Show HN: Statwing is statistical analysis, simplified  - <AUTHOR> https://www.statwing.com/

<comment><USER3> I'm glad to see other people working on this problem. We (Wolfram|Alpha) are doing this too, starting out with the making the 'easy cases' nearly automatic.

Here's a blog-post describing our effort: [http://blog.wolframalpha.com/2012/02/09/launching-a- democrat...](http://blog.wolframalpha.com/2012/02/09/launching-a- democratization-of-data-science/)

You can also play around with our examples without having to sign up to Wolfram|Alpha Pro. My favorite is an automatic analysis of the Titanic data that nicely illustrates that while the motto "women and children first" applied, being rich certainly helped: [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=+&examplefile=1&...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=+&examplefile=1&datasetfile=DataInput%2Fcategories- numbers-genders&examplefile=1&datasetfile=DataInput%2Fcategories-numbers- genders)

We cover other kinds of simple analysis and visualization too, like heat maps, Venn diagrams, graphs, and so on. As always, feedback welcome.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed, glad to be a part of the community of folks trying to democratize data analysis. It feels like an important problem to work on, and we're passionate about it (as I'm sure you are, too).

Thanks for chiming in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The walkthrough took me through finding a correlation between voting preference and neuroticism. Great! But it's also worth noting that this dataset shows _larger_ effect sizes at similar CIs for the correlation between [preference and age] and [age and neuroticism]. This, folks, is why ANOVA is important.

That aside, the product was clear, fast, and intuitive. Well-chosen visualizations and a clean emphasis on the important moments for basic covariate analysis. Well done.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice, well pointed out.

Unfortunately, we don't have regressions yet. But just to make sure these findings were still valid, we tossed this data into a program that did to make sure the effect remained (it did).

It's no substitute for regressions/ANOVA, but for now here's what Statwing can do: If you add a filter that excludes datapoints below, say, 40 years old. Looking only at folks older than 40, there's no relationship between [neuroticism and age], but the relationship between [neuroticism and preference] remains.

But, point taken. We'll count this as a vote for prioritizing regression. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I do a lot of stat. analysis and I was impressed with the clarity of the analyses. However, I ran through the Obama v. Romney tutorial and was surprised to see that the software was averaging survey items (Likert-scale data). I thought that this was not allowed since it is troublesome to interpret the output (how do you interpret 8.36 Neuroticism?)

Aside from that, I can see this filling a need for those whom are aware of the importance of statistical significance but do not have the time to look up the appropriate analysis function in R/SAS/SPSS/...

<comment><USER6> You're right, they shouldn't be making that average. Specifically, Likert data is ordinal, meaning 14 is less than 15 and greater than 13, but the gap between 15 and 14 may be different than 14 and 13.

For example, let's say people measure neuroticism exponentially, and an increase of one point means 10x perceived neuroticism. Because mean(log(x)) != log(mean(x)), the average won't be representative.

Everything else looks OK though: count, median, percentiles, a histogram.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There was a company that applied to YC that wanted to do the "Google Docs for Statistics" but was rejected. They wrote about it in a blog post but I can't find it. They ended up not launching.

It will be worth it to connect with these people to see if there is anything that can be learned from them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely let us know if you think of their name or dig up their blog post. Sounds interesting.

<comment><USER8> I believe the company talbina's thinking of is mine: We applied as Theoryville, got interviewed, got rejected, applied to Betaspring (<http://betaspring.com/>), got accepted, changed our name to DataBraid, and proceeded to fall apart over the course of a summer.

I do think the idea has a lot of potential, and what StatWing has built is already more complete than what my team managed to build in 3 months. A few suggestions I'd offer based on that experience:

1\. Parsing CSVs is easy in theory, but painful in practice, because CSVs in the wild tend to be full of junk. I would provide a JSON API that makes it easy for developers to put data in your system directly, allowing people to build their own CSV parsers for you.

2\. Use GitHub as your model. You want people to collaborate around data the same way that developers collaborate around code. Just about every day when I was doing DataBraid, we'd discuss a use case and then say "Oh, GitHub already figured out the right way to do this." The most compelling use case here is that researchers can run different sets of tests on the same data and discuss which approach is the most valid/insightful.

3\. Getting to revenue will be hard, but having paying customers will make it much, much easier to attract investment. So find the MVP that people will pay for and put everything else on a "nice-to-have" list.

Best of luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looks really great overall - props! One small design thing in there that bothered me was how the gradients reverse in the buttons on hover - <USER2> should never happen. Just lighten or darken the color on hover (move the gradient up with background position and add a transition is a good trick), then consider reversing the gradient on active (or just adding an inset shadow).

Everything else in the design looks great and this is totally nitpicky, but hope it helps!

<comment><USER10> I also work on Statwing so thanks very much for the comment.

Now that I look at it more, the front page buttons do look weird compared to all of our other buttons. We've become numb to it after looking at it so often. Most of our buttons do the design thing that you described, so we'll change that shortly! Thanks for the feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Very nice. One tip: Don't require an email address to provide feedback and you'll get more feedback.

A bug that I found in the tour for "Politics and the Big 5":

The instruction bubble says: _To run a different analysis, remove "Neuroticism" from the white box by clicking the X to the right of the variable name._ But, "neuroticism" is not one of the variables I was using. It seems that something was hard-coded when it shouldn't have been.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, thanks a bunch. Appreciate both the bug and the feedback tip. Have a good one, thanks for checking out Statwing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This looks great and I look forward to running some analyses of the same test data between Statwing and Wolfram|Alpha Pro in a mini-bakeoff.

EDIT: Can you talk about your business model any? Sort of a freemium service, or maybe charging for a future API, or something along those lines? Please don't say "ads".

<comment><AUTHOR> Fortunately, people are pretty used to paying for this kind of a product. So we'll do freemium based on number/size of datasets uploaded and some as-yet- unreleased advanced features. Probably throw in some academic discounts for good measure.

Thanks for the question. Cheers!

<comment><USER12> Good to hear. I always like seeing cool sites have a way to make money so I can have confidence they'll be around for a while. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Very nice. Who's the target audience for this? Students? Curious enthusiasts? Analysts within companies?

<comment><AUTHOR> We think of our target audience in concentric circles. We'll likely have users from each circle at any given time, but we'll prioritize our product and marketing towards the inner circles then move outwards:

Circle 1. A few specific analysts in a few specific companies we're associated with. They analyze survey data, they use only basic functionality of the fancy tools, and they want a simpler solution.

Circle 2. People analyzing surveys generally. It's a straightforward application where existing tools are way too complicated.

Circle 3. The rest of the 50% of stats tool users that never use more than the core functionality of existing tools (that number is from our research).

