Compared to you, most people seem dumb - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2010/10/25/compared-to-you-most-people-seem-dumb/ <comment><USER3> _People are not really stupid, it is just that you know a lot more. Don't let knowledge blind you._

The points made in this piece are very good ones but it is not primarily an issue of intelligence - rather, it is mostly about one's point of reference.

Early in my legal career, I worked at a firm that represented a group of Nob Hill condo owners who had had a series of problems with contractors and who had suffered a variety of damages relating to roof leaks, etc. This might sound mundane but these "condos" were (even in that day back in the early 1980s) worth well into 7 figures and the problems had been persistent and severe. Yet, when it came time to settle the case, we had to prepare a set of instructions explaining the settlement documents and where they needed to be signed. We were dealing with perhaps 30 people and they were all ultra- sophisticated types (former board of supervisors members in SF, top-flight lawyers, very wealthy business owners, etc.) and nearly every one of them messed up the execution of the documents in one way or another. When this happened to me, I learned one very important lesson: maybe _I_ had been so immersed in this process that the detailed explanations made perfect sense to me, logically and otherwise, and even appeared to be simple, but, for those who have busy lives and who don't want to have to analyze in detail a set of potentially intricate legal instructions, such instructions were not simple at all. Why? _Not_ because of lack of intelligence (these were very smart and successful people). Rather, because they were not familiar with the legal mumbo-jumbo and they didn't _want_ to bother to go down the rabbit-hole of trying to figure them out. In effect, they simply wanted a "just tell me where to sign" sort of instruction (which suggested the obvious answer as well, because the matter did need explanations for them to be able to sign in an informed way - that answer was to just set up an in-person meeting with them as a group, give the explanations, and then have them sign).

This same principle operated with the big name partners in this large firm (some of the best lawyers in the nation), who couldn't be bothered with computers because "typing is secretary's work" (this was around 1980). These were exceedingly smart people but it did not fit their point of reference to bother themselves with trying to learn about some newfangled technology that seemed like a lot of bother to learn when their life-long habits had taught them that there is no advantage to investing time in that process.

Of course, with engineering design, one needs to anticipate what a very broad range of potential users might do with an interface that is developed by software engineers who may or may not share the point of reference of a great many such users. Concerning such issues, it is not "dumb" for an older generation to eschew text messages when they are used simply to picking up the phone to talk something over and, when they are forced to actually do a text message, to become frustrated with having to learn something that is not intuitive to them and that may lie well outside of their point of reference. Nor is this an issue merely of age and habits. Non-engineers have nowhere near the breadth of knowledge about such items as engineers do (the main point of this piece) and there are legendary examples of the boneheaded instructions that have sometimes been given because of the blind spot that this can create ("how do I sign on with my ISP when I have never had access to the Internet before [this was in the early 1990s]? simple, just log on to the web at xxxxx and follow the instructions").

Moreover, this issue can be generalized as well. If I have specialized knowledge about a given area (such as law), things that seem obvious and even intuitive to me may very easily not be at all comprehensible to one who does not share that point of reference. I realized this fundamental truth early on in my career in dealing with clients: that is, that learning to communicate effectively and simply about a complex subject matter is an _art form_.

There is no mechanical answer to it except that one must put oneself as best as one can in the place of the recipient of that knowledge and try to anticipate what the person does not know about the assumptions you will be making in giving the explanation.

None of this means that you are of superior intelligence to those with whom you seek to communicate. It only means that you have a specialized expertise that they lack and you have a tall order before you in being able to guide them by the hand, as it were, to make your explanation or instructions (or interface design) understandable. This is not at all easy to do. Indeed, it is one of the toughest challenges extant in the design world, and that is precisely why superb and elegant interface design (among other things) is so hard to come by.

I would therefore amend the main point of this fine article to say, "People are not really stupid, it is just that you know a lot more [about your area of expertise]. Don't let knowledge blind you."

<comment><USER4> As Einstein said: Make it as simple as possible. But not simpler.

This is an art, and it applies to every form of user interface design.

<comment><USER5> "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." - da vinci

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A good friend of mine recently commented that I always brought up role models that he had no idea who were, and I quoted as known and famous. The people in question were names such as Niels Bohr, Steve Jobs, Larry and Sergey, Richard Dawkins and Einstein.

My first thought was to dismiss him as not very knowledgeable, but then I thought to ask him who _he_ thought were good famous role models. He rambled off a number of names that I'd never heard before, primarily from motoring and sports. A quick google search showed me that these people were just as known as my role models.

It's not so much about being dumb, it's more about simply having different interests and perspectives on life. This is a good thing.

<comment><USER7> I would be a bit worried by anyone who has not heard of Einstein.

But you make a great point, and I think the article missed it. It is not that we know more, we know more about our particular areas of expertise, just as others know more about their areas of expertise. My Dad knows a lot more about airplanes than I do, because he worked on them for a number of years.

<comment><USER8> Does Einstein really hold an important relevance to 'everyman USA'? To nearly every citizen - and, I would argue, even with those a basic (HS) level of physics - he's not so different than Heisenberg, Bohr, Bethe, Shrodinger, etc. Sure, they made great advances for the world of physics, but how relevant is that to an individual who does not interact with that theory at all? More specifically, relevant enough to cause worry?

Now, I note that you could argue the Manhattan product is a reason for Einstein's relevance, but was he really significantly more relevant in that than any other of the scientists?

People know politicians because they affect taxes, healthcare, laws, etc. They know sports stars because it's a subject they enjoy following - <USER2> impressive feats of human ability. And they probably know a few individuals closer to their field of work.

Is Einstein really an example of something that 'everyman' should know about, or could your argument partially be a confirmation of the article's argument?

<comment><USER9> It's not about whether Einstein should be known or not. The point is that he _is_ an icon, one that the vast majority of people do know about. Not knowing about Einstein means you're _really_ uninformed.

<comment><USER10> No, Really Uninformed is a whole nother level of ignorance. When pictures of Jupiter from Pioneer 10 were on the front page <\dated myself>, a graduate student in my Engineering school asked me "Jupiter is a planet, right"? Astonished, I answered politely "Yes, its the 5th planet". Then, and this is the good part, she asked "So, is Earth a planet?"

<comment><USER11> There is something called "general culture". Not knowing that Einstein is a physicist, that Jupiter and the Earth are planets, that Christopher Columbus landed the Americas in 1492, is lacking general culture, i. e. being dumb. When you're so specialized you can't be bothered to know the bare "common sense" stuff, you can't even be a responsible citizen.

<comment><USER10> ...or even a good Engineer. This lady may have helped design that MRI machine your spouse trusted their life to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The underlying issue is that people are afraid to try and explore. They form a mental model of how to do something, look for something that fits into that model, and then are happy. If they guess the wrong model, though, then they are stuck forever.

Skilled computer users, on the other hand, don't let a failing model bother them. They just try something else.

Most people will do this for anything _but_ computers, though, which is weird. If their favorite road to the CHEZBURGER store is closed, they will find another road. But if it happens online... panic, frozen.

People basically need to be taught that you can't break computers. Programmers need to provide better undo functionality, so that this is not a lie.

<comment><USER13> My grandma calls me up and says "I want to move my computer into the other room, will you come over and plug everything in for me?".

I tell her "the plugs will only fit one way round into the correct sockets, you literally can't go wrong".

She calls me back, saying that her mouse isn't working.

I go over and take a look. She'd forced the USB connector on her mouse into an Ethernet socket with such force that she cracked the network card.

The lesson? Elderly women are _strong_.

<comment><USER14> You've never plugged a USB cable into an Ethernet socket? Often it doesn't even take any force.

<comment><USER15> Yes, and it doesn't help that some nitwit put the ethernet port right next to the USB ports on the standard ATX layout. DURR. Probably the same guy who made USB symmetrical, thus forcing me to spend what must be a day or two of my total lifespan trying to jam the things in upside-down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've found a fairly useful analogy that helps most tech people. If you're into cars and the analogy doesn't work, just think of something you need to know about at some point, but probably don't know much about at all.

Mostly this helps when a customer feels guilty about needing help, or someone in IT thinks "me > all" because they can enter a command line. I think of my role like this:

Your average non-tech person probably feels about their computer the same way I feel about my car. I know nothing about cars. Usually I get my oil changed, but only because I have a repeating 3 month appointment based on 10 years of not getting it changed regularly. Bt even then, I sometimes forget. I now know I need to check tire pressure, but the place I buy my tires does that for me when I check in every two months. I know NOTHING about cars.

The reality is, your average person is no more stupid for not knowing "technology" than you are for not knowing automobiles, or how an airplane works, or the nuances of ASEAN trade relations. You've specialized, even if it doesn't feel like a specialization because YOU see technology all around you. Guess what: someone specializing in US/China trade relations sees the impact of RMB undervaluation all around, too. And a nutritionist sees daily health decisions all around. And so on.

So don't laugh because someone clicked a link to a pop-up ad when they thought they were closing the ad. Instead, help them fix their problem and, if appropriate, give them a pointer or two so they don't make the same mistake again. And absolutely have the patience with your customers that you'd want someone else to have with you, in your area of weakness. And if you don't think you have a weakness--if you think you're infinitely adaptable--I hope people around you have god-like patience, because you're probably wrong.

But regardless, don't get superior: our skills are valuable, but so are other ones. The sooner you learn that, the better off you'll be.

