Reminder: 72 hours left to export feed list OPML from Google Reader - <AUTHOR>

On 1 July, Google Reader will shut down.
It is unknown if you will be able to export your OPML feed list after this date.
Save your feed subscriptions now. <comment> antonio-R And still i can't import my reader feeds to feedly, despite they are public or not... Better start adding them one by one.

</comment><comment><USER2> I guess that's why Feedly is down...</comment>


A Router That Talks OpenVPN, IPsec and WireGuard - <AUTHOR> https://www.pcwrt.com/2020/01/a-router-that-talks-three-vpn-protocols/ <comment><USER2> Trying out a OpenVPN recently I haven't been able to get it to perform at or over gigabit speeds, has anyone had different results? It seems like it's days are numbered with wire guard on the horizon.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> OpenVPN has high demand on CPU power, and multiple cores don't help. Performance on routers is especially bad.</comment>


More Kids Want to Be YouTubers Than Astronauts Because Obviously - <AUTHOR> https://ffwd.medium.com/more-kids-want-to-be-youtubers-than-astronauts-because-obviously-390fc0957053 <comment><USER2> This article makes a number of suppositions without really critically exploring those claims. Some questions I have after reading this:

1\. How does this compare to historical trends in the US? Did more kids in the 80s want to be rock stars or Hollywood actors, for example.

2\. How is the author establishing a relationship between occupational earnings and the ambition of young people? Do we know that this is even a significant factor or could there be other motivations (popular culture placing more value on Internet celebrities than scientists, for example).

3\. What other variance is at play in the country data? You can't rule out differences in the US and Chinese education systems, for example. There are many sociological and technological factors you need to parse here.

4\. How much does this even matter? "What do you want to be when you grow up" is a question most of us have been asked at some point but how many of us stuck to those dreams? Further, there may be an argument for having a diversity of skills and experiences that is often limited by rigid educational and career paths. Some of the best software developers I have worked with have been musicians and artists.

All that said, I think it would be great if becoming an astronaut had the same or more appeal to young people as social media fame. I'll also say that it's never too late (look at Richard Garriott who took a break from designing video games to become a citizen astronaut). One of my life goals is to go to space before I die and I think it's a real possibility.

<comment><USER3> > 4\. How much does this even matter?

It could matter a lot of a kid is motivated enough. They could start _now_ and at the very least end up developing skills like video editing, publishing, maybe even coding or a deeper understanding of computing.

It might develop an entrepreneurial spirit which could be a real difference maker in their life vs. the path towards astronaut or lawyer or doctor (careers which take a lot of schooling).

If you compare the dream of becoming a YouTuber to rockstar or sports athlete, I can see the path to YouTuber having more transferable skills come out of it than the other paths even if they never achieve the dream.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Being around kids, I can tell you this has nothing to do with earnings. YouTube 'stars' are seen as celebrities for these children. It's not uncommon for a child to want to be a celebrity. That, coupled with the fact that society at large no longer idolizes astronauts - or even speak much about them, sadly.

<comment><USER5> That seems true for all the occupations in this list except "teacher", which in the US is a thankless, disrespected, and underpaid occupation.

<comment><USER6> you can thank the teacher's union for that bit of gem

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> While I'm not enthusiastic about YouTuber as a career choice, Astronaut nowadays is a singularly poor career ambition:

* Extremely high qualifications needed

* Minuscule chance of making it through the selection process

* Job is endless dealing with bureaucracy and the ever changing whims of governments, or, in the private sector, of narcissistic plutocrats.

* At best, you go on a handful of space missions in your entire career.

* And the work you get to perform on those missions is roughly the scientific equivalent of lighting a fart in space.

</comment><comment><USER7> Same topic from a week ago

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20459075](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20459075)

[https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/07/american-kids- would-...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/07/american-kids-would-much- rather-be-youtubers-than-astronauts/)

</comment><comment><USER8> To be honest a kid who wants to be a YouTube star has a much higher chance of success at their dream than a kid who wants to be an astronaut.

<comment><USER9> Arguably, the skills acquired while working towards becoming an astronaut are much more valuable than the ones you could as a YouTuber. Video and audio editing might come in handy, but you will likely not end up getting a job.

<comment><USER10> Video and audio editing are a small part of being a YouTuber

Creating content for millions of viewers, having the pulse of what a large audience wants, the right personality, etc go much farther

And I think those skills can translate over to our connected world

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm hoping one day we can be done with this money obsession. To live in the Star Trek Next Generation universe would be a dream come true.

<comment><USER12> be the change you want to see.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Would you rather be a youtuber than an astronaut? I know I would. If you succeed you are pretty much being paid an insane amount to be mediocre at your passion.

Regardless of your age, we are a selfish society, and from a selfish perspective, youtuber is the obvious choice.

</comment><comment><USER14> In a world where money means everything such a paradigm shift is self explanatory.

<comment><USER15> Money doesn't even figure in my opinion. When was the last time that astronauts were on TV? A major broadcast? When's the next planned mission that people care about? Astronaut is possibly the most elite and difficult to obtain profession in the world but most of that elite selected minority doesn't even make it into space. Over most of my life you couldn't even dream of being an astronaut because the position was full and they weren't holding candidate trials. They just aren't relevant in most kids lives except as a vague abstract concept on the periphery.</comment></comment>


Using Zig to Provide Stack Traces on Kernel Panic for a Bare Bones OS - <AUTHOR> https://andrewkelley.me/post/zig-stack-traces-kernel-panic-bare-bones-os.html <comment><USER2> The more I see of the Zig language, the more I grow to appreciate its beautiful design! Such a perfect blend (IMO; obviously personal preference will vary) of modern language features that encourage inherent reliability and safety of code, with low-level systems programming -- all without the language becoming too complicated or difficult to code productively in.

I'm really looking forward to tinkering around in Zig, for my next hobby project(s).

P.S. In fact, I'm going to 'put my money where my mouth is' and contribute via Patreon[1]. Zig is _incredibly high quality and well-designed_ , despite being achieved from the spare time of so few; it deserves better funding.

[1] [https://www.patreon.com/andrewrk](https://www.patreon.com/andrewrk)

<comment><USER3> > modern language features that encourage inherent reliability and safety of > code

It's still missing linear/affine types, no? To me that's inexcusable given the current offering.

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't say it's inexcusable, but I'm definitely trying to avoid any systems language that has implicit null, and allows for data races and de- referencing uninitialized memory from safe code. So that only really leaves ATS and Rust, and rules out Nim, D, Zig, Jai... (for me at least).

Zig certainly has some cool ideas - I definitely think that we should be making the phase distinction more flexible. I do wish however that its compile time function evaluation was built on a firmer foundation, ie. using dependent types.

<comment><USER5> Please don't spread misinformation. Zig does not have implicit null.

Also depending on how you define "dependent types" \- there are a few competing definitions - Zig has them.

