Why Gas Is So Expensive Today (Hint: It's Not Libya) - <AUTHOR> http://www.cpeterson.org/2011/03/10/why-gas-is-so-expensive-today-hint-its-not-libya/ <comment><USER3> If you are going to explain a system-wide phenomena, you need a systemic explanation.

Gas isn't expensive today. What's expensive today are almost all commodities. <http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/>

This is a systemic problem. Any valid explanation of price increases in a commodity, e.g., oil (gas), has to explain why prices are rising almost across the board.

Global commodity price increases are being driven by two main factors. The first is rapidly rising standards of living in the developing world as many nations, especially China and East Asian countries, have freed up their markets. This has caused a dramatic rise in living standards and a huge decrease in the number of people living in poverty. These people are now buying the things that we in developed take for granted, and that is driving the prices of copper for cars and new homes, steel for buildings, oil for transport, corn for livestock feed, etc.

The other systemic factor is massive currency inflation in almost all OECD coountries. When inflation happens in more normal circumstances, an inflating country's money falls in price relative to those of other countries, and it's easy to see which countries are destroying their currency and which aren't. People sell the increasingly worthless currency and buy the strong ones. What we have today is almost all OECD countries inflating their currencies at once in a (failed) effort to boost their economies. This means that anyone who wants to protect their wealth needs to invest in something that will rise at least as fast as inflation. That means commodities.

BTW: If speculators can somehow control prices in a way largely independent of constraints, then why aren't they always doing it? It's not like human beings just started getting greedy last year. And why have, for instance, prices of natural gas fallen thru the floor (hint: greatly increased supply due to drilling breakthroughs)? Where are the all-powerful speculators on that?

<comment><USER4> _Gas isn't expensive today. What's expensive today are almost all commodities.<http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/>

This is a systemic problem. Any valid explanation of price increases in a commodity, e.g., oil (gas), has to explain why prices are rising almost across the board._

This is almost exactly the point the article is trying to explain: commodity prices are rising across the board in line with the commodities index, but why should there be an index at all? In the market you have the supplier, buyer, and consumer. The "speculator" was placed into the mix _with a limited role_ for providing liquidity; this role was intentional and helpful since in the real world there could be a delay between the time a grower/supplier and buyer/cereal producer actually needed what the other had (raw material or cash); with the speculator there was always the opportunity to buy or sell. However, there were intentional, specific limits placed on the speculator. This was to ensure he couldn't corner the market and artificially skew prices. As long as these limits remained intact the market operated as designed, and the actual price of commodities reflected real world supply and demand (since the main players in the market were physical hedgers - people who actually had stake in/cared about the physical commodity). Goldman Sachs was able to get these "speculator handcuffs" removed. This means the actual market price for commodities doesn't necessarily reflect _supply and demand_. Rather, it also has the component of speculation priced into it. We can see this even within these last few days. The price of a barrel of oil was skyrocketing above $100; this seemed to make sense due to the unrest in the Middle East, then amazingly with the earthquake in Japan it quickly dropped below $100. In such as short time was there _really_ an escalation then de-escalation in the demand for oil!? Of course not. The price was following speculation, people who are only in the market to make money. The end result is that ordinary consumers must pay at the pump what the whims of investors say, never mind progress made whether politically or technologically, or reductions by consumers in a recession to ease pressure on demand and oil prices. Natural gas is not as attractive to speculators as oil.

<comment><USER5> Don't forget that speculation works both ways. It can also bring down prices very quickly and consumers benefit from that. What speculation really does, in my view, is to insert a component of future expectations in addition to the current supply and demand effects.

It is not entirely clear to me that adding this expectations component is always bad. It can get out of control when it becomes self feeding, but it can also convey valuable information that allows us to react early to fundamental supply and demand issues. We clearly have fundamental supply issues in crude oil and in agricultural products. The blog post is totally wrong on that one. Pointing to falling US demand of crude oil makes no sense in a world where the marginal buyer is in Asia.

<comment><USER4> _Don't forget that speculation works both ways. It can also bring down prices very quickly and consumers benefit from that._

That's like me expecting you to say "thanks" for returning an item I took from you when it's speculation which helped drive up prices in the first place.

 _What speculation really does, in my view, is to insert a component of future expectations in addition to the current supply and demand effects._

That's exactly what it does. Why do we need that?

 _It is not entirely clear to me that adding this expectations component is always bad. It can get out of control when it becomes self feeding, but it can also convey valuable information that allows us to react early to fundamental supply and demand issues._

React early and do what? This isn't like hurricane preparedness. Again, the point the article is trying to convey is that prices _don't_ reflect supply and demand. We experience sky rocketing gas prices but no longer see gas shortage or rationing lines. In 2008 we had significantly more people go hungry from food shortages, although nothing has changed about wheat farming except, if anything, farmers producing it more efficiently. The wheat harvest that year was the most bountiful the world had ever seen.

<comment><USER5> I think we need a component of future expectations in prices because it increases incentives and provides funding for averting real future shortages.

<comment><USER4> _I think we need a component of future expectations in prices because it increases incentives_

I'm _extremely_ wary of the term "increased incentives" in light of recent events sparked by this model on Wall St.

 _and provides funding for averting real future shortages._

We just don't see gas lines to support that argument.

Edit: And what do you mean "provides funding" anyway? Speculative contracts don't raise oil producing levels, nor stockpile oil (as our Strategic Reserve does). The extra money which exists is all used up by the speculators playing the game.

<comment><USER5> General anti Wall St. sentiment is not a very potent argument. It's difficult to deny that higher prices increase supply and/or destroy demand. Wall St. didn't invent this logic.

<comment><USER4> _General anti Wall St. sentiment is not a very potent argument._

I'm not anti-Wall St. But I _am_ anti-recklessness when it means wreaking havoc on our national (and by extension entire world) economy.

 _It's difficult to deny that higher prices increase supply and/or destroy demand._

No, it's not. Actually, higher prices usually mean there is _decreased_ supply and _increased_ demand. That's in a normal market. But we don't even have a normal oil market. That's the entire point. When oil prices skyrocketed to record levels above $145/barrel in 2008 it wasn't because of increased demand, and those astronomical prices didn't mean an increased supply of oil either.

<comment><USER5> I think our misunderstanding is that you're talking about what has happened and I'm talking about what is resulting from it. Higher prices mean that demand has been growing faster than supply. As a consequence, suppliers now want to supply more and consumers want to consume less. So higher prices incentivise more supply.

<comment><USER4> _Higher prices mean that demand has been growing faster than supply._

But that's not the cause of our higher prices. Listen, I can't keep arguing this. Do me a big favor and just read the first 3 paragraphs here:

[http://useconomy.about.com/od/commoditiesmarketfaq/p/high_oi...](http://useconomy.about.com/od/commoditiesmarketfaq/p/high_oil_prices.htm)

 _As a consequence, suppliers now want to supply more and consumers want to consume less._

Suppliers want to supply more. So, if you're some Saudi Arabian sheik witnessing these astronomical oil prices you really want _increase oil production_ and _supply more_? What will that do to oil prices? Think about what you're saying.

<comment><USER5> Exactly. If I'm an owner of an oil field I prefer to sell at higher prices and if prices are high I invest more in exploration.

Of course prices are not just influenced by supply and demand. They are also influenced by speculation. I never denied that. What I'm saying is that speculation changes the timing and increases the volatility, but it cannot decouple from supply and demand indefinitely.

So if we're running out of easily accessible oil in, say 20 years, and speculation increases today's prices in expectation of that, that's a good thing. Of course it is a double edged sword. Sometimes future expectations never materialize and speculation ends up destroying value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If oil is priced above demand, there should be large supplies of unsold oil piling up in tankers.

 _Period, god damn it._

If there is no unsold oil piling up in tankers than _oil is currently priced at the level where demand at that price equals the supply_. You cannot blame commodity speculators for this!

My understanding is that during the last price speculation bubble, there _were_ oil tankers piling up. If this is not happening now then commodities speculators have got nothing to do with it. _Why is this so hard for people to understand?_

<comment><USER7> Not just tankers, but oil storage depots. One of the largest oil storage areas is in Cushing, OK. The amounts of oil stored there are at record levels. As reference, read: [http://www.voanews.com/english/news/a-13-2009-01-23-voa61-68...](http://www.voanews.com/english/news/a-13-2009-01-23-voa61-68809857.html) or [http://af.reuters.com/article/energyOilNews/idAFN02226876201...](http://af.reuters.com/article/energyOilNews/idAFN0222687620110302).

It's so full that they're building more capacity to store more oil. The situation is the same in other parts of the world.

BTW, this is common knowledge for those who follow the commodities markets. Oil prices are high because of perceived risk of _potential_ supply contraction due to instability in the middle east. It's a risk trade, i.e. speculation.

<comment><USER8> And if those speculators are right, people will be praising them for having the foresight to save oil for such a situation, which will lower prices compared to the speculation-free scenario.

Speculation could probably have negative effects on markets in theory, but it's so hard to take such claims seriously since they're rarely based on sound economics.

<comment><USER9> Speculation has had negative effects in practice: The tulip crisis. Sometimes speculation can turn into a pyramid game. I'm not saying that this is always, or even often the case, but it is sometimes the case.

