Anatomy of a Fake Quotation - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/05/anatomy-of-a-fake-quotation/238257/ <comment><USER2> _"He tweeted it to his 1.6 million Facebook followers, and the rest was internet history."_

When your name becomes a verb that can be applied to your competitors' products, is it good, or is it bad?

<comment><USER3> I know that Lego spends substantial resources to avoid the term "lego" becoming a noun simply meaning toy-brick. I guess their analysis must show that it's a bad thing.

<comment><USER4> The trouble is one can lose their trademark protection if the trademark comes into common use as a generic term. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genericized_trademark>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very insightful analysis as to how quotes get mangled. I feel like the only thing "new" about this event is how quickly it happened. The retweeted quote is so in keeping with Dr. King's beliefs it is no surprise that so many people would attribute it to him. In contrast with the real quote, though, it is really clear just how much more eloquent a rhetorician Dr. King was. Every time I read (or reread) him, I'm blown away. In my mind, the saddest thing about this is that people who don't realize the quote isn't really a quote might walk away with the impression that he wasn't as amazing a writer as he was.

<comment><USER6> _The retweeted quote is so in keeping with Dr. King's beliefs it is no surprise that so many people would attribute it to him._

Except if you think about MLK's life you'd think "What the hell context would this have been in? Who is this dead 'enemy' who killed 'thousands'?"

The (fake) quote does come across to me as a bit too holier-than-thou. It's a form of cost-free conspicuous po-facedness to which you set your facebook status to mark yourself as being morally superior to the less sophisticated USA-USA chanting crowd. It doesn't sound like the kind of thing MLK would have said, because MLK wasn't all that into "Hey look I'm better than you" type announcements.

There's a scene in Return of the Jedi where the Super Star Destroyer crashes into the Death Star. Everybody else on the bridge cheers, but Admiral Ackbar looks sad and bows his head, acknowleding the awfulness of the loss of life even if they _were_ evil enemies who were trying to kill everyone. The listed quote is propagated by Ackbar wannabees with a George Lucas level view of what being morally sophisticated looks like.

<comment><USER7> So then how do you express the sentiment? I felt very uncomfortable hearing about the "celebrations" occurring after bin Laden's death. How do you say something like, "dude, death sucks, no matter who's on the receiving end of it," without coming off as playing the moral-superiority card?

On a side note, your post has a bit of a holier-than-thou feel to it.

<comment><USER8> I think it's a property of the sentiment itself, rather than the quote. But that's just me - I like it when evil people meet their comeuppance; I thought it was good that OBL was executed, although I'm not the air-punching, brewski chugging type. If I were to find and post a quote indicating my sentiments, no doubt there'd be people thinking I was a dick; it's not going to keep me awake at night.

<comment><USER6> My feelings were similar. On one hand it _is_ perfectly normal and natural to be happy to see justice served at the end of a gun... we humans are social creatures, and the desire which we have to see wrongdoers punished is a normal and natural part of our emotional makeup.

On the other hand, as a civilized person I think that _actively_ glorying in the death of an enemy is a bit unseemly. So I felt a bit of quiet satisfaction, made a few pithy comments to mark the occasion, and poured myself a glass of my most expensive whisky.

So basically in answer to the grandparent question: I think the appropriate response is to keep quiet about it. Let other folks express their own feelings about this historic occasion without feeling the need to elevate yourself above them.

<comment><USER9> I also think it unseemly; especially when the enemy is one of circumstance and in a better world...

But this guy? He killed men, women and children to make a political point. He sacrificed his own, to make his point. He sat back in his mansion, rich and pampered, paying to have people killed.

I admit to a little glorying, to an unseemly degree. Just this once.

<comment><USER10> >But this guy? He killed men, women and children to make a political point. He sacrificed his own, to make his point. He sat back in his mansion, rich and pampered, paying to have people killed.

The same could be said about thousands of people on both sides of this war. Personally, as long as there are people willing to take his place, I'm not rejoicing one bit.

<comment><USER9> Wait - really? Implying me and you too?

Consider the strike force on this one: volunteers, entered under enemy fire and Arrested the bodyguards they encountered, found the guy and disabled the young woman guarding him by wounding her in the leg; retreated with his body; had to blow up the disabled helicopter but first Dragged the Enemy Bastard's personal bodyguard to safety(!), then left all while under fire.

There's a word that describes all that, but its not 'terrorism' its...wait...let me think...Heroism! Yeah, that's right.

<comment><USER10> Bin Laden was a bad person, sure. But there are a lot of bad people in this world. Why was he specifically killed, and why is he singular in his ability to motivate Muslims to terrorism? Why is he going to be any less effective in his death than in his life? I just don't see the value in his death. Terrorists in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq have no shortage of leaders, or of new recruits. The only real purpose I see in his death is making a new martyr - much more powerful than the hunted man who died.

<comment><USER9> A dead martyr has no money. So there's that. The rest remains to be seen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How ironic that it was Penn Jillette, debunker extraordinaire, who ended up spreading the false quote.

<comment><USER12> There's nothing ironic about a skeptic being wrong if he admits his mistake when presented with evidence to the contrary. (Which Penn Jillette did.)

<comment><USER13> "There's nothing ironic about a skeptic being wrong if he admits his mistake when presented with evidence to the contrary." ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is a follow-up article to an article previously submitted on HN.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2508819>

</comment><comment><USER15> "It's amazing in a time when so much information is so readily available to so many people, false information is so readily accepted."

-Foresterh

</comment><comment><USER16> It's funny, I was looking to attribute the quote...

"Man is mortal. Socrates is a man, therefor Socrates is mortal."

Most of the Google results credit Woody Allen! :P

I believe the correct author is Aristotle.

</comment><comment><USER17> This was written in a wildly confusing manner.

Summary: Jessica Dovey, a Facebook user in Japan, wrote the first sentence. She then tacked on an MLK quote. People then treated both her sentence and MLK's sentence as if they were one, continuous MLK quote.

Unless I managed to still misunderstand...

<comment><USER18> That's what I got out of it. I also concluded that we need better English grammar education in this country so people don't mess up quotes like that. :)</comment></comment>


Exclusive interview with three individuals who hacked Gawker - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/media/2010/12/14/an-interview-with-gnosis-the-group-behind-the-gawker-hacking/

<comment><USER2> Just a lame speculation:

I don't see anyone talking about this, but is there any chance these people work for Apple? I mean, given the whole iPhone 4 and Gawker incident, there is a reason Apple would want to humiliate the whole company.

What do you think?

<comment><USER3> Steve and his people are too busy inventing the next insanely great gadget and don't have time for petty things like revenge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> These guys are massive assholes. They disrupted a lot of people's lives for no good reason.

</comment><comment><USER5> Is TNW a serious news source or a spoof? This seems rather too easily generated from just the information that was in the README file.

<comment><USER6> I interviewed Gnosis, they wouldn't go into any specific detail as to how they gained entry.

From what I have found out, it looks like they used a vulnerability found within a three year old Minify script that hadn't been upgraded. This gave them access to other parts of the server:

[http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and- stories/2010-12-14/ga...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and- stories/2010-12-14/gawker-security-breach-remains-says-hacker-behind-info- theft/)

Don't quote me on that however.</comment></comment>


The Corpse Exchange - <AUTHOR> http://www.primerstories.com/2/grave-robbing <comment><USER2> "One night," a doctor said, "last fall, I and my comrades, four in all, When visiting a graveyard stood Within the shadow of a wall.

"While waiting for the moon to sink We saw a wild hyena slink About a new-made grave, and then Begin to excavate its brink!

"Shocked by the horrid act, we made A sally from our ambuscade, And, falling on the unholy beast, Dispatched him with a pick and spade" -Ambrose Bierce

</comment><comment><USER3> "It was not so easy to acquire a corpse for dissection, particularly in Europe. Christian belief held that in order to be included in the Resurrection, your body had to remain intact, so that you could rise up bodily upon Jesus' Return."

