Some young people are buying houses with friends - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46895770 <comment><USER2> I strongly recommend, if possible, to have a single homeowner and set everyone else up as renters. The only exception is married couples who already have shared finances.

Want to share a house with friends for twenty years and share childcare responsibilities? Great, have them sign an intent-to-lease agreement and take _that_ to the mortgage company to help with qualification. Not having this kind of agreement can lead to all sorts of issues.

This should also extend to being jointly and severally liable for paying rent, not just mortgage. What happens when a tenant stops paying? If you've got joint and several liability, you basically have to pay the full amount while being unable to evict the deadbeat for nonpayment (since they're an owner or on the lease). It's slightly better in the case of the lease since you can negotiate a technical default and deadbeat-only eviction with your landlord, but it's still a mess that you should avoid if possible.

That all said, _living_ in a house with friends is an excellent choice IMO. I think humans are built to have some non-blood relatives at that level of closeness and cooperation, and it seems good to raise a child with more than two adults that they interact with in their typical household setting.

<comment><USER3> On the other hand, landlords are not friends. You create a situation where the owner is building equity and the friends are building the owner's equity.

I co bought a house with my wife and another couple. We spent about 18 months figuring out the legal agreement, including many permutations on failure to pay. Fwiw, our 'failure to pay' arrangement is in two steps. First step is the generation of interest bearing loans, secured against the non paying owner's equity. (Effectively auto sale of part of the non-paying owner's portion of the house.) Stage two is an actual sale process, which might be owner to owner, or might be dissolving entirely and selling the house. All of this is in our TiC contact.

On the flip side, we were able to pay 40% down on an awesome place that we couldn't have done individually, and even the lowest earner is getting significant equity because of the way we've structured our terms.

Rent is theft.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Rent is theft.

Wow that's strong. Do you really believe anyone who offers property for rent at market price is morally equivalent to a conventional thief?

<comment><USER4> My take on it isn't that strong, but perhaps it will give you an idea where they're coming from.

Part of rent pays for goods and services: construction costs, upkeep costs, administration costs, insurance costs, etc. Insofar as it does that, I believe that it is a healthy net-positive economic exchange.

Rent also partly goes to pay an individual or company for the service of everyone else staying away from that particular chunk of space. That's the problematic part.

See also: banks selling mortgages are financial arms dealers profiting off of exacerbating all of this.

The real trick is figuring out what to do about it and how, of course.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Rent also partly goes to pay an individual or company for the service of > everyone else staying away from that particular chunk of space. That's the > problematic part.

That sounds like a general aversion to any property rights or right to privacy at all, if you mean that you're paying for nobody else to come and be in the property at the same time as you. Not sure how it's specific to rent?

<comment><USER4> It's an aversion to a very specific form of property right. Henry George is the one to look up for details.

It's not an aversion to property rights in general. In particular, it isn't an aversion to allowing private ownership of the means of production (communism) or, on the flip side of the modern acceptability coin, private ownership of people (slavery).

You're right that the phrasing of the argument was general. There are more specific moral arguments on every side of every one of these, but the practical side of it always boils down to: how do you preserve incentives in a market's growth phase while discouraging rents (in the economic sense of the word) in the steady state?

That's a tricky one, and I don't claim to have a general answer, but I'm pretty sure that in the particular case of land it has something to do with society not making unbounded promises in exchange for bounded goods, e.g. of eternal, transferable land exclusivity to a private entity in exchange for building a log cabin on it. From that perspective, the government of past generations stole the exclusivity rights from modern citizens, and the present landowners are in a situation similar to any other possessor of stolen goods.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As an anecdote, my wife and I bought a place with friends because we couldn't afford on our own. People told us we were crazy. We basically bought the worst place in the city even with both families having good incomes (Vancouver). We had a five year plan to renovate the house and sell it. My wife and I didn't have a kitchen for a year. We cooked on a hot plate and washed dishes in the tub. Every time one of the houses around us was torn down, the mice would flee to our house until we plugged all the holes. Weekends and evenings were spent working on the house. We were lucky that the market continued to go up and that both couples were on the same page about everything. The house turned out quite nice. We have since gone our separate ways and each have our own place.

I love where we are now but I could have continued to live in the situation we were in longer. It was like family. We did lots of things together socially and we supported each other. Financially, it was the best thing both couples have done in their lives (again lucky the market continued to go up).

That's my sample size of one.

<comment><USER6> You bought property in Vancouver 5 years ago. That's like saying you bought AAPL in 2004 with a bunch of friends and it worked out great. Well, it wasn't the friends part of the scheme that made it work out. ;D

<comment><USER5> I get the tongue in cheekness of the comment with the ";D" but I think I qualified how lucky I feel several times and that it is an anecdote/sample size of one.

When we bought people thought it was the peak of the market and that is part of the people telling us it was crazy. We had no thoughts of the market continuing to go up when we bought. Our main focus was possibly making a bit on the renovations.

Even if the the market had gone down or sideways, and we didn't sell, I would have been fine with it. If we had lived there for the rest of our lives, I would have been fine with it. I liked the location and with the renovations, it was a great house.

It wasn't a get rich quick "scheme". Buying with friends was a way to buy a home. We were constantly being renovicted. We didn't have a place we felt was home. That house was home and buying with fiends was the only way it was possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I grew up in a big suburban house because my parents bought a house with a friend. She and her son took the downstairs bedrooms, we had the upstairs rooms. It was more house and in a nicer area than either could have afforded, and meant all the kids went to nicer schools. Built in shared parenting support, communal (but not hippy-ish) dinners.

We moved in in the mid 80s, and in the early 2000s after all the kids had moved out my parents sold their half to the co-owner. Everyone's still friends.

<comment><USER8> Interesting: I've heard anecdotes about similar experiences in southern California, where the "good" school districts often don't allow apartments or smaller subdivided buildings (duplexes/triplexes) to be built.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This does seem very financially risky to me. Yes, they did draw up a deed of trust and they mention that is okay if one of them wants to back out later. But that doesn't solve the monthly mortgage cost. Is that person who is "out" still obligated to pay that cost according to their arrangement? Because I can imagine finding another person to sign up to this arrangement could be difficult.

I'm leaning more towards stacked micro-houses, aka micro condos, as the "future of housing" in urban centers.

<comment><USER10> > I'm leaning more towards stacked micro-houses, aka micro condos, as the > "future of housing" in urban centers.

This is already a thing, it's called coffin cubicles or cage homes: [https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2017/jun/07/boxed...](https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2017/jun/07/boxed- life-inside-hong-kong-coffin-cubicles-cage-homes-in-pictures)

What I'm trying to say is: No, you should not lean towards this. You should lean towards jobs and opportunities spreading out over the country. To appeal to the HN population, instead of thinking in the binary thought of "SF (or some other tech hub) or fully remote!", consider another option: opening up smaller offices. Bring work where housing is affordable.

<comment><USER11> The price of housing is only one factor. You can probably buy a nice, cheap house and open some office in the arse end of nowhere. And then you can spend your day driving around to get basic shopping done.

Some cities are certainly more affordable than others, but in my experience they are also much less desirable.

<comment><USER12> I've lived most of my life in places ranging from a monastery to a town with around 20k people. I never needed to spend a day driving around to get basic shopping done.

I now live in a place an order of magnitude larger, but that really does not cut down on the time spent on basic shopping.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A few experiences here from people who did this and worked out nicely. I also know a good amount of stories of people who bought property with their partners and didn't turn out ok. Now take that risk and multiply it by the number of people involved.

But my biggest issue with this approach is that it doesn't solve the underlying issue of housing affordability. Essentially it says "you need 4 incomes to buy a house now", which will enable prices to keep on rising. What will happen when prices keep on rising and 4 incomes are not enough? Where will the limit be.

"Is buying with friends the future of housing?" I hope that if I do it it's because I want to, not because it's what I need to do to put a roof over my head.

</comment><comment><USER14> I feel like this is the past of housing as well. Most people you see that live in a relatively nice housing unit in a nice neighborhood have a roommate -- the person they married. I remember when I was younger I would always ask myself why it seemed everyone other than me had twice as much money with which to buy a house... then I realized.

<comment> black-tea No, that's a quite recent development too. Not too long ago it was normal for each household to have one earner. Now, thanks to women joining the workforce, we all work more for the same thing.

<comment><USER15> >we all work more for the same thing

No, we work more for more things. If you were to live according to the living standards of the times we associate with stereotypical one income households, say 40 years ago, your house would be 1000 sq feet smaller, your electricity consumption would be much lower because you would have no smartphone, a small TV, your car would not have the features it has today, you would likely have no college education, and your healthcare expenditure would be lower because you would receive significantly less care. You also would sweat a lot in the summer, because back then air conditioning was a luxury rather than the rule.

