Tinder and the Dawn of the "Dating Apocalypse" - <AUTHOR> http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/08/tinder-hook-up-culture-end-of-dating <comment><USER3> _But others lament the way the extreme casualness of sex in the age of Tinder leaves many women feeling de-valued. "It's rare for a woman of our generation to meet a man who treats her like a priority instead of an option," wrote Erica Gordon on the Gen Y Web site Elite Daily, in 2014._

If a woman doesn't want to feel like an option, shouldn't she stay far away from Tinder? It's not like there isn't a million other ways for women to meet men, if she has the slightest inclination.

<comment><USER4> I have been thinking about why Tinder seems like a bad deal for my lady friends. It seems that women used to hold the power in online dating but for whatever reason Tinder has turned into a site that reduces the cost (time investment and biological risk) to sleep with strangers. It seems that as that's picked up the new norm is a "race to the bottom" for women who want traditional relationships.

<comment><USER5> You say that Tinder reduces the "time investment and biological risk" of [sex].

I'm not a Tinder user, how does it reduce the biological risk? wouldn't the risk of an STD be just as great, if not greater, than the status quo?

<comment><USER4> Just a theory of mine. I feel that the odds would be greater going to a bar and doing the usual pick up routine vs vetting them ahead of time.

<comment><USER6> The only barriers to entry are having a smartphone and being able to push a couple buttons and swipe. That's not creating an environment that's even remotely exclusive, and there's zero reason to believe the few people who are excluded by it are more likely than others to have an STI.

And vetting them how, anyway? You might be able to find out whether someone is a felon, but I have no idea how I would (legally) find out whether someone has a transmissible STI.

This seems like a product of some kind of cognitive bias.

<comment><USER7> It buys you time. I think that's what the OP was saying. You can stare at a match for as long as you want. In a bar, the deal expires rather quickly.

<comment><USER8> But you can't tell if someone has an STD by staring/looking at them, either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's a problem of overvaluation.

Men are less selective about who they have casual sex with, so the most attractive men consistently and constantly meet up with women they'd never actually date.

For the few men it works great. For most women it works well for a while, but ends in disappointment. For the vast majority of men, the deal is the worst; they are considered unsuitable because women can do better (in 10 minutes, for 10 minutes).

<comment><USER10> This. Tinder has tremendously magnified the advantage of the most attractive men. These same men, in a bar or club, would not spend the effort to pick up a lot of these women - they would spend their time and energy on the most attractive women in the bar or club. But with Tinder, there's no effort, so these women have more and better options, but not for anything serious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This article makes a big assumption that women only use sex to get to relationships, and men only use relationships to get to sex.

Plenty of women casually date with no interest in serious relationships, for the same reasons that men do: They value their independence, they're focused on their careers, they like to be able to travel or meet new people.

It's antiquated to think that women who go on Tinder are hopelessly pining for love and commitment, and it's equally antiquated to think that there aren't men out there who want those exact things, but can't get them because the women they're dating aren't interested.

In fact, I'll posit that there's a much more positive outlook on this: People nowadays are much more suspicious of moving too fast, of losing parts of your identity and independence for the sake of just being in a relationship. The warning signs are more visible, and we act on them with less hesitation, instead of letting resentment of a bad situation fester into something awful. We break up easier, divorce easier, and refuse to live unhappy lives because the idea of being alone is no longer terrifying.

<comment><USER12> > We break up easier, divorce easier, and refuse to live unhappy lives because > the idea of being alone is no longer terrifying.

And funnily enough we seem to be a hell of a lot _less_ happy.

<comment><USER13> That's a broad sweeping generalization. Does it have any basis in fact? Are people more depressed today than 10-20 years ago, or do we diagnose more people as depressed because we like labels? And if we actually are more unhappy today, is that cause attributable to dating issues, or is it attributable to some other shifts in society like the changing nature of jobs and financial stability?

<comment><USER14> > That's a broad sweeping generalization. Does it have any basis in fact?

Actually yes, it does -- though only for women. Men are happier than in the past.

[http://www.nber.org/papers/w14969](http://www.nber.org/papers/w14969)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> >"For young women the problem in navigating sexuality and relationships is still gender inequality," says Elizabeth Armstrong, a professor of sociology at the University of Michigan who specializes in sexuality and gender. "Young women complain that young men still have the power to decide when something is going to be serious and when something is not—they can go, 'She's girlfriend material, she's hookup material.'

That's just as much a reflection of what women are looking for. If a woman is attracted to a guy who is "high value" relative to her then she is attracted to a guy who has options. She is attracted to guys she has a power differential with. These women could choose to settle for a relationship where they have the options and power but that's not what they want.

<comment><USER16> I fear where that reasoning is going.

Should I expect to have no say on how much serious I want a relationship to be in the future? In the name of "gender equality"? Holy crap.

<comment><USER15> I don't see how anything like that would become a trend. But I think it makes for an interesting double standard in how we talk about these issues. If a sociologist was to describe a scarcity of sex for men as gender inequality she would be informed that men aren't entitled to sex from anyone and that she is promoting rape culture. A woman isn't entitled to a relationship from men any more than men are entitled to sex from women.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This article bothers me for several reasons, mostly given the interviews are all based in NY and are a focal point of the article. As a 24-yr old coming from outside Portland, OR, I don't see this trend much at all with my coworkers or friends. Most have used it once or twice, but not as serious as they make it out to believe. A lot of my friends are in committed relationships or are looking for them. Maybe I am an outlier, but I think outside SF, LA or NY, these dating apps aren't as prevalent as they seem.

<comment><USER18> I'm also in Portland, OR and have used OkCupid/Hinge/Tinder/etc. Thousands of people here use these apps. They're in no way limited to SF/LA/NYC for heavy use.

<comment><USER17> Yup, makes sense. I was just speaking from my PoV (which of course can't be extrapolated)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Speaking as a happily ugly old person who has never used Tinder: whether you are a man or a woman, it is your decision to date someone or not. Nobody is putting a gun to your head. When both sides get to say yea or nay without coercion, this is one situation which is actually symmetrical.

So if you feel like you are getting a bad deal on the dating scene because you are hooking up with people you really don't like and your life is a constant churn, that should tell you that you are being too desperate. Put on the brakes. Let the people who are impatient, demanding and rude move along. Learn to live by yourself and to relate to people non-sexually. Then apply those skills to develop more meaningful relationships. Otherwise, you're just putting convenience first - then complaining that the result was optimized for convenience over other priorities. Other people you'd never think about can't even get any dates, and you're bitching that being non-selective doesn't give you all the results of being selective.

This is a first-world problem for beautiful people with ample disposable income. In many parts of the world, including New York, you might be lucky if you can pick strawberries or make clothes for $2/hr to support a large family you didn't choose to have. Most people who ever existed had no option to participate in "hookup culture."

</comment><comment><USER20> "...the game is out there, and it's either play or get played..." \- Omar, The Wire

Nowadays, if a single guy doesn't use Tinder and other apps, it's missing a huge pool of single girls available to meet for a drink (or other things).

It's never been so easy to meet new people, so guys don't value so much the girls they met like before, but it's the same for girls. If the pool of single girls it's huge, imagine the pool of single guys on this apps.

I know a lot of girls who uses Tinder only to inflate their ego and play with guys. They have never met one guy through Tinder. Sometimes they even mark a date with a guy and "disappear" before that just for fun.

<comment><USER21> I think people who aren't using Tinder aren't missing out much at all based on what you described. It sort of feels like a pool for people that just want large quantities of cheap commodity, and if you are into that then it totally makes sense.

Fortunately, there still exists descent people with desires to be with high quality people. I think it would be quite tragic if someone with decency caved in to societal pressure and joined Tinder, looking for that special snowflake and becoming heart broken when they realize what they've become.

<comment><USER20> I know that and that's true. In the middle of that pool of people there are some high quality people, but most of them doesn't stay longer in the app.

Probably most of the people aren't going to find a man/woman for the life on Tinder but if you put a little effort on your matches you will find interesting people. The problem is that after some time and some "tinder scars" people put less and less effort in meeting better their matches.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> There's a useful word from behavioral economics called "revealed preferences." Briefly, it means that if you're given the opportunity to choose between X and Y, and you say "Wow I really want X" but choose Y, Y, Y, Y, Y, and Y... then your preference is actually for Y.

</comment><comment><USER23> This should be in the onion.

Women use an "I'm not going to be serious" app and complain that all the men on it don't want to be serious.

<comment><USER24> I'm surprised this wasn't an nytimes article. This is very typical of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The "dating apocalypse" began not with the internet but the pharmacist. Effective long term contraception and anti-infectives that worked against a wide variety of venereal diseases removed the tangible consequences of promiscuous sex. Those milestones are the real articulation in the history of dating.

In the 60's there were the "happenings" where people metaphorically swiped right and left. In the 70's it was discos, the 80's had pick-up bars. I'm pretty sure Vanity Fair had long features on each of those phenomena as well. Each generation starts to mature and are pretty sure that they are the first to discover sex, which of course their parents never had, and the older generation sees "little precious" out doing their thing and the end of the world is nigh. 20 years on the youngsters are bouncing the kids on their knees and the old ones are pushing up grass and so it goes. As the Thorton Wilder said, "Once in a thousand times it's interesting".

</comment><comment><USER26> Meanwhile, in the gay community, Tinder's occupies the niche of the somewhat _less_ sex-obsessed alternative to Grindr, the purely gay hookup app that even Tinder's name seems to have been inspired by...