<comment><USER17> If you are changing your oil every three months then you are almost certainly wasting money. You should trust the integrity of the oil change shop about as much as you would trust an 'SEO expert.' There might be good ones, but most are looking to maximize profit at your expense.

<comment><USER16> This is just multiplying my inhibitions :)

It's a '94 Mercedes 500SL, so...better safe than sorry?

<comment><USER18> Every 3000 miles or 6 months.

3 months is quite unnecessary.

And if you switch to Mobil-1 oil you can bump that to 6000 miles, and yearly (but only starting from the second usage of it, i.e. the first time you use it stick with 3000 miles). The oil costs more, but you'll save money by doing less changes.

With newer cars you can go as much as 10,000 to 15,000 miles with regular oil.

<comment><USER19> Going synthetic in an older vehicle isn't always good. a small leak into the piston woudln't be a problem with regular oil, but with synthetics you have an issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Two things to say here. First, "dumb" is not the right word. My wife is a theoretical physicist - thus pretty much guaranteed to be "not dumb" - but is not fully cognizant of the fact that URLs exist. She, too, has Google as her default home page and types what she wants into it. And she has Google search on the toolbar and types what she wants into _that_. _Even if what she wants is the name of the site_ , she goes through Google first. Always.

The corollary to the observation that most people don't know what you take for granted in the computer realm, though, is that _your customers know all kinds of stuff you have no idea about_.

Think about that a little.

<comment><USER21> When you google everything, stuff like this: [http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_wants_to_be_yo...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_wants_to_be_your_one_true_login.php) happens... (read the comments)

<comment><USER20> Oh, I know. When that was news, I laughed at it, and told her about it. That's why she's now partly cognizant that URLs exist. It hasn't changed her habits much, although it did allow me to persuade her that setting bookmarks can have its uses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> My programming language professor once told us the history of when he was assigned in a committee to produce a brochure about the college. At one point a publication specialist came to the committee meeting to talk about possible brochure arrangements. The specialist was using too many jargon words from the publication world so my professor wasn't really able to understand what the specialist was saying. At one point the professor had an epiphany: "My god, this is how we sound to people that work in other areas when we talk about our own area!"

</comment><comment><USER23> I just mailed this post to my partners. We recently merged.

They sold individual accounts to teacher and students. I sold accounts to schools.

Their users are very web savvy and need no training. My users did not seek out the app online. They are being asked by their schools to use the application.

We are noticing now how things we took for granted in the UI are now being questioned. These new users are struggling with the same exact UI that the others picked up and ran with.

Although it is a much larger sale, we are finding ourselves having to "hide" most of our options behind an "advanced" button. We are giving the school admins control to set all of the options and therefore simplifying the app as much as possible. This will make our new users feel comfortable.

Great post.

</comment><comment><USER24> I wish I could wrap my head around the size of the subset in relation to the larger set of users of the internet. I think that those are able to accomplish this have a huge leg up in product design, and this ability is something that is incredibly taken for granted.

One time my non-technical partner was attempting to access something I had been working on for a day or so and he told me that it wasn't working at all (even though I had confirmed it was before I had left) and I started to panic as we were close to a deadline for a client. Turns out that when i was telling him to access dev.somesite.com he was putting in www.dev.somesite.com and it was screwing up the javascript... because he naturally thought everything started with a 'www'.

It blew me away that he didn't understand the concept of subdomains, but also it was a reality check that he sort of knew his way around a computer and websites, and that it meant there was a much much larger set of users that couldn't grasp the concept of a subdomain. It can be difficult sometimes when you have the perception (especially on HN) that so many people out there know more than you about everything. I guess you just have to take a step back and realize you are still in the 99th percentile of the rest of the world when it comes to this stuff.

<comment><USER25> 99th percentile? I'd say HN audience is in 99.9 percentile of the world when it comes to computer knowledge. (0.1% of the world is still 6.6 million people).

<comment><USER19> Certainly higher than 99.999 for just a random sampling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> A few years ago I ran a website for a local community science fair. We'd get about 200 schools participating, and they have to register online before they can send kids projects to the fair.

190 of the 200 go off without a hitch. But I always get five or ten angry emails asking how to register a school, because they see no box to type into. Somehow they can find the "contact" link in tiny print and write out an email with bad spelling and grammar, but the "Click Here to Register" link in 24 point red text is impossible to locate. Also, these people are educating our children.

I learned the hard way why most websites have their signup form right on the front page. Call it A/B testing via angry feedback form.

</comment><comment><USER27> This reminds me of the mixup a few months ago where a site other than Facebook was the top Google result for "facebook login" <http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/11/facebook-login>.

I find it rather depressing that while we've built up all these layers of abstraction there are still people who don't understand what the address bar is.

<comment><USER10> Because the address bar has become rapidly irrelevant. Domain name is almost as useless as ip address - its highly coded unrememberable nonsense, often unrelated to the product or company name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think (one of) the biggest difficulties is that it's not as simple as

 _Make your apps, websites and tools as simple as possible_

There are two targets that could be aimed for- (a) some kind of inherent intuitiveness/simplicity (as in the calendar example), and (b) something the most similar to past experience (as exemplified by the "Reply" button example).

One of my lab partners in grad school didn't believe there was such a thing as inherent intuitiveness. Back when I had more free time for such things, I remember having lengthy arguments with PC-to-Mac switchers explaining how the implementation of feature X was inherently more intuitive or ergonomic on the mac although it seemed a stupid way to do it to them. Some might argue that even in the calendar example, clicking the date is not more intuitive but similar to the past experience of writing on a physical calendar.

However, I'd argue there is definitely such a thing as an interface that is inherently non-intuitive, so by contrast, there must be things that make an interface inherently more intuitive.

So, I think of (a) and (b) as competing trade-offs that must be compromised. Going too radical towards (a), especially on a product that people already have formed associations with, and you end up an awesome, but fringe, product with a small community of fanatic followers (see NeXT). If you create a radically new something, or the impression thereof, you have a lot more leeway, since people are not psychologically attached to previous experiences.

Go too radically towards (b) and you aren't adding anything different with your product.

If you're making something new to go into battle against existing, well- established products, the best approach is to start with (b) and then slowly "fix" things, one at a time, over time, starting with features that give the biggest bang for the smallest change in user behavior. This applies to user- facing front ends, only of course.

</comment><comment><USER29> See the comments at the bottom of [http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_wants_to_be_yo...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_wants_to_be_your_one_true_login.php) for a practical example. See also <http://xkcd.com/763/>.

<comment><USER30> That's hilarious. (and sad)

But seriously, every time Facebook changes something we get a reminder of how disruptive it is to change the average users' usage flow. Everyone gets around it eventually, but adjusting isn't pretty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> My dad is a Master Electrician but he still asks me questions about his hotmail account and to resend a link to my Picasa albums. He deals with megawatts of electricity on a daily basis. I would hesitate to call him dumb...

<comment><USER32> Ditto for my stepdad, electrical engineer, holds more patents than I own books, and has put something on fucking _Mars_.

Still can't get his webcam to work, and keeps every document on his desktop.

It's just a matter of different knowledge domains. If you tossed me into the woods with experienced naturalists, they'd probably laugh every time I wiped with poison oak, too.

<comment><USER33> Actually, you'd probably laugh at them because they were naked.

<comment><USER34> I think you're thinking of naturists, not naturalists.

<comment><USER33> Thank. You. I'm glad you nipped that in the butt. Could have been very embarrassing.

I'm feeling snarky because it's 11:29 PM local time, and I'm about to ditch the trial server software I had planned to use and just write the goddamn things I need in Python, and keep it all in memory, so I can actually finish my shit this week. Fuck databases, fuck socket-server middle-ware, fuck best practice dogma (except when they really matter).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I went to a talk given by a high-ranking Mozilla employee. He mentioned it was challenge getting the loyalty of non-techie users, because when asked what "web browser" they used, most responded, "Google."

</comment><comment><USER36> I have above average intelligence, compared to me most people ARE dumb.

Said in jest, obviously....

In all seriousness, this is a very common issue for "isolated" developers and designers. We all work in our little cubicles building what makes sense to us. We never think that we are our own most knowledgeable users. A feature that is obvious to us is most likely obvious because we put it there.

It's also why in any company, the people making the product (whatever it is) should spend some time on the front line dealing with customers. Even better, they should WATCH people use the product they built.

<comment><USER37> > A feature that is obvious to us is most likely obvious because we put it > there.

Or it's not even obvious to us because it was written years ago. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Hmm, how do you get to the special characters on the iPhone?

<comment><USER39> Hold down a letter and an extended menu pops up.

<comment><USER38> oh wow, thanks!

Now I see where are all these missing letters from my Arabic keyboard are.

Seriously, how the hell would anyone discover this feature on his own?

<comment><USER4> > Seriously, how the hell would anyone discover this feature on his own?

That's exactly how I expected it to work. Only goes to show I've been working in close mental proximity to the people who made this feature for a long time. Sometimes even physical proximity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> It seems to me the problem is that there are many more opportunities for people working in computing to feel superior because of the way computers (and the internet, in particular) have become ubiquitous in our society. I mean, supposing you were a marine biologist. Not everyone is an expert in your domain, sure, but equally, people just don't normally ask you that many questions about it. If, on the other hand, a marine biologist gets asked daily whether a common species of seaweed is safe to eat, she might, after a while, start wondering why people are so stupid that she has to keep answering the same question. The problem is that in this hypothetical world, enough people eat seaweed often enough that this knowledge is required of our marine biologist on a regular basis, yet any particular person doesn't eat seaweed often enough that he would remember which species were safe to eat. Of course, it doesn't help that there are so many species of similar-looking seaweed or that there are just enough marine biologists around that she meets a group of them with whom she can feel smug at every party she attends!