That's completely untrue, in more than one respect.

See this article in the Wikipedia: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissection#Christian_Europe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissection#Christian_Europe)

Also this article in the 1913 Catholic Encylopedia: [http://oce.catholic.com/index.php?title=Resurrection#B._Char...](http://oce.catholic.com/index.php?title=Resurrection#B._Characteristics_of_the_Risen_Body)

</comment><comment><USER4> I somewhat want to read this, but I can't. The formatting is just impossible.

I have text that is cut off, too narrow, white on white.

Just make a normal webpage please.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, in several places the text is actually printed on top of images, apparently deliberately. Who does that?

<comment><USER6> There are times when that's effective so I don't like blanket criticism of it, but this is not one of those cases where it works at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My favorite thing while trying to read is animation.</comment>


Brian Will: Object-Oriented Programming Is Bad - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QM1iUe6IofM&feature=share <comment><USER2> Clicked this mainly to feed my confirmation bias, but ended up learning something. However, really ambivalent about this subject as Ole-Johan Dahl, Kristen Nygaard, and Alan Kay are personal heroes.</comment>


Why Snow and Confetti Ruin YouTube Video Quality - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6Rp-uo6HmI <comment><USER2> More entropy/information in the frame means the encoder has less bits if can throw out.</comment>


Thoughts of a Fresh Software Engineer - <AUTHOR> https://pastebin.com/G8yU6tPh <comment><AUTHOR> Recently I read this article about Software Disenchantement ([https://tonsky.me/blog/disenchantment/](https://tonsky.me/blog/disenchantment/)) and I could not agree more.

I am "junior developer" accordingly to my employer because I don't have more than 3 years in industry, nevertheless I have found people with more than 10 years in industry who don't care about code performance and think all the programming languages are the same.

I live and work in [redacted]. Most people think where are becoming like India because a lot of young people are joining the software industry as a granting ticket to get out of poverty.

I decided to pursuit a career in software when I was in high school because I was fascinated of the history of Internet, the pionners, solo programmers who created systems that became the standard of Internet. Now a programmer is seen as a factory worker.

Full text on the pastebin...</comment>


Show HN: Bookmarklet that makes all HN posts open in a new window - <AUTHOR> http://mponizil.com/box/target-blank/

<comment><USER2> The bookmarklet i use [1], by @mrspeaker is brilliant and does this as well, check it out, i cant use HN without it now.

[1]: <http://www.mrspeaker.net/2011/04/11/hackernews-bookmarklet/>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sorry I'm lame and just did it with jQuery instead of classic DOM action. :P

</comment><comment><USER3> It doesn't appear to work for me. Chrome 16 on Mac</comment>


No boundaries for user identities: Web trackers exploit browser login managers - <AUTHOR> https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2017/12/27/no-boundaries-for-user-identities-web-trackers-exploit-browser-login-managers/ <comment><USER2> What makes the matter worse is this ridiculous trend that all websites have adopted of making a two step process, one for login, another page for the password. I see no good reason to do so, and if the password manager does not prepopulate the credentials, it forces the user to do many clicks to go through the process. This is really a moronic design.

<comment><USER3> This pattern is used for SSO. It doesn't make a lot of sense to request a password from a user who is using a SSO solution. The issue is the website needs to do a look up on the username to determine which SSO solution the user might be using.

There might be a better pattern for this, such as making the determination through a xhr request when the username field loses focus.

<comment><USER4> Another good thing to do in combination with that is to store the SSO provider locally (cookie/local storage, whatever). Then simply use that instead of presenting the two step process -- you can default to the existing server-side determination if the method stored locally fails.

I don't mind doing the two-step dance _once_ during first login on a new device, but having to deal with it every time is infuriating and lazy on the part of the company.

<comment><USER5> But what if the user needs to login through a different provider?

<comment><USER4> That could easily just be a different link, like the "Forgot password" link, presented at the main login page. You wouldn't interact with it normally, and thus it'd never interrupt your typical logon flow, but it'd be there when you need it.

I'm still not really sure what purpose this two-step login is solving, though, as typically every time I use an SSO it's by clicking on a button like "Log in through Facebook" or "Log in through Google", before I'm ever even asked to enter a username. Why do they need to know the username? They'll know that when I log in using the SSO provider.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I never understood this behavior. Opera presto had a dedicated "fill with saved credentials and submit" button in the toolbar (or ctrl-enter). Problem avoided. Autofill never made the overall process faster. On the contrary, if I want to use different credentials I have to manually clear the form first.

<comment><USER7> 1Password does this also, and I believe LastPass. I too prefer this behavior to autofill, especially in situations where I have, say, multiple Google accounts, to the point where the UX tradeoff (introducing extra UI) is totally worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is disabling autofill really a solution for the majority? These publishers are handing over their users' credentials to a third party. If enough people disable autofill they will just move the script to the login page and capture their users' credentials as they are manually typing them in.

The top Polish sites need to clean up their act.

<comment><USER9> Not totally related, but imagine an online banking website with 3rd party scripts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> For FF users: about:config - set signon.autofillForms to false.

<comment><USER11> Would uBlock Origin and uMatrix do the job?

<comment><USER12> For uBlock it depends on whether the script is hosted on a blacklisted site. If it is, the script won't get loaded, but if it isn't, uBlock isn't going to do anything about it.

uMatrix does prevent this as long as you keep the script blocked. But of course you're going to be out of luck if you have to allow scripts from the host that also hosts the script that exfiltrates the data. Sadly, there aren't really many sites left that function without at least partial JavaScript execution. Thus, as was mentioned in other comments already, disable auto pasting for your browser or possibly use a plug-in that disables it for you, as you can't really rely on uBlock, nor uMatrix, to reliably protect you against this.

<comment><USER11> I see, thanks for the highly informative reply... I'll definitely disable auto fill.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was using Secure Login for Firefox for a good while, but it died in e10s era and probably doesn't have the hooks to block this at all in Firefox Quantum. One of its useful features was to not fill out anything, username/email included, until I clicked a button.

<comment><USER14> I haven't upgraded yet, but it sounds like KeePassHelper can do something similar - I have it listed as "try this replacement" for when I do eventually upgrade: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/keepasshelper...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/keepasshelper/)

Seems to require some setup though, and stores passwords outside of Firefox?

<comment><USER13> Not much of a replacement when I'm fine with firefox's password manager. It seems plenty secure when a master password is set and thus the passwords are encrypted at rest.

<comment><USER15> > when a master password is set and thus the passwords are encrypted at rest

They are not [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1284343](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1284343)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder if the parent sites are even aware of this.

If you can get (well, you can) the autofilled email+password, might as well automatically log the user in.

Edit: it's also interesting to see so many EU sites, where in theory you should show a disclaimer for cookies, but apparently it's ok to extract email addresses.

<comment><USER17> They aren't allowed to, of course, and the banner is treated like a formality in an almost cargo cult like fashion.

<comment><USER18> The "we use cookies!" banner is ridiculous. I always click "no thanks" whenever it's an option, but obviously it changes nothing. That banner is a great example of useless regulation that accomplishes nothing yet wastes the time of users and developers.

<comment><USER19> It started as a legitimate complaint about user tracking but it was eventually lobbied into nothingness. Meaningful legislation would have hit the industry hard, at a time when IT/web was one of the few sectors holding on in the Great Crisis, so the EuroParliament got cold feet. They seem to have done a better job with the GDPR, which really should have come before the cookie stuff anyway; there is a chance the matter will be reviewed once the GDPR is fully implemented.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This just reminded me why disabling autofill is one of the first things I do when using a new browser.