You would also eat significantly less meat, and you would be much less likely to go on holidays, travel abroad, or eat fresh fruit from the other end of the world at all times during the year.

<comment><USER16> Your TV & other appliances all used a lot more electricity to get the same job done, even if the screen or icebox was smaller. Your car got worse fuel economy and didn't last to 100k miles. Your house used a lot more wood/gas/oil/electricity to heat.

A big part of why we have more is social & technical progress. We get more for our money.

I do think your parent's question is an interesting one- thorny, but it's not ridiculous to wonder if doubling the work force eventually gnaws away at compensation for the same work. (The natural next question is, well did the demand for labor grow to match, stay constant, or somewhere in between? Did the pie grow and we're all wealthier for it, or are twice as many people now fighting over the same pie?)

<comment><USER15> There seems to be an error in that argument. If you shrink your workforce holding productivity equal, then labour becomes more expensive and wages and prices are going to be pushed, i.e. you just get inflation.

A larger labour force means more competition in wages, but it also increases supply so this shouldn't have any effect. If this wasn't true, then you could reduce inequality simply by artificially restricting the supply of labour, which I don't think has ever occurred.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is the BBC writing more clickbait headlines than ever? continue reading to find out more!

Ignoring the headline. This seems to be mostly beneficial to the lenders more than anyone else. The risk of a non-payments and financial issues is much higher and repossessions will be higher.

> Even if four people's names are on a mortgage, if one or more stop paying, > the mortgage lender has the right to demand full repayments from whoever > they can reach, he explains.

You only have to consider divorce rates to see the maligned incentives. Can someone more knowledgeable than me on the subject of mortgages explain if repossession is more valuable to the lender than someone paying off their debt? Intuitively it feels like repossession is worth more on a long enough time scale but would be interested in insights from someone else.

<comment><USER18> Financial industry makes money off transactions and commissions.

The idea of hyper-unstable living seems to be if you live by yourself or with a spouse you'll make a mortgage transaction every 20 years on average, but if you try to live in a giant commune like a 90s era sitcom, it'll financially collapse every 2 years and ya gotta live somewhere so you'll be entering into new transactions the bank can middleman every two years rather than every twenty years. They probably will make less money off each transaction, maybe lose some of the time, but if you increase transaction volume by 10, as long as their profit drops less than 90% its a net gain for them on average.

Also interest is profit to the financial institution, they'll make far more money off ten two year mortgages than one twenty year mortgage. With a side dish of the bank eating all the equity in interest in fees meaning the participants will be much poorer after twenty years meaning the bank can extract ever more middleman profits off the victims.

The nightmare scenario for a financial institution is someone getting a mortgage, paying it off early, and not getting another mortgage.

<comment><USER19> Maybe, but at 4% interest, isn't it financially optimal for me as a consumer to continue borrowing?

Why would I dump $x00,000 into home equity when I could leverage that money for decades are earn more in the market?

It seems like a win win, at least for people who have access to 4% interest.

<comment><USER20> > _Why would I dump $x00,000 into home equity when I could leverage that money > for decades are earn more in the market?_

My favorite rebuttal to that argument is this Q&A: [https://money.stackexchange.com/questions/89245/should-i- buy...](https://money.stackexchange.com/questions/89245/should-i-buy-my-house- in-cash-or-with-a-mortgage-and-invest-the-rest-of-my-mone)

To quote the top answer:

> _Ask them if you already owned the house, would they be advising you to take > out a mortgage in order to invest elsewhere. If not, ask them to explain the > difference between taking out a mortgage on the day you buy the house and > taking the same mortgage out the day afterwards._

If I owned a house (with no mortgage), I wouldn't take out a mortgage on it just to invest those funds in the market. Some people might, but that's too much risk for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> At some point, I really hope the trend of massive centralization reverses. There are hundreds, even thousands, of smaller towns in Europe and America where one can buy a house for a reasonable amount of money.

Remote work might be the panacea...hopefully.

<comment><USER22> Remote work might bring relief to the larger cities, but it also opens up smaller, often blue-collar industry towns up for gentrification, out-pricing the existing residents in a place where there wouldn't normally be "office jobs".

Remote workers who previously worked in Seattle have done this to where I live now - which has only displaced their housing affordability crisis to a different location, and on to a different demographic.

<comment><USER23> Well, why are all of those remote workers moving to your town? If you live anywhere remotely desirable, I think it's only to be expected that housing prices are going to go up over time until we start to see an overall decline in population.

Furthermore, why has the movement of people to your town created an affordability crisis in the first place? If the existing residents are opposing increased building, then it's not really the newcomers fault. If you're building to meet demand, why are prices going up?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Why is the future of housing always having less?

<comment><USER25> Because we're on track to be 10 billion soon.

<comment><USER26> Small nitpick, but it's estimated that global population will peak at approx. 8.7 billion before starting to decrease. See: [https://www.cnbc.com/id/101018722](https://www.cnbc.com/id/101018722)

<comment><USER25> That's very optimistic.

"The median estimate for future growth sees the world population reaching 8.6 billion in 2030, 9.8 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion by 2100" (2017)

Source: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_grow...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_growth)

<comment><USER27> People typically have fewer kids as their society develops. Average age in the developed world is almost double of places like Africa. There is some evidence that slowing or decline in population is a reasonable expectation.

Also, from Wikipedia:

Low estimates suggest a decline

Moderate estimates suggest a plateau

High estimates suggest constant increase

Time will tell, and estimates suggest that the earth can comfortably support ~10bn

\---

I don't think housing prices have much to do with population increase, but more to do with urbanization (as well as increasing wage gaps).

People are flocking to existing cities, and the more center you are the higher prices are.

This pushes people to the outskirts, which become more urbanized, which spreads urbanization through the same cycle.

<comment><USER25> Increased urbanisation is at best marginal in Western countries. This is not what is driving prices.

But top places like London now attract from a global pool of billions.

People need to realise that a world with 10 billion does not look like a world with 2 billion.

Lastly, the planet has trouble with us now... It's terrorism to suggest that 10 billion is just fine.

<comment><USER27> >Lastly, the planet has trouble with us now... It's terrorism to suggest that 10 billion is just fine.

Calling it terrorism is a bit absurd.

It's totally possible (and even likely within our lifetimes), but that doesn't mean that there aren't huge logistical issues to overcome for it to be comfortable.

One of the main problems is that the world population is so widely distributed. We can already feed and house everyone, we already have more resources than what would be required... they're just not distributed appropriately (some due to hoarding, some due to supply chain barriers, political borders, etc).

<comment><USER25> Considering the current environmental issues this is not absurd at all.

<comment><USER27> It is because I didn't say it was "just fine" I said "can" as in "is possible" — which is objectively true.

...and even if I did say it was "just fine" it wouldn't be tantamount to terrorism because I was pointing out something that is very likely inevitable.

I'm not invoking 3 billion people by assuming one day they will exist.

<comment><USER25> It is intellectual terrorism. I am sorry but sometimes things must be called out even if the feelings of thin-skinned people are hurt.

It is only 'inevitable' because no-one has cared about it and, worse because some try to downplay the issue.

I did not accuse you personally, but you also did not say that it was inevitable, you spread the opinion that it was fine.

Those who claim that it is all good are pushing us to the abyss.

Edit: Downvoting the inconvenient truth won't make it go away.

<comment><USER27> I don't know if anyone's ever told you this, but you're being outwardly shitty when you have no reason to be. You're just throwing the word terrorism around disingenuously to get a rise out of people.

<comment><USER25> It was not disingenuous. You complain too much while avoiding the point.

<comment><USER27> Your only point is that the suggestion of the earth supporting 10bn people is akin to terrorism (which you later amended to "intellectual terrorism"), which I'd argue is objectively disingenuous... and completely pointless.

This conversation has reached the point of unproductive a while ago.

I'm sure you'll try to bait me back into it, because you fit that MO, but you're on your own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> My friends and I have all thought about doing this. We still think about doing this a lot but we're afraid of a dispute coming up and ruining our friendship. We want to do it but we don't want to risk our group friendship.

<comment><USER29> I have done this twice, once ages 24-31 and once 31-34. Both ended up being financially advantageous, especially the first time around when few of my peers were buying houses. Both times it ended up being complicated. It didn't ruin friendships or result in bad feelings between us, but it wasn't easy.

The first time though I wanted to move out before the other owner wanted to sell, so he stayed another 2 or 3 years and I was just a silent landlord, which was okay but made it impossible for me to get another mortgage or even a new credit card. In the end he got married and wanted to sell. This was in the DC area where the market was pretty much always hot, so selling the property was easy. Anywhere else it could have been more complicated.

The second time my friendship deteriorated over the course of the time I lived there because of external circumstances, in the end the other owner agreed to refinance and buy me out, and there was a little tension during the process but I think we both walked away satisfied with the outcome. One of the reasons our friendship deteriorated was because as we grew into adulthood, my friend chose a career in the service industry, and I chose a career as a teacher, and it sucked living with someone who had the opposite schedule. Over time as we settled into our lives, our social schedules diverged as well, which was definitely detrimental to our relationship.