</comment><comment><USER41> Yesterday someone emailed me saying that they downloaded "Like.fm for Firefox" and then proceeded to ask me what the site's address was (it's Like.fm).

However cases like this are still the exception. Bad user experience design usually leads to clueless users. So it's not a matter of intelligence or technical acuity, it's all about how experienced you are with the interfaces and how well it's designed to be familiar to you. Obviously if you are the designer you're going to be more familiar than a new user. But it won't matter if you're using wormholes for your internet backbone if it's well designed even Abraham Lincoln will be able to use it.

That being said not all user interfaces should be dumbed down as much as possible. It just has to be as familiar as possible to your target user base.

</comment><comment><USER42> This is a pretty condescending article. I mean, it's certainly true that your average Silicon Valley engineer or entrepreneur is of far above average intelligence, but things like knowing what a URL is isn't a good way to measure it. For the literal argument of this article, it's a specialization. I'm sure there are military commanders that are strategic geniuses who wouldn't immediately know how to get to special characters on the iPhone, or highly skilled pilots who can't answer the question, "what's a browser?" accurately.

These are pieces of topic knowledge, orthogonal to the question of "smart".

All of this said, having worked in consumer internet, I totally agree that the vast (read: _vast_ ) majority of internet users are absolute retards (or at least play them online).

<comment><USER43> I think this is a case of "flamboyant headline; reasonable article". He doesn't really argue in the article that people are stupid. It is implied by the headline, but that is clearly just an attempt to get pageviews. The actual content of the article is quite reasonable, and true.

While it would be even more reasonable for him to include a paragraph about how other people probably feel the same way about us with things like "social skills" or what have you, that would be off topic, and overly pedantic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Same idea, but on a bigger scale -- Arthur C. Clarke's third law:

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."[1]

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarkes_three_laws>

</comment><comment><USER45> What frustrates me most is that I keep meeting people who seem to know less about their respective fields than one would expect them to, or they should at least know more about them than I or some other laic does.

</comment><comment><USER46> _Apparently you can book tickets, check email and do all sorts of stuff online without knowing that each website has a distinct address called a URL._

Yes. The days of DNS as a mainstream human interface are numbered.

<comment><USER47> So we'll be going back to AOL keywords?

<comment><USER48> Seriously? We've been in that world for the last four years, only it's called Google keywords now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Hmm, I have the opposit feeling, that is compared to me many seem to be more intelligent. I stumble into many different fields and know some basics, but whereever I go people can tell me stuff I have never heard of and seem to comprehend stuff quickly when I explain it, which took me weeks to figure out...

So I usually go with the opposit approach and believe most people can explain something to me rather than believing I could figure everything out what they know by myself ...

</comment><comment><USER50> Let's say I go to the mechanic with a light on in the dashboard, and he'll immediately notice the gas cap isn't tightly secured so it set off a car sensor. He probably went back to his mechanic friends, told them the story, and everyone laughed.

The computer and everything about it is our profession/hobby/passion and that is the main reason we know so much more than everyone else about it.

</comment><comment><USER51> On the other hand, I sometimes wonder if I see dumb when all I talk about is my little startups and whatever jazz I'm into today.

</comment><comment><USER52> It's just that everyone knows more about their own trade than others. My Dad's an automobile engineer and he thinks it's kinda funny that I do not really understand how a 4-wheel drive works...and I find it funny that he doesn't get why his computer hangs much more than mine (I use Linux :P )

</comment><comment><USER53> This is a really good article when considering use cases for your users. Sometimes classifying it under 'stupid user syndrome' just isn't good enough, you have to understand that they are not unintelligent, they just don't grasp the same domain knowledge as we do.

<comment><USER54> As Merlin Mann said, we're all nerds (see <http://www.43folders.com/2010/09/10/my-paladin>). We're just not all nerds in the same disciplines. E.g. I couldn't care less about lawn mowers but I wouldn't dare say that to a clerk at Home Depot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Compared to me, most people ARE dumb, in my area of expertise.

What's that you say? Step out of my area of expertise?

No.

</comment><comment><USER56> Don't disparage these people: they're the ones clicking on your ads ;-)

</comment><comment><USER57> Well, I wouldn't directly equate technical knowledge with intelligence.

However, the statement "compared to you, most people seem dumb" isn't necessarily wrong -- 'you' must just be very intelligent.

</comment><comment><USER58> I would love to read this, but the website is completely broken for me in Opera 10.63.

It breaks after one of the many many many cross site plugins is loaded.

</comment><comment><USER59> now im curious. how does texting someone back on the iphone work?

<comment><USER10> I think you just enter another message and Send, and the address is assumed from context. Cool but definitely not obvious to everyone (me).

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> It's a matter of _specialization_ , if you will. Technology literacy is not the only talent in the world, but if that's what you choose to define yourself with, then it's easy for you to classify people in a related hierarchy.

Granted, this sort of relativism can only cover so much, since you'll also come across people who don't seem to know anything at all.

</comment><comment><USER61> "People are not really stupid, it is just that you know a lot more. Don't let knowledge blind you."

No, you dumb fuck. You're the idiot who knows nothing apart from useless technobabble that nobody will care about in 100 years - sorry, that should probably be 10 years.

</comment><comment><USER62> Tech people, and especially the circle that is absorbed in the startup/techcrunch/combinator thing, have to be the most incredibly self absorbed, solipsistic bunch of twits in creation.

Most people are busy earning a living or living their lives doing something that actually matters, and the subtle nuance of details that tech startup types endlessly masturbate over is trivial background noise to most of the normal working populace.

To turn it all around, I have had the experience of explaining a legalism such as a specific application of labor or copyright law to a deep hard core techie. It's absolutely outside their universe and their frame of reference... does not compute... smoke starts coming out the ears... "Illogical! Norman, please coordinate..."

<comment><USER63> 'Frame of Reference' is exactly the right concept. This is what allows you to make sense of what you don't understand. Even the smartest people with the wrong frames can come up short when challenged.

Having a frame of reference is a combination of specific knowledge (typically gained through a program of formal study), and experience (typically gained from operating within a frame for some time, and building a private sense of how it works in practice).

The fastest way to infuriate an otherwise smart, capable person is to (a) fail to understand that they simply don't share your frame of reference, then (b) treat them like they're incapable of understanding anything at all while (c) failing to supply the kinds of helpful clues that can get them properly oriented, allowing them to use what they do know to make better sense of what they don't.

Computer people seem especially prone to this.

<comment><USER10> Agreed. I tried to eat it a Korean soup kitchen the other day. There I sat clueless with some murky broth and undescipherable dishes of 'stuff' while all around me Korean students scraped and mixed and ate with happy abandon.</comment></comment></comment>


Dark Patterns After the GDPR - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.02479 <comment><USER2> A real effort to protect the information related to users using a website or webservice is not a trivial effort. Extensive re-architecture and forethought is required in order to fully comply, or at least that's the amount I estimate it would require to be fully GDPR-compliant.

Small firms won't be able to take on the cost, which will hurt new businesses.</comment>


Ubermind's mobile designers holding open house (Seattle, Aug 18) - <AUTHOR> http://ubermind.eventbrite.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> These guys:

<http://www.ubermind.com/></comment>


You Can Change Your Personality - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2017/01/how-to-change-your-personality.html <comment><USER2> This is a stale and old debate, personality is extremely flexible and heavily depends on environmental and social constraints, as were demonstrated by seminal social experiment studies such as those of Milgram or Zimbardo. The argument that the changes seen there are short lived can be contradicted by the fact that subjects always go back to their normal environment after the experiment. What I believe Ed Boyden would call the illusion of isolation. That is why important changes usually occur at key breaking moments in a life: change of school, leaving home, changing city/country. The social environment has far more power on the psyche than any therapy. But the social environment of an individual usually do not change, and the only real power he has on it is to willingly chose isolation, which is worst of all. [http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/174569161456835...](http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1745691614568352)

Personality disorders, on the other hand, are characterised by fixed traits of personality, rigid in time in spite of detrimental effects on the life of the subject or the life of others.

<comment><USER3> This reminds me of an article I read which said that 95% of the soldiers in Vietnam who had become addicted to heroin simply stopped when they came back to America.

1: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-real-cause- of-...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-real-cause-of- addicti_b_6506936.html)

<comment><USER4> I have read about this a few times. I think the main difference is in what the folks are changing: They are changing habits and lifestyle - their input - rather than changing their base personality - their output. Naturally with different input they act differently: Same for dropping a drug that affects the way you act.

And I do somewhat understand - I changed a lot of things when I moved overseas. I likely seem different: But I'm also happier and have a different knowledge base than I did a few years ago. People's expectations of me changed as well: As soon as people realize I'm not Norwegian (the English accent gives me away), it is OK if I break some social norms - those things that I had trouble grasping anyway.

<comment><USER5> We are, if anything, creatures of habit. Drawn to the safety and the comfort of the similar.

