Young Japanese are surprisingly content - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/news/asia/21737071-they-are-less-so-when-they-think-about-future-young-japanese-are-surprisingly-content <comment><USER2> I could have sworn that I wrote a comment, but it looks like I didn't post it.

I think there are at least two kinds of "content" \-- one that stems from happiness and another that stems from depression.

The former is the good kind, the one we all assume the article is talking about.

The latter is a resounding "meh" followed by a "who cares."

I've seen a lot of the latter in people in their 20s and early 30s here. The world's going to shit, the society's going to shit, nobody has money, rent is expensive, nobody cares. Spend the money now and enjoy hanging out with friends -- screw retirement and the future because you can deal with it later, preferably with the pension system.

Who's going to get ahead at work? The old folks are all impressing their own power structure on the younger folks and making life miserable. Why bust your ass at work when you can just do your own thing with a bunch of jobs cobbled together?

So, basically, a lot of the "content" people I see around me around happy with their lot, they just don't think their lot's going to improve or worth working on.

This is from a point of view of 11 years in Japan, six years in Tokyo.

<comment><USER3> I don't know about Japan, but even in sunbaked places like LA, I can tell there's a ton of nihilism going on and spreading. Most of the money people make goes to rent, most jobs are BS and people know this deep down, the only way to "move up" these days is to _move around_ frequently, and authority throws up a lot of roadblocks to discourage taking initiative. People act "content", but the majority don't feel particularly good about their situation. Our parents owned homes by my generation's age; very few of us own homes, and while we also don't have the same drive to keep up with the Joneses, there's still an undercurrent of resentment to the previous generation that tells us to "pound the pavement" without a clue as to how the new economy treats young people.

Ask people in their 20s and 30s what they think about the world, and over half of them will say the world's going to shit in one way or another. I know people on both sides of the political spectrum that will say that. This isn't a good sign for society.

Granted, I am not divorced from this phenomenon. There is a lot of things that my parents' generation did that I don't do because they seem pointless. I'm not in a relationship, hence not married, no kids, I don't intend on owning a house with a white picket fence(or any house), I don't have two cars, I don't go on vacation after vacation, I don't "pound the pavement", etc. All because I find these things to be "meh", having a low ROI in general.

<comment><USER4> > _" Ask people in their 20s and 30s what they think about the world, and over > half of them will say the world's going to shit in one way or another. I > know people on both sides of the political spectrum that will say that. This > isn't a good sign for society."_

Do you know the song, "We didn't Start the Fire"? [1] Great song. It was released in 1989 - check out the lyrics. Even more interesting though is why the song was written. [2] Billy Joel was in a recording studio talking to a friend of John Lennon's son, who was 21 at the time. They had a conversation:

 _\- Friend: It 's a terrible time to be 21 [because the world's going to shit]

\- Billy Joel: Yeah, I remember when I was 21 – I thought it was an awful time and we had Vietnam, and y'know, drug problems, and civil rights problems and everything seemed to be awful.

\- Friend: Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's different for you. You were a kid in the fifties and everybody knows that nothing happened in the fifties.

\- Billy Joel: Wait a minute, didn't you hear of the Korean War or the Suez Canal Crisis?_

[1] - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFTLKWw542g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFTLKWw542g)

[2] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Didn%27t_Start_the_Fire#His...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Didn%27t_Start_the_Fire#History)

<comment><USER5> Yeah but climate change. That wasn't really an issue in the 80s. Now we all have to face that fact every day. And don't tell me there's always going to be something. Climate change is different. Not even remotely like anything humanity has faced before.

<comment><USER6> > Yeah but climate change. That wasn't really an issue in the 80s.

The foundational assumption of the modern scientific era (circa 1845) is that steam engine physics are a fundamental law of the universe. This guiding constraint is referred to as the "Laws of Thermodynamics"...