I would actually recommend it either to people who are young and early in their adulthood, so that they have lots of flexibility and don't mind the challenges and inconveniences that it entails, or to people who are well settled in adulthood who already have similar lifestyles, employment situations, work schedules, etc. to minimize friction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> As someone who co-signed on a loan in the past and had to short sell, I advise you to keep paying rent, save money and only purchase a home you can afford instead.

</comment><comment><USER31> I lived with room mates for nearly 20 years. I would have made a lot of money if I bought with them instead of renting, so I can see the benefits of this.

<comment> m-i-l Or instead of buying with them, you could have bought yourself and rented to them. This is what I did for the first approx 10 years of property ownership. My first place was even just a 1 bed flat, but had a separate kitchen, so I was able to rent the living room as a second bedroom. At the time, the rental income was enough to pay the mortgage, and tax free under the "Rent A Room" scheme[0]. From some quick calculations, I think this is still a viable approach, although the rental income is unlikely to pay the full mortgage now, and some of the income is likely to be above the tax free threshold.

[0] [https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/income-tax- rent-a...](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/income-tax-rent-a-room- relief/income-tax-rent-a-room-relief)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I have a hard time understanding all the negative reactions to this. I think it would be helpful if people separated the emotionally driven ideas of "friends" and "living together" with the more business driven idea of partnerships that acquire assets.

I wish I would have never rented. It would be a huge advantage for anyone to accelerate their entry in to buying property by combining capital early on. Yes, you and your partners have to be grown up and treat it like a business - not like frat bro room mates. Yes, there is a risk that someone will not hold up their end of the deal but that is true with any business partnership, hence the need to choose your partners wisely. The bottom line is, this is a great way for people to impact their balance sheet significantly over their lifetime by starting early.

<comment><USER33> The earlier you start, the less life experience you have, and therefore the less wisdom you can apply to the problem of choosing your partners.

</comment></comment><comment> m-i-l There was a startup that aimed to "help people buy property together"[0], although it looks like it was dissolved in May 2018[1] (despite the web site still being up). (Side note: I wish companies that were no longer operating would shut down their websites - there used to be a mirror shop near where I live that still has a website listing its address and phone number, and is still near top results for a search for mirrors in my area, despite the shop having been shut and the building demolished nearly a decade ago.)

[0] [http://neatsplit.com/](http://neatsplit.com/)

[1] [https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/09581451](https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/09581451)

</comment><comment><USER34> I think housing should be a basic human right. Just get Elon Musk to build affordable underground tunnel homes with his Boring company. He wants to build a city on Mars, so why not test the technology (and social aspects) here on Earth where it's much easier.

Housing is a political problem, not a technological one.

<comment><USER35> I agree that it's a political problem, but your solution is baffling to me. Instead of addressing the inequalities above ground, like millions of homes going unused while millions of people are homeless, you want to let a private company put poor people in mole-man colonies underground??

<comment><USER36> Well there is some sense to it: with the extreme weather we have to look forward to thanks to climate change, it'll make a lot of sense to burrow underground and live there. Underground colonies would be mostly immune to hurricanes, for instance, and probably a lot easier to keep warm when polar vortexes result in -50C temperatures outside in the winter, and easier to keep cool when it's 60C+ in the summer.

<comment><USER37> Maybe it'll be like the history of lobsters, where it starts as housing for the poor but eventually becomes housing for the rich.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> This seems more like an issue of not being able to afford housing anymore in areas where there's enough demand for work.

Feels dystopian to see the future as having less.

</comment><comment><USER39> A mechanism to build apartment buildings cooperatively with friends, with ownership still subdivided among the tenants, in the style of the German baugruppe, is much more sustainable than multiple families sharing a single house: [https://grist.org/cities/i-want-to-live-in-a- baugruppe/](https://grist.org/cities/i-want-to-live-in-a-baugruppe/)

</comment><comment><USER40> That sounds unpleasant. All of the downsides of living with family and few upsides. Might as well just go back to multi-generational family housing. At least then grandma would be on site to help with my kids...

<comment><USER41> > All of the downsides of living with family and few upsides

You choose your friends, not your family. So unless you're not discriminating who your friends are, I don't see how it's similar to family at all.

<comment><USER40> At least with my family I have bonds that go above and beyond the house we live in. Getting into a mortgage with friends sounds perilous.

<comment><USER41> I think it comes down to working with what your resources afford you and weighing the risks vs. rewards.

By involving friends it's entirely possible to avoid a mortgage altogether. Living mortgage and rent-free buys a lot of tolerance for others in my experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Maybe the future is kids figuring out that they don't need to live in the city. It's the city's fault if they want to push potential employees out.

<comment><USER43> Everything old becomes new again.

I expect that we'll eventually see a resurgence in the attractiveness of suburban and rural housing. There's something about having free space and a general level of independence that you can't really get in an urban area, even if you're weathly enough to own your own property.

Of course, it's going to take an uptick in well-paying suburban jobs, but I see no reason why large companies won't start investing again in cheap office space for satellite offices, in particular as a way to bridge remote and central office working environments.

<comment><USER42> I don't live in New York or LA, so to some people I might as well be a hill- jack. But I very much appreciate as much space as possible. I've also noticed a huge increase in full or partly remote positions in recent years. It's fun going into the office once in awhile, but once I'm there I'm working from the same machine and chatting online.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Buying with friends is a good way to end up with a lot of problems.

Are you absolutely sure that you really want to spend every day living with your college buddies for the 30 years of a mortgage, covering them when they are short, either living with their filth or cleaning up after them, as well as dealing with all the long term house guests and pets they bring in?

The court cases resolving these sorts of breakups make bitter divorces look like a walk in the park.

But they are not quite as bad as when two business partners who started a business without an ironclad contract have a break up.

Having fun with someone once a week to watch sports on TV on weekends, playing beach sports, hiking and camping, hanging out in pubs, etc, doesn't mean you're compatible enough to have fun living with them every single day in a small space for several decades.

Notable exception is long term unmarried best friends who are basically married to each other but it's platonic. These relationships are fairly rare.

Pushing friend mortgages to the general public as a solution to unaffordable housing is a good strategy for mortgage brokers and real estate agents who work in those markets. They don't have to deal with the fall out of the break up so it's only upside from their point of view.

</comment><comment><USER45> Housing cooperatives have a long tradition.

</comment><comment><USER46> My friends in Toronto co-bought a giant home in a great neighbourhood.

Vice media covered their story: [https://free.vice.com/en_ca/article/59xp9z/how-six- friends-p...](https://free.vice.com/en_ca/article/59xp9z/how-six-friends- pooled-their-money-to-buy-a-dollar13-million-house-in- toronto?utm_source=vicecanadafbca&utm_campaign=global)

</comment><comment><USER47> This isn't the future for my family or for any family with children. I grew up in a communal apartment in Russia, and let me tell you how suffocating it was to exist day in and day out in the company of strangers and their quirks.

And what of those who have no friends? I struggle to name one person in this world who would qualify as a friend, let alone someone with whom I'd like to enter in a long term financial commitment.

<comment><USER48> I agree mostly with your former statement, though keep in mind these people would be friends, not strangers. Even with friends it's all fun and games in the planning stages until you're locked into a mortgage with someone who clips their nails all over the house, leaves dirty dishes everywhere, and lets their kids spit on the floor. I love my friends, but seeing them 24/7 would drive me nuts.

> I struggle to name one person in this world who would qualify as a friend

I find that hard to believe, even if you have to lower your friendship bar to "guy who says 'hi' and asks how you're doing at the hardware store". Barring that, I'll be your friend old bean.

<comment><USER49> ~Great! Now go buy a house with... green account... from peri-soviet Russia... named "triplewipeass"!~

~No? Some friend you are.~

Stable, low-movement societies are more amenable to deep friendships, as one of the primate-brain requirements is mere proximity. We have to see, speak with, and touch the people who become our friends. Long-distance relationships are weaker and require far more effort--generally only worth it for courting and upkeep of pre-existing friendships.

Military brats whose parents are frequently relocated often have trouble forming lifelong friendships, for instance. College might be their one opportunity to get to know someone well enough to stay friends after graduation, if they can afford to go. And that's just within a handful of closely-related cultures in the same country. Is it so hard to believe for someone with multiple _xeno_ factors? Not speaking mother tongue, possibly with an accent. Not in the culture in which they were raised. Possibly different religion. No mutual acquaintances.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I doubt it's the future, at least not for the long-term. Co-buying really only works well for younger professionals - not enough cash to buy solo, but still enough cash to get out and move on (hopefully).