<comment><USER21> I've never disabled it directly, mainly because I'm not intimately familiar with all of the about:config options, but I have always selected the "Never for this site" whenever that popup presents itself. Deep down, I always thought it was a bit tin-foil hat on my part, but sounds like it was good intuition after all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Why do browsers autofill non-visible forms?

<comment><USER23> because it's hard to determine whether something is visible. what if it's offscreen? what if it's partially off screen? what if it's 0% opacity? what if it's 0.001 opacity? what if it's 1px height/width? what if something is overlaid on top of it?

<comment><USER24> Most importantly, the page could easily wait until the login manager fills it in, and then immediately hide the form.

<comment><USER22> Can the browser prevent visibility changes to auto-filled forms?

<comment><USER25> I feel like that'd be a terrible user experience on non-malicious sites

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Lets be honest. Browsers and webstandards never gave us the things needed to build a nice userbase for our little web projects. Persona was a cool idea/step in the right direction but it came much to late. Everyone is on big web farms now where they can do many things after suffering though the arcane form just once.

</comment><comment><USER27> From the article:

> _Chrome doesn't autofill the password field until the user clicks or touches > anywhere on the page._

When I tried the demo, clicking through to part 2 only autofilled the username, but when I hit F5 to reload the page it autofilled the password too.

Chrome 63.0.3239.108

<comment><USER28> Using the same version of Chrome on Ubuntu and I cannot recreate this. I have to click ~somewhere~ on the page before the password is filled, just refreshing does not cause the issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> It would seem the only guaranteed way for a browser to avoid interception of credentials is to deny JS access to sign-in fields. Even write-only access risks allowing other scripts access to the key and mouse events.

Am I missing something?

</comment><comment><USER28> That's part of running 3rd party scripts on your site. I guess the worst part of this is sniffing auto-fill credentials without user interaction- i.e. submitting a form- however listener/callback on the submit button could accomplish the same thing.

Only thing I can think of to thwart auto-fill sniffing is populating the form with junk data on page load then waiting for the user to enter their access id/user name before the password field is filled. This "solution" still doesn't protect the 3rd part script from intercepting the submit button.

</comment><comment><USER30> For this to be significant you first need a) to register on that site b) to explicitly logout and clear all the cookies for that domain(otherwise they can track you anyway). How many people does this? Of course, disabling auto-fill option is a smart thing to do regardless of this, I'm just saying that this is not affecting the most of the population.

</comment><comment> dao- > Users can install ad blockers or tracking protection extensions to prevent > tracking by invasive third-party scripts. The domains used to serve the two > scripts (behavioralengine.com and audienceinsights.net) are blocked by the > EasyPrivacy blocklist.

Firefox has built-in tracking protection that should block these scripts. Enable it in about:preferences#privacy.

</comment><comment><USER31> Nothing happened, which just makes me even more appreciative of uBlock Origin in dynamic mode with default-deny on all 3rd-party resources.

I'll still set signon.autofillForms to false, though. For peace of mind.

</comment><comment><USER32> uMatrix

<comment><USER33> The article seems to suggest that at least some sites are embedding the script to avoid same origin policy, which will also bypass uMatrix.

This is equivalent to hosting something like JQuery from your own domain, instead of using a CDN. As a site owner you have to trust that scripts like JQuery aren't going to do bad things.

They could just as send the email addresses (and passwords) directly to third parties. It's not clear whether the site owners are witting collaborators in this or if they don't know what the scripts are doing.

<comment><USER32> there are companies that specifically market as CDNs to advertisers to allow third-party scripts to appear as first-party. it's nasty shit:

"The company's technology disguises third-party network requests so they appear to be first-party network requests."

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/11/ad_blocker_bypass_c...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/11/ad_blocker_bypass_code/)

however, the demo page linked in this thread failed to work for me as uMatrix blocked an injected 3rd party script</comment></comment></comment>


Official Android 6.0 SDK and Final M Preview - <AUTHOR> http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2015/08/m-developer-preview-3-final-sdk.html <comment><USER2> Right now according to my user demographics, I just decided to move to 4.2 (API 17).

Which means that what I learned at I/O 2013 can finally be put to good use!

The sad part is that I decided to skip looking enthusiastically under the hood of M, because I won't be able to use it anyway for quite some time.

<comment><USER3> And 57% of our demographics are on 5.0 or newer, with 19+ covering over 80% of users actually using the app.

Perhaps updating your app to the 5.x standard will actually make those users use it instead of running away to other Material apps ;)

<comment><USER4> Not quite catching your point - if you set your min sdk to android 5.0, you will remove 43% of your users. That's kind of the problem.

Luckily, Android has a great compatibility library so you can still use many of the new features.

<comment><USER5> Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought you can have a minsdk version and a recommendedsdk version.

This allows you to use the newer features, but also include fallback layouts for lower SDK versions.

EDIT: Yeah, looks like I was mostly right: minSdkVersion and targetSdVersion. [https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/manifest/uses- sdk...](https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/manifest/uses-sdk- element.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> OEMs (and probably carriers) really need to get their stuff together. It really sucks that here we are talking about M when very few devices have seen an L release.

<comment><USER7> A good rule of thumb is that 25% of Android devices will have the OS within 1 year of release and 50% within 2 years of release.

Based on [https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html](https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html) though, L is behind the pace :(

<comment><USER3> Those stats you're linking are extremely misleading and don't really reflect demographic of actual app users. Pretty much all our apps across the board have higher Lollipop and KitKat usage.

Which makes sense - what you linked is aggregate number of all users on the Play store across the world. Users that actually actively engage in their phones and western markets are noticably more up to date. Ignore newer API versions at your own peril.

<comment><USER8> > [..] demographic of actual app users [..] Users that actually actively > engage in their phones and western markets are noticably more up to date.

Your post seem predicated on assumptions which aren't supported:

\- That people with "better engagement" are more profitable to app developers (which might be the reverse of true if you aren't on a freemium modal). \- That non-Westerners don't buy apps at all or that we simply shouldn't care. .

<comment><USER3> No, no, I did not want to imply any of that. Just that:

\- For pretty much any of our apps the actual breakdown of Android versions is nothing like what the Play store shows. \- The amount of new Androids is significantly higher (we actually have an app with 57% 5.x and 80% on 4.4 or newer - Samsung updates have been significant for it) and varies greatly \- The users with newer devices and newer Android versions are usually more engaged, use apps more and also advertise them more which makes for a good network effect. \- We have noticed a major shift to apps with Material design, arrogant Apple marketing aside, there's alot of users on Android that DO care about design, UX and those tend to have rather newish phones.

Depending on your app you should of course also care for people on worse phones. If you're providing a public service app (e.g. showing public transport schedules), you should probably target as low as 2.3 (even though, perhaps actually building 2 APKs for that usecase makes sense). If you're building a modern 3D game, you should probably target API 19+ since users with older devices probably won't be able to run it anyway. But in any case, DO YOUR RESEARCH, because the numbers vary greatly across demographics, app categories and regions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I thought I was the jaded dev until I started reading these comments! There's a lot of stuff I hate about Android but, in my opinion, the tools, first and third party libraries, testing support, and design have made really great progress this year alone. Android Studio and the Gradle plugin are really, really coming along (and I'm on Linux!), the Support libraries are filling in a lot more holes than they ever did before (and I have to support Gingerbread!), Robolectric is at 3.0 RC3 and you can finally run it in Android Studio, and Material Design is getting more well defined and seeing more and more saturation into other tech (Polymer hit 1.0!).

<comment><USER10> > Android Studio and the Gradle plugin are really, really coming along

Too bad Gradle only allows us to use one language (i.e. Groovy) to configure the builds. Because Maven uses generic XML, any language can sit atop it. E.g. Polyglot Maven [1] not only allows us to use Groovy, but also Clojure, Scala, and Ruby to configure its builds.