Today's scientists have better numbers. Dark energy and dark matter are their realization that something is wrong with 1845's understanding of the laws of nature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I asked my Japanese wife for her opinion on this matter and she thinks the reason Japanese in general are more content is because of the lack of drive created by class inequality. Generally speaking, Japanese people are fairly well taken care of by the social systems and there is not a lot of flaunted wealth unlike in the west. Most Japanese probably see no need to strive and work too hard because their life is okay by most standards. Food is great, healthcare won't make one go bankrupt, good service and there's that whole culture of fitting in "the nail that sticks out must be hammered in". With the lack of visual class divide, younger people just don't see the point of working their asses off. They do it at first because that's what they are taught but once introduced to the very rigid and stressful work environment, there is little hope of advancement. I think the depression and suicide is a result of being content - manifesting in frustration and ultimately being unable to deal with the mundane of every day life (combined with other factors like frustration with work and or lack of partners).

I tend to agree. I have lived here for a short time but you get a sense of this just by being around people.

<comment><USER8> I think there's a huge misconception about the conformity in Japan. Yes there is obvious conformity on the surface from a cursory glance, but then how do you explain the innovation that comes out of there? They're super inventive when it comes to Anime, food, design, and technology and it all stands at stark odds with how foreigners perceive them as conformist.

<comment><USER9> >when it comes to Anime

I am a fan of anime but I think there's a lot of tepid, derivative or uncreative anime being created that Westerners aren't completely exposed to.

For example, there are six or seven anime released in the past few years where the protagonist went to sleep/died and then woke up in a video game world, either in a game they played IRL or simply somehow were transported to the world of a video game or a world that behaves as if it is a video game.

They range from inventive and interesting to tedious rip-offs.

<comment><USER10> Is that any different than the 10 of the last 15 marvel movies basically being basically exactly the same?

Heck let's take western indie games where a large percentage of all indie games are yet another smash brothers clone or a metroidvania clone. There's probably at most 3 more genres that make up the majority of titles

In other words that there is tons of derivative stuff is not even remotely unique to Japan.

There's tons of anime that doesn't make it out of Japan (or used to be) as well of tons of manga that's seriously creative. Walk through a Village Vanguard store for example.

<comment><USER11> No need to be defensive. There's a ton of interesting and creative anime that _does_ make it out of Japan as well[0], but as with any mainstream media, the anime industry is optimized for commerce and not art, so Sturgeon's Law tends to apply. Anyone with a Crunchyroll account, for instance, notices pretty quickly how much breadth and how little depth there is to anime.

[0]recommended: Stein's Gate, Psycho Pass, FLCL, Serial Experiments Lain, Tatami Galaxy, Pop Team Epic, Cowboy Bebop, Akame Ga Kill, Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt

<comment><USER10> I don't see it as defensive. I see it rather as "other bashing". Claiming Japanese anime has this quality of much of it being clones of other stuff can only be interpreted 2 ways

1\. This quality is unique or more common in Japanese anime

2\. This is a feature of all media of which Japanese anime is one

If the answer is #2 then there was no reason to say it. It would be like saying "water is wet in Japan". Of course water is wet everywhere so no point in even bringing it up.

If it's #1 then we need proof that Japanese anime has more clones than other media from other countries. I think that proof will be hard to find. Crunchyroll is not Japan.

<comment><USER9> My point was not that various anime is ripping off plots or themes from other bodies of art outside of anime and is thus derivative, but rather that a fair amount of anime is ripping off its themes from the superior examples of the genre.

There is a lot of anime I would rate much higher than pretty much any other narratives presented in other media formats including my native Hollywood.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I definitely got a sense of something like that while visiting earlier this year. It's a place where things are working as they should, at least on the surface, so there isn't much to complain about, but it's also built on momentum and institutions left over from when Japan was the industrial power of Asia, stuff that just hasn't broken yet, so nobody has reassessed it. And there's a conflict likely to emerge in that setup, but it's not going to be a full-blown crisis until later, so "contentment" rules the day.

Contrast with the USA; the crisis - social, economic, political - is here, and it has been for a while. Everyone has something to scream at each other about.

<comment><USER13> > it's also built on momentum and institutions left over from when Japan was > the industrial power of Asia, stuff that just hasn't broken _yet_

Do you have the feeling that it is likely to break, or just noting it as a risk?