<comment><USER10> > Speculation has had negative effects in practice: The tulip crisis

Guess who got hurt in the tulip crisis?

...

The speculators. Their harm tends to be self-contained.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The Economist disagrees with the conclusion that higher prices are due to speculation: "Studies have shown that commodities that are not traded on exchanges have tended to rise as fast, and be as volatile, as those that are." <http://www.economist.com/node/17913011?story_id=17913011>

<comment><USER12> There is definitely a correlation, at least recently, between availability of credit and the increase in commodity prices.

One way to explain this is to look at house prices, and how real-estate agents 'value' these. They will value a property based on the past value of this property, the general increase in price levels since the last sell, and the price of recently sold properties in the area. Properties are not homogeneous, however the 'value' of all properties in a given area will be affected by the price changes of those being bought/sold.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> _The global speculative frenzy sparked riots in more than thirty countries and drove the number of the world's "food insecure" to more than a billion._

Sorry, they did no wrong. They live in the USA and they have the right to manage their trading/strategies/prices the way they like. As a Tunisian citizen, I'm looking for the government to secure food and energy for the population. We have enough lands and water. This is actually a good thing: Solve the problem once in a time and stop the dependency to foreign countries.

On a related note, what happened in Tunisia was a bubble and not a revolution. The bubble burst, destroyed the political system as it was intimately related to the economical one. I'll leave that for a longer article I'll be publishing this summer, which explains and reveals many facts TVs and media are unaware about.

<comment><USER14> _Sorry, they did no wrong. They live in the USA and they have the right to manage their trading/strategies/prices the way they like._

I don't think I agree. Let's think about the situation (assuming the posted article is correct): the price of wheat was relatively stable, on the order of $3-$6 per bushel. This system was fine, and stable, for years and years.

Then some financial analysts come into the picture and decide that this is an untapped market where they can make some money. So they do their magic, and -- again let's assume the article is correct and this was actually the cause -- wheat prices jump like crazy.

The result, in real terms, is that a larger portion of the world had to be considered "food insecure," and I'd imagine that some people actually went without food that wouldn't have otherwise.

Is a financial firm's ability to make money (legally, even) more important than people's ability to eat? Or even just more important than people's ability to feel safe and secure in knowing where their next meal is coming from?

From my perspective, that's a resounding no. The ethical and moral obligations easily outstrip the financial benefits.

As you say, maybe it had positive aftereffects, that the Tunisian government stepped back and decided it needed to take local action to make the country self-sufficient. And that's great, but I don't know that that would work everywhere in the world.

<comment><USER10> > So they do their magic, and -- again let's assume the article is correct and > this was actually the cause -- wheat prices jump like crazy.

If you are not going to explain prices in terms of supply and demand, you need to have clear, compelling alternate explanation. Magic and assumptions don't cut it. If the "natural" (i.e. where supply meets demand) price of wheat is $3, it would be very difficult (and likely expensive) to establish an artificial price of $6. I am curious to know what that story is, exactly.

<comment><USER15> Food prices are not perfectly elastic when it comes to the basic staples like wheat, especially in the short term. People need a certain amount of food, and their choices come down to eat if you can afford it, or die. Demand by households doesn't change much with price, but they will pay anything from zero up to everything they have.

The price is therefore depends on the suppliers. Normally, competition between suppliers will bring the price down to near the cost of production. However, if there is a futures market filled with overly confident speculators, who buy the grains at a high price and push it even higher, the cost to all the owners of the stock when delivery is due will be far higher than the cost of production; if most of the market paid this same price, there will be no-one with the volume who can afford to compete and push down prices; the final price is likely to strike a balance between the loss of value from throwing away wheat because some people had to starve as they couldn't afford the price, and the revenue from selling the wheat at the highest price.

In effect, against inelastic demand, a futures market and confident speculators have the same effect as rational price fixing by a cartel.

<comment><USER16> Demand for grains is actually quite elastic. When the price of things like corn and wheat is low, farmers feed them to animals and people consume more meat. When the price increases, people consume less meat and more grain, and in doing so, consume a lot less grain.

In economies where people are too poor to afford meat, fluctuating food prices are a much bigger issue. But in the US, we use more food than we need to in order to enjoy a luxury commodity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "because none of the banks sell what they hold, the price goes up; because the price goes up, more people make money on their positions; because they make more money on their positions they buy more stuff and don't sell what they hold; and on and on forever"

That is until the bubble pops, those who got in late and can't sell will make a loss. The bid-ask spread widens, in particular there is glut of people wanting to sell at high prices, whilst there are few cautious buyers willing to offer lower prices.

</comment><comment><USER17> I would say that the main reason prices of commodities are going up is that the FED is printing massive amounts of $ through QE1 and QE2.

If you think that this is a speculative bubble caused by traders then I suggest you just short the commodities and make some money bursting the bubble and bringing prices down again. Put your money where your mouth is.

<comment><USER18> It's almost becoming taboo to talk about the FED's activities, as though it's some kind of conspiracy but in my opinion this is a very valid point.

It's hard to call it a bubble when all asset classes are inflating.

Edit: Just to be clear i'm not arguing the premise of the article, just that such extreme speculation would not be possible without the enormous concessions made for these banks.

<comment><USER17> Exactly. It's not the commodities that's rising, it's the fiat currencies that's falling.

<comment><USER19> What do you think the outcome will be of all this currency devaluation? Long term that is?

<comment><USER17> Many countries (for instance the US) currently have massive debt and budget deficits. They have three ways out of it: 1\. Increasing taxes. 2\. Lowering expenditure. 3\. Printing money.

From a political point of view #3 is by far the easiest route. I therefore fear that many countries will "default through inflation". In other words, we will see massive inflation, possible even hyper-inflation. This will be a huge hit to the middle-class. Because people with job but no savings are affected the most by massive inflation.

I'd recommend everyone to watch this short-clip: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I0QN-FYkpw> and this film <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ECi6WJpbzE>

<comment><USER19> Thanks for those.

Another interesting video, if you haven't seen it already - <USER2> Easing explained:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTUY16CkS-k>

" _Printing money is the last refuge of failed economic empires and banana republics and the Fed doesn't want to admit this is their only idea._ " Don't worry, it's (partially) tongue-in-cheek.

 _"In other words, we will see massive inflation, possible even hyper- inflation."_ Do governments ever learn? This is what happened in the Weimar Republic and is happening today in Zimbabwe.

Where I live (Ireland), the government is trying to do option 1 and 2, without success so far. Austerity measures are hurting the economy short-term by dampening consumer confidence (fortunately, internal consumption isn't everything, as we are an extremely open economy and will pick up as exports grow.) They'd possibly be trying option 3, except the European Central Bank controls our currency and ECB rules state that a country can't run a deficit over 3% of GDP without incurring major penalties.

<comment><USER17> That video was hilarious (and informative)!

Austerity measures are painful but necessary. I think that ten years from now you will be better of than the Americans, simply because the austerity measures are stopping all the malinvestment and over-consumption as quickly as possible. I'm Swedish and we went through the same process twenty years ago when our real estate market crashed. Luckily we didn't do like Japan, which still hasn't recovered from their crash from the early 90's (they did what the FED is doing now).

Bankruptcy is never fun but it's the main thing that makes a market driven economy more efficient than a planned economy. You have to stop malinvestments and reallocate resources to something more efficient. This reallocation can be painful but is necessary in the long run. The recession is not the problem, the boom was the problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Just wait another year when the oil cartels/speculators have us accepting $4 prices.

The only "good" thing this is making happen is it's slowly taking extra huge/heavy vehicles off the road as people stop replacing them with the same thing every few years. Low 20s mpg for the city isn't worth it anymore.

Oil is expensive because we'll pay that much and use even more.

Did you know the armed forces pay full top price for fuel in Iraq and Afghanistan?

</comment><comment><USER21> _The current spike in gas prices is not primarily a result of anything to do with the freedom fighters in the Arab world...Nor is it a result of OPEC's production levels...

Rather, the spikes are primarily a result of the speculative market on oil._

Well, uh, what are their speculations based on?

<comment><USER22> The point that he's trying to make all throughout the piece is that, yes, the speculation is partly based on the civil unrest in the Arab world but that the influx in speculatory money is inflating the issue beyond the simple idea of supply/demand.

In essence, the presence of speculators exacerbates the price hikes that normally come of a volatile market. This turns the whole market into one giant feedback loop.

(this is all assuming that I understand correctly, of course)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I always find it difficult to grasp these economic concepts not having studied anything remotely as detailed in my college economics classes. But he's done an excellent job of explaining it in layman's terms. I found myself on an emotional roller coaster whilst reading this piece - at moments I was enraged, then again at moments felt like I could suggest something that would solve the issues, and then felt a little "let's stick it to the man"-ish near the middle. Excellent writing...

Anyways, in terms of the questions my non-economically-inclined-self has to ask,

Who else knows about this? Are politicians aware? Is it something that's not being addressed because they are afraid of losing the support of their wealthy donors? Do the likes of Obama and McCain not address this and place blame elsewhere because it's too complicated to explain to the American public? Has anyone ever tried? I was born and raised here and have never been presented with anything nearly as lucid as this to understand this system over the past 26 years that I have been alive. To those of us who don't study economics outside of the 1-2 required classes as part of college studies, this type of explanation of Wall Street and the commodities market is never really given to us. We don't even cover investment options in school to be honest - most of us don't know what 401k's, IRA's, etc. are when we get out of college.