<comment><USER6> Meditation is one good way to break this. Rubbing your nose endlessly in your own thoughtless patterns can be bloody embarrassing. Certainly life-changing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> People often use "its just my personality" as an excuse for bad behavior. Intuitively I think most people know that you have control over your behavior at the very least as well as aspects of your personality. Just like any other activity, you can practice being a more considerate, or more respectful, or less neurotic personality.

There is a weird meme that tech people aren't capable of being "team players" or working with other people. Maybe research will help address that perception; awkward is ok, but we shouldn't accept that techies will be dicks to people all the time.

<comment><USER8> I've always wondered, given this "stereotype" if there isn't more to it. Is it possible that because, in general, people who were "nerds" were likely more of a social outcast growing up, that they have essentially become "hardened", if you will, to social graces. They spent so much of their developmental years being teased/ridiculed/whatever that what is "normal" treatment of others has essentially become foreign to them? Sure, you can form a relationship with your family, but that really doesn't extend to how you interact with people outside of your inner circle.

There seems to be such a strong correlation, curious if anyone has ever studied it. It seems we've gotten to the point that so very much of our adult behavior can be traced to childhood events/upbringing that this can't be an outlier.

<comment><USER9> I think this is mostly an effect of nerds not wanting to be exclusionary and therefore enabling this kind of behavior. If you're a nerd and you're kind of a prick, other nerds will tend to excuse it rather than just pushing you away. They'll disregard your behavior and keep inviting you to events. They'll ignore the fact that you're unpleasant when bonuses/promos are being handed out at work because it should be based on merit, as if there's no merit in behaving sociably. They'll generally look the other way because the alternatives are to be confrontational (which most people, including nerds, don't want to do) or to exclude you.

On the other hand, if you're not a nerd and you act like a prick, people will just start to cut you out of their lives. You won't get invited to social events. You probably won't get promoted because no one wants to work with you. Your behavior will impact your life. You can be a prick and be successful, but it's harder, because you have to balance it by being really good at something else. You're an amazing salesperson so you get rewarded despite being unpleasant. You're wealthy so people hang out with you even though you're rude.

The bar for nerds looking the other way seems to be lower. You're rude, but that's just how you are. Obviously there are limits even for nerds, but the limits seem to be pretty high.

<comment><USER10> Why not both?

<comment><USER11> To someone with an uncommon interest (a "nerd", in other words, though nerdy interests tend to require higher-than-average intelligence to possess), people with that interest are hard to find.

Once you finally meet someone sharing that interest, and it turns out that they act like a prick, you have a difficult choice (if you value sociable behavior over the opportunity to be social at all; willingly choosing isolation is frequently not a tenable position).

The cost and stakes for confrontation (and exclusion) are higher than it is in a "nerdier" group than for people with more common interests, simply because of the lack of people who are capable of the interest in the first place. So, more bad behaviors are tolerated. It's also worth noting that "bad" covers both "weird" and "malicious", which is also why groups with these interests tend to be much more accepting of people with other interests outside of those standard for the surrounding society.

The feedback loop is as such less; personality quirks don't get as rounded-off as they would in a less-exclusive group, so any conversions from asshole -> non-asshole in a small community will take longer if they even happen at all.

So, it should be no surprise that individuals more aware than most of the fact that "good people are hard to find" are willing to make certain sacrifices to retain them. For individuals whose interests and abilities involve a larger cross-section of the population, however, people are much more interchangeable, so excluding weird/malicious behavior is much easier.

As an example, consider the tech community's recent trend of attempting to exclude speakers with non-standard political views from conferences. The arguments for doing so come from people with the mindset that technology experts are interchangeable (which is valid in some areas), the arguments against it come from those who see technology experts as an unusually scarce resource (which is valid everywhere else in the world).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Did I just miss something or did the article offer no evidence for it's position that personality can changer other than presenting some writing exercises by high schoolers that asked them if personality can change. It didn't seem to elaborate about how these exercises affected or changed their personality or present any other evidence or examples of changing personality.

Don't get me wrong, I do believe that personality can change, just this article didn't seem to present a good basis for that thinking.

<comment> nommm-nommm They named the the journal and the issue but not the title of the meta- analysis itself.

"In an analysis of 207 studies, published this month in the journal Psychological Bulletin, a team of six researchers found that personality can and does change, and by a lot, and fairly quickly. But only with a therapist's help. (Imagine that.)"

Edit: someone tracked down the original. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13452075](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13452075)

<comment><USER13> [https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Brent_Roberts/publicati...](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Brent_Roberts/publication/312105742_A_Systematic_Review_of_Personality_Trait_Change_Through_Intervention/links/5870f1f308ae329d621714aa.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Original paper: [https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Brent_Roberts/publicati...](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Brent_Roberts/publication/312105742_A_Systematic_Review_of_Personality_Trait_Change_Through_Intervention/links/5870f1f308ae329d621714aa.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER15> I believe that we have control over our personality.

Like exercise (to change your body), changing your personality takes time and conscious effort. You need to dedicate time every day for honest self- reflection, self-awareness, meditation, reading and education in the topic, etc.

There are two ways you can lose weight. Accidentally, by getting sick or stressed, for instance; and on purpose, through concerted diet and exercise. The same can happen with personality changes. It can happen accidentally, through change of environment or mental illness like depression.

But doing it on purpose seems more wholesome. Losing weight on purpose is better than losing it accidentally, even though the result is the same, because those people are healthy and the others aren't. Put another way: you shouldn't have to get sick to lose weight.

Everybody should spend some time daily on those mental health items above. It's exercise. Through it you can point your personality and mind in the direction you'd like it to go, and with hard work and patience you'll get there. As your mind gets healthier the less likely you are to become mentally ill. You'll avoid common issues like depression, substance abuse, anxiety and eating disorders.

I think mental illness is starting to become a public health crisis. I know so _few_ people that aren't constantly stressed due to work or school, I've seen many people fall into legitimate depression and only recover after changing their environment (ie quitting their job).

It's said that half of adults experience depression at least once in their life. I bet it's more like 90%. It's like the flu. Pervasive, transmissible and contagious, with most victims recovering quickly, but a small percentage experiencing fatal cases. Now we have flu shots at every Walgreens.

It's time to do the same for mental health.

</comment><comment><USER16> pretty typical salesmanship: if you convince people a) there's something wrong with them and b) that thing can be changed, you can sell them a cure.

<comment><USER17> Overly cynical comment. Article author isn't a psychologist, so has no reason to be a 'salesman'. Additionally, the question of how changeable an individual's personality is, is a perfectly valid and interesting topic to research. (Unfortunately the article does not mention the title, or provide a link to the research).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> When social context matters so much I wonder how they measure things like this. Just the act of getting to know a therapist will reduce anxiety and in the situation you'll be comfortable so there is little value measuring improvements under those circumstances.

As soon as you step out into the real world again fears resurface.

I'd say there's a market for trained therapists who will also coach people through real world stressful situations rather than just talking about them.

Given the expense of doing that it would have to be in a group and the incentives right so you can trust coaches not to exploit the vulnerable. Solve that and you could have a nice franchise.

</comment><comment><USER19> It may be only me but I won't read any "scientific" article hiding behind pay wall and between two unserious ads like "best flashlight ever selling like crazy" and "10 fans who look like celebrities". It would be like reading life advices on the back of toilet paper.

<comment><USER20> You can try sci-hub.cc if it's a scientific paper. Works most of time.

<comment><USER19> Thanks, I will check the site out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think there are limitations to how much someone can change. The analogy I would use is physical traits, you can loose weight, or you can exercise and increase strength and so on but there are limitations. I am 59 and no matter how hard I train I am not going to be able to run a 4 minute mile but I am sure if I worked at it a little harder I could improve my running skills. Similarly, I think one can, through therapy, meditation or other types of mental fitness activities, can make improvements if they have the sufficient desire to do so, but within limits.

<comment><USER22> The problem with this perspective is you can't know your true limit until you actually reach it by trying to improve. So you might as well keep aiming a little higher.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Ironically I saw a presentation from the phycologist mentioned in the article, Dr. Brian Little, a couple of weeks back where he said that being introverted or extroverted _was_ fixed, which was surprising to me.

<comment><USER24> People can and do engage with others more or less, so I don't think intro- or extroverted in that sense is fixed. But the understanding of introversion and extroversion these days tends to be more whether you gain or lose energy in general from dealing with people. I doubt that feeling drained from (not) talking to people would change very quickly in someone.

There are plenty of outgoing introverts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> We are programable and self programable of course.

</comment><comment><USER26> This isn't news to me, but I like having a handy little article that I can send to people to point to and say "See? It's not just me. Science."

<comment><USER27> I feel compelled to link to this[1] bit of writing by Yudkowsky.

 _Science! It 's not a real explanation, so much as a curiosity-stopper. You don't actually know anything more than you knew before I said the magic word. But you turn away, satisfied that nothing unusual is going on._

1\. [http://lesswrong.com/lw/j3/science_as_curiositystopper/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/j3/science_as_curiositystopper/)

<comment><USER28> I think it's more along the lines of "I have changed my personality before, so it's obvious to me that it can be done; however, it may not be obvious to others without some evidence that it's a recognised phenomenon". In that case, "Science!" is intended not to sate curiosity, but to dispel doubt—and maybe then even pique curiosity.</comment></comment></comment>


New ALPHA-g Detector Poised to Search for Signs of Anti-Gravity - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/aerospace/astrophysics/new-alphag-detector-poised-to-search-for-signs-of-antigravity <comment><USER3> > _Understanding whether antimatter obeys the same laws of gravity as matter > is an important step toward confirming whether decades of theory surrounding > antimatter stand true._

The Economist recently covered the same experiment at CERN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18110857](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18110857)

</comment><comment><USER4> If anti-matter has anti-gravity, then the next question to answer is why do photons obey normal gravity?

