Why I left consulting and joined a startup - <AUTHOR> http://blog.keen.io/post/26096112831/why-i-left-consulting-and-joined-a-startup My first real blog post... I hope you like it! <comment><USER2> I did the opposite. I had a modest exit on my startup, and worked for the acquirer until my time was up. Then, instead of just taking a dang break, I was wooed by a Random Giant Agency with more than I'll ever make as straight salary in my life probably.

Despite how well I was treated in general, it was the most angst-inducing and soul-draining experience of my life. I left after only a few months and felt incredibly spoiled for doing so. Now I'm a smelly startup hippy again.

<comment><USER3> Like Michelle points out - once you make above a certain amount, money doesn't really move the happiness meter much. At least for certain people! You and I seem like we're among that bunch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like that "rested racehorses" metaphor: have the ability to run fast when required, but not all the time to the point where you break down. Let's hope that doesn't turn into a cliche someplace!

<comment><USER5> Agreed. We stole it from Jim Franklin (TechStars mentor and SendGrid CEO), who gave a great talk at TechStars Cloud on leadership and company culture. This is just one of the many concepts he covered that we've since internalized :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Mostly, I was growing tired of implementing <some old-school technology> to solve <some generic enterprise problem>. I'm a builder at heart, and I wanted to contribute to Creating a Thing"

Consulting offers a great balance between personal freedom, and cash flow, and that to me is one of its greatest strengths. You get the small team comraderie too, as you mentioned. With a startup, if you can build that product, yes, then a startup is ideal. But that's extremely tough.

For me, I'm willing to sacrifice a small piece of my freedom in exchange for that cash flow.

<comment><USER7> At my last job I was making way more money than I could realistically spend, but there was no way I could go half-time and get those precious hours back for other things.

Consulting gives me that freedom, which I appreciate more and more as the years go by.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is awesome that you made the jump from enterprise to working for yourself (or at least being able to set your own work pace). Are you independent or do you work with a firm? I think my consulting firm had some flexible work options. I know one person who worked only 4 days per week. But I don't think I ever saw anyone go half-time. That's a great option you have.

<comment><USER7> I'm indie right now. I spent the last year trying to make a living selling my own iOS apps and not making much money. But it looks like the freelance iOS market is pretty good so I'm shifting my focus to contracting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've just started doing consulting for the first time in my life, but it's all remote work which lets me spend all my free time here in lovely Nha Trang, Vietnam. It would appeal much less if I had to travel to client offices all the time.

It's too early to tell if this approach really has legs but if I can keep it up it's hard to imagine what would entice me back into a salaried job again.

<comment><USER8> This is why I'm interested in starting freelancing/consulting. I think I'd enjoy being location independent more than I'd enjoy working at someone else's startup. Living somewhere cheap and only working part time while spending the rest of my time focusing on my own stuff really appeals to me. I haven't really figured out how to go about starting yet though.

What's your cost of living like in Nha Trang?

<comment><USER7> Yeah exactly. If you're not too materialistic you don't have too work too many hours to pay the bills and that leaves you with a lot of time to work on your own ideas and/or just enjoy life.

Vietnam is very cheap. I can live quite comfortably here for about $1000/month and I could squeeze it down to about $600 if necessary. I'm currently renting a big, comfortable house within walking distance of the beach for about $350 a month. If you're at all interested in the hacker commune idea you could easily fit four people in a house this big and basically live for peanuts.

<comment><USER8> I actually very recently searched HN for "hacker commune", I'm definitely open to it. Unfortunately I don't have many friends who I think would be interested, though it sounds pretty affordable even alone.

One of my major concerns is finding apartments. How do you manage to find short term leases, especially when you don't speak the language? I'm also curious about how you handle health insurance and cell phone usage. Could you point me in the right direction with these things? Any links would be great, my email is in my profile if you don't want to keep going on this thread.

<comment><USER7> The best thing is to make some local friends that will help you out with this kind of thing, but there are also rental agencies etc that can help you. Cell phone usage is simple. Just buy a SIM card in any shop and pop it in your phone.

For insurance I've used World Nomad's travel insurance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _My equity stake and the small size of our team means my work directly contributes to the value of the company, which in turn contributes to my own personal net worth._

Only going off of anecdotes here, but doesn't it take being a very early or significant employee plus a big dollop of luck to get enough equity to make it "interesting" in net worth terms? (The author seems to be an early employee, but from employees of startups I know, being employee 43 or whatever gets quite boring equity wise..)

<comment><USER10> Perhaps I'm reading that statement wrong... what does equity stake and team size have to do with _your work producing value for the company_? Maybe you're less motivated, but your work is either producing value or not -- regardless of equity stake. Awkward wording, I suppose...?

<comment><USER9> The role of money is implied a few times in the post (salary, net worth, etc.) While "producing value for the company" will have an effect on your continued employment and equity stake over the long term, if you only own 0.1% of the company, it's potentially not an "interesting" amount in terms of affecting your net worth (e.g. $200k at a $200M acquisition - not chump change, but your salary drop may already have swallowed that potential gain). Of course, 0.1% might be totally unrealistic, I'm just throwing a number in the air :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As much as I've enjoyed working in several start-ups, I've been looking to go to consulting for more than a year and finding it tough.

In part its the level I'm "expected" to go into at (Manager), when I don't have consulting experience and the reluctance for firms to let me willingly start at a lower level to learn those internal skills and knowledge. I also doubt start-up experience is valued as much in the countries I'm most likely to work in, as it is in the US.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you have the right idea about going in at a lower level first. I saw managers hired from outside of the consulting world get crushed. Even after climbing my way up the ladder, I sometimes felt a bit in over my head as a manager. They really expect you to have a lot of things polished - understanding project financials/contracts, presenting to client execs, negotiating with other vendors, managing your team, the firm's project methodology, etc. That last one would be especially challenging for someone new to the company. Is there a way to tailor your resume/experience so that it looks more natural for you to be started as an experienced consultant rather than a manager?

<comment><USER11> Yes, that's what I've been doing (aiming for Consultant instead of manager).

Another issue which is largely unsaid, but was in one interview when I made final round interview with the Partner, was that I was possibly "too old" for Consultant level for most of the larger firms doing the international work I'm most interested in. I was older than all of their managers and he had concerns they wouldn't be able to give me instructions. My reply was that I was willingly going in at that level to learn and if feel intimidated to give me instructions, that says more about their own potential and level of confidence.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow. Age discrimination is illegal here in the US. I was a young manager and all of my direct reports were older, some of them over a decade older. Not a problem. Sounds like a place I wouldn't want to work anyway!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As a consultant looking to make the jump, this spoke volumes to me and I think it's just the push I need to make the jump.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do it! Let me know if you want to chat. I had a lot more to write but had to cut the thing down so that other humans could read it.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I just looked at my metrics dashboard. Wow! Almost 4,000 hits from hacker news! thanks ya'll, hope you got some value out of it!

</comment><comment><USER13> Such an awesome explanation on making the jump.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been reading your blog for months, so this makes me really happy :)</comment></comment>


Clearing up some myths around e-cigarettes - <AUTHOR> https://publichealthmatters.blog.gov.uk/2018/02/20/clearing-up-some-myths-around-e-cigarettes/ <comment><USER2> The amount of misinformation on e-cigarettes/vaping nicotine has been absolutely infuriating.

I went from smoking a pack a week, which was very likely to give me lung cancer at some point, to vaping nicotine. The latter is very unlikely to give one lung cancer and there have been no reported cases of lung cancer linked solely to vaping.

Furthermore, the whole debacle with THC vaping juice containing a vitamin E acetate that resulted in several deaths was reported in an absolutely disgusting manner. THC and vitamin E acetate were rarely mentioned in these reports. It was usually reported as "vaping mysteriously causing deaths" and even associated with companies like Juul who don't deal with THC at all.

The irony that we've gone from "Reefer Madness" to "Nicotine Vaping Madness" when black market THC pods were straight up killing people is so unfortunate.

Even NPR reported incredibly questionably on this.

Full disclosure - I don't think kids should be vaping or smoking, but there is no proof that vaping nicotine causes anywhere near as much damage as smoking cigarettes. I also have no problem with smoking marijuana in moderation (and perhaps less so for developing minds), but won't be touching any THC vape pods until it's clear that no one is using Vitamin E acetate in their juice.

<comment><USER3> The reason there was an uproar is that there's been a huge surge in vaping by kids. People have been working tirelessly, for _decades_ , to lower the stats on smoking among teens and when they see vaping spread through high schools like wildfire you can see why they'd be pissed off.

<comment><USER4> But if vaping isn't unhealthy, is it really necessary to reduce vaping by teens? The primary reason for reducing smoking is that it's a huge risk factor that leads to negative health outcomes and expensive treatments. If it's not unhealthy (in the sense of causing respiratory disease or cancer), while I would prefer teens not smoke, I'm not nearly as concerned about vaping (however, I don't think we have nearly enough data about the long-term safety of vaping to really say for sure).

<comment><USER3> We're talking about teenagers using and becoming addicted to nicotine. Nicotine is completely inessential to life. Nicotine addicts (smokers or vapers) don't show any benefit in life outcome from it. All it does is put a drain on their finances just to make them feel better every time they experience cravings, cravings which don't exist in non-addicts.