I'm not sure whether the author of the article would be more shocked by the revelation that many Tinder dates actually don't end in sex[1] or the revelation that ten years ago, the same demographic of men was bragging about the ease of chatting to multiple potential one night stands per night in _bars_

[1]especially ones with men that consider getting a female phone number (with emojis!) to be a major accomplishment

<comment><USER27> There might be a broader point here. It's now OK for gay men to act like gay men in public, and straight people are starting to do it too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Does anyone else have a feeling of total alienation from the people and behaviours described in this article? I certainly do.

<comment><USER29> Yes, thank you! I've read a lot of the comments on here and you're the only one who's (seemingly) raised the question of whether what's written in this article is actually accurate in any general sense.

To me, it feels very sensational, exaggerated and very selective in its use of interviewees and their quotes to describe a specific type of online dating experience, and then projects that as if it's the average experience. It isn't.

I've used online dating, and a lot of my friends have and do - <USER2> tinder. Obviously you come across a few odd situations and people, just as you do in 'real life' but I have never come close to experiencing anything like what's described in this piece.

It paints an utterly depressing scene which just doesn't match up with my experience of online dating at all. For people who've never used Tinder, it's basically nothing like this, and it's not just my own experience or the way I use it - I've never seen any of my friends use it like the people in this article describe.

It's basically just another way to get chatting with people. I'm not saying people like the people in this article don't exist, but they're rare, and if you want nothing to do with people like this, all you have to do is not engage with them in the first place. If you do engage with them, then know that the consequences will probably be as depressing as this article makes out they will be.

The broad conclusions the people in this article draw about 'the online dating world' are simply not true for most people - they're only true for those who subject themselves to it. If that's not what you want, just don't, and you'll be fine. Problem solved.

<comment><USER30> > For people who've never used Tinder, it's basically nothing like this, and > it's not just my own experience or the way I use it - I've never seen any of > my friends use it like the people in this article describe.

Same. Most of the people I've talked to that use it experience a typical "funnel": a bunch of available people, a smaller pool that you're interested in, a smaller pool that's also interested in you, and finally a few dates that go from there. Not an orgyastic meat-market where all your wildest sex dreams come true.

I wouldn't be surprised if this is a piece crafted by a PR team hired by Tinder.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> There's the old story of the guy that walks around asking every women if they want to have sex. Eventually one always says yes. On Tinder a guy can do that without getting slapped 100 times.

<comment><USER32> I went to university with that guy. I genuinely did. It was unbelievable to watch, he was so brazen. He just didn't give a damn about rejection.

<comment><USER33> Did he get laid eventually?

<comment><USER34> The guy at my Uni would stand stand at the door when they closed the Uni bar every Friday night and proposition every girl as they filed out the door. Every one. Never failed to score. He had no standards, but was amazing to watch.

He was Danish, we called it the 'Scando Sweep'.

<comment><USER35> Did he actually bluntly ask "Will you have sex with me?".

<comment><USER36> Richard Feynman (in Surely you must be joking, mr Feynman) actually mentions doing exactly just that - he wrote he later gave it up because it was too easy and too effective

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The hardest part of making those websites work is attracting women on it, and it's not easy. Men are natural predators.

In 2008/9 I used a french website "adopt a guy" (adopte un mec). It was really disruptive because it gave women much more powers. Men can only "charm" women, and women must "adopt" men if they want to talk to them.

To be honest I was really surprised, it worked so much better. Women were more confident and it showed, I was having more discussions. Granted, I had to be patient, but the experience was much better.

Obviously dating websites should not treat men and women equally.

<comment><USER38> What you are saying is that not every human is created equal?

<comment><USER39> Obviously not, when it comes to sex. Men pay for sex, women get paid for sex. That's all you need to know about the demand and supply dynamics in the sexual "market" (which Tinder embodies).

<comment><USER40> > Men pay for sex, women get paid for sex

Some.

<comment><USER41> Payment isn't necessarily in cash. You pay with your time, commitment, interest, attention. If there is literally anything else you could be potentially doing but are spending time with a girl with the hope of getting sex out of it then you are paying for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> The big issue with Tinder (and a lot of other dating apps) is that they have a really shitty incentive structure for revealing your matching preferences.

For Tinder specifically, you can't reveal your preferences, save by "is this better than nothing" and how much effort you put into initial messages. Compare this to a ranking + deferred acceptance system, where you can match every guy and every girl such that there's no alternate pairing that both the guy and the girl would both prefer.

The end result is a lot of wasted effort and low signal-to-noise. The alternative is something that looks a lot like ranking a bunch of potential matches, and magically getting the best coffee or dinner date you can each night. Much more efficient.

Unfortunately, efficient marketplaces don't automatically out-compete thick ones. It's why I haven't done anything about the problem - the difficult part of Tinder's success to reproduce isn't the app or the matching algorithms or the UI, but rather convincing enough people to participate on their platform.

<comment><USER43> Are there marketplaces, in any industry, which take your approach to improving efficiency of matching?

<comment><USER42> Sorry for the late reply, but yes, there are examples. The most famous is the matching market between new doctors and hospitals.

I highly recommend this book for more information on the topic: smile.amazon.com/Who-Gets-What-Why-Matchmaking/dp/0544291131

<comment><USER43> Thanks for the book rec.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> For the most part, I find that most online social media just degrades human interaction. Twitter encourages short shallow quips, Facebook shows me my friends arguing angrily and pointlessly over random articles, dating apps encourage some of the behaviors described in the article. Heck, even HN encourages a certain kind of attitude that I don't find that great, all in all. I know that it's not black or white, and that you get out of these things what you put in them - but more often than not, those systems are designed in such a way to tap into primal human drives (the need for sex, validation, novelty, etc.) that makes it very hard to have constant good self discipline.

As I've realized this over the past few months (a big factor was reading the biographies of some of my heroes, e.g. Dirac, Feynman, etc., and realizing that they spent a lot of their time working alone in their offices uninterrupted, and communicating with people either in real life over meals, walks, etc. or by postal mail), I've been trying to pull out of most technological communications; using text only for coordinating/logistics ("want to grab dinner tomorrow night?") and email for longer form communication.

Then instead of dicking around on Reddit for an hour or chatting with people on Jabber, I go hang out in a local bookstore, read a book in a coffee shop, grab a beer (without my phone) alone at the local bar, go have a meal with a friend. I've had interesting encounters and great conversations with complete strangers; I was the first surprised, given that I'm not particularly gregarious and it's hard for me to strike up conversation with a stranger. But it turns out that there are plenty of people out there who will happily talk to you for a bit.

I just recently moved to a new place, and have been thinking about how I can structure my living space to encourage good habits (e.g. practicing music regularly, reading books, working on electronic projects) and discourage bad ones (e.g. spending too much time on social media, reading superficial online articles, etc.). One of the things I did was not connecting my iMac (which I still use for composing music in Ableton, programming, reading PDFs, etc.) to the internet; if I need to look up restaurant times or something, I'll use my phone. I do try to leave my phone in a drawer out of sight most of the time, and have removed most of the distracting apps on it. It's only been a week, but I like what it's doing so far.

I'm in the second half of my 20s, I work in tech, so I don't think I'm a case of a grumpy old luddite. I'm just starting to realize that technology makes things like hooking up easier, but certain things aren't meant to be made easier. People designing those social apps and sites have, for the vast majority, no regard for your time and your attention - so maybe you just shouldn't give it to them.

I remember reading an article a long time ago ([http://kk.org/thetechnium/amish-hackers-a/](http://kk.org/thetechnium/amish- hackers-a/)) about the misconception we have about the Amish refusing to use technology. We think that the Amish refuse to use ALL technology; but really, it's that our society accepts technology unconditionally as soon as it's available, whereas Amish society accepts it only after it's proven a clear benefit, and that they understand how to use it in a way that won't disrupt their community. For instance, they found that phones are useful: if someone hurts themselves, it's good to be able to call the hospital. But if you put a phone in every home, then people start using it a lot, and local community ties suffer. Their solution to that is to have a single phone booth per village, a couple minutes' walk out. Another example is vehicles: it's very useful to have a tractor to work on the farm, but then people start using them as vehicles to go spend time outside of the village, again weakening community ties. Their solution to that is to have tractors with steel wheels so that they can only drive in the fields, not the open road.

Of course you can push that philosophy as strongly as you want to the point of the absurd, and there are many things you can criticize about it. But overall, I do find that mindset very refreshing and interesting, and that's what I'm trying to bring to my life.

<comment><USER45> > For the most part, I find that most online social media just degrades human > interaction. Twitter encourages short shallow quips, Facebook shows me my > friends arguing angrily and pointlessly over random articles, dating apps > encourage some of the behaviors described in the article. Heck, even HN > encourages a certain kind of attitude that I don't find that great, all in > all.

I don't know. I think, perhaps, in the 'real world' we learn to become very good at choosing who we associate with, and don't spend time with 'destructive' people (for lack of a better term), but perhaps this has yet to be learnt properly online.

For myself, I literally have never seen an argument on my Facebook feed. I have about 150 Facebook friends. I don't see flame wars on Twitter; I follow people I find interesting, that's all. I subscribe to subreddits with sane moderation policies. Generally, the internet I encounter on a day-to-day basis is actually quite a civil, friendly place.

I just don't think the online world is that much different from the real world. You choose where to spend your time, who to spend it with, and that shapes the experiences you have–just like the real world. Is it really so different?

<comment><USER44> I absolutely don't disagree with you. I've tried a more temperate approach like the one you describe; and I can get it with some degree of success for a while, but it never lasts long. Hence why I'm a bit more aggressive in my approach now.

I'm glad it's working for you though!

<comment><USER46> I thought I agreed with you about 'cheaping of human communication' until a couple of years ago. I believed that Snapchat was the _worst_ thing to happen to human communication, and somehow that human interactions had been fundamentally changed for the worse.