<comment><USER3> > Also depending on how you define "dependent types" \- there are a few > competing definitions - Zig has them.

How is it ambiguous? Dependent type systems/algorithms can be weaker than desired, but there's no way you can say Zig has dependent types.

<comment><USER6> I think Andy refers to this [1].

For example you can do:

      const std = @import("std");

      fn Int(comptime value: i32) type {
          return struct {
              pub fn value() i32 {
                  return value;
              }
          };
      }

      pub fn main() anyerror!void {
          const int3 = Int(3);
          const int4 = Int(4);

          std.debug.warn("Types: {} {}\n", @typeName(int3),   @typeName(int4));
          std.debug.warn("Sum: {}\n", int3.value() + int4.value());
      }

Output being:

      Types: Int(3) Int(4)
      Sum: 7

Edit: The compiler does the right thing:

[2] [https://godbolt.org/z/eLWeU2](https://godbolt.org/z/eLWeU2)

[1] [https://ziglang.org/documentation/master/#Generic-Data- Struc...](https://ziglang.org/documentation/master/#Generic-Data-Structures)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I _really_ like the look of Zig syntax so far. I had wanted to use this year's Advent of Code contest as an opportunity to learn some Zig, but I had trouble getting the compiler compiled and working.

I see now that binaries are available (maybe they always were?)--maybe it's time to put Zig to the test on these toy problems.

</comment><comment><USER8> Does anyone know the pros/cons of zig vs nim?

<comment><USER9> Well, for one thing, zig apparently has no built-in memory allocator?

<comment><USER10> Kinda, Zig has a small selection of allocators in the standard library, but it would be true to say that it has no "default" allocator. Idiomatic Zig code that requires allocation accepts the allocator interface as a parameter, so that the programmer is free to choose whatever implementation suits their needs.

<comment><USER6> Worth mentioning that one allocator in the std-library is wrapping malloc.

Here some more details:

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLJ_7lpBhys](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLJ_7lpBhys)

<comment><USER8> Thanks all</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are some successful products that had a disappointing Show HN? - <AUTHOR> Anything from low traffic and upvotes to a weak product. <comment><USER2> Not HN, but still epic:

        No wireless. Less apace than a nomad. Lame.

[http://slashdot.org/story/21026](http://slashdot.org/story/21026)

</comment><comment><USER3> Not on HN, but I remember the initial demo of imgur being torn to bits on reddit. And when Joel Spolsky announced his idea that would eventually turn into StackOverflow, it was derided as useless because the work already had enough question/answer sites.

<comment><USER4> Found this page:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/71i4v/stack_ov...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/71i4v/stack_overflow_launched_into_public/)

Much people don't like experts exchange and found this site much better.

<comment><USER5> My favourite comment (on _Reddit_ ): The fact that Joel Spolsky can jump in and arbitrarily add and remove to what a person wrote is a little unsettling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Dropbox was criticized when it first came up on Show HN. People said that they could create their own and that nobody would adopt installing something.

You can view the original post here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863)

Edit: it only had 71 comments and 111 points, and if I'm not mistaken, that's not much by today's standards.

<comment><USER7> people were still very positive about it

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I released MyPost ([https://mypost.io](https://mypost.io)) which allows anyone to create beautiful simple web pages in minutes with just a few clicks. Completely free with no registration required.

I didn't put "SHOW HN" in the title as I was fairly new to Hacker News. It also didn't do much to gain many comments on Hacker News, but as far as gaining attraction from around the world.. it managed to gain a huge amount of attention in Russia and other parts of the world. It probably has so far received over 100,000 visitors in about a year with no advertising on my part. I would love to monetize it eventually, but for now, it was definitely a nice project that helped me learn a lot about PHP and MySQL.

</comment><comment><USER9> Sleepio appear to be doing pretty well despite a fairly average Show HN - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4504639](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4504639)

Pixelapse did reasonably well and ended up being acquired by Dropbox (not necessarily suggesting that's a success) - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3572755](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3572755)

My personal favourite is Mondo (or Monzo as they are now called). Their founder/CEO posted here when they launched and the thread got very little attention. These days they are one of the most respected startups in London and are on the cusp of enormous success - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9638345](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9638345)

</comment><comment><USER10> Well, maybe if their show HN got low amount/no votes nobody saw it. So it would be impossible to name it.

</comment><comment><USER11> This seems to be a bit of a meme I don't think is true.

Every mentions Dropbox because it is the only one?

</comment><comment><USER12> Our lovely @usepanda app.

[http://usepanda.com](http://usepanda.com)

It's a reader offering RSS and bookmarking as well as ability to view in different layouts. Got 1781 upvotes on Product Hunt.

</comment><comment><USER13> gRPC seemed to have had a pretty rough opening.

Initial announcement - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9114748](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9114748) And for their 1.0 - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12344995](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12344995)

</comment><comment><USER14> Nugget only got 14 points on HN but 350+ points on product hunt... As to final success we're still working on it.

<comment><USER15> The difference in taste between HN and PH was on display in the thread about the AngelList's acquisition of PH. I found it really bizarre. A gathering of people who build stuff just completely deriding something built by a small team for reasons I couldn't make heads or tails of.

<comment><USER16> 1 / The perception that PH isn't doing anything 'hard', tech wise.

2 / The perception that PH was created to capture value and act as a promotional vehicle for a narrow SV elite, rather than creating anything new.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, that's a fairly succinct summary. I suppose I put some effort into having a positive-by-default outlook on stuff others have created. I don't think those descriptions of PH are _bad_ things and even if they were bad, then I would assume that it became bad only by mistake not out of intention.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The declining authority of statistics and the experts who analyse them - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jan/19/crisis-of-statistics-big-data-democracy <comment><USER2> Statistics is not trusted because it shouldn't be. It is incredibly easy to lie with statistics. There's even a tutorial:

[https://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell- Huff/dp/03...](https://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell- Huff/dp/0393310728)

Statistics is ultimately counting, and therefore is incredibly vulnerable to discretion in choosing "what counts". Take the unemployment rate as one example. When people realize that its not equivalent to "people who do not have a job", how can you complain that they trust statistics less?

Expert authority is in decline because it should be, as there is an increasing body of evidence that experts, from politics to medicine, have almost no advantage in forecasting power than the average person.

[https://www.amazon.com/Expert-Political-Judgment-Good- Know/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Expert-Political-Judgment-Good- Know/dp/0691128715/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1485036840&sr=1-1&keywords=expert+political+judgment)

Why should "experts" (often just pundits) have any authority when they have consistently demonstrated they deserve very little?

Finally, the political slant of this article, going along with the decried "fake news", blaming the election results on these declines in authority, is pathetic. It's basically an extension of "the other side is filled with stupids" and has no credibility, no matter how you dress it in professional journalistic veneer.

