A critique of the claim that passive investing is a bubble - <AUTHOR> https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2019/09/debunking-the-silly-passive-is-a-bubble-myth/ <comment><USER2> I think this article really misses the point that Burry was making, which is that if the indexs see a sell off they won't find the liquidity in the market to cash out their positions and will drive the market down.

This article seems to focus on all of the upsides of indexing, which are all true. However, those upsides don't negate the risk that is being pointed to.

<comment><USER3> These sections seem to address the point to me:

* "The tail is not wagging the dog" \- index funds are a relatively small percentage of total share ownership.

* "Benchmark huggers have always been around" \- owning ~the index was not started with index funds.

* "Active funds literally own the market" \- the sum of portfolios of non-index funds ends up having the same profile.

* "Price discovery is a cop-out" \- relatively small part of the trading volume.

* "Liquidity is not a huge problem for index funds" -no market impact to sell (v dubious if you ask me), unlevered.

* "Humans matter more than fund structures" \- the absence of index funds did not prevent bubbles/crashes.

You can disagree with those points (I do with some of them) but that's a large part of the article.

<comment><USER4> > "Liquidity is not a huge problem for index funds" -no market impact to sell > (v dubious if you ask me), unlevered.

If you're talking about index mutual funds, then the author is just plain wrong. Any open-ended fund offering daily liquidity will trade, and therefore produce market impact, to meet its daily redemptions.

If you're only talking about ETFs, then this is technically correct. Besides the occasional index re-constitution, unlevered index ETFs don't do any trading. However it's definitely not true that there's no market impact. As the fund grows (or shrinks) the shares just don't magically appear in the portfolio. Somebody has to go out and buy (or sell) those shares, and like any trading volume, that creates market impact.

The mechanism that ETFs actually use is something called "Authorized Participants" (or APs for short). Basically market makers have the right to create or redeem shares in the ETF. To create new shares, they go out and buy all the stocks in the index, then hand a basket over to the ETF fund manager, who then hands back new shares of the equivalent value. And to destroy shares, the AP hand over shares in the ETF, and the fund manager hands back a basket of shares from the index.

If there's high demand for investors to own the ETF, that'll push up the ETF's stock price. As the price rises relative to the index value, APs will detect an arbitrage opportunity. They'll go out and buy the basket of stocks in the index at a cheaper price, then create new ETF shares at the richer price, and pocket the difference. Vice versa if there's demand from investors to exit the ETF.

The mechanism keeps the ETF price closely pegged to the index, because the further out of line it gets the more arbitrageur activity pushes it back in line. While also flexibly satisfying investors' specific demand for the ETF at any given time. Basically it delegates the role of trading from the fund manager, who usually doesn't have any special expertise in trading, to highly specialized trading firms and market makers.

However, as you can clearly see, market impact most definitely exists. If a flurry of investors rush to enter or exit an ETF, then a huge amount of trading has to be done to create or redeem the shares. Just because the APs create this trading impact, instead of the fund itself, is a distinction without a difference. The underlying stocks in the index _are_ subject to market impact.

<comment><USER5> > _If a flurry of investors rush to enter or exit an ETF, then a huge amount > of trading has to be done to create or redeem the shares. Just because the > APs create this trading impact, instead of the fund itself, is a distinction > without a difference. The underlying stocks in the index are subject to > market impact._

But the trading isn't the cause of the market impact, it's the _redemptions that occur_ first, and force the trading. There had to have been economic or financial reasons for those redemptions to occur. The fact that when everyone tries to sell at one, there's aren't enough buyers is a story of the ages. That ETFs will suffer the same consequences in a run is hardly unique to them as financial assets.

<comment><USER6> Right? I don't see what the fuss is about. If the argument boils down to "price and liquidity will drop in a sell-off", well that's basically a law of nature. I don't see why index funds are a special case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I believe index funds are a good investment strategy, but at the same time we shouldn't get defensive when people criticize them, and call a thoughtful critique "silly". In fact I would like to hear _more_ intelligent criticism of index funds, and thoughts around preparing for a hypothetical world in which index funds were overrated, not less.

How might we notice that index funds were becoming overrated? Perhaps the rise of hedge funds which consistently outperformed index funds? Is that happening?

What should we do if index funds became overrated? Move our money into a medium-size number of stocks, like 30 of them, to essentially do our own index selection? Or moving out of stocks entirely?

Thinking about questions like this without attacking criticism as "silly" is IMO a better way to minimize risk.

<comment><USER8> I found an inconsistency in the article.

> We're just seeing a shift from closet indexing to ETFs and other index funds > en masse now that investors have wisened up.

So active managers are copying the indexes.

> Index fund investors are simply buying what the active investors have laid > out for them.

But indexes buy what the active managers pick.

The author appears to be confused as to who is the tail and who is the dog. Maybe this is resolved by saying _some_ active managers do price discovery, but most are just copycats. It's not clear though.

For the record I think index funds are still the best choice for a retail investor, and the article is mostly true. Namely

> Many of the worries about indexing really boil down to career risk in the > asset management space.

Some of the arguments seem to be hasty and not well presented though.

<comment><USER9> No inconsistency.

> > We're just seeing a shift from closet indexing to ETFs and other index > funds en masse now that investors have wisened up.

Some active managers used to (clandestinely more or less) copy the indexes, but investors move away from active managers into passive funds.

The prices are determined on the margin, by the remaining active investors. That's all consistent.

> index funds are still the best choice for a retail investor

Yes, index funds or index-linked ETFs. Agreed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The "this time is different" crowd rides again.

Burry highlighted two simple truths of financial markets: people will buy shit they don't understand, and people who make financial products will try to earn a liquidity premium by transforming something illiquid to something liquid (which always blows up).

Most people (who I have met) who own passives have no idea what they are buying but are sure that buying passives makes them very smart. This blows up every time.

I also don't think Burry was making some bombastic claim about 100% of ETFs causing the end of civilisation. He was making a limited, reasonable claim about trends in markets. Yes, he generalised but, in my estimation, he has earned that right.

Simply, going from 0 to $300m+ earns you that right. Very few people have achieved that. Very few people have done it in the way he did (taking real risk). The views of a triggered financial adviser leeching off his clients don't hold as much weight (and shows all the self-awareness of a financial adviser to write a post implying they should).

<comment><USER11> I hate this kind of smart-ass top-level "ITT" comment that paints an entire discussion happening besides it with broad strokes.

If only one person does this I can call him names and downvote him. If there are two camps and both camps do this, people tribalize and everything goes meta. Then no further actual discussion can take place.

<comment><USER10> If you think it is "smart-ass", you don't understand what I am saying (or, more probably, what Burry is saying).

There are no "camps" here. The OP is trying to create a tribe (passive investors are cultish, so this is a very odd comment...I will assume an honest mistake) but that makes no sense on this topic (unless you are selling something, which he is).

The meta of my point is: people try this discussion over and over, it is always wrong, some things in finance are universal (because they have been happening for literally three hundred years).

What you appear to have missed is the part where I said: Burry is not making a "bombastic claim" about what will happen 100% of the time. In my experience, most people think this is what investing is about (the OP is certainly an example). It isn't. I am not making a bombastic claim.

The observation is, again, that: you have a lot of unsophisticated buyers and some non-zero amount of these products are about liquidity transformation. You can have a debate about this all you want but it isn't interesting or engaging to anyone but people who are unsophisticated (not 100% true in this case, Asness is a notable exception but he was an academic and it is mostly academics who take an interest).

My interest is limited to the fact that: it is astonishing how often this happens, and equally astonishing how fervently people will deny that it is happening again (although they are usually new converts).

<comment><USER12> Thanks for this -- your comment above about "transforming something illiquid to something liquid" and dcolkitt's post above explaining the possible consequences when indexed ETFs are substantially more liquid than many of the underlying securities really helped me understand the crux of Burry's argument. Are you aware of any academics that are studying this issue or modeling the risks?

<comment><USER10> Well, I suppose the literature around the liquidity premium relates to this topic. But liquidity is fairly simple (and drives the market cycle): liquidity is worthless in booms, and very valuable in busts.

But something to note here too: most measures of historical returns do not look at liquidity either. I am in the UK, and I know there is research (I can't find it atm) showing that before 1970s, trading costs were significant. Historical returns rarely reflect that. Nor do they reflect the fact that most people before 1970 probably couldn't own any asset other than govt bonds (or that most banks were forced to own them too).

So I would say the issues with indexes are two-fold. First, they will fail if they are built on illiquid securities (recent example here is also Neil Woodford's implosion). Second, they are often predicated on historical returns that are, in any non-academic/practical sense, fictional.

Another reply is Horizon Kinetics...apart from GMO, they are the only investment manager whose letters I actually read. And on ETFs, they have written a lot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> One question I have about Burry's comments that isn't (directly) addressed in this article relates to Burry's observation that trading volumes are remarkably low relative to the value of assets pegged to the equities being traded. For example, he remarks that over half of the S&P 500 stocks trade under $150 million daily, despite trillions of dollars in assets globally indexed to those stocks. (And he notes that almost half of Russel 2000 stocks trade at less than $1 million during the day.)

My question is, does this imply that there's substantially more synthetic indexing (without ownership of the underlying securities) than we realize? If there are trillions in indexed assets where the funds owned the majority of the index components, wouldn't average daily inflows lead to higher trading volumes than we're seeing? Or are the market makers such a huge portion of the market that they act as a massive collective buffer causing very few shares to actually be traded?