Then last year, I went on a 2-month long backpacking trip. I don't have facebook et al. and blogs are too tiring, so I decided to get snapchat _just for the trip_. A year later, I've gotten ~20 people to join snapchat, just to keep in touch with me. : )

For me, it's the model of human communication that matters: I don't necessarily want you to remember exactly what I said to you 12.27465 years ago. I know most of the HN and Reddit crowd aspire for the perfect object Vulcan mind, with perfect recollection either, but for me, the value of interpersonal communication lies in the fact that it's REALLY fallible. Not only do we _NOT_ remember things as they are, even if we do remember something right, the act of _remembering_ it messes up the actual memory. For me, that's essential. Our social interactions haven't evolved to reflect a perfect recollection but to accommodate our limitations. We are imperfect, and I like my mode of communication to reflect that.

<comment><USER47> Can you ellaborate on what, in specific, made you change your mind about snapchat and the rest of that kind of communication?

<comment><USER46> I left facebook because it was too tiring. I HAD to have SOME way of connecting with friends. The part I like about snapchat the most is that there's no history -- you send an image, and it's gone, so there's no particular 'baggage' associated with it: no long thread of comments, no 'history' to look at, no tedious 'you didn't like my comment/omg i got 300 likes'. For me, snapchat is somewhere between real-life interaction and texting: as ephemeral as real life 'talk' and long-distance as well... a text message. On other media, stupid things people (or you) say tend to stay around forever, in snapchat, your mistakes last as long as the snaps do. A bad pun, or a mistimed joke, for example... they don't hurt you like they do in other media.

This may sound like exaggeration, but snapchat could be the social network for adults in the longer term [not the 'look at my kid' kind, but 'we're having fun, but don't want it too seem like we're bragging' kind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> God I wish I was in NYC. The stories I've heard from buddies there!

West coast scene is not like this at all, especially not in Man-Francisco or Man-Jose (unless you like men of course).

<comment><USER49> Seriously. I flew out to NYC for a job interview. Was there for just 2 days and I got laid. I wasn't even trying at all, I was just there for an interview! And this was after a 2.5 year dry streak in SF.

My god I want to go back.

<comment><USER50> Yeah, my cousin lives in NY. He told me that the city is still there, it's still between New Jersey, CT and Westchester County where you left it. So, you can still go back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> >"Tinder sucks," they say. But they don't stop swiping.

Well... stop swiping?

</comment><comment><USER52> For those lamenting the "quantity over quality" aspect of Tinder, I would suggest using Coffee Meets Bagel [1] as a supplement or alternative.

[1] [http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/18/dating-app-coffee-meets- bag...](http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/18/dating-app-coffee-meets-bagel- lands-7-8-million-in-series-a/)

(I have no interest in this company nor have I used it; I have been told it works well for higher quality dates by male friends)

</comment><comment><USER53> Interesting to see that America (but as the other commenters have pointed _new york_ ) that a culture of sex is well and truly alive, whereas places such as Japan are suffering from a lack of this culture (men are now called "herbivores" due to their disinterest).

</comment><comment><USER54> Any other non-photogenic dweebs with partners glad they got out of this game before it went mainstream?

</comment><comment><USER55> Surprised they're still quoting Christopher Ryan, who has no scientific credibility and whose work has been entirely debunked. He's essentially just some kook proselytizing his own sexual perversions.

</comment><comment><USER56> People have been writing about the casual sex explosion for ever since the internet hit mainstream but reports also say millenials have less partners than their baby boomer parents did.

Hard to say what is accurate.

<comment><USER57> It's like app store 20% get the 80%. The subj article was focusing exclusively on 20%. Let's hear the "dad bod"'s story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> This reminds me of RFJason's Craigslist experiment.[0]

Back in the day, rude invitations with dick pics were odd enough to mock. Now, according to this article, they've become almost accepted. Funny.

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

</comment><comment><USER59> Anyone remember Logan's run and the dating "circuit" thing they had[1]? We are finally there.

1.[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMlHZNMH5KA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMlHZNMH5KA)

</comment><comment><USER60> This is why I use okcupid. People there actually want to get to know other people.

<comment><USER61> Some. And some just want to have sex.

That's the way it's always worked online.

<comment><USER62> The problem is that our access used to be constrained by proximity, and so there was a natural limit to the number of people we could reasonably entertain the notion of a relationship with. With apps like tinder come an unprecedented level of access. What happens to dating mores once it becomes the norm to have "access" to tens of thousands of people within an X mile radius? Considering how we judge worthiness of a partner is related to social factors and quantity of access (e.g. someone with access to many people like a college student is going to have higher standards), what will it look like when every potential partner is judged through the lens of the last 10 thousand tinder swipes?

We've seen what modern media can do to self esteem, particularly in young women. What happens when we're all now literally competing with the nearest ten thousand most attractive people in your state? I predict that the effects these apps will have on self-esteem, dating, social values, and even the institution of marriage will be catastrophic.

<comment><USER61> Blah at the institution of marriage. The institution of marriage hasn't had any sanctity for the last x years (divorce skyrocketing). Which is perhaps fine, a single partner for one's entire life isn't cut out for everyone. (It's cut out for me, though, and I am happily married).

The "Tinder problem" does exist though, and perhaps it'll lead to a segregation of those who want something meaningful and those who don't. Not sure if that will be a good or a bad thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> I imagine Twine would suit those who prefer a similar service for a dissimilar crowd. I do wonder what actual experiences are like, since I'm attached and have never encountered any males who use it.

<comment> steve-howard Is that because you've only heard from women, or you just don't know anyone who's used it?

<comment><USER63> The former.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> There's been a lot of talk of the decrease in 'cost' of sex, etc in this thread. I want to chip in as someone who has spent a LOT of time on tinder.

Last month, I was spending SEVERAL hours a day swiping on friends' behalf on Tinder. We'd swipe till our eyes hurt, and we'd swipe again. You get a limited number of swipes (and total 'targets') per day, so once someone ran out of their daily quota, I'd swipe for someone else.

The process is TIRING! -- looking at attractive/ people at their best putting on their best show is tiring! It's doesn't seem to be screen fatigue -- there's likely an upper boundary on how many faces/people you can process in a day. We'd end up not checking people's profiles and swipe based on the amount of skin showed on profile pictures. It sounds ridiculous, but being judgmental of people's face/facial features apparently gets tiring at some point.

This leads me to believe that the interactions don't come for free -- they may be cheap, but the costs exist.

So as someone who spent all that time on Tinder, it is not clear to me what 'friction' Tinder removes as compared to dating sites say, 10 years ago. Having a hookup app on your lap, and on your cellphone is not that different. Or sites on the desktop 15 years ago. I know people who think 'mobile' hookup apps are the most godawful things to have happened in the world (and that because, as a lot of people have said here, because they reduce the cost of interaction), but that's not significantly different from say, 10/15 years ago, is it?

If 'hookup stats' are really higher, it could be because not everyone agrees on the definition. For a lot of my friends, going over to sleep at someone's house constitutes a hookup. I'd imagine something like that would have happened 20 years ago anyway in an offline setting, but you'd have met the person in a bar, or a club or what have you. That you happened to have met them on Tinder doesn't make it an 'apocalypse' for the dating type.

All the friends I swiped for ended up going on multiple dates, some in the same week. Two ended in a committed relationship, and one who never wanted to be in a relationship was almost dragged into one. I mention this because without tinder, he would never have been out their anyway. So here's my theory: tinder is bringing out all the 'marginals' \-- people on the relationship margin who would otherwise not have been 'out there' anyway. Since their ratio to the general population has increased because of increased visibility, it seems that more people are NOT into dating. That's a fallacy because it does not control for the marginals: they'd not be 'relationship minded' without tinder anyway.

<comment><USER47> I am super-tired to write an extensive reply to your comment - and it is worth one - but I'll just say this for now and return to elaborate more once I have gotten some sleep: The mere "possibility" of getting laid with a right swipe on a small device your carry in your pocket, any moment you decide to perform it, and a couple of messages makes the cost seem smaller. Sure, the candidates against which you compete are now more, but still.

<comment><USER46> I'm not sure I agree with you completely there. Tinder hasn't created a lot of 'I want sex, and I want it NOW' \-- there's still a gap between communication and hookups, in general [here, I'll accept anecdotes as data, if you have more than few]. Now Grindr, that's a COMPLETELY different story -- I've known people literally do the 'parking garage oral sex' thing in a matter of an hour from start to finish. The general consensus seems to be that Tinder culture is nowhere near that. If you strongly believe the opposite, for good reasons, I'd reconsider my position though.

<comment><USER47> First of all let me say I'm glad my comment reached you, I am not sure how many people here get notified about replies to their comments.

Now, I don't strongly believe anything but I wasn't implying that the smaller cost is because of the speed at which the "sex" happens. I believe that people consider it smaller than before because even with the regular dating sites you had to sign up, upload photos, fill in your profile details, etc etc, to even get something started. All tinder asks for is a facebook account and a couple of swipes (or maybe just one :D). Sure, a match might not end up as an erotic partner but at least there was something.

Hope I made my point more clear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> When most women think " Ew, a dadbod" ,it's expected they will encounter the most "despicable" kind of men.

Such paradigm is not a consequence of a misogyny; quite the other way around.

Downvoting me won't change this.

<comment><USER33> I don't think it's either "way around". Both the men and women on Tinder are shallow people who are mostly just interested in sex.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Boy, that sure is a parallel universe. Did you know striking up a conversation with a stranger in real life can still get you laid? Less efficient, I know, but if you're already saving so much time replacing food with Soylent you should have some wiggle room.

