhead of front running in the expense ratio when I think it would actually manifest as a failure to track the index. Some total market funds end up being a hair pricier (VTSAX and VFIAX are both .05% right now).

Still, if you look at VFIAX it tracks the index perfectly despite front running so it is still nothing to worry about. The amount of money in index funds is large so there is room for a few people to make some money without a big impact. There is some deviation that is significant around the 35 year mark, but do we even know that front running is the cause?

My understanding is that in practical terms weighting shouldn't matter for indexes for the most part since you should only have to buy/sell when funds enter/leave the index (that is the bug). The weight should track without any active trading because it's based on market cap. You buy it and if the market cap increases so does the holding and if it decreases so does the holding. No need for trading.

Now if you want equal weighting among the 500. Well that is an issue. It's one reason not to buy an equal weighted fund.

I know people are thinking of other more problematic indexes than the S&P 500. I don't because I don't buy them so I haven't given a lot of thought to what front running means to them. My investment objective is to hold the entire investable space weighted by market cap (modulo currency risk and home bias) and most indexes play no part of that.

<comment><USER20> >>I think it would actually manifest as a failure to track the index

No, because the stock was added to the index on the same day. So the fund is tracking the index, and the index is doing what it said it would do. It's just that they're both buying in an inefficient way that costs more than it might, and others capitalize on that inefficiency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Sounds like it was written by someone with an interest in encouraging people to buy expensive managed funds.

<comment><USER22> You do see PR from Dimensional from time to time. Their slightly smarter index funds probably do beat traditional index funds slightly but probably not after their additional fees.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is basically the primary trading strategy employed in the _The Ugly Americans_. The time period covered is mid 1990's

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugly_Americans:_The_True_Story...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugly_Americans:_The_True_Story_of_the_Ivy_League_Cowboys_Who_Raided_the_Asian_Markets_for_Millions)

<comment><USER24> Was _The Ugly Americans_ good? I really enjoyed _Bringing Down the House_.

<comment><USER23> If you enjoyed _Bringing Down the House_ , I'd say you'd pretty close to equally enjoy _The Ugly Americans_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> How is this considered unethical? If you know X will buy loads of shares of an equity and you learned that fact legally through (presumably) public channels, are you A) a scoundrel, or B) smart, for buying shares before X buys those shares?

When somebody does something out of the ordinary it's necessarily considered a "game" (read "scam") by the majority establishment.

The reality is that the index is buying the stock because it views it as a good value, meaning that it is currently "under-priced". The index could be then viewed as unethical for "stealing" the shares away from current holders at a lower price than their intrinsic value, unless they were to tell somebody first... like a "frontrunner". In most cases, the largest entity is viewed as corrupt and evil, because it has the means to make the most efficient decisions and capture all the value, but somehow indexes are regarded as altruistic cooperatives.

They're not. S&P is owned by McGraw Hill Financial ($5 billion revenue), CME Group ($3 billion revenue), and News Corp ($33 billion revenue).

<comment><USER26> It's a 1%/99% story. The second paragraph pretty much says so: _" hedge funds and Wall Street trading desks are reaping hundreds of millions at the expense of index mutual funds, the investments of choice for a growing number of ordinary Americans."_

Wall Street vs The Ordinary American™ makes for popular news stories.

<comment><USER25> Good point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Here is a different perspective from Matt Levine: [http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-07-07/can-you- rea...](http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-07-07/can-you-really-game- index-funds-)

</comment><comment><USER28> Just reading the title, I thought this would be another article about the Congressional loophole - where members of Congress can trade on insider information with impunity.

[https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/05/07/congress- argue...](https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/05/07/congress-argues-cant- investigated-insider-trading/)

<comment><USER29> When does insider information become public? When does trading on it become manipulating the market?

<comment><USER30> I asked my compliance officer where I work that question, the answer was the usual "It depends".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The reason this happens is because of strict ruling on how index funds must track the index (as the article mentions). There is no way around this unless...

You loosen the requirements on how strict the index fund must track. Portfolio managers are incentived to trade smartly if they are ALLOWED to. This is why bulk trades are usually "random" to avoid front-running.

So a solution here is create a competitor to Vanguard who has loose, yet well defined rules that define an index fund and how closely it must track an index. That's it.

EDIT: Others are commenting on index funds have to redefine themselves and add/subtract funds. But that is only the index, not the cause of the price movements. That is looking at it backwards. You need to look towards those moving the prices, like Vanguard, to find a solution.

</comment><comment><USER32> Far as I understand it, the investment market exists on the edge between actively managed and passively managed funds.

Actively managed funds exploit inefficiencies in the market, but the more active funds there are, the less their returns through competition. Passive funds are wonderful when the market is efficient, but the more passive funds there are, the more inefficient the market, and the more profit active funds can make. This should create a natural equilibrium between active funds and passive funds where the market should "settle" and returns are optimal for both parties.

Anyone know how to calculate that?

</comment><comment><USER33> Mom-and-pop investors cannot take advantage of this (and many other opportunities) because they have to feed a long chain of middlemen through prohibitively high costs of trading as well as always being on the worst side of bid-ask spreads.

And then of course the value and the cost of high quality information delivered to you in a timely manner is a bit different than staring on CNBC screens.

<comment><USER34> Why can't mom-and-pop investors open an account at a place like Interactive Brokers and trade options on these events? The cost is pretty small per trade (maybe $1-2 for most stock and option trades) and the bid/ask spread isn't _that_ bad if you are talking about an 11% move in a very liquid stock.

<comment><USER33> Just because if market does not move fast enough in the direction of their option trade - the value of their option investment will very quickly becomes ... $0.00

:)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The article really needs some hard numbers, not some "whitepaper estimates".

It's 500 stocks. How many randomly selected stocks do you need to almost equal the performance?

Buying a new entrant on the day it debuts is not required to come very close to matching the index performance.

The article points out that Vanguard "mitigates a good portion" of the risk by gradually building positions over time in stocks.

Problem solved.

</comment><comment><USER36> When i used to very actively trade stock (even just thousands of dollars) i used to monitor releases from companies like MSFT's and Buffet's holding companies announcing upcoming stock purchases. I would then immediately buy the stock before they can. Then i would sell it a few days or few weeks after their purchase to lock in my 10-35% gain.

</comment><comment><USER37> The issue of coerced hackers is an actual thing. They have been coerced by Gov, Mafia but also large corporations. But this article...

> _One day, Okul said he wanted to obtain a pwnie for a client_

oh kay?

> _Building pwnies isn't itself a crime; anyone can buy a version on the > Internet._

hmm... that is false.

</comment><comment><USER38> A way to avoid this is to not buy the indexes themselves but deeper capitalization based funds like VTI etc. This is still basically an index fund but since it buys past the "500" it avoids this BS.

<comment><USER26> Why would you want to avoid it? Either VTI is a better investment (for your profile, of course) than the S&P 500 and such or it isn't; it doesn't really matter if it's because of "index frontrunning" or any other factor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Can't the fund "managers" just add is some slop in their buying so they don't cause such a large spike? The spike in demand is what makes this strategy possible, so spreading the demand over period of days or even a week should reduce the spike and the profitability of the strategy. I know they want their fund to match the index, but if this ever became a problem I think they could squash it pretty simply.

