Redditors who are rich (net worth $1 million+) - how did you get rich? - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/rqejz/redditors_who_are_rich_net_worth_1_million_how/ <comment><USER2> There's a sad undercurrent to this, as some redditors respond that they find this depressing. While I understand their plight, I do not understand the sustained pessimism for most of the depressed ones.

I went to work right out of high school at menial jobs. No college, no big family business. Paycheck-to-paycheck, and any minor emergency like a dead car battery was a financial crisis. I did not "get lucky" on stocks or anything. While getting rich has not been a focus for me, I decided I definitely did NOT like being poor. Lots of small steps, and staying on the lookout for ways to improve matters has led me to not be poor. I'm not rich but I'm in decent shape and moving in the right direction: no debt except the mortage, which will be payed off soonish; some money in savings, stocks, 401k, etc. I'm living at a decent level and should be able to retire in some comfort. No magic. No big windfalls. This is doable by most of those depressed people.

<comment><USER3> I am really glad someone else has noticed this and feels the same way.

This quote from that thread pissed me off all morning: "If you told the common man any time in history other than the baby boomer generation, that the way to get rich was 'hard work' and 'Budgeting' they would die of laughter."

Every day I feel more and more alienated by the victim mentality on Reddit. It seems to be the only tangible by-product of the Occupy Wall Street protests.

I don't even know why I visit Reddit anymore.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure why you would find that quote so offensive, but to be fair, the disillusioned youth on Reddit are probably just as sensitive to the "anyone can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps" assertions by smug boomers (like the GP). Such a world-view is increasingly at odds with an economic reality in which income inequality is higher than its been in decades, and growing.

<comment><USER5> High income inequality is not at odds with the ability for folks lift themselves out of poverty or social mobility in general.

<comment><USER6> It may not be inherently at odds, no, but I haven't seen any evidence or studies that social mobility is in any way increasing - and it does seem counter-intuitive that social mobility could increase at the same time as income inequality.

<http://www.economist.com/node/15908469>

"How rising inequality affects social mobility is still unclear. Those born since inequality started to rise sharply are only just now becoming adults. However there are some troubling signs according to two papers to be presented at the Tobin Project, an alliance of scholars, this month. Christopher Jencks of Harvard University finds that income inequality has been accompanied by a widening gap in college attendance. Ms Sawhill argues that a rising correlation between income levels, likelihood of marriage and level of education will make society more stagnant."

<comment><USER7> "It may not be inherently at odds, no, but I haven't seen any evidence or studies that social mobility is in any way increasing - and it does seem counter-intuitive that social mobility could increase at the same time as income inequality."

The Internet has given many more people opportunities..if they choose to take it. There is so much free information out there..there's no reason why more people aren't able to pick up a new skill and bring themselves out of poverty.

If you don't have the Internet, pretty much every city in the US has free access at a library.

<comment><USER8> There's more to social mobility than just skill, however. As a hypothetical example, if a currently poor person who is genetically/psychologically predisposed to shyness and introversion learns a new skill, they'll still have the difficulty of forming the social connections necessary to know how to apply that skill toward generating life-altering levels of income.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Our path to be on track for a net worth of $1 mil:

1) Two good incomes on the professional track. We both have good degrees from universities and don't plan on taking any breaks in employment. Even with kids, there are plenty of great childcare options available. Living near family helps too.

2) Drive paid off cars. Buy new cars if you want, but structure your costs so you can pay them off in 2-3 years max and then drive them for another 5 or more. Stagger your purchases so you never have more than one car payment at a time.

3) Buy a home well below your means in area with a lower cost of living. There are plenty of parts of the country where you can earn a combined six figure income while spending less than $100/sqft for a home in a good neighborhood.

4) Limit how often you eat out for lunches and dinners to twice a week or less.

5) Live frugally so that you can save 20-40% of your income. Don't cheapen out on things for you or your family, but don't let yourself be manipulated by the consumerism that surrounds us. If you have a disposable income, use it for experiences like travel rather than collecting stuff.

6) Avoid expensive hobbies/activities that consume a lot of time and don't contribute much to your marketable skills. If a hobby requires spending a considerable chunk of your monthly income, reconsider whether it's really worth it.

TL;DR: It's really not that hard to save your way to $1 mil, you just have to be willing to work a little harder and spend a little less than most people to get there.

<comment><USER10> I have to say I almost wondered if this plan was meant as a bit of a joke.

I'd rather spread my income around now on a nice(r) house, some fun hobbies and a bit of abject consumerism, and enjoy life more evenly then save now not have as much fun but end up with more money in the bank later. You'll never get your younger years back.

<comment><USER11> There's a middle ground between not spending and spending extravagantly. So many people with large incomes just waste it away and end up with nothing at the end. We're not talking about a single $500 iPad. We're talking about a $500 night at a club.

<comment><USER12> How great a night we're talking here? Because, in general, experiences are worth more than gadgets (see below what I mean). Though (sky)diving lessons or vacation would probably be better than a night out.

"Asked which of the two purchases made them happier, fully 57% of respondents reported that they had derived greater happiness from their experiential purchase, while only 34% reported greater happiness from their material purchase."

"If Money Doesn't Make You Happy Then You Probably Aren't Spending It Right", Journal of Consumer Psychology

"In 5 studies, we find that people's material purchase decisions are more likely to generate regrets of action (buyer's remorse) and their experiential purchase decisions are more likely to lead to regrets of inaction (missed opportunities)."

"Buyer's remorse or missed opportunity? Differential regrets for material and experiential purchases.", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 102(2), Feb 2012, 215-223.

<comment><USER11> As I said "There's a middle ground between not spending and spending extravagantly." Whether that is experiences or material goods. A $500 nightclub night once a year in Vegas is perfectly reasonable. A $500 nightclub night every weekend is probably over the line for most people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The #1 expense over your lifetime won't be your house, your entertainment, or your cars.

It will be TAXES.

If you build a career path that can take advantage of tax breaks you wind up with a huge advantage from the start.

For tech entrepreneurs - focus on building your enterprise value. Reinvest profits into GROWTH so that you wind up paying the bulk of your taxes in capital gains vs. personal income tax. On $1m or 2m in money the difference in what you save is staggering.

In real estate you can take advantage of all sorts of loopholes to reinvest or shelter profits that let you drastically increase your available pool to invest and create gains.

And for goodness sakes at the very least start a LLC or S-Corp if you're making more than $25,000 or so a year from "side projects / consulting" so you can properly write off and document all business related fees (computer hardware, cell phone usage, home office, etc).

<comment><USER14> As a tax lawyer, I can say with complete certainty that healthcare costs will trump taxes as the #1 lifetime expense for almost everyone (except the Buffets and Gates). #2 will be costs associated with childraising. Taxes are a distant #3, and for people with sufficient debt (mortage and/or student loan), may actually fall to #4.

Also, while the rest of your advice is sound, it is unncessary to organize an LLC or incorporate a S-Corporation for side projects. In either case, you will face additional taxes (nominally called "fees") for the privilege, along with additional tax filing burdens. You can already deduct business-related expenses as an individual. Indeed, both LLCs and S-Corps are treated as "pass- through" entities, so you would already be doing that for your LLC/S-Corp expenses.

The primary reason to form an LLC/S-Corp for a side project or for consulting is for liability protections (i.e., lawsuits, debt, etc.). Unfortunately, for single-member LLCs or sole-owner S-Corps, creditors will generally require the owner to contractually waive such protections.

The secondary reason, and the reason you're probably thinking of: you can sell the LLC/S-Corp, recognizing capital gains (lower tax rate) or even avoid taxes altogether (via certain norecognition transactions). In contrast, it is extremely difficult to sell an unincorporated/unorganized business, and you will essentially always recognize the gain in such a sale.

<comment><USER15> Amen to the childraising point. My wife and I took a total of six months of leave for each of our two kids (mostly her, though I did a 1-1.5 months at the end too). That's a year's salary down the toilet. We're mid-career (i.e. unlikely to see an increase in real income unless we get lucky or change career paths). So that's probably 1.5-2% of our lifetime earnings right there: even before the kids started daycare, and long before they'll go to college.

<comment><USER16> Are you saying 1.5-2% of your lifetime earnings is higher than what you will be paying in taxes? I assume youre in a higher tax bracket than 2% right?

<comment><USER17> He was referring to the first six months of child raising. Therefore, the total cost is definitely higher and may well trump taxes, depending on when your definition of "child raising" stops.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Easiest way:

No kids. Two good incomes. Reliably saving 20%. Mid 40s. No college debt or health issues.

That should get you to about a million in assets.

<comment><USER18> I fulfill all the above (except that I have a son, but he's young so the only big cost is daycare, around 13K/year), so where's my million!?