[1] [https://github.com/takari/polyglot- maven](https://github.com/takari/polyglot-maven)

<comment><USER9> Build systems have been particularly tumultuous for Android. It was unfun to build an app in Eclipse, then want CI and have to write a lot of boilerplate in Ant. The complete translation of all that Ant code and related CI materials to Gradle / Android Studio took weeks for my team on a large codebase. And, if you're a platform dev, you also have to support nonrecursive Make.

I'm not a big Groovy fan either but I am a big fan of picking something that works. The transition was painful but I'm glad the road ahead looks clear and focused.

<comment><USER10> If Gradle's configuration API was opened up so other languages besides Groovy were allowed, such as Clojure, Scala, JRuby, and even Jython, Gradle would attract a lot more developers who are put off by Groovy. Even Gradle's website and promotional materials avoids using the word "Groovy", instead saying "Gradle DSL", but that's not enough to win over hardcore Python or Ruby shops.

As for your case and many others already reluctantly using Groovy in Gradle, translating it all from Groovy-Gradle to, say, Ruby-Gradle wouldn't take weeks but hours because only the syntax would need to be translated almost one-to- one, leaving all the Gradle configuration names and sequences unchanged. In fact, because it could be done incrementally, only minutes spread out over several days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Please Google, how about some real battery improvements this time? I was disappointed to hear that the new "doze" feature is only for completely stationary phones. So sitting in your pocket or the bottom of your purse won't set it off because there's too much motion. I imagine this will be nice for tablets that sit on the kitchen counter all day, but might not affect phone battery life at all.

Apparently, the battery gains from Volta in 5.0 didn't do much and from what I've read many of the popular apps never bothered supporting the new APIs for their own reasons.

On the plus side, hearing about monthly security updates tackles my biggest concern with the platform. The problem is only a handful of the biggest players have signed on for that, and even then these updates need carrier approval for some asinine reason. The smaller OEM's will probably never deliver these updates.

<comment><USER12> Or OEMs could just put decent batteries in the phones? Huawei has the Mate 2 with a 4000mAh battery. I easily get over a full 24-hour day. I never worry about charging it.

Other OEMs could do this if they wanted. But they choose to slice another mm off thickness, and everyone's happy if they can get through 12 hours without charging.

If Apple has chose to ship a battery capable of lasting 24 hours, everyone would just take it for granted that this is obviously how devices should work.

<comment><USER13> That's a brute force way of trying to solve the issue and one I am not big on.

<comment><USER12> Sure, but A: it works, today, B: it works well, with no compat issues.

<comment><USER11> The Mate 2 is a HUGE 6.1" phone and nearly twice the weight of an iphone. This is not a solution for most of the phone market. I own a N6 and I have huge hands and its a bit much for me. Its uncomfortably huge and heavy. I can't imagine most people being on board with a heavy and huge phone because google can't get its shit together on power savings.

<comment><USER14> Back when I was carrying my Nexus S around, I would have happily paid $50 more for a model designed to contain a double-sized battery. [0] My hands tell me that the battery is quite a bit less than 25% of the total weight of the device, so the weight cost would also be quite small; no more than ~1.5 additional ounces.

It's not a rule that one has to choose between a relatively small phone with shitty battery life and a phablet with somewhat less shitty battery life. One could have double or triple-sized batteries in the smaller phones!

[0] The problem with all of the aftermarket batteries that I saw was that they required a new back cover that contained no NFC antenna.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > The Android emulator system images and developer preview system images have > been updated for supported Nexus devices (Nexus 5, Nexus 6, Nexus 9 & Nexus > Player) to help with your testing.

The Nexus 7 is pointedly absent. Will they even get an OTA update for the final Android M release?

</comment><comment><USER16> Really big fan of the simplified permissions feature. It's something I've always wanted that Android never had. In addition to the supposed battery usage improvements, I'm looking forward to the new streamlined Android Pay features.

<comment><USER17> Just learned about this and it seems really great! This is something I always wished for when I was developing for Android and actively using apps. When the most of the apps seemed to require me to give permission to access my personal information, I quit installing and using apps.

"The M Developer Preview introduces a new app permissions model which streamlines the process for users to install and upgrade apps. If an app running on the M Preview supports the new permissions model, the user does not have to grant any permissions when they install or upgrade the app. Instead, the app requests permissions as it needs them, and the system shows a dialog to the user asking for the permission.

If an app supports the new permissions model, it can still be installed and run on devices running older versions of Android, using the old permissions model on those devices."

[https://developer.android.com/preview/features/runtime- permi...](https://developer.android.com/preview/features/runtime- permissions.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Really hoping 6.0 and the new Nexus phones have pen support so I can get over my disappointment that the Galaxy Note 5 won't be released in Europe.

<comment><USER19> Android M gets native Bluetooth stylus support so it should be supported.

<comment><USER20> Why does a stylus need bluetooth? I thought it interacted with the display much like a finger (just more precise). Unless they are using thermal touch sensors?

<comment><USER21> > Why does a stylus need bluetooth? I thought it interacted with the display > much like a finger (just more precise).

Styluses often have interaction mechanisms other than the pointer (e.g., the button on Samsung's "S-Pen".)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I predict that only Nexus devices will get 6.0 initially, just like 4.0 and (to a lesser degree 5.0) before that.

But OEMs will wait for 6.1 to let the bugs settle out. After 5.0 and its memory leak bugs etc, i'm wary.

<comment><USER19> Oh please. Android 5.0 introduced a new runtime that was the cause of a lot of the issues. These have been ironed out in 5.1.

<comment><USER23> Pretty sure that was exactly his point; major issues until the point one release so why wouldn't they wait?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I think that next version of Android will be called Oreo.

Just putting it out there, so when I am right in a year or so time we can refer back to this comment ;-)

I'll write up a separate post later as to why I think it'll be called that.

</comment><comment><USER25> Slightly OT: Does anybody have an ETA of Java 8 in Android?

</comment><comment><USER26> Android as a platform is toast. With the flagrant security issues, anyone who cares about security will buy an iPhone or BlackBerry. Add to that the blatant Oracle IP infringement and you've got a recipe for a platform with no future.

The smart mobile devs are noping the fuck out of the Android ecosystem.

<comment><USER27> You're correct... at ~78% of the mobile market share the platform is definitely on its last legs. Better to focus development on the remaining 22%, esp with that 30% Apple market overhead.... ???

Android definitely has hurdles to overcome but it's far from "toast". I really can't conceive where that view would come from?

<comment><USER28> >at ~78% of the mobile market share

That's the most misleading & pointless statistic I've ever come across and definitely the most dangerous one if you're a developer. Why? Well, VAST MAJORITY of that marketshare are phones that are so cheaply made that they cannot run even 4.4 let alone 5. Only a tiny portion of these phones are actually capable of running latest apps & games well. So all these people running non-Android (China for example doesn't really run certified Android but various forks of AOSP) are not really your customers.

And don't even get me started on user base... if you read Google Play reviews, you'll notice that people give you 1 star ratings if you decide to charge for an app or decide to have IAPs in your "free" app. So good luck making a living off Android apps. About the only way you can do it, and the most common way for Android devs to make money these days, is to exfiltrate as much personal data as possible and sell it to data brokers. That's why all these "free" apps require so many permissions.

Anyway, I've been an Android dev for 4+ years and recently moved into server- side development but I pity the guys who still try to make a living off Android.

<comment><USER11> I'm okay with apps becoming non-profitable commodities, at least for the general user. We have enough fremium games and other junk as-is. Apps should be added-value for another product (control my theromstat, get richer content from a website, etc). The vision of mobile as eating the world never made sense. It has its place and unsurprisingly, the gold rush is ending. You can only make so many Angry Bird clones and flashlight apps.