<comment><USER5> That may not actually be true:

[https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/study-finds-nicotine- sa...](https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/study-finds-nicotine-safe-helps- in-alzheimers-parkinsons/2175396/)

<comment><USER6> Did they weight it against coronary disease endpoints, of which we have numerous studies, some even with pure nicotine?

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4958544/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4958544/)

All case mortality is worse in nicotine users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Another alternative to smoking is Swedish Snus! It also falls in the "probably not risk free, but certainly not nearly as bad as cigarettes". As an added bonus, you don't have to go outside to use since nobody else is affected (unless they want to kiss you or something).

But of course, although snus is a credible safer alternative to cigarettes, it is banned in every other EU country while cigarettes remain completely legal.

<comment><USER8> Don't forget that American tobacco companies all have "snus" products that are actually regular 'dipping' tobacco placed into pouches.

Swedish Snus is cold-cured, while other dip is heat-cured. It is well established that partial combustion of organic matter creates a bunch of different carcinogens. With cigarettes, you are inhaling partial combustion products from plant matter that has already undergone partial combustion once, and you have astronomical cancer risk. With dip, you are putting partially combusted plant matter in your mouth and have quite high cancer risks. With swedish snus, you are putting zero partial combustion, and no discernible cancer risk.

<comment><USER9> I had no idea about the difference - interesting. I thought nicotine itself was a carcinogen though?

<comment><USER10> Nicotine on its own is no more harmful than caffeine, it's other stuff in tobacco that gets you (and burning it doesn't help). So I'm still skeptical that "cold cured" snus would be safe.

<comment><USER8> > it's other stuff in tobacco that gets you

I think the evidence regarding swedish snus shows that it is far less carcinogenic than traditionally-cured oral tobacco, but still significantly carcinogenic. In particular, swedish snus has very little in the way of nitrosamines [1], a major carcinogenic element of heat-cured tobacco products.

RE: harmfulness of nicotine, my impression was that it was a little more harmful to the heart than caffeine. I suppose this would depend on dosage, which is difficult to compare.

[1] [https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(07)60677-1](https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736\(07\)60677-1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Freakonomics did an excellent episode re e-cigarettes and the significant public-policy differences between the US & UK. Adds to this piece and should be interesting to anyone following this area: Episode 398 [https://freakonomics.com/podcast/vaping- nicotine/](https://freakonomics.com/podcast/vaping-nicotine/)

</comment><comment><USER12> > UK surveys show that young people are experimenting with e-cigarettes, but > regular use is rare and confined almost entirely to those who already smoke.

This is entirely not true in the US though, right? Curious how that can be so different.

<comment><USER2> Yeah that's incredibly interesting to me. If that's true, what the hell is the UK doing so right that America isn't?

I doubt that statistic and would like to see the survey they referred to.

<comment><USER13> Perhaps there's less appeal when parents and other old, boring people have e-cigarettes, with the approval of their doctor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I support the right of people to be able to go wherever they want and not be exposed to smoke, to not have their kids playing atound people smoking, to be able to open their windows on a nice day and not have the smell of smoke coming in the window, and to be able to go for a walk and not feel like you have to walk around people that are smoking.

I'm sure there will be more studies about what is safe. But I don't want to be a participant in the study.

<comment><USER15> Does this include the right to not be exposed to car exhaust?

<comment><USER16> The right not to be exposed to car exaust is just a minor corollary of the right not to have anyone ahead of you on the goddamned freeway.

<comment><USER15> The car ahead might be an EV. If it isn't, then it's gassing you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As a former smoker, friends with other former smokers we have joked, in full black-humour sense, that the best way out of the smoking mess, is to reduce the cost of cigarettes for the old cohort who smoke, and let them die rapidly so the public health costs are a blip in the overall curve.

The problem is the young cohort. I guess if we let vape companies sell Disney branded pink princess vape kits, we might keep kids out of smoking, and so this really is a blip and we can continue our black-humour approach to public health and end-of-life statistics.

</comment><comment><USER18> Here's the backstory. Everyone's kids were vaping and parents were freaking out. After all, it was "safe". But after the CDC scare, parents could tell their kids that "vaping is deadly" with a straight face.

It is obviously impossible to prove that this played a role. But anecdotally, I know many very rational people who are surprisingly antivaping -- because kids.

</comment><comment><USER19> Should have [2018] in the title</comment>


The New York Times Is Eliminating Its Public Editor Role - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/new-york-times-public-editor_us_592ec472e4b0e95ac1956706 <comment><USER2> On one hand, having an ombudsman (whatever you want to call it) is a good thing for an institution like the Times.

On the other hand... having Liz Spayd in that role is pointless, so this isn't a loss. The past year has shown us how the New York Times has let false equivalence and the need to sell newspapers to both sides of the aisle has severely damaged the quality of the paper's coverage, and Spayd has continually carried water for this rather than hold the paper to account. I for one am tired of watching the Times sell itself with ads about how the truth is more important than ever and then follow it up with coverage like this:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/03/us/politics/health- care-f...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/03/us/politics/health-care-fact- check-preexisting-conditions.html)

Where Pelosi saying "Up to 17 million children" is supposed to be misleading because it chooses the high side estimate, when _that is exactly what 'up to' means_.

Getting rid of the public editor won't make this better, but not having to read a public editor who won't confront this sort of coverage head-on will at least make me a bit less cranky about it.

<comment><USER3> I'd feel more able to agree with you if the NYT didn't carry water for some whoppers ("you can keep you doctor", "insurers will compete for your business", etc.) back when the ACA was passed in the first place.

<comment><USER4> Insurer's response to ACA reminds me of a Frank & Ernest comic, which I can't find right now, sorry:

Two USPS workers. Package label says "Do not bend, fold, mutilate." One says to the other "Doesn't say anything about crumple!"

Har har har.

\---

I had high hopes for ACA. I believed the 15% medical loss ratio was the poison pill that would eventually drive insurers out of business, and therefore lead to Medicare for All. For comparison, Medicare's is under 5%, meaning 95 cents for every dollar spent goes to patient care, vs coke and prostitutes for the execs.

Silly me. There's no set of rules that can't be broken, gamed.

So now I'm for dozing it all down and rebuilding with universal coverage, single payer, using the capitation model (reward wellness vs fee for service). No more incrementalism. Just do it.

\---

Aside: Mid 2000s, my team created, implemented, supported 5 regional health information exchanges (eg BHIX). It was clear then, to everyone in healthcare IT, that we were pushing cooked noodles across hot pavement. Since then, it's only gotten worse. Overhead continues to grow geometrically, due to things like ICD-10 and meaningful care, without nudging the patient care (outcomes) needle one bit.

I can't explain it.

I just read about cost disease. It seems to explain rising costs, but I don't understand the mechanism, or what to do about it.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease)

And this book blew my mind:

"The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy"

by David Graeber

[http://amzn.to/2mi169U](http://amzn.to/2mi169U)

<comment><USER5> I believe the ACA itself was a poison pill that would make the system so inefficient to drive it to collapse and bring about single payer.

The failure of Republicans to implement an alternative has pretty much guaranteed it.

<comment><USER6> I'm hoping Donald Trump is the poison pill that will bring about the Progressive movement.

<comment><USER7> He's a poison pill alright, but I'm not sure who's going to feel the poison.

He's either the end of the Democrat establishment (the election and post- election hysterics are unheard of in my lifetime), or the end of the Republican establishment (if he crashes and burns as bad as certain circles think he will).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Unfortunately, the thing that will always stick in my memory about Liz Spayd is her criticism of the New York Times for refusing to give more credence to the claim that junk emails about Trump hotels were a secret communications channel with Russia: [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/20/public-editor/trump- russi...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/20/public-editor/trump-russia-fbi- liz-spayd-public-editor.html) (Seriously. Every single piece of evidence pointed to the communications being mass marketing emails, from the companies actually operating the server to The Intercept obtaining copies of some of the emails.)

<comment><USER9> Wouldn't be surprised if in a few years there will be studies about the "Russia" propaganda campaign. How first it was very effective, everyone repeating the same things, the infamous "dossier" with sexual allegations, communication via mass marketing emails and so on. How it was beautiful and effective, and then everyone went too far and it ended up as a very expensive, counterproductive and embarrassing affair.

Also I wonder to what degree the journalists and anchors involved actually believe those things, or they simply know what to sell and do it regardless of their personal convictions in the matter.

<comment><USER10> Did you read what you're replying to? The New York Times didn't buy into some sort of "propaganda campaign", nor were they part of it.

If anything it proves that journalism is doing quite well at the NYT, and the narrative of "bias" and "propaganda campaigns" is undermining civil society, and unfairly accusing people doing the best they can and mostly succeeding.

<comment><USER8> Supposedly a good five or so publications passed over the Trump hotel communications with Russia story for the same reason, but ultimately it didn't matter that much because the moment one publication (Slate) was willing to publish their article went massively viral on social media, the Clinton campaign helped spread it, and huge numbers of people saw and believed it. We've effectively reduced the accuracy of the media as a whole to whatever the sloppiest, most view-hungry outlet is willing to put out that fits everyone's preferred narrative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Before I start, Disclosure: I'm neither a Trump or a Hillary supporter and I don't mean the following to be political. I'm just very dissatisfied with the sad reality of how I cannot trust anything online anymore.

For me, the moment all my trust in NYT died was the election day. The front page had this interactive realtime story of how Hillary is supposedly winning by overwhelming margin, when it was very apparent that that's opposite of the truth. People kept questioning "where the hell is this data coming from?".