My gut feel is that despite the significant demographic problems, Japan has one of the better societies for weathering the increasingly rapid changes modern societies are subject to. But keeping it that way I have no clue how they do it (or got it the way it is now for that matter).

<comment><USER14> I watched this movie called Tokyo Sonata which was made a decade ago. It's part of the J-Horror genre - which isn't scary at all. It just has a very dark and sombre undertone through the entire film. Definitely an interesting film that relates to this topic since it was set after the 2008 recession.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Young Japanese are surprisingly content

 _They are less so when they think about the future_

That subtitle completely changes the context of this article.

<comment><USER16> It's just another click-bait title. "Surprisingly"? To whom? Are these the results of a study? An internet survey? Who knows, better click it!

<comment><USER17> It's been well known that the country has been plagued by decades of malaise [1], and people have long been less happy than people in other countries (as noted in the article).

The surprising news is that there's a significant uptick in reported contentedness now.

You can accuse The Economist of headlines that are too witty by half frequently, but not of click-bait.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decade_(Japan)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decade_\(Japan\))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > "Around 40% of unmarried Japanese are still virgins at the age of 34."

That's a pretty damning statistic for a secular country. Is that a world record?

<comment><USER19> Here's your correction.

> Correction (February 22nd 2018): The original version of this article said > that around 40% of Japanese were still virgins at the age of 34. In fact, > that only applies to unmarried Japanese.

They could also be lying on the surveys.

<comment><USER20> It's pretty odd that a man would lie about being a virgin, but I suppose that's the western perspective.

<comment><USER21> There are also two concepts of being a virgin in Japan: never had sex at all, or only had sex with prostitutes. Depending on how you ask the question, a man who had sex with prostitutes might still answer that he is a virgin.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, I was thinking that was one reason to lie.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I remember there being a bunch of articles over the past year about "sexless- Japan" and I mainly clicked to see if this was yet another one of those dumb articles.

It's mentioned in passing but I'm not sure why this article was written. "Young people feel good about life" is a welcome change from the usual "rah rah, be upset about [bad thing]".

<comment><USER23> Expect to see the usual breakdowns, anecdotes and armchair analyses of how they're doing it wrong, and should emulate the "West" in everything which is clearly without any problems, as seems to be the par for course in any news of Japan, positive or negative, on non-Japanese forums.

<comment><USER24> The article appears to be the opposite of this.

<comment><USER23> Yes, but I was referring to the tendency of a few simplistic memes for showing up in most discussions about Japan: "but what about their suicide rates!", "but their economy isn't growing at a billion dollars an hour!", "but their declining birthrate!" and so on.

<comment><USER25> I think the west can learn a great number of things from Japan. For example their streets (in Tokyo) are the cleanest of any major city I've ever visited. It is a huge sign and deserving of respect that a society can make sure their streets are clean.

The fact that the bidet/spray toilet is used is imo a big indicator of sophistication and significantly superior in every way to toilet paper.

But then again, there's dumb things too: they plant trees underneath powerlines ^^ Maybe that subsides jobs?

Awesome country.

<comment><USER22> YES!

It is so. Damn. CLEAN. I've hated the concept of littering since I was a little kid and it pisses me off to see peope who don't respect their environment.

I was able to spend two weeks in Japan last year and boy, it was glorious. I also like how it's illegal to smoke while walking. You have to go to a designated smoking area.

<comment><USER23> Indeed. A place where people in general actually don't WANT to litter to begin with, instead of one where the government has to continually pick up after them and cleanliness has to be enforced by fines etc., must be so refreshing to live in just for that alone.

It's even more admirable when you consider that Tokyo has been the world's largest metropolis by several metrics (at least until recently, but even now it's #2 or thereby), and compare it with the state of other densely-populated cities:

[0] [http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=garbage+in+New+Delhi](http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=garbage+in+New+Delhi)

[1] [http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=garbage+in+Karachi](http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=garbage+in+Karachi)

<comment><USER22> Those pics look terrible. Oh my god.