Apps will eventually be like the web. They won't be profit makers on their own. Its also good to see a lot of the goldrush crowd go away. The app store is just too gamified to the point that finding good stuff in near impossible unless you know the exact name of the app you want.

<comment><USER28> >I'm okay with apps becoming non-profitable commodities,

You're delusional if you think you will have free AND excellent apps at the same time. It's usually "pick one" situation.

To have great apps you need incentive for developers to make them (which is 99% of the time MONEY). Take the money out of the equation and you have mostly junk.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Perils of JavaSchools - <AUTHOR> https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/12/29/the-perils-of-javaschools-2/ <comment><USER2> >Java is not, generally, a hard enough programming language that it can be used to discriminate between great programmers and mediocre programmers

This doesn't seem like a bad thing.

Anyway I can't tell if this article is gatekeeping or mocking gatekeeping.</comment>


Change.gov uses IntenseDebate - <AUTHOR> http://change.gov/page/content/discusshealthcare

<comment><USER2> The IntenseDebate guys work hard on their product and are some of the nicest dudes around. It's good to see a startup like ID get some big exposure like this.

<comment><USER3> Looks like IntenseDebate have been acquired already (by Automattic, the maker of WordPress)

[http://blog.intensedebate.com/2008/09/23/automattic- acquires...](http://blog.intensedebate.com/2008/09/23/automattic-acquires- intensedebate/)

<comment><USER2> Yeah, they were acquired by Automattic a couple months ago, but the same dudes are running the show at ID.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> They're getting some interesting answers there. Good on them, and good to see a government entity not being afraid of a democratic system!..

</comment><comment><USER5> Kind of makes sense: isn't it the default in Wordpress now? Or am I wrong and this is unrelated?

Congrats to the team, though! That's excellent.

</comment><comment><USER6> ...so?

<comment><USER7> I guess the relevance is that they came out of TechStars, a YC clone/competitor.

<comment><USER8> And that they are direct competitors with Disqus, a (great) YC company.</comment></comment></comment>


Here's Why You Should Quote Your Variables in Bash - <AUTHOR> https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/here-is-why-you-should-quote-your-variables-in-bash <comment><USER2> This is one of the many things that would be called out if you run your shell script through shellcheck [1] source [2]

[1] - [https://www.shellcheck.net/](https://www.shellcheck.net/)

[2] - [https://github.com/koalaman/shellcheck](https://github.com/koalaman/shellcheck)

Shellcheck is also in several yum repos such as EPEL and in homebrew for Mac.

You can add a comment in your script to exclude / ignore specific warnings. Examples are in the man page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, I use Shellcheck in VSCode with [https://github.com/timonwong/vscode- shellcheck](https://github.com/timonwong/vscode-shellcheck).

But it won't save you if you're on a server executing raw commands so it's still good to know about the concerns of omitting quotes.</comment></comment>


This 4×6 index card has all the financial advice you'll ever need - <AUTHOR> http://m.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/16/this-4x6-index-card-has-all-the-financial-advice-youll-ever-need/ <comment><USER2> There are a couple of good parts about this post. The first is the HN comments, which are an unintentional fountain of hilarity. But the second is the assumptions.

50% of the US population can't afford to put even a dollar into any sort of investment security. Of the 50% of the public that does own some sort of security, most of them are in the three-figures range. This index card, without realizing it at all, has targeted itself towards the top 10% of the population: people who have jobs with 401Ks, people for whom Roth IRAs will be useful.

In other words, if you are well into being one of the richest people in the richest country in the world, here you go - save 20% of your income, and so on. And you'll be fine!

So I'm just curious: suppose you aren't?

<comment><USER3> The percentage of US workers with access to a retirement-benefits plan is 71%. 57% of all US workers participate in such a plan.

(Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2009 National Compensation Survey, [http://www.bls.gov/ncs/ebs/benefits/2009/ebbl0044.pdf](http://www.bls.gov/ncs/ebs/benefits/2009/ebbl0044.pdf))

In Table 2, it says that even 15% of the lowest income decile - people making less than 90% of workers - find a way to participate in a retirement plan.

Here's a more detailed writeup from the Bureau: [http://www.bls.gov/opub/cwc/cm20100520ar01p1.htm](http://www.bls.gov/opub/cwc/cm20100520ar01p1.htm)

Meanwhile, the "top 10%" of households earn $135k per year or more, while the median income is around $50k.

(Source: [http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/09/us- househo...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/09/us-household- income))

Anyone making over $60k per year could (in theory; this is a highly abstract argument at this level, of course!) save 20% of their income without dropping below the median household income of $50k; households making over $60k per year appear to constitute 32% to 40% of the population, if I read this Census Bureau chart correctly: [https://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0690....](https://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0690.pdf)

None of which says anything about the effectiveness of 401k plans, or anything else. But if you're going to handwave about numbers it's nice to hit the right order of magnitude.

<comment><USER4> > Anyone making over $60k per year could [...] save 20% of their income > without dropping below the median household income of $50k.

20% of 60k is 12k, 60k - 12k = 48k. So no, the claim isn't true for the most trivial of reasons.

<comment><USER5> Nitpicking, 48k is close enough for the point to still be valid.

You are technically correct though.

<comment><USER4> > 48k is close enough ...

Mathematics is the one discipline where "close enough" isn't close enough. :)

<comment><USER5> Technically correct again but in this case it really is close enough :).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Almost all of this is excellent advice, except for one point: "save 20% of your money". That's a bare minimum, which will let you retire after about 37 years of working. Bump it to 35% and you'll retire after 25 years. Bump it to 50% and retire in 17. Bump it to two-thirds and retire in 10 years.

That's one of the most important factors in your personal finances: not how much you make off your investments, not whether you max your 401k, but _how much of your income you save and how much you spend_. The only more important factor is "never borrow money", and in particular "never carry a balance on a credit card".

<comment><USER7> One of the recommendations is actually wrong, and in fact outright harmful.

"Buy inexpensive, well-diversified _mutual funds_ such as Vanguard Target 20xx funds."

Yeah, no. Mutual funds, even those by Vanguard, have high expense ratios, and there is absolutely no evidence that they outperform their equivalent index funds. Jack Bogle, founder and retired CEO of Vanguard, himself recommends index funds over mutual funds for this reason.

<comment><USER8> Vanguard Target funds are nothing but a collection of passively managed index funds. The ER is slightly higher than doing it a la carte, but it re-balances without having to worry about it.

<comment><USER9> it is only higher if you qualify for admiral shares in all the funds contained in the target fund. With the current case of most target funds having a 2% holding in International Bonds, you would need to have $500,000 invested to make it cheaper to buy the individual funds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, has a similarly good set of advice:

\- Make a will.

\- Pay off your credit cards.

\- Get term life insurance if you have a family to support.

\- Fund your 401(k) to the maximum.

\- Fund your IRA to the maximum.

\- Buy a house if you want to live in a house and you can afford it.

\- Put six months' expenses in a money market fund.

\- Take whatever money is left over and invest 70% in a stock index fund and 30% in a bond fund through any discount broker and never touch it until retirement.

\- If any of this confuses you, or you have something special going on (retirement, college planning, tax issues) ( hire a fee-based financial planner, not one who charges a percentage of your portfolio.

(source: [https://retirementplans.vanguard.com/VGApp/pe/PubVgiNews?Art...](https://retirementplans.vanguard.com/VGApp/pe/PubVgiNews?ArticleName=DilbertGuidetoPersonalFinance))

<comment><USER11> Typically fee based advisors charge a percentage of assets under management. The is opposed to traditional brokers who charge trade commissions. There are few who aren't paid based on AUM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I consider it to be a huge oversight that they left off building an emergency fund.