I believe Newspapers should try to play as much neutral role as possible, but throughout the entire election cycle the narrative was NYT vs. Trump. News organizations and journalists should report stories but should not become the story.

As someone who just wanted to learn what REALLY is going on, I had (and still have) hard time believing anything they say anymore. Other conservative publications at least don't claim to be neutral. A publication shouldn't claim to "tell the truth" and do a whole TV ad about it if they are clearly biased and they're also aware of this.

I know they're being provocative because this sells, and they need to make money, and it's getting harder to make money with newspaper. But they've crossed the line.

People keep talking about "fake news", but what's really dangerous is not some viral website that write some funny photoshopped story. What's really dangerous is influential news organizations like NYT doing deceptively objective-sounding pieces with narratives that mislead the public.

By now I think a lot of people know it's very possible to take a same piece of reality and write completely different versions of it, just by framing them differently. Because of that I have hard time believing anything online anymore, especially the influential ones. This is sad because it used to be the job of journalism to fight against injustice, but nowadays it's more about generating more page views and getting more subscribers, which led to people losing faith in journalism.

<comment><USER12> > The front page had this interactive realtime story of how Hillary is > supposedly winning by overwhelming margin, when it was very apparent that > that's opposite of the truth.

I remember that interactive story. It was not what you describe. It was showing Hillary's _chances_ of winning throughout the evening - she started at 90% or so, based on the polling averages they'd been running on a regular basis throughout the entire election season. Then, as the evening wore on, and results were not as the polling would indicate, her chances of winning dropped, dropped, and then obviously went to zero.

Now, I won't argue that in hindsight that was a pretty bad feature to run. I think it vastly overestimated reader ability to understand statistical probabilities, as well as the accuracy of polling data (the Brexit vote ought to have been an indicator to be cautious). But it absolutely wasn't showing false data that indicated Hillary was winning when she was not.

<comment><USER11> How is it not what I describe? You just described exactly what I described.

Everyone was wondering (both pro-trump and anti-trump) where the "90%" came from. Because it was pretty clear the race was not that obvious. People keep saying nobody saw it coming, but that's their emotion speaking. People just didn't want Donald Trump to win because they thought he's a joke, but objectively speaking people knew clearly that there were tons of his supporters around the U.S., and it was definitely NOT 90% chance that Hillary would win.

To me, THAT's the ultimate "fake news". Slapping a percentage number on it and putting it on the front page is just not right, especially when it's based on very subjective (and eventually false) speculative data.

<comment><USER12> You said:

"The front page had this interactive realtime story of how Hillary is supposedly winning"

I said:

"it absolutely wasn't showing false data that indicated Hillary was winning when she was not"

They're pretty clearly contradictory. That data, at no point, showed Hillary "supposedly" anything. You're making my point about readers not understanding statistical probabilities. 90% doesn't mean she's winning. It means she's got a 90% _chance_ of winning, and there is a 10% chance she will lose. She lost.

> People keep saying nobody saw it coming, but that's their emotion speaking.

Quite the opposite. The _data_ (that same data you're saying came from nowhere) showed that Hillary had a 90% chance of winning. There was variance in the polls, but pretty much all of them showed Hillary with an edge. Yes, there were a great many reports of people saying that there was a lot of Trump support across the country, but those reports are the very opposite of "objective" \- they were thinly spread and anecdotal. Pretty much every newspaper ran stories interviewing those Trump supporters, but there was no hard data to quantify it.

Polling data isn't "subjective" and "speculative". There is a clearly defined methodology behind it. That methodology was incorrect in the 2016 election, and didn't accurate gauge support for two unprecedentedly unpopular candidates. That makes it "incorrect news", not "fake news".

You could argue that the news industry has relied too heavily on this sort of statistical prediction stuff, and I'd agree with you. But in 2012 FiveThirtyEight correctly predicted all but one state, and everyone absolutely lauded Nate Silver for it ("Is Nate Silver a witch?"). But really, what that meant is that each of Nate's predictions were the right side of 50%. And in 2016 they most definitely weren't.

<comment><USER11> I see what you're saying now.

But I don't think you got my point either. The detail doesn't matter. Whatever that number was about, it was pretty clear that 90% was not the right number, I'm not even pro-trump and I was confused, imagine what others thought.

Also, it is not ok to be irresponsible just because you're using a "scientific method". This is what cigarette companies did to fund research that "prove" that smoking is healthy. And this happens increasingly more, because writing polarizing articles generate more shares and page views and money.

Lastly, I am not trying to talk politics here, and it's not even just about NYT. Nowadays for a lot of writers it's all about generating more page views. Again, I'm fine with it (even the "fake news" viral sites), but I was pointing out that it is hypocritical to claim that you're "the truth", when you do things that are biased.

<comment><USER13> You seem very confident that "90% was not the right number", and I'm curious how you reached that conclusion. Do you have research that indicates the odds were actually way different, or does it just that it feel incorrect?

If I win the lottery, is it misleading for people to state that my odds of winning were one in a million?

<comment><USER11> Dude, that guy who was supposed to lose by 90% chance actually DID win. And you're telling me to prove this by showing you some research result?

It's not misleading to say your odds of winning the lottery is one in a million because it IS one in a million, mathematically. NYT saying Hillary would win by 90% chance is NOT mathematics. Do you really think your analogy was adequate?

My point was that people believe statistics, just like you believe that because NYT did it, it would be scientific and you should believe it. But that's where the danger lies. And an influential publication such as NYT should be ashamed of themselves for misleading people by trivializing things down to just a percentage and feeding it to the world, in realtime.

I'm sure a lot of Trump fans who saw that poll on NYT that morning who didn't care for voting decided to go vote.

<comment><USER13> > Dude, that guy who was supposed to lose by 90% chance actually DID win. And > you're telling me to prove this by showing you some research result?

Actually yes, that is exactly what I'd like to find out more about. I'm asking why you are so sure that the NYT and other media publication odds were so wrong? Is it just that he won, therefore his odds must have been better than 10%? Most betting markets (which the HN set seems to put a lot of faith in) had Clinton as a 80ish % favorite ([http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/07/betting- sites-see-record-wage...](http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/07/betting-sites-see- record-wagering-on-us-presidential-election.html)), do you think they were a product of a misled public?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Interesting choice — I love the NYT Public Editor's work and was actually just about to add her column to my media literacy / filter bubble project, Read Across the Aisle. Many people have never heard of a Public Editor and have no idea what the position entails. From a media literacy standpoint, this column offered a behind-the-scenes look at why certain decisions were made, how journalistic standards were applied, and the pros/cons of alternative options.

In this time of political discord and journalistic polarization, I am surprised and disappointed that such an esteemed paper would decide this position is no longer necessary.

I hope the NYT keeps the existing archive online, and frankly I may still add this archive to my media literacy app — even though the underlying stories would become increasingly stale over time. IMO, it is that good!

<comment><USER15> You love Liz Spayd's work, or the previous public editor, Margaret Sullivan? I've found Spayd's column pretty anodyne.

<comment><USER14> I have mostly read Spayd's work, and I enjoy the analytical aspects of it. How would you say Sullivan's work differed? Worth combing through the archives?

<comment><USER16> Yes absolutely. Margaret Sullivan is a national treasure.

Here's her 'back catalog' of stories from the NYT: [https://www.nytimes.com/by/margaret- sullivan](https://www.nytimes.com/by/margaret-sullivan)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So they think that they can just replace that role with social media? Wasn't the whole issue with newspapers in the 2016 election was they relied far too much on social media and ended up in a bubble?

I don't see anything in the article that makes me feel like they are interested in fixing that problem.

<comment><USER10> Nate Silver has done some good work on what exactly went wrong, and it was a combination of factors:

\- (some) polls were systematically off, mostly because they underestimated white non-college turnout and overestimated black turnout. Note that poll errors were actually lower than for any other election–only this time they actually got the winner wrong.

\- Most of the poll aggregators operated under the assumption of statistical independence of state-level results. This was a serious mistake, and both Huffpost as well as The Upshot (to a lesser extend) should be somewhat ashamed. 538, by the way, did this right and had Trump at 3X% on election day.

\- There actually was some significant change in voters' intent in the last days, possibly fuelled by all the news stories the FBI directors was generating. It's highly likely that an election two weeks earlier or two weeks later would have ended differently.

It's also important to note that newspapers aren't really in the business of predicting the future. If they "relied too much on social media" for any facts they reported, I'd love to see some examples.

<comment><USER18> 2X% actually (I remember watching it in real time), but the point stands as it was way higher than anyone else thought.

<comment><USER19> And Nate Silver got a lot of flak for that in the week before the election.

<comment><USER20> He did indeed! He published an article in the last week that listed 4 outcomes for the election, each with ~25% confidence. 3 Had a Clinton victory and 1 did not. I recall him also making some pretty emphatic condemnations of Sam Wang's Princeton Election Consortium, arguing that the numbers absolutely did not support PEC's >95% confidence in a Clinton win. Wang, for his part was so confident that he offered to eat a bug if Clinton lost. Wang's statistical method turned out to be a disaster, but he did follow through.

<comment><USER18> Having actually eaten a bug before (yay Boy Scout survival badge), I'm going to remember that one. The follow-through will impress people but it's not actually dangerous or even that unhygenic (as long as you eat the right bug).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "For the past three years, my assignment has been to try to help this newspaper live up to its own high journalistic standards as it covered a historic presidential election, two wars, the Great Recession, violence in the Middle East and more. I have deplored the overuse of anonymous sources, warned against the creep of opinion into news analysis and worried about the preservation of Times quality on the Internet. But, in truth, I have sometimes felt less like a keeper of the flame and more like an internal affairs cop."