Circle 4. People who analyze at work. In particular, Excel power-user analysts and marketing folks for whom the go-to tool for analysis is the pivot table. We want to ease them into the world of more powerful, statistical analysis. We do a lot of usability testing with these folks and we're excited about their reactions so far. But they're not in a lot of pain, so they're not a great initial audience for us.

Grand vision stuff: Tools like SPSS and the like were built in the 80s, and Excel pivot tables were built in the 90s. They've been updated but not overhauled, and there's a gaping hole between them in terms of ease of use and power. As small, rich datasets become ubiquitous, are people in 2020 really going to be using tools from 1990? We hope not.

<comment><USER13> Thanks! Very insightful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A statistics application that run on the cloud and looks good too? Yes please! Looking forward to playing around with the data to see what's possible. Where are you guys planning to take this software?

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm worried for how quickly you can do tests with this interface. I feel my fingers urging for hypothesis hunting---do you have multiple comparison corrections in place?

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally valid. We do multiple comparison protection on ANOVA post hoc tests, but not across all analyses.

Ultimately we'll need to address this. Hopefully doing so (automatically) will differentiate Statwing from other stats package, where one is quite free to shoot one's self in the foot (and one often does).

We'll count this as a vote for the prioritization of that feature.

Thanks for the comment, really appreciate it.

<comment><USER15> Honestly, I wrote is as a disguised compliment. Doing tests quickly makes statistical validation _available_ and that is solidly better than winging it because you can't be bothered to do the math.

I did a bit of brainstorming previously about penalties and negative feedback controls for hypothesis testing in a medical context. The metaphor I liked was that you are buying hypothesis tests with data and therefore there is a penalty risk for each attempted test. I never worked out the math very thoroughly, but I'd love to see how a system like that would work live.

I think it'd be an amazing boon to your system to have these kinds of feedback. You'd not only be easy and available but also _trusty_ since you make sure you never promise too much.

Very cool project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I can do everything they can do in matlab with your data in less time and with less hassle. my only price is a xmen comic book and a 6 pack of coke.

</comment><comment><USER17> Similar to what Swivel was trying to do. Great idea, nice execution, but really how will you monetize this? There is no real market for consumer grade "intuitive" statistical software. While this will appeal to casual data analyzers, these users arnt ready to spend much money on tools. And those doing data analysis for a living prefer their power tools: R, SAS, Matlab, NumPy, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed that if you spend most of your day most days doing analysis of large datasets you probably need a power tool.

But there's a whole class of overlooked folks who need to do statistical analysis on smaller datasets on more of a weekly or several-consecutive- intense-days-per-month basis. These folks, who split time between Excel and stats tools, make up a surprisingly high proportion of the user base of stats products. And they tell us they're willing to pay for something that makes their analysis and communication more efficient.

Thanks for the comments, and for the kind words RE the idea and execution.

edit: And to be fair to your point, we're sort of comparing apples and oranges insomuch as you're looking at what we have now (not nearly enough) and we're looking at our roadmap for what we'll have in six months, a year, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Are there any plans to add-in any realtime feeds? Like say weather data and the Dow jones close to see any correlations?

<comment><USER19> +1. I really like the intuitive interface and the speed with which I can conduct analysis. It would be great to have a library of feeds for each user that is automatically curated / updated. This library could include both public datasets (fore free) but also proprietary feeds specific to my industry or even my company that are only accessible by me (which I would pay for).

<comment><AUTHOR> This would indeed be super cool. Could definitely see us getting to this eventually.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> While I appreciate the graphs, I'd also like to see the numbers if I hover over wording that says "Very clearly significant". What confidence interval are we talking about? 95%?

If I was you, I'd hide this information from the average user but make it available in a tooltip to those of us who care.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good call RE the tooltip.

Just for reference, everything's at 95% confidence. We do mention that in the Advanced output but it's perhaps a bit too hidden.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The optional upgrade survey appears to be broken. After I submit the survey, I get redirected back to the login page with my username in the query string. After I click "login", I get the alert telling me I can take a survey to upgrade. Rinse. Repeat.

</comment><comment><USER22> I absolutely love this. I'm learning to code (slowly) and have an infatuation with data visualization. I've imagined what something like this might look like, and I think you guys absolutely nailed it. Well done!

<comment><USER22> P.S. I shared this with the Maxwell School alumni group on LinkedIn, so hopefully that drives some traffic your way! I think that my fellow MPA alums will dig it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Very cool. Why should I use this instead of R/gnuplot?

<comment><USER10> Thanks!

We are trying to make Statwing automatically display the right analyses for the portions of your data you are most interested in.

If we can accomplish that, then hopefully we've helped make you faster at understanding the relationships in your data. Maybe that is enough so you don't need to break out R for basic analyses. Otherwise I would also use R. I made some graphs in R that wouldn't be able to do in Statwing right now, but if we can output the right things based on your data then hopefully you could save some time with us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'd like to throw in another vote for prioritizing regressions and specifically adding logistic regressions to the mix. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER24> demo is very cool. love anything that can make pattern recognition in large datasets this much easier.

</comment><comment><USER25> 1\. Great looking product. I clicked through a little bit and liked the general polish, but didn't have time to explore everything.

2\. For people whose jobs involve statistical analysis, how much need is there for something like this? The more analysis I do, though, the more I realize that the hard part is collecting the data and programmatically "piping" it from package to package...And from professionals I know in various numbers- based industries, their biggest blind spot seems to be that ability to gather data that doesn't come in a CSV/Excel sheet for them.

* edit: in addition to the challenges presented above, the challenge of cleaning data so that a package like Statwing can do a proper analysis

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, really appreciate #1.

Agreed that quite often the hardest part is getting the data together (particularly on the web). But from our perspective, it's still true that conducting the actual analysis and visualizing the data should be a lot easier than it is. And that's particularly true if you're in our initial audience, the roughly 50% of SPSS/R/Minitab/etc. users who never use anything past the basic functionality of those programs.

I guess a simpler answer is that we think there's a need because this is a product that I badly wanted when I was an analyst/consultant, splitting time between Excel and the basic functionality of SPSS.

edit: Also, and this isn't very helpful, but we talk to a _ton_ of people about their data analysis needs, and we hear a good chunk of them talk a lot about the pain of using highly technical solutions for relatively simple problems like analyzing a survey.

<comment><USER25> More notes:

#3 I have to say, my first impression was that the tutorial was a little annoying, but it's actually done pretty slickily and it introduces features, such as the multiple variable analysis, that I probably would not have stumbled upon in the first place. Well done.

#4 That's my SOPA project you're referencing! :) <https://www.statwing.com/demos/sopa> (though if you can edit the copy, credit should also go to the Center for Responsive Politics, from which the campaign finance data was collected)

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice! It's a great dataset, really fun, and we're big fans of ProPublica.

