Falling Crime: Where have all the burglars gone? - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21582041-rich-world-seeing-less-and-less-crime-even-face-high-unemployment-and-economic <comment><USER2> I don't think enough emphasis is put in these studies on the rise of cheap entertainment for bored male youth. Teenage boys that normally would have been running around in the streets committing entry level crimes are now glued to their Xbox. The declines in crime also happen to correlate with the ubiquitousness and availability of video games. As they get cheaper and more violent, crime goes down.

Sure policing has gotten better, and crime prevention tech has advanced, but these studies tend to ignore the fact that would-be criminals rarely leave the house anymore...

<comment><USER3> _Teenage boys that normally would have been running around in the streets committing entry level crimes are now glued to their Xbox. The declines in crime also happen to correlate with the ubiquitousness and availability of video games. As they get cheaper and more violent, crime goes down._

I really like your argument but I remember how ubiquitous the SNES, Sega Genesis and PS1 were in the 90s. I do wonder what role the quality of graphics plays here too (especially with regards to portraying violence).

Games in the 90s did cost more than AAA titles today but not by a huge amount and the hardware was similarly priced. Maybe it just took a couple more decades for gaming to be considered a truly mainstream activity rather than something for the geekier kids.

<comment><USER4> > I remember how ubiquitous the SNES, Sega Genesis and PS1 were in the 90s

They weren't "ubiquitous" for poor kids. For those kids, there was no way they would get their parents to buy us anything for (the 1991 equivalent of) $350 and $85/game.

Nobody assumed that upper middle class kids were normally carrying out burglaries...

<comment><USER5> The poor kids had Nintendo and Sega back then, just like the poor kids have Xbox and PlayStation today.

<comment><USER6> Maybe in middle class usa. Other places had very high import taxes for electronics.

Ps1 was actually 100x more common than sega/nintendo in my 3rd world childhood because it was almost free to get games.

For the price of a cartridge rental for two days you could get a pirate cd.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This article mentions, but undersells, the lead factor. Lead exposure causes cognitive problems in children, especially related to impulse control. The drop in crime correlates very well with lead cleanup.

Kevin Drum (a left-leaning US journalist) has been making this argument: [http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/01/lead-and- crime...](http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/01/lead-and-crime- linkfest)

<comment><USER8> Small planes still run leaded fuels so the (rich) owners can save money not changing their engines. This is 50% of our current exposure, needlessly!

[http://www.treehugger.com/aviation/leaded-gas-banned- around-...](http://www.treehugger.com/aviation/leaded-gas-banned-around-globe- except-small-airplanes.html)

<comment><USER9> I fly planes, and I haven't met a rich owner yet. The typical cessna 150/172 costs less than a new SUV. The rich owners tend to fly kerosene burners.

Also, most small-engine planes can already burn regular unleaded autogas. It's just the high-compression engines that require the lead. The FAA, AOPA and others are working on developing alternatives, but it takes time. Perhaps they should have done this sooner.

<comment><USER10> "Rich" is a pretty flexible yardstick. Somebody who can afford to drop the price of a new car on a hobby item is rich compared to most Americans. I recall a thing a while back about how hardly anyone in America will admit to being rich, because they all measure themselves against someone even richer. "Sure, I have three houses and a yacht, but I'm not _rich!_ It's not like I can afford a private island!"

Your points about engines and fuel make sense, though.

<comment><USER9> Well I'm pretty sure I'm less rich than Cory if he is a MS employee.

I pay about $85/hour to fly and don't own a plane. If I lived in the USA it would be $68/hr due to lower gas prices. I think the majority of Americans can afford to spend $68/month on their hobby (assuming they flew once a month).

<comment><USER11> There are high school students who drop _thousands_ of $$$ into their hobbies. My hobby (computers and video games) was cheap in comparison to those getting tuned-up small cars as made famous in movies and racing games. $68/hr is a fairly inexpensive hobby indeed.

<comment><USER12> $68 an hour is not an inexpensive hobby by any objective measurement.

I also have to wonder where high-school students who drop thousands of dollars into their hobbies are getting their money from. Parents?

<comment><USER11> > I also have to wonder where high-school students who drop thousands of > dollars into their hobbies are getting their money from. Parents?

I often wondered the same thing, given that neither I nor my parents had anywhere near that much money to fritter away.

I think it comes down to parents directly or indirectly though. You can make a fair amount of money with a summer job and part-time job the rest of the year, when you don't have to pay for rent, food, etc.

It becomes harder to maintain a hobby once you have to move out and live on your own.

<comment><USER13> Depends on the age. I know when I was a teenager, I worked since I was allowed to (16). So, part time jobs, summer jobs and saving --that's where teenagers get the extra money. It's relatively easy to save money when you don't have to pay for room and board, as it were.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think the reasons for this are: (1) People buy fewer used items in physical stores, i.e. fewer people buy stuff at pawn shops etc and a typical thief will never go through the effort of building up a decent eBay seller reputation. This makes it harder to monetize stolen property. (2) It's a self-perpetuating statistic, in that less crime means more resources/attention is given to the remaining crime (by the police and by the vigilance of citizens) which leads to even lower crime.

<comment><AUTHOR> And, expanding on this, people carry less cash both on their person and in their homes.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, but they carry $500 smartphones with them now instead.

<comment><USER14> Right, but how much would you get for that smartphone if you brought it to a pawn shop? Assuming you properly reset its data and convince the pawn shop owner it isn't stolen I bet you could get $30 at most.

(And if the phone is locked down and the thief can't jailbreak it it essentially has a value $0)

<comment><USER16> On the other hand, you could probably make a lot selling on Craigslist.

I've been selling my family's old phones and computers for years, and the market is robust. Not $500 robust, but two-year-old iPhones go for about $200 (which, probably not coincidentally, is the upgrade price for a new phone).

<comment><USER17> I guess it's much harder to sell a phone without its charger and box. I'd suspect that the property is stolen.

Please anyone buying old phones/property ask for the purchase invoice. It's possible that it's a stolen property and you can get in trouble later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think historians will look back at the early 21st century and note that Soma was best served digitally, rather than chemically.

<comment><USER19> what does this mean?

what is Soma?

<comment><USER20> Reference to 'Brave New World.' From Wikipedia:

...Soma is a hallucinogen that takes users on enjoyable, hangover-free "holidays". It was developed by the World State to provide these inner- directed personal experiences within a socially managed context of State-run 'religious' organizations; social clubs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> My first thought is pure economics. 1990 or so forward saw a massive increase in the standard of living globally on average. US GDP almost doubled over that decade, and I suspect the same is true for most of the industrialized world. So why isn't crime rising now, with big financial and unemployment problems? The countries with those problems are still consuming their past wealth to pay for current entitlements, which is keeping the social contract alive temporarily. And if that theory is correct, the next 10 to 15 years will see a meaningful increase in crime.