\- Departing NYT Public Editor Clark Hoyt

SOURCE: [https://mobile.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/opinion/13pubed.html?r...](https://mobile.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/opinion/13pubed.html?referer=)

</comment><comment><USER22> For context, this is part of sweeping cuts to NYT editorial staff:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik- wemple/wp/2017/05/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik- wemple/wp/2017/05/31/new-york-times-ends-its-traditional-copy-desk/)

</comment><comment><USER23> The NY Times created the Public Editor role in response to a fabrication scandal. Are they trying to tell us something?

<comment><USER24> That they never really wanted it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Saw an article about this on The Outline a month ago, it's a more informal and harsher take on this

[https://theoutline.com/post/1372/the-new-york-times- public-e...](https://theoutline.com/post/1372/the-new-york-times-public- editor-is-bad-at-her-job)

</comment><comment><USER26> >"There is nothing more important to our mission, or our business, than strengthening our connection with our readers," Sulzberger added. "A relationship that fundamental cannot be outsourced to a single intermediary."

This is a disturbing statement. Shouldn't a serious newspaper's mission be to investigate and report facts without regard to the "connection" it creates or dissolves with the reader? I'm sure Infowars has a deep connection with its readers.

This is a profoundly ridiculous statement but I think it represents what the NYT has always been quite accurately.

</comment><comment><USER10> Good take on this from Politico: [http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/05/31/good- ridda...](http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/05/31/good-riddance-to- the-nyts-public-editor-215213)

</comment><comment><USER27> I wouldn't mind if the N.Y. Times crawled up itself and disappeared. The main loss would be the crossword puzzle.</comment>


Why Do High-Frequency Traders Cancel So Many Orders? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-10-08/why-do-high-frequency-traders-cancel-so-many-orders- <comment><USER2> I think to understand most HFT market makers you have to understand how the markets pay.

Most work on a maker taker model. Which means the trader who initiates the trade pays a small fee and the trader who is the passive side, the one who had their order in the market already, gets paid a small fee. as a side note there are inverted markets but lets leave those aside for now.

This means to get paid you want to be at the top of the book, which means you are the first order to get filled when someone crosses the spread to get their order filled. the way priority is determined is first by price and second by time. So you have a very vested interest in being the first to cancel and move your order to the newest price level.

Exchanges have tried introducing some order types to alleviate this constant send/cancel routine such as the order type "Hide not Slide" but people tend to get upset at these order types.

Once you understand this, you start to realize that almost all HFT firms aren't quote stuffing, they are just jockeying for position at the top of the order book.

I've never really understood quote stuffing, the same firm that quote stuffs still has to deal with those quotes coming back, its not like the market data has a flag saying ignore this quote change as its caused by your own quote stuffing.

The way most markets are setup is that quotes come from gateways and multiple symbols all share a single gateway, usually assigned alphabetically, so A-F tickers all share the same gateway. This means that if someone is actually slowing down market data for say AAPL then they are also slowing down quotes for AMZN as well but again, the same firm that is quote stuffing also has to deal with their own mess so I can't see the benefit.

Another comment complains that HFT firms don't like the fragmented market. That is true to a point, but keep in mind most HFT strategies only work due to the fragmented markets and RegNMS. So while they may not like 11 venues, they certainly want atleast 3 or 4, and many of hte top HFT firms run their own dark pools, adding to the problem:)

As far as Hillary Clinton introducing legislation to curb HFT trading, she was the senator for New York. I'm dubious of her coming down hard on Wall Street.

<comment><USER3> Hillary will come down on the part of the market that hasn't contributed to her campaigns. Structurally, this means she will make it good for GS who will help write the legislation but bad for anyone else that doesn't belong to the financial hegemony.

Politicians say they're protecting the innocent, but really they're just tipping the scales for whoever is backing them. This is how they do.

<comment><USER4> What you are describing is not reality.

<comment><USER5> What do you mean?

GS can already bend the FBI and NY State to their will: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Disclaimer: I work in HFT

The article uses the term "front-running" incorrectly. Front-running is where a firm places their own trades ahead of trades they're placing for a client, to capitalize on the price movement that client order might generate. This is illegal.

What the market makers in the article are doing isn't front-running. It's just being smart with their orders.

And that's generally why HFTs cancel orders- they're reacting to market conditions that exist on the span of microseconds and will want to change their market positions very quickly- including canceling orders that they no longer think are suitable.

<comment><USER7> It's worth remembering that HFTs like yourself define front-running differently than others.

Others often (rightfully) feel that HFTs who engage in latency arbitrage where they take advantage that everyone else is using the NBBO (because they have to), and the NBBO is lagged, are front-running assholes who extract value without creating anything.

And we refer to that thieving, predatory, value-stealing activity as 'front- running', even though technically you're engaging in a slightly different activity.

<comment><USER8> I hope you understand that the thievery has been happening for centuries, millennia. There is no other way to gauge _real_ supply and demand than to put buy and sell orders into the market yourself. HFT is doing at ultra-high speed what human market makers do all day long, and have been doing forever.

Now, possibly rightly, market makers in general, through the ages, have had a bad rap. They are indeed trying to get more information than the average joe, with very clever, and risky, techniques (see below) and skimming him after having done so. Nevertheless, you must remember, that without these people/machines taking these risks, you would not have a continuous market in which to trade. You'd have a much more stepwise price action and much more risk. They're providing s service.

Perhaps most controversially, being a good market maker means having some capital, so that you can wear a loss which is entirely possible during your price discovery. Thus, market makers who make money, inevitably already have money. This doesn't help their cause.

But the idea that HFT per se is the problem is wrong. If you don't like HFT, you don't like finance, period. That may be a legitimate view, or not, but the two are inextricable. They are not different one from the other - HFT is simply Amazon doing what Barnes and Noble does, more efficiently (without the monopoly aspects - HFT is _fiercely_ competitive).

Without HFT, bid offers would be wider. Fact.

<comment><USER9> I agree. I've always thought of HFT as a way to let liquidity flow between exchanges, with a payoff equal to the degree to which the inter-exchange spread has been decreased. If the inter-exchange spread is wide, there is some value to be extracted from that spread, and HFT provides the (in my opinion) valuable service of extracting that value, making the market more efficient as a whole. The more people that are competing in that market, the smaller the value the HFTs can extract, until the actual market participants on the exchanges are only paying fractions of a penny for the privilege of buying shares "originating" from another market that has higher liquidity. I can't really see how this could be a bad thing (given enough competition).

<comment><USER10> Well, here's the NY Fed explaining why they think it's bad:

[http://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2015/10/the- liq...](http://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2015/10/the-liquidity- mirage-.html#.VhgmFvnnuUm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Something this article ignores, and which is ignored by most articles on HFT, is that the process is ilegible to the public. "No no we're doing you a favor!" is not reassuring when the activity consumes a bunch of resources on zero sum activity.

Ultimately investing runs on trust. HFT is consuming public trust in the financial system at a prodigious rate. Is it a trillion dollars a year? A billion? Hard to be sure. But it certainly isn't clear the tiny market-making improvements are worth it.

<comment><USER12> > when the activity consumes a bunch of resources on zero sum activity

The thing to remember about the markets is that each individual trade is always zero sum, but the value of the markets comes from the aggregate total.

The behaviors that we _want_ in our markets, price discovery, liquidity, easy risk management are all outcomes that are enabled by speculative market participants like market makers engaging in lots of zero sum activity.

So instead of decrying the zero sum activity what we want to do is drive down the price of it to the non zero sum participants. And HFT market making has been prodigiously good at that.

<comment><USER13> Trading is not a zero sum activity, trades happen because each side want what the other person has more than what they have which is a net positive. aka I want lunch more than money.

HFT trading is zero sum because the traders don't actually want or keep stock.

<comment><USER12> No one wants actual stock. They want to gain money on price differences in stock, or get the dividends that owning stock gives rights to, or I suppose they want to be able to have the voting rights stocks grant.

The difference is all about timing. I may want something else more than you do but am willing to sell now. If at the time you close out your trade (that is sell the shares from me) the price may have risen or fallen. If it rose you won and I lost by not holding longer.

This time mitigation is precisely what market makers have always done and what HFT market makers have driven the profits (and thus the costs to outside participants) out of.

<comment><USER13> Buying stock is trading future money than money today which is a real and meaningful trade. On the other side, I might want a new car, which means I want money, which means I want to sell stock.

Even stock to stock transitions can be meaningful as Bill Gates had a lot of MS stock and wanted a hedge so he sold stock. What he got was probably worth 'less' the diversification was valuable to him making the transaction a net positive.

<comment><USER12> What you are talking about are precisely the aggregate benefits to the markets I mentioned, liquidity and easy risk management.

That the markets provide those behaviors is what makes them valuable but the actual trades that make up those aggregates, your selling of shares when you need a car to someone else is zero sum. Either you would make more by holding or you wouldn't.

That something other than that is more important to you indicates that you are in the market for a middle man to bridge that time gap and buy some of the risk from you. Your time horizon is from share purchase to "need money for car", not from share purchase to "optimal selling point". The service you take advantage of when you bridge that gap is provided by the aggregate work of many zero sum interactions between speculative participants like market makers and "investors" like your self.