<comment><USER13> As the manager of the ETF you could allow it to float freely in which case it could trade at a premium or discount to NAV. But it wouldn't move too far because this would attract arbitrageurs who would trade the ETF against the individual stocks and bring it back in line. This would result in volume in the individual stocks. Another way you could do this is hold a pile of units in reserve and actively sell into the market when the ETF trades at a premium and buy when it trades at a discount. This approach would not result in any volume in the individual stocks (except for re-balancing from time to time). I think what he is saying is that ETF's use the latter approach. Of course this could also be done in an totally synthetic manner, but I don't think that index funds do this. It would be messy.

<comment><USER14> > As the manager of the ETF you could allow it to float freely in which case > it could trade at a premium or discount to NAV.

ETFs are securities that trade freely. They may be open ended or closed ended, but the price of both is determined independent of NAV.

> But it wouldn't move too far because this would attract arbitrageurs who > would trade the ETF against the individual stocks and bring it back in line.

This is the _creation /redemption mechanism_ and is actually responsible for keeping the market cap of open ended ETFs in line with the NAV. Closed ended funds don't have such a mechanism, so the cap may diverge from the NAV.

> Another way you could do this is hold a pile of units in reserve and > actively sell into the market when the ETF trades at a premium and buy when > it trades at a discount. This approach would not result in any volume in the > individual stocks (except for re-balancing from time to time).

This defeats the tax advantages of the ETF structure. Instead of having the manager buy and sell names, APs (authorized particpants) do the trading, hedging with units of the ETF. They then do an in-kind exchange with the fund manager at the end of the day. If the AP has net purchased the underlying basket, they will exchange the basket for shares of the ETF ( _creation_ ). If the AP is net short the basket, they will exchange their offsetting ETFs for the underlying basket ( _redemption_ ). This should affect the volume of the constituents.

Some ETFs do not require creation and redemption to be done with the full basket of index members. These tend to be based on names that trade less frequently. In this case the manager allows a subset of the index to be exchanged. In this case, the creation/redemption mechanism will not necessarily affect the volumes of all members of the index. Note that this can could cause tracking error.

Managers will rebalance when the index the fund is based on changes. For example, bond ETFs generally rebalance once a month. Market cap weighted ETFs (as opposed to, for example, equal weighted ETFs) are easier for managers as well, because the fund doesn't need active rebalancing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As I read it, the word bubble in the Burry interview was really just used for clickbait purposes - his argument wasn't so much that index funds are overvalued, it was that there's opportunity in small caps because they're underrepresented in index funds, and everyone else is investing in index funds.

<comment><USER16> The Bloomberg article mixed Bury's words and the author's words quite a bit, and I'm beginning to wonder if the whole reason we're having this discussion is because some important nuance was lost.

It's hard to see why Mom and Pop buy and hold index investors should care about the liquidity risk Bury talks about...market cap weighted funds will be fine in the long run because the ratio of each underlying stock to a fund share will be constant through the temporary price fluctuations...so no money is lost if the price crashes and then comes back to the same sport shortly after.

Perhaps there are other market participants who are leveraged and would find themselves insolvent if indexes cause a liquidity problem? I just don't see how the fund investors themselves would be hurt if underlying stock prices went out of whack for an afternoon.

<comment><USER17> I agree with your views, but anecdotally, my worry is about how many of those Mom and Pop investors bought the index funds _specifically because_ the index funds have recently performed well; and of that faction, how much of the capital allocated to index funds was pulled from other sources, causing those sources to fall in value?

The data would also support that on a dollar-weighted basis, most index fund investors are not really buying-and-holding:

"Turnover rates for two of the most popular ETFs are higher than 3500%(!), an average holding period of about a week. That is dozens of times greater than the trading liquidity of even its most liquid constituents"

[http://www.grantspub.com/files/presentations/Grant's%20Confe...](http://www.grantspub.com/files/presentations/Grant's%20Conference_Oct%204%202016_Steven%20Bregman_Final\[2\].pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > _Yes, index investors are free riders, but this is the way most markets > work. We don't go to the grocery store to bid on prices of oranges against > one another to set an equilibrium. The market does that for us._

Actually, our behavior does shape the price of oranges. If we go to the store and they're less expensive, then we are more likely to buy them. The analogy breaks down because he's comparing indexes and oranges, not stock indexes and food indexes. Imagine if 14% of people went to the grocery, picked up a sack of pre-selected items that were best sellers last week -- all in the name of efficiency and reducing overhead. That would be quite weird indeed, and some people would point out that if enough people did this it would create market inefficiencies and potentially cause a glut or crash of certain food prices.

<comment><USER19> We bid on a basket of groceries by choosing a store to shop at though. The price of oranges is mostly immaterial when compared to the greater pricing of the collection of goods purchased in a single trip. This is why loss leaders make sense. They entice you in w/ a distorted price and then recoup the loss across your basket.

<comment><USER18> > * We bid on a basket of groceries by choosing a store to shop at though*

I'm not sure I agree with this. Most grocery stores stock the same food, so it's not as if going to Lucky instead of Safeway shapes what you can/will get. You're right that if you go for particular sale items, you're more likely to get those. But does that have a basket-level impact? I'm not sure it does. Also, consider that when you go to a grocery store, you probably purchase about .05% of the items they sell. It's not like we go to Safeway and buy most of the things they sell there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Does this guy not see the contradictions in his own argument? He simultaneously believes that active funds are doing a fine job of price discovery AND that managers at active funds who deviate too much from their (passive) benchmark are likely to be fired.

Also he jumps around Burry's arguments by focusing on liquidity and in AAPL and FB. Burry's whole point is about less liquid components at the bottom of indices which are getting dragged upward by a lack of price discovery and inclusion in widespread passive funds. Since they're market-cap weighted, this would have a cyclical component, more passive purchases -> higher market cap -> higher weighting in passive indices -> more passive purchases. This would result in another cyclical component where that cycle causes: passive fund outperformance -> increased investing in passive funds -> passive fund outperformance.

Then in an event where people start liquidating there is no one there to purchase those stocks and they've been dramatically overvalued anyways so their price gets crushed. This is specifically why Burry likes small cap active.

If you pay attention to finance discussion on this board then you've definitely heard the phrase: "The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent." The argument here is that irrationality has persisted long enough to crush most 'rational' price discoverers.

>Do you know what didn't cause the Great Depression or Japan stock market crash or 1987 crash or 1973-74 bear market? Index funds. Index funds also weren't around for the South Sea bubble in the 1700s. Do you know what did cause these bubbles and subsequent crashes? Human nature.

Imagine doing this but replacing 'index funds' with mortgage CDOs.

Look I'm not even saying Burry is right but the absolute inability of the finance commentariat to actually address what he's saying is giving him more credence.

<comment><USER21> I believe this is related to the rise in buybacks where price fundamentals no longer matter, only goal for companies is to get the largest market cap as possible ignoring long term risks in order to attract an increasing flow of passive money being poured into the markets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> > When an index fund investor sells, they're technically selling their > holdings in direct proportion to their weighting in the index. So there is > literally no market impact.

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't there a well known price premium for stocks included in major index funds? As I understand it, the most popular indexes target a few companies, thus index funds that track them funnel a disproportionate volume of demand to those companies causing a price premium.

It's stands to reason that if a sudden outflow of money from index funds occurred, that price premium would swing the equal and opposite direction.

<comment><USER23> I've asked this question before and consistently failed to get a clear answer - why is there any deviation between index fund weighting and market cap?

To some extent, I'm sure the definition of a "public" company comes into play. Not all stocks are traded in all exchanges, so you could include stocks only listed on one exchange.

Then there's the practice of many index funds picking the top N stocks by market cap. This seems like a backwards practice to me. The small cap stocks should be limited in weight by... their small market cap.

Then there are other hairy factors. Even out of the stocks in an index, it seems that weight does not correspond to capitalization. The reason seems to be some historical drivel. While I can understand that is the way it is, I fail to understand why it should be that way.

Why should an equities index fund be anything other than public companies proportional to their size? If people prefer large cap or small cap, then those variations should be offered as special boutique products. But it seems that we have it backwards, where the default offering is based on arbitrary non-proportional weights, and with a cutoff restricting it to large cap.

<comment><USER24> >The small cap stocks should be limited in weight by... their small market cap.

A lot of index funds include small caps nowadays. Not all of them because it's more difficult to track 4000 versus 500 stocks. Also the more popular indexes have usually been around for a long time and have fewer constituents.

>it seems that weight does not correspond to capitalization

Pretty much all index funds invest in the public float and it makes sense:

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

<comment><USER23> The public float sounds legit. I wouldn't argue with that, in fact, it's probably the technically accurate metric.

Where I was coming from was...

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

> The value of the Dow is not a weighted arithmetic mean[5] and does not > represent its component companies' market capitalization, but rather the sum > of the price of one share of stock for each component company. The sum is > corrected by a factor which changes whenever one of the component stocks has > a stock split or stock dividend, so as to generate a consistent value for > the index.[6]. It is not an accurate representation of the US market or > total market.[7][8][9]

It mentions "consistent value", but that's over time. You can be misrepresented in weightings but still consistent over time.

Basing the weightings on the stock price sounds royally stupid... if I'm even reading that correctly. But maybe this insanity is just the DOW?