In order to develop a successful model, one should also have negative examples, i.e. people who _could have_ had ~$1M in their mid 40s but do not. The greatest mistakes I made that I see with hindsight are (i) doing a PhD in EE where a MS was more than enough and then taking too long to finish that and (ii) taking too long to get acquainted with the concept of creating wealth, a la <http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html>; I'd say that, had I read _Hackers and Painters_ 15 years ago (it wasn't printed at that time or course), my life would have been different (or maybe not, it's easy to get caught with might have beens). That's why I buy a copy of this book to many young people I know who are starting life.

<comment><USER19> Thanks for that link... enjoyed it a lot.

[9]This is a good plan for life in general. If you have two choices, choose the harder. If you're trying to decide whether to go out running or sit home and watch TV, go running. Probably the reason this trick works so well is that when you have two choices and one is harder, the only reason you're even considering the other is laziness. You know in the back of your mind what's the right thing to do, and this trick merely forces you to acknowledge it.

<comment><USER20> Fantastic pull quote. I'm reading this on my iPhone and felt too lazy to bring up this page on my phone to copy/paste the text to send to a friend, so I just voice dictated it. (Which I guess is a reminder that there's also the possibility that sometimes the harder choice is also simply the less efficient.)

To add some value to this anecdote, I'll share that I've been using voice dictation more often, both for convenience (as here) and also as a tool to help improve my diction. I tend to swallow my words and speak unclearly, so by having a computer check me I'm slowly learning to enunciate a little better and specifically figuring out which areas I need the most work. I am not speaking to the phone robotically, the only change from my conversational tone is the speaking of punctuation. (As for the pain of to/too/two and similar homonyms, the iPhone helpfully underlines these in blue and makes it a snap to tap and pick the correct version, a trick it took me a while to learn so I thought I should share.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think the best line from the whole thread has to be:

'TL;DR If your reading this first, your not going to be successful. You're too fucking lazy.'

\- [http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/rqejz/redditors_w...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/rqejz/redditors_who_are_rich_net_worth_1_million_how/c47vz37)

<comment><USER22> Generally agree with the sentiment, though that guy seems to have deleted his account because (apparently) his post is a big lie.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> WRT the top post there (as of right now), you have to be pretty lucky if driving a 20+ year old car is a net gain. Especially if you weren't the owner of that car for the majority of its life. Like with old codebases, there's a lot that can go wrong at any moment and be so difficult and expensive to maintain that it's worth it to just throw it out and get a certified pre- owned.

Depends on the car, I guess, I ditched my 12 year old Dodge for a 14 year old Toyota and feel much better about the reliability.

<comment><USER24> with cars you can just buy them used and sell them before they depreciate too much. Buy a 3 year old car, keep it for 1-2 years, then sell it. (if that's still too rich for your blood...get a 5 year old car and keep that for 2 years)

Just look at the cars as the cost to own...not actual price you pay.

So even if a car depreciates 20% in that time period, you can still drive something decent.

A $10,000 used car...will depreciate $2,000 or $1,000/yr or $83/mo

$83/mo is a small price to pay to have a reliable car that's just 3 years old.

And if you want something better...

A $40,000 used car...will depreciate $8,000 or $4,000/yr or $333/mo.

$333/mo is nothing, and a $40,000 car started off its life as an $80,000 one.

And that's if you hold the cars for 2 years....if you sell them within the year...you can sell it for the same price you paid for it.

<comment><USER17> While your calculation is correct, you do not include a rather important fact. Owning a car which you intend to sell in a couple years is a risk. Even though the cost of ownership of a $100k car and $40k car might not be much, it will turn out to be significant at the moment you crash it.

Which will then inevitably lose you the full value.

<comment><USER25> "Which will then inevitably lose you the full value."

Not even close. Insurance will reimburse you for the loss (minus a deductable).

<comment><USER17> I have to admit that I don't know about the situation in the US, but in Europe you generally will not get your full car reimbursed if you drive it against a wall. Unless you have some disgustingly expensive car insurance of course...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Entrepreneurism seems under-represented: most of the responses seem to be inheritance or stock investments. I'm wondering if that reflects on the reddit community makeup, the type of people who would answer this question, or just that growing a successful startup is really hard / rare.

<comment><USER27> 9/10 start-ups fail, just like most other forms of new business. I believe we could apply Bayes' Law here...

<comment><USER28> That is crazy talk. The rate for small businesses as a whole is around 50% failure within the first 5 years.

There are exceptions to that rule and ways to increase the odds. As an example, 90% of franchise businesses are still running after 5 years.

<comment><USER29> Anecdata: Walk down a main commercial street in any large metropolis and count the number of completely unviable businesses (these are the ones that turn over their real estate every few months). These are further polluting the statistics.

<comment><USER28> I am not knowledgeable enough to know whether or not a business is viable just from looking in the storefront.

Though I would argue that as the owner of two retail locations, I am probably better equipped to make that judgement than most.

In my experience, most retail leases are for 5 year terms. I can't imagine that the default rate on those is anywhere near 50%. Most business "failures" likely never got far enough to sign a lease.

<comment><USER29> My gist was you don't have to be able to know, just walk down the street, then walk down the same street 6 months later, and many of the shops will have changed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Take pride in doing good work. Find a job that will reward you for it. Be lucky. Don't pay more for things than they are worth to you.

</comment><comment><USER31> It's funny how RICH is defined in a monetary value. I live a very rich life (including kids, those of you who don't have them yet: you'll get it when you have them), can afford everything I need and most of the stuff I want. I never got the lavish spending of the wealthy, why on earth would someone buy a Ferrari or 50,000 dollar pool table? What I'm trying to say is money is just the means to fulfilling a desire.

I knew an old lady who saved every penny in her life to amass 10.000 euros, it was her dream. She did accomplish it, but never had any fun in her life because she'd always save her money. When she died she had the desired amount on the bank. Her children inherited the money, but only after they paid 40% tax.

How to get rich? Live your life to the fullest and have fun. And yes, raise a family at some point. I promise you that all the money in the world can't buy you what you get from your that!

<comment> UK-AL A whole life to to amass 10000 Euros?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> This comment is why I stopped reading reddit. The person mentions they "noticed a couple of GOOD POINTS"...

Get lucky, either through a series of serendipitous events or through birth.

Be old enough to have lived in an era when you didn't have $50K or more in student loans to pay off and could get a good job.

<comment><USER33> I like reading it to see how people react to such a question, not really the advice people give. Most people seem to think divine intervention is the best way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Net worth of $1m is hardly "rich" in my definition, since it's not sufficient for most of first-world population to retire on. Heck, that 2500 sq ft down the road was listed for $700k and had multiple offers, and my neighbourhood isn't even considered "rich" (perhaps middle- to upper-middle class).

Net worth of $1m quite easily achievable by 50 with two middle class income, not being a spendrift, and not being a bonehead in investing. (For the record, trading stocks too actively is usually a bonehead move, so is putting all savings in CD's.)

</comment><comment><USER35> Long response from a redditor who launched a reasonably successful startup:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/rqejz/redditors_w...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/rqejz/redditors_who_are_rich_net_worth_1_million_how/c47vz37)

<comment><USER36> Looks like it's fake though. The thread is a reminder of the awful S/N ratio on Reddit.

<comment><USER37> I'm curious-what in the post indicates that it's fake?

<comment><USER36> The reply to it:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/rqejz/redditors_w...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/rqejz/redditors_who_are_rich_net_worth_1_million_how/c48bw7n)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> This book sums up everything you need to be wealthy, what people who live hand to mouth believe and why most people's 9-5 job, live frugally for 50 year plan to be rich in their retirement is stupid (hint: because you just pissed away your whole life).

<http://www.themillionairefastlane.com/> (scammy title I know but seriously read it). The guy who wrote it was the founder of limos.com.

<comment><USER39> s/pissed away/lived/

Just beceause it's not a constant adrenaline high doesn't make it wasted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> For the HNs who are rich. If you have to start it from the beginning.

What would be a good startup to you start, service/product ?

</comment><comment><USER41> Interesting reads on the Reddit thread—most of them feel grounded and authentic.

It's pleasent to get some new views on this topic if you are used to the typical screaming self-help books or blogs post about getting rich and success (where you never know wether the author is really rich or just a good writer).

</comment><comment><USER42> Best book on the topic: [http://www.amazon.com/How-Get-Rich-Greatest- Entrepreneurs/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/How-Get-Rich-Greatest- Entrepreneurs/dp/1591842719)

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

</comment><comment><USER43> So to have a million and also have free time you have to either inherit it (best case) or build up your real estate.

You might be able to get that money other way but it will take so much time that you won't even have few minutes for yourself to brag about your success on reddit.

</comment><comment><USER44> I hope to someday know what this feels like and not have to learn these lessons the hard way</comment>


California considers a single-payer, universal health care plan - <AUTHOR> http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/02/17/california-lawmakers-to-introduce-medicare-for-all-health-plan-on-friday/ <comment><USER2> The article mentions the Canadian health care system, which I can speak of, since I live in Canada.

In Canada, most health care is paid for by provincially funded systems which pay health care providers directly. Here in Ontario, our system is called OHIP. Canada also places limits on drug prices.