So back to the original question - who knows about this and what have they done to make the public aware?

Chris repeatedly mentions that commodities trading bets long and they mostly bet on the prices to go up. "But in commodities, where almost all speculative money is betting long, betting on prices to go up, this is not a good thing—unless you're one of the speculators."

So my question is, would it balance itself out if we required the banks to allow their investors to bet on prices to go down as well as up?

Is this something the banks are abusing their power with - meaning now that they have the letters making them authorized as physical hedgers rather than merely speculators, are they abusing this power by not presenting their investors with the option to bet on prices going down?

Why can't we just revoke these letters given to the banks? What are the downsides? Basically, all these questions are simply my logical brain trying to figure out "Ok, you presented the problem spectacularly well; now what's the solution?" That seems to be my naturally-triggered response to reading your post. I hope he'll oblige with a follow-up or some other readers have answers to these questions.

<comment><USER10> > But he's done an excellent job of explaining it in layman's terms. I found > myself on an emotional roller coaster whilst reading this piece - at moments > I was enraged, then again at moments felt like I could suggest something > that would solve the issues, and then felt a little "let's stick it to the > man"-ish near the middle. Excellent writing...

Sigh... You are responding to rhetoric. That's why it's an emotional rollercoaster. Bad guys are identified and vilified, so you can feel like a righteous victim.

Markets tend to reflect overall sentiment and expectations about the real world. There are a lot of tricks that bad guys can play to defraud markets, but speculation is assuredly not one of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Personally, while high oil prices hurt in the short to medium term, hopefully it sends the US economy towards less dependence on oil. To me, this is a good thing. I just hope the US is smart enough to invest in reducing demand rather than increasing supply.

Also, if this type of story is interesting to you, I highly recommend Paul Krugman's blog at <http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/> . Also NPR's planet money (blog & podcast) has great information and is much less slanted than Krugman's. <http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/> .

</comment><comment><USER25> Isn't the _real_ problem that oil is produced by a cartel that controls prices? Can't the oil-producing countries just put more oil onto the market to decrease prices, if they wanted to?

The issue is that oil producers have no incentive to increase supply: they have a fixed amount of oil under their land, and releasing it slowly makes them more money. Commodities speculators are also tying up some supply (in offshore tankers), but there is more oil in the earth than there is in investment-bank-owned tankers.

<comment><USER26> OPEC members continuously cheat on each other. The reason oil prices collapsed in the early 1980s and stayed that way for two decades was because OPEC had no teeth. Somebody would always overproduce and reap the lion's share of the rewards, and then _everyone_ had an incentive to overproduce.

<comment><USER16> OPEC also has an interest in keeping oil prices low over time. When oil prices are higher, people start investing in more efficient technology, reducing their overall need for oil, and consequently, OPEC's potential for political pressure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I've once heard that a typical barrel of oil trades hands (ownership) 30 times before it makes it into your gas tank.

20 of those times nothing is transported, refined, added... Meaning it was pure speculation buy/sells.

And when you remove that speculation, prices go down 50%.

</comment><comment><USER28> People didn't believe in 07/08 that much of the price movement was due to the devaluation of the dollar. Perhaps the real bump in prices is due to the devaluation and perceived future devaluation of developed economy currencies. QE/helicoptering money/printing money to stave off deflation ain't free.

A lot of the speculation on comm is because monied people believe that US monetary policy will end with uncontrolled inflation rather than the soft landing the fed is hoping for. To my understanding this is a greater picture case of supply and demand. It's just that the product isn't crude it's insurance.

</comment><comment><USER29> > the primary culprit is the reinflating of the commodities market that helped > drive the Great Financial Crisis.

The author doesn't claim any special knowledge, yet makes a rather vacuous guess: "The primary culprit [for the reinflating of the commodities market] is the reinflating of the commodities market"

He's arguing that the reason commodities (in particular oil) is so expensive now is that commodities are expensive.

There are many domains where I lack any sort of expertise, and I defer to the experts for their analysis and opinions. It doesn't appear that the author maintained the same restraint.

<comment><USER30> He's saying that commodities are expensive now due to exemptions granted to banks, and only to them, that allows them to rollover perpetually long positions while charging management fees. This is causing inflation because there is a lack of liquidity from a cornered market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I live in Romania. The price for gas has gone up almost 30% in the last year, a raise that's so high that it's not justified by anything. We have 5-6 big oil companies and they artificially drive the price high. We're one of the few countries that has a decrease in gasoline sales (a decrease of 18%), but they keep raising the price.

We're all going to change our cars for bikes soon. Or we're going to have something similar to what happened in Libya focused on the oil companies.

</comment><comment><USER32> So what do you pay per gallon currently ? $3.50 ? That is $0.92 per litre. In Germany we currently pay €1.50 per litre which is $2.1 or $9.25 per gallon. Consider yourself happy americans!

</comment><comment><USER33> QE1 and QE2.

</comment><comment><USER34> Long-only commodity ETFs are to blame here. People shouldn't funnel their savings / pension funds into them.

</comment><comment><USER35> Why do you call gas that which is not gas?

</comment><comment><USER36> The article is meaningless because skips over two big points:

First, for all those long only positions, for each of them, there needs to be a corresponding short position. The article never explained where all those short positions will come from.

Second, the article said that when the futures contracts expired and there was settlement, the funds would just "roll over" their positions, that is, by selling their long positions in the expiring contracts and buying long positions in the next contract.

The problem is, just why can the funds be sure not to lose money during this roll over process?

Or, if wheat should sell for $5 a bushel and some fund bought wheat at $100 a bushel and doesn't want to take delivery, then the fund needs to sell the wheat they bought (and would take delivery on), and who's going to pay them $100 a bushel for their wheat (position)?

But prices have gone up. I just suspect that there's more to the system than in the article.

<comment><USER37> _First, for all those long only positions, for each of them, there needs to be a corresponding short position. The article never explained where all those short positions will come from._

You might have glossed over the food section of the article - it discusses exactly that.. basically, that the market has transformed from a balance of long- and short- positions to only long, made possible because regardless of whether the price went up or down, the big names would make money (if prices went up, they make money the normal way, and if prices went down, they make money via their profits gained through replication).

So long as corporations like Goldman Sachs are making this sort of crazy money regardless of whether prices go up or down, you're going to be in a world of hurt.

<comment><USER38> I get that Goldman Sachs et al are making crazy money whether prices go up or down, but investors in their funds only make money if prices go up, right? They lose money if prices go down, don't they?

So if commodity prices go down in the long run, why does anyone invest in a commodity fund long term?

<comment><USER37> That's where it gets crazy/wrong - since Goldman is "buying" regardless of whether prices go up or down, it has the effect of artificially providing feedback that triggers higher prices regardless of anything else.

So even if the investors lose a little in day-to-day trading, in the long-run, they're gaining because contrary to what logic says, the prices _aren't_ going down in the long run, they're actually going up (at least until the bubble explodes).

Basically, if we all agree to continue buying something at whatever price it's at regardless of whether we're losing or not, in the long run, we'll drive the prices higher and our own (as investors) profits with them. And then the bubble bursts... only to start over again.

<comment><USER38> Yes, prices go up until the bubble pops, at which point fund investors (but not Goldman) lose lots of money. Was the low point post-bubble above pre- bubble prices?

<comment><USER38> I'm sorry, was that a stupid question? Perhaps you could have told me why after you downvoted.

<comment><USER37> Wasn't me that downvoted you, mate. But anyway, that's a difficult question to answer and the response could go either way - it all depends on when you officially define the bubble to have started/ended.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I generally blame it on Peak Oil (and, yes, I am guilty of just sort of skimming this piece).

<comment><USER40> It's not Peak Oil. Not in this case.

<comment><USER26> What time scale are we talking about? If we're asking why oil is more expensive than it was in 1999, I think that's at least partially due to Peak Oil (more due to China and India, though). If we're asking why oil is more expensive than it was in 2009, I'd say it's because of geopolitical instability, speculation, and price inelasticity.

<comment><USER39> I haven't had a car in roughly three years, so for me, I am thinking in a longer time frame, not a shorter one. Prices will inevitably go up and down some and be influenced by various factors on a day to day basis. But before my divorce forced me out of college, I was an environmental resource management major and went over peak oil in two classes, well before it was some kind of buzz word. One of those classes covered peak oil quite in depth. This is part of why I chose to give up my car when push came to shove for me financially: I believe in the long haul, things will have to change. We will have to walk more, use public transit more, live closer to work, shop closer to home, develop more fuel alternatives and so on. Not everyone will go to the extremes I have gone but the occasional extremist can help make more moderate adaptations look a lot more normal, sane, comfortable, and so on.

