Ask HN: Best books/source to learn about investing? - <AUTHOR> I'm a college student with well managed debt (I saved fairly well and have manged to keep my debts well within range for paying off within 2 years of graduating) and I'm considering taking some of my paycheck and investing it as opposed to saving it.  This includes both retirement funds as well as general stocks/bonds/etc...
I'm wondering what advice you have as well as what sources (I like books) you would recommend for learning about how investing works and how to invest intelegently.  I'm really looking to go for lower risk stuff, but I'd also like to do better than the just-under-1% my savings account gives me.
Thoughts? <comment><USER2> The first and best book on investing that you should read: A Random Walk Down Wall Street ([http://www.amazon.com/Random-Walk-Down-Wall- Street/dp/039306...](http://www.amazon.com/Random-Walk-Down-Wall- Street/dp/0393062457)). This book has great investing advice; is funny, interesting, and well-written; and clearly explains what's going on behind different investment approaches. In other words, it doesn't just answer the "what" question, it answers "why" and "how".

As for specific advice, investing isn't that difficult. The best approach is to be lazy: decide on an asset allocation (e.g. 50% US stocks, 30% international stocks, 20% bonds), buy index funds, and rebalance to these percentages every now and then. Vanguard (<https://personal.vanguard.com/us/home>) is probably the most respected provider of index funds; give them a shot.

Check out David Swensen's lazy portfolio if you want something more advanced: <http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6203264>.

For investing discussion, try <http://www.bogleheads.org/>.

<comment><USER3> Index fund is the way to go for many people. In fact, it is the suggestion William Sharpe gave to (pre-IPO) Google employees.

<http://www.sanfranmag.com/print/node/3368>

<comment><USER4> Yeah, but be careful, most index funds have gone down recently, suffering equity losses in the 10-15% range for the last year, before inflation. Just take a look at the Vanguard funds [1], which have one of the best reputations though. Of course, index funds simply followed the market downwards. Long term, they're still a great, trouble-free investment.

I would also consider buying Berkshire Hathaway stock. Expensive, B-series at about 4K, but worth it, again, long term. Slightly better returns too.

Even better, do not listen to me (IANA financier), but read Phill Greenspan's excellent investing advice [2].

[1] <https://personal.vanguard.com/us/FundsIndexOnly> [2] <http://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/money>

<comment><USER5> The fact that index funds have gone down recently should not cause you to be careful. If you believe the long term value is still there, the best time to buy is in fact after they've suffered losses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> #1 for me would be _The Intelligent Investor_ , by Benjamin Graham. Also read all of Warren Buffett's Letters from the Chairman - they're all up on the Berkshire Hathaway website. Peter Lynch's books are good too.

I see a lot of people here recommending _A Random Walk Down Wall Street_ , which is a good book, but you're going to finish it and say "This investing stuff is too complicated for me. I think I'll just put my money in index funds." Which is perfectly sensible investment advice, but if that's all you want, I can tell you "Go invest in index funds" right now and save you a couple hours of reading. ;-)

Jeremy Siegel's _Stocks for the Long Run_ is like Random Walk - it's decent, but the conclusion is basically "go invest in a stock index fund and don't worry about it". I'm not even sure that's great advice right now - he bases a lot of his argument on historical performance, but when an asset class has done well over the recent past, that usually means it'll do poorly in the near future. Read neither or both - Random Walk gives you good perspective for understanding Stocks for the Long Run.

Finally, if you do get into investing, make sure you start small. I've made some wonderful investment decisions and some truly terrible ones. The wonderful ones more than compensated, but they looked very similar at the time, and if I'd put all my money into the terrible one there wouldn't be any capital available for the wonderful one.

Actually, I'd recommend doing some dry-runs: _pretend_ that you're putting money in a stock, and then track how well you'd have done over time if it were real. Read all the 10-Ks for the stock (they're up in the EDGAR database at the SEC's website), research all the fundamentals, and listen to the analyst conference calls (Yahoo Finance webcasts them live whenever earnings come out). That'll give you a sense of what questions to ask and what events affect the stock price.

I did some of those dry runs and lost hypothetical money on a lot of them, which makes me very glad that they're just dry runs. ;-)

<comment><USER7> Dry runs aren't terribly useful, unless you're backtesting \- investing well means dealing with fear and greed, and you can't simulate that. You need skin in the game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here is a good list: <http://www.bogleheads.org/readbooks.htm>

General Investing

# The Four Pillars of Investing - by William ("Bill") Bernstein.

# Wise Investing Made Simple or The Only Guide to a Winning Investment Strategy You'll Ever Need - by Larry Swedroe

# The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing - by Taylor Larimore, Mel Lindauer, and Michael LeBoeuf

# All About Asset Allocation - by Rick Ferri

# The Informed Investor - by Frank Armstrong

# The Little Book of Common Sense Investing - by John "Jack" Bogle

# The Coffeehouse Investor - by Bill Schultheis.

Investor Behavior

# Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes And How To Correct Them - by Gary Belsky and Thomas Gilovich

# Your Money and Your Brain: How the New Science of Neuroeconomics Can Help Make You Rich - by Jason Zweig

# Rational Investing in Irrational Times: How to Avoid the Costly Mistakes Even Smart People Make Today - by Larry Swedroe

Financial History

# Against the Gods and Capital Ideas - by Peter L. Bernstein

# Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation - by Edward Chancellor

# A Random Walk Down Wall Street - by Burton Malkiel

Like others here have mentioned, <http://www.bogleheads.org/> is a great forum for Vanguard investors.

<comment><USER9> +1 for Bill Bernstein. An excellent book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here are Warren Buffett's recommendations. I hear he knows a thing or two about investing... ;)

[http://www.businesspundit.com/10-investing-books- recommended...](http://www.businesspundit.com/10-investing-books-recommended- by-warren-buffett/)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's quite a list! Looks like good stuff though. Anyone actually read those?

<comment><USER11> I've read _The Intelligent Investor_ and _The Theory of Investment Value_ and _Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits_. All three were quite good.

To summarize the first two (very roughly): The market isn't perfect and there are a lot of undervalued companies that are great. You have to find these companies at a significant discount to what they are really worth, and then you have to be patient enough for everyone else to realize their error.

The third would IMHO be more geared towards someone that wanted to be a professional. Fisher talks extensively about ways to interview management/competitors/clients for information not found on a balance sheet, and prefers to look for new technology companies with huge potential upsides. He admits himself that most of his success was due to a half dozen huge wins in his entire life, and he tries to document how to find such wins.

Realize that with Buffet's reading list you are going to end up wanting to invest like Buffet/Graham/Fisher, which means patience and a lot of due diligence on what you buy.

If you don't have 100 hours a week to research/interview prospects, Buffet and Graham would both recommend that you set a good allocation and buy index funds. Fisher would probably tell you the same, as he makes it very clear that he never buys a single stock without knowing the company like it was his own (which often included knowing the management on a first name basis).

And remember, the key to allocation-based investing is rebalancing, so you periodically lock in gains and don't get overly concentrated in one thing over time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Start here:

<http://www.bogleheads.org/> (long-term investing)

<http://www.tickerforum.org/cgi-ticker/akcs-www?post=5033> (day & macro trading)

<http://wilmott.com/categories.cfm?catid=11> (quant finance & algorithmic trading)

The single most important rule in investing or trading: don't lose money:

<http://infraredpress.com/>

<http://www.rule1investor.com/>

<http://safari.oreilly.com/9780132213080>

[http://market-ticker.denninger.net/2008/03/pump-pump-pump- up...](http://market-ticker.denninger.net/2008/03/pump-pump-pump-up- goldman.html)

Some additional sources:

<http://fooledbyrandomness.com/>

<http://finmath.com/>

Finally, 90% of finance books you can read at Borders or Barnes & Noble and not need to buy and keep as a reference. Do that, rather than spend hundreds on them, and buy only the ones you think you'll want to reread or keep on hand for reference.