<comment><USER66> I found that Google Hangouts through my Glass allow me to date casually and launch my startup with no time deficit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> > "For young women the problem in navigating sexuality and relationships is > still gender inequality," says Elizabeth Armstrong, a professor of sociology > at the University of Michigan who specializes in sexuality and gender. > "Young women complain that young men still have the power to decide when > something is going to be serious and when something is not—they can go, > 'She's girlfriend material, she's hookup material.' … There is still a > pervasive double standard.

Women try and find the best man they can possibly get. Just because 50% of the population is female and 50% is male doesn't mean that they're going to pair off equally. Women want the top 20%! [1] There are evolutionary reasons for this that push our species forward, mating always has and always will be a competition.

Now think of the perspective of these top 20% guys. They get all the sex and need not give out their exclusive commitment. And why would they? From an economic perspective, they can maximize their sexual strategy this way (spread the seed, as it were). Monogamy just slows that down.

Furthering the economics analogy, these dating apps increase the _liquidity_ and _efficiency_ of the market. Want Chad, the good looking investment banker guy? Keep swiping, you'll find him. No need to wait around for Bobby from your programming class to finally ask you out (he probably doesn't even lift weights).

There are two groups clearly disadvantaged by this current setup:

1) Those 80% of "below average" males. Because one of the top males can satisfy many young women (you read the story, some guys sleep with 100+ girls a year), these men get left out. Traditionally, marriage existed as an incentive for the vast majority of men to be productive in exchange for reproduction opportunities. I'm sure the discerning reader wouldn't be surprised to learn that a girl sleeping with a bunch of top 20% dudes and later "settling down" has a harder time staying in a happy marriage [2].

2) Which leads us to #2, unmarried women entering their 30s, or whatever arbitrary later age makes them less attractive to the top 20% men. The reality of male preference for physical attractiveness necessarily means that women who engaged in hook-up culture during their earlier years will have to lower their standards.

We had a period of time where strict monogamy throughout adulthood dominated, and now that's becoming less so (hugely declining marriage rates as one indicator, [3]). The question is whether or not this is a natural evolution for our society, or a sign of decline.

\---

[1] - "As you can see from the gray line, women rate an incredible 80% of guys as worse-looking than medium. " [http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks- and-online-dati...](http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-and-online- dating/)

[2] - "They claim this finding is especially true for women, writing in the report, "We further found that the more sexual partners a woman had had before marriage, the less happy she reported her marriage to be."" [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/21/more-sexual- partner...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/21/more-sexual-partners- unhappy-marriage_n_5698440.html)

[3] - [http://national.deseretnews.com/article/4535/US-marriage- rat...](http://national.deseretnews.com/article/4535/US-marriage-rate-hits- new-low-and-may-continue-to-decline.html)

<comment><USER68> Absolutely. Monogamy advantages non-alpha males, to the disadvantage of most women. Women want to mate with the leader of the pack; if all females mate and carry the children of the one leader, all other males don't mate _at all, ever_.

Many (not all, but many) animal mammal societies work like this, and there are strong indications humans were wired to work like this too. Some human cultures still use that form of reproductive organization.

And then MALES (non-alpha ones) invented monogamy to get a piece of the action.

It's extemely ironic that women would complain about the disappearance of something that was designed to their direct detriment.

<comment><USER69> > _It 's extemely ironic that women would complain about the disappearance of > something that was designed to their direct detriment._

So-called 'alpha males' tend to define and shape the culture they're a part of, a lot more than the 'non-alpha' males you just spent ten sentences shitting on. It's interesting you think low-status males just 'invented' monogamy, and in doing so turned the reproductive tables on 20% of men and 100% of women.

I think it's more like, historically speaking, cultures that allowed for more males to have reproductive success, and that therefore gave more males a stake in the society and culture they're a part of, saw more success and out- competed the ones that did not. Which is to say, a society where near-100% of the population have a direct reproductive stake in the future, will be more productive than societies where about 60% of the population does.

Whether this remains true now is an interesting question.

<comment><USER67> Bingo.

The beta males did not invent monogamy; it evolved as a system whereby more productive abled bodies were invested in the success of a society. These societies proliferated.

> Whether this remains true now is an interesting question.

I believe that when the benefits do not outweigh the cons, a lot of males start checking out of society altogether. See Japan [1] as an example. E.g. I'm going to have to work my ass off throughout life jumping through hoops and then work 80 hour weeks at BigCompanyJapan and then maybe find a woman who I won't have time to spend with? Fuck it, video games, porn, and basement sound better.

For a more US-centric view, check out [2].

[1] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori)

[2] - [http://www.amazon.ca/The-War-Against-Boys- Misguided/dp/06848...](http://www.amazon.ca/The-War-Against-Boys- Misguided/dp/0684849577)

<comment><USER70> These statistics provide some evidence: [http://www.japancrush.com/2013/stories/30-of-single- japanese...](http://www.japancrush.com/2013/stories/30-of-single-japanese-men- have-never-dated-a-woman.html)

There is an antithetic trend in Japan though, since Japanese women are emancipated and the high economic demands prevent them from investing time into dating. So, the numbers could possibly differ even more. (I'm not sure how emancipation affects the statistics for the males, though.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> [http://www.icrw.org/media/news/commentary-does-access- contra...](http://www.icrw.org/media/news/commentary-does-access- contraception-empower-women)</comment>


WireGuard Presentation at FOSDEM17 [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.wireguard.io/presentations/#february-5-2017-fosdem-brussels-belgium <comment><USER2> The FOSDEM web site includes a synopsis of this talk [0], along with the video, slides (PDF) [1] and a "demo screencast" (MP4/video) [2].

It's a good talk and WireGuard is quite interesting. IPSec, OpenVPN, et al., are great but I definitely think there's a need for a high-performance, high- security, easy to configure VPN.

The demo is only two and a half minutes long, check it out.

 _Edit_ : Also found _zx2c4_ 's technical whitepaper, _" WireGuard: Next Generation Kernel Network Tunnel"_. Just started to look over it but it appears to have all the juicy details.

[0]: [https://fosdem.org/2017/schedule/event/wireguard/](https://fosdem.org/2017/schedule/event/wireguard/)

[1]: [https://fosdem.org/2017/schedule/event/wireguard/attachments...](https://fosdem.org/2017/schedule/event/wireguard/attachments/slides/1834/export/events/attachments/wireguard/slides/1834/wireguard_fosdem2017_slides.pdf)

[2]: [https://fosdem.org/2017/schedule/event/wireguard/attachments...](https://fosdem.org/2017/schedule/event/wireguard/attachments/video/1835/export/events/attachments/wireguard/video/1835/wireguard_fosdem2017_demo_screencast.mp4)

[3]: [https://www.wireguard.io/papers/wireguard.pdf](https://www.wireguard.io/papers/wireguard.pdf)

<comment><USER3> "IPSec, OpenVPN, et al., are great but I definitely think there's a need for a high-performance, high-security, easy to configure VPN"

I really like sshuttle.[1] Very simple - just point it at _any_ host anywhere on the net that has an sshd running.

We (rsync.net) have recently sponsored some bug fixes and freebsd-specific improvements that allow --dns to work as well as generalized UDP tunneling. I'm testing it right now ...

[1] [https://github.com/sshuttle/sshuttle](https://github.com/sshuttle/sshuttle)

<comment><USER4> In lieu of the complexity for all other vpn implementations, we fall back on sshuttle consistently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A long-time kernel developer happened to be sitting next to me, while I was listening to this talk at FOSDEM last weekend, and he politely pointed out after the talk (paraphrasing): "Hmm, I'm not quite convinced -- this lives in the Kernel, and if it's compromised, then it's game over."

PS: Day-21 of QEMU Advent Calendar 2016 was WireGuard (contributed by: Jason A. Donenfeld and Stefan Hajnoczi) -- [http://www.qemu-advent- calendar.org/2016/#day-21](http://www.qemu-advent-calendar.org/2016/#day-21) \-- "This image runs iperf inside containers & prints out the performance statistics along with commands used to configure the VPN."

[Edit: I just noticed 'mtgx' has posed this question in this thread -- [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13600614](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13600614)]

<comment><USER4> I've been wondering the same thing. It seems many lament for it to be in the kernel, when many other vpn systems are addon packages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm really thrilled with WireGuard. It's small, easy to audit, easy to setup, and it is using the Noise protocol which uses trusted cryptography primitives by DJB. I hope it can be merged into the mainline Linux kernel once it stabilizes.

</comment><comment> mjl- i've read up on wireguard a week or so ago. it seems awesome. i've rarely been so excited about new software/protocol. the design philosophy feels so right.

a few months ago i concluded i needed a secure vpn to servers. ipsec seemed the better option. but i haven't set it up yet. it all seems so complicated for what i want to achieve: a simple secure tunnel between a few machines.

hopefully we'll get easy to use software for macos/windows. no idea how hard that is to create (i.e. adding tunnel types to these OS'es so you can easily add a tunnel and configure them).

<comment><USER7> Have a look at zerotier then. It's user space, so no kernel requirements. It's super simple: start up the servers and join a network you create on the website. All the traffic still goes directly if possible. Lots of clients available for popular platforms.

<comment><USER8> ZeroTier is cryptographically inferior to Wireguard, but also isn't really a VPN: it has centralized configuration and rendezvous. If you're running VPNs to get the US Netflix from your UK vacation, this is probably fine. If your VPN is how remote employees access your prod network, it is way less fine.

I think it's a bit unfair to judge ZeroTier in comparison to VPNs, because that's not strictly speaking what it's trying to be. I like overlay networks!

<comment><USER9> I actually would love to hear more about your perspective on the crypto used in Zerotier and why it shouldn't be used for remote workers and those sorts of things.