Are there anti-photons? (Presumably only anti-matter can make them.) Or is matter special because it matches photons gravitationally and thus answers the question of baryogenesis.

That second option leads to some very interesting implications for stars made of anti-matter. Any photons they make would be "shoved" away from the star - but where does that energy come from?

The first option means there are photons we can not detect (only anti-matter can make them, so only anti-matter can see them). That would imply there is an entire second universe out there overlayed on this one (at least photonically overlayed) that we have never seen, except gravitationally.

But during annihilation events which type of photon would be produced? Both? Randomly one or the other?

Finding that anti-matter has anti-gravity would open an absolutely enormous list of questions. It's not as simple, as OK, anti-gravity - every other part of physics would have to change as well.

<comment><USER5> Do we know that photons obey normal gravity? I was under the impression that we know that light can be bent by the warping of space-time due to gravity, but not that it interacts with the Higgs field.

Photons don't _really_ have an anti-matter pair that we can observe afaik because anti-particles have the same mass and spin but opposite charge as their counterpart. Since photons have no charge, a photons anti-matter pair is just another photon. Furthermore, we know that anti-hydrogen has the same spectral lines as hydrogen so their electromagnetic interactions are the same.

Finding that anti-matter has anti-gravity would be world changing, though I'm setting my expectations very low. It would mean that we have access to the kind of exotic matter needed for a practical Alcubierre warp drive and could open up an entirely new field of space time engineering. It's just extremely unlikely, given all we know, that anti-matter has such properties.

<comment><USER6> >we know that light can be bent by the warping of space-time due to gravity

That literally is light obeying gravity. Gravity interacts exclusively by the warping of space-time. Gravity and the Higgs field are completely 100% unrelated.

[https://profmattstrassler.com/2012/10/15/why-the-higgs- and-g...](https://profmattstrassler.com/2012/10/15/why-the-higgs-and-gravity- are-unrelated/)

<comment><USER7> > Gravity and the Higgs field are completely 100% unrelated.

That is an incredible insight for me -- I never thought of it that way. So the thing that creates inertia (mass) is not the same as the thing that generates gravitational force -- they're just correlated in the types of matter that beings like us can interact with?

<comment><USER8> IANAP, but IIRC while the higgs field gives mass to electrons, quarks, the W bosons and a few more particles, the vast majority of the mass of the atom (and thus of what we normally call matter) is due to the binding energy of quarks and gluons and not related to the higgs field.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This could be one of the most important experiments that modern physics has attempted.

It's funny that they must adapt their schedule to others, and not the other way around. They're being given just a few days to carry everything out before hitting a cut-off point that may realistically cause the experiment never to get done due to changes in funding or the landscape.

If they obtain a positive result, how many experts will suddenly no longer have a position of expertise?

Suddenly, I wonder if they are having a harder time than other experiments, and whether there are any at CERN who actually don't want the experiment to occur.

<comment><USER10> > If they obtain a positive result, how many experts will suddenly no longer > have a position of expertise?

This is true of most experimentation for novel theories, and it's true of many large experiments e.g. attempting to locate the Higgs Boson (the discovery of which invalidated many theories of physics just through confirming certain unknowns.)

> Suddenly, I wonder if they are having a harder time than other experiments, > and whether there are any at CERN who actually don't want the experiment to > occur.

Well, possibly, but not for the conspiratorial reasons you're alluding to. It's a powerful device with only so much time to operate; the usage of that time needs to be prioritized, and that prioritization can really only be accomplished by gauging the likelihood of an outcome which produces new knowledge (either validating a theory or invalidating it). No one behind the operation of the ALPHA-g detector is going to block an experiment because they may personally not like the results; if the detector has a hand in a successful discovery, the detector and the team supporting it will be able to claim having a hand in the discovery.

<comment><USER11> The real issue is so far all the supporting evidence and theory says antimatter obeys normal rules of gravity. So it really is a long-shot experiment - if it actually differs in a significant way (and let's be clear: experiencing less gravity, going in a slightly different direction - <USER2> - would be major) - then that would be a huge surprise.

<comment><USER9> What evidence are you referring to which supports antimatter obeying "normal rules of gravity", by which I am presuming you mean gravitating in the same direction as matter?

<comment><USER12> There is a very large and very convincing body of purely mathematical arguments, and some minor experimental work [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_interaction_of...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_interaction_of_antimatter)

<comment><USER9> For some reason I had a feeling you'd post that. That wikipedia page doesn't show anything except for, at best, an argument that the Standard Model is incompatible with gravitational repulsion plus many statements of unsuccessful attempts to falsify repulsion of antimatter. Did you even read it??

By the way, it's old news by now that Standard Model is incomplete. But let's just go back to passive aggressively condescending to people we don't know on the internet by implying they've never studied so much as modern QFT because we're not prepared to understand their original argument.

<comment><USER10> > But let's just go back to passive aggressively condescending to people we > don't know on the internet

Please stop accusing people of this; it's being observed as radiating from your own commentary by multiple people, which might explain why others are responding in kind. I called out the gaslighting elsewhere, and the fact that you're persisting with it against multiple parties hampers constructive discussion.

<comment><USER9> Are you not aware of his other comment to me? I've seen it many times before. We don't know each other so perhaps defer belief that you can tell whether that is true or not until you have some evidence. Gaslighting... lol</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


'Sticker Shock' in Los Angeles Housing - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/27/us/california-today-los-angeles-housing-costs.html?em_pos=large&emc=edit_ca_20160927&nl=california-today&nlid=4617603&ref=headline&te=1 <comment><USER2> Yep, our days here are numbered. Every thread on our community FB group has a hordes of people fighting any new construction (including housing) tooth and nail, even on lots filled with stripmalls, decrepit crackhouses, or asphalt parking, keeping LA decidedly third-world--it boggles the mind.

Our rent went up 7% this year alone.

<comment><USER3> I wonder if this is a general problem, where property owners in an area have both the power to influence the local government's land use policy and an incentive to limit new construction in order to create artificial scarcity and drive up the prices of their own property. Is this guaranteed to exacerbate any housing shortage anywhere'

<comment><USER4> Direct democracy doesn't work.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, look at the chaos that is Switzerland: one of the best life expectancy and education in the world, with so low taxes that rich French move there to pay less.

<comment><USER2> A lot of things that work in the small don't scale.

<comment><USER5> This is exactly what the opponents of democracy said during the 18th century, and exactly what China says now "we are too big for democracy".

But well, we have a proven implementation at 8 million people. Let's promote it to all countries of that size or smaller then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> When people say "30% of your income is spent on housing," do they usually mean pre-tax or post-tax?

The article claims you need $145K a year to afford a $2000/month apartment. But assuming that you lose 40% to taxes, you would still be left with $5,250 a month _after_ housing. That sounds a lot higher than it should be for the lower limit of affordability.

If you assume 30% of pre-tax income, and $2000/month rent, you get a required income of $80,000 -- still high, but not as outrageous as the figure he comes up with.

<comment><USER7> The article says post tax but the standard is closer to what you're saying. For a landlord renting a property, for instance, the safe rule of thumb is typically for your tenant to have a gross _annual_ salary of 40x the _monthly_ rent (which for a 2k rental would be 80k gross salary). Using 145k is way too conservative. Similarly, when buying a house, the debt-to-income ratio is calculated on gross (pre tax) income as well and is 28% for housing costs (principal, interest, taxes and insurance), which lines up pretty well with the standard rental calculation.

<comment><USER8> Huh, maybe it's time for my family to move on up since my gross annual salary is 80x my current housing payment.

<comment><USER9> Well there goes your retirement savings... (Assuming that's where your extra money was going).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love living in Los Angeles as a single, 20 something, but the thought of trying to raise a family here terrifies me. The median price of a 3 bedroom home is $865,000 which would mean that a large portion of my long term net worth would end up tied to a single asset. When it comes time to put down roots, I'll head to cheaper pastures.

<comment><USER11> Colorado is calling.

<comment><USER12> Colorado is full thank you to move somewhere else and transform some other state into california.

<comment><USER13> Native Washingtonian.

We're also full.

<comment><USER14> Native? Which tribe are you from?

<comment><USER13> Here's the Merriam-Webster definition in case you don't know what native means.

[http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/native](http://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/native)

Is there a reason you raised the issue of race? Does my race matter? If so, I'd just LOVE to see you explain why.

<comment><USER14> Your race doesn't really matter, no. But neither does your native-born origin. You don't get to lay an exclusive claim on the arbitrarily defined geopolitical unit on the basis that you happened to be born there.

<comment><USER13> Except you wrote:

>> Native? Which tribe are you from?

Then you wrote:

>> You don't get to lay an exclusive claim on the arbitrarily defined geopolitical unit on the basis that you happened to be born there.