Another thought - just a half-silly toss out, but perhaps the Web played a role. It changed a lot of social behaviors, and that would have _began_ in the early to mid 1990s in the industrialized world. It altered how and where people spend their time; how they do their shopping; how they communicate; how often they leave their homes; knowledge available when it comes to almost everything, such as instantly being able to look-up good / bad neighborhoods based on crime.

I first got online around 1994/95, at 14 years of age, and it's almost hard to remember time before the Web. I have to consciously remind myself that it wasn't always there.

</comment><comment><USER22> Since this piece mentions burglary in specific, I found it thriving in Southern California (OC), but in a very specific fashion. Very careful criminals are using the following M.O.:

\- Parking garages with no cameras

\- Security is part time, and they wait until they're gone

\- They hit only cars that are unlocked, so no breaking, just entering

\- Occasionally, if they see a big score like a laptop, they will break a window, but probably as their last act before getaway.

\- They hit a building only once every few months, when people have let down their guard again.

I'd never heard of this until I was a victim, and the police told me the were aware of it but couldn't catch them. Then I asked around and they've hit buildings in several cities. Simply remembering to lock your door and leave nothing obvious on your seats will protect you.

I bring this up because although the crimes are reported to the police, I wonder how much they are reflected in statistics like these.

<comment><USER23> What are people leaving in their cars that are worth taking?

<comment><USER24> Laptops and cameras are the two things that would jump out to me. It should be obvious to you or me that you'd bring those inside for the night, but a lot of people don't out of convenience (some members of my family are/were guilty of this). Or maybe it's a work laptop and you just have no need for it inside.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> A little OT, but related to current events: Detroit, which has been facing fiscal problems, has enjoyed a drop in crime even though budget deficits has forced the city to cut hundreds of officers:

[http://news.yahoo.com/detroit-crime-down-murder- rate-1736002...](http://news.yahoo.com/detroit-crime-down-murder- rate-173600203.html)

And yet the murder rate is relatively stagnant, and this year reached a peak: [http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/04/16352612-weve- los...](http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/04/16352612-weve-lost-respect- for-life-detroit-records-deadliest-year-in-decades?lite)

How to reconcile these things? Is crime really falling, or have reporting standards changed? Or, if cops can't respond to reports, do the reports ever get filed?

<comment><USER26> > _" How to reconcile these things?"_

1\. 'urban lead' is a studied off-shoot of the lead hypothesis. Detroit's lead situation is a studied and known problem. So lingering crime in Detroit is actually expected under the lead hypothesis. Particularly as the population shrinks and the remaining citizen 'average' shifts poorer, with a more-toxic environment.

2\. 'structural' crime. Opportunists considering theft as a means to an end might be dissuaded as the risk/reward equation shifts. But convincing a (drug) gang that it's no longer a good idea to murder a rat/rival is much more difficult.

3\. Detroit's shrinking police coverage. The police department has explicitly warned people away from certain areas of the city, because they don't have the resources to provide effective coverage. This can only be interpreted as an 'opportunity' for structural crime.

[http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/08/14294269-visit- de...](http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/08/14294269-visit-detroit-at- your-own-risk-police-union-warns?lite)

</comment></comment><comment> DanI-S There's no mention of the rise of the welfare state. I'd be surprised if the presence of an economic safety net didn't have an impact on people's willingness to commit crime.

In the end, I'm sure the answer is a combination of all these factors. As individuals and as a species, we get better at living as time goes on.

<comment><USER15> If it's true that welfare makes it less likely for someone to commit a crime then wouldn't that also mean it makes them less likely to get a job?

<comment> DanI-S Absolutely. In fact, many welfare schemes are designed to encourage young people to stay in education rather than dropping out early to work.

In any case: since poor, unemployed young men commit crime, and we're never going to see 100% employment, lifting them out of poverty will reduce the impact of crime on everyone else. Intolerable for Ayn Rand; pragmatic for the rest of us.

<comment><USER27> Poverty rates have actually increased since the introduction of welfare and welfare reform in the US. Long term stability of your proposal aside (see the jump in Disability dependencies that followed the welfare reform), it doesn't match the data that shows a drop in crime over the same time period.

<comment><USER28> Has it really? It dropped significantly in the 60s and 70s. Following that period, it tended to track economic trends (Poverty goes up during recession, comes back down during the good times)

Source: [http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/07/11/p...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/07/11/poverty- in-the-50-years-since-the-other-america-in-five-charts/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> If you haven't read it, Steven Pinker's _The Better Angels of Our Nature_ is a tour-de-force on the factors that have reduced violence of all kinds.

<comment><USER30> While I do support some of Pinker's arguments, there are objections to many of his assertions. This piece is a good, well referenced academic challenge: [http://www.zcommunications.org/steven-pinker-on-the- alleged-...](http://www.zcommunications.org/steven-pinker-on-the-alleged- decline-of-violence-by-edward-s-herman-and-david-peterson)

<comment><USER29> The linked article mainly answers Pinker's data with anecdotes and US-hating (however justifiable). Notwithstanding Herman and Peterson's radical critique of Pinker's Enlightenment liberalism and some quibbles about selecting preferential methods of evaluation for casualty counts, they completely ignore the fact that Pinker's data analysis actually encompasses their outraged counterexamples.

That is, everything Herman and Peterson say about US postwar military adventures is more or less correct, but that doesn't undermine Pinker's argument that overall rates of violence have been in steady decline for centuries. Neither high levels of civilian casualties nor military industrialism nor mercantilism nor imperialism nor ideological conflict nor genocide nor civil war were inventions of the 20th century - an in all cases, their overall global trajectory has been downward.

With respect to WWI and WWII, Pinker goes to a great deal of trouble to explain and justify his argument that they represent outliers - trouble Herman and Peterson dismiss with dripping sarcasm but no counter-arguments.

Sidenote: there are only 8 footnotes, of which one is a note that the essay was first published elsewhere. The only references to critiques of Pinker's book (rather than general references to studies on particular wars or American militarism) are a few references to critiques of Pinker's assertion that pre- civilization nomads lived violent lives. One reference refers to anthropologist Douglas P. Fry, but while Fry takes issue with Pinker's case for rates of violence in pre-civilization societies, he does not disagree with Pinker's main thesis: "Pinker's basic claim is itself largely on target: Physical violence has been decreasing over recent millennia."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I wonder if easier access to contraception, pornography and abortion have decreased the number of youth without access to opportunity and/or supervision.

<comment><USER32> heritability either biologically or by culture of crime?

Anyone with a genetic/cultural predisposition to addiction died as a crack addict in 1980-something, therefore no kids with the same predisposition alive in 2013? Don't have to be dead, just a reproductive failure. No kids, kids taken away, life in prison, etc.