A better solution would be cutting the larger homes into condos (owner- occupied flats). Or, if the house isn't conducive to that, tear-down and rebuild as condos.

<comment><USER10> It doesn't really work for them either; a mortgage is a 30 year commitment. Do you really want to have such a commitment for 30 years with the people you now consider to be your friends? This seems to heavily bet on both people's incomes increasing and the housing prices to increase, which seems to work out alright in the current economic climate (just not in the UK, ironically enough), but it's not a guarantee and not something you want to bet your future on.

<comment><USER51> A mortgage doesn't need to be a 30 year commitment. When I run rent vs buy calculators, it usually becomes a good decision around 10 years -- of course this varies dramatically from city to city.

Note: This is for comparing rent vs buy of properties of equal value. But I'm just trying to make a point about the commitment of a mortgage.

<comment><USER49> The important thing is that the rent-vs-buy inflection point is N years _in the future_. If N is 10, you have to believe that your current situation will be stable for the _next_ 10 years, which is at least partially independent of the number of years it has already been stable.

I have lived in the same place for about 10 years, so had I bought when I first moved, it would have been a good decision (only in retrospect). But 10 years ago, I had no idea how long I was going to be here. The job that got me to move only lasted 2 years. At no point during that 10 years did I ever believe I would still be here--and, more importantly, earning equal or greater income--10 years later. I still don't. The risk I face in loss of all mortgage-paying income is greater when I _can 't_ consider quick relocation to a hotter city for jobs, which is what happens when you buy an immobile, illiquid asset.

It has _never_ been a good decision for me to buy a home. Both times I actually did buy, I had to move earlier than the inflection point, for job- seeking reasons, and take a big loss compared to renting for that same period.

The job market and housing market are inextricably intertwined. People need to live near the place that they work. If they don't have firm, stable career prospects for the next five years, at minimum, and they buy on a mortgage anyway, they will on average lose more of their money to bankers and real estate agents than they would have to rental landlords. Home-ownership is a trailing indicator for the health of local careers, not the other way around. If you don't have good job security, reasonable expectation of finding new mortgage-paying jobs quickly, or enough saved to buy your home in cash and still have some left over for expenses, you should _never_ buy.

The middlemen all earn the most when the churn rate falls into the realm of bad financial planning. If you have to sell your house and plow the proceeds into a new one frequently, the transfer middlemen earn more. If you refinance a new 30-year mortgage every 0 to 5 years, the bankers earn more. But fewer people can really expect to have same-job-same-house for the next 10 years, and they are still buying, on bad advice issued by those who will benefit most, not realizing that they are choosing poorly.

<comment><USER51> Sure, but I also didn't know I would live in my city as long as I did. So I should have bought earlier. Bad predictions can work both ways, you do the best you can.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> This can certainly work out but it's much riskier than a solo or married couple purchase. When it works out it's an amazing arrangement. So high risk high reward, I guess.

Architecture seems important too. Every couple I know who successfully lived with another couple or singleton, each person/couple had their own floor to retreat to.

<comment><USER53> Is it really riskier than a married couple purchase, assuming the friends have lived together for a reasonable period before? There's 39 divorces for every 100 marriages in the UK, and needless to say it's a lot easier to draw up "what happens if you want to move or can't make mortgage payments" contracts between friends...

<comment><USER52> It is, because there is an entire legal framework around marriage and asset ownership whereas there's no legal framework around BFFs. A married couple has the "benefit" of going through divorce proceedings where a judge divides up assets equitably and it's legally enforced with a divorce decree. If you're buying a house with a friend you're going to want to draft up an contract to avoid "no man's land."

Then there's the "mixing business and friendship" issue. Civil marriage is _already_ a type of business partnership, whereas friendship is not, so you're adding a new business partnership. If your buying with friends you're risking your friendship.

I know someone who owns a house with her brother and it's a shit show.

You're also tripling your exposure (3 people rather than 1)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Why would I want to buy a house at all, much less with other people? Some anecdata and heuristics incoming: I know someone who owns his house and he had a plumbing problem in his basement recently; huge pain and expense. Folks in their 20s are seeing these stories. Cultural criticism and call-out culture makes it clear to us that productive communication and friendships are actually hard to do, and that just because you're "supposed" to buy a house and have 2.1 kids plus dog doesn't mean you really have to to be a "successful person!"

I think if people my age see the economic incentives like I am, they are going to move in to apartments, where they can just autopay rent and worry about degrees of magnitude less things that could go wrong, or just move out of the country where they can make more money?

</comment><comment><USER55> My brother did that with some friends so that they could own a house in the Bay Area. I'm glad they're happy, but it seems a little crazy to me.

(I lived in the bay area for a year, but then moved back to Ohio. Housing prices weren't the main reason, but they were a small part of why I moved.)

</comment><comment><USER56> I always thought that it would be interesting if houses could be bought through more flexible financial arrangements like other financial instruments. Say for example I wanted to buy a house but I would be the majority shareholder with a 51% stake in it and I would like to sell the other 49% to investors that want exposure to the property market (which they would already have but in the sense that they would want to take a more active view in this shareholding) . You as the majority shareholder would get to live in it while only putting up 51% of the capital. Of course as someone stated below there would be many difficulties in this not least the explosion in property prices as demand goes up.

<comment><USER57> I don't see why you can't do this now. Draw up an ownership contract and shares etc. This should be workable as long as you don't need a mortgage, and you'll likely need to incorporate, so the deed will be owned by an LLC or some such.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> The future of housing is people paying ever more for ever smaller places to live, because bubbles just keep growing indefinitely and markets don't get disrupted. The tendency of employers to offer 100% home office work is a factor that can easily reverse this trend, for one.

</comment><comment><USER59> In New Zealand, the banks commonly require personal guarantees on this type of mortgage. As a result my friend declared himself bankrupt when 1. his co-owner stopped paying his share of the loan 2. the rent didn't cover the mortgage payments 3. the sale price was less than the purchase price. In other words read the loan documentation very carefully and think about the consequences in a worst-case scenario.

</comment><comment><USER60> this will take off if and when the market lets it ie, banks need to have mortgages that have >2 people, standardised contracts and housing _designed_ for co-living. it's a big difference between sharing a nuclear-family-designed house with friends and sharing something that has alone-space and communal- space.

personally, i think co-housing will take off. It's pretty standard in Norway for instance IIRC.

</comment><comment><USER61> What type of legal abstraction would provide the features needed to make it safe and sensible as a practice? Incorporation with shares?

</comment><comment><USER62> There's nothing new about this. It's like having a co-founder in a relatively low risk small business. The fact that we need a co-founder to aford a shelter says a lot about where our society is heading and the simple presence of such articles should worry us.

</comment><comment><USER63> Lots of different opinions here, but I do believe buying housing in groups/syndicates will become something we see more often.

Most can't afford 100% of a great deal in the beginning, though, they could afford the 10%.

</comment><comment> throwaway-1283 I see a few startups that are doing rent-to-own or get down payment help for equity in your home.

Some people will scoff at sharing upside in your home, but IMO it makes more sense than this.

<comment><USER64> Shared appreciation/whatever you want to call it is only really appropriate in my view where you have a strong view that your income is likely to grow more quickly over the next few years than house prices.

This is because these schemes are usually limited in availability in such a way that you can't rely on them being there again when you decide to move up - so you need to be sure you can borrow a mortgage of the size of the amount of shared appreciation you are paying back to be able to move up (otherwise you'll get "trapped" \- you can only afford to move to a cheaper house or stay where you are).

If you don't think your income will rise that quickly, or you think house prices will rise even faster, you'd be better off buying a place you can afford without shared appreciation and taking the biggest traditional mortgage you can get.

If you think prices are going to fall but want/need to buy now anyway then they are a fantastic deal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> A network of friends is to insecure to finance a long term commitment. Banks exist for a purpose.

But in Germany for example, Landesbanks and Sparkasses offer friendly terms to people.

<comment><USER66> In Germany there is also a strong network to help:

[https://www.syndikat.org/en/](https://www.syndikat.org/en/)

In the end you only own half of it for as long as you live in it, _but_ anyone can walk away and be replaced without problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> From my point of view, I'd say that friendships now are more superficial than before, so I don't see this happening on a large scale

</comment><comment><USER68> Any fans of the fiction of Kim Stanley Robinson are nodding their heads at this news. Communal living is a big theme with his stuff.

</comment><comment><USER69> Living in a space with a suite for each person / couple and shared common space might be ok.

</comment><comment> throwaway-1283 Anecdotally, I only know of unmarried partners buying houses together, but not platonic friends.

</comment><comment><USER70> No, BBC, the future is not yet another generation of youngsters paying more for less and resorting to obviously impractical group mortgages in support of your relentless pro house price inflation agenda. The future is for them to have some semblance of security of tenure without having to "get on the housing ladder" and prop up the whole sordid ponzi scheme.