Why won't you just tell the truth: you don't like it when _some_ people lay an exclusive claim to a geographical unit on the basis that they were born there, but you're fine when other people do it, provided YOU get to make the rules a la: "Native? Which tribe are you from?".

BTW, there's a word for what you're doing. It starts with H.

<comment><USER14> It was a rhetorical question to invite further discussion. Your assumptions about where I wanted the discussion to go from there are just that, assumptions.

And no, I don't believe that Native Americans have such rights, either. But since you sounded like you believe that _you_ do, it was a comparison that practically begged to be made.

<comment><USER13> Are you that guy from the UK? I think we've had this conversation before.

<comment><USER14> No, I'm a guy from Russia who lives in US. But I'm sure you had that conversation before - it's not exactly uncommon :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> B-build A-absolutely N-nothing A-anywhere N-near A-anything

</comment><comment><USER16> Nominal interest rates are zero. We are living through the largest debt bubble in history. How is it surprising that assets are all incredibly overpriced?

Yes, of course it will end in tears.

<comment><USER17> But what would cause it to pop? There is still insane demand in popular areas, in large part because that's where the jobs are. I could only see that becoming more true in a down market.

<comment><USER18> You have answered your own question — it will pop when jobs stop growing.

<comment><USER16> Yep. And it will be reflexive, since the debt was loaned out against future production, exacerbating the downturn.

Some cities might become safe havens for Chinese wealth, not much individuals can do about that except wait it out and hope that the US government starts working in the interests of its broader population, rather than the already rich landowners in a few cities.

At a higher level, this is why privately issued debt is no way to manage your money supply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> As someone who has been in LA for a while, I think the "sticker shock" isn't coming from the housing cost so much as from the salaries that aren't keeping up with it. If you want to live in a nice location with a short commute then you're going to be paying over 1600/mo for a 1 bedroom. But if salaries were at Bay Area level that would be a bargain, especially given the weather, beach access, night life, etc. that LA offers compared to other cities. Unfortunately, salaries here are not great, even in the small tech scene on the west side.

</comment><comment><USER20> Its a silly attitude to deny development. There is plenty of room for more people, on the planet, in LA.Just get organized.I live in Venice but friends in Hollywood I see maybe 4 times a year because driving is numbing. Robocars are gonna improve things greatly.That said, LA is full of itself.You will pay through the nose for property that shouldvbe torn down, yet you are not allowed to. I am a Euro transplant and I have travelled the U.S.for the past dozen years and there is hardly a bad spot anymore.You get great food, culture, people many many places. Madison WI, Bozeman, Raleigh, Detroit even, even Texas. Lot of people are stuck in LA molasses.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm looking to buy in LA and everything is old as shiz and over 800k :(

Oh well, at least I can rep the 323 and shout tupac lines

<comment><USER22> Bargain hunting in Compton?

<comment><USER23> My friend just bought a 2 bedroom in Compton for $600k.

I didn't have the heart to tell him his mortgage will be underwater in a couple years.

<comment><USER24> elaborate?

<comment><USER25> It's a house. In Compton. That cost $600K.

<comment><USER26> If it looks like insanity its probably genius in real estate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Having just moved to the Playa Vista area, $2,000 for a 2 bedroom seems like a steal

</comment><comment><USER28> LA is cheap

Come to the SF Bay area...

<comment><USER29> Let's not pretend because SF has problems that nobody else's problems are any big deal.

<comment><USER30> Kind of a tangent, but isn't the Los Angeles area much more populous than the bay area?

Sure the problem might not be quite as severe as SF, but it affects 2.5x the number of people.

<comment><USER31> LA has more people, but also much more land. The entire stretch from SF on the other hand is surrounded by water on three sides, and the valley in general is... well, a valley. Surrounded by mountains.

To get a good sense of this, open Google Maps and center it on California. You'll get a sense of how different the two areas are in terms of sprawl. LA is basically one big concrete jungle from Burbank all the way to Anaheim. SF area is much more densely packed.

<comment><USER30> I've visited both, but lived in neither. Yeah, SF itself isn't even a million people, LA 3.4 million. The bay area gets up to 7 million, but greater LA is 18 million. SF did feel much denser.

The sort of standard answer is just build more housing, but the cities are already so congested. Building up would surely lower prices in both cities, but i think it'd make bad commutes worse.

I dunno. If there was an easy answer, people would just do that. For a long time the easy answer was just drive farther. That's becoming less of an option now and it's not clear what, if anything, should be done.

In any case, it's easier to convince 100,000 people than it is to convince a million, and it's easier to convince a million than it is to convince 10 million. Whatever the answer is is going to take some serious politics.

<comment><USER32> > The sort of standard answer is just build more housing, but the cities are > already so congested. Building up would surely lower prices in both cities, > but i think it'd make bad commutes worse.

Build around public transportation and fix zoning.

> In any case, it's easier to convince 100,000 people than it is to convince a > million, and it's easier to convince a million than it is to convince 10 > million. Whatever the answer is is going to take some serious politics.

Sigh, yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> > What does it take to be middle class in Los Angeles? That was the question > Ross DeVol started out asking himself when he began calculating how much a > resident would need to make to spend 30 percent of earned after-tax income > on rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles County.

I disagree with the author that this is middle class. A two bedroom apartment is the very definition of impoverished lower class loser, just above homeless.

Middle class means a detached 3 bedroom in the suburbs, with biweekly maid service, two financed cars, health care to the point you don't need to worry about it at all, and buying whatever you want at the supermarket.

What middle class does not include is any one of: a mansion, live in staff, a yacht, full time nannies instead of occasional baby sitters, swiss boarding school for the children, a groomsman for the horse, a pool boy, a cabana, a private plane, or zero income tax.

This is what skilled factory workers and teachers had in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Above them, designers, engineers and lawyers, comprised the upper class, or upper middle class.

<comment><USER34> By your definition of the middle class, a healthy U.S. economy would need approximately 4,000,000 domestic maids to satisfy the biweekly maid service requirement.

<comment><USER33> It is a lot of good jobs that pay fairly, do not require skilled labor, post- secondary education, or high IQ, and is not difficult, strenuous or dangerous work.

I have certainly done this same work myself. It is an excellent position for people without many skills and/or the desire to pursue education. And it is not an appropriate use of time for those of us who do have more skills. Therefore it is highly reasonable and efficient to outsource these tasks to those unable to make things or to design things, and/or not motivated for whatever reason to seriously pursue and master such tasks.</comment></comment></comment>


The Quest to Be Good at Everything - <AUTHOR> https://superorganizers.substack.com/p/the-quest-to-be-good-at-everything# <comment><USER2> There is one super power that is rarely mentioned: having been successful enough that only superficial knowledge and time investment is needed to leverage a workforce.

If you are the guy that spends 40hours per week diving deep into one specific topic because your business depends on having someone being an expert on something to that degree, you won't be able to lead a this well rounded life.

If you are in a Founder position and feel this statement hurts, extract yourself atleast a day a week from being an employee of your business and think bigger.

</comment><comment><USER3> Let me guess: This guy is a Libra!

Seriously though, I can contribute one idea, which is to use radar or spider charts ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_chart](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_chart)). I used to do this kind of thing, tracking 5-10 categories and trying to keep them all balanced. For feedback I would periodically assess how things were going in each category and give it a numeric rating, then plot these on a radar chart. The goal was for the resulting shape to be as close to round as possible, i.e. literally well-rounded. If the chart is bulging out in a particular area you've been working hard in, and lagging in another, you could theoretically take that as the signal to switch focus to the area that needs work. Also if you saved the charts over time you could compare the chart from let's say January 2019, against the one from January 2018.

For me personally it ended up making itself obsolete because it made me notice in a roundabout way that I am, and want to be, one of those people who works better at one thing at a time (or at least, fewer is better). But it did force me to do some things that were beneficial that I probably wouldn't have done otherwise.

<comment><USER4> Really helpful addition to the link, thanks for sharing! Even though I was aware of radar charts, I hadn't linked them for personal use yet and I've been thinking about how I can look a few different measures in my personal life. I was coming up empty. Sounds like it would complement interviewee's system perfectly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I though this was a piece about how modern society pressures us to be good at everything, and how we are optimising ourselves to death.

Boy, was I wrong.

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure you were wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> After reading about him, I don't have the impression that he's particularly good at anything, rather just average.

<comment><USER6> I suspect he's incredibly good at networking and interpersonal relationships.

<comment><USER7> Nothing about him is bad, but also nothing stands out. I didn't see anything that was astoundingly good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've had a feeling for a while that getting to the 80th percentile in everything I do should be my goal.

Imagine a person that is the 80th percentile in distance running, powerlifting, swimming, basketball and Nordic skiing.

That person would be the best all-around athlete you'd likely meet.

The opportunity cost of getting beyond the 80th percentile is so high you should spend that time getting some other skill up to the 80th.

That may feel like being a _master of none_ but the trade off is that you're pretty decent at everything.

I know enough about surfing, politics, world travel, programming and music(among other things) that I can hold a conversation with anyone even though I'm not the best at any of them.

This has felt like a huge advantage over people who focus on one thing at the expense of being more well rounded.

<comment><USER9> 80th percentile in what population? If you've _been_ nordic skiing, you are very likely in the 99th percentile of nordic skiing ability out of everyone in the world.