It's also the first one I grab for, because it's the first one that media reports on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I just looked at the prospectus for one index ETF I own [1]. It actually has a lot of wiggle room. 10% of assets can be invested in things that aren't in the index. The 90% that's guaranteed to be invested in index assets is also not guaranteed to be exactly weighted by market cap. The fund is not even required to own every asset in the index.

I don't know what other ETFs have in their prospectuses, but this wiggle room seems like it could mitigate some of the concerns about crashes due to low liquidity in thinly traded stocks.

[1] [http://hosted.rightprospectus.com/ETF/Fund.aspx?dt=P&cu=8085...](http://hosted.rightprospectus.com/ETF/Fund.aspx?dt=P&cu=808524102)

</comment><comment><USER26> Reminder: "index funds" are also managed by humans. For example, all stocks in the S&P 500 are chosen by Standard & Poors. Stocks are added and removed as they see fit based on various criteria such as profitability, float, market cap, &c. The only things that I can see that truly differentiate S&P from other active managers are that they

(a) have very little skin in the game.

(b) they get to make decisions about what other people have to do with their money

(c) they tend to recommend more stocks with less turnover than typical active managers

(d) they tell the public ahead of time what will be bought or sold, so traders get to buy/sell ahead of time

(e) their actions are relatively predictable, thanks to a long history of sticking to their stated goals.

<comment><USER21> The S&P 500 is basically a group of largest established 500 market cap stocks traded in the US proportioned to market cap. There is no active management determining price and weights here.

<comment><USER27> I don't think so. Otherwise Uber and Snap would both be in the S&P 500.

<comment><USER9> There are certain criteria, see [1] or [2] for a summary. They need to be publicly traded for sufficient time, have sufficient free float, be profitable, etc.

See [3] for example on why Tesla isn't.

[1] [https://us.spindices.com/documents/methodologies/methodology...](https://us.spindices.com/documents/methodologies/methodology- sp-us-indices.pdf)

[2] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%26P_500_Index#Selection_cr...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%26P_500_Index#Selection_criteria)

[3] [https://seekingalpha.com/article/4088016-will-tesla-join- s-a...](https://seekingalpha.com/article/4088016-will-tesla-join-s-and-p-500)

<comment><USER26> Yep. So, you don't just own the top 500 stocks by market cap. You own a set of stocks that resemble that idea, but are in fact still choices made by S&P. Also notice that stocks don't immediately get dropped when they fall below that criteria; there's a buffer for how bad they have to get to be dropped. Additionally, the rules governing these choices are free to change at any time. For example, whether stocks with split voting shares should qualify is still a discussion.

Let's also not forget Hacker News's favorite law: Goodhart's Law. The S&P has performed wonderfully well when it was observed as an index. But now that it's a target, the world will change around it.

<comment><USER21> It's a huge stretch to say the S&P 500 isn't the current top 500 stocks by market cap just because they don't include several recent IPOs and have discretion to exclude stocks based on potential stock manipulation. These are very rare cases that have little affect on the overall index. In time (not instantly) they add large established companies. Proportions are always weighted directly to market cap percentage. They're not weighing some stocks higher than others like how an active manager would allocate.

Agree "beating the index" is quite a joke since that is the benchmark for fund performance and so much money is passive invested now. Matching the index performance is saying "our fund equities have appreciated on equal basis to how all others have".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm a little confused about the point about index funds being a small percentage of assets, when there are constantly articles like "Passive investing automatically tracking indexes now controls nearly half the US stock market." [https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/19/passive-investing-now- contro...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/19/passive-investing-now-controls- nearly-half-the-us-stock-market.html)

His graph shows an arrow pointed at the small sliver on ETFs, but that isn't necessarily the same as passive investing which would include a lot of mutual funds.

</comment><comment><USER29> "When an index fund investor sells, they're technically selling their holdings in direct proportion to their weighting in the index. So there is literally no market impact."

Have to take the rest of the article with several grains of salt after reading this. Even if the index was spread against all stocks it would have an impact. It implies that you can only move money around the market, not take it out of the market altogether.

</comment><comment><USER30> It doesn't seem silly at all. I agree with Michael Burry; I think passive investing is a bubble -- by definition. If you spent $10 million to make a cafe in your small hometown, you would never get that money back for the obvious reason that you could simply never sell that much coffee. The fundamentals aren't there.

So if you invest in "all coffee shops" or "all shops in my hometown", you're not looking at fundamentals, you're investing to invest. And, by definition, (assuming all shops are priced correctly) you're artificially inflating.

If someone invests across a group of stocks, it's because "the market always goes up over time." And if enough people believe that then it can be true for a very, very long period. But eventually it becomes your $10 million coffee shop. It's a bubble. And even a bubble that lasts decades will eventually pop.

<comment><USER31> There are always active investors who could take advantage of this valuation mismatch and bet for/against specific companies that they think are undervalued/overvalued and make money. Eventually this valuation mismatch would show up in their P/L statement and balance sheet. Passive investing freeloads on active investors - in a sense. That's all it is and I for one think it's great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Meta: I read articles like this, and some of the 5+ paragraph comments on this site, and it makes a ton of sense to me why people are downright afraid of the work required to learn how the economy works at a low level. It's crazy how often probabilities are presented as fact.

My mother-in-law works for the state doing financial investing, and I've seen some of the functions and constant values she's had to memorize to get her degrees. Constants that are based on models that are often decades old. It's all ultimately a form of forecasting based on models, but it's treated as gospel of how it will all occur.

Perhaps that's why it works at all - everyone's using the same models, and they behave in a set pattern (established by schooling and "how it's always been done") based off those models, which makes the models accurate.

</comment><comment><USER33> The dig at "Active Management" feels like it detracts from the article, but I guess they're playing a bit to the audience.

What I found a little more concerning is their glossing over of the liquidity risks. If everyone wants to sell an index, then at some point that index needs to liquidate shares (proportionally). Those shares won't have uniform demand, which is going to cause both price fluctuations (drops) which affect the value of the index. The fun part here too is that this can play some havoc with market-cap weighted indexes, which now need to adjust their holding %'s.

<comment><USER34> No they don't. Let's suppose we have A Corp and B Corp both 50٪ of the total market and A Corps price and hence market cap falls by 50٪, making it 33٪ of the total market. The holdings of a fund haven't changed but the exposure still equals the market.

<comment><USER21> He is saying when people exit and index sells all their stocks equal to current market cap rankings that the opposite side of trade buy demand for all those won't be equal. Bad stocks may go down further than solid companies. A shift in value vs growth preferences caused by the downturn itself could be the cause of that. The entire index and all holdings would then HAVE to readjust for this discrepancy and lead to more forced selling of bad stocks and buying of solid companies creating more liquidity crisis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> It depends on whether and to what degree indexes are affecting price discovery:

If prices are being set predominantly by active investors who are truly buying and selling _based on bottom-up, security-level research_ , then the percentage of assets that happens to be invested in passive funds is not that important, because price discovery would be working exactly as you and I would hope.

But if prices are being set predominantly by (a) active investors who are _chasing indexes because they don 't have a choice_, (b) active managers who are _being forced to sell positions_ to cope with a high rate of redemptions (from investors who plow that capital back into passive strategies), and (c) traders who grasp this dynamic and shrewdly exploit it for as long as possible; then price discovery might not be working as we would hope. Prices would no longer be reflecting perceived risk; they would be reflecting the (temporary) influence of this once-in-history dynamical process.

Burry makes a compelling case, I think, that the latter is a more accurate description of the current state of financial markets than the former, and that this state of affairs can only persist so long as capital continues to flow from active to passive strategies at such high rates. Globally, assets under management are not infinite, so capital cannot flow indefinitely from active to passive strategies: Sooner or letter, this dynamical process must exhaust itself.

<comment><USER36> And there would be hedge funds that would try to exploit this eventually pushing things back into balance

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> His point about the increase in volume leading to price discovery is laughable. More algos than ever are trading with each other on the subsecond scale but that means nothing for long term equity values. With the rise of index tracking there are fewer than ever investors actively positioning themselves against a standard indexed allocation by picking good and selling bad stocks. Indexing is riding the boat buying everything in equal components due to market cap weight.

</comment><comment><USER19> IMO the real issue is amount of cash available for investment and the lack of investable assets[1].

If i were king for a day I'd legislate a low bar that required the equities to be listed so that both the insiders cannot be barred from liquidity and so that the investing public can access those parts of the economy.

[1]: [https://personal.vanguard.com/pdf/ISGPCA.pdf](https://personal.vanguard.com/pdf/ISGPCA.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER37> At some point, someone (or a collective) needs to make a decision about how capital is allocated among different firms.

Traditional money managers may not be the right way to do that, but we should be clear that decisions are still being made somehow.

I guess it's not the investors plowing money into the first index fund they find. And it's not the index fund, because they don't do a lot of management.

So I guess it's a handful of hedge funds that set prices?

<comment><USER38> Index funds do not contribute to the process of price discovery.

As long as a certain fraction of trades are performed by active investors, price discovery will continue to be accurate. Currently, active traders dominate, making up the majority of trades. This fraction could be much smaller than it currently is and still be OK.

<comment><USER37> There are still people discovering prices, and they are still getting paid somehow, probably by first-mover advantage.

Are we sure that the right model is to just watch these first-movers and do what they do?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I find it grimly amusing that the posters here expressing variations on the "this is fine" position are making the exact arguments that market boosters were making before/during the mortgage finance crisis in 2007/2008.