Another interpretation is most crime is done by young urban males. A recent- ish development is the Daddy-figure has basically disappeared from the lives of those people, criminal or non-criminal alike. Therefore no following in Dad's footsteps if you have no idea who or what a Dad is. Which is too bad when Dad's not a dirtbag, but if he is, its probably a net positive.

Lack of employement opportunities, especially among the most disadvantaged, means the most disadvantaged kids are no longer latchkey kids?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I live in "Lost Angeles" and former police chief Bill Bratton took credit for any statistic he could. It's my belief that the reason for crime reduction here in L.A. is that the standard of living has gone up via social services and drugs as a income vehicle are more ubiquitous. (See the first 60-seconds of the intro to the film "Layer Cake" where the bank robbers realize they "are in the wrong game..." [http://youtu.be/QHKI8zMHCjE](http://youtu.be/QHKI8zMHCjE) )

Then there is credit card fraud too which is non-violent. In other words info and contraband crimes.

</comment><comment><USER34> > In Chicago, where crime has been slower to fall than elsewhere, local > politicians this year thanked hotspot methods for the lowest murder rate in > half a century.

What year are they talking about? 2012 was the highest in something like 10 years, and 2013 is on pace with 2011.

</comment><comment><USER35> Living in a bay area city with a recent alarming increase in armed robbery due to a shrinking police force (guess which one), I would suggest that crime, like real estate, is local, local, local. Perhaps Times Square and Talinn are safer than before, but the negative dividends of the crack epidemic, the rise of gangs and guns and glorification of criminal culture, the lack of parenting in at risk communities, and the collapse of municipal finances since 2008 has left cities like mine in the US with soaring violent crime rates.

</comment><comment><USER36> There is a simple reason: computers and the internet. It makes people more docile and satisfies their urges. Porn for sexual urges, social media for "socializing", google and wikipedia for knowledge etc. That last part also makes everyone more educated. Which also correlates to less (blue collar) crime.

<comment><USER29> Simple and likely wrong. Violent crime started falling in the early 1990s, before the internet had much of any penetration outside academia.

<comment><USER36> You're talking about only the USA. Actually, violent crime spiked in late 80s and then was coming down from that spike in the 90s, so there's that confounding factor. Most of the crime in the late 80s was juvenile crime in fact. It might have had to do with the culture of the time (inner city gangs, etc.)

A better way would be to compare what people focus on / use on a daily basis today vs in the 80s. If you are restless today you can pacify yourself with a mobile phone. In fact it's an addiction that gives you a boost of dopamine. And the virtual world is much less .... physical and violent, which reduces people's tendencies over time.

Another great pacifier of the 20th century is consumerism. Feel bad? Buy an ikea, veg out in front of the TV. There is a great documentary about how the PR industry was invented and Freud's theories about the "collective ego"

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cW_rIdd69W8](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cW_rIdd69W8)

<comment><USER29> I'm talking across the industrialized world. The availability of the internet and other 'pacification networks' may be a contributing factor but it's clearly not the driving force.

<comment><USER37> It could still be the main driving force, and it just so happened that an associated force or two started a little earlier.

<comment><USER29> But violence has been declining steadily for the past 400 years. Something other than the internet must be behind that.

<comment><USER36> No, it was all the internet! :)

But seriously ... I think that, although before it was not the internet, now the internet has accelerated it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> As a Marxist, i see an explanation of this in that the crime thrives in societies numerically dominated by proletariat: people who have nothing to lose are easily motivated into crime, much easier their children with no view of the future. When the proletariat declined in numbers, so did the crime.

<comment><USER39> You may well be right. Then comes that big step from Hypothesis to Theory. Lots of research, boring work digging through white papers, reading old journals, constructing tests, requesting funding, and finally analyzing results. That is why hypotheses are like opinions, everyone has one, but real, hard data is respected.

"What are the facts? Again and again and again--what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what "the stars foretell," avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable "verdict of history"\--what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!"

Heinlein

<comment><USER40> "In the land of truth the man with one fact is king"

Linton Barwick

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Manufacturing was outsourced to China starting in the 1990s, resulting in a flood of cheap consumer goods. Inexpensive labour means artificially low prices, which means in turn that most consumer goods are not worth repairing because the cost to repair them with North American or European labour is prohibitively expensive. It is cheaper to replace the item if it breaks.

This has led to a decline in two professions: electronics/appliance repair and thievery. Just as it doesn't make sense to repair most consumer goods, it doesn't make sense to steal them, either.

The street price of stolen goods is a tiny fraction of the new or even the used goods price. When new prices are so low, the miniscule price of stolen goods means that it is not worth the risk of getting caught stealing.

The decline in domestic manufacturing may also have a bearing on other crime rates. Depression and hopelessness in a population, paradoxically, do not necessarily lead to increased violence.

Look at any enslaved population; the first job of the keepers is always to create hopelessness, so that the population is easier to control.

Violence declines in any enslaved population--at least, violence against the keepers. And violent crime among the enslaved is rarely reported, partly because the keepers don't care and partly because the enslaved do not trust the keepers.

Criminals have either become anergic or else they have switched to confidence scams like organized religion. Religion, unfortunately, does not get reported as a crime.

Edit:sp.

</comment><comment><USER42> Here's another factor to consider: Sometimes crime is under reported or covered up or not acted on.

I've known of property and other crimes that did not show up in the statistics/annual reports of a particular city. The city in question was/is known for low crime and used that as a selling up point to attract businesses and home buyers. I'd be surprised if this was the only municipality that "fudged" their numbers.

<comment><USER5> > Sometimes crime is under reported or covered up or not acted on.

This could not be more true where I live, and with police departments shrinking nationwide, I would guess that it's true in other places as well.

Plenty of people are still getting their back doors kicked down while at work, and come home to find their laptops and consoles, and television missing.

You call the police, and they'll show up 4 hours later, and all they really do is put your name on a list. It's basically up to you to go around and search pawn shops and craigslist to find your stuff.

Most people don't even bother to call the cops, and don't bother filing an insurance claim since an LCD TV is $450 and the insurance deductible is $1500, not to mention the rise in rates or risk of getting your coverage dropped.

 _Reported_ crime is down. That's about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> You like it or not, but the famous "Broken Windows" and bandwagon effects are in play.

Crime falling in some places just because being dumb looter or thief is less respectable than being "easy" credit consumption bunny. Why should you try to knock down a drunk for a smartphone, or press some fast-food stall for money while you can drive a cheap new Korean car "brought" without even first payment.

But in places like Russia even this doesn't work. These miserable rednecks will never learn (being uneducated and unemployed have no access to A-class credit) and because they are the wast majority, anyone who is trying to lead modern consumption lifestyle are regarded as a peacock or even gay.