<comment><USER23> They don't nearly convey how bad it is to actually live there, which I have. It's depressing how so relatively few places really care about keeping a clean environment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> From the comments on this thread, it seems like the documentary "Japan: A Story of Love and Hate"[1] might not only be relevant, but also of interest to many of the commenters.

Coincidentally, I watched it from a recent recommendation on HN[2]. That comment has a link to stream the movie.

[1]: [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1401179/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1401179/)

[2]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16779954](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16779954)

</comment><comment> oh-kumudo Being content could mean 2 things: optimistic that your situation is great, your effort is paying off and your life is on the right track or pessimistic that you accept things won't get better so just enjoy and be grateful for what you already have.

In case of Japan, it is probably leaning towards the latter. By control, or contain your desire to reach a state of peace, or inertia. Not really surprised because Japan, deep inside, is still very much influenced by the thoughts of Buddhism. Is this really self content? I would like to offer my share of benefit of doubt.

</comment><comment><USER8> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_Japan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_Japan)

Is the suicide rate really significantly higher than other developed countries considering it's 5 more suicides per 100,000 people?

The article seems to imply that it's a big problem with it being the leading cause of death in Japan, but there are few things that can kill you over there since most people don't drive, and violent crimes are almost non-existent.

<comment><USER27> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate)

The rate has actually fallen to 15 per 100,000 people, which is only 3 more than the 12 per 100,000 people in the United States. So not great but also probably not a big enough of a difference to be brought up in every single conversation about japan like it currently is. South Korea on the other hand... yikes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> You've reached your article limit

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://archive.is/IKTvN](http://archive.is/IKTvN)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> _" Young people are all too conscious of the social and economic burdens they will have to shoulder. Over-65s already account for 28% of the population, almost double the proportion of 15- to 29-year-olds. By 2065 they are projected to rise to nearly 40%. The welfare system is struggling to keep up."_

I don't get this. What is supposed to be this so called burden nowadays? What will elderly people require? Food and medicine? First can be considered cheap, relative to the amount of employed people. Actually, I'm not sure there will be needed much more workers than now, if things will continue to improve, we may expect to need less. Healthcare maybe will require a small increase to cope with the growing numbers of patients. (But maybe not necessarily so, considering that the system already serves the current numbers of people and the population is declining?) The Japanese government already pays for 70% of healthcare services for working people, how much of a difference will it make to cover it a little bit more for the old? So what remains there to struggle with? Some food-stamps and a small increase (relative to already existing levels) in healthcare subvention? On the other hand, after giving them food and healthcare, you're pretty much free to cut in pensions as much as you must. It isn't like there are leases or mortgages to be paid. Not from pensions, mind you.

<comment><USER30> Elderly people need the same things as all other people, plus more healthcare. A LOT more. Some studies have shown that over half of a persons total lifetime healthcare expenditures occur in their senior years

Imagine you kept spending the same you do today, but stopped earning income to pay for it. Then on top of that your healthcare spend goes up an order of magnitude. Then imagine this happens to a significant portion of your fellow countrymen in a short time period

<comment><USER31> Do they need it as they age or in the final period of their life? If it's the later then it isn't really a problem, a year of medical care at 85 isn't much different from a year at 75. On the other hand if they are consuming healthcare from 65 until the end of their life then that is a bigger problem.

<comment><USER30> It is both. Roughly one-third of a person's lifetime healthcare costs occur in middle age, and half occur when they are seniors. This is based on US data from 2004 but it is a large sample (almost 4M patients)

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361028/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361028/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > Japanese youth, like young people the world over, drink less and have less > sex than previous cohorts of their age. They are far less likely to be > sexually active than their American counterparts. Around 40% of unmarried > Japanese are still virgins at the age of 34.

Wow. I had no idea about that, the statistics seem shocking.

</comment><comment><USER33> Japanese people seem to be in a pretty good place emotionally. They are pretty closed-off, as I expected, but they're more laid back than people in many Western countries and definitely much less stressed than Americans. I'm speaking in generalities here, of course, and I haven't been to Tokyo yet.