<comment><USER40> According to the article, Vanguard already does this. I suspect it's mostly a non-issue for properly managed index funds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Is there a semi-passive fund that just responds to the announcements that something is going into or out of an index?

Presumably they'd leave a little money on the table because they'd have to guess how much to buy in or sell out, but it'd probably mitigate a good chunk of the loss, right?

</comment><comment><USER42> It's much easier to do this with Commodity ETFs and Futures.

Doing it with equities or baskets of equities gets very complicated and if you read the prospective of most ETFs pretty much all of them track the indexes within some margin of error.

Commodity ETFs on the other hand have an underlying asset that will expire or require taking delivery. Most of these ETFs are managed by a group of less than 10 people. They simply do not have the resources to take delivery of an underlying asset. They don't deal with the hassle of storing / taking delivery unless things are really out of whack. Therefore, as a the underlying futures contracts approach maturity, they need to rebalance their portfolio, almost daily, and at minimum once every couple months. In a contango market, it is very easy to front run these funds compared to ETFs that track equity indexes.

I should know, this was my primary trade 4 years ago before quantitative easing killed all volatility in the market.

That being said, the Russell 2000 index is rebalanced only once per year. Opportunities to front run that index with the futures contracts are one of those trades that I miss dearly.</comment>


The Future Of The Web — A Draft - <AUTHOR> http://thenittygritty.co/the-future-of-the-web-a-draft Bastian Allgeier describes his idea of decentralized sytems that build the web in the future focusing on self-distributed servers. <comment><AUTHOR> Bastian Allgeier describes his idea of decentralized sytems that build the web in the future focusing on self-distributed servers.</comment>


Startup Quote: Edwin Land, creator, Polaroid - <AUTHOR> http://startupquote.com/post/1687346049

<comment><AUTHOR> An invention that is quickly accepted will turn out to be a rather trivial alteration of something that has already existed.

\- Edwin Land

<http://startupquote.com/post/1687346049></comment>


Ask HN: Is it possible to buy a small amount of crypto coins? - <AUTHOR> Is it still possible to buy a tiny amount of any crypto coins for less than $50? I have $42.50 left on my US virtual master card (US Unlocked) and these vultures want to charge me $36.50 for unloading it, so I thought I may as well get a tiny amount of crypto coins for the first time. Potential complication in terms of verification all those coin exchanges demand - I'm in London, so my address/ID and everything is UK based. <comment><USER2> Yes, it is possible.</comment>


Browserstack hack - <AUTHOR>

https://twitter.com/browserstack
Dear BrowserStack User,
We are unfortunately displeased to announce that BrowserStack will be shutting down. After much consideration on our part, we have realized we were negligent in the services we claimed to offer.  In our terms of service, we state the following:

    [...] after the restoration process is complete, the virtual machines are guaranteed to be tamper-proof.

    [...] The machines themselves are in a secure network, and behind strong firewalls to present the safest environment possible.

    [...] At any given time, you have sole access to a virtual machine. Your testing session cannot be seen or accessed by other users, including BrowserStack administrators. Once you release a virtual machine, it is taken off the grid, and restored to its initial settings. All your data is destroyed in this process.

 Unfortunately, we have blatantly lied. Not only do all of our administrators have access, but so does the general public. We have no firewalls in place, and our password policies are atrocious. All virtual machines launched are open to the public, accessible to anyone with the alpha password "nakula" on port 5901, a password which is stored in plaintext on every VM. As well, our infrastructure uses the same root passwords on all machines, which is also stored in plaintext on every VM launched ("c0stac0ff33").
Given the propensity for cyber criminals to target infrastructure services such as ours, it is almost certain all of your data has been compromised. These passwords take no less than 15 minutes to find for anyone who is looking.
We hope we have not caused you too much trouble, and to our enterprise customers who signed deals contracts based on a fabrication, we are equally sorry.
Sincerely, The BrowserStack Team <comment><USER2> This was posted previously:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8581477](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8581477)

<comment><USER3> The strange thing, is that the original post is not showing up any longer on the first 4 pages of HN. Buried?

<comment><USER4> We buried it earlier because the title ("BrowserStack is Shutting Down?") turned out not to be true. Since the story itself seems to still be of interest, we restored it and changed the title to "BrowserStack was hacked".</comment></comment></comment>


Is React Native Dead? - <AUTHOR> https://blog.logrocket.com/why-keep-faith-react-native/ <comment><USER2> Oh dear. I don't think Airbnb's '2018' post was 'last year' neither does a native developer shop using RN in a brownfield project render the whole ecosystem 'dead'. But then again Betteridge's law of headlines is very wonderful for posts like this.

All of the technical points the author (yes the OP) uses have been available in Flutter and even Xamarin which I don't find the case for RN convincing at all. They are all looking the same except for the language used. Which is why from there, it now depends on the developer language you are most familiar with. C# - Xamarin, JS/TS - RN, Neither? Use Flutter with Dart.

I don't even like React Native, but at least its better than some other alternatives depending on your circumstance (cross-platform, MVPs, greenfield projects, etc) but still no better than a native app if you know the iOS or Android ecosystem in depth.</comment>


English is weirdly different from other languages - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/essays/why-is-english-so-weirdly-different-from-other-languages <comment><USER2> Overdrawn. Nearly every language has certain features (or annoyances) that very few other languages have (except for closely related ones).

There's a "fat tail" of these weird-isms, basically, and English is just another dot on that fat tail. Yes it's a creole (and creoles are kind of weird), but it's not like it's unique that category either.

<comment><USER3> > it's a creole

…is it? It's an example of heavy language contact in a few places, but "creole" seems hyperbolic at best.

<comment><USER4> Well, there's quite a bit of German and Latin together. Doesn't that qualify?

<comment><USER5> No, it's still Germanic. It just got a lot of loan words.

<comment><USER2> A very high proportion of loan words, along with significant differences in grammar, phonetics and orthography. That's why people think of it as more of creole (or hybrid) language.

<comment><USER5> None of these are reasons one should consider it a creole language. It may have been influenced by other languages, but that doesn't make it a creole.

<comment><USER2> You can go find a linguist to debate this if you want. My basic points are simply: (1) the author of the original article wasn't making much of a point, and (2) in regard to what you were saying, where exactly English sits on the spectrum of hybrid languages is a multi-faceted issue -- rather more complex issue than simply the proportion of loan words.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > There is no other language, for example, that is close enough to English > that we can get about half of what people are saying without training and > the rest with only modest effort.

You mean like English as spoken in the American South, vs Australia, vs England? They are each very different from the English I speak, I can mostly understand each, but it takes effort and sometimes misunderstandings happen.

<comment><USER7> English in those different places is still English. There are different accents and dialects, but they're generally considered the same language.

But you wouldn't say Spanish and Portuguese are the same language.

<comment><USER8> Q: What's the difference between a language and a dialect?

A: A language has an army!

Examples: The Chinese government usually just talks about "Chinese". Mandarin is an English word to describe the Chinese language spoken in northern China--- but the Chinese government as political reasons to try to pretend that Cantonese is just a dialect.

Swedish, Danish and Norwegian are mutually intelligible, but each country has a government department dedicated to vetting books published in the language, and claim that what they speak are languages, not dialects.

I think the real answer is that taxonomy is difficult.