<comment><USER3> Implying that most experts have agendas that supersede the truth is outrageous and frankly dangerous. Saying we should just give up on using data to make predictions is ludicrous -- even if it hasn't worked before in some situations.

We should hopefully be in agreement that using data to make decisions is preferred to winging it. We should also hopefully be in agreement that we should trust people who devote their life to studying an issue over someone new who merely has gut feelings about it -- and hence is even more biased in many additional ways.

The thrust of your argument is valid -- summarizing data inherently leaves things out. However, the solution to this is not to give up and throw statistics out the window. And the solution is definitely not to unfairly discredit people who devote their lives to these issues.

Rather, if you see statistics, wonder how they were generated and why some data was included and others thrown out. By being open and candid about the decisions made, the statistics are meaningful. Just giving numbers without providing details of how they were achieved is not valid statistical work.

From my experience, most scientists (and myself in my work) care about the truth over everything else. I use statistics to better understand my data. My objective is always to choose the most sensible path in analyzing it that allows me to most accurately answer the questions I pose.

<comment><USER4> > Implying that most experts have agendas that supersede the truth is > outrageous and frankly dangerous.

I think that "experts with agendas that supersede the truth" claim is true if you consider the pool of pundits that regularly appear in mainstream media. Unfortunately they are not representative of scientists like yourself.

<comment><USER3> This attitude of not trusting experts and not trusting statistics unfortunately permeates from the political arena into science.

The belief that all statistics are not to be trusted is a clear danger to our society. Not trusting climate scientists. Not even trusting simple statistics on vaccinations. As another poster noted, the only alternative is ignorance.

<comment><USER5> Exactly. So what we need to do is reduce the misuse and cherry picking in the statistics that make it to the main stream media (both sides) so that public confidence in science does not degrade further.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is the problem that statistics are losing authority, or that everything connected with the elite is losing authority? From what I see, just about every class of experts is less trusted now than a few years ago. Economists, scientists (climate change), doctors (vaccines), and so on. Statistics are used to back up every quantitative thing that's ever been studied, so of course that quantitative element sometimes comes under scrutiny as well.

As for statistics as a national health monitoring system, it is a victim of regime shift.

You collect the statistics that seem relevant when you are setting up the collection. You look at things like money supply, unemployment, GDP and manufacturing jobs because they seem to make sense at the time. Whatever models people are working on seem to want those numbers, so those are the numbers you collect.

Unfortunately, it's hard to model things for which you have no data. Social science is especially messy, and so there are many ways things might interact, but haven't yet, and some of those things will be a surprise to you, with the added problem that the confounding variable is one that you haven't collected, because you didn't think it was important.

This regime shift, which causes a new way for the numbers to be generated, is to be expected. Why would the economy grow for hundreds of years, like it has, in the same way? Looking at history, it hasn't. The structure of the economy changes, as you would expect from any ecology that isn't in equilibrium. And "The World Economy" has been growing for hundreds of years.

One example of numbers changing meanings was in the Economist the other day. Manufacturing is not what it was. A lot of builders of equipment now make money maintaining equipment or training people to use it. For instance I was surprised to find out a professional coffee making machine is actually not just a thing a coffee shop buys. They lease it, and along with the lease comes training for baristas. Something that would skew figures.

</comment><comment><USER7> The article doesn't mention the problem that we often try to predict the outcome of a singular event when statistics can only tell us something about it when repeating it. The prediction could still be correct even when the actual event is not what was predicted.

<comment><USER8> There's also something to be said for the replication crisis in certain highly-politicized fields of sociology and psychology.

People (rightly, IMHO) realize that political activists sometimes work under the guise of scientific researchers. It shouldn't come as a surprise that this kind of conduct erodes confidence in the field as a whole.

Sadly, the baby has a nasty habit of being thrown out with the bath water...

<comment><USER9> Not disagreeing with you, but the replication crisis is happening everywhere, especially in the biomedical sciences. In fact, analyses have suggested it may be worse in certain fields, like cognitive neuroscience (whether or not you consider that a branch of psychology or biology is maybe debatable).

<comment><USER8> Indeed, but I mention sociology and (social) psychology in particular because of their clear potential for political slant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> People often fail to trust what they don't understand, and instead believe those who offer easy to understand but often false or inaccurate information. People also look locally but are told things that apply globally and they can't connect the two. This of course means they are likely to be manipulated by people who know how to tailor the message. I don't know if our education system is up creating a population that can understand what they are being told and when they are being lied to. Life today is filled with so many decisions and concepts and information and connections and maybe it is too complex for most people to comprehend. This may just lead people to give up and never get beyond easy answers.

</comment><comment><USER11> Statistics is a useful metric, but how they are used and what they are trying to say while using them can often be very subjective.

Example USA-someone is collecting unemployment, in December their unemployment money is up. They have no job, they want one and are looking.

By government standards in January they are no longer unemployed, they are "not part of the work force" and ding! guess what unemployment rates just dropped because that person is no longer unemployed, awesome!

Anyone interested in the reality of who is unemployed knows that statistic is full of bs. In December that person is looking and wants a job and is unemployed. In January that person is looking and wants a job and is unemployed. Stats changed but reality didnt.

<comment><USER12> Inflation statistics have the same problem. They typically don't include house, stock or bond prices. At best, they include some convoluted and highly questionable derivative of house prices like estimated rents. At worst houses don't affect the indexes at all.

This leads to a situation where central bankers are publicly saying "hmmm, we've done massive QE but there's no inflation, what a mystery" whilst the average punter is seeing housing and stock market bubbles inflate right in front of his eyes. It causes people to tune out: headlines like "inflation statistics hit new low" are placed right next to "house prices reach record highs".

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Statistical analysis of poor data doesn't mean statistics is a poor method.

</comment><comment><USER14> It's not that the authority of statistics is lost on me. What I don't trust is the reporting of statistical information without transparent access to the data and actual published results from knowledgeable statisticians.

I think the solution is to push calculus off the K-12 agenda and up to the college/university level and replace it with probability and statistics instead. Most people understand averages, but they have no clue what standard deviation is. In fact (sad to say) many software developers don't even know what SD is!

Until the general public are able to understand the power of numbers and their pragmatic use, people who know how to manipulate the masses will continue to do so.

</comment><comment><USER15> Not sure statistics ever "accurately" represented the world

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_stati...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statistics)

<comment><USER16> Yeah. The article makes a case that people have come to a newfound mistrust for statistics.

But, that mistrust has been around for a very long time.

A big part of the mistrust is not in the numbers themselves, but in the people who trot out the statistics and the way they carefully cherry pick numbers that support their cause, ignoring other numbers.

<comment><USER17> _the way they carefully cherry pick numbers that support their cause, ignoring other numbers_

Sometimes not so carefully. In a previous election, I remember seeing a purported screenshot from an evening news show that showed poll results, but skipped the #2 candidate entirely. Presumably they favored #1, and didn't want people to think there was a viable contender.