<comment><USER8> Great question...my response wasn't super clear on that. I'd say 80th percentile of people who _do_ a given activity. That's, of course, pretty vague but this is just a guiding principle for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've learned that unless I'm learning new skills my mind creates issues for me. Learning to dance, play an instrument, draw, sing — with no desire to become close to exceptional in any of them has benefited me in ways I couldn't imagine. Just 1% better every month (although I don't track it) in a relaxed manner, over time, without investing too much time (5 minutes every few days) is enough to make life fun. In the end all these various "unrelated" skills tend to link up. YMMV I went to "elite" schools and anything less than 100% was deemed failure. So wrong.

<comment><USER11> I have started walking down this path and I'm finding the same thing. Your comment was validating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Step 1: Get lucky and win the lottery.

Step 2: Sit in your chair. Your cash reserves now give you access to opportunities that poor people don't have.

Not a very actionable plan for the rest of us.

</comment><comment><USER13> An obvious PR piece on the front page?

<comment><USER14> Worth asking: how does wasting your time on being interviewed for this fits into this framework?

<comment><USER15> Box #2 - Invest: "For example, I spend a lot of time thinking about how to invest in building a reputation in a particular area so that I'm seen as an expert. "

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Have met Henrik a couple times -- super fascinating, very down to earth guy.

Interesting to get a peek at what goes on behind the curtain.

</comment><comment><USER17> > NoteToSelf Mail is a little app that I have on my home screen that lets me > really easily send an email

Oh snap, I haven't thought the AppStore is such saturated platform, where there is specific app to send an email to myself - why FastMail or Spark won't be enough to do that? Isn't just two/one less click optimization app?

<comment><USER18> The app isn't used because of its functionally, it is used as a psychological hack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > He ... has helped started business like ... Managed By Q (acquired by > WeWork)

I'm wondering if it's a good time to praise WeWork ties. On Managed by Q's website ([https://www.managedbyq.com/](https://www.managedbyq.com/)):

> We Manage, We run, We design, We staff

<comment><USER15> There are plenty of us who have built products which then got sold to companies who do not match our ideals. The flaws of our acquirers do not diminish our work -- we accomplished something by building a product that was interesting and successful enough that someone wanted to buy it in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> using IFTTT != hacking a Google Home

<comment><USER21> Hack in the MIT sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> this is an advertisement thinly wrapped in some vague advice

<comment><USER23> What am I buying? Trello?

<comment><USER24> The interview platform/website?</comment></comment></comment>


Amen: the world's most famous sample and the rise of the musical copyright - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac <comment><USER3> The author's own site (including the video), Nate Harrison:

<http://nkhstudio.com/>

</comment><comment><USER4> The "Amen Brother" drum break is far from the most sampled or most famous drum break in history. Check out a list of more heavily sampled breaks here: <http://the-breaks.com/stats.php>

The above list is far from complete, obviously. If I had to put my money on it, id say the most sampled drum break is "Impeach The President" <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqbEsS5kFb8>

<comment><USER5> How does this site decide what to check for the use of a sample? We're at the point where sampling is so easy, so ubiquitous, that counting usage is impossible without some arbitrary selection criteria (e.g. "I've heard of it", or, "The people who compile <some chart> have heard of it").

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Another ubiquitous break is the `Apache' break:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WY-Z6wm6TMQ>

<comment><USER7> Here's a whole collection of them: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLQyWoBXb2M>

On a related note, I'm always amused by Youtube video descriptions breathlessly claiming "NO COPY RIGHT INFRINGEMENT INTENEDED".

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> TV Tropes has a list of examples: <http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AmenBreak>

<comment><USER9> That's a _horrible_ TV Tropes article. It reads like Wikipedia...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> That's why drum and bass all sounds the same to me.

Reggaeton also has a similar situation, where everyone uses the exact same beat for the rhythm. It's called the "Dem Bow" beat.

<comment><USER11> Lots of older drum and bass does sound very similar. Some of the newer stuff, like Pendulum, Sub Focus, and The Qemists, have taken the genre to the next level. It's much more interesting and exciting than in the past.

Pendulum - <http://www.youtube.com/user/pendulumlive#p/u/9/X6BKBIOtRXw>

Sub Focus - <http://www.youtube.com/user/subfocustv#p/a/u/1/MYO_0Xfh58k>

The Qemists - <http://www.theqemists.com/youtube/video/OTGJW0-QPuw/>

<comment><USER12> There have always been loads of sub-genres. The stuff you mention there is very commercial.

Looking at some of my vinyl from over 10 years ago, you can compare Jonny L <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qo1aoR96oI> with Goldie <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8u7MNG-ug8> or PFM feat Conrad (from '94) <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxcMPPoZI7s>, or Roni Size / Reprazent <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwI0gbGEyuI>.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting video. I wish the narrator didn't sound so robotic though.

<comment><USER3> I thought that was one of the best aspects of the video.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> i found the presented samples different from the original.

it would be better if the drum lines from different songs were showed as notes, or i can't believe that they are derived.

i think it's a stretch to make a beautiful statement, that somebody invented some loop in 60-s. i even thought the author wants to tell that if i wrote a little break bit myself, i used that amen sample (just _rearranged and manipulated in any number ways_ ). but i didn't i swear. never heard of this before today.

</comment><comment><USER15> Weirdly melodic and somber, but interesting video nonetheless.

</comment><comment><USER16> Checkout the Amen Break iPhone app too: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph7HnNLKh6Q>

</comment><comment><USER17> The break started here (at :05 sec) <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUImpeQG66U>

<comment><USER18> FYI you can link to exact to exact times in youtube videos by appending #t=XXXmYYYs to the link (m=minutes, s=seconds). For example:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUImpeQG66U#t=0m5s>

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Strange, I just happened upon this for the first time 3 days ago seemingly at random.

</comment><comment><USER20> Glossed over in the video, and in the discussion here so far, is that _even when a court rules a derivative work to infringe a copyright_ , there's no need to obtain a license so long as the derivative work is "creative enough" to qualify as fair use under US copyright law (and similarly in many other jurisdictions). So while it's true that the Sixth Circuit ruled in 2005 [1] that unlicensed samples of any duration constitute copyright infringement, what's left unsaid is that samples still may be used without bothering about licenses so long as they're used as part of a sufficiently creative new song.

But what's "creative enough"? Ah, there's the rub.

The real story here is how copyright owners are able to abuse a quirk of the law in order to strong-arm musicians into paying licensing fees, even when everybody knows full well there's probably no legal obligation to pay them. "Sample trolls" exist precisely because fair use is only a _defense to litigation_ , which means it can only be invoked in the course of a lawsuit. So there's no sure way to know whether you need to license your use of a sample until you get sued, you claim fair use, and a judge tells you whether you should have (past tense) bought a license or not. It's much cheaper, of course, just to pay for a license up front and be done with it.

Unfortunately, its hard to imagine a way to resolve this conundrum if copyright holders are still to be granted monopolies over derivative works [2]. Consider the canonical law-school example of a derivative work, Marcel Duchamp's goteed Mona Lisa ( _LHOOQ_ ) [3]. If Leonardo had been around to defend his copyright, would Marcel have been able successfully to invoke the fair-use defense? It all depends on how creative the judge thinks it is to give old Lisa a mustache. Reasonable judges may disagree.

And then consider Andy Warhol's colorful posterized Mona Lisa silkscreens, or Kazimir Malevich's collage-cum-painting _Composition with Mona Lisa_ , which incorporates a small copy of Leonardo's painting. Even if you thought Marcel's work was a blatant rip-off, you might think Andy's or Kazimir's is fair use. (Then there's Salvador Dali's _Self Portrait as Mona Lisa_.) Point is, it's impossible to draw a bright line on fair use, even for a particular work.

But that's not to say there's no bright line anywhere. When it comes to recorded music, one such line is whether a work actually incorporates a copy of the recording. If it's not a sample, but a new recording that happens to sound the same, there's no issue. (A ruling that duplicating any portion of a musical _composition_ constitutes infringement is nigh unimaginable.) So just go record your own version of the beat you want to use and there's no issue.

1: See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeport_Music,_Inc._v._Dimen...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeport_Music,_Inc._v._Dimension_Films) ; a good write-up on the case is at <http://www.ivanhoffman.com/fairusemusic.html> .

2: And maybe they shouldn't be. But then the debate would probably turn back to what constitutes a derivative work.

3: This and other riffs on the Mona Lisa are shown at <http://www.aiwaz.net/gallery/mona-lisa-as-modern-lisa/gc234> .

By the way, for those of you who doubt the ubiquity and permutivity of the Amen Break in today's hip-hop, here are a few tracks I picked out in a quick once-over of two albums by The Roots. From almost-a-sample to you-gotta-be- paying-attention, these all use the Amen Break:

\- "Rolling with Heat" (slowed down, but otherwise almost unchanged)

\- "Thought @ Work" (syncopated by dropping a beat)

\- "Duck Down!" (very slow, syncopated)

\- "I Don't Care" (syncopated)

\- "Web" (very syncopated)

\- "Boom!" (very syncopated)

If you can hear the signature "bum bum BAH, buh-DUM buh-DUM" in those last few, you can see why people call it the most ubiquitous break. It truly is all over the place, albeit often in heavily manipulated form.

</comment><comment><USER21> "Overprotecting intellectual property is as harmful as underprotecting it. Culture is impossible without a rich public domain. Nothing today, like nothing since we tamed fire, is genuinely new. Culture like science and technology grows by accretion. Each new creator building on the works before. Overprotecting stifles the very forces it is supposed to nurture."