I've been a user for quite a while and it's been really nice (and generally I've really only had trouble using Zerotier on really locked down wifi networks), but given their Technical FAQ info it sounds pretty convincing to a lay non-security-expert person that it is relatively secure: [https://www.zerotier.com/tech_faq.shtml#security](https://www.zerotier.com/tech_faq.shtml#security)

As far as using it for remote workers, in comparison to how our current VPN option at work functions (currently a SonicWall Firewall/VPN) it definitely seems to work more easily/consistently so it's been something I've wanted to share so we can try out (but if there are big security issues with doing so I'm sure myself and others would love to get your thoughts on Zerotier in particular).

Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This looks excellent!

I read the presentation and it looks like the designer did an excellent job handling all of the factors.

I also really like the work done to simplify the human interface. This is also important for security and is often lacking.

This feels like the introduction of ssh. I think this has the potential to become an important tool in everyone's toolbox.

I will read more about this tonight!

</comment><comment><USER11> WireGuard does seem like a very good approach to an easily configurable, high performance, high security VPN.

<comment><USER12> Would you please like to add some reasoning to make it easier for others to understand how you came to that conclusion?

Why do you think that it seems like a very good approach?

What information is your analysis based on?

And what is your competence that allows for a public verdict, if I may ask?

POTUS-style "it is very good" posts should not invade this discussion space.

<comment><USER8> Your comment would be just as informative if it ended after the first sentence.

The presentation answers most of this:

* An extremely small, auditable-in-an-afternoon codebase. The code is 1% as large as XFRM/StrongSwan IPSEC.

* Designed from inception to eliminate memory corruption and state machine bug classes; for instance, all allocation is per-peer at-config static.

* A simplified, modern crypto stack with no cipher agility and thus no downgrade attacks (and, again, an extremely small codebase) --- this also drastically simplifies configuration.

* A DOS-resistant forward-secure protocol based on Trevor Perrin's NoiseIK.

* Direct integration into the Linux networking stack, so that VPN tunnel interfaces appear to management tools just like other interfaces, and policy can be expressed using standard iptables and IP routing tools rather than poorly duplicated in the VPN software.

<comment><USER13> Great synopsis, thanks! I'm particularly excited by the last point - there's a genius to putting this in kernel space for exactly that reason.

<comment><USER14> A VPN does not need to be in the kernel for that; userspace TUN/TAP VPNs can also take advantage of standard system tools for policy and management.

The actual motivation for running in kernel space is performance.

<comment><USER8> I didn't write "runs in kernel" as a benefit. I wrote "directly integrated with Linux networking stack". It's actually not the case that the other VPN alternatives integrate as seamlessly with Linux networking tools as Wireguard.

<comment><USER14> I wasn't replying to you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have to say this for wireguard, they're doing really well at PR.

We're still doing pretty well with bonding multiple OpenVPN links to get multi-processor performance at FastMail:

[https://blog.fastmail.com/2016/12/19/secure-datacentre- inter...](https://blog.fastmail.com/2016/12/19/secure-datacentre-interlinks/)

But I'm sure we'll look at wireguard again at some point, but while the website says this: "WireGuard is not yet complete. You should not rely on this code." I'll stick with being conservative and using what we already know and trust.

</comment><comment><USER16> Previously covered 7 months ago at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11994265](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11994265)

The author answered questions there.

Also 4 days ago for its FOSDEM presentation: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13569420](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13569420)

<comment><USER17> Anyone know if they've implemented DMVPN yet?

edit: sounds like nope; only progress is a high-level description of how WireGuard might provide equivalent functionality: [https://lists.zx2c4.com/pipermail/wireguard/2016-December/00...](https://lists.zx2c4.com/pipermail/wireguard/2016-December/000687.html)

<comment><USER8> Candidly: it seems weird to me that anyone would prioritize something like DMVPN over escaping the IPSEC ecosystem as soon as possible. IPSEC --- including Cisco's IPSEC products --- is terrifying.

<comment><USER13> So I've caught flack for choosing an OpenSSH "native" VPN (where it sets up TUN/TAP for you on both ends, etc..) over IPSec before.

While I'm sure it's probably lower performance, if you've ever done more than just plug and play some Cisco IPSec stuff (e.g. manually implement IPsec on Linux), it is terrifying in its complexity, IMO, for something you depend upon so critcially.

<comment><USER18> It's not just a performance problem. OpenSSH's VPN works by encapsulating either IP packets (tun) or Ethernet frames (tap) in TCP. Now you suffer from head of line blocking and nested congestion control. If you want an easy to use userspace VPN use OpenVPN. It may be bloated, but it works a lot better than IP over TCP can ever work.

<comment><USER17> Hasn anyone implemented IP over QUIC in any VPN product yet?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> How good/bad of an idea is a kernel-level VPN?

<comment><USER20> ipsec/ike2/isakmp are implemented in kernel afaik, with userspace tools to control them and they're used pretty heavily in commercial scenarios(for office to office vpn or vpn into cloud tenancy etc). OpenVPN/Tinc etc are userspace and seem to be popular for consumers as they require less coupling and relatively easy to setup.

In terms of whether that's good or bad, it depends on your requirements and what's optimal to you. If you think about the problems in OpenSSL, which backs OpenVPN, then that's been a fairly large attack surface vector. Compare that to ipsec/ike2 kernel related vectors and weigh up the setup/learning/deployment costs of both.

<comment><USER21> IPSec is in the kernel. IKE is outside in userland. IKE tends to be the parts that get compromised often and IPSec in itself is pretty simple.

Putting control planes in the kernel is the worrying part IMHO.</comment></comment></comment>


TD Ameritrade Acquiring Schwab Nightmare - <AUTHOR> https://joelx.com/td-ameritrade-acquiring-charles-schwab-a-nightmare/15501/ <comment><USER2> You got it backwards. Schwab will acquire TD Ameritrade.

[https://www.npr.org/2019/11/25/782632545/charles-schwab- to-b...](https://www.npr.org/2019/11/25/782632545/charles-schwab-to-buy-td- ameritrade-creating-brokerage-behemoth)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point! I just updated my post. I am much happier with Schwab than TD Ameritrade, but I still don't like acquisitions that harm consumers by reducing competition and choice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I hope Schwab will replace TD Ameritrade's junk backend systems. I had major problems with TD Ameritrade where the email addresses ( I used to run a disposable email service, so I am paranoid about these things ) would immediately end up with spammers. The only logical explanation was that they had a live leak of their PII data, almost continuous leak.

In contrast, I have actually spoken to some Schwab security folks (random in- flight chat) and they seem to know what they doing - at least to the level you can expect from a bank.

If the reverse happens, I would be forced to move my money from Schwab to elsewhere. IMHO, only other company with a decent security is Vanguard.

</comment><comment><USER4> I just hope they keep the ThinkOrSwim product alive. It's been a great platform for trading automation and development.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wouldn't count on it.</comment></comment>


Why gun violence barely rates on Silicon Valley's long world-changing to-do list - <AUTHOR> https://backchannel.com/no-moonshots-for-gunshots-f5ca338a273f#.jvag9g7gp <comment><USER2> "If we can set it up so you can't unlock your phone unless you've got the right fingerprint..." That's a very precise point, although probably unintentional.

 _Swipe...swipe...swipe...swipe...swipe...swipe...swipe...[gives up and types a backup passphrase on a huge touchscreen]_ For a smartphone, the functionality contained is rarely needed _right damn now_ (and many phones allow the user to make emergency calls from a locked device; I believe that's even some sort of regulatory requirement). If you're unlocking a smartgun, and you have all the time in the world for that, _what purpose_ exactly are you unlocking it for?

</comment><comment><USER3> "Gun violence" is a misnomer. Violence using guns is a better description, but the left-leaning media will never correct this.

Mass shootings get loads of attention, but the murder rate using guns has actually decreased in the last 20 years, not gone up. But to listen to the mainstream media, you'd think that a few nutters with guns is ushering in the end of the world.

There will always be guns, there should always be guns for the law abiding enthusiast. Making it so difficult to obtain and use a gun is akin to a de facto blocking of the 2nd Amendment. A simple background check, which is already the law, works. Anything else is burdensome. Ditto have special permits to buy guns and ammo. If I need a permit to buy something legally, it's no longer a right, but a granted privilege. This is the reason, despite living in Texas, one of the most gun owner friendly states in the union, I have no gotten my concealed weapons permit. A right does not need a permit. I don't want a granted privilege. I carry one in my car because the law allows it sans permit, but I will not ask permission to do something the 2nd Amendment already grants. This is why states like Kentucky, Wyoming, Montana, Alaska, Vermont, Arizona, all allow what we call "Constitutional Carry". They can carry legally with no permit, because the 2nd Amendment is the permit.

<comment><USER4> > They can carry legally with no permit, because the 2nd Amendment is the > permit.

No, residents of those states can carry legally without a permit because their state legislature said they could. "Constitutional Carry" is a cute nickname, but Vermont is still granting its residents the privilege of carrying guns in public. There is no nationwide right to concealed carry.

I'd advise you to read up on United States v. Miller (1939), in which the Supreme Court considered the argument you describe. The defendant was carrying a sawed-off shotgun without the proper permit, and his counsel argued that the 2nd Amendment absolved him of any wrongdoing. It was the Court's ruling that many of the firearms we purchase and possess today have nothing to do with the maintenance of a well-regulated militia, and as such, the states may regulate them as they please.

The Founding Fathers may have given you the inalienable right to a musket and a hunting rifle in the days before we had a standing army - but today, even in Texas, you're going to need a permit to conceal that semi-auto on your person.