<comment><USER13> Continuing from the perspective of buying a car:

If I put a sell order on the market at 12:00 the only impact is the sales price. If it executes at 1PM or 2PM it makes zero difference to me as I can only access money at the end of the day. So, I only gain liquidity if I would have been otherwise unable to sell by the end of the day. Therefore, I don't gain liquidity from HFT.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you don't want liquidity don't buy it. No one is forcing you.

[https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2014/how_to_not_get_rippe...](https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2014/how_to_not_get_ripped_off_by_hft.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This article brings up something that HF traders have been bemoaning for a long time: the fragmented US market structure. In US equities, you need to monitor almost a dozen exchanges to be competitive. The popular book "Flash Boys" gave the impression that HF traders loved this market structure and used it to extract more money out of the market. In the majority of cases, this is wrong.

In fact, the fragmented market results in huge costs (4 datacenters worth of infrastructure, low latency connectivity, etc) In reality, most market makers would vastly prefer to simplify this away. This is one of the reasons many traders have moved to alternative markets that have fewer trading venues (for example, many futures and options trade primarily on a single venue)

<comment><USER15> The HFT guys love the fragmentation. If not they wouldn't be building out private microwave links between Chicago and NY to "beat the market".

<comment><USER16> The NY/Chicago arb trade is futures vs equities. In other words it's two separate products with highly correlated prices. On one side are the futures contracts and on the other side are the underlying stocks (and ETFs). As long as the two separate products exist, you'll always have fast arbitrageurs. This is true whether the matching engines are 1000 miles apart or in the same rack.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> John Arnold (former Enron energy trader) also posted something on Bloomberg View, and the main gist of the article was:

Front-running is profitable against traditional orders entered by humans. But with spoofers in the mix, the picture looks quite different: When the front- running HFT algorithm jumps ahead of a spoof order, the front-runner gets fooled and loses money. The HFT's front-running algorithm can't easily distinguish between legitimate orders and spoofs. Suddenly the front-runner faces real market risk and makes the rational choice to do less front-running. In short, spoofing poses the risk of making front-running unprofitable. Because spoofing is only profitable if front-running exists, allowing both would ensure that neither is widespread.

[http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-01-23/high- freque...](http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-01-23/high-frequency- trading-spoofers-and-front-running)

<comment><USER18> That's why most of these HFT-sponsored exchanges (read: BATS, CHX, etc) pay retail brokers (e.g. eTrade, Scottrade, etc.) for their flow.

<comment><USER19> I would be interested in your source for that comment, as I think it is untrue (at least for US exchanges, I don't know rules in other countries).

I am not saying payment-for-order-flow doesn't exist, but the buyers are firms like Citadel and other "internalizers", not exchanges.

If by "paying" you are referring to the maker/taker rebate model, that is paid to any market participant, not just retail brokers.

<comment><USER14> [https://www.nyse.com/publicdocs/nyse/markets/liquidity- progr...](https://www.nyse.com/publicdocs/nyse/markets/liquidity- programs/arca_rlp_fact_sheet.pdf)

[http://cdn.batstrading.com/resources/release_notes/2012/BATS...](http://cdn.batstrading.com/resources/release_notes/2012/BATS- Introduces-Retail-Price-Improvement-Program.pdf)

<comment><USER18> And these exchanges have historically been doing it. BATS has been around for about 10 years. But the initial players like Island ECN, Archipelago, and others (now merged into NSQD, NYSE, etc.) have been paying retail brokers for their flow since late 90s. This is what attracts big fishes to trade at their venues.

When you do the wrong over several times without getting caught it becomes a standard (read: make-or-take rebates)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I happen to have 144 lines of Ruby which implement the world's most braindead market making algorithm, coded by someone who had literally never written a trading system before. It cancels ~98% of orders before they are hit when running on a single stock on a single venue.

<comment><USER21> Is it profitable? Or just paper trading/simulated? Braindead stuff works if it is the fastest in the world, but as you slow down you need to get smarter to cover losses due to getting "picked off" more frequently.

<comment><USER22> I'm pretty sure it's a competitor for Patrick's StarFighter game. It's not supposed to be impossible to beat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The "new" part of this news, which not many have responded to here, is the notion of an HFT tax. The arguments on either side of HFT (liquidity/spread/etc. vs. cost/unfairness/etc.) have been largely unchanged for the last few years. There simply isn't enough data made public to declare a victor.

As far as the tax: personally I'm very in favor of slowing down trading... unfortunately, what's being proposed introduces as much structural game theory as it eliminates. What's the dominant strategy for a trader faced with a rule like "any trades resting for less than 300 micros get taxed"? To be as fast as possible without triggering the tax; staying just above the threshold.

All that economic waste on low-latency tech will just be redirected to low- jitter tech. Those who can reliably land an order within +1 microsecond of the tax line will outperform those who only have an accuracy of +10.

I'd like to see more exchanges experimenting with things like random variance in speed bump size, frequent batch auctions, etc.

<comment><USER24> > personally I'm very in favor of slowing down trading...

As a retail trader, no.

As an example, yesterday I placed a sell order on $90,000HK worth of a stock. Once I hit 'send', my order was fulfilled before my browser could load the confirmation page, and at the market price I was quoted seconds before.

This is, in large part, thanks to market makers who use HFT. Before this, the broker/market maker might take a spread worth half a percent or more (and being a retail investor, you probably wouldn't get the 'market' price), now it's pennies or less, and at the market price.

Thanks to HFT, spreads are smaller, execution quicker, and it definitely 'levels' the playing field.

<comment><USER23> I completely agree that liquidity is first and foremost, and that in today's market structure HFT drives a lot of it. Retail enjoys a lot of the benefit, because trades in the $1,000s - $100,000s range probably aren't enough to slip the market. But is ultra-low-latency the ONLY way to bring about that liquidity? I have yet to come across any economic or technical reason why that has to be the case.

Also, slowing down trading doesn't mean eliminating HFT, it's a matter of what constitutes "high" frequency... I'd argue we're well past the point where incremental increases in speed result in equal gains in liquidity. And those increments now cost more than ever before.

<comment><USER24> When incremental gains are no longer worthwhile, institutions will no longer invest in the infrastructure. As long as the profit gained > costs, they will invest in infrastructure, to the benefit of the tech industry.

And you're right, we don't need market makers trading as fast or as frequently as they do, but they see an opportunity, so they go for it, and we benefit anyway.

I'd personally be happy with 10 second execution, but if I can get 1/2 second execution, why would I complain?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > the story of high-frequency trading is basically one of small smart firms > undercutting big banks by being smarter and more automated and more > efficient

Is that true? Isn't there a high barrier of entry? I was under the impression that large trading firms were building high-speed connections, which is obviously not something a small firm could ever do.

<comment><USER26> These days you can rent a co-located computer with direct connection to the exchange. The cost is a few grands per month. Not very cheap but definitely within reach of a small business. There are many small HF firms based all over the country that just rent 1 or 2 computers close to exchanges. This is bad for big investment banks like Goldman because they no longer have a location advantage - you do not need an office in Manhattan to compete with big guys anymore.

<comment><USER25> Then my followup question would be: why do we actually need trading to be faster than the regular internet allows? For the objects being traded (companies) have time-constants that are far greater than the millisecond- range. And I hope the answer is not "because everybody else does it" :)

<comment><AUTHOR> The answer is, in fact, "because everybody else does it".

[https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2012/hft_apology2.html](https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2012/hft_apology2.html)

This can be partially fixed with a very technocratic market microstructure change (eliminating the subpenny rule). But politically that's very much a "huh?" point - imagine Bernie Sanders saying "I believe we should let traders quote in increments of 1/100 of a cent, not 1 cent".

[https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2012/hft_whats_broken.htm...](https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2012/hft_whats_broken.html)

(This would fix things on the placing orders side, but not on the cancelling orders side.)

<comment><USER27> Eliminating the sub-penny rule would probably be counter-productive for most US equities. You would not see further spread compression (most stocks' natural spreads are already greater than one cent), and displayed size would likely shrink (this latter bit is exactly what happened when prices decimalized). A better alternative would be a tick-size schedule that's a function of price, as is generally done in Japan and Europe.

<comment><AUTHOR> The "displayed size" would probably shrink, but so what? You'd just need to look at the book to see it.

Decimalization would help even with equities where the natural size > 1c. HFTs who want to get to the top of the book could compete by offering $10.0073 instead of racing to be the fastest at $10.0100. HFTs would compete on price rather than speed.

<comment><USER27> A more granular tick doesn't just "spread out" the existing liquidity to a bunch of price levels--it meaningfully decreases incentives to post serious size. The spread will end up being marginally tighter, but with thinner books, you still pay more to trade large amounts. The objective function to minimize is transaction costs, not spread.

<comment><USER28> > it meaningfully decreases incentives to post serious size

Do you have support for that claim?

(I don't have an opinion; Trying to form one based on data)

<comment><USER27> The second page contains a succinct summary of theoretical reasons why this is true. The rest of the paper goes over empirical findings: [http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~keechung/MGF743/Readings/G2%20D...](http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~keechung/MGF743/Readings/G2%20Decimalization.pdf)

Since then, we have additional data points from the decimalized US equity markets. See [http://www.sec.gov/rules/other/2014/34-72460.pdf](http://www.sec.gov/rules/other/2014/34-72460.pdf) for a bibliography. The weight of the evidence points towards thinner books. Incidentally, the SEC is looking to increase the tick size for illiquid small- cap stocks for this very reason.