</comment><comment><USER13> The best book on investing that I've ever read is this one:

[http://www.amazon.com/Buffett-American-Capitalist-Roger- Lowe...](http://www.amazon.com/Buffett-American-Capitalist-Roger- Lowenstein/dp/0385484917)

It's a biography, but there are lots of anecdotes about specific analyses. Nobody can invest like Buffett, but just about everyone can benefit from reading about how he did it.

<comment><USER14> I'll second that recommendation. Lowe's biography of Buffett is an excellent book -- it's a biography with lessons on investing woven in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> the internet does the job just fine, imo. there are some good investing blogs that will give you good information for the beginner investor.

if you want my 5 second pitch for what you should do, here it is:

open up an online savings account with HSBC direct or ING direct, so you're getting 3%+.

save up money so that you have padding for 3 to 6 months worth of living expenses, in case of emergencies. i'd suggest 6 so that you have 3 months of living and the other half is for monetary emergencies (big car problems, etc).

put your long term investment money (401k/roth) into index funds with low costs. keys are diversification (50% domestic, 30% international, 20% bonds is what i do) and long-term. despite short term drops, over the long haul, the market will grow. set it and forget it.

after that, if you still have some cash left over, you can pick up some more riskier stuff. just make sure that you fulfill your "safe" investments first. ensure your long-term riches and safety first, then go for short-term stuff.

<comment><USER16> I agree with this advice for the most part. Nevertheless, I would insert insurance (health, disability, auto, etc.) between emergency savings and long term investing. Choose policies that are appropriate to your life needs, but definitely do it. It's harder to do when you're living hand to mouth (e.g. running a start-up), but it's a means of protecting your life, assets and investments. I've had people close to me who had their net worth wiped out by an accident. My $0.02.

<comment><USER15> oh, i didn't mention insurance because i don't consider it an investment, i consider it manditory.

get insurance, even if its minimal disaster-level stuff. no question.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Highly recommend Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan.

also <http://www.gladwell.com/2002/2002_04_29_a_blowingup.htm>

<comment><USER17> It is a great book. But the investment advice can be summed up as: "Put $ in T-Bills".

<comment><USER18> Either you didn't read the books, or I'm afraid you completely missed the point.

His investment advice is to invest most of your money (say 80%) in T-bills, and the rest in speculative investments (Taleb does it through derivatives). The rationale is that most of your cash is protected (short of a government default) albeit making modest returns. So you'll never spectacularly "blow up"... but you also have the upside exposure to good "black swan" events in your speculative investments.

<comment><USER17> Well, I saw him give a talk in February at a Long Now Seminar, and I asked him: "How should people invest if they aren't derivatives traders?"

And he said: "Don't invest."

I have read his books and I am familiar with his barbell strategy. Are you really suggesting that he recommends the common man to invest in derivatives and such?

<comment><USER2> Very interesting - I've often wondered what the rest of us can learn from Taleb's advice.

I've seen a slightly more watered down approach at use. Put 60-70% of your money in government bonds (regular and inflation-indexed), and the other rest in US small-cap value stocks, international small-cap value stocks, and emerging market stocks. These sectors have been more volatile, but with higher returns, over the last 80 years. Historically, this portfolio would perform about as well as an 80/20 stock/bond split. And if the market drops 90%, you still have 60%+ of your money safe.

I'm not convinced that this is the way to go, but it is interesting.

<comment><USER17> I've thought a lot about it too. Investing in "extremistan" - the stock-ticker price of a stock is dangerous. If you are a buyer and seller of stocks, then a 90% drop in the market is a disaster.

But if you are a buy-and-holder (i.e. a buyer of future cash flows), then a 90% drop in the market is a great thing - you can buy a lot more company that before. Regardless of how the market moves, you will still be acquiring an ever-growing % of whatever company you are looking at.

And you have dollar cost averaging working in your favor as well, so you are guaranteed to do at least a little better than average.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Invest all of it in my startup. :)

Now for real advice:

First, consider getting an online savings account from ING Direct(3%), or putting your money into PayPal(2.5%)...Better than less than 1%.

Second, jon_dahl's advice is spot on. The 2 tricks are to diversify and to dollar cost average(invest your money each month instead of dumping it into the market all at once)....Index funds are the way to go. Vanguard's are great...You might also want to read "Fooled by Randomness" which will make you feel confident that this is the right investment approach, and anything else is pretty much gambling.

</comment><comment><USER20> I have read many of the recommend books. Here are my two pence.

Books on Wealth

        1. "Rich Dad Poor Dad"
         and find out exactly why someone becomes rich.
        (if you like this one, at some point you may also
         want to quickly scan through "Cashflow Quadrant
         Rich Dad's Guide to Financial Freedom".)

         2. Also "chapter 6 - How to make wealth"
         from "Hackers and Painters's chapter 6 - "

         3. "The Way to Wealth by Benjamin Franklin"

Investing books in this order

        1. Peter Lynch's One Up on wall street
        2. The Intelligent Investor  (Ben Graham)
        3. Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits
        4. Security Analysis (Ben Graham)
        5. The Warren Buffet Way is a famous business read not exceptional but read it if you have some time left
        6. A Random Walk Down Wall Street (Read it for a good laugh)

Do NOT read

        1. AA- The Motley Fool Money Guide
        2. How Gerge Soros Knows What He Knows
        3. Investing Online For Dummies
        4. Malkiel Burton - A Random Walk Down Wall Street
        5. Cracking the millionaire code
        6. Joel Greenblatt - You Can Be A Stock Market Genius

<comment><USER21> "Rich Dad, Poor Dad is one of the dumbest financial advice books I have ever read. It contains many factual errors and numerous extremely unlikely accounts of events that supposedly occurred.

Kiyosaki is a salesman and a motivational speaker. He has no financial expertise and won't disclose his supposed real estate or other investment success.

Rich Dad, Poor Dad contains much wrong advice, much bad advice, some dangerous advice, and virtually no good advice."

John T. Reed, Harvard MBA, successful real estate investor <http://www.johntreed.com/Kiyosaki.html>

"However much money Kiyosaki did or didn't make in the past, he's making a fortune by selling the idea that he holds the key to your financial future. In one of the many logically creative passages late in the book, he raises the astonishing idea that Americans don't spend enough time trying to emulate the successful—there's just not enough hero worship out there. "It's one of the most powerful ways we learn that we often lose as adults," he writes. "We lose our heroes. We lose our naivete." If there's better proof of how wrong this is than the success of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, I can't think of it."

<http://www.slate.com/?id=2067175>

<comment><USER22> There is _some_ good to Rich Dad. For example:

\- the explanation of how the rich earn passive income by acquiring assets rather than making a direct trade of time for money. It may seem obvious if you know it, but it's a basic and powerful concept.

\- he recommends learning to read balance sheets and becoming financially literate which is, again, basic but important

\- his advice to consider the importance of taxes and learn to structure your income to where you pay taxes but no more than you have to.

A lot of it's pretty obvious advice, but there is one thing he does well which is to motivate people to take control and become interested in learning to improve their financial situation. I think that generally outweighs the "bad" and "dangerous" advice in the book.

There are better books out there, but I think that the (unfortunately named) Rich Dad series takes more flak than it deserves.

<comment><USER21> Problem is that if you're a newbie, and these books are targetd at them, you have no way of sorting out the wheat from the chaff. So the book as a whole is simply not suitable for those that it was meant for.