<comment><USER9> Mutual intelligibility between Danish and the other two Scandinavian languages has declined over the 20th century. Danish has undergone some striking phonological developments (compare modern pronunciation to that of reference works written before the war) that have made it extremely difficult for Norwegians and, even more, Swedes to understand Danish without prior experience with the language. Nina Grønnum's 2003 paper titled "Why are the Danes so hard to understand?" looks at some of these quirks in detail.

It is interesting to attend international events and watch the Scandinavians in their 60s or 70s speak among each other in their own languages with seemingly no problem, since their generation was pushed to overcome any hurdles to understanding the neighbours, while a group of younger Scandinavians that includes Danes is likely to switch to English because it just feels easier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In case anyone is interested in the history of the English Language, Bill Bryson's The Mother Tongue ([https://www.amazon.com/Mother-Tongue-English-How- That/dp/038...](https://www.amazon.com/Mother-Tongue-English-How- That/dp/0380715430)) is a pretty easy and informative read.

Actually had it set as required reading in high school English of all things.

<comment><USER11> Another recommendation: the History of English Podcast, by Kevin Stroud. [http://historyofenglishpodcast.com/](http://historyofenglishpodcast.com/)

<comment><USER12> I'll add another one: 'The Story of English' from a Canadian bloke here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mj9jJiPwsp0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mj9jJiPwsp0)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This really is why being a stickler for English is really pointless, and maybe even counter-productive to the evolution of the language.

I also don't like it when people write "u" instead of "you", etc, but it's how languages move. If you're going to cling to the past, you may as well write in Ye Olde English -- because eventually that's what you'll sound like.

<comment><USER14> As a non-native, I find "u" closer to the actual pronunciation than "you".

<comment><USER15> The pronunciation is /ju/, so I would think that "you" is a closer rendition. The only reason "u" works is because we happen to pronounce the name of that letter exactly the same: /ju/. So it's being used as a non-traditional digraph.

It's the same pattern as using "8" in examples like "g8 b8 m8 I r8 it 8/8". Here "8" is serving as a non-traditional trigraph /eɪt/.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm finding the writing style of this article very strange. Is the author pulling some trick that other linguists would find amusing?

<comment><USER17> In at least some of his sentences, he tries to mix in words from different origins. From the article:

"To be fair, mongrel vocabularies are hardly uncommon worldwide, but English's hybridity is high on the scale compared with most European languages. The previous sentence, for example, is a riot of words from Old English, Old Norse, French and Latin."

Also, this is not the first time I've heard someone on Hacker News say a literary article was hard to read. Even when they aren't trying to prove a point, people who swim in literature every day tend to sound like the literature that they read. They also sound like their colleagues, as they read a lot of their articles. They write differently than people who majored in one of the sciences, who in turn write differently than business majors --- naturally.

English majors delight in words and are at play when they write --- naturally. They majored in it, didn't they? So their writing will have a wider variety of words, they will inject subtle poetic traits even in prose (metaphor, alliteration, etc.) and they will choose and arrange words based on how it sounds. They remember that even when reading silently, you still hear all the words in your head. So they will try to make it sing. Some do it subtly and well. You don't notice anything but that it was a nice read. Other writers are more heavy-handed and obnoxious about it.

I was an English minor and feel at home reading this kind of stuff. I miss it, actually.

<comment><USER18> > _Also, this is not the first time I 've heard someone on Hacker News say a > literary article was hard to read._

Switching between computer code and natural language is a major context switch.

EDIT: I mean, look at the dumb sentence I just wrote. "Switch [...] switch." (sigh) Need to go back to the damn Vault config files.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The author describes Hebrew as much easier to learn than Russian for a native English speaker. Can anyone comment on this? Is Hebrew particularly simple/rule-based with few exceptions, or is it just that Russian has a lot of complex/one-off rules?

<comment><USER20> Russian is a famously difficult language to speak at a fluent level. You can make yourself understood fairly easily, but the nuances of both the pronunciation and grammar are quite hard to get 100% correct.

In particular, its system of declension for nouns and adjectives (and some other noun-like things) tends to drive non-native speakers batty. Wikipedia gives a good overview:

"Nouns, pronouns, adjectives, demonstratives, most numerals and other particles are declined for two grammatical numbers (singular and plural), three grammatical genders (masculine, feminine and neuter) and six grammatical cases (see below). This gives dozens of spelling combinations for most of the words, which is needed for grammatical agreement within and (often) outside the proposition. Also, there are several paradigms for each declension with numerous irregular forms."

<comment><USER21> Verbs are no joke too. Many students of Russian seem to be bewildered by movement verbs in particular.

<comment><USER19> Could you give an example?

<comment><USER2> I'll leave it to the native speakers to provide some examples. But basically, Russian (along with a few other Eastern Slavic languages) has an entire system of verb organization (this business of "aspect") that has counterparts in only a handful of other languages (outside that family). It's totally pervasive in the language, and way more complex than, say, gendering for nouns or pronouns, or even most verb tense distinctions.

<comment><USER9> > ...that has counterparts in only a handful of other languages (outside that > family)

Obligatory aspect marking is extremely common all around the world. While within the Indo-European family Russian might represent more hassles for the learner than certain other languages, it is not particularly unusual in this respect.

(Within the IE family, incidentally, combined aspect, deixis and path is marked on motion verbs also in Ossetian. I am sure there are some other IE languages that do it too.)

<comment><USER2> _Obligatory aspect marking is extremely common all around the world._

Right, but usually (except in a few corner cases) this is done with separate helping words (e.g. in English: "to cook up" v. "to cook") which are usually pretty uniform and easy to pick up through osmosis. Such that it generally isn't even taught in grammar courses (and even educated English speakers most likely won't even be even consciously aware this is what they're doing).

Meanwhile in Russian it's a much bigger thing -- the markings are much more complex, and every grammar book and every dictionary addresses the subject.

<comment><USER9> > Right, but usually (except in a few corner cases) this is done with separate > helping words (e.g. in English: "to cook up" v. "to cook")

No, there are a large number of languages around the world that mark aspect with affixes, apophony or root suppletism just like Russian. I can only assume your knowledge is limited to a small handful of probably mainly IE languages. I strongly recommend looking at an introduction to aspect whose examples are drawn from a wide range of linguistic typologies such as the Oxford Handbook of Tense and Aspect.

<comment><USER2> Your background knowledge is impressive, but this is way off topic.

Recall I was simply attempting to explain why Russian verbs are sometimes confusing to foreign speakers. My quantification of the distinctiveness of the Russian system may not have been quite correct -- but it was completely ancillary to the broader point I was making.

<comment><USER2> _Your background knowledge is impressive,_

This sounds a bit obnoxious, actually. I should have said something like "Your clarification is very helpful, and your points are perfectly valid."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> So here we have someone with English as their mother tongue speaking about how weird English is. I'd bet native speakers of just about any other language could write a similar article about theirs, too.

<comment><USER23> As a german: No. German is a little oddly rigid due to being more tied to legislation and has a few weird corners like "ei". However in the big picture and on the scale of fucked-up-ness it's not even in the same order of magnitude as english.

You have a german username so i guess you're german too. Try to point out what's as weird in german as having to wonder in english how to even write a word just from the sounds.

<comment><USER22> Good guess, but I'm Dutch :) Let's see what weirdness I can come up with.

A thing that's often noted about German and Dutch is how you can string words together without spaces (kindercarnavalsoptochtvoorbereidingswerkzaamhedenplan).