The problem with those arguments is the fact that what turns a recession into a depression is demand strikes: when the people with cash lose faith in the integrity of the market, they just take their money off the table and go home. Arbitrage and market correction dynamics cease to function.

The fact that depressions can be caused by collapses in demand as well as in supply was the key insight of Keynes et al. in the 1930's, which is why he argued that the government must have the power to regulate markets and the authority to step in and become the buyer of last resort in the face of an incipient depression.

Keynes' insight was conveniently forgotten by the early 2000's, regulation was resisted, the shadow market grew out of bounds, bailouts and stimulus met political resistance, and the rest is history.

How short the time span of memory is.

</comment><comment><USER40> Now my main concern with index funds I hold (broad market/large cap) is that I definitely have exposure to businesses (e.g. fossil fuels) that I don't actually want to be invested in.

Anyone have suggestions on the best sustainable ETFs out there?

</comment><comment><USER41> I think this idea of an index fund bubble makes a lot of sense in terms of metrics like economic efficiency. Investors are paying more money to buy stocks which provide less economic value per dollar invested... but low productivity and economic inefficiency doesn't mean low profits. Indexed companies often have monopolies in their fields and can derive profits from rent seeking activities and lobbying for beneficial regulations so they don't need to be efficient in order to derive profits.

</comment><comment><USER42> I believe what's missing from the recent analyses of beta/index investing is that alpha continues to lag when in theory stock pickers should be able to find more mispriced assets. Although volatility around earnings (which serve as valuation reset) has generally increased. Unprecedented bull market and 3/4 of investable wealth now pooling into passives funds simply cannot be overcome. What it does provide is significantly asymmetrical opportunities shorting single stocks.

</comment><comment><USER43> Wasn't the housing bubble driven in part by a form of passive investing, namely bundling mortgages (one of the "safest private investments")?

Economic systems are feedback loops. If something is the best investment that causes it to become a bad investment in proportion to how rapidly people realize it's a good investment.

</comment><comment><USER44> In these times I'm looking at more conservative "passive investments" such as interest bearing accounts, FDIC insured. With Twitter posts resulting in large swings in the market, I declare "market manipulation" by those with large numbers of followers.

</comment><comment><USER17> For those interested in this topic, Horizon Kinetics' 2016 presentation "Indexation: Capitalist Tool" is a fascinating read, as it points out some baffling structural mismatches between indexes and their underlying securities beyond just liquidity (which was the main focus of Burry's analysis).

[http://www.grantspub.com/files/presentations/Grant's%20Confe...](http://www.grantspub.com/files/presentations/Grant's%20Conference_Oct%204%202016_Steven%20Bregman_Final\[2\].pdf)

 _Edit_ Some highlights:

> Does an asset allocation program or roboadvisor tool seeking foreign market > exposure know that 6 of the top 10 holdings of the iShares MSCI Spain Index > get 70% or more of their revenues from outside of Spain? That a purchase of > the ETF is, essentially, investing outside Spain? The same holds true for > emerging markets ETFs.

> the business demand of ETF organizers for liquid stocks has only increased, > with the influx of funds directed into the same limited population of liquid > stocks. ExxonMobil is one of the most liquid. Ergo, it will be found almost > anywhere one can imagine that it can be placed. It's Growth, It's Value, > Its' a Bird, It's a Plane...

> Would an active manager of a low-risk strategy be permitted the risk of a > near-50% weighting in financials? ... These largest-in-class ETFs can > legitimately be characterized as low volatility, since of late the financial > sector has not been volatile. And the high weighting enables the ETF to > attain its advertised low Beta.

</comment><comment><USER45> If an index selloff could cause a drop in underlying stock price, wouldn't we see this effect when stocks are relegated from various indexes? Does this effect exist?

<comment><USER46> This effect does exist, but changes to indexes are public, so this information is mostly included in the price already.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Back in 2007 you could've made a similar chart to show that CDOs are a small amount of the market.

What's unclear is the impact that ETFs have on prices. This "debunking" doesn't address the point about low volume.

Let's suppose most of those non-ETFs owners are buy and hold investors that bought in a long time ago and wouldn't buy anywhere near today's prices.

That would mean ETF holders, especially those who joined late, could still be responsible for a disproportionate share of today's prices. If the market shows signs of weakness, these people need to get out, especially if they bought on leverage.

</comment><comment><USER48> As others have noted, there's a lot here that isn't relevant to Burry's argument, but this seems like the key rebuttal to me:

 _Active funds literally own the market. When you buy an index fund of the total stock market, you are literally buying the stock market in proportion to the shares held by all active investors. If you sum up the collective holdings of active managers, what you basically get is a market-cap-weighted index. Index fund investors are simply buying what the active investors have laid out for them._

I don't have the knowledge to evaluate this statement, but to me, it undermines Burry's point that passive investing distorts prices.

And this bit that he quotes from someone else expands on the point:

 _The use of price signals by those who played no role in setting them may be capitalism's most important feature. That most of us and most of our dollars don't have to pick stocks, or to price air conditioners, is a great benefit and taking advantage of it makes us honest smart capitalists, not commissars._

As I understand it, Burry's argument is that index funds distort prices because capital is being allocated in an automated and uniform way, instead of being allocated according to the expertise of a diverse, success-weighted group of investors who are motivated to make intelligent and informed decisions. At some point the difference between the index-fund-driven prices and the "true" prices according to informed opinion will become obvious, and investors will attempt to flee index funds, popping the bubble. The rebuttal in this argument is that active investors are still controlling the market because index funds mirror their activity. We will never reach a state where people will rush to "escape" from the index funds to actively managed funds, because index funds will always approximate the aggregate opinion of the actively managed funds.

This accords with my naive idea of how index funds work, but I don't know if they actually _do_ work that way, so I can't evaluate the soundness of either argument.

<comment><USER49> > Index fund investors are simply buying what the active investors have laid > out for them.

That works until it doesn't. If passive becomes big enough, the indices themselves will be the ones steering the ship. The active managers won't be significant enough to sway the indices.

I heard this analogy on a podcast (I think it was Invest Like the Best): Indices are like a drunk person, and active managers are like the sober friend guiding the drunk home. But if the drunk becomes 10x the size of the sober friend, the friend is no longer strong enough to be a guide.

If passive funds get big enough to dwarf active management, they eventually will be the ones steering the market, and active investors will be noise at that point. In that scenario, I'm not sure what happens, but it seems that indexing would become more like a Ponsi scheme.

<comment><USER48> As I understand it, the index funds aren't drunk and aimless, forced in a certain direction as a side effect of the trades of active investors. They are intentionally and methodically following the active investors.

<comment><USER50> Or the underlying companies that are traded.

This "evil zombie index fund" trope seems to imply that index managers just continue to blindly buy the stocks in the index regardless of events, falsely inflating the value of companies. If a company is unable to generate cashflow from its underlying business, this will quickly become evident because it will be unable to pay its creditors and employees. It could take advantage of its "inflated value" by issuing shares to generate cash, but this would then obviously begin diluting the stock and cause the price to fall, the "zombie indexes" wouldn't simply continue to price it at a constant value. I.e. price discovery will happen, just perhaps not as quickly as an active analyst monitoring the stock would do it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I don't buy the liquidity argument. Their mere existence creates liquidity. Two sides to every trade. Index fund "sell offs" will likely go to buyers of the same index fund shares but at a lower price.

Apple alone has $50 billion in cash that will flow into Vanguard if index funds hit a 50% plunge. Same with Buffet. Index funds may be bubble priced, but they don't suffer from a liquidity issue.

</comment><comment><USER52> "When an index fund investor sells, they're technically selling their holdings in direct proportion to their weighting in the index. So there is literally no market impact"

This is a straight out false statement. Who is this guy again? Oh yea, he has his hands in passive investment big time.

</comment><comment><USER53> That is a very confusing headline.

</comment><comment><USER54> yes!

</comment><comment><USER55> I think someday we will think that index funds were pernicious but we don't understand entirely why yet.

If you believe, for instance, that there is an "S&P 500" bubble then there is difficulty turning that into an investable thesis. The S&P 500 is about 80% of the valuation of the stock market. If the S&P 500 pops, then relatively the other 20% of the market will go up, but how much can it go up?

The most harmful effect we know now of the passive funds is that they have a strong incentive (when they vote their shares) to discourage competition. If they own both AT&T and Verizon they would rather both of these be profitable at the expense of consumers rather than work hard to gain market share for one or the other.</comment>


A Google a Day - <AUTHOR> http://www.agoogleaday.com/ <comment><USER2> These days, you can not have Pub Quizes with at least a few teams cheating by using a phone to Google the answers. Knowing trivia of the top of your head seems to have become as useful a skill as calligraphy.

A friend of mine was about to fall for a hoax/scam. And even though they changed the words and meaning of quite a few elements, I was able to pinpoint the exact scam using carefully crafted Google queries.

With Google there is just no way to bullshit people anymore. Someone would tell a strong story in the 90s during a birthday, and you'd have to go to library the next day to verify or discard it. Not anymore.

Someone asked why those old modems made noise, and instead of giving an answer right away, it took all of 15 seconds to find the answer online, much better than I ever could answer it.

I remember my first job skill test. It was multiple choice and you were allowed to use the internet. I answered all questions by Googling keywords from the question, in combination with keywords from each answer, and looking which combination gave the most results. Answering this way I got a near perfect score. There were questions about programming languages I hadn't even written a "Hello World"-example for.