> There are several reasons why satisfaction is rising. Partly because of the > cost of housing, more young people live with their parents. Masahiro Yamada, > a sociologist, calls them "parasite singles".

Yeah, accomodation is ridiculously expensive here and it's reflected in the price of hotels and how _small_ everything is. It was pretty claustrophobic my first few days here. There's an interesting article[0] talking about the housing situation but I don't know if it's accurate or not.

> Life is pleasanter in other ways too. On every street corner is a 7-Eleven > or similar convenience store where young people can buy everything from > stationery to ready meals (and heat and eat them on the spot), flick through > manga comics, and buy tickets to baseball matches.

My favorite part of Japan is that you can walk down an average block and expect to pass a dozen vending machines with coffee, energy drinks, and beer. Always gives me a good laugh. In this sense life is pretty convenient, but in Korea it is even more so (their skyscrapers literally have miniature malls in them).

> Although rapid economic growth is history, they appreciate that living > standards remain high, and that life (apart from housing) is affordable.

This seems true, stuff like food is not as expensive as I expected (coffee is a dollar, a sushi dinner for two is 60 dollars maximum and usually more like 20.) Korea was even cheaper, though, and the food was much better.

> That is good news for a country where the word "youth" tends, with good > reason, to conjure up images of gloomy misfits: hikikomori—people who shun > society—and otaku—nerds.

Most "otakus" I've seen so far were foreigners and not Japanese. I can't comment on the number of hikikomoro here, for obvious reasons, but I do think these are exagerrated stereotypes. Perhaps these stereotypes were more true in the past.

Just some observations, I've only been here a week. Oh yeah, and Japanese people drive less, bike more, and tend to be rather fit (or at least not obese) -- that gives them a big leg up on Western countries in the happiness department :)

[0]: [http://thejapanfaq.com/FAQ-Prices.html](http://thejapanfaq.com/FAQ- Prices.html)

</comment><comment><USER34> Quote from Dave Chappelle: "I say this with no disrespect. We're all Americans, and we can all agree that America has a huge body count all over the world, but nowhere more than Asia. Literally, if you look at history recently, we have bombed the masculinity out of an entire continent. We have dropped two atomic bombs on fuckin' Japan and they've been drawing Hello Kitty and shit ever since."

<comment><USER35> Maybe Chappelle could google for "Kyokushin" one of these days...

<comment><USER36> It's better than most karate, but Japan's martial culture has actually been fairly average since the fall of imperial Japan. Granted, they aren't china, but he's right in that the culture softened an incredible amount following a total defeat in WW2.</comment></comment></comment>


Plume's pint-sized Wi-Fi pods are now available - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/12/5/13837804/plume-wifi-mesh-router-pod-now-available <comment><AUTHOR> They had me interested... right up until they talked about using proprietary protocols. That concerns me.</comment>


China develops microwave emitter to quell unrest - <AUTHOR> https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/03/article/china-develops-microwave-emitter-to-quell-unrest/ <comment><USER2> This is horrendous. I really don't see how everyone involved in creating products like this love with themselves.

Hiding behind "non-lethal" completely ignores the permanent damage done. I wouldn't be surprised if that was intended.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Neuropathy due to damaged peripheral nerves can occur when the nerve is > subjected to microwaves of sufficient power density and the damage mechanism > is believed to be thermal.

Holy fuck.

</comment><comment><USER4> Here is a weird video with such ADS mounted to a truck: [https://youtu.be/kzG4oEutPbA](https://youtu.be/kzG4oEutPbA)

</comment><comment><USER5> This is just crazy.

What are the effects of WiFi, and all other types of waves around us?

<comment><USER3> If the mechanism is believed to be thermal, then this is 4-6 orders of magnitude more powerful than WiFi. It's like removing the cavity from a microwave oven and blasting it at someone. This is horrifying.

<comment><USER5> I read so much news about lower testosterone, bigger depression, etc etc.