The system is mostly working. If you need routine or critical care, you get it. But there are some issues. If you need expensive medical care for a condition that isn't killing you right now -- hip replacements are the common example here -- you can expect to wait quite a while because only so many treatments are funded every year. Some people who have such conditions do travel abroad to have them fixed, at their own expense, but that is quite rare. Not a lot of people can fork over the six-figure sums for such treatments out of pocket. I suppose if things started fraying, people would start buying US medical insurance, but we're definitely not at that point now.

Also, it can be quite hard to get a family physician in small and midsize towns, because few physicians want to locate there. When I lived in Kitchener, I called around to some physicians, and they all had one-to-two-year waiting lists. Fortunately there are plenty of walk-in medical centres, which are staffed by physicians, and there they'll see you right away.

Generally, my sense is that the Canadian system is working, but there are some issues.

<comment><USER3> You've described a system wherein waiting lists are pervasive. Why do you think it's working?

(This doesn't imply I think the _American_ system is working. On the contrary, I think it's a mess.)

<comment><USER2> "Pervasive" sounds like an overstatement. Most conditions don't have waiting lists. But a few do.

In the medical field, I don't think it's possible to give people everything they want, because some people want _everything_ done to keep them alive but some treatments are horrendously expensive. Any funding system is therefore going to have some sort of shortfall; someone isn't going to get everything they want. The best that can realistically be done is to ensure that the shortfalls between want and get are never too severe, and are generally distributed in some fair and sensible way. As far as I can tell, the Canadian system meets those criteria.

To be clear, I do think the Canadian system could be improved. To give just one example, I think it should be legal to pay for your own medical procedures out of pocket. If you have the funds to pay the full freight, who are we to stop you? But that would mean a two-tier system, one for the rich and one for the rest of us, which is currently politically unacceptable in Canada.

<comment><USER4> " Most conditions don't have waiting lists. But a few do."

Almost all conditions have delays that are considerably longer than other systems.

Just getting to see a specialist for something benign can take months.

If you have highly specialized needs (such as a sports injury) - it can be very problematic.

"I think it should be legal to pay for your own medical procedures out of pocket. "

Some degree of privatization would be a good start.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Waitlists are a red herring. It'll take 3-6 months here too. people over 65 get them, that's all Medicare. Even if it was regular insurance you'd still see waitlists for the doctors due to demand.

</comment><comment><USER6> In general money makes the world go round. It takes a lot of very smart people working very hard to innovate. That's only going to happen when there is a lot of money. So I'm not against profit in the medics industry. Without profit, I think cures would come out much slower becuase smart people would move to make money elsewhere.

It stinks that health care is so expensive. But by moving to a single payer system, innovation will be stifled. Temporarily that may be fine, but it's like killing the goose that lays the golden egg. Innovation will slow and in maybe 10 years we will be worse off than we were before

<comment><USER7> It seems that you are suggesting that the profits made by insurance companies is the key factor funding innovation in health care. This might be worth looking into, but I doubt this is true. It seems just as plausible if not more so that government grants in a country with single payer health care would drive innovation. The government would have an interest in both improving the health of citizens and finding new methods/techniques that reduce the cost of diagnosis and treatment.

<comment><USER8> The usual argument is that single payer will be cheaper because the single payer has a strong negotiating position from which to pay doctors and drug companies less. The suggestion is that the profits made by drug companies are a key factor in innovating health care.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Good. It'll be even better if multiple states decide to pool together and go single payer as well.</comment>


Measuring Social Engagement with Ruby - <AUTHOR> http://gaslight.co/blog/measuring-engagement-with-ruby

<comment><USER2> This is a nice Gem for sure. Using the Twitter and G+ widgets are ok, but 1) they aren't always accurate and 2) Who cares about them? Seeing activity on HN and Reddit is great.

What are the performance implications of having this gem running on a page?</comment>


From Sex Object to Gritty Woman: The Evolution of Women in Stock Photos - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/07/upshot/from-sex-object-to-gritty-woman-the-evolution-of-women-in-stock-photos.html <comment><USER2> Based on the article, this is at least partly because of the availability of specifically curated collections. Someone still needed to choose to pay for the photos, but it probably does give a bit of a nudge to editors quickly selecting a photo to accompany an article. This article notes that a lot of the selected images are also still pretty stereotypical in various ways. So possibly a real trend but I'm not sure how much I would read into it.</comment>


How iOS7 Stacks Up : Smartphone OS User Experience Shootout [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.pfeifferreport.com/v2/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/iOS7-User-Experience-Shootout.pdf

<comment><USER2> There is a really interesting comment on reddit regarding this survey, specifically about how dodgy its methods was.

"This is not me saying that this is a bad study because I'm a Microsoft fanboy. This is me saying this is a bad study because I'm a scientist.

The "study" says that "cognitive load is the sum of elements a user needs to be familiar with in order to use the operating system." That's actually a good thing to look at, and would be interesting. Unfortunately, they counted the number of pre-installed applications and decided that was somehow linked to the cognitive load? I don't even begin to see a connection between the two.

In the "efficiency and integration" section, they do not actually run a study to see how quickly different tasks can be done (which would be efficiency) -and I don't see anything about integration at all- instead they simply talk about how many short cuts there are- except on Android, which is docked for having too many short cuts.

The customization section showcases 2 problems. 1. They assume that more customization is always better and 2. If what you're going for is customization, than you better make Android a 10 and the next highest operating system a 2. The fact that they have Android and iOS7 anywhere close together shows they did not use any methodology for assigning score.

And finally, the UFX score. I don't even know where to begin. First, he claims that you can close applications on iOS7 and Android to "free up resources," but in reality both camps have said explicitly that their app launcher does not control resource use. He claims that iOS 7 can fit 24 application shortcuts, while Windows Phone can barely fit 12. In reality, if all you want is icons with counters (which is all iOS 7 offers you) then you can fit 28 icons on Windows Phone. He also complains about not having a background image on Windows Phone, never once mentioning how you wouldn't be able to see it (he also lists this under UFX- not sure how this causes any friction. Anyway, he also list this under customization (which makes more sense) and double counts this as a negative). And the oddest one- he claims that the Lumia 920 has "sponsored links on the homescreen." I don't have a Lumia 920- so I can't speak from personal experience, but none of my Google searches reveal anything about this and it is something that I am quite sure would be railed against frequently if true. So in that case, I'm pretty sure it is a lie.

Now, that being said- there are of course problems with Windows Phone. However, I really don't think this article captured any of them." \- Weed_O_Whirler

</comment><comment><USER3> Strange how trying to make something objective can make it inaccurate. For example, I deliberately changed from android to windows phone because I much prefer the windows phone user experience, but it scores the worst in their objective comparison.

All the complaints about windows phone are mostly accurate, but largely irrelevant for me personally. For example, I don't want a background image for the live tiles screen, so I don't care that I can't configure one.

I do agree with their final conclusion that windows phone is a strange mixture of careful user-centric design and complete disregard for actual user needs. There are things which are incomprehensible that they haven't been fixed over the past few years, like not having a separate ringer volume. If, like me, you are lucky to have needs which mostly align with the intended design, then it beats even iOS in usability. But if you are only slightly out of alignment, it is a long fall down the usability ladder.

<comment><USER4> I only just picked up a Lumia 1020 two days ago after using an iPhone for the last 2 years, so the jury is still out for me on whether I prefer it or not and how well it suits my particular set of needs. I'm not even sure I can accurately define what my particular needs are right now (except that I wanted the 1020's great camera). I wonder if you could elaborate on what needs it is that you think Windows Phone suits so well?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> No you can't compare iOS 7 to android until you install my bespoke launcher and remove all the default icons and widgets and customize the phone!

It's not fair picking both up out of a box and comparing the user experience.

<comment><USER6> You're joking, don't you?

<comment><USER5> Yes but unfortunately there are people making that argument quite seriously.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> When one of the negative points is the number of icons and widgets it says a lot about that report.

<comment><USER7> Like what? Things that clutter the user experience are certainly valid points. Otherwise we might suggest that the old godaddy website was well designed because it had lots of "features."

<comment><USER6> Number of apps installed is not what defines clutter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's probably worth noting that Pfeiffer, the consulting group which makes this report, seems to be a consultant for marketing departments.

One shouldn't read these reports as a scientific publication (b/c their methods are certainly suspect at best), but rather a way to try and translate product differences into things for the marketing department to emphasize.

</comment><comment> k-mcgrady Is more customisation really better? I would have left that out of the report as it can be argued either way. High levels of customisation mean you can tailor the device to your needs. On the other hand a device might be designed to work perfectly for 90% of the users and offering customisation options will just lead to confusion and people not getting the best experience.

<comment><USER9> I really liked someone's observation: Android is about what you do to your phone, iPhone is about what you do with your phone.

<comment><USER10> I think that's slightly unfair.