<comment><USER5> Unless i'm mistaken, and it's entirely possible that I am, the only enumerated 'inalienable' rights are "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" (albeit prefaced with the weasel-words "among others".) The Second Amendment is part of a framework of law which allows for its own legal repeal, so it's not inalienable.

<comment><USER3> Well, thankfully, it takes 2/3 repeal, so that likelihood, at least in our lifetimes, is not realistic.

I'm already disappointed that most of the Republicans in the House and Senate are actually RINOs. Just goes to show you that there is a difference between a Republican and a Conservative. No true Conservative will ever vote against gun ownership. We need an entire House and Senate full of guys like Jeff Sessions in order to undo the damage by liberals in this country.

<comment><USER4> Well, thankfully for moderates everywhere, a Congress stacked with guys like Jeff Sessions is _even less likely_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the person you are mostly likely to kill with a gun is yourself so I don't think it makes a dent in gun violence.

Yes, it can protect you from somebody who steals your gun, and it can protect cops from people who steal their guns, but it is not such a big thing one way or the other.

<comment><USER7> I could see a gun you can't operate under the influence of alcohol. Especially, for law enforcement or private security.

<comment><USER2> Three words: DoS. Splash a bit of cologne on the officers, abracadabra, disarmed!</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: VC funded startup downsides? - <AUTHOR> I'm starting to question the whole thought process behind VC funded startups : take money -> grow fast -> get to a liquidity event so investors can make returns. VC funded startups are all about growth growth growth. I feel like there are serious downsides to this mentality :<p>- encourages failing quickly hence is a wasteful process<p>- almost always companies do desperate things to keep growing and changing, hurting users eg- reddit<p>- a steady state i.e zero growth but profitable existence is not encouraged. Such a state of existence is actively discouraged so it becomes : keep growing or die already. A lot of companies that could exist, make a profit and keep users happy instead just die.<p>- It's likely you give up some control over the direction of the company having to balance stakeholders, getting to a liquidity event, growing a business.<p>What are your thoughts? Here's a crazy idea : YC but for bootstrappers. Give each startup $120k and ask them to pay back 5X that once they become profitable. The most valuable thing about YC is the people, network and fellow founders. I think removing the VC factor should be considered, at least for a parallel program. <comment><USER2> > Give each startup $120k and ask them to pay back 5X that once they become > profitable.

The devil is going to be in the details of what "profitable" means. If the company just keeps hiring people and growing, are they profitable, or not?

You also have to remember that this idea would be competing with bank loans, so you would have to be willing to take significantly more risk than a bank does to ask for get 5X returns.

Speaking of which, "5X" returns may sound great, but the timeline for those is somewhat important too. 5X in 3 years is very different to 5X in 20 years.

Maybe it's just me, but I wouldn't take this deal. I'm not super interested in VC unicorn money, but as someone in tech, it's really not hard to pull 120k together. And if I thought it was just going to be "profitable", I wouldn't want to be in a position where I am being asked to pay back 600k, since that is a serious drag on my own earnings.

So it just seems to be a really weird niche, where I would think my plan has a high chance of failing (otherwise I wouldn't take 120k, since that's very little money), but I also don't think it's going to have huge returns, which means I would be badly aligned with traditional VCs, but I'm also willing to pay back 600k.

</comment><comment><USER3> "YC, but for bootstrappers" is an oxymoron. You need the high growth to support the YC staff and other assets because not all the businesses will succeed.

A support program for bootstrappers would look different. Getting $120k "to bootstrap" is also an oxymoron. Bootstrapping means earning the money as you go so you don't need to take investment money.

I am all for the idea of developing more support systems for bootstrappers and small projects that have no goal of growing big. But it would inherently need to take a different format from the YC model.

</comment><comment><USER4> VC is for investors. That's who it's good for. It's terrible for founders, employees, and society. The people who benefit most from "startups" are VCs. Keep that in mind.</comment>


Out with the old, in with the less - <AUTHOR> http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/out-with-the-old-in-with-the-less <comment><USER2> TempleOS is ring-0-only and has no networking.

It is forever limited to 100,000 lines.

The vision is a C64 ROM.

DOS and C64 had no protection and no problems.

There are no buffer overflow check in templeos. It will allow massive buffers until it crashes by running out of memory. Keeps it simple and beautiful. I hate arbitrary buffer size limits.

I want whole file reads and write exclusively. Compression is almost always used and that requires whole files. Text files can have binary graphics -- you cannot grow a file if binary graphics are on the end.

The code is beautiful. I always break compatibility to keep it perfect.

It is limited to 100,000 lines. The file util flags are okay.

You must stop assuming everything grows in size. It is done and it is a fixed size.

</comment><comment><USER3> One hopes that his code is more organized than the thought process revealed in this post.

Pokemon reference, Spolsky link, XKCD link, flowery metaphors, random paragraph splicing, anagram soup, endless linkouts that are either entirely critical to what he's trying to say or meaningless footnotes that can be ignored.

It would take hours to read this post and the linked material and fully understand it. And for what point?

There's so much wisdom in the BSD crowd trying to leak out -- but so many of them come off as nuts in their writing. His second sentence: "... simplicity or security or whatever it is that OpenBSD is all about."

Well, why don't you figure that out? Define that for me and then the rest of the post might make sense. This type of writing respects neither the project nor the reader.

<comment><USER4> The post is tagged "thoughts" and begins "Notes and thoughts on various OpenBSD replacements and reductions.", not "Here is my thesis and a carefully constructed narrative to guide you to the conclusion."

It is as advertised.

<comment><USER3> No, it violates almost every rule of advertising, which involves setting context and carefully targeting audience and making a point with brevity and clarity.

If you want people to read your thoughts, organize them.

<comment><USER4> It's not advertising...

Edit: I see what you did there!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there a good language overview for C? - <AUTHOR> A friend who has good programming knowledge with high programming languages (Java, Ruby, JS, etc) asked me if I knew a good introduction or language overview for the C programming language, because though it is not really necessary to know any C to study computer science any more, it is still (and I guess will be for a long time to come) a sort of reference language for everything low-level programming.
For C was the very first programming language I learned may years ago, I did not really had a good answer to this question. No I am looking into this, and had something in mind like gobyexamble.com (which was here in HN recently), just for C instead of Go.
Does anybody know of such a thing? <comment><USER2> He probably doesn't want a book, but I'm going to recommend he beg, borrow, or steal K&R (ANSI ed). It does a great job, and with his backround it's just the level he needs.

What is more interesting is all the lost voodoo, that everyone half decent was expected to just know, especially if you were doing anything embedded or kernel hacking. This will help him to understand why it's low level when needed.

Like the lost art of structure packing (that most of us used to do automatically without thought). No one does that any more outside of embedded systems.

[http://www.catb.org/esr/structure- packing/](http://www.catb.org/esr/structure-packing/)

Or some of the evil low level pointer hackery, but I'm not turning up anything great on google about this. Most sites claiming to have are dull run of the mill pointer operations. No unions of structs of arrays of pointers to functions doing evil trickery with inline assembler in sight! Amateurs!

SO post on "hidden features of C" [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/132241/hidden- features-o...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/132241/hidden-features- of-c)

Not very hidden most of them, but hey.

Obfuscated C Contest is good for making you friends' head hurt. Some really clever ones, so worth a look.

[http://www.ioccc.org/](http://www.ioccc.org/)

I think I may have spent too long C hacking in my 20s... :)

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/c/](https://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/c/)</comment>


SCALABILITY, CONTROL, AND ISOLATION ON NEXT-GENERATION NETWORKS - <AUTHOR> https://www.scion-architecture.net/ <comment><AUTHOR> Adrian Perrig did a presentation last week that I attended. It was impressive but I can't help but wonder why this has not recieved any large scale attention.

The concept seems both alien and sound, the source code is on Github, some ISP's seem to be "prepairing" but I have not found any discussions, neither pro nor con, about it.

Since there are a lot of smart coders & networks here: would some of you care to share you mind and shed some light on the subject?</comment>


Facebook Co-Founder Gives Up U.S. Citizenship - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-05-11/facebook-co-founder-saverin-gives-up-u-dot-s-dot-citizenship-before-ipo <comment><USER2> This has been a growing trend for a number of years. Changes in the US tax code, US laws, and the way the US government interacts with foreign banks has made increasingly difficult for US citizens, particularly those with assets, to live outside the US even if they are perfectly happy to pay taxes. Not only are foreign banks no longer willing to deal with Americans living abroad but in some cases complying with the aggressive US laws are in conflict with the laws where the people actually live. Naturally this is very frustrating to people who live overseas or who are married to citizens of other countries.

The way the US deals with taxes for Americans living overseas is gross overreach any way you look at it and the increasing difficulty of being compliant with US laws applied to people living outside the country is driving this. No other industrialized country treats citizens living outside its borders in this way and this reflects negatively on the US.

</comment><comment><USER3> You can't escape US taxation by giving up citizenship.

He will have to pay the exit tax instituted in the 2008 Heroes Earning Assistance and Relief Tax Act (HEART) on all unrealized gains he has worldwide because his net worth is likely greater than $2 million. I believe it is set at 30%.

As Facebook has announced the strike price, the value of the company and what his tax liability is, already has a very dollar value.

There used to be a ten year shadow for giving up US citizenship where you'd still have to pay US gain taxes for 10 years after you gave it up.

And the federal government has the incentive and the means to collect on someone who is a billionaire.

<comment><USER4> The article says he actually gave it up last September, so the numbers might have been fuzzier then. Regardless, he's protected from tax on any subsequent rise in stock price. You can't escape past or current tax, but you can "escape" future taxation.

On the ten-year tax shadow: How would that even work? If you were no longer a citizen, what claim would the US have on your money?