In Dutch we have the "g" or "sch" sound that almost noone else can pronounce. As you can see, "g" and "ch" are sometimes pronounced the same.

In Dutch it's quite a problem for some people to determine if the perfect tense of a verb should end with "d" or "t".

A common mistake (do mistakes count?) is to use the possessive "hun" (their) in places where you should say "hen" or "ze" (they).

Some articles online remark on the large number of consonants that can be grouped together in a single word (e.g. "angstschreeuw").

There are no clear rules on whether nouns should be preceded by "de" or "het" (the or it), for example you say "het huis" (it house) but "de fiets" (the bike). Confusing these is a hallmark of beginner speech.

Whether a word goes with "de" or "het" also determines how you should spell adjectives ("deze fiets" but "dit huis").

Another article (1) noted that the two parts of a separable verb can be very far apart in a sentence:

"I _want to go_ to the park tomorrow" becomes "Ik _wil_ morgen naar het park _gaan_"

Although I'm not quite sure how strange this is.

(1) [https://novemberfive.co/blog/learning- dutch/](https://novemberfive.co/blog/learning-dutch/)

<comment><USER24> > A thing that's often noted about German and Dutch is how you can string > words together without spaces > (kindercarnavalsoptochtvoorbereidingswerkzaamhedenplan).

You can do that in English, it's just that we choose not to and introduce spaces between the unbound morphemes. Imagine:

        kinder carnavals optocht voorbereidings werkzaamheden plan

If Dutch were written more like English, that's what that word would look like.

The dutch 'g' isn't really all that strange. What's strange is how prevalent the sound is in the language.

English has phonological abominations like 'strengths', so can't really complain about complex consonant clusters. :-)

'de' and 'het' is just a historical thing: gender is just as difficult in other languages that have it, and it just happens that in the Romance languages, the sound changes have mostly conspired to leave pretty decent markers as to the grammatical genders in a lot of cases.

Your 'separable verb' example isn't: Dutch is a V2 language, meaning that there has to be a finite verb in the second slot in a sentence. 'wil' in this case is a finite (auxiliary) verb, where as 'gaan' is an infinitive, and thus goes at the end of the word. This whole thing is a consequence of the Germanic languages once having been verb final, but later the finite verb moved up to where it presently is in most of the Germanic languages. English is now a notable example of a Germanic language (mostly) without this, but you still get remnants of V2 word order here and there. The term 'separable verb' is more apt for the likes of 'aankomen'. English has these too, it's just that the separable bit is typically written afterwards as separate word rather than prefixed as in most other Germanic languages.

<comment><USER15> I would say that English has broadened the V2 transformation into a fully SVO language. While German is still SOV with an exception for V2. My reasoning being that this interpretation results in a smaller rule set than calling it V2 with exceptions for SOV. (But it's not like I would take a hard line on it _has_ to be interpreted as SOV.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> English has many great things:

\- Easy to learn so you can speak like Tarzan and being understood. Pronouns, articles, and verbs, for a basic grammar, is quite easy.

\- Articles have no gender (e.g. "the moon" has an article that is not masculine nor feminine, which is a pain for learning Latin and German languages).

\- Is the most universal language in the world.

And some drawbacks, too:

\- To master English is very difficult, like mastering most advanced languages.

\- Pronunciation vs writing is not 1:1 (e.g. Spanish and German are easier in that regard)

</comment><comment><USER3> > There is no other language, for example, that is close enough to English > that we can get about half of what people are saying without training and > the rest with only modest effort.

…uh, French? English has such a huge amount of French vocabulary that it does not take a huge amount of effort for an English speaker like me to, say, read a Wikipedia page in French, despite my limited knowledge of the language. Pronunciation is a different matter, however, that's true.

> it's us who are odd: almost all European languages belong to one family – > Indo-European – and of all of them, English is the only one that doesn't > assign genders that way.

Might be weird from an Indo-European perspective. But consider this: firstly, it's not like other IE languages' grammatical gender isn't being simplified. Maybe it hasn't been eliminated yet, but English is not a complete oddball here.

Second, lacking grammatical gender is hardly unusual once you go outside Indo- European!

> There is exactly one language on Earth whose present tense requires a > special ending only in the third‑person singular.

English has a small and not very expressive set of verb inflections, okay. It's not alone there. Yes, maybe other languages don't have inflections limited in that specific way, but that kind of specificity is far from unusual.

> English started out as, essentially, a kind of German.

Well… _Germanic_ doesn't really mean German. Old English does look somewhat familiar to a German speaker, though.

> In linguistics circles it's risky to call one language 'easier' than another > one, for there is no single metric by which we can determine objective > rankings. But even if there is no bright line between day and night, we'd > never pretend there's no difference between life at 10am and life at 10pm.

Languages are not "easier" or "harder" in isolation. What matters is how similar a language is to those already know. The author does nothing to refute this and comes up with the bizarre concept that "English is 'easier' than other Germanic languages"… how so? I could make a convincing argument that English is significantly harder than other Germanic languages, for instance.

> normal languages don't dangle prepositions in this way

What's the author's idea of "normal" here? Latin?

> the has no specifically masculine form to match man […] strangeness

Arabic has no masculine form of "the". Is it weird?

> English got hit by a firehose spray of words from yet more languages

As opposed to other languages, which never import possibly duplicative vocabulary en masse? Japanese has a lot of Chinese vocabulary alongside native words, for an easy example. And this is hardly unique to Japan.

> The very idea of etymology being a polyglot smorgasbord, each word a > fascinating story of migration and exchange, seems everyday to us. But the > roots of a great many languages are much duller.

But the roots of a great many _other_ languages are similarly interesting!

\----

This tells you various interesting (and correct!) facts about English's history which a student of historical linguistics could tell you, and maybe that's good, it could get more people interested in the subject! It utterly fails at proving its thesis though. English is a bit of an outlier, but it's not a unique one. Of course, you could argue that no other language has the same combination of weirdnesses, but that's because they're different languages!

<comment><USER7> > _English has such a huge amount of French vocabulary that it does not take a > huge amount of effort for an English speaker like me to, say, read a > Wikipedia page in French, despite my limited knowledge of the language._

I just tested this out. I visited [https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random) and tried to understand the page I got. I ended up on [https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conte_licencieux](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conte_licencieux) and I really have no idea what that page is about. There's a bunch of random words I can understand, but it's not even close to enough to figure out what's going on.

> > _normal languages don't dangle prepositions in this way_

> _What 's the author's idea of "normal" here? Latin?_

The article made that quite clear. On the subject of dangling prepositions, it said there were only 2 other languages besides English that allowed them (an indigenous language in Mexico and one in Siberia).

> _Arabic has no masculine form of "the". Is it weird?_

The context of that sentence is the changes that Norse made to Old English. Prior to the Norse influence, the implication is that English had gendered articles. And more generally, Indo-European languages (of which Arabic is not one) have gendered nouns and articles, except for English.

It looks to me like you're cherry-picking sentences and trying to refute them, but by taking them out of context you're actually just turning them into straw men.

<comment><USER15> > The article made that quite clear. On the subject of dangling prepositions, > it said there were only 2 other languages besides English that allowed them > (an indigenous language in Mexico and one in Siberia).

Which is not the complete story, at all. English "dangling" prepositions are a direct lineage from Germanic separable verbs, which also still exist in at least German and Dutch.