The reason a lot of people like Android is that they can customise it to remove even the slightest friction from the things they want to do. They have to make a bit of an investment in time to do that but to them that's a good thing because it will pay off.

Android is absolutely more about what you want to do to your phone than iOS, but I'm not sure it's fair to suggest that it's not about doing things with your phone. That feels a bit like someone just trying to find a comparison to make it into a nice phrase.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This seems like such an arbitrary report. Looking at the "analysis" for UXF it just reads like a list of random annoyances their testers came across.

</comment><comment><USER12> Nice to see they pick Samsungs version of android, the worst one going.

<comment><USER5> Yes and its the one most people know?

Let's compare user experience. One phone is straight out of the box. The other we will just take a minute to gain root and reinstall the entire OS. Just to keep things fair.

<comment><USER13> But it means they're not comparing iOS (and WP and BB10) to _Android_ , they're comparing them to _TouchWiz_ (or whatever Samsung are calling their skin these days). In that case, they should also include HTC Sense and Motorola Blur etc. The fact that TouchWiz is most popular is irrelvant; pretty much any Android skin is probably more popular than BB10, and many are more popular than WP as well.

<comment><USER5> Relatively no one who walks into a store to buy a phone understands any of those words you just said.

They just know they bought the most popular android phone and I guess this is what android is?

Edit: By your definition you can't compare anything to android because android doesn't exist.

Is it possible to compare windows to linux?

<comment><USER14> > Relatively no one who walks into a store to buy a phone understands any of > those words you just said.

> They just know they bought the most popular android phone and I guess this > is what android is?

SifJar was talking to you, not the average person who walks into any store.

> Edit: By your definition you can't compare anything to android because > android doesn't exist.

He didn't try to (re)define anything. To give you a clue, when someone talks about Android to me, I think about the Android Open Source Project, the OS managed by Google. It's essentially what the Nexus devices come with.

The problem with the study is that they claim to compare different operating systems, while more precisely, they are comparing different user experiences on different OSs. Big difference, I'm explaining it below, and they should know better.

In the case of Android, most OEMs do everything they can to differentiate their devices from other Android devices, and thus they offer a fundamentally different _experience_. They even give names to these experiences, e.g. TouchWiz or Sense. So the authors were actually comparing TouchWiz to other operating systems. This is evident by the fact that some of the features they felt were lacking are actually in Android trunk, and some of the features they found problematic are not.

Thus, I feel like the people who did this UX study didn't actually know what _exactly_ they were studying, based on their choice of words (TouchWiz is not mentioned at all).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> the fundamental flaw of these kinds of survey: if you have enough time to participate then you're not majority, you will never value time-saving features as highly as people who matter will, for example. lots of other things. I never regard experiments using accidental sampling seriously.

</comment><comment><USER5> Can the experience being behind a wall garden buddy buddy with the NSA ever be truly good, ignoring superficial things like icons and launchers?

<comment><USER16> Indeed, you make a good point for avoiding the Google Android ecosystem.</comment></comment>


What.cd Debuts Lightweight Tracker For Its 5 Million Peers - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/what-cd-debuts-lightweight-tracker-for-its-5-million-peers-101014

<comment><AUTHOR> Ocelot. I want to see this code!</comment>


Review my app: utsup.com, simple team awareness for projects that use git - <AUTHOR> http://www.utsup.com

<comment><AUTHOR> As we grew as a company, we found that we frequently had people working remotely on a project, sometimes from home, sometimes from another country. trying to keep track of what everyone was doing at any given moment seemed to get exponentially more difficult as time zone differences were involved. just asking people for status updates became a pain. we decided that we'd have to find a better way, and what we came up with to solve our internal issue is UTSUP?.

We developed the application to work transparently with git to update the entire company as to what individuals are working on without the communication overhead of having to actually send someone a status update; now we all just "sup" each other.

<comment><USER2> I take the lazy approach and just watch the twitter feed of the updates come in over growl. Low intensity management.</comment></comment>


Snowden arrives at Moscow airport from Hong Kong - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23021767

<comment><USER2> This BBC article tries to gloss over the fact he's an important whistleblower that has been accused of committing a series of criminal acts in order to blow the whistle on some particularly egregious domestic and international surveillance by the US government and British government, and instead paints him as a Wild West-style criminal on the lam. It's not that they're incorrect, it's just the story's lead and first few paragraphs appear to be a not-so- subtle attempt at framing [1] him in a negative light to sway perception and erode support.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing_(social_sciences)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing_\(social_sciences\))

<comment><USER3> Or it could be that this is impartial reporting of a situation where little is known and _nothing_ has been proved, which is how things should be done in a free press. But feel free to stick to your paranoid interpretation.

<comment><USER2> For it to be impartial the journalist would have given equal weight to his status as a whistle blower and as someone who is wanted by the USG for blowing the whistle and taking some government property in order to do so.

First impressions count. What you lead an article with serves as the context for the rest of the story and is the part that's most likely to color the reader's judgment. Also, most people only skim the first part of an article; the abandonment rate drops precipitously with every passing paragraph, which is why you put the most important things first, and the least important things last. This idea is succinctly conveyed by the literary maxim: don't bury the lede.

It's really not a paranoid interpretation. It's well known you can sway a reader's view on a topic by the order information is presented, and being aware of this tactic is useful for thinking critically about a news story. Every news outlet has a particular bias; the BBC is no exception. This isn't in any way to say it's a disreputable outlet.</comment></comment></comment>


Recipe – an integration test data declaration framework - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kormide/recipe <comment><AUTHOR> I began this project at work. It made writing and maintaining our tests so much easier, and it supported our need for setting up data in different languages in a consistent way, so I open-sourced it.

Just wanted to get this project out there in case you find it useful. Currently there's only support for Java and TypeScript, but I'll be adding more languages in response to demand. Any feedback is appreciated.</comment>


CEO of Scvngr caught faking acquisition rumors via Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://bostinno.com/2011/11/16/seth-priebatsch-thinks-everyone-at-bostinno-is-painfully-stupid-really-internal-email/

<comment><USER2> There's an old saw that says "Work is like high school, but with money". Feels appropriate to this story.

More generally, I'm always amazed at how easily managers/founders can get caught up in the game of publicly toying with other companies, with no apparent benefit to their customers.

Another saying comes to mind "real artists ship".</comment>


Please help me to not go broke - <AUTHOR> http://devblog.avdi.org/2016/05/23/please-help-me-to-not-go-broke/ <comment><USER2> I just wanted to give a quick word of praise to Avdi and the products he produces:

I'm a subscriber to Avdi's screencasts and have purchased Confident Ruby. I really like both and both have helped me tremendously in my day job as a ruby dev. I've also listened to him extensively on the Ruby Rogues podcast. All in all, he's a great teacher and his learning materials are really easy to get into and apply right away to your ruby code.</comment>


Hipmunk Raises Money And Is Immediately Threatened By Patent Troll (July 2012) - <AUTHOR> https://www.techdirt.com/blog/innovation/articles/20120709/02383719619/hipmunk-raises-money-is-immediately-threatened-patent-troll.shtml

<comment><USER2> Every time I read an article like this I feel enraged, as I'm sure many other people do too.

I'm a UK resident currently working on a suite of business apps, when I eventually am able to launch the company and (hopefully) make some money what can I do to avoid being a victim of patent trolls?

Seems actively seeking to avoid violating patents could get me into more trouble than doing nothing!

<comment><USER3> Just keep doing what you're doing, in the UK, try not to open yourself up to US jurisdiction if you don't have to. Keep assets out of there.

If you really are infringing and concerned, I'd see about proactively getting favorable licenses while you're tiny, in case you get big.

If you aren't infringing and it's a bunch of crap, like the Hipmunk case, I'd do what they did. Seek a declaratory judgment and call their bluff. After all, the troll might not even have money to fund a real battle. If their lawyers are working on contingency (they often are), they won't waste their money pursuing something with no real shot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> And the patent has already expired:

Patent number 5,345,551 was filed on November 9, 1992. That makes it a 17 years from issue date patent.

It issued on September 6, 1994. September 6, 1994 + 17 years is September 6, 2011. The patent expired over one year ago. It is dead, one can no longer by sued for doing anything it claims.

<comment><USER5> According to <http://www.uspto.gov/patents/process/status/> it is a patent case, which I interpret to mean it's still in force. (After the captcha, select patent number and enter 5345551, note the lack of commas)(IANAL and could be wrong.) (Sorry, I can't link directly to the page, it's a crappy application).

<comment><USER4> That look-up just reports that the application became a patent. That status there does not determine its expiration date. Barring something exceptional it died over a year ago.

<comment><USER5> I know it gets updated if the owner doesn't pay the renewal fees, so I figured it would show when it wasn't in force any more ::shrug::

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What defines a data source? It would seem, even if they did have multiple windows they all come from one web server, thus one data source.