And, of course, being a low-level criminal is inferior comparing to a "successful" corrupted official of any kind, driving $100k cars on the very same streets. It is very common in Russia to see people who live in a miserable soviet time panel housing blocks, but having a luxury car in a parking lot.

So, street crime falls with easy credit, but this is only temporarily. Any severe economic disturbance and you will have it all back on the streets.

</comment><comment><USER44> Crime has gone white collar. The march of progress goes on.

</comment><comment><USER45> I have no absolute numbers, but in recent years I have heard far more about attempted burglaries than in the decades before (in Germany). It sounds to me as if the burglars are mostly professionals, driving with trucks into suburbs to find empty houses.

On the other hand I also wonder what is there even left to steal. Apple might singlehandedly sustain burglaries because their gear is the only stuff worth stealing these days?

Then again an acquaintance told me when her flat was burglared the thieves took everything, including photographs and files. I suppose there might be villages somewhere in eastern countries dedicated to scanning those files for bank account information.

</comment><comment><USER46> All the robbery nowadays happens in the central banks and is called "QE".

</comment><comment><USER47> The burglars went to the internet. Low exposure to police and easier ways to attract victims. (scams, rip off schemes, ponzi)

<comment><USER48> Yeah, to generalize, IMHO, a big part of this is there has been a move from blue collar to white collar crimes. Having grown up in South Florida myself, certainly there is anecdotal evidence of that. South Florida leads the nation in medicare fraud reaching possibly into the billions. Mortgage fraud was another linchpin during the financial crisis. There are tons of call centers in the area full of drug addicts who peddle every sort of scam you can think of to the gullible types in flyover country : automobile warranties, gold , carbon credits, home warranties. The latest craze is tax return fraud.

Here's an old article about medicare fraud: [http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/23/60minutes/main5414...](http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/23/60minutes/main5414390.shtml) "They've figured out that rather than stealing $100,000 or $200,000, they can steal $100 million. We have seen cases in the last six, eight months that involve a couple of guys that if they weren't stealing from Medicare might be stealing your car," Ogrosky explained."

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> It's more profitable, with less risk, to steal cellphones by mugging/pickpocketing/grab and running. One job can net an easy $200. Six a night and you're rolling in Benjamins.

</comment><comment><USER50> I'm pretty sure I saw a documentary recently about the increase in juvenile crime and the increasing occupancy rates in jails. Also, what about biological disposition and hormonal influence?

</comment><comment><USER5> Wait - I thought New York city's crime rate actually _rose_ 4 percent because of all the iPhone thefts?

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2212093/Spike- iPhone...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2212093/Spike-iPhone- robberies-causes-New-York-crime-rate-rise.html)

<comment><USER51> The daily mail is not a reputable source for anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> They've all moved to Spokane, Wa and become real estate agents or car thieves

</comment><comment><USER53> _Virtue to them is that which makes modest and tame: with that they have turned the wolf into a dog and man himself into man 's best domestic animal._ \- Nietzsche

</comment><comment><USER54> The financial sector

<comment><USER55> Congress! Sorry, had to say it... nobody else had!

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> At least one was at my apartment. Macbook Pro =(

<comment><USER57> :(

Hopefully you had everything backed up somewhere.

<comment><USER56> Not everything, but most of the important stuff was backed up I think. Probably lost a bunch of pictures though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Wallstreet ;)

</comment><comment><USER59> Online.

</comment><comment><USER60> Jail

</comment><comment><USER61> Welfare.

</comment><comment><USER62> Sweden.

</comment><comment><USER63> I think the simple answer a lot of these comments are pointing to is: civilization, wealth, progress, whatever you want to call it, but more and more people are aware of how nice life can be and also see that it doesn't really appear without hard work, course this is merely a hypothesis, but I think it's a pretty common sentiment in the first world that hard work creates an easier life.

</comment><comment><USER64> This is a worrying news indeed. Decreasing in crime in general can lead to letting our guards down. Less demand in security systems and personal firearms. The police and the federal security agencies may experience decline in applicants. It is wiser to have more bad people in the society doing bad things, so that the good people can defend themselves. The government should do something about this, sigh...</comment>


What I learned building [Pulitzer winning] PolitiFact - <AUTHOR> http://www.mattwaite.com/posts/2009/apr/27/key-lesson-i-learned-building-politifact-demos-not/ <comment><USER2> I've worked at a very large (60,000+ employee) company, so perhaps my background clouds my judgment somewhat, but I think requirements documents are quite helpful. The Software Functional Specification that was handed to me provided a good background to the problem space.

When I wrote the Software Design Specification (100 pages, oof...), I easily solved 2/3 of the bugs before I touched a single line of C code. I was surprised, since I didn't think I would enjoy the documentation process, but it really helped. I designed my module using English and pseudo-code, sent the spec around for comments, and when the spec was approved it was a (somewhat) simple matter of conveying a solid design into C.

Meetings still suck and should be minimized, but documentation is really essential. I always glance at the Design Spec for a feature before going into the code, since it gives you some solid background as to what exact problem they were trying to solve.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is essentially a very brief summary of the 37 Signals (e)book, "Getting Real" <http://gettingreal.37signals.com/>

I suggest you all read it. They have some really, really good points and analogies.</comment>


GammaThingy – Open Source f.lux for your iPhone - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/thomasfinch/GammaThingy <comment><USER2> Screen temperature is a public health feature which should be implemented by the OS. Until this feature arrives in iOS, the next best option is for apps to implement it. The ebook reader Marvin and Koala web browser both have controls for color temperature.

<comment><USER3> Opera Mini browser has a night mode too, it dims screen and lowers temperature.Works excellent. Feel free to add to the list

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's NOT open source as per the readme: "I purposely have not added an open source license to the project and am intentionally retaining copyright for the code, meaning that it may not be redistributed (in code or compiled form) without my permission."

<comment><USER5> Confusing!

The author states: "You may think it's dumb to have open sourced it then [...] even if it's under copyright. [..] So basically, it's open source so people can learn from it.

So this is public source code which is under copyright.

<comment><USER6> AIUI most FLOSS code is under copyright [0] the distinction being that the author(s) grant others a licence to use, copy and distribute under certain restrictions.

It seems that the author here wants people to be able to read the code, but not distribute it, primarily because he does not wish to tread on the toes of f.lux' developers.

[0] In fact, AFAICT unless a creator specifically and explicitly waives such, all work is copyright, because Berne treaty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So, what is it doing that f.lux isn't/can't on non-jailbroken phones? I know they'd need access to APIs that Apple doesn't make available.

<comment><USER8> I haven't looked into it, but I would assume it is hooking into private frameworks and this is simply not allowed from an app on the App Store.