 _Ich fahre jetzt ab._ \-- The "ab" is a preposition, just kind of hanging out at the end of the sentence. It is, in fact, part of the verb, where "ab·fahren" means "to leave". The example given, "Which town do you come from?", could be analyzed as exactly analogous, where the verb is actually "to come from".

<comment><USER7> > _where the verb is actually "to come from"._

I'm not sure what you mean by this, because "to come from" isn't a verb, and you can't simply declare that it is.

Also FWIW, upon re-reading the article, it says Danish actually also has this (more specifically, it said Old Norse allowed for this, "which Danish retains"). So I guess it's 4 languages, not 3. Not that that really makes any difference here, since the whole point is that dangling prepositions are rather exceptional and nearly all languages don't allow them.

<comment><USER15> > I'm not sure what you mean by this, because "to come from" isn't a verb, and > you can't simply declare that it is.

"ab·fahren" is analyzed as a verb in German, even though it is clearly a verb with a detachable prepositional particle which modifies that verb.

Let's look at some English examples:

stand up, stand out, stand in, stand down, stand by, stand back, stand for

These all have drastically different meanings from both each other and from the verb "stand". I don't see any reason why they shouldn't be analyzed as individual verbs, same as the German ones. Do you have an actual reasoning behind not analyzing them in that way?

And this isn't just some strange idea that I, random internet person, am spouting either:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separable_verb#Analogy_to_Engl...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separable_verb#Analogy_to_English)

<comment><USER7> For all of your examples except "stand for", you have a verb and an adverbial particle. "stand for" (and "come from") is a verb and a preposition. So all of your examples except for "stand for" are already something different. For example, with "come from", "where did you come from?" is the same as "from where did you come?", but there's no equivalent with e.g. "stand up". And conversely, you can "screw things up", but you can't "come <object> from".

Anyway, simply put, they aren't verbs. They're "phrasal verbs". Or more specifically, most of them are particle phrasal verbs, and two (stand for and come from) are prepositional phrasal verbs. And you can't just pretend they're the same thing as normal verbs.

The Wikipedia page also says particle phrasal verbs (e.g. "stand in") are in the same general category as the separable verbs of other Germanic languages, the implication here being that prepositional phrasal verbs aren't. And in the link you provided, it explicitly says adverbial particles can be separated from the verb. So the point here is that ab·fahren is analogous to particle phrasal verbs in English, and _not_ to prepositional phrasal verbs. So it's like "stand up", but it's not like "come from".

<comment><USER15> It occurs to me that maybe this more abstract approach I've been taking isn't working. So let me try again, with a concrete example. I'll use "stand for", which you seemed to have taken specific umbrage with. You state that you believe "stand for" is a verbal phrase ("stand") with a prepositional phrase ("for something"). Let's use a concrete sentence:

A rainbow flag stands for LGBT pride.

So, if I'm understanding you correctly, this is how you would analyze this sentence:

(A rainbow flag)subject (stands)verb (for LGBT pride)prepositional

I agree that, with this interpretation, the question form should be:

For what does a rainbow flag stand?

However, I don't agree with that interpretation. Here, the verb is simply "stand", with the prepositional phrase being the beneficiary of the standing. Well, a flag can't stand. And even if it could, I don't see how it could stand in benefit of LGBT pride, considering that it has no intrinsic motive.

I propose the sentence be analyzed as follows:

(A rainbow flag)subject (stands for)verb (LGBT pride)object

In this analysis, "stands for" is a discrete lexical entry, a transitive verb that just happens to be written as two words. A flag can't "stand", but it can "stand for". And since it's now a transitive verb with a direct object, it's perfectly acceptable to ask:

What does a rainbow flag (stand for)?

Because that is how you ask for the direct object of a verb. It's exactly the same construction as:

What does a lion (eat)?

And all this is directly in line with German prefixed verbs -- both separable and inseparable -- where the prefixed verbs are analyzed as distinct verbs from their unprefixed forms. And I doubt you would argue against "understand" being a different verb than "stand", which is an example of an English inseparable verb. So why the strong stance against the same type of analysis for English separated verbs?

<comment><USER7> You keep trying to say "what if we pretend that preopositional phrasal verbs are just regular verbs, then we can declare that they're the same as Germanic separable verbs". But the whole point is _they 're not the same thing_. That's not how they're categorized.

<comment><USER15> How do you think they were categorized and named in the first place? They were named by someone studying the language, examining how it works, and making a decision. Well, I'm studying the language, examining how this construct works, and making a decision.

Did you know that there are some people that classify German as an SOV language? It actually makes a lot of sense in analysis; it drastically simplifies the otherwise complex rules around German verb placement. However, it takes the ability to step aside for a moment. To look at the _common_ case (V2) and call it an exception.

Well, reformulating "stand for" as a transitive verb _also_ simplifies the rules. It does even more; it takes a very common construction ("dangling preposition") and not only explains it, but makes it perfectly grammatical.

There's been a huge movement in linguistics away from what has been called "prescriptivism" towards "descriptivism". That is, that the _users_ of a language are the ones who determine what is correct, and the best a linguist can do is take those constructs and describe them. Your approach to my comments so far has been extremely prescriptivist; that this construct has these words and therefore should be formed that way. And you do this in light of the fact that these types of constructions are extremely common and perfectly well understood.

So I ask you, is grammar meant to be a _description_ of the way a language works, or is it meant to be a _prescription_ of the way a language is supposed to work? Because all you've given me is the latter, while I'm attempting to show you the former. And if you believe the latter, then I already know that we will not come to terms because we are at philosophical odds with each other.

<comment><USER7> > _Your approach to my comments so far has been extremely prescriptivist_

Not at all correct. We're not talking about the correct way to form sentences. If I was saying "it's incorrect to have a dangling preposition" then I would be prescriptivist. But I'm not. What I am doing is telling you that you cannot simply reclassify one element of grammar as something else in order to pretend that there's no difference. Because there _absolutely is_ a difference between prepositional phrasal verbs and particle phrasal verbs, both in how they're defined and how they're used. "stand up" and "stand for" are _grammatically different_ , and pretending they're the same is simply wrong.

I don't understand why you keep ignoring this, since I've said it several times. And your attempt to paint this as prescriptivism vs descriptivism is a straw man.

<comment><USER15> That's not what a strawman is. I never said that such a view was _wrong_ ; I said that it was a philosophical point over which we would not be able to agree. Note that I was not directing the argument to something I could knock down; I was trying to identify a potentially terminal issue and "agree to disagree".

I was also communicating my view of what was happening. And I'm glad I did, because you are correct and it was a mistaken view. You never implied "dangling prepositions" as a problem; that was something I had in my head which you hadn't said.

In the end, I think we are stuck in a hole that Wikipedia actually summarizes quite nicely, so I'll just quote it here. The topic is the use of the terminology "phrasal verb", emphasis is all original:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrasal_verb#Some_notes_on_ter...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrasal_verb#Some_notes_on_terminology)

"The value of this choice and its alternatives (including _separable verb_ for Germanic languages) is debatable. In origin the concept is based on translation linguistics; as many single-word English and Latinate words are translatable by a phrasal verb complex in English, therefore the logic is that the phrasal verb complex must be a complete semantic unit in itself. One should consider in this regard that the actual term _phrasal verb_ suggests that such constructions should form phrases. In most cases however, they clearly do _not_ form phrases. Hence the very term _phrasal verb_ is misleading and a source of confusion, which has motivated some to reject the term outright."