This screenshot itself could have been faked, but we've seen other serious blunders by TV news, like the fabricated names of officers on a downed flight.

<comment><USER12> A recent example I saw was a friend of mine on Facebook, who posted a snapshot from an MSNBC program. It was an attack on Rex Tillerson, in the form of a bar graph of profit potential for ExxonMobil by country.

The countries seemed pretty random (that well known oil giant Germany was in there) but at the top was Russia with a bar far far larger than any other country on the chart. The graph was an obvious attempt to continue the theme of "Trump administration is owned by Russia". The problem was that the numbers next to each bar weren't labelled: the graph was totally lacking in context.

I did some googling and found that the graph appeared to be measuring profit potential in millions of acres of drilling rights. Thus it was comparing an acre of frozen Arctic ocean with an acre of Germany as if they were the same thing. There are industry standard ways to compare oil fields. I've never once seen oil fields measured in this way because it ignores extraction costs, but sure, if you want to imply that Russia will be wildly more profitable than anywhere else on earth then that's one way to do it. But it's an abuse of statistics.

I pointed this out to the friend in question who simply said that she had a policy of not taking part in political debates on Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> A problem I found with article is the talk of opacity of statistics techniques in the guise of "big data" used in social media corporations. Statistics used by individuals and companies is nothing new. As a counter-example, I feel the public has greatly benefited from statistics in the form of quality management embedded in the proprietary processes of manufacturing and large service corporations. Stuff like TQM allow us to take for granted so many things. I think the issues revolve around who owns and gets access to large data sets, mathematical literacy and the morality/ethics of various players.

<comment><USER19> Perhaps from a moral perspective, statistics about inanimate matter like TQM are better than statistics about people? It's somewhat reminiscent of the Second Formulation of the Categorical Imperative, anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> _"...Is there a way out of this polarisation? Must we simply choose between a politics of facts and one of emotions, or is there another way of looking at this situation?..."_

I feel extremely uncomfortable being put in the position of supporting populist, right-wing causes simply because the essayist is doing such a bad job, but here we are.

This author did a terrible job of understanding and explaining whatever the hell it was that they were trying to understand and explain. Perhaps "Populists hate science! How can we live with them?"

Heck with it. I'm not going to take the other side. There are a half-dozen problems with how the argument is set up. Anybody with a passing familiarization with "There are lies, damned lies, and statistics" should at least be able to set up a counter-argument or two.

Statistical _science_ is great. It's the foundation of much of the western economies. "Statistics", as that kind of numerical smorgasbord that's thrown around constantly in the media and politics where correlation and causation are the same? Not so much. If you can't see the difference, you really shouldn't be writing essays supposing to inform us on anything.

</comment><comment><USER21> The "statistics" is only in decline because it was blatantly used to try and sway the election. As in, oversampling demographics to get the necessary conclusion, phrasing the questions such that you're "literally Hitler" if you answer them "wrong" and so on. I quoted "statistics" because it's not statistics, it's pretty obvious propaganda, using the most shameless tricks in the book. Editors of Soviet Pravda would be proud. We know much of this thanks to Wikileaks now, as well as because it was so blindingly obvious that only a complete moron would think the polls were impartial.

I'm not afraid of "what's next" because as far as political polling is concerned (calling it "statistics" is way too generous), it just can't really get any worse than it already is.

<comment><USER22> The polls were no better or worse than past years. _Reporting_ on the polls is a different story.

<comment><USER21> Even the polls were cooked. E.g. to improve the odds of polls fitting the narrative, democratic leaning pollsters would disproportionately sample minorities known to vote predominantly democratic. The patron saint of pollsters, Nate Silver, was consistently wrong about everything all the way through the campaign. Now, if his main goal wasn't to peddle a particular narrative, one would expect him to make corrections to his models after getting things wrong, but no, he sacrificed his professional integrity instead.

I'm sure this is not the first time this happened, but this year it was particularly obvious, and I don't really trust the polls at all anymore except when it comes to completely non-political topics.

<comment><USER23> Nate Silver gave the eventual winner a 30% chance of victory, and his prediction for the popular vote was off by only 1% for Trump and 0.5% for Clinton. That's a damned good job if you ask me.

I can't fathom people who look at the results of this election and conclude that the polls are all horrible. They got very close to what happened. Many places took those poll results and interpreted them far beyond what they should have, saying Clinton was a lock when she wasn't, but that's a different matter. (It seems like they assumed that errors in swing state polls would be uncorrelated, thus vastly underestimating the chances that a lot of them would flip together.)

If you were trying to sway the election for Clinton, talking about how her victory is assured would be a bad way to go about it. That just encourages her voters to stay home. _If_ the polls were biased that way, and _if_ it was a deliberate attempt to sway the election, then if anything it would be an attempt to sway it for Trump. Which really doesn't seem likely at all.

<comment><USER24> They came out with the wrong result and that is _all that matters_. I don't care how close a surgeon is to cut out my tumour, either it is gone or not.

<comment><USER23> How is giving a 30% chance of winning to the person who won "the wrong result"? Do you think that anything over 50% odds means a guaranteed win or something?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The weird thing is that there are statistics that are based basically on surveys, whose collection and analysis is essentially model- and assumption- free. Like the unemployment rate, or inflation, for example. And yet there are enough politicians who reject even those statistics, and that seems like a totally different category of stupidity. When that happens, it's hard to believe that the fault lies with the statisticians.

<comment><USER26> One problem is that "unemployment rate" is a technical term that does not match the colloquial / folk understanding. "There is a 5% unemployment rate" and "25% of working-age adults do not have a job" are not mutually inconsistent statements. So if you "know" that more than 5% of people are not working but you keep hearing about the low unemployment rate (and multiply that by 10s or hundreds of other little things like that), it's not hard to make the jump to "the government is lying to us"

<comment><USER27> Your example seems more like an example of people not having a consistent mental model of what words means. A typical person would probably say that "a working-age person without a job is unemployed" and "a full-time student or a stay-at-home mom or someone who retired early are not unemployed" are both true statements, but the two statements are contradictory. A statistician cannot possibly come up with a definition of unemployment that matches the colloquial understanding of what unemployment means.

<comment><USER12> Of course they can. They can report the unemployment rate as "percentage of the population physically capable of working who do not", and then provide other terms to refer to "people who are looking for a job but can't find one", maybe call it the jobseekers rate or something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Statistics never changes, what changes is the people who interprets them. So if there is anything to blame, elites should blame themselves because people don't want to believe their interpretation anymore.

</comment><comment><USER29> There's a 98.328% chance that statistics are used to deceive the consumers of the lossy compression of information.

</comment><comment><USER30> Reminder: the terms "statistics" and "statisticians" come from the common root word "statist".