</comment><comment><USER7> Well there was no point suing them when they didn't have money.</comment>


What does it feel like to be late to an appointment in Germany or Switzerland? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/What-does-it-feel-like-to-be-late-to-an-appointment-in-Germany-or-Switzerland?share=1 <comment><USER2> Being of italian decent (first generation american) and knowing most italians are pretty laid back, i am never late, to anything. So much so that the first thing out of my mouth after getting to a job interview a half hour early is if i'm ever late, i'm probably dead or someone or something effected my plans that was completely out of my control.

One job i had, i remember having no idea where it was and before smart phones / gps (it ended up being in some obscure business park) so i drove there the day before so i could gauge the time, then went back home. still showed up for the interview a half hour early.

</comment><comment><USER3> My mother is German. My father was career military. "On time" means "I will arrive at least 15 minutes early."

Duh.</comment>


Federal judge puts limits on FBI use of "stingray" cell site simulators - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/+DeclanMcCullagh/posts/3gc6o6B3Pex <comment><USER2> The actual requirements start on page 8. Here's my summary:

> First, law enforcement officers must make reasonable efforts to minimize the > capture of signals emitted from cell phones used by people other than the > target of the investigation. [...] Moreover, law enforcement officers must > not use a cell-site simulator when, because of the location and time, an > inordinate number of innocent third parties' information will be collected.

> Second, law enforcement officers must immediately destroy all data other > than the data identifying the cell phone used by the target. The destruction > must occur within forty-eight hours after the data is captured. [...] > Additionally, the destruction must be evidenced by a verification provided > to the Court with the return of the warrant.

> Third, law enforcement officers are prohibited from using any data acquired > beyond that necessary to determine the cell phone information of the target.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Cell site simulators" Somehow I don't think they'd call it that if I "simulated a law enforcement officer", presented a "simulated identification document", or enticed someone to pay me for a "simulated service", opening mail addressed to my "simulated persona" but not to me, etc. These devices are fraudulently impersonating users' cell service carriers. They are fake cell towers.

<comment><USER4> They likely operate with permission from the cell service carriers, which would make a big difference legally.

<comment><USER5> Do they? Why would the Govt. tell the carriers about it?

<comment><USER6> Because without carrier permission, they're violating Federal laws administered by the FCC.

<comment><USER3> Without carrier permission, they might be violating some type of interference regulations, but I would also think the fake cell device itself and maybe its operator would need FCC licenses regardless of carrier permission. As an Ars Technica post I linked in another comment shows, the cell sites are probably being used outside of the constraints of their FCC licenses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is the actual link [http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district- courts/illinois...](http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district- courts/illinois/ilndce/3:2015mc00021/317964/1/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, yes, but HN often links to blog posts and news articles about a court opinion rather than the opinion itself.

A summary (that links to the opinion) tends to be more useful to non- specialists than a document beginning with: "United States of America v. In the Matter of the Application of the United States, No. 3:2015mc00021 - Document 1 (N.D. Ill. 2015)"

<comment><USER8> the blog post does not even mention warrants but the justia link does... I would be curious to know if a warrant is required for all people located in the area where such a device is used (which of course should be impossible).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Silly thought experiment:

Police dogs are known for being trained to deliver false positives, i.e. saying "drugs" when the are no drugs. Couldn't STINGRAY et al be used to the same effect? I.e.: "the suspect showed a pattern predictive of child pornography" being used as a pretext for executing a warrant?

Where is this wrong? Is there any evidence in favor of this interpretation?

</comment><comment><USER10> It says the destruction of collected info not pertaining to the target must occur within 48 hours but prior to this it says they frequently need to diff multiple sessions possibly at different locations to pinpoint the target and eliminate others.

Does this mean they cannot run sessions separated by > 48 hours, since no diff would be possible afterwards?

<comment><USER11> No, it means they're going to do the sessions anyway, keep the data, do the diff whenever they feel like it and then phone in an anonymous call with the evidence, _then_ destroy the collected information.

<comment><USER10> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction) FTW

i guess with the W = warrant

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wish I were surprised these provisions weren't originally penned when drafting laws related to cell site simulators, but my faith in the US government actually looking out for the privacy of its citizens has been less than stellar.

<comment><USER13> Law in the US tends to come only after abuses have happened, especially with regards to government powers. It was a brilliant marketing strategy on the part of the companies providing the cell tower simulators to claim they were covered under "national security rules" to avoid giving secrets to terrorists -- even though use of such cell site simulators by police/military has been commonplace across the world since the 90s. Especially in the types of totalitarian regimes that often push people into extreme ideologies. It prevented this from being much of a story for a long time, and by shielding the source of information in court, it allowed them to sell a lot of these devices before the legal system caught up.

<comment><USER14> this is a great point.

I often think of the current research chemical market in regards to this: a poorly understood drug like MDPV makes the rounds on the internet, someone decides to take the risks for the rewards in the gray-area and makes it widely available, someone buys it at a gas station and ends up in the hospital after doing something dumb, a panic ends up getting it banned, and a short while later the cycle restarts with a new drug that is still in the gray-area of the law.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Fuck the FCC. We need open source radios.

<comment><USER16> I hate that you were downvoted for the unfortunately negative truth. Open source firmware, with radios seperate from cpus (and seperate DMA), is exactly what we need for security. All these proprietary peices, half from foreign countries, are more a threat to "national security" and "cybersecurity" than just about anything else. They want to pass CISA etc because of cybersecurity but their actions show levels of incompetence with few bounds.

When is the government going to embrace open source as a basis for security of users?</comment></comment>


Split Flap Physical Counter for Facebook Likes (500 in Pre-order) - <AUTHOR> http://www.smiirl.com/

<comment><USER2> Does this work on footfall or user needs to click on the device??</comment>


Mindsuckers: Meet Nature's Nightmare - <AUTHOR> http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2014/11/mindsuckers/zimmer-text

<comment><USER2> _Toxoplasma gondii_ can infect humans as well* if they have sufficient contact with cat excreta, and lead to a similar disregard for dangerous situations. I conjecture that some non-negligible fraction of violent criminals carry this parasite and that it would be worth screening for in incarcerated populations.

* [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/03/how-your...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/03/how-your-cat-is-making-you-crazy/308873/)

</comment><comment><USER3> "The virus and the wasp have the same evolutionary interests; turning a ladybug into a bodyguard produces more wasps, and more wasps beget more viruses. And so their genes work together to make the ladybug their puppet. The D. coccinellae wasp may not be the puppet master it once seemed. Instead it hides another puppet master within." Great now I just can't sleep! Haha great read.

</comment><comment><USER4> Pop-ups.</comment>


Shortdot SA Registry Services Evaluation Policy (RSEP) Request for .ICU [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/rsep-2019089-bond-request-22may19-en.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Nothing but spam from .icu domains

Ie what can be worse than a top level domain being owned/cobtrolled by a media company...

[https://answers.microsoft.com/en- us/outlook_com/forum/all/a-...](https://answers.microsoft.com/en- us/outlook_com/forum/all/a-rule-to-eliminate-mail-with-the-domain- icu/8d1b5c69-997d-471c-a019-955a69a8904f)

[https://support.mozilla.org/en- US/questions/1240290](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1240290)

[https://domaingang.com/domain-crime/first-renewal-scam- spam-...](https://domaingang.com/domain-crime/first-renewal-scam-spam-email- from-an-icu-domain-arrives/)

[https://blog.paranoidpenguin.net/2019/08/icu-tld-i-see- you-s...](https://blog.paranoidpenguin.net/2019/08/icu-tld-i-see-you-spammer/)

[https://iphoneteile.com/153520/How-do-I-block-all-icu- domain...](https://iphoneteile.com/153520/How-do-I-block-all-icu-domain- emails/)

[https://www.onlinethreatalerts.com/article/2019/2/22/receivi...](https://www.onlinethreatalerts.com/article/2019/2/22/receiving- ecoheat-s-spam-emails-in-the-hundreds/)

[https://www.onlinethreatalerts.com/article/2018/10/30/beware...](https://www.onlinethreatalerts.com/article/2018/10/30/beware- of-icu-fraudulent-and-cloned-websites-or-domain-names/)</comment>


This is the story of frozen custard - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/family-passion-frozen-custard-velvet-scoop-origin-story-zoe-madigan?published=t <comment><USER2> Frozen custard seems to be having a moment now -- in the US, a large ice cream manufacturer -- Dreyer's (AKA Edy's) -- came out with a line of packaged frozen custard that showed up in supermarkets around 2 or 3 months ago:

[http://www.dreyers.com/FrozenCustard](http://www.dreyers.com/FrozenCustard)

<comment><USER3> I wonder how much the expansion of Culver's has contributed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> @dmitrygr:

What kinds of machinery/technologies are used to make frozen custard?

Are they different than standard ice cream?

<comment><USER5> batch freezer?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Insultingly easy to make, foolproof.

Leiebovitz's Perfect Scoop is mandatory read.

The way I freeze it - I make big stockpot of brine (23% salt by weight) and chill it. Then just drop the ready made small pot of custard inside.