With all this goodness, comes of course the danger of relying on Google for all your answers. If it is not on the first page of the results it is not true. Especially younger people believe a lot of facts they find online. Another danger is using Google for confirming a bias: With so many pages online, there is bound to be a page in the results that agrees with your initial hunch, however incorrect it is.

I participated in the pilot for Google Answers. There were people there that, if the answer was to be found anywhere online, could answer it, no matter their expertise on the subject. Googling well is a valuable skill.

<comment><USER3> > With Google there is just no way to bullshit people anymore.

The existence of spam, nigerian prince scams, "Windows Tech Support" scammers, phishing, etc. show there's more than enough bullshit to go around. At what rate do they say suckers are born?

<comment><USER4> > At what rate do they say suckers are born?

About 4/s[0], considering newborns are all suckers, both regarding their knowledge of scams and more literal minded sucking.

That said, I'd be interesting to know what the percentage of suckers is by age against a broad spectrum of scams. That said, someone who can tell a tech support scam in seconds might still fall for the Chinese Tea house scam (two women invite foreigner for tea at teahouse, owner shakes foreigner down for money). Or the China Stock Options scam (foreigners can't own stock in pre-IPO Chinese company. This makes stock option agreements with foreigners null and void). Or the China Investment scam (where you get treated as a cheap dev team instead of a viable investment). Anywayys, I'm getting carried away.

[0][http://www.ecology.com/birth-death-rates/](http://www.ecology.com/birth- death-rates/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> FWIW, if you enjoy this kind of stuff, you might like Daniel Russell's (Google research scientist, creator of A Google A Day) blog on using Google Search for research (and research on how people use search):

[http://searchresearch1.blogspot.com/](http://searchresearch1.blogspot.com/)

He regularly posts quirky challenges (What kind of cow is in this picture? Can you see the Farallon Islands from San Francisco, and where should you stand at what time of year to best see them?). Also contains lots of useful information about the state of the query and engine, such as which search operators have been deprecated, or which obscure search operators no one seems to know about.

<comment><USER6> That's a good start but looking up discrete facts is far less useful that looking up deep answers or articles about very specific subjects. I wish Google taught that.

<comment><USER5> I think researchers might argue that looking for deep answers almost always depends on being able to look up and efficiently collate discrete facts that are straightforward when considered in isolation.

<comment><USER7> There should be two parts: part 1. Gather as many facts as possible part 2. Separate the wheat facts from the chaff(sp?) facts in relation to whatever problem you are working on

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> squeaky-clean Some of these were neat, some were really stupid.

"What do you learn the definition of on page 21 of the 2011/2012 Official Rules of the NBA" was "legal goal" really? It doesn't say that anywhere on the page. "legal field goal" didn't work, "Scoring and Timing" didn't work (the header of the page). None of the other definitions on Page 21 worked, there's a few. The only mention of "legal goal" is in the Index where it points to page 21.

<comment><USER8> it was field goal, which is the common name used in statistics and broadcasts.

<comment> squeaky-clean Ah, when I used the first letters hint, it said they were L and G, not F and G, strange.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In a review of Google Home, I was amazed to learn that you can ask "Who is the guy that plays God in a lot of movies" and Google will answer back with Morgan Freeman.

I'd love to try asking the questions from this site to Google Home and see how it does.

<comment><USER10> George Burns? (kidding - Morgan Freeman does a great job too).

<comment><USER11> Burns was good as both God and the Devil in "Oh, God! You Devil"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> With this and [https://quickdraw.withgoogle.com/](https://quickdraw.withgoogle.com/), whether I want to play super-obscure-trivia or draw stick figures, google has me covered.

<comment><USER13> Is this actually by Google? I couldn't easily figure that out.

<comment><USER14> have you tried Googling it?

Jokes aside, yes it's from google. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Google_A_Day](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Google_A_Day))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This reminds me of "The Wikipedia Game" we'd play at school.

You'd all start on one random page, and race to get to some completely unrelated target page, only by clicking through links to other pages.

It was always surprising how few degrees of separation there were between wildly unrelated topics.

<comment><USER16> We played that too, I think we called it "five clicks to Jesus (or Hitler)" or something. After a while you learn which pages will probably be very long and general and will be good jumping off places to head in a new direction.

<comment><USER11> I just did this starting with the movie "Oh, God! You Devil":

\- James Cromwell

\- Category: American people of German descent

\- Category: Ambassadors of Germany to the United States

\- Hans-Heinrich Dieckhoff

\- Adolf Hitler

<comment><USER16> That one is easy if you're trying to get to Jesus :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This seems pretty fun however navigation seems a bit difficult. Some links from Google results wouldn't open and I had to open in a different tab, then go back to the main tab. Not sure if it's my browser or the game?

<comment><USER18> I had the same experience with unopenable links. I just did everything in a separate tab.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wish it gave me some sense of how my score stacked up to others.

<comment><USER20> FWIW, I had a total score around 1850. It took me quite a while to figure the first one out but the second two were faster.

<comment><USER21> Same, 1807. I got hung up on the first one since I didn't know we could click links.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The fact that it requires to type in the exact answer (for its own definition of exact) is annoying. The first question I got was how Hemingway's protagonists are called. Let's say the answer is "A B". Well, the answer I had to type in was "The Hemingway A B". Both "The" and "Hemingway" are mandatory.

Later the question was what musical period was the definition of symphony, sonata etc. standartized in. I copy pasted "C period", it didn't work, so I tried some other ones. Well, apparently "C" was the correct answer all along.

</comment><comment><USER23> In the early 1990s there was a very conceptually similar game called the Internet Hunt:

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

An example of the very first one, from August 1992:

[http://www.ibiblio.org/history/1sthunt.txt](http://www.ibiblio.org/history/1sthunt.txt)

Google has definitely made these a lot easier, so the questions have had to get a lot harder!

</comment><comment><USER24> Very hard to use it on mobile phone

</comment><comment><USER25> They should call you out for directly googling the question, as it defeats the point, since you would get the answer only because the exact question was posted on some forum.

</comment><comment><USER26> I had a trailing space and it said my answer was wrong

<comment><USER27> ya, it had a trailing space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> this sounds like fun, but the first query i did threw up a firefox "blocked by content security policy" error.

</comment><comment><USER29> Looks like a nice way for Google to train a machine learning model to answer trivia questions

<comment><USER30> Looks like a nice way for Google to prove that their ML model has made us into thinking we are indeed teaching it how to answer trivia questions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> What's the point of this? To learn how to use google search?

Who is the intended audience?

<comment><USER14> it's a game, imo it's a lot of fun

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Anyone else's comp become a turbine?

</comment><comment><USER14> are the questions always the same?

<comment><USER33> I believe its a set of three new ones everyday

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> i remember a game very similar to this (that i used to participate in and do very poorly) back around mid 90s that people used to play online. except you'd use things like archie and gopher. i don't remember the details but someone(s) would come up with questions and you'd have to find the answers online using these tools (before google).

anyone remember this game? my recollection is hazy but i think the questions were sent out periodically and teams would rush to get them all answered first.

<comment><USER35> I remember something similar that was based on a website that would post questions that would lead you, after searching, to some particular site. Once you found the right page, there would be a logo for the game (something round with question marks?) that would take back to the original site and give you points for finding it. They kept a running tally that was used for a leader board and I think possibly some sort of prizes? I vaguely recall some sort of name like "Riddler" or something, but I have never been able to track down anything about it outside my own memory...</comment></comment>


Microsoft says turn off Windows feature to protect Windows - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/security/78261/microsoft-says-turn-windows-feature-protect-windows <comment><USER2> abennett exists only to submit itworld.com stories which are frequently just FUD: [http://searchyc.com/user/abennett?only=domain&sort=by_da...](http://searchyc.com/user/abennett?only=domain&sort=by_date)

</comment><comment><USER3> Did the author really just reference Wikipedia? If you reference that Wiki entry not only is it very poorly written, it doesn't cite many references either.

</comment><comment><USER4> Umm, isn't this the same as Linux????

You have to "harden" a Linux box from most distributions.

OpenBSD is a nice flag carrier, but it comes with most services turned off.

Would you leave default configured Fedora smbd/bind/sendmail running on a server in Production???

</comment><comment><USER5> Isn't this always the way Windows is? Microsoft comes out with Vista and the first thing everyone wants to do is show you how to turn things off to make it run better. To fix bugs, Microsoft wants you to turn things off.</comment>


Show HN: My weekend project using the Soundcloud API - <AUTHOR> http://www.getworkdonemusic.com <comment><AUTHOR> I'm a college student with a bit too much time this summer. Thought of this site on a plane ride a few months ago and finally decided to put it together, let me know what you think! Should be great coding music.

<comment><USER2> Do you know any other sources of coding music?

<comment><AUTHOR> My favorite is definitely Trance Around the World <http://trancearoundtheworld.com> \-- I actually themed the music on this site to kind of fit in a similar flow, I always feel like a productivity robot when listening to TATW

<comment><USER3> TATW is the only thing I can listen to when doing work...it just pulls you in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can you explain what it is?

From what I can tell, there is a "Fast" playlist and a "Faster" playlist of music (which you've selected) to listen to when working, because the songs are upbeat I presume. So the play button plays the music, and do the Fast/Faster buttons switch between the two lists?

Or is that not it at all?

<comment><USER5> I'm assuming this is BPM, if you want something a bit harder. IMO needs an option for ambient/downtempo stuff I personally find it hard to get stuff done to dance music.