I am a trained, practicing statistician (clinical and medical, not governmental) and this always gives me pause. "Data science" is a shitty term, because science without data isn't science at all. Moreover, these days it's just long for "IT guy". But I'm not sure what's better as a term for the real thing, where experimental design and inference are as important as predictive accuracy in one specific context.

Anyways. Statistics was always built around statism.

<comment><USER31> I'm not sure I get your point, care to elaborate?

<comment><USER32> He's wrong, that's not correct. In fact it comes from "state", statism is a term referring to the actions of a highly centralised government who handle economic planning and controls.

"Statism" is a term that has been around since the 1850s, but "statistics" is a term coined by Gottfried Aschenwall in the late 1770s.

<comment><USER30> Well, I didn't claim to be a trained historian, which is probably the correct training for this type of work. Based on your temporal evidence, I must concede the point.

However, I did not actually pull this straight out of my ass: [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/statist](http://www.thefreedictionary.com/statist)

Thanks for the history lesson (seriously). I learned from it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Snip2Code launches the new code snippets tool for Notepad++ - <AUTHOR> http://www.snip2code.com/Static/Downloads#notepadpp_plugin

<comment><USER2> I think storing and sharing code in snippets is a genuinely good idea. Looking forward to seeing the database grow further!

</comment><comment><USER3> Definitely +1 for Snip2Code: it is saving me tons of time looking for the best snippet and it is also giving me a truly powerful and engaging user experience. I have tried other apps to search and collect snippets but Snip2Code is definitely a MUST!

</comment><comment><USER4> This definitely solves my coding problems, and works great also in other IDEs like Eclipse. Great job guys!

</comment><comment><USER5> Great! It saves me a lot of time since I'm a heavy user. Thanks guys!

</comment><comment><USER6> Great job!!!

</comment><comment><USER7> It's simply great!</comment>


YouTube top earners: A seven-year-old making $22M - happy-go-lucky https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46427910 <comment><AUTHOR> What I find interesting is that many of these youtubers have created personas to appeal to their audience, like true entertainers. However loyal viewers are fooled into this false sense of reality, where they are friends with content creator and this is not a persona at all, he's my friend. Over time, the content creator and the audience share so many moments together, it becomes an emotional bond and a substitute for people's social needs. People grow attached to this persona, sometimes obsessively. I think it could create of a scary pattern of disassociation, has it already?

Another thought: If the content creator chooses to optimize the money-making persona, it eventually leads to sensationalized content to generate the maximum possible number of views. I think there is some sadness in that: no matter what form of art, so much of it is influenced (disrupted?) by money -- it almost seems inevitable.

<comment><USER2> My GF is an elementary school teacher and she says the amount of kids who are developing anti-social behaviors is increasing pretty rapidly. Kids these days have computers and are basically simply "escaping" to the internet to live in a fantasy world that is disconnected from reality. Some even display active addictions to computer games, like minecraft, while others say they only have friends online in the games or with these youtube personalities like you say. These kids literally do not know how to make friends or interact with other kids because they are so used to just sitting in front of a game or computer basically having a "friend" entertain them with only one-direction of interaction. They think this is normal relationship for a friend. They don't understand that in the real world in order to get friends you need to talk to other kids and interact with them. They literally do not know how to do this because they've learned it is not necessary...

Parents need to take it very seriously and limit the amount of time the child uses the computer...otherwise these behaviors continue into adulthood. If you are socially incompetent then it will hold you back in terms of jobs and so on. Very troublesome is that parents are basically using computers to babysit the kids or to keep them occupied...which only helps to reinforce the lack of social skills they get. How many times do you see a kid in a shopping cart holding a tablet watching some movie or whatever? Very common.

<comment><USER3> Youtube is turning 14 next year and computers have been mainstream way longer than that. Personally I was a kid when it was the TVs fault and video games were making kids violent, but imo things turned out just fine.

<comment><USER4> Trading card games and D&D is ruining kids.

<comment><USER5> Those darn stick-and-hoop games are ruining our Victorian kids.

<comment><USER6> That sort of games do require physical activity, though; plus some verbal contact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My 7 year old son watches Dude Perfect on YouTube, which I had never heard of. Apparently its all the rage, in elementary schools and he heard about it via other kids.

I watched a few to make sure they were ok, but they mostly came off as older guys doing elaborate stunts that kids would do on a much smaller scale (like throwing balls off tall buildings, fat suits on cars, etc )

I'm not shocked they are making $20M or so. One of the episodes showcased their new Dude Perfect headquarters that looked like a block long warehouse with basketball courts, foam pits , etc in it with their DP logo all over it.

I guess it pays to cater to kids base desires on a grander scale

<comment><USER8> > _I 'm not shocked they are making $20M or so._

I'm slightly shocked that the money comes from advertisers interested in influencing 6-7 year old kids.

<comment><USER9> Then again, thinking about the kids' tv shows that only really existed to sell the toys (eg, Transformers) it's not that surprising.

<comment><USER10> Not surprising, but I find the practice disturbing. I imagine it's hard for busy parents to police the commercials the children sees, and much of the marketing to children likely occurs in this unwanted but hard to avoid space. The end result is corporations trying to train children that the best way to live and enjoy one's self is if they buy a steady stream plastic goods made overseas, eventually to be discarded in landfills.

One could imagine a world where advertising to children is no longer considered appropriate, with the understanding that the young minds of the world should not be manipulated by corporate interests.

Or those who want that kind of environment need to find a new way to fund media.

<comment><USER11> > I imagine it's hard for busy parents to police the commercials the children > sees

I hear things like this a lot. It's not hard, it just takes time. Is it hard to make that time? If it is too hard to make time to do something with your kids that you yourself think is important, you have to reconsider your priorities.

If you didn't plan appropriately, and decided to have kids before realizing the effort required, then you need to do some risk-reward analysis and determine which things you "have time" to pay attention to and which you don't.

> unwanted but hard to avoid space

Again, not hard, just time consuming. Time and interest will make sure your kids are well adjusted (well, at least as well adjusted as their parents).

<comment><USER10> My issue with this (I don't have kids) is that the people with the least time are the poor. They're chronically busy, and so taking the time to keep your kids off of this stuff is a privilege not everyone can enjoy.

<comment><USER12> Not providing access to YouTube is pretty low effort. Providing supervised access is harder, sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It may not be all that much fun and games..

Half a year ago I saw a documentary (can't remember which), where a number of popular YouTube vloggers were followed to see what being an influencer entails.

While each of them were enjoying the good stuff - the money earned, the free gadgets and trips, etc. - in general each of them also felt trapped. To me it seemed like hell to live a life like this.

Huge social pressure from followers to crank out new content on a continuous basis. No time to take real breaks, let alone a longer vacation. Totally focused on social metrics. A wrong move leading to loss of 1,000s of followers. A vacation or even being sick leads to people complaining in your feeds, or even starting to threaten you. Responsibilities and contracts with influence marketers.