<comment><USER71> The future is socially owned housing.

<comment><USER72> Doesn't the UK call those council houses? And people are usually trying to get out of them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> I hope not. Friends can quickly turn.

<comment><USER49> Faster than old milk poured on older fish.

If your business relationship requires friendship to begin, that friendship will be exhausted by the time it fails.

If you enter in to such an arrangement, you need to forget that your partners are your friends, and instead imagine that they are all either evil goblins trying to screw you and take your share, or evil faeries that will disappear on a whim to a land that you cannot reach.

A business relationship that still works between mortal enemies can certainly hold up when the partners have a relationship more cordial than constantly trying to kill each other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> Ah, the big cities are turning into a shit-hole for many people. It is interesting that both politicians and rentiers will ignore the signs until a full collapse.

How hard will it be to move government jobs and private jobs (with special tax breaks) to a different nearby city?

I mean: London, Paris, New York. Over-priced shit-holes. Check the apartments that the average guy/middle class family can get. The apartments in both London and Paris are real shit-holes. Amenities (like doors, toilets, kitchens) are from the 60s.

The solution is actually not quite sophisticated: Move government jobs first. Most people will move when offered a new, clean, affordable city that they can live in. Brazil did this with Brasilia. The US has Las Vegas.

Positive side effects:

\+ The people from the country side where the project will be built will become instantly rich. They hold large lands that new developers will pay (relatively little) for. So wealth moves from the average guy to the poorer ones instead of the rich ones.

\+ New, Modern transportation system are easier to build in an empty plot of land.

\+ You'll probably have underground parking in your condominium.

\+ You pay less for rent/mortgage but you get to live on a 21st century apartment or house.

<comment><USER75> Except that it's not 1950.</comment></comment>


American toddlers are eating more sugar than the amount recommended for adults - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1302201/american-toddlers-are-eating-more-sugar-than-the-amount-recommended-for-adults/ <comment><USER2> Last year I went a month avoiding any food or drink that contained added sugar.

Health benefits aside (I was also exercising a lot more and drinking less, so I can't comment on specific benefits), it was incredibly hard.

It wasn't the sugar cravings that were hard. I didn't get them at all, I didn't miss sweet food or sugar one bit. The hard part was actually finding food that didn't contain added sugar.

I was basically relegated to preparing all my food from scratch. Practically anything in a packet contained sugar. Even the most innocuous things would contain it. Obviously some things only contain low amounts and that's normal (e.g. cured meats), but I couldn't eat most bread, any sauces, the vast majority of pre-prepared meals (except for "paleo" meals), or any spice mixes. Even bottled mayonnaise contains sugar!

It made trying to find a snack incredibly difficult, I basically had to eat carrots and hummus.

At least whisky contains no added sugar (caramel colouring wasn't counted as sugar, in this case).

<comment><USER3> > relegated to preparing all my food from scratch

> find a snack incredibly difficult [..] I basically had to eat carrots and > hummus

You make it sound as if it was not normal to cook your own food from basic ingredients and not regularly eat processed snacks.

<comment><USER4> Practically everything I eat comes out of a package these days. I'd prefer it wasn't like that, but it was the easiest way to measure calories when I was losing weight. You don't lose half your body weight by not making extreme sacrifices, despite what charlatans might tell you in an effort to sell you something.

After I hit my lowest weight I decided to ease up on the extreme calorie counting and shift my efforts towards eating simple home cooked meals since they'd be less expensive and, if you believe the common wisdom, healthier. Consequently, I put on about 30 pounds. This was mostly eating tofu, eggs, potatoes, fruit, mushrooms, various vegetables, cheese, and homemade bread (usually whole grain).

So I went back to what worked. One other thing eating packaged foods did was give me a bunch of time back. I'm still about 10 pounds up from that experiment.

<comment><USER5> I don't know what you've tried, in terms of home preparation of food. One strategy is to switch to two meals a day, plus one snack. Another is to focus on high-volume, low calorie density foods, such as vegetables and beans, while limiting high-calorie dense foods such as bread, cheese, and meat. This allows you to feel full from fewer calories. Another way to think about this is to dramatically increase your fiber intake (and not just from hard fruits, but from a variety of sources). For example, if you were to make a pasta dish, use half the regular amount of pasta, and greatly increase the amount of veggies in it, so the pasta is just a small component of the dish.

<comment><USER4> I've been fighting my body for the better part of a decade now, trust me when I say that I've probably tried every piece of advice ever parrotted on the internet. For instance the high-volume low-calorie high-fiber plan ultimately just made me extremely bloated and often constipated.

<comment><USER5> The bloating is caused by the production of gas by the bacteria in your gut. If you add a lot of fiber at once, the bacteria will overpopulate, and produce too much gas, causing bloating/distension. One way to avoid this is to gradually increase the amount of fiber, so your microbiome will adjust slowly, allowing you to avoid the excess gas/bloating. Not sure what to say about the constipation, though it could be a similar issue.

These things are not simple, are they?

One strategy is to focus on the healthy veggies that your genetic ancestors likely ate; your body is more likely to be adapted to those foods.

<comment><USER4> I didn't ask for your advice and I'm not a moron so I know how to use google just as well as you do.

This is the shit I'm talking about. If you have difficult losing and maintaining weight people crawl out of the woodwork to parrot bullshit advice they got from some clickbait article as though knowledge isn't the easiest part of the process. People don't have difficulty with their weight because they lack knowledge, people have difficulty with their weight because suffering sucks and the human body doesn't like having to eat itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You need to tackle this stuff early on. Here in Norway sweets are banned from pre-school and school in lunch boxes, including for birth days. There are no pre-school or school celebrations involving sweets.

The kids get involved early in learning about healthy food making and we get a cook book about what sort of food one should make for children when they start school.

This is something so serious for people's future and life that I don't think one can focus enough on it.

<comment><USER7> > Here in Norway sweets are banned from pre-school and school in lunch boxes

This seems reasonable.

I remember seeing 'Supersize me' where kids were fed with junk food (e.g. pizza, chocolate bars, sodas) at school. Is that representative of American schools or did they pick the worst ones to make their point?

<comment><USER8> It varies by location and affluence. When I was going to a public elementary school in the midwest, in the very early 1990s, we had "pizza days" that happened once or twice a month but generally the food was fairly healthy.

I think they maybe had deserts like pudding sometimes. There were no sodas or junk food available at all. The drink choices were 2% milk, chocolate milk, or water.

What I do remember is the food seemed fairly low quality. Canned and frozen packaged stuff, never anything resembling fresh. Every kid got the exact same meal unless you had some medical exemption.

In high school there were some bad choices available in the menu. There were soda and junk food vending machines, but they weren't part of the normal cafeteria and I never had money for them. While there were unhealthy options, there were also many healthy options and you simply bought what you wanted. The freshness was maybe a step up from elementary school.

I think there may have been efforts to remove the vending machines since my time there.

<comment><USER9> > In high school there were all sorts of bad choices. There were soda and junk > food vending machines.

I read a bunch of years ago in Branded by Alissa Quart of American schools where soda giants would fund equipment for the sports teams _and_ provide free soda for the cafeteria. So the school would both have to pay for their own drinks in the cafeteria and refuse sponsorship of the sports team to avoid being involved with soda the companies. It just makes economic sense in that case to let the soda company rope the kids in.

It's been a while since I read it, and I can't verify the truth. For me, it sounds like schools should have no part in getting kids addicted to soda.

<comment><USER6> That is just sad. I think it is for good reason here in Norway that companies can not contribute to school funding. They try to keep private money out of schools, so that you don't end up with A and B schools because some parents are richer than others.

I think the corporate sponsorship you talk about here also means that the pressure to fund schools properly through taxes are taken away. It gets too easy to avoid taxes by getting others to pay.

<comment><USER10> > That is just sad. I think it is for good reason here in Norway that > companies can not contribute to school funding.

I had a great High School class in genetics that would not have been possible without large donations of money and equipment from a local biotech company.

I have fewer problems with companies donating science equipment, computers, and the like. There have been occasional issues with corporate donated history books though...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's absolutely mind blowing that this article doesn't mention _diabetes_ as the main problem from eating too much sugar. It affects a third of Americans and is spreading around the world at an alarming rate. Why is that? Why is it that my mother knew about sugar and diabetes, but it's almost as if we forgot and are painfully trying to prove the connection again.

<comment><USER12> Just look at the advertising and lobbying spending of sugar industry to gauge their power over population's discretionary spending.Also, bulk of their marketing spend is during cartoon programming of kids, "catch'em young"!

They successfully shifted blame from sugar to fat as cause of modern lifestyle diseases for last two decades. Would highly recommend the book "Case against Sugar" by Gary Taubes discussed amply here[0] and here[1].

Also recommend the documentary "Super Size Me"[2] a revealing take on workings of fast food industry.