(Having given up my car, I do not expect to ever own a car again, having nothing whatsoever to do with peak oil. The short version is that some of the really scary infections that people with my medical condition sometimes get, which doctors don't know how to effectively treat and which 'normal' people don't typically get, are used by environmental scientists for bioremediation of petrochemical spills -- ie they eat petrochemicals. I have come to believe that people like me absorb petrochemicals more than average and that this fact contributes to our seriously negative health outcomes, including picking up infections that think petrochemicals are yummy. I have done much better, health-wise, without a car. Compared to what is supposed to happen to someone with my diagnosis, a little walking is a minor burden.)

<comment><USER20> Unless you buy everything from local producers who get all their components from local producers, you are indeed affected by oil prices, regardless if you own a car or not.

<comment><USER26> There are degrees of affectedness, though. I live 2 miles from work, bike in during spring/summer/fall, and my employer provides food on weekdays (technically on weekends as well, if I wanted to go into work then). I tank up on gas about once every 6 weeks, it costs me about $30, and I spend maybe $25-30/week on food. It's well within my budget, and would continue to remain so even if gas went to $10/gallon.

That's a far cry from someone who commutes 20 miles to work in an SUV and spends $60/week just on gas. These people are hurting now. If you have the opportunity to re-arrange your lifestyle so that it's a bit less sensitive to oil prices, it may be a good idea to do so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> begin bla bla bla.

... and since bernanke is printing money and making stockmarkets go up, therefore the oil exporters also are printing what they have, i.e.oil, making their "valuables" go up...

bla bla end

signature: soylent green is sheeple.</comment>


I beat Google ReCaptcha, this is my Captcha: Touch and I-am-not-a-Racist Captcha - <AUTHOR> Over two weeks ago I announced I beat Google's Recaptcha using AWS Rekognition (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24271979) and I mentioned I did it because I designed my own Captcha but I didn't more details.
Well, here is the full story: my new Captcha will detect whether you are human based on how you play and lose a twisted game of "follow the dots." It exploits the limitations of visual focus. It is a very simple game, perhaps the simplest of games, but it is hard. I made an actual game version you can try for free(https://apps.apple.com/us/app/two-finger-game/id1526964426?ign-mpt=uo%3D2)
These days the biggest problem are not just bots, but people who use the Internet to spread hate so I created this idea of an anti-hate captcha that forces racist and ass*s to acknowledge that everyone is equal using images of people of all races generated with a Generative Adversarial network. It just sends a message and should also be able to block those who refuse to solve the anti-hate Captcha
I am not a racist instead of I am not a robot
You can see all details on my Kickstarter
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/worldssmartestman/touch-captcha-and-anti-hate-captcha-a-better-internet?ref=project_build
I also made a video on how to setup my captcha solver, so you can do it yourself. 4 hours long but if you follow it exactly as I did, you should be able to get it working:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzu94y56H3I
ozymandias <comment><USER2> I suppose I am in fact more interested in robots checking the "I am not a racist" box than in racists checking the "I am not a robot" box

But idk if it solves anything because I've been lying to that "I am not a robot" box for years

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm sorry I don't have a constructive comment. But I think this is GREAT!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I promise to make it a reality</comment></comment>


Harvard Just Discovered That PowerPoint Is Worse Than Useless - <AUTHOR> https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/harvard-just-discovered-that-powerpoint-is-worse-than-useless.html <comment><USER2> Shouldn't it say "presentation slides are <judgement>", it doesn't seem like the point specifically applies to PowerPoint. (also anecdotally having a bad presentation with or without a tool doesn't matter, having a good presentation seems to help having visual aids and mediocre presentations would be helped if they stopped following terrible advice)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is hardly a new revelation. Edward Tufte, whose books about the presentation of data are well known, wrote a thin pamphlet around over 15 years ago that was essentially a rant against the use of PowerPoint presentations. See:

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0961392169/ref=dbs_a_def_r...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0961392169/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i4)

</comment><comment><USER4> Maybe, but Whats worst than useless are Inc. clickbait articles.

<comment><USER5> You might be interested in Gene Weingarten's Pickin' up where the Apostrophe Protection Society left off,

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/gene- weing...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/gene-weingarten- pickin-up-where-the-apostrophe-protection-society-left- off/2020/01/02/e7479cca-1b8a-11ea-87f7-f2e91143c60d_story.html)</comment></comment>


USA FREEDOM Act Aims to Amend Excesses of NSA Data Collection - <AUTHOR> http://sensenbrenner.house.gov/uploadedfiles/usafreedomact.pdf

<comment><USER2> The FREEDOM Act?

What a horribly rhetorical name... Also:

Page 11 line 18: _A judge considering a petition to modify or set aside a nondisclosure order shall grant such petition unless the court determines that alerting a target, an associate of a target, or the foreign power of which the target is an agent, of the interest of the Government in the target; or otherwise seriously endangering the national security of the United States._

This sounds like more of the same.

No mention of "NSA" or "National Security Administration". Most of the changes involved are regarding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or National Security Act. Almost all amendments contain provisions for terrorism, non disclosure agreements, or vague notions of harming national security.

How about repealing some laws instead of passing even more legalese?

ALSO: The word "terrorism" was found twice on the first page, and only 8 more times thereafter. That's MUCH better than the 158 references found in the Patriot Act, found here: [http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-107publ56/pdf/PLAW-107publ...](http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-107publ56/pdf/PLAW-107publ56.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> Note that the ACLU has come out strongly in favor: [https://www.aclu.org/national-security/aclu-strongly- support...](https://www.aclu.org/national-security/aclu-strongly-supports- sensenbrenner-leahy-bill-reforming-nsa-surveillance)</comment>


Why are monoidal categories interesting? - <AUTHOR> https://jvns.ca/blog/2019/03/26/what-are-monoidal-categories/ <comment><USER2> > I don't know whether this particular thing really has anything to do with > programming, I just remembered I thought it was cool.

There's so many cool things related to programming & monoids.

For example, monoids are parallelizeable. Since they are associative, you can group monoids arbitrarily, then use their monoidal operation to get your final result, think MapReduce, or a parallel fold operation.

Sorting operations are monoidal (think merge sort), sums, products, so many cool things. There is a huge amount of application to computing.

<comment><USER3> I am probably wrong, but I think all the examples you mention only rely on associativity, and you're essentially talking about why fold / reduce can be parallelized (literally a parallel reduction).

For example, just make up some associative operation with no identity element. Imagine a string binary operator that prepends the character 'a' to the second operand, then concatenates them.

        f('foo', 'bar') = 'fooabar'

        x `f` y `f` z = '{x}a{y}a{z}'
        = x `f` (y `f` z)
        = (x `f` y) `f` z

but no string e can result in e `f` x == x, so there's no identity and so no monoid arises from this.

<comment><USER2> There is a requirement for identity, take sorting for example, you need to be able to sort the empty set. It's a monoidal operation.

The same is true for folds:

        fold(xs) = fold(xs ++ []) = fold(xs) ++ fold([])
        fold(xs) = fold([] ++ xs) = fold([]) ++ fold(xs)

<comment><USER3> There is no monoid type requirement for fold. See the type signature in Haskell (where Monoid happens to be used for fold despite not being necessary) vs Scala (which does not require a monoid) for example. Applying fold to an empty argument has nothing to do with monoidal identities, for example you could just specify what the "seed" result should be (like with Python's reduce function).

<comment><USER2> Have a look at this blog post, it contains the bit I got that fold description from:

[https://philipnilsson.github.io/Badness10k/algebraic- pattern...](https://philipnilsson.github.io/Badness10k/algebraic-patterns- monoid/)

Back to my first post, I don't think it's not wrong to describe these operations as monoidal. Or to say that a monoidal operation implies something can be run in parallel, this whole thing feels a bit pedantic.

edit: I don't know how you can say monoids for lists have nothing to do w/ empty lists considering the definition is literally:

       -- Identity laws
       x <> mempty = x
       mempty <> x = x

Which is exactly what I posted before

<comment><USER2> should read: "It's not wrong to describe these operations as monoidal..."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> 6 years ago, when HN was way more relaxed & laidback, someone posted my story about monoids. It stayed on the HN front page for like a whole day !!! (which these days is next to impossible)

Anyways, here's that monoid parable - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5179410](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5179410)

</comment><comment><USER5> I have high regards for Julia, but I am a little sad to see so little meat behind this promising title. As we find out at the very end:

> I don't know whether this particular thing really has anything to do with > programming, I just remembered I thought it was cool.

Also, I don't really get the main point:

> tensor [Monoidal] categories are about proving (or defining) things with > pictures

You could say that about Category theory as a whole already. E.g. "A product is a space which makes this diagram 'universally' commutative.". No?

<comment><USER6> Julia often writes pieces that are just partial captures of a few steps in figuring something interesting out, and which don't come to a conclusion per se. So I don't really understand your critique.

I'm not seeing this as any different than her typical articles, except that in this case I know next to nothing about the topic and so from the start I was lost.

Her first sentence and her second paragraph address your complaints, anyway. We didn't "find out" that this was just her talking about something cool at the end. Not only did she intro the piece with saying as much, but that's the premise of her entire blog!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I always enjoy a good Julia Evans article, and this one is no different. She has a very approachable, personable way of explaining technical things, which is missing from many monoid (and related) tutorials.

I'm confused by this opening line though:

> Monoidal categories are also called "tensor categories" and I think that > term is a little less confusing

Why is that? What is special about the word "monoid" that makes it more or less confusing than "tensor"?