<comment><USER7> @venomsnake - That's a great method. Reminds me of the old coffee can + rock salt + ice approach.

"Perfect Scoop" is a superb book.

Another great read for an ice cream lover who loves nerding out is: "The Science of Ice Cream" by Chris Clarke. Some highlights:

-the equations of ice cream... for example ice cream mix is a shear-thinning liquid (solution of sugar/stabilizer and a suspension of fat droplets) with viscosity as a function of shear rate (aka power law fluid aka viscosity=b(shear rate)^n where b and n are empirical constants)

-particle size distribution chart for optimal mix

-force displacement curves for different ice creams with different ice contents

-microstructure breakdown during consumption

-melt down curves for stabilized vs unstabilized ice creams

-relationship between mean gas cell size and temperature over hardening time

-rheology of ice cream (aka comparing newtonian fluids where velocity gradient is proportional to shear stress i.e. not velocity gradient versus non-newtonian fluids like ice cream aka solutions with polymers which exhibit shear thinning)

<comment><USER7> amzn link [http://www.amazon.com/Science-Ice-Cream- RSC/dp/1849731276/re...](http://www.amazon.com/Science-Ice-Cream- RSC/dp/1849731276/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1435184264&sr=1-1&keywords=the+science+of+ice+cream)</comment></comment></comment>


Advanced Cryptographic Ratcheting (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://signal.org/blog/advanced-ratcheting/ <comment><USER2> These days, probably read this instead:

[https://signal.org/docs/specifications/doubleratchet/](https://signal.org/docs/specifications/doubleratchet/)

Also the IETF drafts for MLS might be interesting:

[https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-mls- protocol/](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-mls-protocol/)</comment>


Why Win Phone 7 apps feel more roomy - <AUTHOR> http://designdare.com/windows-phone-7-apps-feel-roomy

<comment><USER2> > which offers a fragmented and vast range of screen sizes

Diversity is not a pure negative thing, yes it's harder to design for, but it also keeps us from being sucked in to the black hole of eternal standards.

Game designers already showed us that it's possible to handle diversity.

> Not to mention the bloatware.

I would rather tolerate some bloat ware than to have a communist App Store. See previous 'X app got rejected from App Store' articles for reference.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This image, from the article, is interesting: <http://rgam.me/G2cB>

Certainly a different aesthetic than the iPhone, and does a lot to make the screen feel bigger without sacrificing comfort and battery life.</comment>


Ask HN: Is it still worthy to learn Lisp nowadays for data mining tasks - <AUTHOR>

Seeking advice whether I should continue investing more time on Lisp.
My background: switched major to CS in graduate school, familiar with Python, and need to deal with JSON and csv-like data every day. Python has been handy doing the job, but I just started learning Lisp for fun. Though the language looks powerful, for many simple tasks I have to start from scratch while Python usually has convenient libraries and can do things in one line.
My friends say Lisp is too old and not suitable for data mining task, no one is actually using that for work, and they all prefer Python. But I leave their words to doubt as they are not familiar with Lisp. (In our generation, people don't seem to learn functional programming any more?)
Is it still worthy to invest time learning Lisp, for data mining purposes? Any advice is welcome. Thanks :-) <comment><USER2> I'm torn in how to respond. As usual, I think the answer is "it depends".

A few years ago, i got bored/frustrated with using SAS for really specific custom built work/research that also worked at large scales and went searching for a replacement. For my uses, I wanted it to be:

Compiled, fast but also flexible, free, have functions, macros, and an object system. (and I wanted to learn something from it even if i ended up not using it).

I settled on Common Lisp. The rest of the world seems to be python/R these days. I really do like common lisp, lisp is easily my favorite language so far, but there are some realities which, two years on or so, which i feel able and qualified to share:

Some observations on Common Lisp:

Cons:

-its a big language. I still feel like i don't get all of it, but that doesn't necessarily matter.

-its not batteries included. That means you're basically going to be coding ALOT yourself. And that requires a lot of work/knowledge about what you're doing. And if you don't understand good data structures/compsci fundamentals, you aren't going to beat the implementations that already exist in other languages. I want to dismiss this because I'm generally trying to write new stuff that doesn't exist anyway and I want low/high level access simultaneously for performance reasons, but it seems there's always supporting libraries/infrastructure underlying some of your work that you didn't really think of that don't exist sufficiently now. THIS IS REALLY THE BIG NUMBER 1 STRIKE AGAINST THE LANGUAGE. Do not underestimate how much you'll be doing if you think you can just implement techniques that have already had X years of work being implemented in other languages.

-It is not dominant, or even widely known any more. Workmates/friends will ignore you for writing in it. Your work probably won't let you use/install it...

-You'll resent other languages if you successfully learn it.

Pros:

-of course, i find current libraries in languages don't do what i want, so i often find i have to rewrite things anyway.

\- Its great for solo, exploratory work or work that doesn't exist yet.

\- Its fun/liberating to code in.

\- It will beat the absolute pants off of Python/R performance wise if you ever get it up and running and if that's important to you. It is to me. But you can only implement said performance if you know what you're doing.

\- SBCL kind of gives you the best of both the dynamic/static compiled/interpreted worlds.

\- I found it really does open up your eyes to a lot of compsci-theory aspects other things gloss over. Of course, by glossing those aspects over, python/R can make your job a whole lot easier if they aren't important...

Python is actually pretty cool, but its also pretty slow. I really do prefer lisp, but most of the world prefers algol-esque syntax. I think its really up and coming in the machine learning/stats world.

R: Is liberating coming from SAS. Has huge stats community backing and huge number of stats packages. Coming from LISP however, its the horribly disfigured plastic-surgery older-hollywood nightmare of a beautiful starlet you remember from your youth, but has now carved up its face to try to look like the other young starlets :P (haha, only serious). Which is to say, its got enough lisp influence behind it to seem familiar, but its a horribly designed/implemented language coming from a programmer background...

More accurately though, if Python is slow, then R is SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW. Really, its painful to type things at the R repl after coming from common lisp. It has a bit of a cult-like following amongst stats people though...

Hope i've offered at least a little bit of valued feedback...YMMV

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing your valuable experience!

Yes I have the same feeling (for now), that at many times I have to implement things from scratch using Common Lisp, and that pushes me to understand both the essence of the algorithm and how computation works.

As I am still in the early stage of learning Lisp and just switched to CS, I am learning many mind-blowing things at the same time (SBCL+Emacs+Slime), this combination sum up to create a quite steep learning curve, and yes they are just time black holes, I have invested more time than expected every day in them and sometimes have to use Python to get the job done first to make my advisor happy, and then try rewrite in Lisp in leisure time.

Maybe it can be good for me to learn a bit of Lisp every day, because I don't expect to understand all the ideas in the SICP book and remember all rules in the Practical Common Lisp book in 21 days.

As I am doing some research, Python is indeed effective in exploring data/testing preliminary models. But most recently as I just experienced, it gets unbearably slow sometimes. (By unbearably I mean >15 minutes on PC.)

Performance is also important for me, not only for the sake of "big data", but also for self-fulfillment: feels much better if the code gives result in 10 secs rather than several days. (By the way, does CL have mature support in parallelization?)

My lab mates also use Mathematica a lot and it is even more convenient in testing models for data mining tasks, but I have been warned that some packages are buggy at this moment, and most modules are just black boxes that don't allow fine-grained tuning.

I also tried R and at most times don't quite understand the logic of the language. Maybe as you pointed out, it is the gene of the language that determines its shape.

Thanks again for your response, it is good to see someone doing real stuff with Lisp for data mining tasks nowadays.

<comment><USER2> If you're going to try to do practical things in Common Lisp, make sure you get well acquainted with quicklisp, for easy library installation, and [http://www.cliki.net/](http://www.cliki.net/) for finding out about half of those libraries. I say you have/will want to do a lot yourself, but you don't have to do it all.

Be aware that SICP is written for Scheme. They're both lisp dialects, but they are different. I've done bits of it here and there in Common Lisp, but the two variable namespaces, no first class continuations, different function names, less emphasis on recursion (due to specific iteration forms/macros in Common lisp) and native efficient data structures offered by common lisp might make some things non-applicable or difficult even if you're already familiar with the language. Tail call optimization is, i believe, not required in the Common Lisp standard, but I believe SBCL performs it, at least above certain low optimization declarations.

I've only just started looking at multi-threading in Common Lisp myself. I imagine the proper answer about "mature" parellelization is no, relative to some other languages (i have no real basis for this, just side-knowledge that other languages focus on such issues more. Hell, its probably better than R.). Multi-threading is not established in the language specification, but in practice, implementations have their own version of it, including SBCL, which is the version I'm sticking to for numerical work. If you're looking into it, I believe you might also get acquainted with Bordeaux Threads. Once you've got quicklisp installed, you can install that easily from there :P

That being said, when you're performing something 10-500 times faster than the interpreted memory-hungry mess that is R for example, the complication of multi-threading can fall down the priority list...