Being an influencer is a kind of topsport. You are a professional, while you are also still a kid.

And the longer you keep doing it, the more you've made a life's choice (neglecting school, building real social network, etc.) and it is harder to get out of it.

Edit: Oh, I forgot to mention that the real famous vloggers also can no longer come outside without being recognized everywhere. E.g. 16-20yr olds that cause young children to go histerical when they see them, giving signatures all the time. Literally no rest anywhere.

<comment><USER14> With $22m in the bank he could give it all up at a drop of a hat, put it all into passive investments and live the life of a king off the proceeds.

<comment><USER15> It's very easy to blow $22m in a very short amount of time, especially with his teenage years not all that far ahead of him.

<comment><USER14> Not if you can't touch it

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> To me this little news snippet had just hit home how much of a bubble I live in, and how we're diverging into multiple streams of media for different cultures and classes.

These million dollar media businesses exist that I have no idea about and no exposure to. Presumably when my child reaches approx 8, he'll have been brought up without ads and with most of this content having been blocked (or more accurately, just never coming into the house/houses of his friends, blocking, even though that's what it is we're doing is almost too 'active' a word). And there will be a whole sub-class of the population brought up on this stuff that we never mix with.

Or maybe I'm naive and these media will get in past our defences, but judging by how current media bubbles work it's a distinct possibility that it will remain a bubble I'm never exposed to (I.e I know pay TV options and certain newspapers/you tube things exist, but struggle to tell you a single person I know under the age of 50 who subscribes).

I can't be the only one who feels a little sick at the prospect of making money heaping consumerism on children...?

<comment><USER17> Eh? I mean, most of the money comes from sponsored videos.. So hot wheels, thomas the train, surprise eggs.. etc.. some are obvious, some are the kid playing with the thing. It's funny that we cut the cord and don't allow kids to watch nick jr or disney jr but instead allow youtube where the subversion is greater. My kids don't watch any (or very few) traditional ads but they know exactly what is hip. Most of this was from youtube kids. And now they have the surprise toys. Genius. Is it bad or good? I mean don't take your kid to target or walmart or the supermarket or the airport...

<comment><USER18> "Forbes said all but $1m of the $22m total is generated by advertising shown before videos, with the remainder coming from sponsored posts."

Unless I'm misunderstanding your comment, most of the money comes from pre- roll advertising, not sponsored content product placements.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It amazes me the amount of advertising dollars funneled into advertising to users who are not even allowed to use the website (those under 13).

<comment><USER20> Kids watch the videos, then ask their parents to buy the toys. Same way toy advertising works on television.

<comment><USER21> Or like He-Man, where the entire premise was to create a cartoon they could sell action figures from. Rewatching it, the plot wasn't all that coherent. But that didn't matter, because Battle Cat was cool and Skeletor's castle had a microphone and speaker built in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> A small point: did anybody notice how this reward mechanism prize the "idiocy" far more than the "knowledge"? I mean most followed YT channels, most upvotes on FB etc are about "brainless things", "brainless contents" vs valuable technical or cultural contents.

An YT channel about "just for laugh" or "sport" or "how to decorate nails" have FAR more subscribers and viewers than a tech, historic, physics, ... DIY channels.

That's of course natural but prize it instead of fight it it's a means to push toward stupidity.

<comment><USER23> Who decides what is valuable content and what is brainless stupidity?

<comment><USER24> Im pretty sure that we can easily define metrics to measure that and we had.

This cult of relativism really needs to stop.

<comment><USER22> The modern "need" (mania) of defining metrics have a deep root not in knowledge but in ignorance. Smart people can reason autonomously like Galilean scientific models, ignorant can only follow Aristotelian model.

That's also the reason today we have substantial ZERO innovations and capacity to produce new things.

<comment><USER24> I think you have a poor understanding of what metrics mean, and in case it's pretty ironic since Galileo essentially defined the modern scientific method of observation, experimentation, and mathematization which birthed quantitative assessment.

<comment><USER22> I think not. I think I have a clear understating on how we trade Science for neoaristotelism because someone want brainless, managerial-driven, commercial- servant research instead of Science and culture.

<comment><USER24> You are really barking up the wrong tree, I think you took a wrong turn on your way to the rally comrade.

<comment><USER22> A small example: take a young CAD/CAE/CAM engineer, ask he/she to design something for doing a certain job. Ask the same to an ancient engineer. Compare results.

The young will give you a well simulated part/assembly ready for first prototype, the ancient normally gives you small note and a drawing. Prototype the two: the younger one is generally far more complex to being build, costly and far less effective than the ancient one. And it's not a matter of experience, it's a matter of different way of thinking.

Today we spent enormous time in bureaucracy with ridiculous stuff from ITIL/Kanban to the last bit, we spent enormous time in detailed reasoning being on contrary incapable of see the big picture. That's why for instance in shipping company when a (rare) EU doctor (we have less reformed medicine studies than the USA) went in the USA local seafarers they put themselves in the queue for being visited by "real" doctors.

<comment><USER24> Your rant has absolutely nothing to do with the subject matter nor reality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > As he is still a child, 15% of Ryan's earnings are put into a bank account > that he can only access when he becomes a legal adult.

Why 15%? Why not 100%? Why not even 50%?

Should this sit right with me? I want to believe this child isn't being exploited.

EDIT: Thanks for clearing that up for me. It seems I was misunderstanding.

<comment><USER26> It says 15% OF this earnings, he might be getting more than that but 15% is locked up until he is an adult.

Even so, the parents are probably the actual 'runners' of the company (?) doing all the work except being on camera. Meaning administrative work, accounting, filming, editing, marketing maybe and so on.

<comment><USER27> Exactly, it's not like the kid is writing the scripts, creating the sets, buying the equipment, paying for lawyers, settings up advertiser deals, paying for video production and editing, etc. From the videos, it seems like they've now got a much fancier house too, which I'm assuming was paid with the earnings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> My 6 y.o. lives in a youtube universe. Every content he creates, he makes a video and publishes on youtube. Making slimes, building stamps, building paper train wagons, visiting places, and of course unpacking toys and stuff. He always concludes video or other stories like `pls press the Like button, and subscribe to my channel in order not to miss a thing`. When I talk too much he says 'papa skip ad', with a tap gesture. on air.

youtube is the definite leader for <10 y.o.s around me.

<comment><USER29> You should explain to him that whatever you publish on the Internet is forever and whether he'd like someone in his adult life to be able to find that content.

<comment><USER30> Why should anybody be embarrassed about playing with toys or making stamps as a child?

It's the stupid stuff they'll do in high school and college they should be worried about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I was interested to see that the top 10 earners are all male.[1] I wonder if this is merely a reflection of greater male patronage of Youtube generally but the topics that these top earners are focusing on are not all stereotypically male interests. The 7 year old kid reviews toys which seems quite gender neutral and then there's the makeup artist which, presumably, would be of more interest to a female audience. What is stopping women and girls from dominating Youtube?