<comment><USER6> Yes, it uses IOKit which is a private API on iOS.</comment></comment></comment>


The Paging Game: Zarking and The Thing King - <AUTHOR> http://son-of-sand.us/~rsc/MTS/thing-king.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I know this isn't news, and probably many of you already know this. However, I was recently surprised to discover that some deeply geeky friends of mine didn't know how virtual memory worked, so I pulled this out to explain it.

If only all technical documentation were half as accurate and half as engaging.

</comment><comment><USER2> The idea of writing swap to a tape (or some other kind of "dump") both scares and intrigues me, in terms of its implications for how long some processes would have to stay running for this to be at all useful to them.</comment>


Ask YC: your google adwords experience? - <AUTHOR> I have started to advertise my site on adwords and so far the experience has been quite frustrating. The ads are not showing, after 4 days I still see zero impressions for all imaginable key words and their diagnostic tool does not really help, just says: "This keyword does not trigger any of your ads".
I have increased my budget to ridiculous $5CPC and gigantic monthly budget but nothing seem to work. At this point I am getting paranoid of things suddenly starting to work and getting a huge bill from google.
I searched for help here and there, but mostly found the same suggestions over and over, that do not work for me: "increase your budget!", "pick better keywords!" and "wait 3 hours for servers to pick up your campaign".
Anybody had similar and frustrating experience? Is it even possible to spend, let's say, less than $2K a month advertising on google ?

<comment><USER2> Definitely. There are a few things to bear in mind...

1\. Make sure your landing page is relevant to your keywords. If it is not, Google will give it a bad score, and your minimum bid will be raised, and you'll get less traffic. So make sure keywords appear on the landing page as you would for SEO.

2\. Make sure your ad-copy is good. You can create loads of differently worded adverts, and Google will work out which one gets the best CTR, and show that one the most. So spend a long time experimenting with different wording. It's sometimes surprising what changing a single word can sometimes make. (If your CTR is too low google will also reduce your quality score, and so increase your minimum bids).

If you pick popular keywords you can have traffic coming within about 30 minutes I've found. Spend a while using the keyword tool, and adding your own variations - as many as you can think of.

When you start getting traffic on some keywords, expand that avenue - use the keyword tool to find other similar keywords.

How many keywords do you have and what sort of sector are we talking here? $5 is quite a lot unless you're doing finance/law etc

</comment><comment><USER3> google has jacked minimum bids through the roof over the last 6 - 12 months. i'm guessing all of your ads are actually inactive right now because your minimum bid is too low and you have a bad "quality score". Their UI is sort of a pain.

login -> click into your campaign -> click into your ad group -> on the set of tabs to the right, click "keywords". here i'm guessing you'll see that your campaigns are inactive and you have to bid between $5 and $10 per click...which I'm guessing will be prohibitive. 9 months ago you just had to bid the minimum and you would end up paying <$1 per click, but now you will actually pay $5 - $10 per click.

the crazy thing is that there is zero transparency into this market. funds try to bet every quarter on google's earnings based on comscore, etc. but they have no idea what the average CPC is doing. it's like betting on Exxon based on car usage w/o knowing the price per gallon.

<comment><USER4> I would drill all the way down to the Ad Group level, in the keywords tab and click the customize columns link under the date range and to the right. I'd show the quality score as a column; check all the quality scores and minimum bids.

Then I'd check all the status starting from the keyword level up to the campaign.

Lastly if nothing showed up there I'd go back to the keywords and put my mouse over each and every keyword magnifying glass to find out if ads are being served.

Then if it didnt work I'd call google and ask them for help.

Hope this helps!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> On Google I narrowed down to 4 keywords that work best where I get a good conversion rate and I spend no more then .35c per click.

Turn off Google's "Advertising Network" and only advertise on Google search results. I found there "network" just drums up a lot of hits but few conversions.

Use www.adbrite.com. I get better results on AdBrite then I do on Google and I spend less money for more hits and the hits are good quality, it did take more time to narrow down the right sites to advertise on.

Google organic hits are important don't forget SEO.

Try www.reviewme.com to get a blog writer to write about you (don't spend more then $100).

</comment><comment><USER6> We just launched PayScroll ( <http://www.payscroll.com> ) and I've been trying out various ads system. Adword, Yahoo Search Marketing, Text-Link-Ads and almost PPP (payperpost). Here's what I have been seeing so far. And bare in mind, this is with a $200 budget.

Adword - Expensive. we are bidding around $0.15 - $0.25 CPC. Clicks comes from search and sites. And also you got charge for impressions. We had to pay $$ for impression from a campaign that brought in zero clicks. Remember, Google is stock is at $600 for a reason. If you have a huge budget and can place high bids, it might work for you.

Yahoo Search Marketing - Slightly less expensive and lower CPC with more click through. We signed up through Yahoo SB account and you get $50 sign up promotional credit but the catch is you have to deposit min $30 so you get $80 to burn. So a plus if you have a small budget. No cost per impression just pure CPC.

Text-link-ads - So far not a whole lot of clicks with $125 worth of links. Total links we bought - 5. Main purpose is increasing your pagerank (wishful thinking?). Promotional $100 so overall we paid $25 out of pocket.

PayPerPost - Pay per post sounds interesting at first. And we submited an opportunity through PPP direct. Basically PPP direct is you make an offer to the blog owner and the blog owner will decide to accept your offer to review your site, etc. We did not go through because the offer was pending for days for some reason. So no deal there.

Again this is what we are at with $200 and might not hold true if you have a huge budget of 4 digits to burn.

</comment><comment><USER7> We're doing Adwords, plus a couple of other pay-per-click services. We spend about $500/month with Adwords, and haven't had trouble finding keywords to sit on for about $2-$3 (we avoid competing with our customers for keyword placement, which rules out a large pile of really expensive hosting-related terms)...keywords are expensive and getting moreso from adwords, so I'm putting most new spending on other options.

AdBrite is pretty good. You can buy full-time placement on quite a few sites, which is probably better for long-term effectiveness and brand awareness than per-click...I'm experimenting with that now. Sometimes it turns out really expensive though--I picked a few design-related sites, thinking web designers are also often webmasters, but so far, I've paid like $23 per click from one of them (from about 100k impressions)...I still have some time left on the ad, so it could drop a bit more as the ad has time to work, but I'm thinking I'll pick the best performers from the CPC ad list to buy full-time placement on in the future, rather than guessing about what fits.

TextLinkAds are too expensive and are kind of iffy on the "don't irritate your potential customers" scale, so I've signed up, but haven't bought any links yet.

Our best marketing tools are our various informational websites--we get 50% of our clicks from our Open Source project website, and another 10% from our documentation wiki (which contains our two published books on the topic of our Open Source project and gets quite a lot of traffic).