<comment><USER8> To the contrary, when I think "monoid" I think good old nonnegative integers and addition, or positive integers and multiplication, or any of a half-dozen really easy-to-understand examples.

Tensors... what the heck are those? Like matrices, but _more_ complicated, you say? Thanks, but I'll stick with my basic monoids over here. :-)

The confusion between monoids and monads is perhaps unfortunate (even if the similarity is quite intentional, because technically monads are a particular kind of monoid), but easily sorted out and not much worse than having to distinguish between the nuts in your pantry and the Nutella.

<comment><USER9> You can think of a tensor as "an element of a tensor product" (just like a vector is "an element of a vector space") and look at the definition of a tensor product via its universal property, it basically turns bilinear maps into linear maps. This universal property is elegant and immediately gives the Hom-tensor adjunction, but to show that tensor products satisfying it actually exist you'll need an explicit construction, which can be done by quotienting a free module. This explicit construction might look unintuitive at first, but you're really quotienting by the minimal relations required for the "bilinearity" property of tensors to work out

<comment><USER10> I think this is a fantastic definition of what tensors are for mathematicians, but I think it is likely to be not very helpful for someone whose perspective is:

> Tensors... what the heck are those? Like matrices, but _more_ complicated, > you say? Thanks, but I'll stick with my basic monoids over here. :-)

If matrices are the limit of your tolerance for complication, bilinear maps probably aren't intuitive tools for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Fun fact: a monoid is a category with one object.

<comment><USER10> A monoid is (realisable as) the _set of morphisms of_ a category with one object ….</comment></comment>


Cutting Back Sugar Improves Obese Children's Health in Just 10 Days - <AUTHOR> http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/10/27/cutting-sugar-improves-childrens-health-in-just-10-days/ <comment><USER2> Here is a link to the actual journal article on the study, since the NYTimes omitted it for some reason (currently free to access):

[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/oby.21371/abstrac...](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/oby.21371/abstract)

PDF:

[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/oby.21371/pdf](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/oby.21371/pdf)

Lustig, R. H., Mulligan, K., Noworolski, S. M., Tai, V. W., Wen, M. J., Erkin- Cakmak, A., Gugliucci, A. and Schwarz, J.-M. (2015), Isocaloric fructose restriction and metabolic improvement in children with obesity and metabolic syndrome. Obesity. doi: 10.1002/oby.21371

As an aside, it's very strange that the article is not cited in the NYTimes post. A journalist should at least give the DOI at the bottom if there is not a link to the article in the body of the text.

Edit: I left this same comment on the NYTimes article and the text now links to the journal (though my comment was not approved). Seems like a win! NYTimes editorial staff: thank you!

<comment><USER3> It constantly frustrates me how news articles _never_ cite research articles, they always just mention "a study" and the author, leaving me to fumble around for 10 minutes to find the actual study. Does anyone know why this is SOP?

<comment><USER4> Because journalism is a systematically dishonest profession populated largely by people who do not want their readers to be able to catch their mistakes and do not want to give credit to the researchers who made the discovery that earned the clicks for the news article. They care about entertaining, not informing; the truth or falsehood of what they are writing is irrelevant to them, except as a constraint that might impede the telling of a sensational story (all else being equal, a story is more sensational if it is true than if it is fiction). Like PageRank-hungry SEO scum, they will only name sources if they think some of that the source's credibility will rub off on their article, never vice versa.

<comment><USER5> It's really depressing how cynical that is. (Developer working at the NYTimes here).

The actual reason links to studies are often left off articles (particularly in cases like this with sharp deadline pressure to publish fast before the competition) is that the software powering the editing and publishing workflow really badly needs improvement. An incredible amount of work and knowledge goes into a story like this.

Versioning rich text through many different software tools designed for writing/editing and publishing across many platforms is hard. Sometimes people copy/paste by hand and in doing so a link can go missing. The news industry needs more technologists to work on these problems. We're hiring for people to do that, by the way: [http://developers.nytimes.com/careers/](http://developers.nytimes.com/careers/)

(Also, the link to the study is now in.)

<comment><USER6> It's cynical because that's what we, regular readers of news, have to deal with. NYT may be top of the line, but sadly it's not above the line.

Now I don't want it to sound dismissive or personal in any way, but tell me - if say, few of great software devs now drop everything they do and come to NYT to help, sit down for months and develop the most awesome software package the world of press has ever seen, will it actually solve the quality issues articles have? And more importantly, if sold to other papers, will it suddenly solve _their_ problems?

Will it make journalism honest and trustworthy instead of lies and clickbait bullshit?

I'm not sure how much blame to put on broken publishing workflow, a lot of this seems really to be about broken incentives - "deadline pressure to publish fast before the competition" that leads to the "many articles, as sensationalist as possible, truth be damned" mentality, especially in the management layer.

But you did give me a pause here. Only recently I had a chance to peek at internals of a tiny part of manufacturing industry, and _oh boy how much money they waste_ on badly designed software, which is badly designed because of deadline pressure and top management pressuring to iterate over a broken software package (and then messing with the process) instead of scrapping it altogether and doing it right. Maybe software is more to blame than I thought.

<comment><USER4> > Now I don't want it to sound dismissive or personal in any way, but tell me > - if say, few of great software devs now drop everything they do and come to > NYT to help, sit down for months and develop the most awesome software > package the world of press has ever seen, will it actually solve the quality > issues articles have?

This actually happened and that's how we got d3.js. It didn't fix journalism though.

<comment><USER6> Oh, didn't know the origin story; I only thought they just like it over there. D3 is absolutely awesome!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I completely removed added sugar from my diet for the past 6 months. It is hard to describe how my life changed.

I am much better at swimming, less tired, I eat a lot less. I lost weight the first 3 months and now my weight is very stable.

Cutting added sugar is not very hard but it requires some willingness.

The food producers put sugar everywhere: bread, red beans, smoked salmon, yogurt, etc. You just need to read the ingredients to avoid it. You will quickly learn which type of product is ok and which type is not.

Today I am more attracted to a fruit than a cup cake or an ice cream, and it feels good :)

<comment><USER8> I have become so wary of comments about lifestyle or diet changes that result in a bevy of subjective improvements. Like when people start running and they have all these wonderful side effects — more energy, better sleep, mood improvements, etc — where in my experience I really didn't experience any of it when I trained for a triathlon a couple years back. It just reminds me of infomercial testimonials. I need to see double-blind clinical trials that prove the effects outperform placebo at this point. It all sounds logical, because "sugar bad" but I have become far too skeptical these days.

<comment><USER9> Double blind dietary study? It would be quite hard to fool someone into thinking they are eating cupcakes when they are really eating a bowl of unsweetened oatmeal.

Dietary studies are very hard. There is no conspiracy preventing rigorous studies, they are just really hard. You need a large enough sample, you need to control the subjects very tightly (people don't self-report accurately), and you need to do it for long enough to see if the effects are lasting or illusory.

If you want real science here, we need to change our expectations and think in terms of $10B not $10M. Probably still a good investment in health, comparable to cancer research.

Until that time, what are you using to make your dietary decisions, given there's not much real science behind any of it?

<comment><USER8> I completely agree that it would be very difficult to perform such studies, if not impossible, but that doesn't make me desire them any less. Instead I've become very skeptical of everything and – if you'll pardon the pun – follow my gut instincts.

I find maintaining a high level of skepticism tends to dissipate any longterm benefits of the placebo effect. So sometimes I'll try a fad, or a lifestyle change, but hold my judgement until months later and most of the time I'm left disappointed in the overall results.

Other than that, I follow the golden rule of health and nutrition: "everything in moderation".

<comment><USER10> "Everything in moderation" is just a tautology. "Moderation" for kale is different from "moderation" for sugar is different from "moderation" for opiates. "Everything in moderation" means "the right amount of everything," which is just begging the question of what the right amount is in the first place.

<comment><USER11> Ah, thank you for articulating the problem I have with that statement that I could never quite put my finger on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> >The proposed changes have been strongly opposed by the food industry as unscientific. The Sugar Association, a trade group, said the F.D.A. was "making assertions that lack adequate scientific evidence," and the Grocery Manufacturers Association criticized the standards the agency used to establish the daily value as being "inadequate."

That's the tobacco industry smoke-screening evidence about the dangers of smoking all over again.

<comment><USER13> But also sounds like, for example, producers of vaccines arguing against that one study that vaccines cause autism. Just because they have an ulterior motive in defending their product doesn't mean they're wrong.

<comment><USER14> Every medical researcher argues that vaccines don't cause Autism. There is literally no study published in any serious peer reviewed journal that suggests otherwise.

<comment><USER15> You mean, except that one study which started it...

It's crazy to start freaking out over something just because of one small study, especially if it's something that didn't seem to have any observable negative effects until then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Critical omission from title: _obese_ children.

These are kids whose livers are already suffused with fatty tissue, not average kids.

<comment><USER17> Mean age is 13.3 ± 2.7 and the mean body weight is 93.0 ± 22.1 (~205lbs) at study start. That's pretty big for a 13 year-old.

<comment><USER18> So the mean height would have to be around 5'11 for them to just be "overweight" and not "obese". Which seems unlikely for a group of young teens.