[0][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12480733](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12480733)

[1][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15521882](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15521882)

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

<comment><USER13> I agree with you for the first two points, but Supersize Me is a sham of science.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> 'We've long known that processed sugar is bad for kids.' Why 'for kids'? It's bad for everyone. People don't realize sugar is the most socially accepted and legal drug ever and with more addicts I would say.

There's plenty of studies that talk about how bad are added sugars. Governments don't do enough to contain this drug.

WHO recommends free sugars to be less than 10% of daily calorie intake. And suggests going down to 5%. Source: [http://www.who.int/nutrition/publications/guidelines/sugar_i...](http://www.who.int/nutrition/publications/guidelines/sugar_intake_information_note_en.pdf) An adult that takes 2000 calories, should not take more than 25g of free sugars. Now tell me if it's easy for you to not go over the limit.

Kids and todlers food has more sugar than adult processed food, maybe so they create a dependency on sugary products since they are babies? And so they buy these products when they are older.

We've all seen kids asking cookies and shitty food instead of vegetables (or unprocessed food), they get angry and parents have to say 'no, you've to have lunch now'. Isn't that strange? We are so used to this.

Food is not only calories. Quality of ingredients matter. Plenty of studies relate refined oils, flours, sugars to cancer, diabetes, heart problems. Cheap, easy to get != healthy. It's cheap and unhealthy because ingredients are low quality.

Was processed food in supermarkets a hundred years ago? Humans don't need it. Of course food is safer than 100 years ago, but also processed food has pulled apart healthy and unprocessed food from our diets.

Nestle, Coca-Cola, Unilever, they are in universities, associations, etc... we see plenty of cases here in Spain. They do courses for professionals... and they are the brands with the best public perception. And we say advertising doesn't work?

So many inputs when you go to a supermarket and so easy to fall for a chocolate bar, for some cereals, sweetened yogurts, refined flours white breads... Then, they try to sell you some (supposedly healthy) food because it has some part of bio unrefined flours, but it's the same disguised as healthy.

To avoid all these games they play you just have to look for vegetables, fish, (some) meat, dairy products, eggs, fruits, dried fruits... just unprocessed food or foods like canned peas and other minimal treated foods were a physical process like boiling has been applied.

<comment><USER15> Do you have any book recommendations or resources for eating healthier?

<comment><USER16> I just read "Always Hungry" by David Ludwig and it is pretty good. I like the fact the book has a number of recipes as well. If you're trying to lose fat, then really the key is just eat a diet that keeps insulin low. There has been a lot written on this topic, so you should be able to find information on this very easily if you haven't come across this idea already.

With that being said, I've found that cutting out sugar and fast digesting carbs isn't hard due to not knowing what foods to eat, but it is hard because you have to plan meals and it can be psychologically difficult, especially at first. You have to plan meals and cook since it is near impossible to find food that aren't packed with sugar or fast digesting carbohydrates. This requires a time investment and potentially clearing up some time in your schedule. If you are someone who rarely cooks, this is a huge change. Some psychological barriers that I have personally experienced:

\- Dispelling beliefs like "Life is not worth living without beer".

\- Finding healthier ways of managing stress than eating sugary food, fast digesting carbs or drinking.

\- Not just eating or drinking something because you're out with friends/family and they are doing it.

\- Turning down offers from coworkers for unhealthy snacks at work.

\- Having a reason to continue on the diet such that you won't just quit when things get tough.

\- Getting through the initial stress of taking sugar and fast digesting carbs out of your diet since your body and brain will be used to using that as fuel and you have to initially feel worse before you feel better.

If only we lived in a world where most of our food wasn't garbage and most people didn't eat garbage, then all of this would be so much easier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wow... ${expletives}. It is all starting to make sense to me now.

Ref what I wrote on [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17017920](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17017920) :

"As a Norwegian, when I visited Boston in 1999 for an Allaire dev conference I saw more grossly fat / obese people in the _hour_ spent switching flights at Newark airport than I had in my (then) home country in the preceding year. I was really taken aback."

I never got my now 7y son into juices etc and Coke products are generally banned in our home. He has a very healthy body weight, so that's one fewer thing he has to worry about whilst growing up.

<comment><USER18> I was in Copenhagen earlier this year and I commented to my wife and our friends multiple times on how there were just no obese people anywhere. You Scandinavians are obviously doing something right.

<comment><USER6> A lot of that comes down to much stronger belief in government regulation and initiative. In the US it seems there is an outrage every time somebody suggests some kind of regulation to promote health and welfare.

I suspect that outrage is partly manufactured by the sugar and junk food industry though.

Copenhagen is also very active in getting people to bike in town instead of driving.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There's a huge problem in the US with what we describe as healthy. Cereal is a huge culprit. All cereals say they're "a healthy part of a balanced breakfast". But almost all of them contain an absolutely ridiculous amount of sugar. Cookie-crisps, golden grams and cinnamon toast crunch are absolutely not a healthy meal. It's disgusting that it can be called such.

I hope cereal sounds as blasphemous in the future as the old 50's soda commercials do now. "It's never too early to start your child on a soda regimen. Soda is proven to help your teen fit in". [ EDIT: Apparently this soda commercial was fake ]

<comment><USER20> > "It's never too early to start your child on a soda regimen. Soda is proven > to help your teen fit in"."

FYI, that ad was fake: [http://rjwhite.tumblr.com/post/472668874/fact- checking](http://rjwhite.tumblr.com/post/472668874/fact-checking)

<comment><USER19> Oh good! I was shocked when I saw that. Guess I should probably double check when I see stuff like that. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The food industry needs a lot more regulation IMHO. It often misleads the consumer with its marketing, but a cereal or juice drink is not healthy when it's rammed full of sugar.

<comment><USER22> > food industry

When you refine the addictive, pleasure-causing white powder out of a plant and make cocaine or heroine we call it a drug. For historical reasons when we do it to make sugar we call it food, but it seems more of a drug.

Maybe drug regulations should apply.

<comment><USER23> > For historical reasons

Seems more likely that it's because people eat sugar, and they don't eat heroin or cocaine.

<comment><USER24> People chew and brew coca like coffee and tea

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > _The study found that toddlers 12 to 18 months consumed 5.5 teaspoons per > day, and that toddlers 19 to 23 months consumed 7.1 teaspoons._

 _Toddlers consumed_? More like parents fed them. Toddlers eat what's put in front of them.

> _parents might want to consider cutting soft drinks, fruit drinks, . . ._

"might want to consider*?!?!

Might they want to consider not giving the kids cocaine too?

<comment><USER25> The parents at my kids' school talk about "trying" to get their kids to eat right. I just dont get it. You want them to eat something? You give it to them! If you don't want them to eat something then don't put it on the table. This could not be simpler. My kids beg for chard and broccoli.

<comment><USER26> I think in America there is a huge misconception on what 'hungry' actually is/feels like.

People think that if you don't stuff your kid 3 times a day with massive quantities of food, they will fade away over night. It's very easy to refuse food and be picky when you are not truly hungry.

My personal rule of thumb is if my least favorite food doesn't sound edible, I don't actually need to eat.

<comment><USER27> I've got a nephew-to-be in Israel who's a really picky eater, and his parents resort to bribing him sugar to get him to eat healthier stuff.

But, like, the kid is demonstrably underweight for his age, shorter than all his classmates, etc. So I don't know if just starving him is the right call either. Some people (you) get lucky and don't have to make the decision, but sometimes it actually _is_ hard to get kids to eat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I see this happening a lot. For eg, on youtube I often see Casey neistat buying candies,marshmallow candy for his daughter. Now i am not targeting him.just pointing out what i notice.(he has made great videos on actual calory content in butgers etc).He also has some juice many a times after runs, i dunno whether that's healthy juice without sugar. But, basically parents give in to kid's demands. Also, lack of suitable choices. I am in India, and even see poor mothers,kids purchasing chips or eating some refined flour item on roadside coz it's easily available. Also, a while ago i read that in Brazil ,Nestle has these agents who sell nestle food poducts door2door, also obesity has risen due to high consumption of cheap ,packaged products like Nestle's. Big Food,Big Oil are the most prime corporate evils whose actions will be felt for many decades to come. I guess there are food startups trying to make good products, but haven't heard of a lot. I dunno whether their low sugar initiatives aee actually good, i mean it's obvious that after a cetain time they will have to change or perish but the question is how long.

<comment><USER29> Fruit juice IS sugar, whether they add HFCS or not. There's really not significant difference between kinds of sugars biologically, the amount of sugar you can take in from juiced fruits is astronomical.

<comment><USER30> Just for completeness: The _actual_ fruits are fine, though. Something (fibers play a part, but apparently can't explain the whole effect) in the whole fruits changes the absorbtion.