I wonder to what extent technology around us is guilty and to what extent food and just quality of what we consume.

Is there any studies on what day to day exposure to waves does to people?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Integrity of BIOS update? - <AUTHOR> I want to update the BIOS on my Gigabyte motherboard as this hopefully solves a problem. However, the archive containing the BIOS update and flashing tool can only be downloaded over http and there is no way to verify it's integrity as neither signed or non-signed checksums are available.
I'm extremely uncomfortable with just installing the update without being able to verify it's integrity, as I would forever think about if the BIOS has been modified in case the download server has been compromised or by MITM attack while I'm downloading.
What can I do? <comment><USER2> In theory, you could probably call Gigabyte and ask them to mail you the BIOS update on disk or CD or something (you know, the old fashioned way), and/or you might be able to tell them that you feel insecure with plain http, and maybe they'd change it for you...

But what you're saying points to a larger problem. How do you know that anything you download from any vendor (and that includes such hallowed things in the industry as Apple/Ubuntu/Red Hat/Microsoft/Google updates), is really secure?

The only way to get true security for anything is to build your own processor, build your own PC, write your own operating system, build your own network card, and then _hope_ that there aren't any bugs...

Historically, things that were once thought to be secure -- have been proven over and over again not to be. Case in point: Windows NT -- it had labels all over the box, to the effect, "It's secure, it's secure". Well, fast forward 17 years or so. Numerous incidents and issues have historically proven those assertions to be in error... don't take my word for it... look at the history... Google "Windows NT security vulnerabilities" and you can also add the word "historical" in there, if you want.

That, and I'm pretty sure as a novice computer historian, that history repeats itself, although chances are that your BIOS might be perfectly safe even if you do download it with http (although, make no mistake about it, you are taking a chance, so "chance-taker beware", as the old saying goes...)

Computer security is a tough business, because on the one hand there's too little security, and on the other is outright paranoia... what's the correct balance between those two extremes? I sure as heck don't know...

Anyway... good luck with your BIOS update...

<comment><AUTHOR> Good points. I must admit that I have not contacted Gigabyte as my experience with such large companies tells me that I will only get elevated blood pressure and absolutely no usable answer.

My main concern is not if the BIOS is secure, I'm very sure it's full of security vulnerabilities like most other software I use, but I have decided to trust Gigabyte like I have decided to trust the developers who build the Linux distro I'm using in that they are not malicious and trying to steal my information. The packages in my Linux distro are signed, so I can verify that they have not been modified since they left the developers machine, but I can't do the same thing with the BIOS update and that's what makes me uncomfortable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I explored this issue many years ago and, at least at the time, it was my understanding that for many motherboards it's simply not possible to introduce unsigned code through software alone.

<comment><USER4> I second this, usually bios updates are signed

you could always check if there is a signature with binwalk or smtg if it makes you feel safer

<comment><AUTHOR> I did run an older version of binwalk on the firmware image, but it was unable to unpack anything and only printed false positives. I have now tried the newest version and it's able to unpack everything and display a lot of information. The PE modules in UEFI seems to be signed as these signatures are found many times:

      Certificate in DER format (x509 v3)
      SHA256 hash constants, little endian

Very interesting to dig around in the firmware, I even found the boot splash image. Definitely a time sink, but fun.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Download the file in Starbucks + 5 other locations. Check sha1sum. Though not useful in this situation, but better buy reputed server mobo.</comment>


Warning Signs That a Bubble Is About to Burst - <AUTHOR> https://onezero.medium.com/warning-signs-that-a-bubble-is-about-to-burst-aa9801e65557 <comment><USER3> I was expecting to see discussions of something like a yield curve in this article, not the fashion sense of CEOs...

Market timing is pretty much impossible for most people. So many people said we're heading for a crash 3, 4, 5 years ago. They lost out on so many gains. We might crash tomorrow, or we might crash in 5 years. Nobody knows for sure. Market timing based on articles like this is a fool's game.