One interesting thing to note: Adwords clicks are stickier than any of the other types. Folks stick around for nearly 5 pages after finding us through Google Adwords, while Adbrite clicks stay an average of 2 pages (though some are better--very closely related pages tend to produce much better stickiness), and the other sources are somewhere in between. So, I suspect Adwords clicks are better qualified than those from the other sources, and thus worth more.

Of course, if you can't find keywords that you can competitively spend on, then you can't really make good use of Adwords. But, I'm surprised. I've used Adwords in two fields that were pretty competitive (in my previous business I was butting heads on one side with CDNs, and on the other with various types of server appliance vendors and proxy software vendors...while my current business sits along-side the highly competitive hosting industry, which has some of the highest per-click rates that I'm aware of), and never had trouble finding some less trodden territory to live in. Are you sure you're not going overly broad or trying to buy ads that would better serve your business partners or your customers? You obviously want to sit on the same spots as your competitors, if you can afford it, plus if you can come up with some alternatives (like for people who don't know what your product is normally called but know what they want to accomplish) that's a good way to capture customers that no one else has first access to.

So, it really depends on your industry, how wide a range of keywords would be useful to you, and whether you've got to fight with a dozen other companies or just one or two.

And, of course, Adwords is not the only kind of marketing that exists. It's just the easiest. You can advertise in all sorts of strange places--just figure out where your customers go, what they read, etc. and get your ads into those places via whatever means necessary.

BTW-Google's syndication network is a huge ripoff, in general. Do not let them run your ads on the whole network (it's enabled by default). It was eating our budget in a few hours each day for worthless clicks, and leaving no money for far higher quality clicks from the search engine results.

</comment><comment><USER8> Order this today (it's a damn bargain!) and thank me later: <http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321496590/>

PS: I do not know the author and I do not own Amazon stock.

<comment><USER9> Do you own Amazon call options or debt?

<comment><USER8> LOL... no, no derivatives of any kind. :)

Just a fan of the book. It's excellent!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Yeah, the interface really really sucks. We actually thought of making an adwords campaign manager for our YC idea (making buying adwords mindless and simple) but if you drill down into the TOS for all the major networks they are anti-competitive to the level of being ridiculous. It took me a few hours to actually figure out the adwords interface and I still don't fully understand it.

<comment><USER11> _the interface really really sucks_

I've found the interface very good. I think it took about 15 minutes to go from zero to a worldwide ad campaign. Let's keep perspective.

.......................

I pay about 6 to 10 cents per click. I get about 1000 impressions a day with a very small monthly budget. Adsense, by contrast, is completely worthless...maybe one click every couple months. Make sure you aren't corrupting your view of adwords by accidentally targeting adsense (which google encourages).

<comment><USER2> Completely depends on the sector though. Some things _fly_ on the content network (adsense), some things die.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> In the past I've run campaigns with budgets as small as $60 per month. $2 a day is perfectly reasonable if you just want to get some test users to your site. Of course, I had to pick the right keywords to make this work.

</comment><comment><USER13> Try Pubmatic. They look at more than one ad-network to increase your revenue.

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


Should drivers licenses use negative points instead? - <AUTHOR> http://followingtherules.com/why-drivers-licenses-should-have-negative-points/

<comment><USER2> Administrative outweighs psychological in this instance, I imagine. The convenience of easily being able to set different thresholds and zero points always meaning no deductions may outweigh anything else.</comment>


Ask HN: In which country our privacy is above the Big Brother's curiosity - <AUTHOR>

I have an idea, actually, I already have a well working prototype of a software.
It is a very simple idea and implementation which will make lawful interception impossible!
When application is published, it will grab the attention and flames overnight (and if it will be released as non free, say $3-5), it will probably generate millions of dollars within several weeks.
Point is, our government (US), as well as the EU would not like it, and would surely do anything to shutdown the business, block the software, and freeze the bank accounts.
Given that, I have come up with two strategies, each of which have it advantages and disadvantages.
One is to release the app in a light version, let us call it an extensible engine, that later on everyone would be able to write extension/modules using a simple XML structure.
In this way, the engine itself will not be a threat, as it does nothing `illegal[1]` or inappropriate yet, it will take more time for the application to catch.
The other way is to setup a company in a "liberal" country where governments cannot override human rights automatically and operate from there.
I do not wish to have terrorists used this, but I am sure they would consider using it just the same as anyone of us, simple, ordinary people would.
[1] The app will not perform any illegal operation in any case, but will build a stronger wall around our privacy. <comment><USER2> It's hard to dig through the hype here to see what you are really talking about.

What does your application do, exactly? It makes "lawful interception" of _what_ impossible? Is it somehow more "interception-proof" than, say, PGP?

If what you are talking about is some new encryption protocol or security scheme, then the only chance you have of getting any adoption whatsoever is to publish the source code, so that respected security researchers can sign off on it. The recent case of Haystack should make that pretty clear.

But do you have any realistic reason to believe that the app you have prototyped fills a market need so well that you think you can sell several hundred thousand copies in a few weeks? That sounds like hubris to me, as does the claim that the US government (and the EU) would "do anything" to shut down your business.

Your throwaway account name indicates you are a long-time HNer; as you no doubt know, there are some very respected security professionals active here. Why not get in touch with one of them directly?

<comment><AUTHOR> perhaps you are right, I have been exaggerating about its success,but yet, this is not the issue, I mean, for the sake of the conversation let's say this will be distributed for free.

My dilemma lies somewhere else, in the zone of what is right or wrong. Would it be right to release such a tool which will give people the ability to encrypt data in a way authorities would not be able to decrypt, even if they have access (tap) to the providers switches.

I am using standard encryption suites, yet its the power lies in the application which is currently compiled and working on almost all of the well known desktop, servers and mobile platforms.

<comment><USER2> From an ethical perspective, I still don't see the issue.

You ask: _Would it be right to release such a tool which will give people the ability to encrypt data in a way authorities would not be able to decrypt, even if they have access (tap) to the providers switches._

Such ability already exists-- for example, by using PGP to encrypt their information prior to sending.

Do you really think you're doing something that any evildoer with a CS education couldn't hack together themselves?

Seriously: if you have a prototype of a security app, send it to some serious people in the security community, and ask them to take a look. Before that is done, the rest is moot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I would have gone for the first option, as well as making it all free and open source, and searching for a better and safer ways to generate money.</comment>


Aramid: Create Strongly-Typed HTML Components in C# - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/edamtoft/Aramid <comment><USER3> You may want to check out Hyperlinq, a C# library for statically typed HTML generation. It also statically types the HTML attributes. Example code:

H.head ( H.title ("Hello world"), H.link (a => a.href ("/favicon.ico").rel ("shortcut icon").type ("image/x-icon")) )

Having used it on a website that I've had to maintain for years I can say that the simplicity of writing reusable components and ease of refactoring is really nice. It entirely negates the need to use a view mechanism at all - <USER2> just write your views in C# code.