<comment><USER6> You might like somafm.com, they have some great channels including beat blender, among others. Ad free too.

<comment><USER7> Di.fm is also good for the same reason. I find I listen to Soma more though because of Groove Salad.

<comment><USER6> I totally forgot about groove salad. I'll check out di.fm .. for now I'm liking getworkdonemusic.com a lot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm more a fan of rock and metal, but I dig the Fast & Faster functionality. It would be awesome to have that for a rock & metal playlist:

hard rock -> heavy metal -> thrash metal -> speed metal

And for this genre, even Hard & Harder functionality. Hells yea.

<comment><USER9> I'm surprised at how little Rock/Metal music is represented on Soundcloud. I have several songs I recorded years ago that get virtually no views on Soundcloud, most likely because they are tagged as rock/metal tracks. Seems like these bands are more content with MySpace than experimenting on Soundcloud.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great Job. I viewed this just because I like seeing what people on HN are working on. Then 1 hour later, I realized that the music was still playing and I was in a state of flow with the work I was doing. This surprised me because I don't normally enjoy this type of music.

Definitely put "slow", "medium" categories on there. Also, maybe filter out the songs that do those jarring breakbeats since those break the state of flow.

</comment><comment><USER11> Good stuff man, I like what I hear so far! What type of algorithms are you using to choose what to play?

</comment><comment><USER12> Nice work! I'd love to see the addition of a volume control. With my headphones, even at the lowest volume level above mute, the music is still louder than I'd like.

This seems to be a common issue for me with a lot of the embedded music players.

<comment><USER13> Same issue for me! Unusable without volume control.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm not sure if you just happened to hit some good songs or what, but I like this a good deal, am using it this evening and plan on doing so in future. My tired old play lists thank you. :-)

</comment><comment><USER15> I've used soundcloud for the past few weeks for background programming music and the main issue I had was the need to find the next artist with enough songs for the next session.

Thanks for saving me time!

</comment><comment><USER16> Dear god; PLEASE MAKE AN ELECTROSWING version/channel.

Like one that plays through Parov Stelar, Caravan Palace etc...

This is awesome!

This is the next Pandora

Just noticed: REQUIRES a volume slider. Also a Download link.

<comment><USER17> +1 for Parov Stelar & Belleruche. Check out 8tracks for some ElectroSwing playlists.

<comment><USER16> Have a link to a good playlist?

<comment> simba-hiiipower shameless act of self promotion, but i threw this together a while back: <http://8tracks.com/simba-hiiipower/swing-swing>

a mix of mostly 'mainstream' (if there is such a thing) electro-swing tracks i like to groove to.

<comment><USER16> SICK Channel!

Where are you? Do you play out? I am in SFBay and really need to get out and see some live electroswing.

We used to dance at top of the mark in SF - I'd really like to help organize an electroswing party at that venue!

EDIT: I see you're in DC...

Email me your contact info: sstave at gmail dot com -- If I succeed in organizing an electroswing party in SF - your presence will be required.

<comment> simba-hiiipower haha, that sounds totally awesome!

and yeah I'm hoping to make it out to the SF area in the near future; would definitely be down if it works out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The interface is nice and I like the responsiveness of it all. Could you briefly describe the technology/infrastructure stack you used?

</comment><comment><USER6> This is great, I've wanted something like this for a long time, wish I could upvote it a hundred times ;)

If you don't mind doing a blog post on how you found and picked all the music it would be interesting to see how this came together!

</comment><comment> why-el A feature to save the songs will be great. I know that I can go back to SoundCloud when clicking on a song but its a hassle so far. So how about adding a small profile? Otherwise excellent idea.

</comment><comment><USER19> I want the ability to choose genre - Trance is ok sometimes, but I like to be able to switch it up. Should be an easy adjustment. Check the input, sanitize, pass to your javascript api call.

</comment><comment><USER20> Might want to fix your like button. I had to click again to confirm posting to my wall (not sure if new Facebook feature or because you don't have any Facebook meta tags on the site)

</comment><comment><USER21> What would be cool is if this hooked into your github account or similar and was able to measure what effect music actually has on productivity (assuming a causal relationship).

</comment><comment><USER22> this music is terrible. good job in getting it done though

<comment><USER23> really ? I am liking what I am hearing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Love it. Would love a way to play it outside of the browser. I guess I could pop it open in a Fluid window, though.

</comment><comment><USER25> I like the idea, not so much the music though. My recommendation for getting work done music: soma.fm.

</comment><comment><USER26> Do one for mashups similar to Kap Slap's spring break mix, and you can have my first born.

</comment><comment><USER27> This is awesome! If you're in San Francisco (or next time you're here) I owe you a beer.

</comment><comment><USER28> This sadly doesn't make me want to code, it makes me want to compose music. Curses!

</comment><comment><USER29> been looking for something like this! Needs more collections and more options!

<comment><USER30> I would kill for a "no vocals" option. Trance vocals make me want to jump out of a window.

<comment><USER31> "No vocals" would be especially nice for coding.

EDIT: P.S. I've been using it all evening and I love the site. Thanks Ryan!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I like the minimalist design but I think a volume slider would be nice!

</comment><comment><USER33> If it chose well based on existing SC favorites it could be great.

</comment><comment><USER34> I had this same idea! Great job! I look forward to using it!

</comment><comment><USER35> Great pickmeup for this morning, in Moscow, Russia. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER36> Love it. I was looking recently for music for work.

</comment><comment><USER37> Awesome! Have my background music for the day!

</comment><comment><USER38> Any chance of a favicon that isn't pure black?

</comment><comment><USER39> it would be great (and probably trivially easy) if it included a button to add the song to your soundcloud faves.

</comment><comment><USER40> Nice work. Definitely going to use this.

</comment><comment><USER36> Btw, why does not the ex.fm plugin show?

</comment><comment><USER41> this is great! Thank you. Have a lot of work to get done today, this is going to help :)

</comment><comment><USER42> Where do you get the music from?

</comment><comment><USER43> console.fm (500 Startups) is based on the same idea. Good stuff.

</comment><comment><USER44> very nice, but need a version without Flash.

</comment><comment><USER23> nice work!! cool weekend project to do.

</comment><comment><USER45> Love it.

</comment><comment><USER46> It doesn't support IE 9. Fail.

I remember when it was fashionable for "enterprises" to make IE-only sites circa 2000.

Now it's fashionable for "startups" to make sites that don't work with IE. It's every bit as short-sighted.

If you use the right DOCTYPE, IE 9 complies with standards well. It's a decent web browser, and very fast for day-to-day browsing. The only thing wrong with it is I occasionally run into sites like this run by people who discriminate against IE users.

I don't like Firefox for most browsing because it's got numerous problems that never get confronted. I don't like the browser from another web conglomerate because I don't want to share my usage data with a company that will ultimately use it to put me (and you!) out of business.</comment>


Bill Gates questions worth of space exploration for improving humanity (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-on-space-exploration-2013-8 <comment><USER3> Good to know that Bill Gates shares this viewpoint. It's not that space travel is wrong or doesn't have great potential. It's just that, in my view (and I guess it's also BG's judging from his short quote only), it cannot not alone bring humanity into the bright future. Look at how we are (mis)treating the environment. Look at all the greed, corruption and anger around us. Anyone seriously thinks going to new worlds will change these human tendencies? Of course not.

I see only one truly worthy alternative - education, with strong emphasis on sustainability and care about the environment, as well as some sort of moral principles that would help prevent spending trillions on new ways to kill each other (aka defence) in future generations.

<comment><USER4> >> I see only one truly worthy alternative - <USER2>

I strongly agree - but education in regular sense - schools, etc probably won't do. We maybe need something closer to the training Buddhists monks get in a monastery, a training that deeply changes the structure of their mind, and instill them with deep compassion and caring for others, eclipsing at enlightenment.

But:

1\. Buddhist monasteries aren't scalable - they fit only a rare few, they take too long, and are very hard. And it seems that with science/tech we can create something better.

2\. Once we have the tech - it isn't trivial to use it. People fear messing with their brain. How do we prevent abuse. Making people too relaxed and compassionate may make them less fit for the 21 century. How do we integrate this. How do we convince everybody .etc.

I feel like this is THE biggest question of our current century, because once this can be offered mass scale, human nature changes deeply - and everything changes with it.

<comment><USER3> Yes! I strongly agree and your definition of education if very close to what I had in mind.

I also see Buddhist ideas as one of very few hopes of real change in the world. Yet, as far as science goes, the best it can do is help spread these ideas (internet, which we already have). Personally, I don't believe in brain- changing tech for the near future at least. It will be always up to the individual so go sit in the corner and do some meditation/self-improvement. That's not scalable indeed.

<comment><USER5> There is already brain-changing tech, drugs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love Elon Musk's original vision. I think we need one backup plan as radical as that.

But when you have others like Jeff Bezos jumping on the bandwagon, it becomes a race and I wonder about the true motives. Race for what? Humanity, ego or boyish dreams to conquer space? Let's not forget that Earth 1.0 is the best one we've got, by literally _lightyears._

If humanity is the concern, let's start with fixing it. Fix poverty, fix the environment. There doesn't need to be a 'magic bullet' that solves all of this at once, because if we have enough rich people targeting different areas, the world will radically improve.

I respect Bill Gates for realising this. He's not perfect, but it's clear that he's less concerned about glamorous legacies. He chooses a few areas he believes he can make a difference in, and he sticks to them.