<comment> nommm-nommm Obesity in children is measured a bit differently. They use BMI-for-age percentiles, not Straight BMI.

From the CDC:

Overweight is defined as a BMI at or above the 85th percentile and below the 95th percentile for children and teens of the same age and sex. Obesity is defined as a BMI at or above the 95th percentile for children and teens of the same age and sex.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Note : the study selected children who were considered to be "particularly high risk of diabetes and related disorders. All the subjects were black or Hispanic and obese, and had at least one or more symptoms of metabolic syndrome, a cluster of risk factors that includes hypertension, high blood sugar, abnormal cholesterol and excess body fat around the waist."

I did not read that there was a control group.

<comment><USER3> The paper discusses this:

However, there are some limitations to our paradigm. Athough inclusion of a separate external control group would have been optimal, it would have presented novel challenges of its own, such as: 1) if subjects under- or over- estimated their baseline fructose consumption, then providing them their reported daily fructose content would be problematic; 2) altering each subject's diet while trying to maintain the baseline fructose content would require changes in liquid versus solid, which may also result in caloric change, altered absorption, and altered satiety; and 3) our participants were all patients in an obesity program. We did not believe that maintaining fructose at the same level, even within a study, is commensurate with the message that the change in macronutrient composition is important for their health, and in order to use the study as an "educational moment." Furthermore, others have looked longitudinally at children with obesity over time without any intervention, but still within the confines of a study, and had seen no changes in metabolic outcomes [39]. Rather, each participant served as his or her own control. Our paradigm of dietary sugar and fructose restriction, which included mid-study dietary adjustments to compensate for weight loss, resulted in a 4% decrease in percentage of calories from carbohydrate, a 2% increase in percentage of calories from protein, and a small increase in dietary fiber, which could have reduced macronutrient absorption [18], flux of fructose to the liver, and also increased satiety. Recognizing that consumption data by recall is routinely underestimated [24], we made every effort to maintain our participants' baseline weight throughout the 10-day study interval, and even increased the caloric allotment partway through the cohort, yet a decline of 0.9 ± 0.2 kg was noted during the 10 days.

<comment><USER20> I'll quote part of your quote, because it's interesting:

> _We did not believe that maintaining fructose at the same level, even within > a study, is commensurate with the message that the change in macronutrient > composition is important for their health, and in order to use the study as > an "educational moment."_

This is a very bad excuse to avoid a control group. There are many unknown factors that are difficult to estimate. For example: Did the children also change the fat consumption because a doctor was going to examine them in a few days? Did they change some habits, like walking to medical center instead of no walking? I can invent a few more, because it's very difficult to guess the baseline and the changes in the subjects.

To be sure that "the change in macronutrient composition is important for their health" you need a scientific study. And to be sure that the study is reliable you need a control group.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This article has all the hallmarks of poor science: 1) very small study size 2) very short study period 3) self reported consumption 4) marginal p-values 5) highly biased first author.

<comment><USER22> I completely agree. I'm surprised that the HN community, which so often points out poor science in other articles, in this case seems to include a lot of people posting personal anecdotes about their diets.

For those people, I think it's very nice that you had a good experience dieting. Your story isn't science however, and the rest of us aren't going to learn anything generalizable from it. Perhaps you should be posting to a reddit support group?

<comment><USER21> Did you mean to reply to another comment? I didn't say anything about dieting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I cut back my kid's syntactic sugar, and he developed a Lisp.

</comment><comment><USER24> There's a very revealing and entertaining documentation about the rise of sugar in our lives, drawing parallels between the tobacco lobby and the sugar lobby: Sugar Coated (2015). Highly recommended. It was streaming on tvo, but somehow the stream does not work anymore. I only found a german version on arte.

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4425138/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4425138/)

[http://www.arte.tv/guide/de/054774-000/die-grosse- zuckerlueg...](http://www.arte.tv/guide/de/054774-000/die-grosse-zuckerluege)

[http://tvo.org/video/documentaries/sugar- coated](http://tvo.org/video/documentaries/sugar-coated) (not working)

In some ways, sugar is even harder to control than tobacco. Smoking is a choice, but sugar is essential for living. It plays a big role in our society. Remember the last birthday party/christmas/anything without sugar overdose?... Me neither.. And its hard to prove that over-consumption is unhealthy.

</comment><comment><USER25> With all the discussion going on here, I would like to pop up a quick question:

How can one go about learning about nutrition?

I have tried many, many times to do this, but I always run into these problems:

1: I can't find a "big picture" overview of the field, and thereby learn which areas to focus on

2: Most of what I find seems to be anecdata, or poorly constructed studies _" We followed these 7 people..."_

3: The rest of which I find is always biased by what the author is trying to promote - Low Carbs! No Carbs! Water! Fruit fruit fruit!!! and suffers from points 1 and 2 above...

I would really like some good recommendations for books on learning nutrition science. From the ground (coffee) up.

<comment><USER26> This is not a book, but could be a starting point: [http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/](http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/)

<comment><USER25> Thanks for the link!

But I still have problem 1: A big picture view of the field.

I am looking for a kinda Cliff's Notes of the nutrition field. Then I feel a lot of the sections on that site I would be better prepared to deal with in an informed way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm not sure how this is news to anyone these days. There are a billion and one places you could go on the web, see on TV, read in books, or even speak with neighbours and the same advice would be given. Lots of sugar = bad. Less sugar = generally good.

The human body is quite remarkable in it's ability to adapt, the only thing this article adds is the '10 days' portion (pun intended), but even that isn't too surprising!

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm seeing a lot of reactions that seem to imply the current situation with added sugar is okay, and that this research can be dismissed as being too specific in terms of sample subjects.

Let's be clear, this research is specific, and all it does is add yet another point in a massive cloud of evidence pointing towards the current dietary disaster that is added sugar.

But don't take my word for it, please, do your own quick research on the subject. Look up terms like Sugar+Diet or Sugar+Nutrition on Google scholar. Go through the abstracts, the literature reviews. And stop spreading baseless opinions, especially when it's potentially very harmful to the people reading them.

When you see a comment that poorly defends a valid position, reply by defending it properly, not by pointing out the flaws and/or following up with FUD when you haven't done basic research on the subject.

<comment><USER29> You certainly aren't upholding your own statements by defending your position properly.

I find that the added sugar=bad position is backed up with a lot of studies that don't control for total calories between groups (meaning the total calories are the culprit), or macronutrient ratios not being controlled between groups (meaning lower protein or higher carbohydrates are the culprit). There are a 'massive cloud' of studies which have both of those 2 errors present.

Aside, I realize the study in question did control for total calories, I'd have to read through the full study to be able to comment on it. However, drawing conclusions on the population at large from obese kids with metabolic syndrome and abnormally high sugar consumption isn't exactly "another point" in my books.

I don't think anybody is arguing that any level of sugar consumption is fine, but it's unfair and intellectually dishonest to say 'sugar is bad' or 'sugar is unhealthy'

<comment><USER28> Who is being "unfair and intellectually dishonest"? The idea is not that 'sugar is bad' or 'sugar is unhealthy', but that sugar is bad and unhealthy _as it is being used in our current society_. I thought this was pretty clear in the first comment. This is why much of the research that comes up uses the HFS for reference levels.

I agree about my laziness (making my own literature review would be a lot of work), however, controlling for total calories as you suggest could be misleading, because sugar provides lots of calories but often does not reduce hunger:

[http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/254512.php](http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/254512.php)

<comment><USER30> > however, controlling for total calories as you suggest could be misleading, > because sugar provides lots of calories but often does not reduce hunger

I don't see how could it be misleading. You trade sweat treats for fullness, and you could even add low calories side meals to balance the count. That's what a lot of diet regimes do and have been proved to work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> My mother always told me how angry it made her to see obese children.

If you're an obese adult, it sucks and there are things to say, but whatever you do you. But kids don't know, kids need to be taught. And you're basically 100% responsible for any kind of extra weight on your child.

</comment><comment><USER32> When experimenting with intermittent fasting ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermittent_fasting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermittent_fasting)) I have also observed that my lust for sweets and other "unhealthy" foods completely disappeared. Somehow after a grace period the taste (In my subjective experience) gets much more aligned to foods that we know are considered healthy. I think adjusting ones diet to minimise sugar and highly processed food can do wonders for ones general health and well-being.

</comment><comment><USER33> Great, so scientist are now telling me what my mom had been telling me for years. I guess I should listen to my mom more often.

</comment><comment><USER34> I believe it (not having read the article). I went Paleo when my blood sugar finally went from borderline diabetic to your blood sugar is now diabetic, you either get results or go on pills at my doctors suggestion. Just had my three month bloodwork done and the reduction in blood sugar and cholesterol are staggering.

<comment><USER35> I saw a couple of videos' through the UCSF web portal by this guy (Lustig) a few years ago. I can summarize what he said about various diets. The Paleo and Atkins diets work not because what they include but by what they exclude; processed carbs, sugar, and booze.