<comment><USER28> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> "Updating" orders seems a far more accurate terminology than "cancelling" in the market maker case.

Although of course making such a distinction by law is problematic, because updating an order to be "out-of-the-money" (have an absurdly low or high price) is almost equivalent to canceling, and objectively determining if an order is "out-of-the-money" is problematic.

</comment><comment><USER30> "Here you have an industry that has undercut the business of the big banks, irritated hedge fund managers and been great for small investors. Why would cracking down on that business be populist? Why would it alienate wealthy donors?"

For the same reason that people don't generally cheer when a gang war happens. Just because the gangsters are mainly shooting other gangsters doesn't mean the violence isn't costly to society. The same with Wall Street. Just because people don't trust big banks and suspect them of rooking the common man doesn't mean that they want to legitimize said rooking, or that it isn't costly to society when banks rip each other off.

<comment><USER12> I think you are missing his point. HFT is not typically banks ripping each other off. Its a new outside entity that has made the service the banks and traditional market makers provided to their customers much cheaper at the expense of hedge funds and bank profits.

In most industries we applaud this disruption.

<comment><USER30> But, in the mind of the populist masses that Mr Levine it criticizing it is. I don't work in finance and I'm not going to make any judgments on the industry, just to say that people who are opposed to it would be opposed to HFTs as well.

Also, the people who applaud 'disruption' are not this sort of populist, they don't cheer because of the damage done to incumbents but because the disruption will hopefully mean better products/services/prices for customers. HFT just does the job of the old investment bankers slightly more efficiently. If you think investment bankers are bad, you're not going to think that more efficient investment are an improvement.

<comment><USER31> When ignorant people don't like something we should strive to explain the benefits more clearly. Not give up and declare that thing bad just based on a vote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Ahem, buried in the middle of the article (I wonder why) "Navinder Sarao is accused of spoofing in the S&P 500 futures market, entering and cancelling lots of orders to create an illusion of demand, in suspicious proximity to the flash crash of 2010."

This happens a lot more than you might think. There is always a temptation to stuff the order book to keep it going in a direction profitable for you (ie, fake volatility).

This is the #1 reason why canceled ordered from HFT are suspect. It's too easy to stuff the order book and cheat a little. You really need highly credible market makers who have proven not to do this sort of thing. Even then, such folks are very rare and hard to appreciate. Your algorithms get so complex and obfuscated it's hard to tell what's stuffing the order book and what's simple market making.

The fact is, everyone is stuffing the order book. Sarao is more a patsy than anything else. His biggest crime wasn't belonging to a Goldman Sachs paying bribes to political entities.

<comment><USER32> _There is always a temptation to stuff the order book to keep it going in a direction profitable for you (ie, fake volatility)._

Is this something you have personal experience in? I ask because a lot of people relate this concern because they read about it in Zero Hedge, which is regarded by people in the industry as (as someone here once put it) "a conspiracy theory site without the theories".

<comment><USER28> The description of ZeroHedge is funny and not entirely untrue, but if you regard them as an aggregator of opinions, (which they mostly are, even though they do offer their own opinions), it is unmatched in its breadth of coverage, despite having a rather low signal coverage.

WRT suffing the order book - at least as far back as 2003, in Eurex, there was a swiss trader who would do that in bond futures. There were a lot of comlpaints, and even death threats IIRC, but a Eurex investigation at the time found he did nothing wrong - their main finding was that he would occasionally get those "stuffing" orders executed, which means that (as far as they are concerned) they are not false or misleading in any way.

That's probably the gist of it: as long as you are willing to take the hit if your bluff goes against you, there's nothing "fake" about it. It's been years since, and I know not of any (officially investigated) cases back then, or of any recent cases - but I'd be surprised if it's not very prevalent. (Also, I've been out of the HFT world for a while).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> A better question is why do we even have 'High Frequency Traders'?

Wouldn't the market be better served by a window structure with a scale on a more human timespan? Say a 5 min process in which:

* for 4 min orders are taken in confidential secret.

* there is a 1 min blackout window in which no orders are taken, and in which any results of settling the outcome of orders is not published.

* At the end of that period the new results are published. (It doesn't matter who reacts first, it's who reacts best.)

The profit between what sellers are asking for and what the buyers are willing to pay still needs to be accounted for. This could be the market's operating fee (the cost of the sale's commission), it could be attributed to the government as a form of sales tax, it could be returned in some way to the parties involved (buyers pay less, sellers earn more), other, or some combination of the above.

<comment><USER34> The price of equities is not known. The market is how that price is calculated.

You could slow down the process, but that adds risk (that one party is getting the wrong price). The market makers would say, I'll sell you one 1 share for $1, 10 shares for $1.20, 100 shares for $2, 1000 shares for $10. So then someone who wants to buy 1000 shares for $1 a share will buy only 1 share at $1. Then in the quiet period, the market makers will adjust their prices. 1 share for $1.01, etc. Then you'll sell another share for $1.01. Then you'll wait 5 minutes, and the market makers will adjust their price.

The market is going to work the same way at 5 minute delay as it works at nanosecond delay, but just be slower. The market makers won't be getting you a better price, and your large transaction won't not affect the share price.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I guess I see why high frequency trades are necessary in the current trading framework, but looking at the situation from a high level, isn't it obvious that the resources being spent on microsecond level response improvements don't benefit anyone but the winners? Can someone argue otherwise?

<comment><USER32> You're right, although you should also build into that argument the benefits that accrue to technologists that work at HFT firms, and to technology vendors who sell to them.

<comment><USER36> And to HFT simulation writers!

<comment><USER32> Well, fuck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> TL;DR: Market makers put a buy and a sell offer, separated by one or more cents, on every trade; when someone big enough picks one side, they cancel the other side and re-issue new buy and sell offers with new goal-posts.

</comment><comment><USER38> it's called "discovery" ...

</comment><comment><USER39> It's great to see Matt Levine on HN - for those interested in finance, his Money Stuff [0] daily column is absolutely excellent. His writing has a really fantastic funny and informal style.

He does a great job presenting a fair and deep view of a lot of finance issues, like HFT or Unicorn valuations.

[0] [http://www.bloombergview.com/topics/money- stuff](http://www.bloombergview.com/topics/money-stuff)

<comment><USER40> Matt is brilliant. A little bit more mature and reserved than during his time at Dealbreaker, but still awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> what benefit does high frequency traders provide to rest of society? none. they raise the cost of transactions of all investors. it should be banned and those brought to justice.

</comment><comment><USER42> Legalized quote stuffing.

</comment><comment><USER43> Because they're gaming the market. How it works: place a large order, wait for others to make a bid, then cancel the order and sell your own at a mark-up.</comment>


WebODF - Render office documents in a browser - <AUTHOR> http://webodf.org/

<comment><USER2> There should be a prominent link to a live demo on that site.

Edit: Found it: <http://webodf.org/demo/> \- should be a lot more prominent though, it's linked to in the footer as the "Gallery".

<comment><USER3> Does this work properly for you? It just says "loading [...]" when I click on any of the documents there.

<comment><USER4> Works for me in Chrome on Windows 7. I can't click the hyperlink in DanskTest01.odt, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> While this is cool, i'm surprised by its lack of features : no real editing, the rendering is nowhere near openoffice standards, and the documents just "look different".

Also, did it really take all this while for someone to come up with javascript apis for ODF? Or are there existing tools out there? Surprising that there are no full featured web-based ODF editors even when the standard is completely DOM based and open, and quite old already. How hard is compiling a bunch of XML (what ODF is) to some HTML anyway?

<comment><USER6> "how hard is compiling a bunch of XML ..." - sorry to pick on you, but "I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."

Being built on XML, which is mostly just a syntax, doesn't really say anything about the semantics of display and editing. It's only slightly removed from saying that it should be easy to compile any programming language into any other because they're all just ASCII text files.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> For this to be really useful it has to render existing ODF documents as rendered by OpenOffice.

<comment><USER8> I wasn't aware that OpenOffice is the gold standard w.r.t. ODF rendering, or even that having such a standard makes sense. I would think that, if you want to ensure your document renders the same everywhere, the right approach is to create a .pdf or .png document.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Yet another reason why people should be leaving behind Microsoft's .doc(x) formats!

</comment><comment><USER10> Haha, did you just see that in the lightning talk at the Berlin Desktop Summit?

</comment><comment><USER11> _shudder_</comment>


Zenefits Loses Over Half of Its Value - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2016/06/30/zenefits-loses-over-half-of-its-value/ <comment><USER3> The repricing is, in effect, a form of settlement agreement with the company's preferred stock investors.

What the former CEO did amounted to a form of fraud on the investors. They thought they were investing in a company they thought was worth x but whose real value was less than half the value of x. The company had actual or constructive knowledge of the facts underlying the fraud, to wit, that there was in place an automated program that facilitated and attempted to cover over blatant regulatory violations. This was a material fact known to the then CEO and the company, legally speaking, is charged with his knowledge. Therefore, it constructively knew the truth as well and failed to disclose it to investors when they invested in the prior round (Series C). Since this was highly material to their investment, the sale of securities to such investors without such disclosure amounted to securities fraud.

Now, when something like this has happened, people can sometimes let it slide but the impact here was _huge_ and the investors have easily lost at least half the value of their investment.