It's not just for rich people though. If you're interested, here's a link that someone posted a while ago: [https://80000hours.org](https://80000hours.org)

<comment><USER7> The reason for a backup is not poverty or other things that you can possibly fix, but extinction events, such as nuclear war, evil AI, virus etc.

<comment><USER6> Sure.

We need the backup for worst case scenarios like that.

What about the world as it stands now?

We need the wealthy to jump on _that_ bandwagon, not the former.

I understand that Elon Musk actually wants to reboot space race to ramp up innovation (sorry I can't remember the source, but I believe it was an early interview where he was talking about NASA not being as forward-looking as it used to be.) But it's hard not to be cynical when there is still a lot of suffering in this world. Can't we make everyone in this world at least have dinner everyday?

<comment><USER7> There are a lot already fighting poverty, diseases and the like, no one did something about space exploration.

So would it be smarter to say that you need another one fighting the former or that you add the first to find a solution for one of humanity's biggest threats in the next century?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In my view, this misses the mark. The primary benefit is the second-order effects. Inspiring the next generation of scientists, engineers, and innovators. New technology developed in the process that improves life on Earth. New scientific advancements. A deep feeling of awe and wonder, that ignores borders and nationalities, and brings us closer together as a species.

Now from an economic and investment standpoint. The most important angle here is one of _marginal benefit_. If we are already spending 100 billion a year on disease, poverty, and climate change (this is a very conservative guess), how much good is adding a few billion more? It's likely not going to move the needle extensively. However, that money that will make an enormous difference in our space endeavors, letting us reap some of those second order benefits.

This idea is core to approaches that involve casting a wide net or diversifying your efforts -- essential strategies for when information/understanding is incomplete and the possibility space is broad. Very much like where we are at today.

Lastly, we need to look longer term. A space program is essential in moving humanity into the next technological era, and will likely have many unforseen positive benefits. Looking at the two paths, I think 200 years now, all else being equal, the GDP and happiness quotient of a society that invests in space exploration will be significantly higher than in one that doesn't.

P.S. This is also a bit ironic coming from Bill Gates, given the impact the space program had on the nascent computing industry:

[http://www.computerworld.com/article/2525898/app- development...](http://www.computerworld.com/article/2525898/app- development/nasa-s-apollo-technology-has-changed-history.html)

<comment><USER9> > Now from an economic and investment standpoint. The most important angle > here is one of marginal benefit. If we are already spending 100 billion a > year on disease, poverty, and climate change (this is a very conservative > guess), how much good is adding a few billion more? It's likely not going to > move the needle extensively. However, that money that will make an enormous > difference in our space endeavors, letting us reap some of those second > order benefits.

I feel like this is faulty reasoning. That money might fund a project that otherwise wouldn't get funded which may cure cancer (unlikely, but honestly I'd say finding a moderate breakthrough for treating a specific strain of cancer with a few billion dollars is about as likely as that few billion dollars getting us significantly closer to Mars). It's not that every project is getting funded and it's just how much they get funded - some projects don't get funded at all. Nobody can predict the future which is why startup investing is so hard - the winners often start out looking like losers (DropBox, AirBnB, Google, Tesla, Apple all struggled to raise money initially). And big accomplishments often come from underdogs, like the Wright Brothers (who were up against much better funded and better educated competition). And sometimes the best discoveries are completely accidental - like penicillin.

Nobody knows the best way to allocate resources. I think the smart thing to do is to back things because you believe in them, not because they seem underappreciated. And honestly, Elon Musk has such a cult following that I'd say anything he does gets way more love than all the other things that money could be spent on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's possible that even Elon Musk has changed his mind about the value of Mars for humanity. One could view his plan to convince cities replace their roads with 3D tunnels, as preparing a massive shelter for humanity, to protect us against catastrophic risk, instead of a mars colony.

BTW: he has very smart leverage strategies, especially in the context of him a change makes, instead of of the common focus of value extraction of most business people.

Is there any place one can read about such strategies ?

<comment><USER10> Or the tunneling machines are for building habitats on Mars. Well, it's a fun hypothesis at least. Anything that could improve traffic in major cities gets my vote of approval regardless of what other applications it has.

<comment><USER11> I think your point is probably closer to the truth. Musk's desire to travel to mars seems to stem from the fact that it's a pretty awesome, adventurous thing to do, so it's one that doesn't fade on some whims. Whatever people say about Musk, he undoubtedly is pushing humanity in a better direction so maybe we should leave him to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There is certainly a large internet subculture that places undue moral value on space travel.

<comment><USER13> I'm not opposing what you're saying but I feel like the distribution is somewhat:

80% - Science and its marvels 15% - Humanity survival (IMHO not possible) 5% - So we know more and more and somehow fix problems where that knowledge may be applicable (is that what you're calling moral value)?

I do think that we should be better off spending money elsewhere. I don't know why Trump is so pro-space travel and stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I _half_ agree with Gates.

To me, sending probes into space deepens our understanding of nature and over time that knowledge will benefit humanity. But sending humans into space is really just an exercise in human vanity, like climbing Mount Everest or placing a person at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

For the cost of sending a man to Mars we could send out two probes - one to Mars and one to Europa. Wouldn't that be better for science and humanity?

</comment><comment><USER15> Tech developed for space is whats saving us though. Push for space -> more science in general. Fewer skeptics. More educated folk.

Have to disagree with big B on this.

</comment><comment><USER16> I get what he means, but you can spend the next 500 years trying to fix humanity's problems on Earth, it will never end.

Meanwhile, space is the final frontier, and just like our ancestors, we're compelled to go out and conquer it. It's actually an easier task than fixing all the stupid.

<comment><USER17> Compelled by Star Trek.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> _Everybody's got their own priorities. In terms of improving the state of humanity, I don't see the direct connection. I guess it's fun, because you shoot rockets up in the air. But it's not an area that I'll be putting money into_

That' the beauty of it, a lot of rich people with their own ideas and priorities. The world problems existed even before the rich started spending on space exploration, and likely we'll have problems for millions of years.

This quote from Interstellar is thought provoking: "we're not meant to save to earth, we're meant to leave it"

<comment><USER19> I'd like to add to your quote here. It's not something from the film, but it's something I feel like not enough people understand: The Earth doesn't need saving. No matter what we do, we cannot kill the Earth. We do not have that power. We can make the Earth inhospitable for ourselves, but it will recover. The Earth will keep spinning until the Sun expands and swallows Earth whole billions of years from now.

We, as a species, do not have any sort of power capable of stopping the Earth from doing its thing. In fact, one could argue that we are part of the Earth's thing. We don't exist on Earth, we are part of Earth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's funny that he says that because I remember him almost a decade ago asking on LinkedIn "how we will encourage more young people to pursue careers in science and technology". Well, that's how. Space exploration is sexy and intriguing as hell. Take for example how much admiration and awe the Cassini mission has created. We have a tiny vessel in the edges of our solar system some 1,5bn kms away exploring unknown worlds and sending back valuable feedback. You can't but feel humbled by all that. Imagine now what will happen if a few years in the future we find life in some planet out there.

Space exploration will bring more people to science because it attracts a lot of attention. It's intriguing because it involves a multitude of disciplinaries from engineering to biology, geology, physics, astronomy, you name it. Look at how many great sci-fi movies have been produced in the last decade. The reason for that is that younger generations understand technology and are intrigued by it. And there's nothing more intriguing than setting a colony on Mars or sending a probe το Europa to drill on the ice in search for life.

We do that, and thirty years down the road we'll have two or three times as many scientists as we have today. And then they will take humanity further. As they've done for the last 200 years. We live in a time of prosperity due to scientific breakthroughs, from fighting infectious deceases that expanded life expectancy to decades, to improving agriculture productivity and thus increase access to food for more people.

<comment><USER21> I feel he's come to the conclusion that the right answer is to bring a healthy standard of living, education and stability to the billion-plus people in extreme poverty, who _would_ be contributing far more had they only the chance.

</comment></comment><comment> crush-n-spread Anyone who's claiming that there is no direct connection between the improvement of humanity's condition and space travel is right; there is no _direct_ impact, but the _indirect_ connection between new forms of society and an overall increase in human well-being is staggering, also obvious.

Look at the pioneers who left the oligarchies of the United Kingdom to start a new society in America. They took their lessons from the oligarchies and forged a new set of rules, a new way of running their country, democracy. They could not have created this new method within Britain! This is the important part: The creators of democracy did so within brand new territory, and then it spread to the rest of the world.

Humans are going to do amazing things on Mars, and the things we do there would absolutely be impossible to do on Earth. However, the incredibly strong and probably breathtaking examples we set for Earth will certainly inspire long term positive change on our home planet. I conclude that if you want to make large, sweeping, positive changes on your home turf, the best way is to set up a much, much better society and wait for them to copy you. Don't waste time trying to convince the people around you who are already comfortable enough!

</comment><comment><USER22> As a physicist I totally agree, there are more urgent matters.

</comment><comment><USER23> Asteroid mining is ignored. The value of materials in them is immense and will change the economy. All these scenarios of "X running out in Y years" become irrelevant once asteroid/space industry develops. [http://www.asterank.com/](http://www.asterank.com/)

</comment><comment><USER24> Honestly, I don't really get it either.

As for tech billionaires dabbling in space, it comes down to what they expect to get out of it.