Totally independent of my decision to try to the language, i later found this paper,which suggests that one of the authors of R is well aware of and in agreement with some of my own observations, plus there's a benchmark in there of common lisp, R, and python, though take all such microbenchmarks with a grain of salt, because you will be spending more programmer time in Common Lisp:

[https://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~ihaka/downloads/Compstat-20...](https://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~ihaka/downloads/Compstat-2008.pdf)

Unlike some language zealots, i feel its my responsibility to remind you this is the road less traveled. I don't think its the way industry/academia is moving. I think there is, perhaps arrogantly, a selection bias in who becomes a Common Lisp programmer, such that inquisitive/smart/alternatively-thinking people tend to be attracted to the language, but if you think it will magically makes you 100 times better than you already are because some other smart guy uses it, put that idea right out of your head.

But also honestly, I've found the experience extremely rewarding, and I code my own projects in Common lisp now where I can.

I came in the top 20 of [http://www.kaggle.com/c/facebook-recruiting-iii- keyword-extr...](http://www.kaggle.com/c/facebook-recruiting-iii-keyword- extraction/leaderboard/private) by literally coding something up from scratch in common lisp, and my model had easy room for improvement and was among the fastest, so you can most certainly compete writing in lisp.

Now, aside from my eternal side-project, I'm trying to put something together in the field of data linking in Common Lisp. I think its one of the only options that will let me combine the flexibility of dynamic languages with the performance of C...(i'm actually hoping to perform better than the US Census Bureau C program)...I already know it blows the current python/R options out of the water, but time will tell whether I can match it with C performance- wise...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Sure. LISP is always worth the time, even if you cannot use it at work. Technically still far superior to everything else out there.

</comment><comment><USER4> BugSense (now part of Splunk) uses Lisp for quick analytics.

[http://highscalability.com/blog/2012/11/26/bigdata-using- erl...](http://highscalability.com/blog/2012/11/26/bigdata-using-erlang-c-and- lisp-to-fight-the-tsunami-of-mobi.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> Which dialect of Lisp are you studying? Common Lisp?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes I am trying to learn to use SBCL+Emacs+Slime, using the book "Practical Common Lisp" and SICP</comment></comment>


Windows 10 Technical Preview download now live - <AUTHOR> http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/preview-download

<comment><AUTHOR> Downloading now at around 0.5MB/s.

Tempted to put this on my main dev machine as many of the desktop changes will really aid my workflow but will probably wait until the weekend at least just in case.

<comment><USER2> Going to dogfood it as a primary workstation for a few days as well and see what happens. My laptop needs trashing anyway and everything is backed up regularly so I've got nothing to lose other than a couple of hours max.

Plus it's just a giant window manager for PuTTY and outlook...

Download ETA 50 mins...

<comment><USER2> Ugh it's horrible. Reinstalling now.</comment></comment></comment>


Music affects my productivity: A developer's story - <AUTHOR> https://maestros.io/how-music-affects-my-productivity <comment><USER2> Great article ... it articulates the four categories of tasks very well. I've found podcasts and audio books are the same as music with lyrics - I can listen to them during the Trivial and Physical Exercise categories but not during the Requires Concentration and Reading categories.

Curiously, if I'm concentrating or reading, I don't hear the content at all (though it can distract me). Friends report that they hear the podcast but don't remember the task.</comment>


Irate Congressman gives cops easy rule: "just follow the damn Constitution" - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/04/30/irate-congressman-gives-cops-easy-rule-just-follow-the-damn-constitution/

<comment><USER2> Wonderful quote from article:

 _" And because the NSA didn't do that and other law enforcement agencies didn't do that, you're seeing a vast public reaction to this. Because the NSA, your colleagues, have essentially violated the Fourth Amendment rights of every American citizen for years by seizing all of our phone records, by collecting our Internet traffic, that is now spilling over to other aspects of law enforcement. And if you want to get this fixed, I suggest you write to NSA: the FBI should tell the NSA, stop violating our rights. And then maybe you might have much more of the public on the side of supporting what law enforcement is asking for."_

<comment><USER3> The Representative who you quoted also has a background that may be of interest to the HN community:

 _" Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA), who described himself as a 'recovering computer science major,' provided one of the most forceful counter-arguments. (He is just one of four House members with computer science degrees.) Lieu also is a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Air Force Reserves and served for four years as a member of the Judge Advocate General's Corps."_</comment></comment>


Switching from base 10 to base 12 makes a lot of sense - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jgc.org/2010/06/duodecimal.html

<comment><USER2> 24 has 2 more factors and could be as easily represented by the alphabet minus 2 letters. A day has 24 hours, there are 24 major and minor keys, and English could be represented using 24 letters unifying both written language and numbers in a single system!

</comment><comment><USER3> For the title you gave this on HN you sure to present very many reasons as to why it makes a lot of sense (other than more factors).

I think probably the hardest part for me to learn to count and do math in base 12 would be to use and learn two new symbols to represent 10 and 11.

By the way German also has separate words for eleven and twelve.

<comment><USER4> Spanish has separate words up to fifteen. French has separate words up to sixteen.

The linguistic argument for switching is suspect (even setting aside words such as "twenty" and "hundred").

<comment><USER5> If high school memories serve, Latin has regular number-names for 11 through 17, but then semi-irregular ones for 18 ( _duodeviginti_ , or "two from twenty") and 19 ( _undeviginti_ , "one from twenty").

(I say semi-irregular because they're inconsistent with 11 through 17, but at least consistent with each other, unlike say "eleven" and "twelve", as far as I can tell.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> No it doesn't.

For one thing, 12 doesn't have the factor 5. Who says having the factor of 3 is better?

And the whole 10 fingers thing? That might be useful to keep.

I assume the article wasn't meant to be taken literally, but it's hardly high- quality content, and I'm sure everyone who reads HN knows about non-decimal based systems.

<comment><AUTHOR> The point is that 12 has more factors than 10 making a lot of everyday calculations easier.

Sure you lose dividing by 5, but you gain dividing by 3, 4 and 6. Also, you get nice decimals for common fractions.

 _I assume the article wasn't meant to be taken literally_

I think it makes a lot of sense to use base-12 instead of base-10. Of course, it'll never happen because it'd be an almost impossible change given the weight of education and the metric system.

<comment><USER4> It might have made sense to use base 12 in the first place, but it certainly doesn't make sense to switch from base 10 to base 12 now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nothing on the blog itself made me think jgc was making the argument that a switch would "make a lot of sense", just the title he used on HN (and his first comment in this thread). That struck me as slightly odd.

</comment><comment><USER8> I made a little dozenal/decimal online converter, check it out: <http://flud.org/dozenal-calc.html>

</comment><comment><USER9> Heinlein argued for base 60. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagesimal></comment>


Why Alcohol Is Good for You - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/09/why-alcohol-is-good-for-you/

<comment><USER2> Summary: the author of the article speculates that moderate alcohol consumption leads people to socialize and not be lonely. People who are lonely are more likely to die from "just about everything." There's no actual study done here -- the author only references other studies. This article is about the author's hypothesis.

<comment><USER3> This article, similar to "The Web Is Dead", is about nothing more than link baiting. Wired has been going down hill as of late.

<comment><USER4> How do you measure that rate of "becoming worse"?

<comment><USER5> with careful consideration and scientific rigor, I'm sure

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "But here's the really weird data point: Heavy drinkers also live longer than abstainers."

Really? Really? I don't believe it. I'd like to look more closely at the data that supports this. And it depends on the definition of "heavy" drinking. If it's a regular one glass a day, sure. If it's a bottle a gin a couple of times a week I would beg to differ.

Alcohol is insanely destructive. Whilst no doubt this study is picking up on correlations between lifestyle characteristics which would explain these results, there's no doubt that booze is bad for you. It rots your brain, wrecks your liver, makes you depressed and makes you violent.

It's mental that for £20 I can pop into any off-licence, corner shop or supermarket in the land and buy enough alcohol to literally kill myself. It's a factor in 100s of thousands of deaths a year (UK) via heart disease, liver cirrhosis, car accidents or violence. It costs the NHS and police forces 10s of billions of pounds a year. It turns town-centres into virtual no-go areas on the weekend. It ruins lives.

Yet for some reason not only is it legal, it occupies a cherished position in our culture.

Edit: just to clarify, i'm not a prohibitionist. I think alcohol _should_ be legal. Personally I love booze and having a few. But our stance on alcohol versus our stance on other drugs (pot, coke etc) is just utterly illogical, non-sensical, even I would argue, immoral.

<comment><USER7> The full study is available online, and is linked to in the article. Their definition of "heavy drinking" seems to be more than three drinks per day, which seems like a reasonable definition to me.

<comment><USER8> The problem with that definition is that it still lumps modestly-heavy drinkers (two small beers after work, two glasses of wine with dinner) with _really_ heavy drinkers (guzzle whisky until you pass out every afternoon).