The links for github and nuget are:

[https://github.com/hyperlinq/hyperlinq](https://github.com/hyperlinq/hyperlinq) [https://www.nuget.org/packages/Hyperlinq](https://www.nuget.org/packages/Hyperlinq)

I should mention that I use Hyperlinq in conjunction with MarkdownDeep. Markdown is great for defining HTML fragments that are very document-oriented, as opposed to data-oriented. So for instance I'd use markdown to define an FAQ, but would use Hyperlinq to define HTML for a customer record. Markdown fragments can be inserted into a Hyperlinq DOM as literal nodes (the underlying mechanism for Hyperlinq is Linq to XML), so the two approaches mesh together nicely.

I wrote the library ages ago but put very little effort into promoting it as I'm too busy.

</comment><comment><USER4> WebSharper templates are worth considering as an alternative:

[https://github.com/intellifactory/websharper.ui.next/blob/ma...](https://github.com/intellifactory/websharper.ui.next/blob/master/docs/Templates.md)

[https://kimsereyblog.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/create-html- comp...](https://kimsereyblog.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/create-html-componants- for-your.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> I like the idea, but I think this kind of thing feels obtuse in languages like C# and Java where the "templates" are 100% written with the hosted language.

Some languages can work around this by having flexible type definitions and syntax to make the DSL much closer to the target template (for an example, see: [http://www.lihaoyi.com/scalatags/](http://www.lihaoyi.com/scalatags/)). This works pretty well to avoid all those field declaration and "new" keywords.

<comment><USER6> > I like the idea, but I think this kind of thing feels obtuse in languages > like C# and Java where the "templates" are 100% written with the hosted > language.

I agree, but it's not that bad. I do think j2html [1] has a cleaner look than Aramid.

[1] [http://j2html.com/](http://j2html.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks a lot like the HtmlTags project that grew out of FubuMvc.

[https://github.com/HtmlTags/htmltags](https://github.com/HtmlTags/htmltags)

</comment><comment><USER8> In .NET Core, there are new TagHelpers that probably do some of the same stuff... not sure exactly of the overlap, but I've used them and they're really nice.

<comment><USER9> I'd much rather use razor than write all my markup in c#. This code looks way too bloated

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> While the _tags_ are strongly typed, their _attributes_ are apparently not (anonymous types). Why?

</comment><comment><USER11> I feel the name should be "Kevlar" to reflect use of trademarks by Microsoft and DuPont. Perhaps if the language used was C++ then Aramid might be appropriate.

</comment><comment><USER12> Is this only for server side rendering?

</comment><comment><USER13> Why not F#?

<comment><USER14> Using F# would have been a great choice. By using algebraic data types plus active patterns the size of the code base would have been dramatically reduced and much more comprehensible. And of course it would have been even more type safe.</comment></comment>


Biologists Home in on Turing Patterns (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/biologists-home-in-on-turing-patterns-20130325/ <comment><USER2> If curious see also

Discussed in 2015 (not very well) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9091997](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9091997)

Discussed at the time (much better): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5438679](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5438679)

Related from last year: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20895212](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20895212)

Related bit from 2018: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18765224](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18765224)

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice to see a mid-90's page still up: [http://mrob.com/pub/comp/xmorphia/](http://mrob.com/pub/comp/xmorphia/)

<comment><USER4> [http://mrob.com/pub/comp/xmorphia/ogl/index.html](http://mrob.com/pub/comp/xmorphia/ogl/index.html) very hypnotic:)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thank you! Not 20 minutes ago I was trying to find papers on the topic.

<comment><USER6> Here is a paper using the Turing mechanism to explain the pattern of 10hz flicker-induced hallucination (which is a fascinating rabbit hole). [https://www.pnas.org/content/104/20/8490/tab-figures- data](https://www.pnas.org/content/104/20/8490/tab-figures-data)

<comment><USER7> Excellent, thank you for sharing this! I'm curious: do you know of me such resources / how did you come across this (researcher?)?

<comment><USER6> Because I'm into Neurotech, psychedelics and history of science. Purkinje (famous neuroscientist) discovered the flicker-hallucinations effect back in the 1870s.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


If You Build It Myths and Realities about America's Infrastructure Spending - <AUTHOR> http://www.city-journal.org/html/if-you-build-it-14606.html <comment><USER2> A really worthwhile article. Infrastructure spending can be helpful, but the particulars of the project matter a great deal.

> _A well-known 1988 Congressional Budget Office survey found that spending to > maintain current highways in good shape produces returns of 30 percent to 40 > percent—but that new highway construction in rural areas showed a much lower > return._

But also:

> _California's huge investment in high-speed rail was justified by a 2014 > cost-benefit analysis that Parsons Brinckerhoff, the firm building the rail > system, had prepared. The report predicted that total benefits from the > project would range from $66 billion to $80 billion over several decades. > That number looked reasonable when the projected price tag for the project > was $35 billion, but the budget has already swollen to $68 billion—and is > still expanding._

<comment><USER3> > California's huge investment in high-speed rail was justified by a 2014 > cost-benefit analysis that Parsons Brinckerhoff, the firm building the rail > system, had prepared. The report predicted that total benefits from the > project would range from $66 billion to $80 billion over several decades. > That number looked reasonable when the projected price tag for the project > was $35 billion, but the budget has already swollen to $68 billion—and is > still expanding.

Wow, the pile of errors there is pretty amazing...

(1) The SF-Anaheim route (Phase 1) was estimated at $33 billion in _current_ dollars in 2006 (given the construction and inflation estimates in that plan, that was $65 billion in year-of-expenditure dollars at that time), but that was quickly revised to $96 billion year-of-expenditure if exclusive trackage (the original plan) was retained for the whole route.

By the 2012 business plan, that option (no longer the preferred one) was down to $91.3 billion year-of-expenditure, and the now-preferred blended system which used some shared track was $68.3 year-of-expenditure.

(2) The supposed 2014 report from Parsons Brinckerhoff (which hadn't yet been selected as the lead partner for the rail delivery contract) doesn't seem to exist; all the High Speed Rail Authority's commissioned studies and reports are published on the Authority web page together by year, and there is no 2014 report from Parsons Brinckerhoff, and no report (in 2014 or otherwise, from Parsons Brinckerhoff or otherwise) I can find making the prediction indicated in the quote, after skimming the ones that seemed from their titles to focus on economic impacts.

There is a 2016 fact sheet claiming that the Phase I alignment is an alternative to a combination of freeway and airport construction that would cost $158 billion to provide equivalent capacity, which at a $68 billion price tag for High-Speed Rail _would_ be $80 billion of _net_ savings in construction cost alone (there are also operations/maintenance cost savings) -- not total benefit before cost.