In Musk's case he's managed to create a company that can launch payloads into orbit (and hopefully beyond one day) at what will hopefully be a fraction of today's launch costs if the promise of reusable first stages holds true. He's also managed to do this on a fraction of the budget that NASA seems to be spending on the SLS. Launching satellites is a commercial enterprise so hopefully self-sustaining. Must hopes to leverage this to one day colonize Mars. Well, good for him.

Not sure what Bezos is up to but superficially it looks like a "me too" SpaceX.

So why send things other than satellites into orbit or probes into deep space? That's really what it comes down.

Some will point to the resources out there. This argument I just don't buy because the economics of any material on earth are many orders of magnitude cheaper than what resources from space could possibly cost. Take iron, for example. You're talking less than $100/ton. How could extraction from space possibly compete with that? Obviously accessible iron on earth is ultimately limited but even at $10,000/ton it'll drastically change human society.

So what about colonization of other planets and moons? Well, first you need to ask why. To me, the only goal that makes sense is to ensure survival of humanity by creating a self-sustaining colony as anything built on the premise of requiring supply from Earth is ultimately just a vanity project.

So what would it take to have a self-sustaining colony on another world? If you think about it, it's a lot and I'm not sure it's feasible with current technology.

Also, where? Other worlds are pretty inhospitable. A lot are attracted to Mars but I'm not sure why. It essentially has no atmosphere (pressure is much closer to a vacuum than Earth's atmospheric pressure), which, incidentally, is one of the problems with the Martian (the movie at least; I haven't read the book). It lacks the Earth's protection against UV rays too.

So what about interstellar travel? Sad as it sounds, I just don't think humans are built for it. We live too short a period. The distances are so vast that how would you ever construct a vessel large enough to make the trip and be self-sustaining or have enough supplies for thousands of years and then also propel it to the necessary speeds?

The conclusion I come to is that there are simply too many of us here on Earth and this will resolve itself if we don't resolve it first.

<comment><USER25> > You're talking less than $100/ton. How could extraction from space possibly > compete with that? Obviously accessible iron on earth is ultimately limited > but even at $10,000/ton it'll drastically change human society.

I think you misconfigured a word there, but what about the price of getting 1 ton of iron into space? If it's already there, we can manufacture in space. More important is the price of rare Earth metals like Platinum. We could build goods in orbit or build missions in orbit. Space mining and manufacturing should bring about a new era where 3rd world country slave mines shutdown and entirely new products can be made when the high price of rare Earth metals become the low price of common space metals.

<comment><USER24> Yes but let's put that in perspective.

To get one rocket into LEO currently costs about $100m. That's equivalent of digging up about 1M tons of iron. Obviously it's a lot less for more valuable materials. It looks like platinum is about $1k/oz and Google tells me there are 32,000 oz to the ton so that's about $32M or 3 tons of platinum.

Now obviously if you were living in space you wouldn't need to get things onto or out of the Earth's gravity, which is where things get really expensive, but the launch cost puts things in perspective about just how expensive it it to do anything in relation to space.

So take that platinum. Where is it coming from? The asteroid belt? How expensive would it be just in fuel to go and get it and possibly refine it (assuming you don't find a solid lump of it)? What energy source are you using?

People tend to think too simplistically about energy. Like the holy grail is viewed as getting more energy out of fusion than you put in but fuel is only one cost component of energy. Let's consider:

\- How expensive is a fusion reactor?

\- How big is it?

\- What is the energy output?

\- How much does it cost to maintain?

Add all those things up and there is an amortized cost to even fusion energy.

So start adding all this up and the delta-V required to get all of this to and from wherever it comes from and it's hard to come up with an economic model for how this can possibly work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> c-smile There are not that many useful tasks that can be solved in principle with massive use of rockets based on chemical reaction. But none of these tasks are "mission critical" for survival of the civilization.

Having 10 companies launching rockets instead of current 5 will not make any differences in principle.

It is just a matter of time for next gamma burst or so to wipe out life on the planet. So we need colonies on large enough distances. And Mars does not count as it is too close.

To achieve that goal (civilization survival) we a) must keep our common home habitable and b) focus efforts on finding ways of inter-stellar travelling.

<comment><USER26> You must choose between a) and b).

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I guess, just like he did not see the point of Free Software.</comment>


Show HN: Graphing Compound Interest with D3 - <AUTHOR> http://jvoorhis.com/compounding/

<comment><AUTHOR> I just wanted to share my first D3 project. There is plenty of duplication, and the CSS is provisional, but I wanted to share before taking the time to polish.</comment>


Browse the web Hands Free (Chrome extension) - <AUTHOR> http://www.handsfreechrome.com/ This is the initial release. While it's not perfect, it works pretty damn well. I'm hoping this will be transformative for people with injured/missing hands or disorders and conditions such as Parkinson's or severe essential tremor.
For the rest of us, it's just fun. Once you get used to it, it's very comfortable as opposed to using a mouse/keyboard.
The main problem relates to the "map" command, which you'll quickly learn about once you try it out. It's a tricky problem, painting numbers next to all the clickable, visible items. What's clickable? What's visible? It's especially hard because some of the most popular pages (gmail, facebook) don't use standard input elements but rather heavily JS'ed divs that act like inputs.
(I know the website looks like it's from the 90s. Spare me.) <comment><AUTHOR> This is an initial release. It's not perfect, but it works pretty damn well. I know the website looks like it's from circa 2002, spare me.

The main issue relates to the map command, which you'll quickly discover if you try the extension out.

How do you tell which elements on a page are clickable? How do you tell which elements on a page are truly visible? It's a bit tricky. Right now I default to buttons, inputs, anchors, spans, lis, textareas, and one or two others, and check for display:none, visibility:hidden, hidden parent elements, opacity:0, and overlapping positions, and maybe something else.

But it's especially hard with major websites like gmail and facebook that use heavily JS'ed divs instead of inputs. Still haven't found a solid solution to that one.

</comment><comment><USER2> I love when they say "Hands Free permits easy browsing while eating or multitasking, finally bringing an end to the dark era in which a comfortable individual would __have to physically move __in order to click, scroll, or type. ", like if our sedentaries lives where not sedentary enough already.

</comment><comment><USER3> The microphone input window keeps asking me for permission to use my microphone. I click on Allow, but it keeps asking.

<comment><AUTHOR> You mean repeatedly, immediately after accepting? As in, it never lets you have access to the mic?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Of course it's primarily intended for browsing the web while eating or doing other serious stuff

</comment><comment><USER5> Would be really fun to watch this go in a crowded area where there are other voices :)

</comment><comment><USER6> I love playing with this. Thanks for building it.

</comment><comment><USER7> Something like this would be great for mobile

Apple should include OpenEars as part of iOS to have an advantage for all iOS 8 apps

</comment><comment><USER8> > For the average user, Hands Free permits easy browsing while eating or > multitasking,

How can you eat and utter voice commands at the same time?

<comment><USER9> I think the point is that your hands may get greasy or have food bits on them and you can still browse without getting your keyboard dirty.

<comment><USER10> Spraying out food particles and spit all over the keyboard and monitor is ok then! :)</comment></comment></comment>


Quantum computing as a field is obvious bullshit - <AUTHOR> https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2019/01/15/quantum-computing-as-a-field-is-obvious-bullshit/ <comment><USER2> Further discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18958321](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18958321)

</comment><comment><USER3> The good points being made about the tenuous link between current quantum computing theory and anything like reality is consistently undermined by his "old man shouts at clouds" attitude.

 _Physicists used to be serious and bloody minded people who understood reality by doing experiments. Somehow this sort of bloody minded seriousness has faded out into a tower of wanking theorists who only occasionally have anything to do with actual matter. I trace the disease to the rise of the "meritocracy" out of cow colleges in the 1960s. The post WW-2 neoliberal idea was that geniuses like Einstein could be mass produced out of peasants using agricultural schools. The reality is, the peasants are still peasants, and the total number of Einsteins in the world, or even merely serious thinkers about physics is probably something like a fixed number. It's really easy, though, to create a bunch of crackpot narcissists who have the egos of Einstein without the exceptional work output. All you need to do there is teach them how to do some impressive looking mathematical Cargo Cult science, and keep their "results" away from any practical men doing experiments._

Yeeeaaaah... I'm wildly skeptical of the state of so-called quantum computing, but what does this ranting have to do with anything? Pissing on theorists can be fun, especially in physics where whole fields divorced from anything like a feasible experiment exist (I'm looking at you M-Theory), but dismissing the exercise is downright silly. It wasn't that long ago that the Higgs Mechanism moved from completely untested theory to observed reality.

I'd love to hear a brutally honest assessment of the field in question without it rapidly degenerating into pissing and moaning from an irredeemable ass.

<comment><USER4> Higgs-Anderson "discovery" was done in 1973 with discovery of weak current, and again in 1982. It was a great piece of experimental particle physics, but it was also not necessary for our understanding of how the world works.

The point of all this is pretty simple: people are play acting instead of doing useful work. Higgs-Anderson mechanism is a great example of this. 73 we were done, but had this huge staff of experimental particle physics guys with nothing to do, so we do it again. And again. Until you end up with a "science" paper with hundreds of "coauthors" and a huge racket of people wasting their lives verifying something that was already done in the 70s. Maybe it serves some higher purpose, like international relations, but even if it didn't, I'm pretty sure some bozos will be requesting an even bigger particle accelerator in 20 years to do 1970s physics again.</comment></comment>