<comment><USER31> It takes 3-6 apples to make a glass of apple juice. It's easy to drink a glass of apple juice and want another but nobody is going to eat 3-6 apples. That's a key difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Recently spent a month in SF after having spent a month in japan : US needs to restart its food habits from scratch. yes, you can eat very healthily if you're ready to spend 40$ per meal ( either in restaurants or buying in organic groceries), but anything under that price will get you fat, sweeten,artifically flavored, huge piles of sh __*t.

And this was SF. I can't even imagine how it's like in the average US city.

<comment><USER33> > if you're ready to spend 40$ per meal ( either in restaurants or buying in > organic groceries), but anything under that price will get you fat, > sweeten,artifically flavored, huge piles of sh*t.

This is really exaggerated. I lived in SF, and would easily prepare healthy meals for ~$6-8 per meal ($2-3 for some proteins, $1 or less for some portion of rice or some bread, and the rest for vegetables). Maybe $10 max if I felt like eating avocado :)

For one thing, healthy != organic. As much as pesticides are harmful on the long run, the biggest health hazard is the type of food you consume, not its provenance. Eating bananas or some oatmeal instead of pop tarts and Oreos saves you money.

<comment><USER34> You used the word _prepare_. Plenty of people do not have that option, either because they're in a hurry or they don't live nearby or, like in my case, they're tourists. Though I agree that SF is better than other places, having more health-ish food shops, overall US-wise it's not easy to avoid sugars.

<comment><USER33> GP spent a month in SF so I assumed they weren't a tourist. They also mentioned organic groceries so they included cooked meals in this. Even if you eat out, you won't have to pay $40 for a healthy meal. You can get something good for $15-20, which is still pretty expensive... but not $40, and not significantly more expensive than comparable unhealthy foods; of course McDonalds is cheaper, but then again unless we're talking about people that have no money to spare, it's more likely they're choosing unhealthy food rather than being forced to buy it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I went strict ketogenic diet(high fat, protein, very low carb, zero sugar) 16 weeks ago.

I've dropped 20kg in that time and just last week ran a marathon carrying a 25kg pack in 5 hours 48 minutes with just an 11 week train up.

Zero sugar diet has been a massive positive game changer for me.

You can still have desserts that don't require sugar!

The only difficulty with it has been the struggle of what/where to eat when traveling.

It now really clicks for me after several years of putting the pieces of the puzzle together.

3 years ago I met a cohort of middle aged male vets from a specific military unit with a work culture where sugar was viewed as poison for the 40 years since this community's inception.

They all seemed noticeably younger than their actual years.

I'd like to learn if telomere length is shortened by sugar consumption and conversely lengthened by the absence of sugar in your diet.

</comment><comment><USER36> Taking responsibility for your health is discouraging in America. You have to go through great lengths to avoid added sugars, companies hide or obscure the amount of sugar they're putting in their product. I'm tired of feeling like I have to defend myself from the people trying to sell me things, it's difficult trying to make decisions that are best for me when multi-billion dollar companies are doing everything they can to manipulate me into consuming their products.

<comment><USER6> I hear you. When we took our baby to the US on vacation I found it really hard to find appropriate food. American baby food had added salt and sugar which is illegal to add to baby food in Norway. We have the opposite "problem". There is no way to find baby food jars with salt or added sugar. That can't be sold in the store.

I don't get why America is so against regulation like this to promote the welfare of the most previous thing in people's lives. Do corporate interests really have that much power?

<comment><USER36> >Do corporate interests really have that much power?

In short, yes.

<comment><USER6> Why isn't there more political engagement to change that? Like pass laws to limit corporate influence?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The article didn't really mention the sources. It's hard to believe the quotes sugar from drinks are being given to toddlers, but perhaps that's in the form of juice?

<comment><USER38> Does it matter if it's fruit juice sugar? Fruit juice sugar is already bad for kids let alone fruit juice with added sugar which is basically most fruit juices you buy. It's really hard to find 100% fruit juice.

<comment><USER39> Hard to find fruit juice? All I have to do is go to the supermarket, and look through a few bottles until I find one that says 100% fruit juice. (Alternate plan: go to back yard, collect oranges, juice them). Compare that harrowing experience to a hunter-gatherer, sheesh.

<comment><USER38> Yeah. Look at them. Because the vast majority have added sugar. That's my point is it's more common for fruit juices to have added sugar than to be 100%. Which doesn't help parents who think they are doing good by buying juice rather than coke for their kid.

<comment><USER11> Even though it doesn't matter. Freshly squeezed juice from your garden have about 114g of carbs / liter (of which 90g of sugar). Coke has 110g of carbs / liter (all sugar).

Yes, coke has more sugar, but it's the same order of magnitude, fruit juice, even freshly squeezed from pure organic oranges is very much comparable to soda.

<comment><USER40> Fruits are the sweets of nature. Don't eat too much of them.

<comment><USER41> Fruit is okay, but fruit _juice_ is another story. Without the fibre it's digested quite differently and is not very good for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Who needs conspiracies when you have pure greed and unmanaged corporate interests.

</comment><comment><USER43> The problem with sugar is that there's no daily recommended value... because that value would be 0.

A "safe value" for an adult would probably be up to 40g. A can of soda has exactly that amount.

Now imagine a kid eating cereal, snacks, then soda... can probably end up having 160g of sugar in a day, or about 38 teaspoons.

</comment><comment><USER44> What is really the difference between what we call sugar and regular carbohydrates that constitute a huge part of our diet? They all enter the blood stream as monosaccharides. There is difference in how fast this happens - but is that so important?

<comment><USER45> Table sugar is half fructose half dextrose. Fructose is metabolized through the liver similar to alcohol, whereas dextrose is glucose and metabolized like a simple carb.

Fructose has been increasing as a percent of daily calories since the 70s as a consequence of attempts to reduce fat, and this is the likely cause behind the massive increase in diabetes.

<comment><USER46> Table sugar is half fructose and half _glucose_.

<comment><USER47> Dextrose is an alternative name for D-glucose (the naturally occurring isomer of glucose). The parent comment even said "dextrose is glucose".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Try, for a week, tracking the total amount of sugar you consume each day. If you live in the US, it's likely to be shockingly higher than you might have guessed. For instance, a single "protein bar" can provide 3/4 of your recommended daily sugar intake (for a man) or 100% (for a woman).

Getting in the habit of checking utrition labels also reveals some surprises and frustrations. In the average American grocery store, try to find a single cold breakfast cereal with less than 5g of sugar per serving.

<comment><USER49> There are plenty of breakfast cereals like that: Cheerios, Chex, Rice Krispies, Corn flakes, Wheaties, Grape nuts, Life, Shredded wheat, ....

They are still pure processed carbs, not really the best regular breakfast.

<comment><USER48> I thought that too. And then I actually checked the nutrition labels for Cheerios and Rice Krispies, etc.

Of the ones you listed, only Shredded Wheat has less than 5g sugar per serving.

<comment><USER49> Cheerios is 1g sugar per cup of cereal according to the label on the box in my pantry, etc.

<comment><USER48> Are you in the US? Last I looked in the grocery store (about 3 months ago), it was 9g.

<comment><USER49> [http://www.generalmills.com/~/media/Images/Brands/Nutritiona...](http://www.generalmills.com/~/media/Images/Brands/Nutritional_Images/Big_G/Cheerios.JPG)

You were probably looking at one of the sugar-added variants like Honey Nut Cheerios, Very Berry Cheerios, Chocolate Cheerios, Frosted Cheerios, ...

<comment><USER48> I suppose that's possible. Anyway, the rest of the cereals in that list do have significant amounts of sugar per serving.

<comment><USER49> The rest on my list were all <5g of sugar per serving. I explicitly checked most of them.

There are several other similar commonly available breakfast cereals which also have <5g of sugar per serving.

I can believe that your particular market didn't stock any of the 50-year-old classic cereal brands and only stocked sugar-added cereals (frosted this, honey that, marshmallow everything), but among American markets I have seen it is typical to have at least 4 or 5 choices of low-sugar cold breakfast cereals on the shelf, as well as several choices of low-sugar hot cereals. [Of course, as I said before, they are all still pure processed carbs, and not the best regular breakfast.]

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> It is being discovered that obesity in kids also lowers their IQs. Obesity is one of the reasons US healthcare is so expensive as well. There are some things we can do to put a dent in this that should appeal to both left and right leaning Americans - like ending subsides on foods used to make sugar (corn). If there are any influential people in the thread, I can't imagine why we can't make this happen, this is a crisis.

</comment><comment><USER51> In my household sugary drinks were only allowed occasionally, otherwise the children just drank water. Now that they are grown up they continue to drink mostly water. It helps that we live in a small town in Norway that has very good water. If we had to drink water from some of the places I have visited in the US the story might have been different as the water tasted so bad. I suppose we would have bought bottled water.