We'll definitely edit the copy. I'll ping you unicast to make sure we did it right. Yay!

edit: Also, thanks for the feedback on the tour. Our goal is to make the interface so intuitive that it shouldn't require the tour to know what to do. We've got some updates in mind that should get us much closer to that goal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> looks really awesome. interested to see what if any data analysis can be linked to current events.

</comment><comment><USER27> "Female tends to have slightly higher values for Neuroticism than Male"</comment>


FBI: Nation-state actors have breached two US municipalities - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/fbi-nation-state-actors-have-breached-two-us-municipalities/ <comment><USER2> "nation-state actors" is pure speculation, apparently based on an overestimate of the difficulty of using standard and open source "script-kiddie" tools.

The FBI seems to be behind the times in following the commodification of hacking tools.</comment>


84% of the investment gains from hedge fund went to the managers - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/107033731246200681024/posts/7VmpGHzmY3R <comment><USER2> Warren Buffet made a bet that a market index (S&P500) would outperform hedge funds. So far, he seems to be winning the bet.

<http://longbets.org/362/>

As the hedge fund market grows by 10x, its all but certain returns will decline. The economy isn't a zero sum game but when investment funds grow faster than investment opportunities, logic dictates that median performance will fall and there will be more absolute losers.

Furthermore, picking a hedge fund manager becomes an exercise in futility as the number of managers increase. The pension fund administrator can pick the 1 in 10 stocks he believes will return 15% per annum or he can pick the 1 in 20 hedge fund managers he believes will return 15% per annum. (The numbers here are made up but I hope you see my point).

Either way, the pension fund administrator will need to research on where to park money, but I'd argue the variables to predict future performance are much more transparent with stocks than with hedge funds. All the administrator has done is transformed the problem of picking a winning stock, to picking a winning hedge fund. The only difference being the hedge fund is guaranteed to take a cut of your money.

<comment><USER3> There are advisors and fund of funds just to hedge your bet on hedge funds - and like you said - it's only going to get harder. Picking a hedge fund is going to be like picking the next hot pharma company.

<comment><USER4> Well that's more or less what tese things are. Instead of investing in a startup, your effectively betting that a group of money managers will hit pay- dirt with a unique investment strategy. For te most part only people with so much money they can afford to risk a pile can even play

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Even worse, hedge fund managers somehow get their income classified as "capital gains" and only pay the 15% rate on their earned income, even though they never had any cash equity at risk. It is a massive subsidy to the industry and it is grossly unfair to other taxpaying Americans.

I have similar sweat equity in my tech company, and have to pay income tax rates and payroll taxes on my earnings.

<comment><USER6> And when there was some noise a couple years ago about changing that tax loophole the idea was immediately squashed by congress and it died a quiet death. Almost as if congress does Wall Street's bidding to the detriment of the overall national interest. Almost.

<comment><USER7> That "loophole" you're talking about is known as carried interest. Carried interest exists for a good reason (at least to my understanding); so that partners can with less capital can build sweat equity. Sure there are people who take advantage of it, but it does serve a purpose (taxes more so than retaining their profits). I'm not saying there aren't plenty of greedy hedge fund managers, but understanding why it exists will at least help form a solid opinion.

>The arguments for the carried interest are fairly compelling: without it, the partners who contributed ideas and talent end up being taxed much more heavily on their earnings than partners who contributed financial assets. This is not only sort of unfair, and impedes the ability of talented people with few financial resources to move into the moneyed class, but also might have implications for economic growth: if your gains are going to be taxed at ordinary income rates, why quit that safe job and risk all on an untried venture?

[http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/08/thinking...](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/08/thinking- about-taxes/243651/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's at least one big fallacy in this post: "This is a tiny fraction of the 1% fleecing the rest of the 1%."

This is dangerously inaccurate. A significant portion of hedge fund assets are from institutions not wealthy individuals. This includes government assets (from local to federal), college endowments, pension funds etc.

If the analysis is correct, this is a tiny part of the 1% fleecing all of us, and your parents too.

<comment><USER6> I don't know enough to be sure one way or another but when Bernie Maddof's fund collapsed it did seem like it was mostly just rich people who lost money. Also it seemed like clients were obtained via personal relationships, not any kind of market exchanges. But I don't know if that fund was typical or not.

<comment><USER9> Quite a few nonprofits and foundations had money invested with Maddof, and he was a rather sketchy money manager.

Many (most?) universities have some funds invested with hedge funds (as well as VC funds and PE funds).

<comment><USER10> You can make the argument that Harvard is an unregulated hedge fund.

"I say get rid of exemptions on profits while keeping the charitable deduction for donors. Why should Harvard be tax-exempt on the dividends it receives from Microsoft or IBM stock, when everyone else is taxed on that dividend?"

"So, in my mind, Harvard is a hedge fund that has a relatively small, money- losing education business on the side. I can see a justification for an endowment in a world of uncertainty when there are "bankruptcy costs" associated with the failure of a non-profit. However, large endowments are disturbing and are possibly evidence that a non-profit has not followed a zero or negative IRR strategy."

Excerpts from the comments, not from the article

[http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/05/wha...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/05/what- should-be.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's worth pointing out that the FT's 84% figure is NOT correct, though that actually further reinforces the point that fund managers are fleecing their investors.

While the funds collectively realized $449bn in investment gains and paid out $379bn in fees to managers, the hedge funds earned a significant portion of these fees without making their clients a penny. Rather a fraction of the $379bn is a share of the gains fund managers made their clients, while the (likely very large) remainder of the $449 is derived from straight management fees (typically 2% of invested assets).

</comment><comment><USER12> There is a problem with this analysis - the 449 figure is capital paid out, not gains. The worst funds have their capital withdrawn at the fastest rates; investors in the best funds tend to keep their capital put.

By Lack's metric, which ignores un-realised gains, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, which hasn't paid a dividend but pays salaries to its "managers" is a ruddy failure of an investment institution.

It should also be noted that not all cash taken by the fund manager as compensation goes straight into the mamagers' pockets - there are staff, Bloomberg terminals, and office space to be paid for. At smaller funds, the 2% asset fee can sometimes barely cover that.

The FT author likens hedge fund statistics to a "statistical minefield". Rather helps if you don't lay the mine you blow up.

<comment><USER11> The article does call them gains, but if it's truly only the capital paid out this is a good point. More likely, these numbers are abysmal because of the poor performance of equities over the selected period (1998-2010) and consequently the fact that investors have paid a lot in 2% management fees and received little upside in the way of gains.

<comment><USER12> We also have to marry this to the reality that most hedge fund managers have around 2/3 of their net worth in their funds.