<comment><USER22> Yeah... I don't know. I'm hesitant to come across as a big Kiyosaki advocate (I'm really pretty indifferent) but while I was able to think of several "wheat" examples, I can't really think of any chaff. Can you (or anyone) point out some specific areas where his advice is dangerous or just wrong?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> _A Random Walk Down Wall Street_ by Burton Malkiel

It starts with a brief history of market bubbles, moves to an explanation of the the most popular theories of stock forecasting (and why you probably can't use them to beat the market), explains and argues (quite convincingly) for the efficient market hypothesis, and concludes with lots of practical personal investment advice.

</comment><comment><USER24> Like many of you, I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out what the best investing approach is. My advice is to not spend any money on investing books. I am not saying not to read them, just don't spend ANY money on them.

I think the future of investing is here, and it is covestor.com. This site helps anyone stand on the shoulders of giants. Covestor shows who really knows how to trade in a verified way. Some users on Covestor are professionals, others are simply individual traders.

For me, I don't have the time to spare to try and beat the S&P. Thru Covestor I have found a CFA/CFP that knows how to beat the S&P waaaay better than I do. His name is Sean Hannon. In case you are wondering, Sean didn't pay me to write this.

www.epicadvisorsllc.com

<http://www.covestor.com/rankings/popularity> (see #2 on list / user "epicadv")

<comment><USER24> I forgot to mention that I think a site like Covestor scares the big investment advisor companies. If a CFA/CFP is extremely talented, beating the S&P consistently, Covestor gives him/her a way to prove this. Why would I use Goldman Sachs over a super lean / small investment advisory company when the small company achieves better verified returns, has much lower fees, and doesn't require that I have at least 100k+ to invest with?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> For savings, I use FNBO. They have an online presence (FNBO Direct), where everything is done online. <https://www.fnbodirect.com> The nice part is, they adjust your interest rate as it goes up and down. So when it goes up, you don't need to look around for another bank, they automatically raise it for you. Not all banks are so kind.

For books, try Bogle on Mutual Funds. In the end its a let down excitement wise, because his main advice is basically "put it in an index fund and let it sit for 40 years." He makes a good case that you'll do better than most people this way. Of course, most people don't do this because they want the excitement of trading, watching stocks, etc.

</comment><comment><USER26> I really like Ben Stein & Phil DeMuth's "Yes You Can Get a Financial Life":

[http://www.amazon.com/Yes-You-Can-Financial- Life/dp/14019112...](http://www.amazon.com/Yes-You-Can-Financial- Life/dp/1401911250/)

Very conservative approach to long-term investing, but also helps prepare you for other common life expenses, such as housing and children. A great broad, bottom-line, why-this-really-matters-in-life approach to investing. I wish I had read this book at or before graduating from college.

</comment><comment><USER27> For the shortest introduction to sensible, index-based investing, read The Coffeehouse Investor (Bill Schultheis). It shouldn't take more than an hour or two to go through, and it contains all the basics. Then, if you're interested in a more in-depth analysis of the same thing, read A Random Walk Down Wall Street (Burton Malkiel), as suggested by several others in this thread.

</comment><comment><USER28> I really enjoyed Henry Blodgett's "The Wall Street Self-defense Manual: A Consumer's Guide to Intelligent Investing" ([http://www.amazon.com/Wall- Street-Self-defense-Manual-Intell...](http://www.amazon.com/Wall-Street-Self- defense-Manual-Intelligent/dp/0977743322)).

It's basically a diatribe against active investing. Buy index funds and hold them.

</comment><comment><USER29> No one mentioned Dilbert's 9-point formula?

[http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?guid=%7Bbe5...](http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?guid=%7Bbe57f0aa-03d9-4320-bc4d-83363b6372f6%7D)

Won't paste it here, but it's worth a look. The first bit of advice is make a will (yes, even if you aren't married - give it to the old hackers home).

</comment><comment><USER30> As an aside, my etrade savings account yields just north of 5% interest. Might be worth looking into in the interim and even more so if you plan to trade yourself. Is etrade a safe bank? Well, I've had money there for quite a while and in this day and age what bank is safe?

</comment><comment><USER31> After you've read a few books that were recommended here, but before putting down any real money, be sure to pick up a copy of Taleb's "Fooled By Randomness" to make sure you have a healthy amount of skepticism.

</comment><comment><USER32> bogleheads guide to investing

<comment><USER33> I second Bogleheads. Also second the "Intelligent Investor," but that one might be a little too much depth for what you're after.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Jonathan Hoenig's _Greed is Good_ is pretty excellent. <http://www.capitalistpig.com/merchandise.html>

</comment><comment><USER35> Don't forget to pick up a book on how to read financial statements, once you figure that out you'll actually be investing, instead of playing the lottery based on hype.

</comment><comment><USER36> Check out this site to learn a few tips on technical analysis: <http://www.stockcaster.net/education>

</comment><comment><USER37> Market Wizards: Interviews with Top Traders by Jack D. Schwager Stock Market Wizards: Interviews with America's Top Stock Traders by Jack D. Schwager

</comment><comment><USER38> For all you who love playing with math check out Option Volatility & Pricing: Advanced Trading Strategies and Techniques by Sheldon Natenberg

</comment><comment><USER39> Investments by Bodie, Kane and Marcus (BKM) is one classic that still has value in this climate.

</comment><comment><USER40> my favorites: <http://www.uglychart.com/?page_id=1534>

</comment><comment> cypress-hill try investing with imaginary money. the only way to learn about the market is to be in it, even with imaginary investments. what was written about the market in the past is based on the market of the past. its not all bad or outdated, but a some of it is. for example, buy-and-hold only makes sense in a secular bull. in a secular bear, you need to learn a new strategy.

learn by doing. simulate real investing. you will learn a lot.

</comment><comment><USER41> Random walk down Wall Street, then the Graham books (look for things that are written by the people who taught Warren Buffet).

</comment><comment><USER42> you must read "The Dollar Crisis" before you invest in anything - trust me this will help for the rest of your life !!!

<comment><USER43> I completely agree. The conventional wisdom of buy and hold a diversified portfolio of stocks and bonds or index funds is simply bad advise right now.

While stocks do tend to out-perform over the "long-term" there have been multiple 10 year periods when stocks lost big in terms of real inflation adjusted returns. (e.g. 1929-1960, 1971-1983, 2000-present)

As a primer on the current financial crisis, I recommend firing up your favorite search engine and reading up on:

* inflation: understand that inflation is not rising prices, it is inflation of the money supply and debasement of the currency

* fraction-reserve banking and fiat currency (understand the leverage built into banks and financials and its impact on the broader economy)

* petrodollars and their importance to the US economy's ability to run deficits and import it's inflation as well as the rise of the Euro and the opening of Iran's oil bourse with it's promise to trade oil in all the world's currencies.

Other posts have listed some great resources, here are some general tips from personal experience:

* Stick to the classics and understand fundamental valuation

* Remember, there is something to technical analysis for short-term trading and market timing, but most of it can be explained by thinking about the supply/demand situation for a specific stock or asset class. Don't get sucked into the voodoo.

* learn to think about stocks and asset classes in marketing terms (branding, awareness, interest, trends, etc.) and you will gain a big edge over most. If you can figure out where the money is flowing and why within market segments or individual stocks, you stand to outperform.

* invest in what you know. find companies you are interested in and learn their investment story. Read their ipo prospectus if it is a new issue or their last 2 annual reports if they are established.

* never accept a stock tip without an explanation of the investment thesis behind the stock. Do your own research and be able to explain why you hold specific positions.

I am an entrepreneur and as such am generally an optimist. However make no mistake, there are clear and significant downside risks to this economy. There is more downside risk than upside potential over the next 6-12 months and possibly longer. The next 12 months will be an education in itself.

<comment><USER19> I agree that the next 12 months will be an education in itself. I wasn't old enough to remember the 91-92 recession so this will be my first. Things don't look good.