[1] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/2018/12/03/high...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/2018/12/03/highest- paid-youtube-stars-2018-markiplier-jake-paul-pewdiepie-and-more/#7ec9f901909a)

<comment><USER32> why force equal outcomes on such a niche place like Youtube?

on Instagram the top earners are all females. Kylie Jenner makes $1 million per post, Selena Gomez 800k. And it is ok to be like that as Instagram is 70% female.

<comment><USER33> > why force equal outcomes on such a niche place like Youtube?

I didn't get that from the OP at all - I think it's a valid (and quite an interesting) question to pose (especially as a marketer): what is it about YouTube's audience that seemingly favours male creators?

Not about "forcing" anything, but it's always interesting to dive into why platform demographics differ and the reasons behind it.

(Also, my assumption is "dominate" here isn't like take over, but just "do it really well" \- feel free to correct me OP).

<comment><USER32> > What is stopping women and girls from dominating Youtube?

I think it is valid in English language to consider this sentence as saying women doing better than men on the platform. dominate is not another word for equality in English.

<comment><USER33> True, but it's also valid in English colloquially to use "dominate" as to just be really good at something too, and that was my interpretation in this context.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> There are so many things wrong with youtube such as accountability, standards and advertising value. These problems get even weirder when kids are involved.

Obviously the reason this kid is making 22m is because other kids are watching. Which isn't bad. This kid basically won the lottery and good for him.

But then you have things like elsagate which is/was (idk if it's over) so weird. I still don't know what the hell was going on there. I can only assume that, once again, kids are mindlessly watching these videos and that's fairly disturbing.

Also I am curious about what people that buy ad spots on youtube think about the fact that a lot of the views they're paying for are kids that won't care about products like their makeup or adult oriented products/services.

<comment><USER35> Well ten years ago kids were mindlessly watching cartoons on TV, which probably had just as much advetisement. The main difference with YouTube, I figure, is that the money is mainly going to content creators rather than TV executives.

On the other hand, the recommended video feed is something akin to heroin for the brain, so giving kids unbridled access to YouTube is probably not the best parenting strategy

<comment><USER36> The main difference is not just the money going to content creators. Like preommr said, the real main difference is all the creepy stuff that's on Youtube that you don't normally see as an adult on your YT account recommended videos/related videos, but that kids see because things are targeted at them. There's some real creepy scary stuff out there. TV back in the days, even if kids watch them obsessively, at least don't have "dangerous" stuff like that. They were curated by reasonable people working at the networks, not algorithms.

I will never give my kid unbridled access to YT. When she's old enough to watch videos, I would consider downloading specific content from YT filtered by myself, for offline viewing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I just watched a few minutes of "Ryan disappear[s] through a Secret Portal in the house to the North Pole" and am thoroughly impressed. Clearly a lot goes into the concepts, sets, and overall production of these videos. I don't know all of the details, but I can imagine how building a business like this could be one of the cooler ways for a family to spend quality time together.

<comment><USER27> I'm not sure if you're being serious, but that video was honestly minimal amount of effort when it came to effects, sets and production. There are channels on Youtube with a fraction of the following that produce content orders of magnitude more professional than that. This kind of video can be made by some amateur producer in their bedroom. Considering they make 22M, you'd really think they'd spend money on at least getting a single professional video editor, if not more.

<comment><USER38> OTOH, maybe the family enjoys doing as much as possible themselves.

If everything needs to be professionalized, where does that leave the hobbyists and the amateurs? Should there not be room for them? If not, why?

<comment><USER39> Not disagreeing with you per se, but if you're making $22 million off something, I'm not sure the terms "hobbyist" or "amateur" apply there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I'm kind of surprised that Logan Paul is still doing so well.

Living embodiment of YouTube gone wrong, still made $3 million more than he did last year according to this article.

<comment><USER41> Best summary I've ever read about Logan Paul is this (since-deleted) tweet: "Watching adults learn about Logan Paul is like seeing Mt. Everest base campers leave for the summit with a windbreaker and a granola bar."

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> It creates bigger winners and even bigger losers.

There are kids who have been depressed since age 8, no idea when their depression will end.

The number is increasing at huge rate.

There are kids who will look upto these kids and get in competition mode while other kids gonna be depressed because they can't afford or can't do as good as them.

I've no idea if it's good or bad.

</comment><comment><USER43> It's interesting how so many people criticize this family that is making tens of millions every year. If that is wrong, they should start with TV Shows in which children that are much more exposed and sometimes not having fun doing what they want, make actually a 6 fig salary. Too many grow to be poor and lost adults. At 7 Ryan has enough money for a comfort life.

<comment><USER44> > At 7 Ryan has enough money for a comfort life.

 _wayyy more than comfortable_

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> This kid has made more money than I will ever see in my whole life. I'm not jealous I'm proud! I hope he's got some good support around him as all that money so young could be a recipe for disaster if not managed right. High school comes to mind: if I was a self made millionaire in high school oh man I would likely have been even more wreckeless than I was.

<comment><USER44> "Youth is wasted on the young."

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I wonder how many views one needs to get such income and who pays it? I had a blog with 500k monthly unique visitors and rarely made over $500 from AdSense. I had pretty good bounce rate and average visit was 7 minutes.

<comment><USER47> Top YouTube talent in general: ad revenue, endorsements, affiliate sales, sell shirts/pins/hats, appearance fees etc.

The individual in this article:

>all but $1m of the $22m total is generated by advertising shown before videos, with the remainder coming from sponsored posts.

But take people like Jenna and Julien: they make and sell limited edition pins, they have a twitch that pretty mcuh always has someone as a top bits tipper at 10k bits plus twitch subscribers, a cut of YouTube red subscribers watching their streams, Jenna has done keynote and commencement speeches (a quick google search shows her booking fee might be 20-50k$), she has a Sirius XM show, she has a podcast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> > _The amount generated by sponsored posts is small compared with other top > YouTubers, Forbes writes. It is "the result not only of how few deals Ryan > (or his family) chooses to accept, but also the fact that his pint-sized > demographic isn't exactly all that flush"._

They then proceed to disprove this "fact" in (literally) the next sentence:

> _The toys featured in one of the channel 's videos can sell out instantly._

</comment><comment><USER49> There really needs to be some regulation or at least self-regulation for this kind of stuff. This child should remain the exception (this is technically child labor), and advertising to kids on youtube should catch up with TV standards. And i don't think this kind of publicity is doing any good to other children.

Perhaps a startup that helps parents deal with this kind of stuff easier?

<comment><USER50> oh my god. Please don't bring the government into this.

<comment><USER49> the government is already the protector of google's business

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I wonder if these guess at the income of internet celebrates could some how hurt them when doing taxes.