<comment><USER5> There is a rule - quite reasonable in my opinion - that if you were to renounce your US citizenship but then come back for more than 120 days (per year) during the first 10 years following your "resignation", you are considered a resident of the US for tax purposes. It is designed to deter Americans from giving up citizenship solely for tax evasion purposes, as opposed to actually moving to another country. I imagine one enforcement mechanism would be the denial of entry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some friends of mine are yelling "see? our tax code is pushing capital overseas!" My argument is, that with $4B at stake, even if we had a "reasonable" income tax, people like this would still seek out tax havens where the burden is even lower still.

<comment><USER7> So you agree with your friends that people act in their best interests, including changing citizenship, when it comes to taxes, you just disagree on the amount of money it would take?

<comment><USER8> I don't think it's true for the vast majority of people. Most Americans, including most wealthy Americans, are happy to be Americans, even if they aren't happy about everything in the US. Rejecting your home country for monetary reasons is a fairly drastic action, and only a very small number of people take it. I mean, you don't see Bill Gates moving to Monaco or anything. Not even very-rich people with libertarian politics, like Larry Ellison or the Koch brothers, are itchin' to leave the country.

In fact the number is even smaller than the raw number of renunciations. A spot-check at the list of renunciations suggests that most are actually people who in practice ceased to be Americans long ago, or in some cases never were. Some were born overseas to American parents and have never lived in the US; one actor on the list is of Italian origin and moved back to Italy 40 years ago; etc. Apart from a tiny handful of cases, it seems more like formalizing situations that already exist (people who aren't really Americans just making it formal). A number are also people applying for citizenships in countries that don't recognize dual citizenship, who are required to renounce their American citizenship to do so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Saverin was born in Brazil and has been living in Singapore for a while. There are also probably psychological advantages to being out of Zuckerberg's shadow.

While taxes might have played a role, it's not obvious that this was the principal factor.

</comment><comment><USER10> Someone on HN caught that as well: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3944467>

</comment><comment><USER11> It's common for UK citizens to give up citizenship, prior to an exit in their business and move to Monte-Carlo or Gilbraltar for a few years to avoid capital gains tax.

If Facebook blows up on the IPO and the stock value increases 50% or 100% he could easily be saving $500m - $1b in taxes. It's a no-brainer...

<comment><USER12> It's more of a no-brainer when he isn't even American. He "became" an American citizen in record time - arrived in the US in 1992 and was a citizen by 1998.

I'd say citizenship was given a tad too lightly.

<comment><USER4> He's 30 now, right? So he arrived at age 10 and was a citizen sometime before 16. The rules are (as they should be) a little different for minors.

Edit: dumb math error.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The lack of social responsibility is what erks me the most about Saverin's decision. Saverin takes full advantage of the investments and sacrifices made by countless Americans and then when the country asks for him to uphold his obligation as a citizen, he leaves to save a few percentage points. This is a tactic for small thinkers.

<comment><USER14> I feel it's really unjust the way we treat our fellow citizens living abroad. I would hate to be taxed both by the US and the country I was living in. He's already paid very a very large amount of tax for the value he generated while living in the US. Why should he pay US tax for the value he generates while living in Singapore or elsewhere?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Presumably, he would be paying long-term capital gains this year, which is only 15%. Sure, it's 15% of a lot a money, but it's still only 15%. I guess a big part of the reason to give up citizenship is not the tax, but also the fact that he has strong roots outside the US to being with.

</comment><comment><USER16> 30 years old. He'll have to do his National Service in the Singaporean army.

Edit: Correction. His children would be eligible.

Also, Singapore doesn't allow dual-citizenship, so he'll have to give up his Brazilian citizenship (if he had it).

<comment><USER17> The article doesn't say he's establishing citizenship in Singapore; just residency. He presumably will remain a citizen of Brazil.

<comment><USER18> Which also has military service (presumably obligatory, though in practice it hasn't been so for some time)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_service#Brazil>

"While de jure all males are required to serve, numerous exceptions mean military service is de facto limited mostly to volunteers, with an average of between 5 and 10% of those reporting for duty actually being inducted"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Immigrant who only sought US citizenship for financial gain, renounces US citizenship for financial gain. This is not terribly surprising.

There is a subset of Immigrants that move to the US, not because they believe in its ideals, but because it is financially advantageous for them to do so. Sometimes it works for the benefit of the US... as in this case. Other times... not so much.

On balance, I believe we generally gain more than we lose. Though I have no data to back up that assertion.

<comment><USER20> Immigrants believe in American ideals more than most Americans. Esp when most americans barely know anything about their own country. How many of us even know the bill of rights by heart?

Just because one guy is making a financial decision doesn't mean you blame a large group for some perceived lost of ideals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> "Thanks for all the opportunity. Later, U.S.!"

</comment><comment><USER22> Does patriotism have anything to do with citizenship? or is the question of acquiring citizenship becoming a function of your financial/carrer plan? (I can see that in a lot of comments here. It is an easy logic too.)

In other words is "patriotism" or "nation state" a medieval concept that will, over the next century, morph into the "market-value-ism" or "market-states"? (In the hypothetical "market-value-ism": You will be able to enter exit & participate in civic activities an any place based on the education/wealth that you have &/or the corporation you are aligned with.)

</comment><comment><USER23> I believe he would still keep is green card, I'm not sure though.

Also, if you worth more than 250K you can get in the US, and get a permanent resident visa (green card).

The only 'benefits' [1] of being an US citizen is, the social security money when you retire, and the right to vote.

With that being said, I'm about to start the process to become a citizen. I think everyone should do it if they can, since, you don't know what's gonna happen when we have an immigration hating president.

[1] Not sure if social security would have any funds when I, and Eduardo, retire. And, I don't think voting counts in this country.

</comment><comment><USER4> See also <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3960000> .

</comment><comment><USER24> Brazilian law says that he should have lost his Brazilian citizenship for voluntarily acquiring the US citizenship (which also requires that you renounce all others).

But I guess with so much cash it won't be a problem.

<comment><USER8> Both Brazil and the US have allowed dual citizenship for some years now, so he's fine on that front.

<comment><USER25> The governments of the US might tolerate dual citizenship, or turn a blind eye towards to it, but legally speaking, it's not allowed; you can have allegiance to only the United States.

<comment><USER8> Depends on what you mean by "legally speaking". The citizenship oath does require allegiance to the United States, but unlike in some countries, there is no law requiring naturalized citizens to renounce other citizenships as a condition of naturalization. So both practically speaking and legally speaking, dual citizenship is permitted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> US citizenship is a nasty trap from which it is extremely difficult to escape. The US is one of a _very_ small number of countries which will happily tax its citizens on income earned overseas, thus causing them to pay double taxes on everything they earn.

This has seriously bad consequences for US competitiveness, in particular:

1\. It discourages competent foreign citizens from seeking US citizenship (a greencard is _so_ much better!)

2\. It discourages US workers from spending some of their careers overseas, thus reinforcing US cultural insularity and giving competitive disadvantages. Go to any interntional company's office in Singapore, Shanghai, Kuala Lumpur and note that it's filled with Brits, Australians, New Zealanders with very few Americans; this is why.

3\. And of course, things like this.

<comment><USER27> It does not discourage US workers from spending some of their careers overseas. Most workers, even if working overseas, don't make enough that they have to pay taxes on foreign earned income. --Between the deduction for money earned overseas, deductions for housing, and other standard deductions, if you earn enough that you're going to get taxed by the US, you earn enough that you might as well pay an accountant to help further reduce your tax burden.

I don't buy #1 either, since most people don't get citizenship in a country unless they plan on settling there.

<comment> steve-howard It looks like you have to make over $150k/year to have to pay worldwide taxes:

[http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/international/article/0,...](http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/international/article/0,,id=97245,00.html)

It's not cool on principle, I suppose, but most people find it hard to sympathize with the problems you face when you make more than $150k/year.

<comment><USER28> Just to clarify, your link refers to the income limits that qualify someone for the exit tax (i.e. the tax that you have to pay the IRS upon giving up your citizenship).

If you remain a U.S. citizen but choose to live abroad (i.e. pay taxes in another country), you also have to pay income tax to the IRS, but you can exclude the first $95,100 of your income from being taxed.

Source: www.irs.gov/businesses/small/international/article/0,,id=97130,00.html

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> He's going to regret this down the road. Yes taxing on Worldwide income is absurd but not more absurd than giving up your right to live in the US. There will come a day, probably not too far in the future, where being young and rich on a tiny island isn't fun anymore and he's going to want to do something with his life. He's going to be quite sad when doing it in the United States is no longer an option.

<comment><USER30> Singapore in not an island.

<comment><USER31> It's a state made up of 60+ islands. The largest is often called "Singapore Island":

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore#Geography>

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

<comment><USER30> So it's not _an_ island

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The catch here is: good luck getting back in. The US gov't takes notice of this stuff, and it's just good to be aware of the implications for if you ever want to come back to the US. Not saying it's wrong or right (by all means, the less tax the better), but it's important to be aware of the consequences.</comment>


AdultFriendFinder has filed for an IPO - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/23/adult-friendfinder-files-to-go-public/

<comment><USER3> Reading the S1 that they filed, they (obviously) are trying to offset the debt they have through liquidation of their common stock. I can sum up the report as "we are making lots of money, have fairly significant debt, we need to move our shares now". AFF seems to be profitable and I see no reason why they shouldn't go public. While they are generating pretty impressive revenues they can also function as an umbrella in which adult oriented startups can fold into. Possibly providing further value to their shareholders. This is actually a pretty unique IPO , especially in the web sector.

I also think it will be entertaining to see AdultFriendFinder ring the NYSE bell.