But, I'm curious, why would you not recommend investing in stocks/bonds/funds, even if the economy was going down? I mean, where else would you put your money besides 3% savings accounts? Sure, if your investments return 5% and inflation is 7% you are technically losing money, but it's better than the full -7% you would earn if you stayed out of the market.

Maybe I have to read the book, but I'm curious what you have to say.

<comment><USER43> Don't get me wrong, for a sophisticated investor this is an excellent time to make money in the market. The thing is, I believe that many 'sophisticated investors' who come along for the ride in a bull market are unprepared for bear markets.

In bear markets the bias is down, up, and sideways at times - but mostly down. Most investors do not participate on the downside and so are biased against the trend.

There are exceptions though and there are more options available to individual investors than ever before. One simple way to play both sides of the market is synthetic ETF index funds such as those available through ProShares and others. (no formal affiliation, but I do have ProShares funds in my portfolio) With that disclaimer, here's a link: <http://www.proshares.com/funds>

These funds let you participate in either the short or long side of specific market indices, market sectors, or geographic regions. In some cases they even offer 2:1 leverage allowing you to say, gain 2% for every 1% drop in the DOW. This sort of investment timing generally is not recommended for an average investor. It is very risky stuff.

For the average investor, my advice is to buy gold (gld,xau), silver (slv,slw), and other scarce commodities. Over the past 5 years alone, the US dollar has already lost 65% of it's purchasing power as measured in gold (<http://www.kitco.com/LFgif/au1825nyb.gif>)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why aren't more women in prison? - <AUTHOR> The recent question of "Why more women aren't in tech?" left me wondering why more women aren't in prison. Does something need to be done? <comment><USER2> Because women commit vastly fewer crimes than men in almost every way.

[https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in- the-u.s/2012/...](https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in- the-u.s/2012/crime-in- the-u.s.-2012/tables/33tabledatadecoverviewpdf/table_33_ten_year_arrest_trends_by_sex_2003-2012.xls#overview)</comment>


Show HN: Generate Unique Music Hooks Using AI - <AUTHOR> https://hookgen.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> I have created a AI music generator

Link: [https://hookgen.com](https://hookgen.com)

It is basically a GAN in TensorFlow r1.13, however, I have two separate discriminative networks, i.e. one network feeds the piano score, while the other the duration the song was played on the website in milliseconds</comment>


Ask HN: What's the best dev laptop? - <AUTHOR> I love my macbook pro, but when I evaluated the latest models, I can't bring myself to buy one again.  The specs seem lower than similarly priced competitors, and NO USB slots?  I think it's time I look elsewhere.
My plan is to install Ubuntu, on the machine.  So I've been looking at the Dell XPS 13.
I want a machine with a great display, I like the 13" form factor.  I also really loved the aluminum shell on my MacBook (I've dropped this laptop countless times).
What do you guys recommend? <comment><USER2> Anything lightweight that has a long battery life is good. The Dev work can be in the cloud or datacenter in a tmux or screen session. Lightweight so you can put it in a small bag next to you on the beach whilst sipping your martini.

<comment><USER3> My preference is the opposite. Something big that fits 32 GB+ of RAM; for the work I do, I need it. Other than the monster laptop and the power brick, I travel super-light. (For instance, if I travel to a big city I will not pack a lot of underwear and socks because I will buy some at Niketown)

It is not always practical to move big data sets to and from the servers a lot. I think my next dev machine is going to be a monster desktop machine, however, because the latest GPU is table stakes for neural network work.</comment></comment>


NoSQL: If Only It Were That Easy - <AUTHOR> http://bjclark.me/2009/08/nosql-if-only-it-was-that-easy/

<comment><USER2> I think it must be noted that this is very old - apparently written in 2009 - and while it may have been good at the time, it does not reflect the current state of affairs.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, for example: Cassandra's pretty happy with a node going down these days and has matured reasonably well. My company is using it for their production systems, and the only problems we've seen were either us doing something wrong, or client-library quirks for certain languages (they favor Java/Python in those parts).

<comment><USER4> /pretty happy/ is a long way away from /ACID/

NoSQL has a place, but IMO that place is not primary data storage (in most cases.)

I asked one large, household-name IT company on a recent interview what they'd do if their DC containing all of their Cassandra nodes went down. Their response was "it doesn't go down" (and if it did, they'd lose data)... ... ... amateurs.

<comment><USER5> Cassandra stretches across multiple DC's nicely by design.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The subjunctive mood: if only it were that easy. :-)

</comment><comment><USER7> Can someone with production level Redis experience explain why Redis doesn't scale, while taking into account what this article stated?</comment>


New Pacman for Atari 2600 - <AUTHOR> http://atariage.com/forums/topic/229152-new-pacman-for-atari-2600/ <comment><USER2> "Currently the rom is about 120 bytes free, so I'm trying to add other things."

It's so easy to love old-school programming. (For comparison, my comment here is 178 characters.)

</comment><comment><USER3> The same guy did Mario Bros for Atari 2600

[http://atariage.com/forums/topic/229153-a-better-mario- bros-...](http://atariage.com/forums/topic/229153-a-better-mario-bros-for- atari-2600/)

demo: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joYIDR4CMu0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joYIDR4CMu0)

<comment><USER4> to compare to the original: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GouYMH1K4nE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GouYMH1K4nE)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is mindblowing.

Just check out how the original Pacman port looked on the 2600: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL2p2ANFlQ4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL2p2ANFlQ4)

<comment><USER6> This is mind blowing... I'de say about 7 million people who purchased Pac Man for the Atari 2600 were ripped off. (Myself included.)

<comment><USER7> Think of it this way: you paid for a Kickstarter project to be delivered in 40 years time, got an early proof of concept showing game play and a nice display box, and the real thing was finished before those 40 years were up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I always wondered how the video output was controlled without video memory. Do you have some sort of 'current color' register which need to be set to different values during video output, timed with nop loops?

I have coded on several 8-bit machines in 80s, but never on one without video memory. I stumbled over this curious property of the Atari 2600 when Ed Fries wrote 'Halo 2600' a couple of years ago (boss of the Microsoft games business during the late 90' and early 00's).

<comment><USER9> The book "Racing the Beam" has a great survey of how the 2600 worked and it's a pretty quick and breezy book to read through.

But basically you set various display registers as the scan-line was being drawn. Then you have the time it takes for the electron beam to move down and across to the next scanline to do some setup and calculations and so on. And then at the bottom of the display you have the time it takes for the scanline to get back up to the start position for a frame to do more number crunching.

Basically instead of RAM, you read right out of ROM and fiddle with various display registers either between lines of while lines are being drawn.

It's an old 8-bit "trick" as most people assume the registers get set and then you do something not knowing that you can play with them while things are going on.

<comment><USER7> That trick wasn't limited to 8-bit. The original Macintosh used a variant of this to generate sound and to adjust the rotation speed of floppy disks. Just past the bitmap for the screen, it had two 740-byte buffers.

It read a single byte from those buffer at the end of each horizontal scan line, and fed it into the sound system/as a PWM signal for the motor of the floppy drive ([http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_128K/512K_technical...](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_128K/512K_technical_details#Sound). I think the section on the floppy drive is incorrect; the original Mac didn't have a IWM; it was all done in software)

If you wanted to generate continuous, non-repetitive sound, you had to fill the sound buffer with new values at the end of each vertical blank interrupt.

Quite a bit easier than on the 2600, as the update frequency is only 60 Hz and the CPU a lot faster, but the same principle, and still quite a challenge at the time, if you wanted to do something in the screen at the same time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wonder if how close they managed to make the ghosts move like the arcade version. Someone reversed engineered how the ghosts chase you, each one chases using a different algorithm which ends up making the game really interesting to play.