I think I'm sitting squarely in the latter camp described above. My analysis is that these are not phrasal at all, and so I think that's where this debate is actually sitting. (And conveniently, that quote also directly indicates Germanic separable verbs as alternative terminology.)

So, to summarize, I think this is one of those fine times (that seems to happen so often on the Internet) where we saw some sort of disagreement, but were really agreeing on everything but terminology.

<comment><USER7> It's a straw man because it wasn't actually my argument at all. You declared my argument to be something it wasn't, then said you disagree with the straw argument (which is another way to say you think it's wrong).

That said, the rest of your comment is quite reasonable and I'm content to let this be. I'm not entirely convinced that the only thing we disagree on is terminology, but it's certainly possible, and I don't think we need to waste any more air in figuring that out.

<comment><USER15> > It's a straw man because it wasn't actually my argument at all.

And I admitted as much.

I'm allowed to disagree with a certain philosophy or approach, while at the same time not discrediting it as an alternative approach nor as a basis for argument. And if I'm not attempting to discredit an argument, but rather saying that I simply don't think we will agree on an issue, then I'm not setting up a strawman.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> When I started learning Chinese I was like: Huh, this is basically English with a different vocabulary.

May it be that languages with a lot on non-native speakers (I assume Han was imposed on most of it speakers over the course of history, but I may be wrong) degrade to some kind of gramatically "neutral" pidgin?

<comment><USER15> In that case it's because they are both relatively analytic languages.

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

<comment><USER26> That's the obvious part of it. One would except laguage spoken by non-native speakers to lose most of the complexity in inflection. But what about, for instance, how the same word can be used as distinct lexical categories. The extreme case of the phenomenon is to use proper name as a verb: Houdini yourself out of a situation. In Chinese I've seen a text describing how killers of king Wu were going to "wu" his minister.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The history described in this article is fascinating, but it does nothing to prove the article's thesis that English is uniquely "not normal".

All it does is describe how it's different, principally, from continental languages in the German and Latin families. Which, you know, you might expect when it comes from a big island off the coast.

Only English has spelling bees? In Chinese you have to memorize thousands of characters -- much, much more work. English has no genders and less present- tense conjugations? Again, Chinese has no genders and _no_ conjugations. English uses a weird word "do"? Chinese has a weird word "le".

I'm only using Chinese as an example because I took a few semesters of it in college... but the idea that English is somehow an "weird" outlier in the world of languages doesn't seem to have a shred of supporting evidence from this particular article.

<comment><USER28> This article struck me as ignorant enough that I gave up before it got to the history, which may have been interesting. Every language has things unique about it, otherwise it wouldn't be considered a different language. Picking a couple from English (some of which are really arbitrary, others not even true) proves nothing.

Yes, English has some unique features. But rather than every English speaker going around thinking their language is some massive exception, I'd like people to understand that English has been subject to essentially the same forces as every other language, and makes plenty of sense given the history of Britain. But I think many of us anglophones want to hold on to a sense of uniqueness rather than acknowledge our commonality with the rest of humanity.

<comment><USER29> Indeed. If there was a language that had nothing unique in it, then it would be unique for the mere fact of not having anything unique in it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> awinter-py yeah, spelling is way harder than learning ten thousand pictograms in CJK languages

<comment><USER30> I disagree. I think learning 10,000 pictograms is much harder than learning English spelling. Even just learning the 2000 needed for reading Japanese or 3000 to 4000 needed for Chinese is harder. Of course most Han pictograms are composed of a few hundred "letters" (e.g. 能 is made up of a 厶, a 月, and two 匕s) but the correspondence between a "spelt" pictogram to the spoken word or meaning in Chinese or Japanese is far more variable than between the spelling of an English word and its pronunciation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Well, no shit. What we today call English is a creole that emerged out of trade pidgins used by Angles, Saxons, and Normans to communicate. It doesn't look like other languages for the same reason Garnet looks like neither Ruby nor Sapphire.</comment>


The Roger Williams Code: How scholars decrypted a secret language (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/life/history/2012/12/the_roger_williams_code_how_a_team_of_scholars_discovered_the_theologian.single.html

<comment><USER2> I can't believe I never thought of typing f🚢 instead of friendship before reading this.</comment>


Ask HN: Why doesn't job entries in HN have discussion enabled? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I agree - it should be fair game to discuss the interviews at that company and their hiring practices in their job posting threads.

</comment><comment><USER3> I find those posts more like Ads within the site. They all seem to be Y Combinator sponsored jobs. It's in no way different than how twitter, facebook and instagram post ads in between content.

</comment><comment><USER4> Because the purpose of the job listings (which are for YC companies) is to spark applications to the listed job, not discussion.

<comment><USER5> Those two don't seem to be mutually exclusive goals.

As far as the company posting the listing is concerned, the bad outcomes are (a) if the candidate they would otherwise hire won't apply because of the content of the attached discussion, and (b) if candidates that they aren't interested in hiring apply because of the attached discussion.

I think, since HN seems to exist mostly for discussions about how awful open office plans are, and since many of the company posting listings have open office plans, then the discussion will usually be negative, but that seems more likely to cause the opposite of (b) (that is, less unwanted candidates) than it will cause (a), since people who are 'a good fit' for the job would be less likely to be dissuaded by the sort of baseline negativity that exists in most of the comment sections on this site than people who aren't qualified or aren't interested in working for that company specifically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Many times I want to ask questions about the job details, and I'd like to see this feature as well.

I always suspected it was to prevent people from talking about embarrassing things about the company. People are very good finding faults and even making innocent things look evil. Easier to avoid all that by simply disabling comments.

</comment><comment><USER7> Having interviewed with one of the companies currently listed on the jobs board, I could easily see how "having a discussion related to job placement at the company" could lead to negative feedback, and dissuade potential applicants.</comment>


Palo Alto pastor resigns after tweets about city: 'An elitist shit den of hate' - <AUTHOR> https://m.sfgate.com/local/article/palo-alto-pastor-tweets-gregory-stevens-baptist-12928428.php <comment> a-dub It's actually a pretty fascinating read...

[https://www.cityofpaloalto.org/civicax/filebank/documents/65...](https://www.cityofpaloalto.org/civicax/filebank/documents/65063)

Apparently some NIMBYs in Palo Alto got upset because there are too many cars/buses picking up/dropping off kids to sing at a church or something, so it's gone to a fight with the city council.

The complainants appear to be of the trophy-wife variety with lots of resources and time on their hands, so they did some digging around on the Internet. Amazingly, one of the NIMBYs discovered that one of the young pastors at the church appears to be (a: homosexual, b: completely disgruntled and c: vocal on twitter).

Since the army of trophy wives aren't particularly bright, they add this to their complaint packet which ends up in public record, of course the press picks up on it because some of the tweets are funny and in effect the whole thing will likely cause more damage to their home values by highlighting to the world what an "elitist shit den of hate" Palo Alto is than any busloads full of kids in the afternoons ever could...

<comment><USER2> Another choice bit: one of them wants to stop "mental health professionals" from using the church (presumably to provide services to the community), because its allegedly a zoning violation. How petty is that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> His frustration is justified. He's calling out the massive hypocrisy of claiming to be liberal and about "social justice" while doing everything possible to exclude people from housing even to the point of forbidding a church from housing people.