Another comment. Dr Lustig is a pediatric endocrinologist. If you start looking though the literature. Doctors, nutritionists, etc are all doing research to prove low fat diets work. And high fat diets are bad. And it's all about will power. The pediatric endocrinologists started working the processed carbs, sugar (fructose) are bad angle about ten to fifteen years ago. Probably about five years ago they became absolutely convinced this is correct.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> They don't mention any kind of blind? Maybe the kids just improved because they were receiving attention...

</comment><comment><USER37> As an anecdote, 10 days ago I decided to try and go nuclear with sugar and high GI foods (bread, rice, etc) for a month after watching this video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyeor3z9EdQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyeor3z9EdQ)

The first week I've been feeling _odd_ and lethargic with the second day including flu-like symptoms. In little more than one week I've lost 1.5kg (~3 lbs). Now I start to feel more energetic and tomorrow I'll be hitting the gym for the first time since I started. If I manage to lose 10 lbs, I'll probably stick to the diet for some months more. (I needed to lose 40 lbs or so anyways)...

<comment><USER38> We're on almost the exact same timeline. The only added sugar I get right now is from about 2 grams in balsamic vinaigrette salad dressing. I've dropped roughly 10 pounds. My goal is to stay sugar free until Thanksgiving, then see how I feel after pigging out and the next couple days after.

Edit: btw I was already in good shape. A little bit of belly fat but I can still wear slim clothes. So for me at least the effect is there despite starting in the normal weight range.

<comment><USER37> I have started with slight overweight, but I'm a regular in the gym so I'm in good (muscular) shape, I just need to drop some extra lbs.

Before cutting sugar and high GI foods, I had to do 4-5 days of intensive cardio in order to drop 2 lbs in one week. Now I'm losing them almost without exercising (only walking here and there)...

My goal is to adjust my diet to a minimum of sugar (complex carbs, fruits, raw honey, etc) that allows me to stay in my BMI and 6–13% BFP (I was at 5% in my early 20s!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I can almost understand why Soylent makes headlines here, but articles about sugar being bad for you and bacon being bad for you? There are a hundred other places online I can read about this.

<comment><USER40> It's not about you; it's about getting the message to those who need it. And that's an awful lot of people who are over-indebted to the success and productivity of the food producing industries worldwide.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I posted a comment earlier today describing my own experience. I never said that everybody should stop eating food with added sugar, I just said it worked for me.

One main thing we don't mention in this thread is that sugar is addictive. Cutting sugar was hard like quitting somking was hard. If you never got addicted like I was, I guess it os hard to understand the problem. But when you are addicted it is hard to just know if you are hungry or not. So I choosed to go on the other extreme which works better for me.

</comment><comment><USER41> I read an interesting article on how excess sugar clogs the tiny blood vessels and tissues where there aren't really any blood vessels.

Circulation in these areas won't be as great by the nature of things so clogging them up has a greater impact. It prevents nutrient/waste flow to tissues. Just think about that for a bit. Accumulating waste and blocking delivery of nutrients.

Balancing sugar intake and moving around, even if it's just walking, on a regular basis will fix you up real fast.

</comment><comment><USER42> Robert Lustig, first author on this paper, has written a very accessible book on the same topic titled "Fat Chance" [0]. I enjoyed it, although I can't vouch for all of the science.

Full disclosure: I did stop eating sugary food after reading and watching some of Lustig's presentations, and I'm generally pleased with the results.

[0] [http://amzn.to/1S7LmQY](http://amzn.to/1S7LmQY)

</comment><comment><USER43> This is a very good first step - now we need more research into whether this holds for non-obese kids who are not Hispanic or black.

I.e. does cutting out almost all added sugars from the diet of a normal weight kid improve health outcomes?

Also note that the lead Author is Robert Lustig - I first ran into a lecture called "The bitter truth" by him against Sugar. So it seems to be a pet crusade of his (not that that invalidates the result).

</comment><comment><USER44> Sure, I noticed an immediate difference when I cut back on extraneous sugar content like soda and junk food. I also lost about 15 pounds over the course of a month. I noticed a mild withdrawal but once you get past that and as time goes on, you crave it less and less. The human body does need a certain amount to function but those amounts are easily obtained via a healthy diet with plenty of fruits and vegetables.

</comment><comment><USER45> "the findings add to the argument that all calories are not created equal." Well pardon my french but no f _cking sh_ t. Anyone person/system who strictly counts calories and completely looks over the fact that there are literally millions of other organisms involved in the digestive/energy process gets no love from me. Unfortunately its not as simple as calories in/calories out.

<comment><USER17> I think the problem here is that of BMI. While it is true that BMI is not always accurate as a measure of fitness, it usually is for people who go around saying that BMI doesn't mean anything. It is only incorrect for people who are extremely muscular, and those people _know_ they're fit enough because they have other measures (like precise measures of body composition) to tell them.

So while it is true that not all calories are created equal, the people who most often seem to go around saying that seem to be the same people who refuse to pay attention to portion size and then bitch about not losing weight because they're only eating healthy foods.

<comment><USER46> >While it is true that BMI is not always accurate as a measure of fitness

You're right. I've never seen a fit person complain about the inaccuracy of BMI in anything other than a joking manner. It isn't precise, but it's "good enough" for the majority of people. It's a heuristic.

On the other hand, people who are clearly in poor shape love to scream up and down about how inaccurate BMI is at determining fitness levels. Ironic because BMI generally puts non-active people in a positive light. If we switched to body-fat percentage something tells me a lot of these folks would be clamoring to get BMI back since it under-reports people who have low enough mass to be not considered obese, but too high body fat to be healthy (thus are at greater risk for diabetes etc).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Lustig just doesn't give up. He has already been crushed by Alan Aragon five years ago.

[http://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/02/19/a-retrospective- of-...](http://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/02/19/a-retrospective-of-the- fructose-alarmism-debate/)

<comment><USER48> Credentials would tend to support the practicing endocrinologist. Also, the data Lustig really had to go get was the causal inference where increasing fructose had a delayed response of increased metabolic syndrome. That study has been done now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> There is something called blue zone food, Okinawa islands. There have been a studies of the people who live longest and what they eat.

The study concluded you should cut down on sugar and white flour. Use fresh locally produced food and avoid processed foods.

</comment><comment><USER50> Even the New York Times is not immune to the impulse towards click-baity, misleading article titles.

</comment><comment><USER51> Sugar is the drug that makes us sick, but we keep it (and I love it in many different forms). I'm addicted to it...

</comment><comment><USER52> Just in time for Halloween!

</comment><comment><USER53> Go watch Forks over Knives on Netflix.

</comment><comment><USER54> Anyone's health _</comment>


$100 bill surpasses $1 bill in circulation for first time in U.S. history - <AUTHOR> https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2019/07/31/100-bill-surpasses-1-bill-in-circulation-for-first-time-in-US-history/6391564603260/ <comment><USER2> USA could stand to have a major update in how it treats currency. As an easy example: why is the penny still legal tender and widely used? Every other first world country had been essentially rid of cent level denominations for years now. Canada is too easy, let's instead look at Ecuador who uses USD as currency. In Ecuador, outside of touristy areas, salary and prices of everything are in general at most 1/4 of what USA charges. Yet somehow, Ecuador functions without the penny. All prices are rounded to the nearest 5 cents and Ecuador has not imploded from the rounding issues. Why is it that we insist on pricing and dealing with pennies? Every other first world country had adjusted their own currencies accordingly.

<comment><USER3> Nothing is wrong with a penny, really the problem has been inflation. Like about a hundred years ago a penny had the same value as quarter today. Given a enough time with constant inflation a dollar itself will be about like a penny today. Although, I'll probably be dead before then assuming no sudden changes.

The dollar could be rebased in that time period to make the units still make sense. Like 100 "old dollars" equals one "new dollar". Like we are talking 200-300 years from now to where a dollar that furture year is about the same value of a penny today. Again assuming no sudden inflation rate changes.

<comment><USER4> Sure, but until then, we should phase out useless coinage. I avoid cash largely because I have having a pocket full of coins. Eliminating the penny (and preferably the nickel and dime as well) would encourage me to use cash again.

<comment><USER5> Or we could fix the root problem...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


"The Market for Martyrs" (Iannaccone 2003) - <AUTHOR> http://www.religionomics.com/archives/file_download/30/Iannaccone+-+Market+for+Martyrs.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> Some key excerpts (borrowed from [https://plus.google.com/103530621949492999968/posts/XvwKVnQF...](https://plus.google.com/103530621949492999968/posts/XvwKVnQF8na)):

"From the late-1960s through the mid-1980s, sociologists devoted immense energy to the study of New Religious Movements. [For overviews of the literature, see Bromley (1987), Robbins (1988), and Stark (1985).] They did so in part because NRM growth directly contradicted their traditional theories of secularization, not to mention the sensational mid-sixties claims God was "dead" (Cox 1966; Murchland 1967). NRM's also were ideal subjects for case stud ies, on account of their small size, brief histories, distinctive practices, charismatic leaders, devoted members, and rapid evolution. But above all, the NRM's attracted attention because they scared people.