[http://home.comcast.net/~jpittman2/pacman/pacmandossier.html...](http://home.comcast.net/~jpittman2/pacman/pacmandossier.html#Chapter_4)

<comment><USER11> Actually all four of the ghosts have different chase algorithms: Blinky aggressively chases you, Pinky and Inky try to get in front of you (setting you up for a pincer attack with Blinky), and Clyde chases you until he gets within a certain distance, then makes a break for the lower left. (Hence why he's considered the stupid one.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The embedded video is not showing up for me. I believe this is the one though: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clddb79LQcM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clddb79LQcM)

<comment><USER4> I think the embedded one is [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4tFhEQFs7I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4tFhEQFs7I) but your link is of better quality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I didn't know that there are homebrew games for Atari 2600.

They also assembled a tutorial for beginners: [http://atariage.com/forums/topic/33233-sorted-table-of- conte...](http://atariage.com/forums/topic/33233-sorted-table-of-contents/)

<comment><USER14> Oh, there are new homebrew games being made for a lot of the major 8-bit machines, still today. Myself, I've been enjoying the revival immensely, especially since the 8-bit machine of my youth rarely got much attention at all from the major industry developers (Oric-1/Atmos), yet today - in the 21st Century - its getting a regular stream of releases from the die-hard holdouts .. and some of them are absolutely amazing products which would have been huge hits back in the day.

(See [http://www.oric.org/index.php?page=software&fille=top150game...](http://www.oric.org/index.php?page=software&fille=top150gamesoverall))

We got Space:1999, 1337 (Elite clone), SchoolDaze, Impossible Mission, Oricium, 4K Kong .. a lot of really awesome titles .. in the last few years. Also, new techniques have been discovered and continually refined by the core die-hards, meaning we're seeing things on the platform that we in the 80's could only ever have dreamed of seeing .. new color modes, new ways of handling animation, etc. It really is astounding to return to these platforms, 30 years later, and see new titles being pushed out by the ever-eager hackers who are keeping the platforms alive. Heck, we even got new hardware for the Oric-1/Atmos platform in the form of a dedicated disk emulation system, whose microcontroller alone, itself, is more powerful than the Oric ever was, but which nevertheless is being pressed into the disk-emulating duties that makes the Oric-1, at last complete. ;)

So if you've got an old 8-bit machine in your closet, get it out, wire it up, dust if off, and get out there on the 'net to find the elite groups keeping these systems alive. And remember: old computers never die - their users do!

<comment><USER15> The surplus of resources on modern PCs makes it possible to make development tools which would have been positively indulgent by the standards of their day- sophisticated debuggers, the ability to pause, freeze and replay execution while inspecting every byte of memory at will, fancy languages that remove tedium, etc.

For my part I made a pretty nice high-level assembler and IDE for the venerable Chip8: [http://octo-ide.com](http://octo-ide.com)

<comment><USER14> Wow, looks really useful! Its amazing to think how far we've come, and yet return to these limited machines and push them as far as possible. Something we have to keep future generations of developers enlightened about, I think.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Angular 2 in Java and Python: the first multi-language full stack platform? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jhades.org/angular-2-coming-to-java-python-the-first-multi-language-full-stack-platform/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is likely not in 2016, but then again we never know. Looks its really becoming a platform, with the whole Native Script thing, lets see where this goes.</comment>


Show HN: autolib, the last Python library you'll ever need - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/reverie/autolib

<comment><USER2> This...this is horrifying.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I'm glad _someone_ appreciates it.

<comment><USER2> I like how apparently nobody else got that this was an April Fools prank.

At least, I hope to God it was an April Fools.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This sounds distinctly dangerous.

Edit: And very unpythonic, however amusing it may be.

<comment><AUTHOR> I address your safety concerns in the README.

But seriously, how would you have designed this more Pythonically? It's an easy criticism to make, so back it up!

<comment><USER3> The concept is broken, not the implementation.

You need to know what's in your damn namespace.

Edit:

I'm sorry if you expected a more technical readout of what's wrong, but you need to step back and think carefully about what the Zen of Python actually means.

I'm not a dogmatist, I learned to code in C and have since dabbled in many languages. However, I'm a strong believer in, " _When in rome, do as Romans do_ ".

<comment><USER4> I disagree about the concept being broken: CPAN and Gems work on similar principles, except that the download step is reserved for a human running an explicit installer program. Add a filesystem cache and some digital signatures, i.e. an offline mode and some way of declaring "I expect this module to be signed with this trusted RSA key", and I think it would be workable.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft Office Web Apps Now Available on Windows Live - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/officewebapps/archive/2010/06/07/10021218.aspx

<comment><USER2> It doesn't work for me. I clicked on any link after I login I keep on getting page not found. I am using IE7

<comment><USER3> haha :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> i smell malware and spyware on the horizon.

<http://ubuntu.com>

I apologize I really am biased against anything microsoft, flash, java or apple ;p</comment>


40 uses for Germanium Diodes (1950) [pdf] - kalium-xyz https://frank.pocnet.net/other/Sylvania/40_Uses_for_Germanium_Diodes.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> I fell in love with Electronics at 16 precisely because of these kind of books that 60's printed full of them. I discovered them in my father's book collection in early 90's and these were my "drug gateway" to my programming career.

Having electronics and hardware background made my programming so much easier as it was easier to understand some concepts and choices that to "pure software" engineers appeared weird.

These days I love to combine hardware and software integration and boy oh boy, it pays so much better. Not many programmers out there that will offer a bill acceptor and/or magnetic card reader integration for a POS solution when your local restaurant wants to modernize their shop.

Show these kind of books to your kids, you'll never know where the rabbit jumps from.

<comment><USER2> Hasn't Stripe and others cannibalized the POS market? I figured that market would be saturated. Being another software/hardware guy the various POS systems Always seemed an interesting market. Do you do lot of custom work building custom POS?

<comment><AUTHOR> Always. Clients always like their solution to be personalized for their specific needs. No 2 shops are alike even if they are across each other on same street. Usually the custom work comes in form of: a). hardware used hence interfacing with it is custom and b). reports as each client has its own idea of how data should look in front of their eyes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> One niche use that I know of that lives on to this day for germanium diodes is in analog guitar effects.

The reason is twofold: germanium diodes generally have a softer turn-on than silicon diodes, and they have a lower forward voltage drop than silicon diodes.

This makes them useful in audio applications for clipping circuits (more sensitive and warmer sounding distortion), but also in simple one-diode envelope-detector circuits. One rather famous guitar compressor effect from the 1970s (the 'Orange Squeezer') used a germanium diode as an envelope- detector in this manner.

<comment><USER4> > germanium diodes generally have a softer turn-on than silicon diodes

This a million times, and it also applies to germanium transistors too. I keep reading that all it needs to emulate the germanium sound in a guitar fuzz made with silicon transistors is adding a small cap between base and collector, which is only part of the story: those are non linear devices, and there's a non trivial difference between Ge and Si V/I curves, which translate into different sound which can't be emulated just by adding a cap. A softer curve creates a much gentler distortion which doesn't ruin the sound when playing chords for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The librarians date it 1951. [https://www.worldcat.org/title/40-circuits- using-germanium-d...](https://www.worldcat.org/title/40-circuits-using- germanium-diodes/oclc/30204555) It is no 102 of Bernards radio books series. List and many other scanned books at [https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Bookshelf_Bernards_Baba...](https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Bookshelf_Bernards_Babani.htm)

<comment><USER6> Thanks for posting the link to the bigger list of books. I just love this stuff. I remember some of these from my childhood and my father's collection. +1 for posting this!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> No copyright date appears in this document, but it was apparently published before 1963 (since it lists a U.S. address that uses a postal zone rather than a ZIP code).