This is a problem across the state. Here in SoCal they talk about wanting to be a sanctuary city/state while also opposing any new construction or any other measure to address housing. I suppose all these sanctuary seekers will live up unicorn butts. I don't have a problem with immigrants but we must build housing to meet demand.

<comment><USER4> I think there are two issues they have, one of which I agree with:

1) We should support and rely upon state assistance, not charity.

2) Religious organizations present an inherent level of risk, have a special tax status and must be constrained.

<comment><USER3> These are valid points in isolation, but they ignore the meta problem which is that policies backed by communities all over California have created an unprecedented housing affordability crisis. Without this crisis this just wouldn't be happening at all.

I think it is deeply and systematically hypocritical to claim to be "liberal" and for "social justice" while supporting a restriction of housing availability that amounts to stealth red-lining.

<comment><USER4> I agree. Many who don the mantle of being "liberal" are anything but.

A small percentage of people have genuine ideological commitments, but most are driven by self-interest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Stevens said. "If the same energies used to organize neighbors around minor > parking issues, young girls choirs, and 'nasty tweets' were honed to fight > actual injustices, Palo Alto would be a very different city. Palo Alto needs > more action, less lip service."

That seems accurate.

<comment><USER6> Probably so, but fellow pastors should have counseled him that if he spent as much energy at prayer as he did tweeting at "a small group of progressive ministers and Leftist political activists to whom my rants were geared" (haha wut? that's not how online works) he would never have had these difficulties.

<comment><USER7> Calling 'Christians' out for being hypocrites is a thing that all good clergy has done since before there were Christians.

<comment><USER6> Yeah that would have been great if he had communicated that to his congregation directly. Instead he was badmouthing them to his buddies. Except he was doing it online, where it was guaranteed to bite him in the ass eventually.

Apparently HN isn't big on the power of prayer, but even if it doesn't change the universe it can still improve our thinking. All of this is obvious with even a little reflection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yeah, god forbid a pastor speak some truth.

</comment><comment><USER9> Why is this news? I guess I'm not seeing what's interesting about the story.

The broader discussion about culture and justice is interesting. A associate community organizer (it sounds like that's the kind of pastoring he's into) putting his foot in his mouth? Not as much.

<comment><USER10> My guess would be because Palo Alto's right next to Stanford and an important part of Silicon Valley, esp since Palantir HQ is in Palo Alto.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> There is a bug in human beings, and this is universal. Our expectations from the rest of society and others on ethical and moral issues are gigantic but we just can't give.

We 'empathize', we relate, we cry about suffering in the movies and in the arts, we root for the victimized, but on a day to day basis it all breaks down and we simply do not want to make any sacrifice to make a more humane society come true.

The worse we become the more shrill and desperate our posturing, to try to convince others, but maybe ourselves.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's a shame he allowed his language to overshadow the truths he spake. He left himself open to the "think of the children" gambit.

</comment><comment><USER13> Everything he said was true. Residents love having a few extremely desperate, homeless people living in old vans around to look down upon, sneer at and change sides of the street while walking on the sidewalk. It's not like any of the residents would ever talk to, much less ever help, anyone whom were on the street... that would require actual interaction with the "little" people. If anything, residents would find passive-aggressive ways to harass the homeless like leave them cleaning supplies, bags or soap. Oh and gotta love the teenagers and elderly of Palo Alto whom feel entitled to directly harass the homeless people at all hours of the day or night... because after all, what would the police do? Nothing but arrest the homeless for being poor.

PS: I'm curious what Chuck Jagoda will say about this.

</comment><comment><USER14> Imagine how pissed he'd be if he lived in Birmingham: [https://twitter.com/WoodfinForBham/status/996412005199249408](https://twitter.com/WoodfinForBham/status/996412005199249408)

</comment><comment><USER15> "Palo Alto is a ghetto of wealth, power, and elitist liberalism by proxy, meaning that many community members claim to want to fight for social justice issues, but that desire doesn't translate into action,"

Seems like a smaller version of the brand of liberalism that emanates from Hollywood / media world.</comment>


Stress Mess: 3 in 5 Millennials Say Life More Stressful Now Than Ever Before - <AUTHOR> https://www.studyfinds.org/survey-millennials-life-more-stressful-than-ever-before/ <comment><USER2> > From slow WiFi to broken phone screens to zero "likes" on social media, > everyday stressors are causing young adults to have struggles falling asleep > 138 nights each year, researchers say.

I'm sorry, but I'm not reading past that lead. Even if the main story text goes past that, this attitude of belittlement shows how little respect the author shows towards me, the 1% percent of people that click past the headline.

Not global warming? Not the "bullshit jobs" crisis? Not the academic crisis of worthless degrees?

No, it must be the fact that my Instagram posts only get 13 likes.

Thanks, but no thanks.

<comment><USER3> And not the fact getting really sick can bankrupt me or the fact I want to buy a house before I'm 35 but seems impossible in the circle of debt that we get before we're even 21?!

Most Millennials are almost 30...slow WiFi or social media is the least of our worries.

<comment><USER2> I have to admit that living in Europe, the only worry I share with you is the real estate prices.

I recently tried to read a book about depression in Millennials and common treatment options, but had to put it down when it became apparent that I shared none of the very basic fears.

I am much more impacted by the (in my mind) really strong lack of drive to achieve anything my generation is experiencing. Amongst my age group, I know basically two groups - those that have their 2 kids, dog and mortgage to pay off forever, or those actually trying to find some purpose in their work.

IMO, there is a real lack of a healthy middle ground.

<comment><USER4> "purpose in their work" is something HR tells you to pay you less. You were not supposed to take it as a goal.

<comment><USER2> So all doctors, nurses, therapists, councilors, teachers, etc. just missed the bus on becoming accountants?

They could earn a lot more that way, you're right.

/s.

<comment><USER4> Good examples as several of those (nurses, teachers) are quite underpaid in many countries.

Seems to me quite a bit reductive that your purpose can even be described by a profession, let alone embracing that description.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I DO believe millenials are incredibly stressed. I don't believe it has anything to do with "washing dishes," (remember millenials are about 30 years old).

What I do see them stressed about:

1\. >$100K college+car loan and no retirement at age 30

2\. Getting so emotional about politics they can't let go

3\. Having a hard time making friends

4\. Feeling like their family is cold/uncompromising

5\. Having little sense of meaning, little to believe in

</comment><comment><USER6> A broken screen more stressful than losing a wallet? I'm pretty sure that has to do with 1/5 millennials being broke and having nothing of value in that wallet.

Maybe they just think these things are the stressors.

<comment><USER7> I have some cards in my wallet that can be blocked, a few of them might costs $5 to replace. A screen repair would cost almost $300

Every time I take out my phone, there is a little voice reminding me not to drop my phone. I never really thought about it, but I can see how that can be a "death by a thousand needles" thing in terms of stress.

<comment><USER8> I guess the study is US-centric, but most Germans I know carry id and driver's license, so that's 100 EUR to replace already, plus getting appointments for reissue and waiting. That can be a lot worse than the phone, because that's in addition to your cash (10-100 EUR on average I'd say) and the fees for bank and credit cards.