If you plotted "health problems" vs "amount drunk" you'd probably see a fairly flattish curve from zero up to some level, combined with a sudden increase at very high levels of consumption. The "heavy drinking" number you're getting here is going to be a section of the flat curve combined with a section of the sudden increase, so the number you're getting doesn't tell you much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Correlation does not strictly mean causation. Our statistics professor brought this example once, he explained it that people who don't drink (in a western society) have often problems with their health or are taking medication. Statistics could be often misleading.

Another example was that people with bigger feet were more likely to be earn more money. Guess why?

<comment><USER10> While true, it's not just correlation that alcohol may be good for you. There's growing evidence that, among other things, alcohol boosts your HDL (good) cholesterol. For one _controlled_ study see:

<http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/102/19/2347>

The conclusion from the controlled study?

"Alcohol intake increases HDL-C in a dose-dependent fashion, associated with and possibly caused by an increase in the TR of HDL apolipoproteins apoA-I and -II."

Of course, this is different from the author's hypotheses about socializing and loneliness, something much harder to test.

<comment><USER11> But now we are several steps removed from the outcome of interest. We can postulate the following:

EtOH -> higher HDL -> increased reverse cholesterol transport (or another HDL function) -> reduced risk of cardiovascular disease.

But there is a problem here. While higher HDL epidemiologically correlates with reduced CVD, the only clinical trial of a drug that purely raises HDL showed increased mortality. Now, the trial was complicated by off-target effects of the drug, but my point is that we actually do not know if raising "good" cholesterol is good!

<comment><USER12> Doesn't niacin reduce mortality?

<comment><USER11> Yes, but it is not a pure HDL modifier: it also reduces LDL-C, so it is not clear which effect leads to niacin's benefits (both could, to be fair).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So the referenced study prompts a basic but hopefully interesting question about statistics and epidemiology which I hope someone could answer. When they controlled for former problem drinking status and medical status (among other factors), there was a major change in abstainers from 200% increased mortality over moderate drinkers to 51%. So it seems like current abstainers included a significantly death-prone cohort who were former problem drinkers and/or in poor health.

Okay, so that makes me wonder what the difference is between controlling for major factors and simply excluding the cohort with factors having that very significant impact on mortality. My question is, at what point should one correct for major factors and at what point is it appropriate to completely segregate the data? What if the size of the group with major factors excluded would be statistically insignificant (i.e. heavy drinkers who have never been problem drinkers)?

</comment><comment><USER14> Complete abstinence from alcohol is also correlated with lower education level and poverty. People with less certainty and control over their lives are more likely to distrust alcohol, justifiably -- the risk that comes with it is more serious for them.

<comment><USER6> Hmm, I'm quite surprised. For sure, high levels of alcoholism are correlated with poverty and lack of education. Random study:

"In the weighted model, a one-unit increase in neighborhood poverty at the prior examination was associated with a 86% increase in the odds of binging"

[http://journals.lww.com/epidem/Abstract/2010/07000/The_Relat...](http://journals.lww.com/epidem/Abstract/2010/07000/The_Relationship_Between_Neighborhood_Poverty_and.10.aspx)

Anecdotally, all the cases of alcohol abuse I hear about tend to be in disadvantaged homes.

<comment><USER15> Homes might be disadvantaged by the presence of an alcoholic. A friend of mine came from a home like this- her father spent truly stupendous amounts on alcohol. There was never enough money afterwards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A thought about "having more friends". People like people who are like them. Since most people drink, you are more likely to have friends if you do.

</comment><comment><USER17> Since I've taken up light drinking almost entirely for the health benefits, and since I don't drink socially, I hope this hypothesis isn't really the answer. The other day when a co-worker was trying to get me to go to a scotch tasting, he said, "What, do you only drink at home, alone, in the dark?!" I replied that it wasn't _usually_ dark... :)

<comment><USER18> Even if your focus is health, why does it always have to be at home, alone?

<comment><USER17> It doesn't have to be -- my co-worker was successful at getting me to agree to go out with the group -- but typically, if I'm around more than a couple people with whom I'm expected to interact, I'm not going to be having fun, so why waste alcohol on that situation? With lowered inhibitions, I might actually _announce_ that I'm not having fun. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> These studies that whet the appetite for 'sin secrets' are entertaining, but that's about it. I favor reductionism. Maybe it's not forced brain evolution or African-plain-life recreation. Maybe it's because when you drink you tend to eat less, which is, good.

<comment><USER20> The only inherent advantage in eating less is getting fewer calories; alcohol has a substantial number of calories itself, so no benefit there.

<comment><USER8> Also, I think that studies (and my own experience) have shown that alcohol increases the amount you eat anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> if alcohol drinkers are happier people, and happier people live longer...

does that mean people who have a lot of good sex live longer too? I bet they do!

</comment><comment><USER22> Great article. Now it's time to go out at the local bar to have a few beers with my friends :)

</comment><comment><USER23> I'd drink to this.</comment>


Taskk meet Github. Github meet Taskk.  - <AUTHOR> http://gadoci.me/2013/01/taskk-loves-github/ On the same day that Github launched their markdown tasks, we integrated Taskk.it with Github issues. Check out how and why here. <comment><USER2> Is the idea of organizing tasks for me depending on their length new? It feels awesome. Maybe this is the personal secreatry I have been waiting for all year.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha! Yea we agree. It feels like the concept shouldn't be that "new" but we couldn't find anything like it. Seems like people have been looking for task scheduling for a while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like the idea but giving authorization to " Update your public and private repositories (Commits, Issues, etc). " doesn't sound good.

<comment><USER4> Hi! I'm Mike, from Taskk.

Yeah, we don't like that either.The github API doesn't allow for access more granular than that. That's what is needed to be able to read and close your github issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> 500 Internal Server Error. Might want to get that fixed...

<comment><AUTHOR> Yikes! Are you still getting that? What were you doing when you got the error?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Have no idea how this works with github, was lost in the interface and I removed this less than 10 minutes of use.

<comment><USER7> IMO this is not something that can have a dead-simple interface. I think Brandon and the team have found a good middle-ground, but definitely watch the webcast, everything is pretty straight-forward.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much. We'll put the video on the integrations page as well to help people. Good feedback all around.</comment></comment></comment>


An unraveling spiral: The most compelling visual of global warming ever made - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2016/05/10/the-most-compelling-visual-of-global-warming-ever-made/ <comment><AUTHOR> Related: "Almost Everything You Know About Climate Change Solutions Is Outdated, Part 1"

[http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/05/10/3776465/everythi...](http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/05/10/3776465/everything- you-know-climate-change-solutions-outdated/)</comment>


Balloon Hashing: A Function Providing Protection Against Sequential Attacks [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://eprint.iacr.org/2016/027.pdf <comment><USER2> > _The staggering number of password files breaches in recent months > demonstrates the importance of cryptographic protection for stored > passwords._

Rather, they demonstrate the importance of not re-using a password for multiple sites.

The value of a password is under the user's control. A password which controls access to a user's account on a site which has been compromised (only to that account and nothing else) has very low value, even compared to other pieces of personal information (which are usually stored plain text, and likely included in the breach).

<comment> Ar-Curunir In an ideal world that would be the case, but we are not in an ideal world. If your cryptography can prevent attackers from figuring out shared passwords, then it is a godsend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Balloon is neat, and has a good pedigree. But: all the password hashes are fine, including the ones that aren't space-hard. If you're undecided, throw a dart, or pick the one with the simplest library for your platform.

Where you get into trouble is when you try to roll your own password hash with a crypto hash and a "salt".

<comment><USER4> >But: all the password hashes are fine, including the ones that aren't space- hard.

Not quite sure this is true: the Alwen-Blocki attack at CRYPTO this year (and some other nice recent work) demonstrated that there are some subtleties in this area that we don't fully understand yet.

<comment><USER3> Reducing the memory requirements of a space-hard password hash is important in theoretical terms, and perhaps for systems built around the hardness of a space-hard KDF as, for instance, a proof of work. But it's of virtually no bearing whatsoever to business applications that store passwords. Your space- hard password hash is less space-hard than you hoped it would be. Oh well. The low-hanging fruit is using salted SHA hashes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This would also be useful for making better bitcoin systems, ones which are resilient to current asics.

<comment><USER6> Better bitcoin system should have some sane non-libertarian economics behind it.

It should be engineered to have steady inflation that is slightly higher than most common currencies. 4-5% for example.

This would discourage hoarding and increase velocity of money. Good money should not be investment asset or speculation asset. It should be something used for transactions between assets.

<comment> vertex-four The thing is... why would any reasonable individual use a currency with inflation when they can use an equivalent currency with deflation? Governments can force inflation on people - cryptocurrencies have no ability to force anyone to use them.

<comment><USER7> Governments can only force inflation of the currency, not of all assets. That helps to keep value in investments that pay a return and increase real value to society over holding currency which doesn't.</comment></comment></comment></comment>