Sylvania's 1N34 diode became available in 1946[1], so the document may date from as early as then.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diode#Solid- state_diodes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diode#Solid-state_diodes)

</comment><comment><USER8> I was looking through this magazine for inspiration for a fun project. I've been a hobbyist for 40-something years, and still like to daydream about 'cool things to build'. Then one of the projects caught my eye, and I saw a real- world/real-use for it related to Amateur Radio. And then I saw more, and more!

At the end, I see that a fellow Amateur Radio was a previous owner. So it has me more interested now.

Thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER9> My first ever electronics project was a radio that used an 1N34 diode in 1974. Worked beautifully and that's what launched my interest in electronics and then computers.

</comment><comment><USER10> I was sad recently to find that Digi-Key doesn't stock germanium diodes. My 200-in-1 kit I had as a kid had a couple of germanium diodes in it; I guess you could substitute Schottky Si diodes in most if not all of the circuits in its manual. I guess Schottkys have higher reverse leakage, but that doesn't always matter.

<comment><USER11> taydaelectronics.com lists 1N34s in their catalog, although they are out of stock at the moment. 28 cents each.

(I usually check Tayda first, before ordering from Mouser/Digikey. Often cheaper, although parts take a little longer to arrive.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> On page 18 they power a relay directly from an antenna. This seems a little optimistic to me, or perhaps they had very low-power relays back then?

<comment><USER13> >Transmitter Failure Alarm

You would have it installed near your high power transmitter. Having worked on high power AM transmitters, the fences surrounding the antenna can pick up the signal and corroded joints act as a detector, the result is the fence becomes a receiver. So I have no doubt a relay could be powered.

<comment><USER14> What? Does the fence itself vibrate and reproduce the sound? Or do you need to complete the circuit using the fence as the detector?

<comment><USER13> I'm not entirely sure what process is converting to sound, but the metal fence makes a great antenna and we are talking about 10's of feet from the antenna with 500 kW AM at 200 kHz going into it.

It could actually have been arcing:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uo9nGzIzSPw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uo9nGzIzSPw)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does anyone know where other books from this series can be found?

<comment><USER4> Not sure if it contains other books from the series, and it has been likely posted already a hundred times, however here is a huge list with some interesting subdirs filled with books also pertaining electronics, ham radio etc.

[https://archive.org/details/folkscanomy](https://archive.org/details/folkscanomy)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> You only need one use to justify germanium: Fuzz.

</comment><comment><USER17> I like to plant them and grow Geraniums.</comment>


Ask HN: 5% ownership; or hourly-rate. Fair? - <AUTHOR>

Our MVP is ready for deploy. The business model has a tech part (SaaS) and an operational part (business service). My partner (and friend) is offering me the following: 1) Past year dev effort to be a cash loan to the company (outside of the share agreement, if any). 2) 5% of the company against a renewable 3 year service-contract agreement; OR; an hourly-rate (no ownership) and a 7% of revenue (upon completion of any work).
I'll be responsible for all things tech (maybe around 15 hrs a week), and he'll be all others (part time too).
The company has a potential $120K in profit, and an exit of maybe $10M.
Appreciate your help.
Is the 5% a fair share? If not, at what percent you think I should negotiate? Should I accept the hourly rate? <comment><USER3> I'm missing something here. Your partner is offering you 5% of the company while he keeps 95%?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes - that's the offer. [edit] - he's the original idea owner (which went through 2 rewrites).

<comment><USER3> Ok... so he's taking 90% of the company just for having the initial _idea_? Ideas aren't quite worthless, but they're pretty close. Execution matters far more.

What is he contributing aside from the initial idea?

<comment><AUTHOR> He'll be largely responsible for bringing in clients (corporate - <USER2> prospects). The business operational side. Marketing & PR (he's good).

<comment><USER3> Ok. Hire him as your VP Marketing and offer him 5% of the company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A few questions/thoughts.

1) Cash loan on what terms? Seems like a good opportunity to take it in the form of preferred shares, first $300K of any exist >$1MM for example.

2) Fuck the "OR", always remember any negotiation can be an "AND", cherry pick whatever terms YOU think are right.

3) Ask him to take your "friendship", and past effort, out of the equation. He has a supposedly MVP and he needs to hire the "tech guy" to build and maintain it. What would he offer someone for that role in terms of salary and equity. Don't worry about what the company can afford, pretend his rich uncle is writing the checks for him. Value the position first. What would a "normal" person expect from this role, what kind of talent does he want to attract?

From #3 I think you'll have a better negotiating view. He most likely either places no value on the position (which is a signal to you) or he recognizes the value but the lack of short-term resources to recruit properly. In this latter case, you are foregoing other income opportunities to take a risk with him. That risk needs to have a payoff above and beyond what you could get on the street to make it worth taking on your part.

Reading what you posted, 5% of a $10MM (best case, which is generally unlikely) is $500,000K. As a lump-sum that's not life-changing for most people, spread over 3 years is $166K/year, which is very nice salary (if you get it), but still no where near fuck-you type terms even in the short duration.

</comment><comment><USER5> Don't do it man. Especially since he's your friend. This is a recipe for resentment down the road.</comment>


Show HN: Multi-player Competitive Conway's Game of Life - <AUTHOR> http://gameoflifetotalwar.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I made this as an experiment. It's an idea that I've been toying with for a long time, but I only just got around to building it.

<comment><USER2> Ton of questions, I've been working on a small game (+engine) myself and it has been magnitudes more difficult than I imagined.

Do you have any blog posts about the process of making this? I see the technology link, but I'd like to hear a little more about the architecture. Something along the lines of a post mortem maybe.

* What sparked this idea?

* Was your initial set of features more simple or more complex?

* Any features you had to give up on?

* Any unexpected features you were able to add after you were forced to rearchitect it? (Ok, I may be painting my own experiences on you with this question.)

* _How long did it take?_

<comment><AUTHOR> Let's see...

I haven't written a post mortem yet, partly because I'm still building it, and partly because I hadn't seen it under heavy load (although I woke to emails from linode screaming at me about high CPU usage)

* The idea is one that I've been toying with for years. I've made other experiments that got some notice here a few years ago, too.

* There are some extra features that I still want to add at some point ('formations' for pre-building shapes, as an example. The database table is there, but no functionality.)

* Nothing given up on entirely yet.

* The only rearchitecting that happened was replacing the board UI with a canvas implementation. The initial version used a table and was painfully slow. From past experience I knew that wouldn't cut it, but it was an easy starting point.

* the initial commit was... October 2nd, but I didn't start working on it till a week later. All in all, I've just grabbed time between other (paying) projects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Conway's Game of Life is my goto "learn a new language" project. It covers most of a languages surface. data structures, conditionals, loops, stdlib. And the rules are _just_ complex enough to get a sense of how the language works.

<comment><USER4> Snap! I've been doing the very same since Turbo Pascal back in the 80s. I'm recently trying to get to grips with Android, hence I present: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.singlemost...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.singlemost.lifewallpaper), if I may be so bold. It's had precisely zero downloads since its publication a week ago, which has itself been a lesson. Hopefully I'm not too out of order running it past some cellular automata enthusiasts on this thread.

<comment><USER3> Installed. Looks cool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Really cool. Spent ages building a glider gun and then pointed it in the wrong direction...

I think there are probably a few too many civilians in there as well, messed up any cool formations I had far too early for them to be effective.

<comment><USER6> I also built one, the very first glider collided with some civilians and the 'shrapnel' took out my gun as well. Would be neat to be able to save patterns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I had a lot of fun with this, until now:

My challenge has been accepted, but my challenger will not place his armies, and so I'm effectively unable to play.

Perhaps he's placing a really, really elaborate pattern.