So what does new management do? With the historic problem cleaned up, it reprices the shares in the previous round to set the valuation at the level it should have been (or least much closer to it) had all facts been known and disclosed to investors. This is speaking hypothetically, of course, because investors of this type do not invest in a company that is committing serious legal wrongs and they would not have actually invested here had they known all the facts at the time of their original investment. But, given that the damage had already been done, the proposal made to investors gives them the chance after-the-fact to affirm their investment, release their legal claims, and take the hypothetical value that presumably would have more accurately reflected the real value of the company at the time of their investment had all facts been known and disclosed to them.

Is this a perfect solution? No, of course it cannot be. This is a real mess and the wrongs committed were serious. But it gives investors a path through repricing to get more than double the shares they had bought at the prior pricing. The trade-off: they must release all legal claims against the company.

Now the carve-outs: if any given investor sees this as an imperfect solution, they can always just say no and file suit against all parties, including the company; and, even for investors who take the deal, there is no absolving of the former CEO in that the release of claims does not extend to him - hence, they reserve all rights to sue him if they like.

On top of all this, employees are given RSUs that help minimize the effect of the dilution that is built into this for the benefit of investors. Again, not perfect but another indicator that this has been carefully thought out. If the company revives and its stock value goes up, the employees will essentially be paid bonuses via the RSUs to help make up the difference.

This is actually a pretty elegant attempt to salvage what must have been seen by many as a situation beyond repair, first (and formally), by setting up a mechanism to prevent the company from being swamped by lawsuits and, second (and much more importantly) by taking a good faith (and, for the company, painful) step in order to save its relations with its key investors.

People should not flippantly dismiss this action just because it is unusual. It may wind up being right or it may wind up being wrong but it clearly is a carefully thought-out attempt to deal with an exceedingly difficult set of circumstances in a creative and constructive way. If it does work, it will be because the investors perceive the business model of the company as fundamentally sound in spite of the earlier illegality and corner-cutting. It is their opportunity to register a vote of confidence for new management to give it another try, this time with an honest respect for the relevant regulatory environment even as the company attempts to disrupt its target market.

Whether it works or not, only time will tell.

<comment><USER4> Excellent analysis as usual! If this type of rewriting the cap table is legal, then what is/are the defining factors of illegal manipulation of the cap table?

<comment><USER5> It could have happened anyway because the Series C investors could have sued. The company (obviously) didn't disclose any of the fraudulent behavior when they raised the C round (= they can get sued). Doing it like that is cleaner and makes sure that the company has a future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Despite all the turmoil around the company, I've been using them for payroll and looking into more HR stuff through them, and it works really well. Much better than Intuit, certainly (which has cost me a fortune in late filing fees and other stuff, because they don't automate tons of stuff that ought to be automated and invisible to the end user, and I suck at doing taxes).

I'm surprised they need 900 employees to do what they do, though. But, I guess a huge part of their business is interacting with decrepit old systems used by insurers and states, and often require humans and fax machines and other such nonsense.

This is a pretty astounding turn of events; it's not something I've ever even heard of happening. It's certainly better than exploding under the pressure of investor lawsuits, I guess. But, aren't their still regulatory issues being investigated and so catastrophe is still possible?

<comment><USER7> Zenefits works well until it doesn't. They botched a commuter benefit payment to me, and it took either four or five phone calls and me being pretty rude to the last couple employees to get it fixed. I couldn't understand how correctly crediting me my $80 was so difficult, particularly since it had repeatedly worked before.

<comment><USER8> Exactly this. In general they're great but when you have a problem it's a giant pain. One of our employees had a lot of trouble getting his spouse insured. It took them months to work it out.

<comment><USER9> Zenefits screwed up a bunch of our state registrations and payroll taxes. The worst thing was the hideous customer service in trying to resolve this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can't imagine this is legal. It sounds like they are trying to dilute out Conrad specifically by significantly repricing the earlier rounds and then covering existing employees with new grants. Anyone out of the good graces of the current management sees massive dilution and everyone else is untouched. How is this not just stealing Conrad's shares?

The extra kicker is investors signing up for the free shares agree to waive all claims... _except_ against Conrad. Wow, that's vengeful!

<comment><USER10> That's kind of the point of shares, isn't it? They're super manipulatable and for just this reason: you can get rid of people you don't like. They can fight in court all they want, but a private company will probably win.

<comment><USER11> Wait, what? I though the whole point of shares (per GP) is they're all (within the same class) treated equally, regardless of holder, specifically to _prevent_ these kinds of shenanigans!

Imagine if the management of a company voted to void some arbitrary 10% of the shares -- the ones held by people they didn't like, merely to claim more of the company for themselves. That would absolutely not be kosher.

But then (assuming the grandparent's description of what happened is accurate), Zenefits is doing _exactly the same thing_ by more roundabout means. Surely the laws on this aren't so easily circumvented? And even if not, isn't this as a big red flag to future investors?

<comment><USER10> That's one way of looking at it, of course. I think another is to say that the concept of stock as compensation (especially in a private company) is to give the company maximum flexibility. They (presumably) don't have cash, so they give stock as a proxy for that. However, if they hit hard times, they can issue as many new shares as the BoD will allow to any new investors they want.

This includes new classes of shares. It's not "standard" practice, but it's also not uncommon--to get rid of people they want to get rid of, they can dilute them out (issuing new shares and everyone except X gets new shares), issue new classes of shares with preference, etc.

I'm sure there are laws around this, but it's also a private company so it can be tricky there. Stock in a private company is much more difficult to hold, since there are many, many ways for the company to manipulate it to the company's advantage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So employees get roughly 25% extra shares (RSUs, vesting in 12 month) and the C series investors get >50%? Just out of curiosity, could the employees sue (and are they also releasing their legal claims if they accept the deal)?

The same logic of fraud applies to employees. The argument would be that they were thinking the company is doing more amazing that it actually is doing and thus "wasted" time of their life working there under false assumptions. Why do they get a worse deal?

<comment><USER13> The hard truth is it's not about the legal problem in Zenefits. Zenefits is not growing from last October. ARR remains the same 60M for last 10 months. If the company is not growing and it's burning more cash than revenue (way more in Zenefits case), the company should be valued at (cash in hand + ARR) which is 700M. No idea how Zenefits still gets 2B valuation.

<comment><USER14> > If the company is not growing and it's burning more cash than revenue, the > company should be valued at (cash in hand + ARR)

Is that really true? Maybe if a company had NO HOPE of growing. Zenefits has clearly shown some huge growth. The market is huge. Just being not profitable and not growing for the short term does not mean you are guaranteed dead... just that you are default dead and need to get working on it, which they seem to be.

Edit - and if truly a company was never going to grow again, I would value them at something like cash on hand + ((total rev - min expenses to stay afloat) * 3) or something... In your example if someone had ARR of 100 million, min expenses to keep doors open of 300 million, and cash on hand of 1 million.. you would value them at 101 million, I would value them at - <USER2> million.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> >> "This is a unique situation, we've never seen it before and we don't expect to see it again," said a spokesperson for Andreessen Horowitz.

This is the golden line in the article, with the "bend the rules" mantra VC's have for their founders I suspect we'll be seeing more of these come to light in the future. Thinking this to be an isolated incident could be very wishful thinking.

Even if AH expects every Unicorn to go through a similar event in the near future they wouldn't say as much to the press, there is no benefit for them as VC fund.

<comment><USER7> This may be isolated in the sense of how very clearly against the law/regulations the behavior was, and some of those laws/regulations appear to have teeth if regulators wish them to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Not a huge surprise given the events of late, especially considering they laid off more than a hundred of their employees.

If this is the public slash they are announcing, how bad do you think reality is looking on the inside? Just imagine the spin masters trying to spin this to their employees.

I can't help but chuckle a little. Kids.

That being said, I'll add that there are certainly aspects of this that are _not_ funny at all. Real people lost their jobs due to the tomfoolery of others. I feel for them.

 _edit_

Are you saying that all 100 people got the generous severance package?

<comment><USER17> At the end of the article it states that they offered their employees a chance to leave if they wanted with a generous severance package and that 10% took it. Doesn't sound like they forced them to leave.

<comment><USER18> It's only generous in dotcom terms. My mom took an early-retirement package from Kaiser Permanente as a bog-standard phone-room nurse: free no-copay health insurance for the rest of her and my dad's life. Free treatment, free prescriptions, free _equipment_. Free everything, for life.

<comment><USER19> That's a great deal for your mom, I'm glad she was able to get such an amazing deal.

On the other hand, Zenefits is an unprofitable startup with huge internal problems. Clearly, expecting them to provide such sorts of benefits would be beyond unreasonable.

<comment><USER18> _On the other hand, Zenefits is an unprofitable startup with huge internal problems._

That's the "dotcom" part, but yeah.

<comment><USER19> I strongly beg to differ. That's just every startup in general. The dotcom days were way more debaucherous and perverse than what's going on today with startups.

<comment><USER18> Sorry, my mistake, I was using "dotcom" for the larger movement beyond the 2000 crash, including today. I was there, I can see the differences and similarities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Amazing that repricings like this are so rare that even investors like A16Z never / rarely see it:

>>"This is a unique situation, we've never seen it before and we don't expect to see it again," said a spokesperson for Andreessen Horowitz.

What's the advantage for the company?

The article makes it seem like this was David Sacks' decision and he's trying to coerce existing investors into signing off on this "new deal," making it even more strange.