<comment><USER2> I think the article may have been referring to page 30 of this 2014 Parsons Brinckerhoff document on HSR's site:

[http://www.hsr.ca.gov/docs/about/business_plans/BPlan_2014_S...](http://www.hsr.ca.gov/docs/about/business_plans/BPlan_2014_Sec_7_CaHSR_Benefit_Cost_Analysis.pdf)

where it says:

Total Benefits $80,541,866,770

and

Grand Total Discounted Costs $34,639,084,822

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Also this:

> _Big infrastructure requires fancy equipment and skilled engineers, who > aren't likely to be unemployed. The most at-risk Americans, if they're > working at all, usually toil in fast-food restaurants, where the average > worker makes $22,000 a year. They're typically not trained to labor on > complex civil-construction projects. Subsidizing Big Mac consumption would > be a more effective way to provide jobs for the temporarily unemployed than > subsidizing airport renovation._</comment>


Cloud-based service promises 99% spam-free inbox, or your money back - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2011/10/cloud-based-service-promises-99-spam-free-inbox-or-your-money-back.ars <comment><USER2> I use Gmail for my personal and educational (Google Apps) and I haven't once gotten spam in my inbox (Google has caught all of them). I don't see why this better.

</comment><comment><USER3> It is simple to improve sensitivity to spam, but at what cost? What about the false-positive rate, which would follow the reduced specificity?</comment>


Launching a plugin against evil businesses - <AUTHOR> https://www.jothefish.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Launching our MVP now. We're a plugin that warns you about unethical businesses. All reports are researched, fact checked and reviewed by our community.</comment>


Body Language Reveals Wealth - <AUTHOR> http://www.livescience.com/culture/090210-body-language.html <comment><USER2> I should point out that the conclusion of the linked study is complete bullshit. It claimed that poor people are more polite than rich people. What it should have claimed was that poor people _who went to Berkeley_ are more polite than rich people _who went to Berkeley_.

Poor people who go to Berkeley are likely to be moving up in the world relative to their families; their eyes are being opened to a whole new world of knowledge and power and all that, and they are humbled by it.

Rich people who go to Berkeley are likely to come from prep schools, and feel vindicated by having been admitted to a top school, and therefore are snooty.

The conclusion doesn't jibe at all with my personal experience, either, and I think this is why.

<comment><USER3> Also they only studied people who got rich by having rich parents. It would be more interesting to study people who became rich through their actions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yes, I do hack my body language, though not in the ways described in the article.

Through college, I had a weak posture, submissive body language, and tended to fidget/move around. I often looked goofy.

About six months ago, I decided to improve all that. I consciously developed an upright, chest-out posture. I cut down or eliminated unnecessary motions. I keep my hands extended and parallel to the arms, instead of close-fisted and angled inwards. I keep my chin up and my gaze high. I keep my legs outward and, when comfortable, spread apart.

By now, it's all become second nature. And it works. Women react much more strongly to me (in a good way). I feel more confident. My body image has greatly improved.

As software developers, most of us spend a lot of time seated in chairs and have less than Adonis-like physiques. I highly recommend body language hacking.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The reason I posted this to HN, is because I am curious as to how many people here hack at their own body language, and whether you tend to focus on "improving" it, or just let it be "natural", whatever that means. And if you are "improving" it, what are your considerations for particular situations? Do you try act as if you are from a lower SES, to try to level yourself with your listener, or the other way around - try to increase the perceived importance of your SES in order to put down your listener?

<comment><USER5> There are some good papers on perceived IQ, and how perceived IQ correlates with actual IQ. It turns out that pIQ is mostly a function of body language, eye contact, rate of speech, and things like that; what comes out of your mouth doesn't actually matter all that much. Some of the factors you are able to fake and boost your pIQ, but most you aren't. So if you are into that it would pay off well to figure out what those are. :-)

<comment><USER6> Social skills can be hacked. Remember unconscious incompetence -> conscious competence.

RE: Body Language.

Move slow, talk slow, be an approval giver (not a seeker). We all have the capacity to be at the level of Bill Clinton or other legendary communicators - we do it on first dates, job interviews - he does it all the time. One of my most networked/outgoing friends consciously goes into certain situations like 'she owns the venue'. Also if you talk to everyone, you can hide the fact that you are interested in not everyone. You might also try videotaping your body language when you are with friends/familiar situation vs strangers/safe situation. You will have to try this to realize the power of this - but if you really, really want to talk to a group or even a cute female who is seated alone/together, drag a chair over from the other side of the room (noisily if possible) and sit down with them. That demonstrates commitment and is an opener all-in-one.

RE: Peer ratings

They are a form of social proof (raters do not exist in a bubble).

"Similarly, a person who has been unemployed for a long time may have a hard time finding a new job - even if they are highly skilled and qualified. Potential employers attribute wrongly the person's lack of employment to the person rather than the situation. This causes the potential employers to search more intensively for flaws or other negative characteristics that are "congruent" with or explain the person's failure and to discount the applicant's virtues."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_proof>

RE: SES

One of the more clever and disturbing ways to gain 'power' over an individual is to play the student in the master-student role. E.g. by having them teach you something - which is doing _you_ a favor, _you_ can gain their favor.

Ben Franklin: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=145544>

<comment><USER7> re: last point - Sounds like every girl who ever asked me to help her with her homework...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Years ago the author of Dress for Success reported a study noting that women say they like men who are "confident," which asked men to go into bars to start up conversations with women, who then rated the men. If the men were prompted to act confident, the women didn't like the men much. But if the men were prompted to act arrogant, they got much higher ratings from the women. Hmm.

<comment><USER9> All communication is on the part of the receiver. I automatically substitute "what the other person perceives to be" in front of everything that has to do with communication, especially emotive communication.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I guess if you title your paper "Rich people tend to act like assholes", it's harder to get funding for your next research project.

</comment><comment><USER11> The data is that more fidgeting and grooming correlated with higher SES, and more nodding, agreeing and eybrow raises correlated with lower SES. There's no link to the study itself, but there's no support in this article how they established causation, and further, even with causation established, that the behaviors are for the reason they give.

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't. Even the thought is a bit repulsive to me. Regardless, I don't think it's worth the effort, because people are less likely to infer my wealth from my body language; even if they know nothing about me, they have other (more reliable) sources to go by - my clothes, my accent, my hair etc.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is absolutely true in my experience. I never connected it to SES, though. I just thought the fidgeter/groomer was probably just a jerk.

</comment><comment><USER14> All seems very subjective to me. The research, I mean.

</comment><comment><USER15> it would be interesting to know how the body language changed over time.. i.e. is the arrogant body language a cause or effect..</comment>