<comment><USER22> I, too, found this quote very remarkable. But it left me wondering.

Can anybody tell me where the harm in underprotecting "intellectual property" comes from? This is an honest question. I don't understand it. Maybe it's because I'm too young and don't depend on "intellectual property" protection yet. I don't understand where this idea comes from that ideas can be owned by anyone.

What if the limit of copying would become what's copyable and not what is allowed to be copied? Wouldn't that accellerate innovation? Isn't innovation more valuable to a society than anything else? Why do we put a tax on it?

<comment><USER23> > _Can anybody tell me where the harm in underprotecting "intellectual > property" comes from?_

I will speculate that, without any protection, there will be significantly less investment in intellectual property, and any projects will be smaller. People have to eat, if you make a business of content creation you get to spend more time doing it than if it's just people working in their spare time.

Either that, or rely on rich patrons to fund the arts. But you would never have Hollywood with just their help. This is both a bad and a good thing, for reasons easily imagined.

<comment><USER24> You're framing the issue by saying that creation of IP happens for the reason of selling it later on. This is circular (IP wouldn't exist - it is a direct product of prootection), but I'll assume you meant that there'd be less investment in ideas in an environment without IP.

I disagree with your framing and conclusion. People work with ideas for the purpose of solving problems or satisfying interest that they have, not just directly commercialising the results. I write software in order that my business can operate in its environment. Mendelssohn was inspired to write the Scottish symphony. Free software authors have a commercial interest for their work because it increases their chances of getting good work, and the same applies for music teachers who compose and record, and literature professors who write, and scientists who publish.

Creating an ecoosystem that is oriented around direct commercialisation through the mechanism of IP cannibalises the innovation of people who solve problems and satisfying interest because of the extra weight of restrictions it places upon them. Many of the tunes in Handel's _Israel in Egypt_ were directly ripped from other work he had access to. That oratorio could not have been created in the current IP atmosphere.

Further, ideas benefit from network effects in a liberal idea space. Copyright hampers the exchange.

You equate IP with being all protection - this is misleading. IP is just one form of protection, one that is government backed. Consider Steam - <USER2> mechanism that furthers commercialisation of ideas without leveraging IP. The growth of models where businesses take responsibility for their own commercial model is stunted by the government protectionism offered in the form of easy copyright. This further fuels arguments like the one you've made. We look around us and see copyright everywhere tied up in ideas, and fail to appreciate the opportunity cost of the situation.

Without copyright you wouldn't have Hollywood, but you would have something else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is an interesting video, but how does this has anything to do with Startups, Technology, Development, UX or Tech Business... This is the why I think HN is becoming another Reddit. It's a shame...

<comment><USER26> Anyone who works in technology is going to have to deal with intellectual property, as well as the laws/attitudes around the same.

Moreover, music is an essential component of culture, which means comprehension of music, or at least its recombinant nature, may improve your chances of creating a consumer product people love.

edit: And come on, you've been around long enough to have read the FAQ:

"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. _That includes more than hacking and startups._ If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

(my emphasis)

This passes by any measure. Being well-rounded is a good idea. I love seeing content like this way more than the insipid, obvious, naval-gazing, circlejerking blog nonsense that often passes for worthwhile reading just because the author mentions "funding" or "startups" or anything else in vogue n times before the post finishes.</comment></comment>


A simple way to create mobile apps in minutes - <AUTHOR> https://vimeo.com/177374532 <comment><USER2> Whoa! Can it also do offline scenarios?

</comment><comment><USER3> Can I add my own code?

<comment><AUTHOR> Apparently, you can add custom js code to make the app more powerful</comment></comment>


How to Make Your Startup Go Viral The Pinterest Way - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/26/pinterest-viral/ <comment><USER3> I don't know if this article says a whole lot other than the reference to Pinterest being popular among lots of people deeply interested in art, fashion, cooking, and homemaking instead of just people interested in tech news (using the phrase "housewife in the Midwest", which doesn't seem very accurate anyway; from what I can tell by roaming around Pinterest over the past few months, probably most of the women using it work outside their homes and/or have no children [even though they may plan to eventually]).

Pinterest has a really good simple "what does this do" explanation - <USER2> collect and share pretty pictures! Everyone who likes the idea of making their homes more beautiful and their outfits nicer is liable to find that idea appealing. And it's "selfishly social", which is important for retaining users; it's useful to use just by yourself, and then even better with other people.

Another important part of Pinterest is that it's both very flattering to each user and intensely aspirational - when you use it, you get the feeling of "Look at what great taste I have! I want to make cakes as lovely as these, I want to live in a house as wonderful as this one, I want to have a wedding this beautiful; maybe someday I will, thanks to these ideas cataloged on my Pinterest boards." (But I actually get frustrated with the aspirational prettiness of most Pinterest pins; I like messy homemade things, strange things, things from normal people along with things from professionals. I wish more people pinned photos of their own work, imperfect and homemade and genuine, not just of other people's work. That would add something even more fun to browsing other people's pins.)</comment>


Device creates particles with negative mass, and a novel way to generate lasers - <AUTHOR> http://www.rochester.edu/newscenter/vamivakas-microcavity-negative-mass-generate-lasers-290202/ <comment><USER2> To address the inevitable complaint: There exists a concept called "effective mass", which can be negative.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_mass_(solid- state_ph...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_mass_\(solid- state_physics\))

<comment><USER3> Yes, but "negative mass " evokes the idea of non-Baryonic exotic matter. It's a nontrivial difference since exotic matter has applications for things like Alcubierre drives.

<comment><USER4> Thank you for clarifying - my immediate reaction was "oh shit, do we have warp drives now?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> They created roton- like quasiparticles, not exotic matter. The polariton laser is cool though.

</comment><comment><USER5> I appreciate people posting novel scientific findings on HN. This isn't that: this is a typically overblown press release from a uni press office. I'm not sure such explicit marketing material masquerading as a science article is a value-add here.

<comment><USER6> As a scientist in a related field, I totally disagree. I feel this is a very balanced article. From my own experience being interviewed by popular press (and in some cases, with my work being overblown to my dismay), I particularly appreciate how Prof Vamivakas was cautious to say that applications are "down the road."

This is a press release, to be sure, but not overblown. This is legitimately an interesting result.

(Full disclosure: I am in no way connected to this work.)

<comment><USER7> It's still a clickbait headline, no matter how interesting it otherwise is. "Negative mass" and "negative effective mass" change the implications quite a lot. One potentially means wormholes, warp drives, quantum gravity, faster than light travel, and time travel. The other does not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> See also: _Excitonium_

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15885404](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15885404)

Sounds like polaritons and excitons are part of the same area of study, that a number of groups are looking at right now.

<comment><USER3> Condensed matter physics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16114250](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16114250)

</comment><comment><USER10> Aren't even things like air bubbles in water things with "negative" mass, in some of the same ways these particles described here would be ?

</comment><comment><USER11> What are the technological implications of this?

Is there hope that this could be the future of semiconductors as a replacement for NMOS?

</comment><comment><USER12> Could someone explain to a layman if this is the kind of negative mass you'd need for an Alcubierre drive? ;P

<comment><USER13> It's not.</comment></comment>


Cursive: The IDE for beautiful Clojure code - <AUTHOR> http://cursiveclojure.com/index.html <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6512597](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6512597)</comment>


Keys Duplicated - Take a picture of your key and get one back.  - <AUTHOR> http://keysduplicated.com/

<comment><USER2> I'd really rather not have a copy of, say, my house key made by some random website and then mailed _to my home_. At least the mechanical cutter at the local Ace Hardware, even if somehow record my key shape, doesn't know where I live.</comment>


Teletext time travel - <AUTHOR> http://www.transdiffusion.org/2016/01/07/teletext-time-travel <comment><USER2> More technical info on how this works (specifically dealing with VHS bandwidth being lower than TV bandwidth and "de-blurring" the data): [https://github.com/ali1234/vhs- teletext/blob/master/README#L...](https://github.com/ali1234/vhs- teletext/blob/master/README#L86)

</comment><comment><USER3> Snapshot from 1980 and I don't feel like I'm looking at something old, fascinating!

I still use teletext daily as an app on my phone. One of the fastest way to check sport results and read some news.

</comment><comment><USER4> I was fascinated to learn that there are still teletext services here in Finland. There's even mobile apps now to access them without a TV.

<comment><USER5> Yes, in Switzerland as well. It's so odd seeing so many people using these apps to check hockey and soccer results – on a smartphone!

<comment><USER6> Same in Netherlands. Little text, so it's straight to the point, and no ads,

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Apart from the limited (aka 'hideois') color palette, limited character set, and limited resolution, the original format had an extra feature that made it challenging to design pages: spacing attributes.

What that meant was that, whenever you wanted to change color (text and/or background), you _had_ to insert a space in the page.

So, for example, showing text on a background Dutch or German flag was easy, doing so on a Belgian, French or Italian one could not be done nicely.

</comment><comment><USER8> Apparently run time of the decoding is still a problem. I wonder if it lends itself to massively parallel execution like with CUDA or something.

</comment><comment><USER9> We never had much teletext in the US but I remember back in the 80s there would be these touch screen teletext like systems in BART stations in the bay area.</comment>