Before buying a house, buying individual securities, or maxing any retirement contributions, you need enough liquidity in your investments to get you through an illness or layoff that leaves you without income for a year.

It amazes me how otherwise intelligent peers of mine will be paying extra on mortgages, student loans, and retirement funds with less than $5k in the bank.

<comment><USER13> That sounds wrong. An unexpected year-long unemployment isn't unheard of, but for an already-employed investing professional (i.e. not a recent entrant/re- entrant to the employment market who wouldn't be able to take this advice anyway) it's really quite rare. Certainly it's not true that most people "need" to do that, as it won't happen to them.

This sounds like the kind of failure mode better addressed by solutions like insurance instead of upfront savings.

<comment><USER12> In broad strokes, the more specialized your skill, the harder it will be to find a job that meets your salary expectations. Sometimes this will mean moving to a new city or being unemployed for over a year. Sometimes this will mean taking a pay cut, which means you'll need some cash to break a lease or otherwise see you through downsizing your lifestyle.

Also keep in mind that it's huge to have 6 months of expenses easily available while evaluating job offers. You're much more likely to settle when you have to worry about paying your mortgage next month.

<comment><USER13> Both of these replies are speaking to the social issues. Yes, people can lose their jobs, and it does happen. My point was quantitative: it happens _rarely_ , and so addressing it with individual savings is a poor choice for the same reason that we don't pay for catastrophic health care out of savings. "Insurance" is a better social tool, as it requires far less capital be tied down.

And that insurance is readily available in the market, if the duck on my television is telling me the truth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> >Never buy or sell an individual security. The person on the othr side of the table knows more than you do about this stuff.

The person on the other side is c++.

</comment><comment><USER15> Am I alone in wondering if the advice about broad index funds is no longer good?

We're still below the s&p inflation adjusted high from ~2000 -- almost 14 years later. When will the gains finally arrive?

I worry that there is some systemic problem in our economy that has leaders playing whack-a-crisis every five or ten years that erases years of gains.

I've read John Bogle and _I want to believe_. But a few years ago I took some money out of index funds and placed it in a rental property and so far I've seen very predicable returns with no loss in principle, and it makes me wonder if I should keep bothering with index funds at all.

<comment><USER16> _We 're still below the s&p inflation adjusted high from ~2000 -- almost 14 years later._

Only if you're looking at the _price_ index. The _total return_ index -- including dividend payouts -- peaked at 2108 in September 2000, and is now at 3027. After inflation that's a gain of 6%, for a real return of slightly under 0.5% per year... but hey, at least it's positive.

<comment><USER17> It's barely positive if you compare the two points. However, if you have investing regularly via your 401k (etc), you also bought in during the low periods. So, your gain would be much more than just minimal positive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I trade in individual securities, but I put in the time to learn about the companies, the industry, and so on. Also, having taking econ, accounting, finance, and statistics in college helps.

<comment><USER13> Professional traders have been known to put in the time to learn about this stuff too. Don't fool yourself. You might make some good bets. You might make some bad ones. You're not going to systematically outperform a market as an individual investor by anything but luck (or plausibly by chasing a "hunch" based on good intuition and evidence that the professionals missed -- but don't fool yourself, that's luck too).

<comment><USER18> I have consistently outperformed the market since 2007, when I started investing (I refer to the market as the DOW).

Just because the average salary in the United States is $57,000 (random-ish number) does not mean that's what I have to settle for because it's the average. If I put in the time, work smart, work hard, and keep learning, then the expectation is that I can beat the average income. Likewise, I can beat the average market by putting in more time, more effort, more learning, than the average investor.

I tried forex for 2 years, and did poorly, so I stopped, and learned my lesson.

I bet on Ford at 1.60. I bet on Tesla at 16, and 24. (not heavily mind you, just 2.5% of my portfolio). I research the companies, the management. I not only go to the annual report, but I also read books by the founders, read about their manufacturing (are they using lean like Toyota or lean like GE?). I went after Ford based on Mullally's performance at Boeing. I went after Boeing based on the 787's promises. (It's doing very well.) I read Deming.

I lost $900 in American Airlines, and $300 in Washington Mutual. I did lose $6K on a $10K mutual fund that went south in 2007-2008. It looked like it would recover, but then wasn't following the market up. I've made a lot less money with mutual funds that with stocks.

Granted, I've been riding a pretty nice wave since the drops of fall 2007 and mid 2008, but I don't blindly pick a stock and buy in. I'm very careful where I put the money, and will do 2-4 weeks of research on a single company.

I also research their competition, and business trends in general. This means I don't watch TV, don't watch sports, and will do one movie per month with my son. Instead, I read. A lot.

I do max my 401k because of company matching, but I'm not holding my breath on returns. There's an event horizon where it's better not to match and buy securities directly, because of the 1% or so fees. (You start out with twice as much, but you get less annual yield.) You don't pay taxes till you sell, and you can sell at a time of your choosing.

I don't day-trade, I don't even month-trade. I generally invest for 7-15 years.

Finally, I invest only my own money, and that is a very strong motivator for spending the time to do it right. (Small caps do slightly better than large caps--more risk, more return. Diversify.)

<comment><USER19> Have you outperformed on a risk-adjusted basis (ie: delivered alpha)?

Or simply beat on an outright basis?

That time period, aggressive buying of nearly anything beat the DOW-30 (as my portfolio handily beat the DOW30 as well, since I'm full risk-on at this point in my life). I know I crushed the DOW, but I'm much less convinced that I delivered alpha.

<comment><USER18> I got better than anything else I could have invested in. That's what matters to me.

<comment><USER13> You did that over a period that was a decidedly bull market, though. Presumably sokoloff's question was intended to point out that very similar strategies (trying to pick "winners") is likely to _underperform_ the market in bear conditions, sometimes very badly.

I knew a lot of people who thought they were hot stuff day traders back in 1998 too. Spoiler: they weren't.

<comment><USER18> I went in in August 2007, when the DOW was at 14700 or so. I watched my portfolio dip from $27K to $18K. Everyone I knew was going cash. I didn't. I trimmed the sails, turned into the wind, and learned. There's no better learning that reading everything you can about the market when the market is doing back-to-back triple-digit drops in the 8000's, with your money in the game. I sold some pigs, bought some as they were going down. The best pickings were on the floor, BK at the corner, and people had written them off. I got lucky that I was buying when everyone was scared, but I didn't buy because the stock was low, I bought because I knew the companies had customers, long term contracts, good manufacturing know-how, good management, and made products their customers wanted. At that point, I reinvested another $25K in securities, from when the DOW was around 7500, and gold was shooting up, to about 10,000. After that, it was all growth, reinvestment of dividends, etc. I pulled $10K out in December 2012 (down payment on car), and had $61K in the portfolio after. This week, not really doing anything, it's at $99K. Yes, it's a wave, but like in surfing, you gotta be in the water to catch it. I have holdings in about 60 companies. My last trade was selling $1600 of Honda stock and buying $500 of Fedex and $600 of Toro, both adding to existing positions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Seems like good advice, though a great many Americans are at a disadvantage because their employer doesn't offer a 401k. Even with no employer match, a 401k allows an individual to save much more money in a tax-advantaged account ($17,500 for a 401k vs. $5500 for an IRA). If you're a W-2 employee but your employer doesn't offer a 401k then you're pretty much stuck paying higher tax rates on any savings beyond $5500/year.

<comment><USER21> With no employer match, a 401k has ZERO tax advantages. Because it merely delays when your income is taxed: after withdrawing it from the 401k. Mathematically you end up with the same capital whether your pay income taxes today and invest post-tax money, or whether you invest in a pre-tax 401k and pay taxes later.