When markets crash you see more redemptions from bad funds than good funds; by only observing redemptions the good are ignored and bad are counted. Since those funds are still charging asset fees, the numbers are probably distorted towards 100% the worse the preceding period's equity market performance.

Are hedge fund structures in need of reform? Probably. Do we need to warp and mis-represent statistics to accomplish this? No.

Bottom line is that saying that the ratio of cash out to operators to cash out gross is 84% is meaningless given that it has survival bias built in - in the inverse. Bad funds who dissolve and result in massive outflows are over- represented. Those that succeed and hold capital, e.g. Berlshire Hathaway and Renaissance'a Medallion Fund, are ignored.

I'm just imploring the HN community to remain objective, even when bad evidence seems to agree with our pre-conceived notions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Something does not add up.

The author is claiming that between 1998 and 2010, managers earned between 379 billion in fees.

Generally, hedge funds operate on 2/20 model i.e. 2% of the assets as the management fee + 20% of the profits. [Obviously these varies across hedge fund but for now, let's assume everyone follows this model.]

E.g. If I give a hedge fund 100MM, they would charge me 2MM to manage it. Let's say they generate 10MM in profit. They will take 20% of that 10MM as performance fee. So to get 8MM, I will be paying them 2MM + 2M = 4MM which is 40% of the profits.

Now that's clear, let's run this logic on author's numbers.

Let's assume equal distribution which means that hedge fund earned around 30 billion in fees per year. (379 billion divided by 13 years between 1998 and 2010). If 30 billion is 2% of the assets, it means that they were managing 1500 billion dollars. The biggest hedge fund in the world, Bridgewater Associates, manages 125 billion dollars. There is no way other hedge funds can account for the remaining money.

<comment><USER14> Sooo... what happens if the returns are negative? Does the fund manager cop 20% of the loss?

What happens if the gross return is 2.5%? Does the fund manager still get everything (2% fee plus 20% of the 2.5% gross)...?

Clearly if the returns are between 0 and 2% the fund manager wins and the investor loses. Seems to be open to all kinds of gaming of the system.

<comment><USER15> This is exactly the rub. Managers take no haircut when the fund gets hammered. It is true that most managers won't take a profit on investor's money until they return to the "high water mark" of how much $$$ that investor originally put into the fund, but often times when a fund loses too much money, the manager simply closes it and opens another, therefore dodging the high water mark requirements.

But honestly, if rich people can't figure out that their fund manager is ripping them off, then to hell with them. Fund managers, at least, prey on people who are already rich. Better than a lot of other sleazes who take advantage of the undereducated and poor. I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying that if you have enough money to write John Paulson a check, then you should know what you're doing. I can't say the same for an old woman in a bad neighborhood who was talked into refinancing her house of 50 years so she could take out cash to buy a conversion van. The people who preyed on her are far worse, in my mind, than your average fund manager who does nothing of virtue for his clients.

<comment><USER16> People (and actually it's institutions, mostly) who invest in hedge funds are sophisticated investors. They know full well what the managers are being paid and presumably feel they are worth it.

<comment><USER17> Ha ha. Good one. What are you basing this on?

<comment><USER16> The fact that they keep their money with the manager? Sure there might be a few people who don't know what they are doing (lottery winners?) but if you have enough money to buy into a hedge fund, you more than likely are paying attention.

<comment><USER17> I don't see why you think A applies B at all here. I have worked both in institutional investment and in a hedge fund, and it's pretty fucking hard to read a term sheet for anybody.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I have such a hard time understand investing on this scale. Who the heck are these investors that continue to put money in these funds? Are there really that many wealthy people/organizations that are duped into the fallacy of hedge fund returns?

This also reminds me of the idiots who paid into the Groupon investment just so they could pay off the original investors (who happen to be largely the Groupon CEO): [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-30/groupon-has- raised-...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-30/groupon-has- raised-500-million-of-950-million-it-sought-in-funding-round.html)

When a market is littered with this much "loss" doesn't it eventually adjust?

<comment><USER19> _This also reminds me of the idiots who paid into the Groupon investment..._

You link to an article where they invested at a $4.5B valuation, and now the company is worth $11.5B. It seems your hindsight isn't 20/20, or you think 250% returns in 12 months is low.

<comment><USER20> > You link to an article where they invested at a $4.5B valuation, and now the > company is worth $11.5B.

Can they sell their $1B without the stock tanking, though?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It seems that this sensational headline (and the subsequent article) leaves out a main point as to why this would be happening: performance fees paid prior to 2008.

Assuming the 2/20 fee structure, HFs would have taken 10 years of 20% fees on their performance before 2008 knocked out (according to the article) all of the returns for the previous 10 years. That would leave the investors back at 0, minus 10 years of 20% performance fees and 2% management fees. Given the time frame, I'm surprised the fees aren't greater than the realized gains.

<comment><USER22> It's also worth noting that many funds make performance feeds contingent on long term returns.

So for the funds in question, if 2008 knocked out all their returns, they can't collect performance fees again until they have fully recovered from 2008. I.e., no more performance fees until the fund recovers from 2008.

<comment><USER2> The managers are more likely to close the fund, open up a new fund under a new name and start the game over again.

From this morning:

[http://darien.patch.com/articles/collapse-of-darien-hedge- fu...](http://darien.patch.com/articles/collapse-of-darien-hedge-fund- threatens-kentucky-state-pensions)

[http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/01/03/...](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/01/03/bloomberg_articlesLX89WS6K50YJ.DTL)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> If anyone is interested, "Inside the House of Money" is a pretty enjoyable book about "global macro" hedge funds in the mid 2000's. It's just a series of interviews with hedge fund managers about their careers, their favourite trades and how they run their funds.

The interviews all take place prior to the financial crisis and it's neat to see how they were thinking about the economy. It ranges from "we're in trouble" to "I'm confused about what is driving the CDS market so I am on the sidelines."

As for the story, I am totally apathetic. If you invest in a hedge fund you are well aware of the fee structure going in and you are a sophisticated investor. Ultimately these guys only make money if their clients make money.

</comment><comment><USER24> If the markets [or the managers] performed better, a higher proportion of investment gains would go to the investor.

As mentioned in this thread, fund managers are compensated based on a % of AUM and a % of profit, such as 2% and 20%. When the fund loses money, investors are the only ones that experience a net loss (the managers still net a % of AUM, or nothing at worst). If managers end up not losing money, the investor mathematically keeps a larger proportion of the gains.

Also, when you invest in a fund, the idea is you are trusting someone else with your money. This article does not imply managers as shareholders. With this in mind, it does indeed make sense that in times of low performance and frequent losses that the people with no way to lose money end up keeping a greater proportion of earnings.

EDIT: This might seem obvious, but its worth mentioning that in times of very good fund performance, the investors will keep an increasingly greater proportion of earnings.