<comment><USER52> Only if they don't report. Tax departments usually don't care where the money comes from, as long as they get their cut.

<comment><USER44> And regardless of whatever supposed income numbers there are out there, only the IRS cares about the 1099's from Adwords and companies sponsoring their content. If they get their appropriate tax checks from those, all is gravy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I banned Ryan's after they started peddling his Walmart toys - my 4 year old hasn't seen/asked for Ryan's in last few months. So cut them off while young.

</comment><comment><USER54> Something still feels wrong about something that takes _comaparatively_ so little effort making so much money. I'm not saying it's easy but it's much much easier than many other proffesions. Think of software engineers slaving over brilliant designs staying up night after night for a few hundred thousand per year, or even NFL stars that expose their brains to permanent damage. It's almost like a new form of the lottery. The viral lottery.

<comment><USER15> It goes against everything we're lead to believe about hard work always paying off. But that's life.

<comment><USER55> Much of what we were taught about hard work was pushed by exploiters of peasantry whose fallen descendants would literally risk a disgraceful death and believed damnation as highwaymen rather than work a day in their lives. It just perpetuated and their lies got out of their control and got many of them killed several times historically - from Cromwell to communism. And it didn't end too well for their deposers either - from their own actions no less.

The truth is hard work can pay off not that it does and working smarter is always a better option.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Several times youtubers have called BS on these headline grabbing estimates. So these numbers should be taken with a grain of salt.

</comment><comment><USER57> Could anyone point me toward a more comprehensive analysis of incomes from YouTube?

Specifically, I'd like to get an idea about the distribution of income across active monetised accounts. This would be far more interesting to me than looking at some - I'm guessing - statistical outliers.

What does a average channel, with modest viewers, with niche content, earn for the producer?

<comment><USER58> Not sure if it's exactly what you're after, but I know of this[0] video from CGPGrey talking about adsense specifically. There's also this[1] video breaking down the income sources for Linus Tech Tips and related channels, although they probably don't qualify as 'modest views'? This[2] is talking about twitch streamers rather than youtube channels, but it's quite an interesting breakdown too.

[0][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KW0eUrUiyxo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KW0eUrUiyxo) [1][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t73wXF8IF-8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t73wXF8IF-8) [2][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m5P_n5njCQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m5P_n5njCQ)

<comment><USER57> Thanks, I'll give those vids a watch.

Yes, I'd definitely say that Linus' channel is much bigger than I'm interested in. I'm thinking of the small channels who put out quality content, b with a restricted audience. I watch some channels who make Linux and Chess videos and the content is superb, but there's a natural threshold level of views they'll get.

I was prompted to think about it after a conversation with a colleague. We were talking about the market within medicine for giving exam prep courses to med students and doctors. A recent day course we noted was £50 per student and it was sold out (about 200 people I think). The person delivering the course had multiple dates lined up across the UK.

We wondered whether it would be more profitable for this individual to use youtube (there would be numerous pros/cons to this, but that's another topic).

We could quickly do the maths to work out the income from X students, on Y dates, minus Z estimated costs, etc, for the traditional lectures... but we just cant find any data for likely youtube profits. The information seems almost deliberately obscured.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Maybe if real life didn't suck as bad as it does for so many stuck here, people would prefer real life interactions.

I'm happy for you if you've had any amount of good-natured uplifting human interaction. This is not the case for everyone. A privilege.

</comment><comment><USER60> I feel sad about my life working so hard and will never able to even compete with this kid.

<comment><USER61> On the flip side there are probably peasants in rural East Asia who labor in extremely challenging conditions and make a fraction of what you do. If they understood that your job was to (probably) sit in an air conditioned room tapping keys and talking to people for a few hours a day for significant wealth they might feel what you feel.

<comment><USER60> I don't really like this comparison to peasants, they can be happy and healthy for doing what they do, but office jobs are just depressing and unhealthy in comparison.

<comment><USER61> Any office worker who feels this way should immediately start his own rice paddy.

<comment><USER62> I don't know if starting a rice farm is a feasible way to pay off student loans or mortgages for most people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> I find my son consistently finding Ryan's Toy Review in YT, but as a parent I have no control except to completely remove the app from his life.

Youtube should add personalized content filtering designed to remove such content from search results and feeds.

</comment><comment><USER64> sweet the hockey fad is kind of old I want my child to be a youtube star

</comment><comment><USER65> While 22M youtubers-wonna-be earning little to nothing.

<comment><USER66> As someone commented: This creates couple winners, but millions of depressed losers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Ok, but how much does the Bro Sweet website make?

</comment><comment><USER68> I'm 34, and I just discovered PewDiePie. I thought he was one of those irritating Let's Play guys, but I was definitely wrong. His videos are mostly about reviewing memes, internet news, and funny videos these days. He's a really entertaining guy. I highly recommend you subscribe.

</comment><comment><USER69> Who is watching these videos? Youtube TOS states you have to be at least 13 years old to use their site. If I were to see my 13 (or older) children watching a 7 year old unwrapping toys, I think I would go to the psychiatrist just to check them out.

Unless of course YouTube allows for their own TOS to be violated and they have a right to do so in the spirit of greed; their pockets are clearly filled up by children clicking on Google ads; otherwise how do you think he made that $22MM, from a GoFoundMe donations??

<comment><USER70> Children under 13 can legally watch videos on YouTube _with_ their parents. Consider the premise: you must remove all children, including infants and babies, from the room and or hearing/viewing distance before you utilize the YouTube service. That's laughable to say the least. You can also take your children to R rated films for example, they just can't go by themselves. The same concept applies to video games - you can buy your 11 year old Grand Theft Auto, they can't buy it for their self. It's not illegal for children to listen to music with vulgar lyrics, they just can't buy it typically.

<comment><USER71> Thought so too, but that's not their ToS, unless I missed some part (didn't read the whole thing and just scanned for age-related sections): [https://www.youtube.com/static?template=terms](https://www.youtube.com/static?template=terms)

> In any case, you affirm that you are over the age of 13, as the Service is > not intended for children under 13. If you are under 13 years of age, then > please do not use the Service. There are lots of other great web sites for > you. Talk to your parents about what sites are appropriate for you.

<comment><USER70> I read the ToS before posting that. It's overruled by the fact that the adult can utilize the service and legally YouTube can't force a parent to remove their child from the room while said parent is utilizing YouTube. It's perfectly legal and does not violate the ToS. The parent is using YouTube, the ToS applies to them and not the child.

It is that simple. It would be laughed out of court on any challenge as an issue.

You can also use thousands of other popular sites that are 13 age restricted while in the presence of your children.

<comment><USER71> I don't think we're talking about a parent using with an under 13 in the room, but an actual under 13 using.

Does YouTube TOS allow a six year old use its service directly? Actually interact with the service and not passively watch an adult do it?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>