Edit: He placed about 30 minutes after accepting. I could still see this being a problem, and so this is a type of bug report.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, it's a problem with no great solution. That's one reason why I allowed registered users to make multiple armies.

<comment><USER8> It would be really useful if you could save patterns to copy paste them into the battlefield. Some of the more complex patterns are really really hard to paint on a high resolution screen.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's definitely planned (I have a 'formations' table ready to go), I just haven't spent the time to build it yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I created the Max space filler. too bad it's very volatile inside [http://gameoflifetotalwar.com/challenge/pwtOc](http://gameoflifetotalwar.com/challenge/pwtOc)

</comment><comment><USER10> Do you detect stable states to declare a draw? They can take many generations to develop and reveal themselves...

<comment><USER8> You mean solve the halting problem? That would be impressive.

<comment><USER10> no, I mean detecting a cycle. If you ever find a state that has already been visited you can know for certain it's "stuck"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is an impressive bit of coding, especially since it displays the battles in real-time.

</comment><comment><USER12> Very cool. I made a multiplayer version of Conway's Game of Life a few months ago, and it is fascinating to see how much our versions differ.

I dig how you are using "war" as not just a metaphor, but a game concept.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is too fun. Unfortunately, seems that an excellent and simple strategy to win is to just place entire columns full of life, particularly on the front and back ends (with whatever subdivisions you can afford also).

</comment><comment><USER4> Good work, excellent fun! I don't know if it's just me but I'm finding Firefox has the "I'm ready for battle" button disabled on first load of the challenge page.

</comment><comment><USER14> Cool idea. Maybe make it easier to get started, it's a bit unclear initially what to do. Also, maybe have a mini version where you just place 20-30 armies instead of 100.

</comment><comment><USER15> This looks like a more organized version of [http://lifecompetes.com](http://lifecompetes.com), which is itself a LOT of fun.

</comment><comment><USER16> Not meant as a criticism, but a thought: It's a bit ironic that for a thing meant to demonstrate the concept of emergence, players are designing states rather than rules conducive to emergence.

For example, imagine a game where flocks of boids[1] did battle, but instead of setting their initial position, you programmed the rules of behavior that governed each boid identically. The fixed rules of the system are such that the more "cooperative" the behavior, the greater the chance of success. Individual boids aren't allowed to have any memory (i.e. stateless), so AI solutions are precluded.

[1] [http://www.red3d.com/cwr/boids/](http://www.red3d.com/cwr/boids/)

<comment><USER6> There have been many games written in that direction (including one by yours truly: [0]) I actually think this turning things on their head is refreshing!

[0] [http://phonons.wordpress.com/2010/06/01/cells-a-massively- mu...](http://phonons.wordpress.com/2010/06/01/cells-a-massively-multi-agent- python-programming-game/)</comment></comment>


The Decision to Stop Seeking an Investor - <AUTHOR> http://blog.qonqr.com/post/42975235134/the-decision-to-stop-seeking-an-investor

<comment><USER2> As one of the founding members of this team that had to return to fulltime work after depleting my personal financial reserves, our inability to explain what we were doing in such a way that convinced investors to back us has been frustrating. It was hard to understand why everyone we talked to loved the idea, loved our traction, loved our numbers, loved our team, but wasn't ready/willing/able to invest. We continued to follow the advice we received and constantly modified our pitch, but we were never quite able to convey the story in a way that investors needed to hear it.

Calling off the search and refocusing on Product Development was definitely the right decision for us, but it was a hard lesson to learn.

Although we continue to push forward, and we're seeing some awesome growth and a rapidly expanding passionate player base, there's no doubt that our progress is still not what it could be if we had been able to leverage investment dollars.</comment>


Dixie cups became the breakout startup of the 1918 pandemic - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/90520298/how-dixie-cups-became-the-breakout-startup-of-the-1918-pandemic <comment><USER2> And in 2020 they'd just be called... 'Cups'</comment>


Year Five - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jayfields.com/2013/04/year-five.html

<comment><USER3> For software engineers, it's extremely likely that whatever company you started working for in Year 1 will be completely different in Year 5. Google wasn't the same company in 1999 that it was in 2004, which wasn't the same company that it was in 2009, which won't be the same company that it will be in 2014. Leadership, culture, technology, teams, products -- these all can change, and you may not be happy with that outcome of that change.

Likewise, unless you're a completely static individual, your own preferences will change. You might not mind a completely chaotic startup environment at age 26, but you might be over it by age 31. So given all that, over a five year period, what's the likelihood that you and and your company will evolve into being as good of a fit in Year 1 as it was in Year 5? Pretty damn unlikely.

Given this paradigm, the two errors most companies make are:

1) Treating this phenomenon as "disloyalty." For a lot of companies, it's not acceptable to say, "the company went one direction, I went another, let's stop dating and just be friends." Good companies understand this happens, treat their former employees like _alumni,_ and a lot of good things can come out of "just being friends" (e.g. that former employee recommending to others they work at the company). Bad companies act butthurt and whine that Generation X/Y are a bunch of ungrateful 'job hoppers.'

2) Having stupid policies for those that continue to be a good fit through Year 5 and beyond. If a former employee ever says of a previous employer, "I liked it there, I just got a way bigger salary increase at my new company" or "I liked it there, but after I was promoted to Senior Engineer, the only real way to advance was through management/business," then that company lost a software engineer over something completely controllable. I see so many companies locking themselves into 2.7% annual cost of living raises for their current employees while they offer 20% more to new hires, and then complain "it's so hard to find good engineers." Well, no shit.

The OP has essentially managed to set parameters with his current employer where he's essentially in control on how his job will evolves, so he can ensure it evolves organically with his preferences, which is probably why he likes working there so much. But in lieu of having every engineer negotiate such a framework with their employers, it'd probably be a lot more effective for those employers to recognize that this "Year 5" phenomenon happens, and adjust accordingly (ie. not holding it against employees who no longer feel like a good fit, and compensating those who continue to be a good fit and produce)

</comment><comment><USER4> I think this is the same for all roles and isn't related to programmers or programming (IMHO). If you want your pay to rise at a faster rate you move.

If you do it too often then your CV looks bad, if you don't do it enough then your pay tends to rise slower than you would like.

3-4 years is that middle ground.

</comment><comment><USER5> The average job in general lasts 4.4 years at this point, so this isn't just an issue for programmers. That's just the nature of things. At most jobs, you hit a ceiling pretty quickly, or you get grunt work that doesn't help your career, or you get laid off, or the people you like move away, something else happens that makes it a good idea to roll the dice again.

Typically, I can figure out in 6 months whether a job is going to lead to real membership in the effort and, if not, then I look for something else. Why shouldn't I? It's my life. Why am I some sociopathic "job hopper" for leaving?

Also, this guy seems pretty solid in general, but this...

 _There's always someone willing to pay you more than you're worth. After several years with a company it's likely that they're going to pay you what you're worth, but not what some other company thinks you're worth._

is total loser thinking. No, actually. The company you're with is going to pay you _less_ than you're worth, knowing that most people are averse to change. That's also why landlords almost always raise rent in the first year.

To get anything even close to what you're worth (a half-decent programmer is worth $500k+ easily) you need to job hop to a degree that (a) most people can't stand, and (b) those who can stand it are unusual enough that regular society thinks there is something wrong with them.

Actually, the only way workers could get what they are actually worth would be for society to implement a basic income-- then no one would need to work, and companies would pay something resembling the actual value of the work furnished to them-- but I wouldn't hold my breath for that.

<comment><USER6> >>There's always someone willing to pay you more than you're worth. After several years with a company it's likely that they're going to pay you what you're worth, but not what some other company thinks you're worth.

>is total loser thinking. No, actually.

When I finally quit my employee-day-job, I told them I'd do more work for them as a consultant. At 2x my previous hourly rate. They said yes, and I've gotten that rate several times since then as well from unrelated companies.