<comment><USER22> That's not true: the capital gains you accumulate are pre-tax, so your entire investment is taxed once, upon withdrawal, as income. With up-front taxation you still end up paying additional capital gains taxes at the end of the day on your total capital gain.

There are conceivable situations where you end up paying more in taxes, if your retirement income tax rate is higher than your current income tax rate plus your capital gains rate multiplied by the ratio of capital gains to the total capital.

I've spreadsheeted it out and using a 30 year timeline and what I most would consider an extremely conservative rate of return, you end up with about 15% total advantage. This can go up to 20 to 25% if you assume more aggressive returns.

Despite that, I hate the fact that your money is locked up and there is a severe penalty if you pull it out (except in a few situations, and even then the amount you can pull is limited.)

Is it worth 15% of your money for it to be truly _your_ money? It is to me, but that's a subjective call.

<comment><USER23> > With up-front taxation you still end up paying additional capital gains > taxes at the end of the day on your total capital gain.

Not true if it is a Roth IRA, which is post-tax contribution but tax free on withdrawal.

<comment><USER22> Of course.

A Roth IRA almost always makes sense, which is why they are so limited.

<comment><USER23> > A Roth IRA almost always makes sense, which is why they are so limited.

A Roth IRA makes sense in two circumstances:

1) You have maxed out contributions to tax-deferred retirement accounts, such that the only options for additional retirement savings are Roth IRA or regular investments with no special tax benefits (i.e., post-tax contribution and capital gains tax on withdrawals.), or

2) you expect to be at a retirement-savings-excluded income esuch that the average tax on withdrawals from your retirement savings would, if taxed as income, be greater than the taxes you pay on current-year income. (Otherwise, your better off with a tax-deferred vehicle than a Roth IRA.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Seeing the comments here about people is interesting. Whether it's in the comments or in reality, _most_ people aren't conscious they _are_ poor.

Poverty isn't a privilege reserved to those who live under bridges, or take showers once in a while.

Driving to work and back every day, stuck in traffic, getting home exhausted and not wanting to do anything _is_ poverty.

It's amazing how many guys I know who start working and consider it a success and start spending cash, get a car on credit, get a mortgage and what not. They actually think that having an expensive car makes them rich, yet can't even afford a part of that car breaking. It's a disaster for them.

So, if you have to slave for a pittance (or not, you're slaving anyway). If you can't afford to be ill with some weird disease and getting properly treated for it without waiting _social security_. If you can't afford a good life for your children. If you can't buy something (a car, a house) without a loan and it still doesn't represent a good portion of your assets..

If you can't do that, you're poor. Poor in money, and most probably poor in time, too.

</comment><comment><USER25> I don't know how good the advise is to max out 401K and other retirement account. Some of the 401K accounts have very limited choice of investment. For example, you can't do real estate investment.

If you know what you are doing, you might want to retain the money outside and do the investment yourself on investment that are not available in a typical 401K account.

<comment><USER26> Look at the costs associated with each of your 401K investment options. Usually, most plans include at least one that is not actively managed, and their management costs tend to be significantly lower. Additionally, but avoiding actively managed funds, you also avoid the "chasing the tail" syndrome that leads to almost all active managers under-performing index funds over time. Layer in the tax benefits of 401K accounts, and I think the advice to max out 401K and other tax-shielded investments, and to look for "inexpensive, well-diversified funds" is very good advice. If followed correctly (few do, from the sounds of the replies to this article), I think you'll find that the advice is sound.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I would have an opinion but Australian law prevents me from having one without providing a statement of advice.

<comment><USER28> I doubt anybody could construe a general opinion that's not tailored for a specific individual's situation as financial advice, if that's what you're getting at. Maybe it's different in Oz.

<comment><USER27> You'd be surprised. Our law assumes quite a large amount of potential uneducation and general stupidity when it comes to an unsophisticated investor interpreting financial advice.

<comment><USER29> You can't even post a, "this is not advice but here's what I am doing..."? That seems overly strict.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> What about non-US people? U.S. index funds are off limits to us, and European ones are hard to trust, and normally require a lot of difficult paperwork to get in unless you are a citizen of a particular country, and operate off a very localized, and very small equities market (say Austrian, however healthy Austrian economy is i find it hard to bet my retirement savings on it, especially given neither my income nor my expenses have anything to do with it). And yes, fees of those funds are way higher than Vanguard's, due to their small size.

With income in 7-figure range, one can buy commercial real estate, which gives decent returns and is a good replacement for exchange-traded equities. But what about others?

</comment><comment><USER31> What does HN think about the last statement? -Promote social programs for when things go wrong

<comment><USER12> Sounds like political advice more than financial advice.

In a similar vein, I would advise people to support charities that help the less fortunate like food banks, but I wouldn't consider that financial advice.

<comment><USER32> he clearly qualifies it for "when things go wrong", so the suggestion is more like some kind of insurance in case that happens

<comment><USER12> They have insurance for that. Why isn't that suggested then?

No, someone thought they'd be cute and throw a political jab in there.

<comment><USER33> That is a form of social insurance.

<comment><USER12> Social insurance is a misnomer in this context. I was referring to short- and long-term disability insurance, which will cover you for many disaster scenarios.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> ...If you happen to live in the United States, and the tax laws there don't change.

<comment><USER32> well yes, but it should be too hard to replace "401k" with whatever tax- advantaged retirement program is available

<comment><USER28> Edit: Misinterpreted what a 401(k) is. I thought it was a tax-free savings account that you can borrow against, rather than a form of pension plan. The UK does have something somewhat similar: a personal pension scheme. The rest of this comment is wrong, but I'll leave it here for giggles.

\--

They don't really always exist. As far as I'm aware there isn't really the British equivalent of a 401k, for example. Brits have ISAs but they're just tax free savings accounts with an interest rate generally well below inflation. Cash ISAs also come with the restriction that you can only deposit a very low amount into them per year -- this year it's £5,760. You also can't re-deposit withdrawn money without that further deposit subtracting from your annual deposit limit.

The trouble with putting large amounts of money in a savings account is that it generally comes with interest rates that (even before tax) are less than inflation. Savings accounts are great for socking away money to cover temporary shortfalls in income, but not much else.

<comment> steve-howard You're not too wrong; you can borrow against a 401(k) (<50% of the balance, no more than $50k total). Most financial advice says to stay away, though.

<comment><USER35> That is one thing I don't understand, is the advice to not borrow against your 401k. Lets say you have a 3-year auto loan, that is 7% interest. If you convert that to a 401k loan at 4%, that is a savings right there.

Oh, but that money you borrowed isn't getting any investment returns in our 401k (I hear people say). But it is -- it is getting a 4% return (what you are paying back in interest). And considering that a well balanced fund is going to have some amount in a lower fixed-interest investment, that isn't much of a problem (just rebalance the fund when you take your loan out, then rebalance again as it gets paid off).

The ONLY downside I see, is that you have to pay it back all at once if you lose your job, or face a 10% penalty (plus tax) on the loan balance.

<comment><USER19> The money that you take out of the 401k is no longer protected against creditors. (Someone borrowing from a 401k seems more likely than the average 401k holder to be at risk for bankruptcy.)

Some plans do not permit net-new contributions while a loan is outstanding. Even when plans permit it, the fact that you're borrowing on Thursday might not have you in a situation to make payroll deductions on that Friday. (This is situational, of course. If you're in dire straits overall, you might still not be making contributions.)

I'd consider borrowing from a 401k to buy a house, or to pay off credit card debts that were 15% or worse and that's it, full stop. Refinancing 7% debt at 4% seems not worth it, especially if you're taking money out of equities to do it.

<comment><USER35> Ah, I see -- it is a problem borrowing from 401k if you pay it back out of your existing contributions. Makes sense -- I've just never thought of it that way. To me, it only makes sense if you are substituting it for a regular loan, and not touching the contributions overall. In other words, if you are in a good financial situation to take out a regular loan, then a 401k loan could make sense also.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> First advice: max your 401k. That's selfish.