<comment><USER4> The reason why they shouldn't go public : very bad timing in this volatile economy. I don't know if AFF can be categorized as startup, but startups that do not have enough cash flow (the real cash) for 2 or 3 year of expenses and etc should not go for public unless you want to get burned by short-sellers and opportunist. I work part-time in Japanese startup in my leisure time. We are only 10~ people (not all of us are developer) but already generating $4M of net income last year(not try to brag on it, since I'm sure we're not the best) and by the way we did end-year party last night I am pretty sure it's more than doubled. We choose not to raise fund or sell IPO because we feel steadier without it. Unless you have great growth that can ensure market (remember, todays market is mostly based on fear) or you have great trouble and IPO is the only thing that can save you, don't enter the market :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The perfect index symbol for them would be NSFW.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've always wondered how AFF can possibly maintain a number of users for long. Even average women can just walk into a bar/bookstore/coffee shop/etc. and find a man on any given night with very little effort, which means that site couldn't have much of a selection of females participating. I assume the same is largely true of gay men. So you're left with a large amount of straight men looking for women that probably aren't there.

So I could see how they could lure in a lot of straight men with the promise of casual sex, just not how they could keep the enormous churn rate down when they found they were barking up an empty tree. Maybe they just haven't burned through 100% of the population quite yet, and want to IPO so they can cash out before they do, or maybe just a lot of people have lower standards (even when sober) than I would have guessed. Or maybe AFF is nothing but a ruse to lure men into porn sites they own, since you'd probably prefer it to your options there.

<comment><USER7> Judging by the number of adultery stories I've heard here and there, I'd imagine it's a few more than we'd expect. Females seem to use it for hooking up, not for any sort of relationship, and it seems to be used especially if one is already in a relationship.

As for gay men, there are many men who hate the idea of finding a hookup or boyfriend in a bar. Gay.com has tons of users, myself included until I met my boyfriend there about two years ago. While that doesn't affect AFF's population (I haven't heard of gay people using it that much) I would imagine the same is true for straight folk.

<comment><USER6> Hmm, I would think adulterers would be less inclined to post their own picture online where it could be more easily found. Perhaps they want to get caught I suppose.

<comment><USER8> How does this "search for my spouse" work? (Our google friends aren't yet doing face recog on images. When they do, lots of interesting things will happen.)

<comment><USER6> It's not a search. I know a guy, for instance, who was married and set up an eHarmony account only to discover he was a match with his wife's best friend. And much more common I'm sure is the cheater's spouse seeing something in their email.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is adult friend finder even a legitimate business? I have always been of the opinion that the vast majority of the ads for women are fake in order to get men to sign up. After all, why would a woman post an ad on there when she can just as easily go to, well, anywhere and find a random guy to hook up with?

<comment><USER10> Does the way people use your product determine if your business is legitimate or not? If you did much IRC back in the day then you know that no such site will _need_ to make fake women accounts to get guys to sign up. There are enough people who get a kick out of pretending to be a girl just to prank guys.

<comment><USER9> The business masquerades as a way for men to meet women to have sex with. If all of the women are fake accounts made by employees, then I would not consider it to be a legitimate business. In fact, I might go as far as to say it's fraud, much along the same lines that shill bidding on ebay is fraud.

<comment><USER10> Did you read my comment? They would have to be incredibly stupid to make fake accounts of hot women. Enough men/ugly women would do that for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> AFF has been around for a while and had been one of the first personals sites (recently they were sold to Penthouse who planned to take them to IPO).

When they were privately (and before being sold to Penthouse) they were still very profitable and paid generous bonuses to employees (although they had a fairly high churn rate due to the nature of their business). AFF, by the way, is a big Perl shop.

I believe most of their income comes from pornographic portions that they offer / affiliate programs (but I'd imagine the "adult personals" portion is what draws its audience).

A friend worked at AFF and has a curious story about it:

Once in the early day's, my friend's manager (the company's founder) had been asked by a former classmate if he could host a site for his start-up in exchange for stock options. The manager refused. That classmate's name was... Jerry Yang.

<comment><USER12> are you trying to tell me aff somehow predated yahoo? i'll file this story under "bs" and you should too

<comment><USER11> 1) Is that hard to believe? Yahoo only incorporated in 1995, there were start- ups before that. Unfortunately, I can't find DNS records to back this up - <USER2> domains seem to be registered with non-Verisign registrar which wouldn't have been arround until 1998 (when third party registrars would have been available).

2) AFF's founders could have already been hosting sites _before_ founding AFF (indeed, it would logically follow that he'd have experience running a site before launching a successful company).

EDIT: Here's some proof:

Conru.com is registered wih Verisign and on 03-NOV-94 (Andrew Conru is the founder of AFF and you can see the FFN address and name when doing 'whois conru.com'). Yahoo.com is registered 18-JAN-1995 (do "whois '=yahoo.com'" to check). Seems like it's at least plausible (Stanford is a small place).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> AFF is part of an umbrella organization called FriendFinderNetworks, which you will find at <http://ffn.com/>

Over there, you will see that the same company runs a number of age/gender/ethnicity specific networks (GayFF, AsianFF) and even a Christian dating site called "BigChurch.com" Also, the nerve.com personals section is run by fastcupid.com, which is also owned by FFN.

I think that perhaps a large part of the "ew" factor in this (and many other) threads come from the idea that enough money to warrant an IPO can come from such 'seedy' business as facilitating one-night stands, but in my mind it is quite questionable whether the vast majority of the income comes from the one- night-stand part of their business.

In fact, I am willing to bet that it is not. It seems plausible to me that the number of people who simply are not meeting a partner that meets their criteria is on par with the number of people who require one night stands.

</comment><comment><USER14> _The primary use of the proceeds from the IPO, the company says, is to pay off the nearly half billion dollars in debt on its books._

So they're only going to take money from new "investors" to pay off the old? Sounds like another Ponzi scheme to me.

<comment><USER10> Um, no? They're going to _sell_ a part of their company to pay off their debts. But if you still don't see the difference just realize that they can only sell so many percent of their company until they have nothing left to sell and the company belongs to someone else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I suppose it is but now they have set a new thing--when sending a message the default is set to use 100 points everytime by letting you know when the person has read the message. I once had 1564 points--now I have 864 because of the new default. I complained and they restored 200 but what about the rest? I don't care when my message is read but if I did, I would click on the box so that I WOULD know. Another way to rip you off, huh?

</comment><comment><USER16> this is good news, i think. not that AFF, is a great business, but simply adding to the IPO count will help others do the same.

i am still of the opinion that a majority of the funds in the hedge markets had cash conserved during the down turn. if this goes well, then it will show that there is money out there.

on another note, in down times, entertainment seems to do better and this might be the only time that an adult website could grab the attention of investors.

<comment><USER17> The problem is if it crashes and burns, it turns into some sort of referendum on how IPOs are "doomed" in this economy and possibly also for quite some time in the future. I'd rather see a better company and one that doesn't carry a stigma (rightfully or wrongfully) that could prevent wide public investment be that bellwether.

Unfortunately those companies are probably staying away from even thinking IPO at this time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wonder how they managed to rack up $500 million in debt?

<comment><USER19> Penthouse bought AFF from the founding company for ~400mm -- if you glance at the S1:

Long-term debt classified as current due to events of default, net of unamortized discount(3) 411,019 (in thousands)

"In their report dated December 22, 2008, which is also included in this prospectus, our independent registered public accounting firm stated that events of default have occurred under certain of our debt agreements allowing noteholders to demand payment of our 2005 Notes and 2006 Notes and our subsidiary's First Lien Senior Secured Notes, Second Lien Subordinated Secured Notes and Subordinated Convertible Notes (each as defined herein) and that these conditions raise substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern."

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> And everyone says Sarbanes-Oxley killed the IPO market...

<comment><USER21> ...if the only consumer Internet companies going public are ten years old and issuing stock to recapitalize rather than to grow their business, yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I once had a roommate who worked atadultfriendfinder.com. He was kind of weird. One of the types who never left his room, etc.

<comment><USER22> Truth hurts?

<comment><USER23> irrelevance hurts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Who cares? Seriously... Adult Friend Finder? Don't even give me some crap excuse about how it's relevant because they're a startup. These guys have been in business, ripping people off since '96. Someone submitted an RFC for an avian IP network earlier today and now this. It's way too early to be posting April fools stuff.

vaksel, you really need to stop submitting everything that pops up in the TechCrunch RSS feed. I'm starting to wonder if you're some kind of sock puppet for them. It's already bad enough that we have to see any of their articles here at all. Their so-called reporting is so bad I don't even know where to begin. At least have the decency to filter out the obvious garbage like this.

<comment><AUTHOR> having something so crappy go for an IPO is news enough for me

<comment><USER24> I don't even know how to respond to that. What are you trying to say? That this should be some kind of inspiration to readers here? There's hope that one's startup can eventually go public if AFF can do it?

A twelve-year-old casual sex meetup site is successful enough that they're going to start selling stock to the public. Stop the presses! Sex sells!

I really don't see what this has to do with hackers, entrepreneurs or HN.

I also find it somewhat ironic that you-- only a month ago-- submitted a poll asking users if they felt HN should be invitation-only in order to improve the quality of submissions.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=373789>

"Seems like the site is growing by leaps and bounds...and slowly losing the quality we've all grown to rely on."

Sheesh...

<comment><USER25> This is absolutely relevant to entrepreneurs and HN. This is a real web business with real revenue really going public.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


4 Movies Every Entrepreneur Should Watch - <AUTHOR> http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/242249

<comment><USER2> Primer.

Because success is a problem to be prepared for.

Also because Primer is awesome.

<comment><AUTHOR> This [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390384/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390384/) ?

Looks awesome, thanks for the suggestion :)</comment></comment>