>a half-decent programmer is worth $500k+ easily

I would argue about what "half-decent" means, but generally think you're right that $500k for a _good_ programmer would be a reasonable value. And by good I mean close to the 10x-25x end of the spectrum. [1]

I would describe someone in the 2-5x range as "half-decent" myself, and someone in that range is probably worth closer to $160k/year, tops. Someone at the top end of the productivity scale is faster, yes, but also produces better code, can debug that code more quickly, and can solve some problems that a "half-decent" programmer will simply never complete adequately.

[1] [http://www.devtopics.com/programmer-productivity-the- tenfini...](http://www.devtopics.com/programmer-productivity-the-tenfinity- factor/)

<comment><USER7> "I'd do more work for them as a consultant. At 2x my previous hourly rate."

Well, this is largely because overhead for employee positions can often run 2x salary. As an employee, you get benefits, health insurance, perks, job security (of sorts), and you're not "on the clock" the whole time - <USER2> companies do not expect that employees are actively working 8 hours a day, they expect they're getting 4-5 hours of focused useful work and the rest is lunch breaks, watercooler talk, impromptu discussions, administrative stuff like e-mail, and idle diversions like Hacker News and Facebook. As a consultant, you're only supposed to bill for the time you're _actively_ working, and all the rest is your own time. It's quite possible that as a consultant with 2x your hourly rate you're costing the company less than you did as an employee.

When I've had friends that have converted from consultant to employee at the same company, the rule of thumb is 1000x hourly for annual salary, even though there're 2000 hours in a work-year. The difference is because of overhead, and the differing accounting for time.

<comment><USER6> Very true. But under the new regime, I was able to also work on my own personal projects the rest of the time. A big win for me.

<comment><USER7> Then it's not really that they were paying you less than you were worth, it's that there was an alternate business arrangement that was a win-win for everybody. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm pretty sure that it's not completely random. 4-year vesting schedules are common in the industry amongst companies that provide stock or stock options as compensation. Considering that that form of compensation ends on your fourth anniversary, it would make sense that engineers would at that point move on.

<comment><USER9> Isn't this only true for companies that provide a grant at signing and no other grants afterwards?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> _I'm surprised that more companies don't pay (the employees they want to keep) what their "flawless market value" would be_

The only company I'm aware of that does this (paying "flawless market value") is Netflix.

<comment><USER5> How do they assess it?

I'm not convinced that anyone can even measure what an individual programmer is worth, especially because project/person fit is always a contributing factor but huge at the upper levels. So I'm curious as to how they would do this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Enjoy your below average salary with thinking like that...

<comment><USER12> I'm guessing that a programmer at one of the top proprietary trading firms does not get a below-average salary.

<comment><USER11> Depends, if others are making 5m a year while he is making 500k...

Of course, by his thinking, the others are being paid above their worth! While he is by definition correctly compensated!</comment></comment></comment>


Opinion: The Normalization of Evil - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123362422088941893.html?mod=rss_Today%27s_Most_Popular <comment><USER2> Normalized evil? Sounds like one of the databases I have to interface with...</comment>


How Apple presents statistics in its favor when they clearly aren't - <AUTHOR> http://www.neowin.net/news/apple-is-good-about-lying-with-statistics-when-the-truth-hurts

<comment><USER3> None of these are lies or even deceit by Apple (apart from a little bit of chartjunk).

Apple may have cherry-picked some particularly complementary surveys/analyses/metrics, but I'm not sure what you'd expect from the keynote of a company's premiere event.

<comment><AUTHOR> They are not lies but they are a manipulation of the truth to look more favorable. I understand its their presentation and who doesn't want to look good at that? but there's other things they could show the world rather than compare with the competition. Its like going back to the Mac Vs PC ads when Apple clearly moved on from that kind of marketing the past couple of years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The author tries to paint Apple as "hiding the truth" but he's the one pushing an agenda:

1) User Adoption: _adoption_ can only be a percentage, and is independent of market share.

2) Satisfaction: their data has different numbers, but the same end results. How is that "drastically different" or "lying"?

3) Fastest JS: this Safari update will no doubt come to market before IE10, and have a much faster adoption rate (ha). No lies here either.

<comment><USER5> Dude what the article is saying or trying to say is this. Apple knows that people would not go looking into the actual stats. Like how Mac Os claims to be the most advanced operating system ever....? Percentage-wise maybe they are telling the truth but they are hoping that people would interpret it as this... "People don't own windows anymore, lets jump on the Apple Mac boat" - study a bit of marketing or consumer psychology and you'll understand perfectly.

<comment><USER4> Data is presented to support a point. The charts they showed today weren't fake or twisted stats, but real data, obviously selected from their point of view. The author accuses them of lying or "hiding the truth", and that's a looong stretch.

At no point they suggested that no one uses Windows anymore (everyone knows that would be ridiculous), maybe you're confused by the "adoption" term?. Adoption has nothing to do with market-share, it's about how quick users migrate or install updates. IE vs Chrome/Firefox offers similar stats, with Microsoft far behind - their large user base, fragmented installs, update methods etc. result in slow adoption.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> did not have to read the article before deciding to comment. This is the first article I've read that tries to see Apple for what it clearly is a - <USER2> company.

IPAD is winning not chiefly because of pricing. Yes pricing!. The other guys made a stuid mistake my pricing above or the same with the cheapest Ipad at first.

Apple's marketing stint worked perfectly - in the mind of all tablet wannabe purchasers, Ipad cost 499 even if they'd go an buy one that's over $700.

Competition did not breakdown theirs that way except amazon and amazon would make more profit by mimicking Apple's separation of specs just like the kindle eBook reader does.

should stop writing cheers.

<comment><USER4> Well, you haven't been reading much lately, have you? Marketing is clearly a huge part of any consumer-facing business.

Despite that, Apple is still a _product_ company. Google is a marketing company, they create, manage and sell advertising space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> More accurate headline: How (most) companies use statistics in their favor.

</comment><comment><USER7> Seriously, every company does this.

</comment><comment><USER8> Of course they would take out statistics in their favor, it's their presentation. And since mostly Apple fans were tuning in, very little people would call them out on it.</comment>


The Elements - A Perfect Coffee Table Book for Nerds - <AUTHOR> http://zachaysan.tumblr.com/post/315148493/the-elements-a-perfect-coffee-table-book-for-nerds

<comment><USER2> I thought he meant Euclid's Elements - now that's an awesome book. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclids_Elements> (the link doesn't work because HN removes the apostrophe from hyperlinks for some reason)

<comment><AUTHOR> I've read that in Grade 12, really opened my eyes on a ton of things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It looks like a very high quality book for only $20, according to Amazon:

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1579128149?ie=UTF8&tag=...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1579128149?ie=UTF8&tag=booksforsa03b-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1579128149)

</comment><comment><USER4> There is an interesting piece about Plutonium. It seems that Plutonium Batteries were used in some pacemakers. Here's the link: <http://www.periodictable.com/Items/094.3/index.qt.html>

</comment><comment><USER5> And I guess the perfect companion gift would be found here: <http://www.element-collection.com/>

</comment><comment><USER6> New goal: Collect a sample of every element. =P

<comment><USER7> After poking around the site posted by wrs, I found:

<http://www.element-collection.com/html/coffee_table.html>

Forget books, here's an element coffee table!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you like this book, consider looking at The Math Book by Cliff Pickover; it's similarly awesome and amazingly illustrated. Video review of it here: [http://www.youtube.com/user/joannelovesscience#p/u/19/BDCFms...](http://www.youtube.com/user/joannelovesscience#p/u/19/BDCFmsl94OE)

edit: P.S., I am not associated with Cliff and am not spamming for him. :-)</comment>