<comment><USER16> When it comes to hedge funds, the managers typically are heavily invested in the funds themselves.

<comment><USER24> Yep, but proportionally the amount is trivial.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I am an expert coin tosser :) If you have 1000 people tossing coins some of them will become experts at tossing heads every time.

<comment><USER26> Greetings fellow disciple of Taleb! :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'd be interested to see the data and methodology used.

1998 to 2010 was a wonky period in the markets with both the tech and leverage bubble/bust, making any sort of estimate on performance/fees/assets tough.

</comment><comment><USER28> I don't understand what the article is talking about. Hedge funds traditionally take 20% of the profits from their investments. They also pocket 2% of the money that investors put into the fund (and 2% of it again when they withdraw), but I don't see why this would be classed as 'investment gains.' It's just more money they've been given to manage.

<comment><USER12> I posted a more complete thought as an independent comment, but essentially, by focussing on redemptions Lack'a analysis ignores un-realised gains. By this logic, Berkshire Hathaway has paid out less in dividends (zero) than accumulates compensation to its staff (since we are noting all cash receive by the fund as manager compensation, research and office space be damned).

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Yeah, and it's trivially proven. To the extent that hedgy X captures alpha, hedgy Y will not, and since they are both representing the same class of rich suckers, the only money gotten is the rake, aka, the 2-and-20 fee structure: mathematically the only people who can win are the funds themselves. Nothing complicated about it.

</comment><comment><USER30> A lot of reasonable, sensible, intelligent, math & business oriented people saw this coming. I surely did and I'm not a financial professional. Financial products are basically snake oil there to enrich the salesmen at the expense of the clients. The clients eat the losses, the salesmen eat the gains.

The stock market in general is a rigged game there to enrich insiders and salesmen.

The reason financial products proliferate is because a sucker is born every minute and most people are too unimaginative to see alternative avenues of investment.

It's not a productive industry. It's snake oil at best and more realistically is just a giant parasite on the economy.

</comment><comment><USER31> There is a glut of hedge funds, the best large ones are usually closed to new investors. In a year where many struggled of course fees v return looks bad. 2% of assets and 20% of gains is a steep price but it is cheap when you get one of the best. Pension funds don't do a good job of selecting managers and every man and his dog has opened one just to collect 2&20 rent on the money. Very few managers have an edge and it can be impossible to tell which ones do. All statistics on hedge funds are of limited value as the samples are incomplete and skewed - it is an information game after all.

</comment><comment><USER32> When I first saw this post my initial reaction was... The data must be wrong, it doesn't make sense!

I thought about it, and thought about it, then I realized it makes perfect sense.

Hedge funds as an asset class should net to zero. Meaning, there should be zero profits on average from Hedge Funds. Since hedge funds hedge, meaning they supposedly eliminate the effect of market movements, the aggregate of all of them should be zero.

Overtime, the bad managers loose their clients money and shutter and the good managers make billions.

Mutual funds should net to inflation.

Anything above zero for hedge funds and inflation for mutual funds represents alpha. (alpha is the additional return the manager returns).

It makes sense that if the industry is returning any profitability to their investors they should be paying a fee. If you pick the right hedge fund manager, you should make excellent returns. Picking the wrong manager results in you taking gigantic losses.

Even the best managers only make 20%+/- in addition to a carrying fee. But, the loosing managers suck the other profits out in carrying fees and losses.

I'm not sticking up for hedge fund managers, but I think it is important to note that it makes sense that 87% "of profits" go to managers after you take out the losses and lost fees on shuttered funds.

Winning funds still only take 20%ish of profits.

<comment><USER33> "Mutual funds should net to inflation."

Are you forgetting to include economic growth in your analysis? Historical long term returns of the major indexes are in the 10% range (ballpark approx.), much higher than inflation, which I think was in the 2-3% range (also ballpark).

<comment><USER32> You have to assume going forward there will be economic growth. It is a perfectly fair assumption, but not a fact. And, I will certainly not argue with that assumption. (although there are a lot of people that may)

Hedge funds should still net to zero though. Which is much more important for this discussion.

-I'd be interested in hearing what others think, maybe I'm off on my assumption that hedge funds should net to zero, or maybe I'm missing something else.

<comment><USER12> Market participants should net to beta; hedge funds, as a subset of market participants, have no requirement to net to anything. Likewise for mutual funds.

<comment><USER32> Hedge funds eliminate beta using the hedge. Whether they should meet market returns is a conversation institutional asset managers would have with their clients, but in practice, the aggregate of all of them should net to zero.

<comment><USER12> In practice all of them should net to zero conditional upon them being perfectly beta hedged and having zero net alpha. This is very, very, very rarely the practical case.

If you had moderated your comment with "in theory" instead of "in practice", then you would be more right (since they would then converge at the risk-free rate, not zero).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Theoretically, hedge fund managers should make close to 100% of the gains over the market rate in fees. Otherwise, why would anyone invest in anything other than those funds if they're so much better than the market?

</comment><comment><USER35> Fair enough: the managers did all the work and had all the brains. Investors in hedge funds were just hoping to get something for nothing.

</comment><comment><USER36> It's interesting to me that the people who rant about hedge funds ignore that participation in them is entirely voluntary and even restricted to the wealthy few.

<comment><USER2> The biggest source of hedge fund money are pensions. I'm quite certain the workers didn't volunteer to put their money into hedge funds.

<comment><USER28> Are you sure about that? Isn't that mutual funds?

<comment><USER37> Completely sure. My Australian superannuation/pension was heavily tied up with various hedgefunds and it lost about 50% of its value in 2008. I can't tell them how to spend my money and I can only change between a very similar set of funds. Many pensions around the world are in similar arrangements with hedgefunds and investment banks.

<comment><USER38> You can put your super into a huge variety of places, or even run your own fund. Iirc there are about half a million or so such private 'funds' in Australia.

<comment><USER26> CHORUS 100x

 _~From big things, little things grow~_</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


An entomologist rates ant emojis - <AUTHOR> http://curlicuecal.tumblr.com/post/175362924100/an-entomologist-rates-ant-emojis <comment><USER3> Kinda similar:

Investigating the Potential for Miscommunication Using Emoji [https://grouplens.org/blog/investigating-the-potential- for-m...](https://grouplens.org/blog/investigating-the-potential-for- miscommunication-using-emoji/)

Paper: [http://grouplens.org/site- content/uploads/Emoji_Interpretati...](http://grouplens.org/site- content/uploads/Emoji_Interpretation_Paper.pdf)

It's intersting because there is a huge difference between the simple emoji faces accross devices. The grinning face example is really good because the Apple and Twitter version doesn't look happy at all, like a different expression under the same emoji

[https://grouplens.org/site- content/uploads/GrinningFaceWSmil...](https://grouplens.org/site- content/uploads/GrinningFaceWSmilingEyes-768x154.png)

<comment><USER4> Oh yeah. I used to send an emoji that looked to me like grinning and my friend told me after months she was really feeling uncomfortable with me snarling all the time.