<comment><USER17> Agreed Norwegian water was great. I recall when I grew up in Fredrikstad, Coca Cola was always the go-to drink #1 at parties etc. They did a stellar job inserting themselves.

Fortunately those were the only occasions when we'd have it, and as kids we were far more active back then - roaming the streets and forests, so we had more than enough activity to offset.

My son's grown up on water after the breast and has very little interest in soft drinks now, not that we encourage him to try them out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> One of the worst things in terms of sugar is Coke and sodas in general, one can of 330ml has 7 teaspoons in it.

The only thing that prevents us from throwing it up immediately is the ascorbic acid.

This is an epidemic that needs strong legislation. The use of sugar, salt, and fat in food needs to be regulated otherwise it's an arms race for brands that just keep adding all 3 to their products.

<comment><USER53> > This is an epidemic that needs strong legislation. The use of sugar, salt, > and fat in food needs to be regulated otherwise it's an arms race for brands > that just keep adding all 3 to their products.

Lobbying from the food industry is extremely powerful and pervasive. They're using the same playbook as the tobacco industry a few decades ago. For instance the traffic light nutrition labels (that I believe originated from the UK) were shot down at the EU level, under the pretense of not stigmatizing the important gastronomic heritage in several European countries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> *EVERYBODY is eating more sugar than they should be. It's an epidemic. Shame on Starbucks for raising the price of regular coffee while not raising the prices of their sugary drinks. If they really cared about their customers they would lower the price of regular coffee and raise the price of the sugary crap.

</comment><comment><USER55> The link text on this post incorrectly generalizes from the information on the linked page, which says

 _The study found that toddlers 12 to 18 months consumed 5.5 teaspoons per day, and that toddlers 19 to 23 months consumed 7.1 teaspoons. This is close to, or more than, the amount of sugar recommended by AHA for adult women (six teaspoons) and men (nine teaspoons)._

</comment><comment><USER56> I suspect mothering instincts are at play, based on observation. If a kid appears to not be eating enough, mothers get really worried. Sugary foods "fix" the problem quickly. Instincts and biological urges are powerful and override rational behavior on many fronts (no pun intended).

</comment><comment><USER57> Lucked out. My son loves fruit since his baby days, so he doesn't like artificially sweet candy (or can self moderate pretty well). Halloween candy just piles up year after year. His school here bans candy in packed lunches too.

</comment><comment><USER58> As it should be, sugar is a reward for the body and only very occasionally should be eaten. 0 sugar should be the norm. Maybe you can have some cookies or homemade pastry on a special day but that's it, the rest is harming you.

</comment><comment><USER59> It probably helps to set a good example for kids. I eliminated nearly all sugar about three years ago and highly recommend it. Food is fuel, not a recreational drug. Added sugar is purely recreational.

</comment><comment><USER60> Just look at the size of candy bars. When I was a kid the candy bars were at Max half the size of what i see now in stores. Same for ice cream scoops. They are a full meal today.

</comment><comment><USER61> there is sugar in absolutely everything in America. Bread, cereal, oatmeal, any drink, even canned tomatoes have sugar in them. I don't know whats american food manufacturers' obsession with putting sugar into everything. The govt should mandate a huge warning label on foods that contains more than 1% sugar in it just like they did with cigarettes. May be then manufacturers will be discouraged from supplementing nutritious ingredients with the poison called sugar.

</comment><comment><USER62> I fail to see the issue here. Toddlers need plenty of energy and calorie dense food, unlike the average sedentary American.

<comment><USER63> Childhood obesity is a growing concern. The idea is that growing up with a healthy eating pattern can prevent obesity and other health problems, because changing ingrained habits is very hard. Eating healthy (i.e., eating normally) can be a valuable part of their education.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> The scariest part of this article is that there is still an amount of sugar that is recommended for adults.

<comment><USER65> What makes a recommended dose of sugar scarier than childhood obesity? I'd rather there was some guideline than none at all

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Good thing they aren't adults, then.</comment>


California DOJ Cuts Off ICE Deportation Officers from State Law Enforcement DB - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/12/california-doj-cuts-ice-deportation-officers-state-law-enforcement-database <comment><USER2> > To further protect immigrants from ICE's abuses

It's starting to look like any enforcement of immigration law/border security at all is labeled 'abuse'.</comment>


Google instant previews - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/landing/instantpreviews/

<comment><USER2> I'm beginning to miss Marissa Mayer's axe on things on the main search page. I think Google's primary advantage for a while now has been cleanliness of results (as the difference in relevance between search engines has slimmed); they're opening themselves up to a competitor with a better design/flow by continuing to cram these "useful" items in.

</comment><comment><USER3> So far, it's been one of the goddamndest annoying things I've ever seen on the serp.

</comment><comment><USER4> This has been Snap.com 's competitive advantage for years. I suppose Google gave them enough of a head start for them to make something of it if they were going to. Theirs is certainly more mature though. And they have a JS include you can place on your site to enable this sort of image preview on all external links.

Theirs customizes the preview type depending on the content. For example, links to stock information shows a little quote and graph preview.

<comment><USER5> To call it a "competitive advantage" is stretching it a bit. It's a feature, that much is unarguable.

I'd say that the snap.com UI probably falls into the "Hover and cover" UI Antipattern (as defined by Bill Scott)

[http://www.slideshare.net/billwscott/design-anti-patterns- ho...](http://www.slideshare.net/billwscott/design-anti-patterns-how-to- design-a-poor-web-experience)

(slide 36 onwards)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I installed an extension on Safari called Apperture or something - when you select any text it lets you bring up search results in a little sub-window, conveniently organized to put wikipedia at the top and videos in a separate tab and stuff. Search technology is changing, Google are no.1 at the moment but they need to be a moving target.

<comment><USER7> Apture[1], you mean ?

[1]: <http://www.apture.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It was enabled for me by default, and to be honest I didn't care for it at first. It's grown on me a little bit, but I'm still not sure I'll keep it.

I highlight while I'm reading, and it plays against that by distracting me with the popup. The article says that it comes up from pressing the icon, but it also includes the text. I'm leaving it enabled though to see if I benefit from it like I do Instant.

That said, I'm still unsure about Google Instant because I'll see my result then keep typing and fly by it having to backtrack and see where Google gave it to me.

</comment><comment><USER9> Interesting implementation detail: the images are XHR'd in with a json wrapped data URI. Try to right click on an image and share it.

Other notable notes: they don't render flash in the previews and they let the hovers cover up the right-hand ads.</comment>


Red-black trees revisited - <AUTHOR> http://t-t-travails.blogspot.com/2010/04/red-black-trees-revisited.html

<comment><USER2> My current favourite balanced tree is the treap:

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

In a treap the shape of the tree is uniquely determined by it being heap- ordered according to a random number associated with each node, in addition to the standard search tree ordering.

The various operations are fast and simple to implement. For example, deletion is as simple as rotating the node in question down until it is a leaf, then removing it. The rotations only need to preserve heap ordering, a much simpler invariant than the red/black one.

The standard description of the treap calls for a field in each node containing a random number, but you can eliminate that by just hashing the address of the node. That's what I did in GSequence in glib (<http://git.gnome.org/browse/glib/tree/glib/gsequence.c>).

<comment><USER3> For simplicity in implementation but guaranteed upper bounds I highly recommend AA-trees.

WikiPedia: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AA_tree>

Original paper: <http://user.it.uu.se/~arnea/ps/simp.pdf>

Tutorial giving intuition for this data structure: [http://www.eternallyconfuzzled.com/tuts/datastructures/jsw_t...](http://www.eternallyconfuzzled.com/tuts/datastructures/jsw_tut_andersson.aspx)

<comment><USER4> Other cool balanced trees: rank-balanced trees [1], which have O(1) amortized insertion, deletion, and rebalancing, and ravl trees [2], which do not rebalance on deletion in hopes that insertions will happen soon and seem to rotate fewer times than both red-black trees and rank-balanced trees in experiments.

[1]: <http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~sssix/papers/rb-trees.pdf> (2009)

[2]: <http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~sssix/papers/ravl-trees.pdf> (2010)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wouldn't it be more profitable, in terms of real-world performance, to adapt B-trees to maximize locality in CPU data caches? (One could also apply stochastic optimization to a B-tree based algorithm to reduce the number of operations on delete.)</comment>


Yahoo to open source s4, their real-time mapreduce project - <AUTHOR> http://qr.ae/7WPr

<comment><USER2> <http://wiki.s4.io/Manual/S4Overview>

</comment><comment><USER3> As pointed out in the question link, the git repo would be available at <http://github.com/s4> in the near future.

</comment><comment><USER4> will this supersede hadoop ?

<comment><USER5> No. This is complementary to Hadoop. Google's Percolator is a similar system and they say that it's much less efficient. If you don't need continuously updated data then Hadoop is a better choice.</comment></comment>