That's what Wall Street wants you to do. Reality is whomever manages the funds has only one short-term goal in mind: year end bonus. It's very common for traders to move on shortly after bonuses are given out leaving "cooked" books for the next trader to deal with. The plan is always to never get caught holding the short term strategy book.

I find the typical trader archetype to be repugnant. There's so much of it that goes against technical-minded people with even the tiniest sense of ethics. If you're financially disciplined you're better off investing elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER37> This might be blunt, but I found this advice to be misleading. Many lost large percentages of their 401ks in the ~2000 and ~2008 crashes.

Crashes historically happen at least once every decade.

</comment><comment><USER38> As some one who takes great meticulous care in planning and investing regularly, both for the long term and super long term(retirement savings), I can pitch in and offer some advice here.

First advice I would give is, totally avoid using credit cards. It might sound impractical, but I've found some workarounds for it. Which is to use my debit card as a credit card. Go frugal for a few days and save some money in the savings account, then use that money as credit to yourself. The worst thing about any kind of debt/loan is the interest part. Lesser interest you pay the better, except in situation where you are making an investment with the loan(like buying a property of a home) and the value of the investment is growing faster, when the at the same time inflation is decreasing your loan's net value.

Second advice I can give you is to buy your own home and avoid paying rent. If you look at the whole thing having your own home is vastly more profitable than renting some one else's home on a long term.

Then there are a few assorted advices I would like to give, especially to people in India(My country), But I believe it applies equally to else where to. Buy gold in small quantities regularly. Gold is protected from inflation, and is the near standard of economic growth around the world. And value of growth(over long term) always grows. Once you have sufficient gold- sell it and, learn to buy real estate in city outskirts. You will see in any growing city, sooner or later outskirts merge into main city areas and then real estate prices shoot up. Take loans to do this, if and only if the loan is small and as I said before, inflation affects your loan faster than, the rate at which its value grows.

Make the mandatory 1 lac per year(if you can't make as much as you can), tax savings investments on things like endowment insurances which serve as both life insurance and long term investments.

Its good if you could rotate money by building a home which you could rent out. It will serve as a steady source of income later and after retirement.

Lastly at the risk of attracting downvotes, please don't invest in stocks and show pointless heroics if you don't understand that business. Far more people have burnt their hard savings hoping for magical miracles to happen and make them millionaire while dealing in stocks. In short if you know how to do it, do it. Else keep out for your own good.

<comment><USER39> My friend... That sounds like some really BAD advice. Gold (even Warren Buffet warns against), Real-Estate (which is extremely risky, limits your job and movement flexibility), No Credit Cards (so you plan on having no credit history?), I don't even know where to begin. That's some terrible advice.

<comment><USER38> I am NOT suggesting you buy tons of gold or hundreds of properties. That's what Warren Buffet advices against, because in problems like sub prime crisis, the more you own the more you lose. That is a totally different scenario.

But I've seen millionaires being made and money being transferred through three generations in a family, only because some one invested in properties and bought enough gold when it was cheap and easy to buy, and later find it multiply. And people there hardly do enough work except for building more wealth through rents they get.

May be controlling a lot real estate is dangerous from a super super long term perspective. But by then, your great great grand daughters bones would have turned to dust and it wouldn't bother you least bit.

Gold, real estate, and kids. Nothing really beats these investments in a true sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Correction: Don't have a credit card bill to begin with.

Let the excuses and reasons for them fly, think whatever...fact is they are not necessary. While some smaller percentage of people can be responsible, for many it just invites problems. Don't get one in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER41> Doing a startup is inconsistent with the advice give here.

<comment><USER42> Because doing a startup is not financially advisable to _most people_ without a financial cushion. It may be fun, it may be thrilling, and it may work out better than your wildest dreams, but good financial advice for the general public it is not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> this is nothing new... this is stuff straight out of the automatic millionaire by David Bach..wanna get rich? First step is pay yourself and get out of debt... then build up some solid investments.. real estate is a good way to build assets and wealth flipping or rentals..rentals for long term obviously.

Or do what 80% of us reading hn plan on doing ...build something awesome and get bought out for 10 mill.

<comment><USER44> I never understood why real estate would be such a good investment. If one house is good, why not 100 as part of an REIT?

<comment><USER45> It's different than REIT, not necessarily universally "good". One obvious difference is with a house you get a collateral for a huge low-cost leverage, that in some cases might be easier to settle if things go South (e.g. shortsale). Another one is rent you save/collect from someone else.

<comment><USER44> To me, rent just seems like a form of dividend payment, which is of course not unique to property ownership.

<comment><USER43> I know someone who bought a 4 plex here in Dayton for $50k in cash, and earns 500 per unit ie 2k per month or 24k per year. Paid for the investment in 2 years, and is now earning 24k per year residual and bought another property for 78k.

Renting is a good investment if you can handle sourcing tenants and outsourcing or handling maintenance issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you follow that advice, you don't need a financial advisor.

<comment><USER11> Even if a financial advisor meets the fiduciary standard, he or she may still not be looking out for your best interest. I'd say become educated, and bypass the advisor altogether.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Seems about right to me.

</comment><comment><USER47> self-contradictory: "Make financial advisor commit to a fiduciary standard"

<comment><USER26> A Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) is required by FINRA to commit to a higher fiduciary standard than a broker (the more commonly used investment advisor). I think that's what he's referring to. Of course, most RIAs don't cater to anything but high-wealth individuals. Things are changing, though, as the Internet is enabling a number of RIAs to cater to those with lower levels of investment funds.

<comment><USER47> I meant that the card was giving advice and the card hadn't committed to a fiduciary standard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Except for the 'never buy a security' bit, I fully agree.

<comment><USER16> Do you think you can beat the market?

Are you a professional stock market trader?

If you answered yes to the first question but no to the second, why?

<comment><USER49> I think with good domain knowledge and basic knowledge of economics and finance your average Joe can do better than the market. There's a lot of low hanging fruit in the stock market that a small investor in particular can grab because their size allows a certain level of under-the-radar activity.

<comment><USER2> > I think with good domain knowledge and basic knowledge of economics and > finance your average Joe can do better than the market.

There's a word for people like you: suckers.

<comment><USER50> I think you're a sucker for thinking the "professional" trader/analyst/bot on the other side is some kind of deity. Incompetence is endemic in almost every profession and finance is certainly not immune. The stupidity of so many big analysts is almost hilarious sometimes, I've made big predictions that counter the prevailing wisdom of 99% of people and I'm a total amateur. Like parent said, there's always low-hanging fruit out there.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Gilt Grew Sales from $25 million to $170 million in 2 years - <AUTHOR> http://primitus.com/blog/how-gilt-grew-sales-from-25-million-to-170-million-in-2-years/

<comment><USER2> _"In three years, he says, you won't think about Walmart, Target and Amazon when you think about ecommerce. You'll think about this whole new wave of companies doing flash marketing."_

Three years is a very short time to see such a change. I'm skeptical.

Still, Gilt is doing impressive things. I interviewed there a year or so ago and had it worked out I would have taken the job without hesitation. Seemed like they had interesting technical requirements ranging from scaling/performance down to supply chain integration. The financial reward upside seemed pretty huge, too, considering their revenue growth rate and IPO possibility.

</comment><comment><USER3> > there's no store in the world that could change its entire inventory in a > night. We do that every night. Customers know they'll see something new > tomorrow.

I've seen stores that needed to discontinue items they used to carry, but I've always thought of that as a _problem_ that ecommerce helped _solve_. Apparently some people find it exciting rather than frustrating, a good bit of marketing psychology to remember.</comment>