I wish those emojis carried a very small caption. Also because I can't recognize what half of them are supposed to mean.

<comment><USER5> The "crying with laughter" one is similar, some people only see the tears (they are rendered on relatively small screens after all).

<comment><USER6> That one has caused so much confusion amongst the older members of my family on Facebook. My aunt to this day still posts "crying with laughter" to posts about celebrities dying or natural disasters. We've told her it's not a sad smiley, but I think she just can't tell the two apart any more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reminds me of the dead butterflies: [http://emilydamstra.com/news/please- enough-dead-butterflies/](http://emilydamstra.com/news/please-enough-dead- butterflies/)

<comment><USER8> Huh, I could have sworn seeing real, live butterflies with their wings stretched forward. Of course not when it is resting, but perhaps when it is just about to take off? Or when it is defensive/threatened?

<comment><USER9> I always forget to make note of this when I see a butterfly.

I think what happens is that they tend to hold their wings up, which gives the impression that they are pointing forward even when they are not.

Then again, I'm not an entomologist.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/NatureIsFuckingLit/comments/8e0hj3/...](https://www.reddit.com/r/NatureIsFuckingLit/comments/8e0hj3/blue_morpho_butterfly/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/NatureIsFuckingLit/comments/5xj1pn/...](https://www.reddit.com/r/NatureIsFuckingLit/comments/5xj1pn/narcissistic_butterfly_is/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Archive mirror for Europeans who do not want Yahoo/Oath/Tumblr cookies: [http://web.archive.org/web/20180718095145/http://curlicuecal...](http://web.archive.org/web/20180718095145/http://curlicuecal.tumblr.com/post/175362924100/an- entomologist-rates-ant-emojis)

<comment><USER11> I tried turning all the tracking/ads off but it just kept on redirecting me to their GDPR preferences screen every time I clicked submit.

<comment><USER12> Intentional dark pattern or honest bug?

I have had this 'bug' on multiple different websites. Forbes in particular is a nice example, they take 5mins to save your preferences and then it says they "are working on it. You can change your preferences." (Not direct quote).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Off topic, but I think this is interesting:

> I don't know what this is?

I think statements followed by a question mark is a distinctly Tumblr-y convention. It's generally used to express confusion. Kinda like raising one's pitch at the end of a statement to indicate uncertainty.

Pretty cool.

<comment><USER14> It's actually just a lame, noncommittal way to say something. People should just use the period and stand by what they say, imo.

<comment><USER15> It's a linguistic device that adds richness to the language?

<comment><USER16> okay, that's nice use of the question mark.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Apparently there's a whole subreddit dedicated to these reviews:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/EmojiReview/](https://www.reddit.com/r/EmojiReview/)

<comment><USER18> Of course there is, and it reminds me that deep down I still love reddit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's odd that there's no mention of the fact that the samsung centaur ant has 5 legs.

<comment><USER19> It's there, it's just exactly behind the back leg in the foreground.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> What surprises me is the lack of an emoji with an unambiguous meaning of "thank you." I use the prayer hands but that seems to be implying something that doesn't quite fit. Raised hands is somewhat like thanks but also like, "that's cool."

<comment><USER21> > What surprises me is the lack of an emoji with an unambiguous meaning...

Yeah, unfortunately that is hard to express pictorially as there's no universal human gesture or face for it (unlike most facial expressions). I have seen the clapping hands [1] use to say thanks, and alternatively the right-facing fist[2] (as in fist-bump) - but the meaning of the latter can be lost entirely depending on demography of recipient, or interpreted as being aggressive (I'll punch you), and the former might be understood to be applause.

1\. HN does not render Emojis - [https://emojipedia.org/clapping-hands- sign/](https://emojipedia.org/clapping-hands-sign/)

2\. [https://emojipedia.org/right-facing-fist/](https://emojipedia.org/right- facing-fist/) sometimes combined with the left-facing fist to make a fist- bump.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm surprised that they don't mention that most of the ants are missing mandibles.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is so very much what I come to HN for. Bravo!

</comment><comment><USER24> A little OT but how emojis work?

Does each device send a code, interpreted by the recipient device/platform with its own library of images, or do devices send pictures, received as is? Or does it depend on the platform? Is there a standard?

<comment><USER25> The standard is Unicode. The ant is U+1F41C. I have mixed feelings about emojis in the Unicode standard. Apparently this is a Unicode character 'PISTOL':

[https://emojipedia.org/pistol/](https://emojipedia.org/pistol/)

<comment><USER26> Very interesting, in this case there isn't just a different design or different appearance between devices, but it's actually a _different object._

<comment><USER5> I heard (but I may have misheard / misremembered) they're actually planning to remove that emoji from the standard.

It's an er, interesting position that the emoji standards committee (if that's the term) finds itself in. Do they have the right to determine discourse? There have been small riots (if that's the right term) about skin colors, genders, family composition, jobs, and now about weapons as well. They have the job (which I don't envy) to design an international language that is able to express a lot of concepts and emotions on the one hand, but on the other not to offend if possible.

And then there's the implementers, who have to add an extra layer to it - <USER2> the Apple crash bug which was caused by a certain flag emoji being available in one country but not the other.

<comment><USER25> >They have the job (which I don't envy) to design an international language that is able to express a lot of concepts and emotions on the one hand, but on the other not to offend if possible.

Why is their job to avoid offending anyone? Why a pistol emoji showing a real life pistol is offensive on itself? It's not like I can't offend anyone using only the ASCII character set.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I don't understand. A whole 6/10 for the WhatsApp ant, which has only three legs? At least Samsung, missing a leg, got a proper 2/10.

<comment><USER28> But three legs makes sense given you are only seeing one side. If you showed a person from one side it's likely you'd only see one leg. It's the 5 legs and 4 legs that don't make sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> By the way, on my Linux machine, I see most UTF characters in Firefox, but almost none in Chromium.

Does anybody know why?

For example, in Chromium I only see squares here:

[https://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1f41c/browsert...](https://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1f41c/browsertest.htm)

But in Firefox I see ants.

<comment><USER30> Nitpick: Those are _Unicode_ characters, not _UTF_ characters. UTF is just a family of encoding schemes for Unicode codepoints.

(Bonus nitpick: Also, those are not characters, they're glyphs. The term "character" is so indefinable that the Unicode standard, to my knowledge, never uses the term.)