<comment><USER21> Yeah I don't get it. Is the company offering investors more equity in order to prevent a lawsuit for failing to disclose the shady stuff they were doing?

<comment><USER22> Yes. That is precisely what is happening.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think we'll find David Sacks is going preserve his blue chip reputation by leading the crippled Zenefits into the safe harbor of a rich insurance conglomerate or PE firm. Getting these investors paid out would be the ultimate amends.</comment>


Gun Debate Yields Page One Editorial in The New York Times - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/05/us/gun-debate-yields-page-1-editorial.html <comment><USER2> there is commentary on the editorial here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10682298](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10682298)</comment>


OpenACC – GCC Wiki - <AUTHOR> https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/OpenACC <comment><AUTHOR> Nice to see that they are supporting GCN. Does anyone have any experience with OpenACC and GCN?</comment>


Ask HN: What decides how to open links in Linux desktops? - <AUTHOR> The recent trend of Google creating tools like Meet that only work in Chrome has made me wonder how hard it would be to get my system to open links for certain domains in a specific browser but leave everything else to the default Firefox. Is that possible on Linux? Is there a specific program that could be tweaked to have a domain override list? <comment><USER2> /usr/bin/xdg-open</comment>


Handmade Software is not for Everyone - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@civilframe/handmade-software-is-not-for-everyone-fc645c05fde3

<comment><USER2> What kind of software do you envision being created with App Factory? If you can create a system that is both easy for non-technical users and yet powerful enough to make something _genuinely_ useful, I'm all for that. I would love a non-suck variation of the Wordpress/Drupal plugin ecosystem, which is what this most sounds like. What I would be afraid of is the compounded complexity inherent to writing real software systems. That is a really hard problem to solve. One I don't personally think can be solved until AI has reached a certain level.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. It's a daunting challenge. My vision for App Factory is for it to make custom apps of low to medium complexity, for individuals and small/medium businesses. So probably nothing enterprise-level. For personal apps, think... Travel Adventure Log, House Shopping List, Stamp Collection. For business apps, think... Golf Course Management, Research Log, Request/Approval System. The possibilities are many.

If you're thinking... I can do all this with a spreadsheet, consider this. A house shopping app. Sure, it can be done with a spreadsheet. But wouldn't it be more intuitive to have an orderable list of houses with an image, a mini Google Map with it's location, and details that are important to your decision making? Making a simple app like that would be trivial with App Factory. It might take you 15 minutes to slap together a blueprint to do that. Then spin up an instance of the app, and you're good to go. All through a web interface.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, it sounds great and definitely would fill a need. I know a lot of non- devs who are trying to do their own thing using Wordpress and its just non- stop pain and frustration, so they ask me to help out sometimes. I will keep an eye on your progress.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the vote of confidence :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The car analogy is false.

Buying a mass produced car isn't the same as "rolling your own" from pieces.

And it sort-of has its software equivalent in creating a blog and choosing a theme and a couple of plugins, maybe.

Besides, as far as the "masses" are concerned, software choices are more plentiful and cheap than ever.

So why would the go out of their way, to make apps?

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess you could have said the same thing about websites 5-10 years ago. Why would anyone bother wanting to make their own website, when there are so many web designers out there, who work for cheap?</comment></comment>


Can science solve an 80-year-old Indian mystery? - <AUTHOR> http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/jaeger-lecoultre-_can-science-solve-80-year-old-indian-mystery-/42474992 <comment><USER2> > The ISV (Inter-Session Variability) algorithm provided a decent comparison > score of 0.79 for Kanchan Prabha Devi which was much higher than an image of > Zubeida Begum Dhanrajgir. However, the results of the CNN (Convolutional > Neural Network) algorithm were not as clear-cut. Devi only managed a score > of 0.42 while Zubeida got 0.50.

> So, which algorithm to trust?

This is an excellent example of the danger in using algorithms that produce point estimates, but not variability estimates. Whether you model it or not, any inference or prediction exercise implies a probability model (else you wouldn't need to conduct inference at all). Failing to make that model explicit, whether by nested cross-validation or an analytical technique, leads you down a dangerous road of making arbitrary comparisons And breaking near- ties on the basis of "field knowledge", which can turn out to be a little more than glorified gut instinct.

<comment><USER3> Thank you for this!

we are planning to have a consultant come in a build image comparison of selfies with ID cards (for a fintech mobile app). What kind of validation and variation scores should we ask for to explicitly model the probability ?

<comment><USER2> I don't think there's anything available for CNNs other than resampling techniques like nested cross-validation.

I'm also a fan of sensitivity analysis, where you jitter one of the inputs, or one of the model parameters, and see how robust the output is to local noise.

ISV I'm not explicitly familiar with. But there's no reason you couldn't use one of the general purpose techniques from above.

That said, resampling is very computationally intensive, so I can understand why it's not that popular in conjunction with similarly intensive iterative fitting algorithms like backpropagation and MCMC. I didn't mean my post to be a criticism of the research as much as I wanted to just put a warning out there about an issue that researchers without deep statistical backgrounds tend to overlook.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> grif-fin Not getting into the story just commenting on the title 'Can Science solve...'. It boils my curiosity when sentences start with 'Can science solve X, Y or Z?'. It is referred to as if science is a tool.

I mean is there an alternative to science that we question in that way? -_-

<comment><USER4> I would not read this as questioning science but as the science-journalism equivalent of asking whether the 'mystery' can be 'solved' at all.

<comment> grif-fin When a sentence is in form of 'Can X do/solve/manage/become/etc ... Y?' it is both simply asking and challenging X at the same time.

Challenging science is absurd as is challenging the reality.

<comment><USER5> "Can the president outrun a cheetah?" is not the same as challenging the president's qualifications as president.

It _is_ challenging the idea that the president can outrun a cheetah, however. So, "Can science solve X?" is not the same as "Is science effective?".</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bitcoin Crashes After Chinese Exchange Says It Will Halt Trading - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-14/bitcoin-tumbles-as-chinese-exchange-says-it-will-halt-trading <comment><USER2> I find it odd that they're going to halt trading in 2 weeks. If they determined that trading is illegal, shouldn't they halt trading immediately?

Also, a similar situation played out in 2013: [https://www.coindesk.com/price- crashes-china-outlaws-bitcoin...](https://www.coindesk.com/price-crashes- china-outlaws-bitcoin-financial-institutions/)

<comment><USER3> Not at all. This gives holders of bitcoin an opportunity to unwind their positions. Otherwise, they'll be stuck with a digital currency they can't convert to yuan without jumping through a lot more hoops.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> crashes? it's gone down by ~6%

tomorrow it could rocket up by 20% and it would be a normal day in the btc world

</comment><comment><USER5> Would it be possible to create a fully anonymous/trustless decentralized cryptocurrency?

<comment><USER6> Monero is trying to fill that space.</comment></comment>


The Student Debt Slide - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/03/the-real-meaning-of-1-trillion-in-student-loans/254928/

<comment><USER2> The problem is not just debt, it is the lack of jobs to make money to pay off that debt. In the 1950s and earlier, a college degree of any kind would guarantee you a white-collar job. People with advanced educations, particularly in the soft subjects like English and History, were highly sought after and groomed to be managers and executives. Now you not only need a degree specific to the field you are attempting to enter, the degree only gets you into the entry level if you can even get the job because there are fewer jobs than there are degree-holders. If you do manage to get the job, wages have gone down relative to inflation and the cost of a university education has gone up, leading to more debt. College graduates today have fewer opportunities than high school graduates did a few decades ago and fewer opportunities than high school drop-outs had before the Depression, and are often making less money. Adjusted for inflation, my father made more as a bagger at a grocery store in the 1970s than I have ever made as a computer programmer, and that's when I can find work.

It's easy to say the problem is a lack of jobs, but it's harder to say what to do about it.</comment>


Theory Meets Material Science - <AUTHOR> https://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2016/05/09/theory-meets-material-science/ <comment><USER2> I found this summary a bit hard to follow, so I read the 2008 Nature paper the author refers to [0]. (It's behind a paywall, but the supplemental materials in [1] are available.) It seems like Silicium is using an approach that's similar in concept, but there's not a lot of technical detail in this blog post. Presumably that's because they are trying to commercialize their research.

The topic is engineering more effective thermoelectric materials -- they generate an electric potential when subjected to a thermal gradient. Here you want a high electronic conductivity and a low thermal conductivity, which is hard to achieve because electrons transport heat very effectively.

The approach outlined here is to use an array of doped silicon nanowires instead of a bulk material. They make the nanowires thinner than the phonon mean free path, which essentially confines the dominant heat transfer mechanism (lattice vibrations) in this system to one dimension. The nanowires are thick enough that the nanowire array still has electronic properties similar to bulk silicon, so you can get a lower thermal conductivity without sacrificing electrical conductivity.

The programming::materials design analogy at the end of the blog post is interesting. This is actually one of the core philosophies of materials science -- (hierarchical) materials structure (and chemistry) dictates physical properties, and is highly dependent on processing and fabrication routes. You engineer materials with more desirable properties by manipulating their structure. The hard part is learning reliable structure-->properties and processing-->structure mappings.

[0]: doi:10.1038/nature06458 [1]: [http://www.wag.caltech.edu/home/jamil/Nature-SiNWs-TE- supple...](http://www.wag.caltech.edu/home/jamil/Nature-SiNWs-TE- supplement.pdf)</comment>