But yeah, if I only had to call a number and get one credit card reissued I wouldn't care either :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was gonna stress over my wifi Until I got high I was gonna get up and get some more likes But then I got high My phone screen is still cracked and I know why (why man?) 'Cause I got high Because I got high Because I got high

Funny to see how the canabis companies are emulating the big pharma and creating issues that can be naturally be addressed by using their product... restless leg syndrome anyone

</comment><comment><USER10> Would love to see that top 20 list of past generations as well.

<comment><USER11> Everyone thinks that the time they are living in is the most important, stressful, crucial ever. At least those who haven't gone through a war or disaster thinks this way.

<comment><AUTHOR> My view too, everyone whines about the "new generation." While it's true that living standards have increased (along with the stresses to keep it,) old people are having it much better too compared to their parents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Here are the top 20 stressful scenarios reported by millennials: ... Washing > dishes

... oh no.

</comment><comment><USER13> Seems like a little bit much. I mean we have it rough, but it's not like we have to worry about famine or total war.

<comment><USER5> I think this is a fallacy though. I don't think stress (or emotions in general) are "rational."

It doesn't matter if your life is easy by standard X or Y, that doesn't mean you don't feel really strong negative feelings about it.

Also, vice-versa. Some of the most fulfilling parts of my life were when it was in total chaos, I had no savings, I had no plan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Well, that site goes on my blacklist...

</comment><comment><USER15> Stop using the internet and read some books. Move out of the city, and live somewhere quiet where life is slower. Don't waste your money on a smartphone.

</comment><comment><USER16> _" In fact, the survey of 2,000 American millennials, commissioned by CBD oil company Endoca, reveals that one-third of millennials believe their lives are more stressful than the average person's life."_

A third of respondents felt their life is more stressful than average? That's almost an unreasonably reasonable result from a survey like that. Didn't 80% of car drivers believe themselves to be above average drivers?</comment>


AI technologies that could make chatbots intelligent - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/three-ai-technologies-that-could-make-chatbots-intelligent-10f8c6e8b4b0 <comment><USER2> The project seems interesting. Wonder if the modules could have plugins so the decision like which semantic parse is configurable?</comment>


Microsoft Has Been Watching, and It Says You're Getting Used to Windows 8 - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/news/508546/microsoft-has-been-watching-and-it-says-youre-getting-used-to-windows-8/ <comment><USER2> The users adaptation to a new interface is not the issue. The interface can be fixed if necessary. Removing people freedoms is importand not that easy fixable.</comment>


Some Surprises in the 2018 DoE Budget for Supercomputing - <AUTHOR> https://www.nextplatform.com/2017/05/23/surprises-2018-doe-budget-supercomputing/ <comment><USER2> Next-gen Intel part?

<comment><AUTHOR> The article speculates about possible Phi/Nervana hybrids.</comment></comment>


The survival of filoviruses in liquids and solid substrates (2010) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1111/j.1365-2672.2010.04778.x/asset/j.1365-2672.2010.04778.x.pdf?v=1&t=i0zca0zk&s=53088f66e93770545aa22e10843fe9bcc6bbf12c

<comment><USER2> Quoting from the discussion section of this paper:

"Such data, obtained from experimental animal models, combined with the aerosol decay rates determined in this study, would suggest that filovirus, at infectious levels, may remain a potential aerosol threat for at least one and a half hours. Epidemiological evidence, however, would suggest that during outbreaks, filoviruses are rarely transmitted by the airborne route."

A bit disconcerting.

Let's hope that the "epidemiological" evidence is again borne out.

</comment><comment><USER3> HTML version: [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2672.2010....](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2672.2010.04778.x/full)

In case it's not clear why this is on HN's front page, there are simultaneous outbreaks of Ebola and Marburg in Africa right now; this paper discusses their ability to live on surfaces, something not widely understood in the current Ebola outbreak but with huge implications.

<comment><USER4> Has the original link been censored? Or did the submitter have special access and not realize it?

Even the abstract is probably something TLAs don't want widely disseminated given the easy access to these viruses that is possible right now. They're poor choices for weapons (you can't stop em), but there are crazy people out there.

<comment><USER5> Ignorance is not what protects humanity from those crazy people. Overwhelmingly, we are kept safe by the moral sense of people. No amount of laws or control has ever proven effective at preventing crazy people from wreaking havoc on large numbers of people. There simply is no one out there who is waiting to find a virus that can be easily spread and have fatal effects who is both capable of enacting such a plan or able to persuade those who are capable to do so. The closest we have is in our militaries, who plan these things and convince themselves of bogeymen hiding around every corner, but even they often find themselves stopped by the moral sense of individuals. We should have been annihilated in a large nuclear war in the 1980s a couple times if not for the individual soldiers simply being unwilling to follow protocol and be responsible for the deaths of millions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Am I reading this correctly in that higher temperatures reduced survivability? Anyone in a position to ease my mind about dust inside computer equipment from isolation wards?

<comment><USER7> I haven't checked this paper, but what I've read independently, perhaps based on it, is that's true.

In general just knowing it's an enveloped virus tells you a lot about its ability to survive in the environment. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_envelope](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_envelope) which points out that the lipid bilayer stolen from the host cell " _is relatively sensitive to desiccation, heat, and detergents, therefore these viruses are easier to sterilize than non-enveloped viruses, have limited survival outside host environments, and typically must transfer directly from host to host._ " And this isn't something that's going to change with mutations.

This is why we aren't freaking out more by the no protection pressure washing of the index patient's vomit outside his apartment. It was sufficiently delayed that the heat and UV from the sun almost certainly killed all the Ebola viri in it. Of course that delay wasn't so good....</comment></comment>


Hardened Gentoo - <AUTHOR> https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Hardened_Gentoo/en <comment><USER2> Should developers use Gentoo? I've used various different operating systems in the past but have never given Gentoo a try before. I've heard most of the complains about compilation are overstated (binary packages, optimizations, etc) but would love to hear more from someone using it on HN.</comment>


Pogue reviews MacBook and talks to Steve Jobs about death of FireWire - <AUTHOR> http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/30/the-macbook-makeover/ <comment><USER2> Ah, target disk mode, I'll miss thee.</comment>


Windows 7 cuts out parts of mp3s? - <AUTHOR> http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=715550 <comment><USER2> In MS's defense, it _was_ leaked; the build wasn't supposed to be public.

Not that it makes a difference anymore - it leaked with this bug (& many others, most likely, just somewhat more minor) - and can't be unleaked.</comment>


Trump announces 'peace deal' between Bahrain and Israel - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-54124996 <comment><USER2> Not even counting the unprecedented attempt with North Korea, it's the third he has done. Here they are:

      1. Kosovo and Serbia
      2. Israel and UAE
      3. Israel and Bahrain

There have been multiple nominations for that peace prize, but the committee will do anything to avoid awarding it.

Oh, LOL... Over at _The Atlantic_ , staff writer Graeme Wood is now arguing to end the Nobel Peace Price because of this awkward development.</comment>


The ultimate email server for Windows?  This is it. - <AUTHOR> http://www.argosoft.com

<comment><USER2> ...and the server storage that can help out while cutting storage costs to a half is <http://moolave.tk></comment>


Google Analytics Premium vs. Standard - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/analytics/premium/features.html

<comment><USER2> For a flat annual fee of $150,000.

Contact sales for more information.</comment>