<comment><USER31> [http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode11.0.0/](http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode11.0.0/) has "Changes in the Unicode Character Database" and starts "Unicode 11.0 adds 684 characters, for a total of 137,374 characters." The rest of my comment quotes from the spec, from the section "Characters, Not Glyphs"

> The Unicode Standard draws a distinction between characters and glyphs. > Characters are the abstract representations of the smallest components of > written language that have semantic value. They represent primarily, but not > exclusively, the letters, punctuation, and other signs that constitute > natural language text and technical notation. The letters used in natural > language text are grouped into scripts—sets of letters that are used > together in writing languages. Letters in different scripts, even when they > correspond either semantically or graphically, are represented in Unicode by > distinct characters. This is true even in those instances where they > correspond in semantics, pronunciation, or appearance.

> Characters are represented by code points that reside only in a memory > representation, as strings in memory, on disk, or in data transmission. The > Unicode Standard deals only with character codes.

> Glyphs represent the shapes that characters can have when they are rendered > or displayed. In contrast to characters, glyphs appear on the screen or > paper as particular representations of one or more characters. A repertoire > of glyphs makes up a font. Glyph shape and methods of identifying and > selecting glyphs are the responsibility of individual font vendors and of > appropriate standards and are not part of the Unicode Standard.

> Various relationships may exist between char acter and glyph: a single glyph > may correspond to a single character or to a number of characters, or > multiple glyphs may result from a single character.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Why does every ant get docked for being a "centaur" with 2 thoraces, and yet HTC goes unpunished?

<comment><USER33> The centaur idea refers to the ant's front legs not resting on the ground, not to the double thorax. I found that jarring too, but the ratings are based on appeal and HTC is apparently being rated as elegant abstract art. Compare LG's rating of "This ant is wrong in every way, and yet I can't stay mad at her. 7/10"

Looking more closely, the most disturbing thing I see in these is the Google ant, which has somehow placed its left front leg over its left middle leg. It feels like a layer mixup; that position is completely impossible in normal motion.

<comment><USER34> Google had an issue with the beer emoji being physically impossible as well - a frothy overflowing head on a half full beer.

[https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/5/16737066/google-burger- be...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/5/16737066/google-burger-beer-emoji- android-8-1-fix-release-date)

I agree with the author on the LG ant - it looks wrong but still cute.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Apple attention to detail and build quality wins again.

<comment><USER36> Facebook also deserves credit, though I'm not sure why Messenger has a different set of emoji.

<comment><USER37> Cross-platform consistency.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Was it commissioned by Facebook :D?

<comment><USER39> Facebook's ant is really good tbh

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Relevant XKCD: [https://xkcd.com/1012/](https://xkcd.com/1012/)

</comment><comment><USER41> I'm stuck in a "please accept our gazillion cookies" loop. After managing preferences (which is implemented illegally, as I understand, since opt-out should be as easy as opt-in) and saving, I just get shown the same page again.

Too bad, sounded like a fun article.

<comment><USER42> I'm currently making a list of bad implementations of GDPR, as far as I've observed I'd say that roughly 80% (low estimate) of cookie management systems are dark patterns, and that most of them are downright illegal.

Maybe I should write an article on that, it's a perfect case study.

<comment><USER43> A lot sites moved on to merge their privacy policies with their cookie policies, and they disallow access if you don't accept all of their tracking methods. How do you judge those examples? I'm not referring to those hiding the options to opt-out deep within their policies, sometimes even with text links, but those with absolute consent, i.e., either accept or move on.

<comment><USER42> My wording was indeed inappropriate (I'm not a native speaker), "dark patterns" are subjective but I'd say:

      - the less privacy-friendly option is a big shiny button, while privacy controls are behind a small greyed link
      - hiding the privacy options behind many interactions, basically making it as frustrating as possible to find the opt-out, I always find that amusing to read "We value your privacy" while I spend so much time looking for actual control over my privacy
      - all of the "partners" checked by default (non GDPR compliant), with no easy way to deselect all ("select all" is, however, usually an option)
      - bait and switch: when you go to partners' settings, checking the checkbox is actually requesting to opt-out, but to know that you need to read a long, grey paragraph with a small font size at the very end of the list
      - punishing the user by making it unnecessarily slow to opt-out, most of them are legitimate from my finding, but I've noticed a few fake loadings (zero requests in the network tab), it may simply be due to poor engineering though (Hanlon's razor)
      - redirecting the user from the original content after he opted-out, also feels like an intended punishment to me (but same as before: can be explained by poor engineering)

The list is non-exhaustive, but I wish I had better writing abilities to share my observations in a Medium article or something like that.

<comment><USER44> (Meta: please don't use code formatting for lists; just use a paragraph for each list item, that way it's _readable_. You can even use U+2022 BULLET • as the marker instead of - if the fancy takes you!)

<comment><USER42> Thanks a lot, I was wondering how to format it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> "Hork-bajir", now that is a deep cut reference.

<comment><USER46> With that reference, I knew (within a range of +/\- a couple years) the age of the author.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> In a more extreme form, someone once compared Peppa Pig with real health services. I'm somewhat painfully reminded of the ̶w̶a̶s̶t̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶i̶m̶e̶ scientific value that is this kind of content.

<comment><USER48> Does Peppa Pig encourage misuse of primary care resources?

[https://www.bmj.com/content/359/bmj.j5397](https://www.bmj.com/content/359/bmj.j5397)

<comment><USER49> [https://sci-hub.tw/https://www.bmj.com/content/359/bmj.j5397](https://sci- hub.tw/https://www.bmj.com/content/359/bmj.j5397)

"Dr Brown Bear displays signs of 'burnout.' His disregard for confidentiality, parental consent, record keeping, and his self prescribing indicate that the burden of demand from his patient population is affecting his health. He is no longer able to offer the level of service his patients have come to expect."

Incredible article.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Make your own Product Hunt with airtable or Google sheets in 3 mins - <AUTHOR> Hello
This is my new side project, Hyperlyst, It is a way to build common websites using spreadsheets.
I hope you find it useful.
https://www.hyperlyst.com/ <comment><USER2> [https://www.hyperlyst.com/](https://www.hyperlyst.com/) here is the link

</comment><comment><USER3> How do I self host this?

<comment><USER4> You can via the settings.</comment></comment>


Team17: Your Game Could Be an App Store Hit with One Small Change - <AUTHOR> http://www.carrypad.com/2011/05/17/an-open-letter-to-team17-your-game-could-be-an-app-store-hit-with-one-small-change/

<comment><USER2> How that article got by without pitching naming the feature "Worms With Friends" is a mystery of the ages.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. Was I the only one that interpreted the title as meaning, Team17 will teach you one small change that can make YOUR game a hit?

<comment><USER4> No. The use of a colon instead of a comma probably added to the confusion.