...We have trouble recalling the fear provoked by groups like the Krishnas, Moonies, and Rajneeshees. Their years of explosive growth are long past, and many of their "strange" ideas have become staples of popular culture. [We see this influence not only in today's New Age and Neo-Pagan movements, but also in novels, music, movies, TV shows, video games, university courses, environmentalism, respect for "cultural diversity," and the intellectual elite's broad critique of Christian culture.] But they looked far more threatening in the seventies and eighties, especially after November 18, 1978. On that day, the Reverend Jim Jones, founder of the People's Temple, ordered the murder of a U.S. Congressman followed by the mass murder/suicide of 913 members of his cult, including nearly 300 children.

The "cults" aggressively proselytized and solicited on sidewalks, airports, and shopping centers all over America. They recruited young adults to the dismay of their parents. Their leaders promoted bizarre beliefs, dress, and diet. Their members often lived communally, devoted their time and money to the group, and adopted highly deviant lifestyles. Cults were accused of gaining converts via deception and coercion; funding themselves through illegal activities; preying upon people the young, alienated, or mentally unstable ; luring members into strange sexual liaisons; and using force, drugs, or threats to deter the exit of disillusioned members. The accusations were elaborated in books, magazine articles, newspaper accounts, and TV drama. By the late-1970s, public concern and media hype had given birth to anti-cult organizations, anti-cult legislation, and anti-cult judicial rulings. The public, the media, many psychologists, and the courts largely accepted the claim that cults could "brainwash" their members, thereby rendering them incapable of rational choice, including the choice to leave. [Parents hired private investigators to literally kidnap their adult children and subject them to days of highly-coercive "deprogramming." Courts often agreed that these violations of normal constitutional rights were justified, given the victim's presumed inability to think and act rationally (Anthony 1990; Anthony and Robbins 1992; Bromley 1983; Richardson 1991; Robbins 1985).]

We now know that nearly all the anti-cult claims were overblown, mistaken, or outright lies. Americans no longer obsess about Scientology, Transcendental Meditation, or the Children of God. But a large body of research remains. It witnesses to the ease with which the public, media, policy-makers, and even academics accept irrationality as an explanation for behavior that is new, strange, and (apparently or actually) dangerous.

...As the case stud ies piled up, it became apparent that both the media stereotypes (of sleep-deprived, sugar-hyped, brainwashed automatons) and academic theories (of alienated, authoritarian, neurotics) were far off mark. Most cult converts were children of privilege raised by educated parents in suburban homes. Young, healthy, intelligent, and college educated, they could look forward to solid careers and comfortable incomes. [Rodney Stark (2002) has recently shown that an analogous result holds for Medieval saints - arguably the most dedicated "cult converts" of their day.]

Psychologists searched in vain for a prevalence of "authoritarian personalities," neurotic fears, repressed anger, high anxiety, religious obsession, personality disorders, deviant needs, and other mental pathologies. The y likewise failed to find alienation, strained relationships, and poor social skills. In nearly all respects - economically, socially, psychologically - the typical cult converts tested out normal. Moreover, nearly all those who left cults after weeks, months, or even years of membership showed no sign of physical, mental, or social harm. Normal background and circumstances, normal personalities and relationships, and a normal subsequent life - this was the "profile" of the typical cultist.

...Numerous studies of cult recruitment, conversion, and retention found no evidence of "brainwashing." The Moonies and other new religious movements did indeed devote tremendous energy to outreach and persuasion, but they employed conventional methods and enjoyed very limited success. In the most comprehensive study to date, Eileen Barker (1984) could find no evidence that Moonie recruits were ever kidnapped, confined, or coerced (though it was true that some anti-cult "deprogrammers" kidnapped and restrained converts so as to "rescue" them from the movement). Seminar participants were not deprived of sleep; the food was "no worse than that in most college residences;" the lectures were "no more trance-inducing than those given everyday" at many colleges; and there was very little chanting, no drugs or alcohol, and little that could be termed "frenzy" or "ecstatic" experience (Barker 1984). People were free to leave, and leave they did - in droves.

Barker's comprehensive enumeration showed that among the relatively modest number of recruits who went so far as to attend two-day retreats (claimed to be Moonies' most effective means of "brainwashing"), fewer than 25% joined the group for more than a week, and only 5% remained full-time members 1 year later. Among the larger numbers who visited a Moonie centre, not 1 in 200 remained in the movement 2 years later. With failure rates exceeding 99.5%, it comes as no surprise that full-time Moonie membership in the U.S. never exceeded a few thousand. And this was one of the most successful cults of the era! Once researchers began checking, rather than simply repeating the numbers claimed by the groups, defectors, or journalists, they discovered dismal retention rates in nearly all groups. [For more on the prevalence and process of cult defection, see Wight (1987) and Bromley (1988).] By the mid-1980s, researchers had so thoroughly discredited "brainwashing" theories that both the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and the American Sociological Association agreed to add their names to an amicus brief denouncing the theory in court (Richardson 1985)."

\- Anthony, Dick, and Thomas Robbins. 1992. "Law, Social Science and the 'Brainwashing' Exception to the First Amendment." Behavioral Sciences and the Law 10:5-29. - Anthony, Dick (Ed.). 1990. Religious Movements and Brainwashing Litigation: Evaluating Key Testimony. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. \- Bromley, David and Richardson, James T. 1983. The Brainwashing/Deprogramming Controversy: Sociological, Psychological, Legal, and Historical Perspectives. New York: The Edwin Mellen Press. \- Bromley, David G., and Phillip E Hammond. 1987. The Future of new religious movements. Macon, Ga. :: Mercer University Press. \- Bromley, David G. 1988. Falling From the Faith; Causes and Consequences of Religious Apostasy. London: Sage Publications. \- Cox, Harvey. 1966. The Secular City: Secularization and Urbanization in Theological Perspective. New York, NY: Macmillan. \- Barker, Eileen. 1984. The Making of A Moonie: Choice or Brainwashing? Oxford: Basil Blackwell. \- Murchland, Bernard (Ed.). 1967. The Meaning of the Death of God: Protestant, Jewish and Catholic Scholars Explore Atheistic Theology. New York: Random House. \- Richardson, James T. 1985. "The active vs. passive convert: paradigm conflict in conversion/recruitment research." Journal for the Scientific of Religion 24:163-179. - Richardson, James T. 1991. "Cult/Brainwashing Cases and Freedom of Religion." Journal of Church and State 33:55-74. - Robbins, Thomas. 1985. "New Religious Movements, Brainwashing, and Deprogramming - The View from the Law Journals: A Review Essay and Survey." Religious Studies Review 11:361-370. - Robbins, Thomas. 1988. Cults, Converts and Charisma: The Sociology of New Religious Movements. London: Sage. \- Stark, Rodney (Ed.). 1985. Religious Movements: Genesis, Exodus, and Numbers. New York: Paragon House Publishers. \- Rodney Stark 2002. "Upper Class Asceticism: Social Origins of Ascetic Movements and Medieval Saints." Working Paper. \- Wright, Stuart A. 1987. Leaving Cults: The Dynamics of Defection. Washington D.C.: Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.

Some of the references fulltexted:

\- [http://asketikos.info/pdfarticles/stark.pdf](http://asketikos.info/pdfarticles/stark.pdf) \- [https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/182368464/1985-robbins.p...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/182368464/1985-robbins.pdf) \- [http://jcs.oxfordjournals.org/content/33/1/55.full.pdf](http://jcs.oxfordjournals.org/content/33/1/55.full.pdf) \- [https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/182368464/1985-richardso...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/182368464/1985-richardson.pdf) \- [https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/182368464/1992-anthony.p...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/182368464/1992-anthony.pdf)</comment>


Ask HN: What happens to the codebase of a failed startup? - <AUTHOR> Startup Genome Project states that, there 92% startups fail within 3 years.[1]
According to CBInsights there were ~8000 deals in 2015.[2]
If we combine the above two facts and do a very conservative assessment, there will be at least 7000 failed companies.
I have a very simple question - What happens to the codebase of these companies?
Can we do something with it?
[1] - http://blog.compass.co/discover-the-patterns-of-successful-internet/
[2] - https://www.cbinsights.com/research-venture-capital-2015 <comment><USER2> Probably the best thing to do with the old code of failed startups is to ignore it. Most code isn't in a quality state suitable for other people to reuse and unless the startup was maintaining their code as open source and seeing reuse, the odds that someone else will come along and pick it up and maintain it are about zero.

Good luck.</comment>


Ask HN: Can someone explain the Yuri/Conway-YC Deal? - <AUTHOR>

I understand that startups are being offered lots of money, but they said it was on really good terms. Can anyone explain the terms? <comment><USER2> read Yokum's blog ([http://www.startupcompanylawyer.com/2011/01/31/what-are- the-...](http://www.startupcompanylawyer.com/2011/01/31/what-are-the-terms-of- yuri-milnersv-angels-start-fund-150k-investment-into-y-combinator-companies/))

</comment><comment><USER3> apparently it's $150k per startup in a convertible note with no dividend and no cap... sweet deal for any entrepreneur....

<comment><AUTHOR> can you explain 'convertible note' and 'no dividend' 'no cap'</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What data / file format do you work most with? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> JSON</comment>


Netflix buys US rights to The Fall - <AUTHOR> http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/news/international/netflix-buys-us-rights-to-the-fall/5053995.article?blocktitle=LATEST-NEWS&contentID=870

<comment><USER2> Signin Wall</comment>