<comment><USER5> I certainly would have benefitted from the title being prefixed with "Dear Team17," or "An open letter to Team 17"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In the casual/social gaming world we call this asynchronous play. You won't find a single breakout hit in the space that requires synchronous play (like Worms). It's extremely rare to find groups of ones own friends online at the same time, who want to play a game with you, outside of the core gamer sect.

</comment><comment><USER7> Carcassonne (<http://carcassonneapp.com/>) provides exactly this play-by-mail feature (though it uses iOS push notifications to inform the players). It's really fun if you like being distracted the whole day long.

<comment><USER8> Play by mail is just a term for multiplayer turn notification. Words with friends also uses push notifications if enabled, and if I recall from the early days, they (Words and Chess with friends) would send either a Text or Email message to inform players of their turn before iOS3.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I disagree to a point. One key part of a worms match is to be able to make your move in a fixed amount of time. Playing in a scenario like WWF, it could easily take that time just to reacquaint myself with where everyone is.

<comment><USER10> It is true that it would change the game dynamics, this is also true for Scrabble and Chess, which are normally played with a clock (however formally or informally applied)

That can improve the game though, while I'm not necessarily that interested in improving my Worms Skillz, correspondence chess definitely gives me a form of training that comes in handy when playing over the board

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I would think it would take more than "one small change" to get this added. Never as easy as it seems.

<comment><USER12> Author of the story here:

I know I bend the truth a bit with the "one small change part" but I did mention that it would be "one small change" from the player perspective, but probably a decent amount of work for the developers : P. All I was trying to imply was that the game is already designed to be turne-based and that doing asynchronous play wouldn't alter the gameplay very much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> ...or replace the worms with birds and call it "Birds".</comment>


Countdown to timestamp 1,500M - <AUTHOR> http://timestamp.online/countdown/1500000000 <comment><USER2> Wow, we're about to see the end of the 1,400M era. The 1,400M era saw me moving to the big city and getting pushed into project management.

Hoping the 1,500M era is nothing but good memories of getting my hands dirty again.

<comment><USER3> Good point. It saw me gain a teenager (second hand) by virtue of being in a relationship with somebody and I love it. Looking forward to 1.5, where we'll hopefully get our house bought together and make a proper life.

<comment><USER4> what's a proper life?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> some info to save someone else from having to look it up

      1 400 000 000 was 5/13/2014, 11:53:20 AM
      1 600 000 000 will be 9/13/2020, 7:26:40 AM
      1 000 000 000 was 9/8/2001, 8:46:40 PM
      2 000 000 000 will be 5/17/2033, 10:33:20 PM
      2^32-1 (4 294 967 295) will be 2/7/2106, 12:28:15 AM

      100 million seconds is a little over 3 years
      1 billion seconds is almost 32 years.

<comment><USER6> I remember 1e+9 because it shifted a log file over by 1 character. And less than a week later I was out of a job (travel industry).

<comment><USER7> Was that a coincidence? Please don't leave us hanging.

<comment><USER8> 1 billion Unix time was September 8, 2001.

<comment><USER9> Sep 9th actually. 0146 GMT.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I remember staying up late (uk time), watching the seconds on my 17" 4x3 cry running on Debian tick over to 1e9 back in September 2001, with slashdot open on the side.

Now, 500 million seconds later I'll be watching the counter on an ubuntu laptop. Not quite as late as I'm in Washington DC on business, and I abandoned /. a couple of years ago.

It amazes me how much changes, but also how little things change.

</comment><comment><USER10> Wow, in the last 100M seconds I've gotten married, bought a house, had two kids, graduated college, started my own company. That's one heck of a metric.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> But be aware with your celebration. It can be slightly off due to leap seconds. [https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/327361/openbsd-6-0-...](https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/327361/openbsd-6-0-ntpctl- says-clocked-synced-but-is-26-seconds-behind/327403#327403)

<comment><USER11> A leap second coming between now and Unix time 1500000000 would certainly be unexpected. I doubt any software in the world is ready for that.

<comment><USER12> Really, your organization isn't prepared to handle an _emergency_ leap second? Tsk, tsk.. /s

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> At the beginning of 1.4 I was just a freshman. Now, at the beginning of 1.5, I'm just a different kind of freshman.

</comment><comment><USER14> Shouldn't we celebrate changes in the binary representations instead of decimal?. After all, that's how it's stored.

</comment><comment><USER15> And only 7,494 days, 5 hours, 22 seconds until timestamp -2,147,483,648 (assuming your system uses the original Unix signed 32-bit integer time format).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem)

</comment><comment><USER16> And happy 1500000000!

<comment><USER17> Yay! Here's to the next 100 million! or 500 million! Cheers!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Back in 2001 my social circle had a "gigasecond party" where we got together to cheer the moment of 1000000000. Like New Years, except that it was during the afternoon.

<comment><USER15> My wife and I calculated her 1 billionth second of life and observed the moment (I was already past mine when we thought of the idea). It occurs at 31.7097919838 years of age.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is like New Year for geeks

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It looks that next interesting timestamp will be in 4 months - [http://timestamp.online/article/countdown-to-interesting- tim...](http://timestamp.online/article/countdown-to-interesting-timestamps) :)

</comment><comment><USER20> Noted at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14758615](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14758615) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14764504](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14764504) .

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This post was for shirt time period first on hacker news. More than 2k people arrived during first hour. For more details you can check my analysis - [https://goo.gl/iKM3kV](https://goo.gl/iKM3kV)

</comment><comment><USER21> On a mac, you can keep track by opening the terminal and running the command "date +%s" (no quotes).

<comment><AUTHOR> To see the countdown, you can use:

      while true; do echo $((1500000000 - `date +"%s"`)); sleep 1; done

<comment><USER9> Sleep 1 means that you could miss it, as the loop will take >1 second to run (the fork isn't instantaneous)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The website 'honors' the max time [http://timestamp.online/countdown/2147483647](http://timestamp.online/countdown/2147483647) (it gives the same value for all URLs larger than it)

<comment><USER23> To truly honor it, it should overflow into negative seconds before the epoch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I remember the 1234567890 celebrations. I saved the IRC log from #1234567890 on Freenode.

<comment><USER25> pastebin pls!

<comment><USER24> Okay, fine:

[http://jordi.platinum.linux.pl/1234567890_prelim.txt.gz](http://jordi.platinum.linux.pl/1234567890_prelim.txt.gz)

I don't know what's going on with some of the encodings there, but I expect people were simply sending pre-UTF8 encodings.

<comment><USER25> Wow, thank you for that. I had no idea IRC still had that much energy in 2009!

<comment><USER24> There's still lots of IRC activity today, but I couldn't find a 1500000000 celebration.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> That was epoch! ;)

</comment><comment><USER27> Which means we're not getting younger</comment>