I'd really love these people who constantly predict the crash to also predict when the market will pick up, but of course they never do. They just keep predicting a crash and eventually get lucky. And we only remember the correct predictions. Why don't they put their money where their mouth is and actually show us all that they're investing according to their predictions as well...

<comment><USER4> In the current late stage of a cheap debt infused bull market it appears to be more sane to predict a crash and hence discourage people form investing in it altogether (or at least be extremely cautious) rather than speculating on where exactly the market top will occur.

If you miss the timing of the crash all of these gains will have disappeared anyway. Downturns often happen too fast for normal people to react to in time to save their gains.

It's most likely time to buy again directly after a crash or significant pullback has happened and valuations have come down to a more rational level.

No one can predict a market under the current circumstances (federal reserves keeping rates artificially low, pumping new funny money into the market over a period of 5-10 years).

<comment><USER5> How is under-target inflation for a decade artificially low rates?

<comment><USER4> Well, look at where the money has gone. It's now in the stock market and in real estate. Inflation is there, it just didn't trickle down into the CPI basket (yet).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> TBH I don't see much of a bubble by these metrics. My indicators for "not in a bubble" are:

1\. New grads are more interested in getting a job at a big company than in getting a job at a hot startup.

2\. Fundraising requires revenue.

3\. There is a constant negative press cycle around the industry.

4\. People are moving out of Silicon Valley.

5\. CEOs from the last bubble are getting indicted.

All of these are present today. Meanwhile, out of the article's list, the only bubble indicator I see is that Apple, Facebook, Google, and Amazon have all built shiny new headquarters. Tech P/Es are incredibly _low_ compared to the general market (Apple is at 14 vs. the market's 25 or so), and the market P/E is not out of line with interest rates (P/E of 25 implies a real rate of return of about 4%, vs. about 2% for Treasuries. Mark Zuckerburg and Larry Page are too busy raising kids to either attend to their companies or be celebrities, Tim Cook is busy running his company, and Jeff Bezos is busy getting divorced. Haven't noticed any particular CEO fashion. People are looking to grey-haired figures for leadership, not young people. Six-figure tech salaries are just inflation: there's money ( _real_ money, not bubble- money) in tech, and intense competition for employees, and so that filters down to wages.

If anything, the real tech bubble burst in 2015 with the unraveling of Theranos, Zenefits, and Uber, and we've been in tech recession since. 2015 also seemed to be peak Silicon Valley rent increases, and the last time you could raise capital on just an idea. There was a mini-bubble in crypto in 2017, but that also popped, and the dominant zeitgeist today is complaints about how shitty life is, how there's no growth anywhere, and how we're on the precipice of a revolution, civil war, environmental catastrophe, dictatorship, or all 4.

<comment><USER7> Yup. There are plenty of signs for a general economic recession in the US, but tech specifically doesn't seem overvalued in comparison, and we're in a state of anything but irrational exuberance in terms of attitudes towards the tech industry and unprofitable startups.

<comment><USER8> >> There are plenty of signs for a general economic recession in the US

Out of curiosity, what "signs" are you referring to?

<comment><USER9> Economists have warned the recent slowdown experienced by the U.S. economy carries with it "the unmistakable whiff of a recession."

[https://www.newsweek.com/economic-recession-2019-us- economy-...](https://www.newsweek.com/economic-recession-2019-us-economy-gdp- trade-war-china-donald-trump-1437258)

"US recession risk rises as trade tensions with China remain unresolved"

[https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/us-recession-risk- rises-...](https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/us-recession-risk-rises-with- trade-tensions-uncertainty)

"Morgan Stanley says economy is on 'recession watch' as bond market flashes warning"

[https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/28/morgan-stanley-says- economy-...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/28/morgan-stanley-says-economy-on- recession-watch-amid-bond-warning.html)

<comment><USER10> People have been saying this since 2010.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm aware of three indicators of bubbles:

1\. Pricing anomalies where the price of two assets that have fundamental relation to each other violate that relation. For example, in the 1999 bubble, 3Com was a majority owner of Palm, but their market caps were inverted for almost two months.

2\. Huge upward movements in price without any corresponding changes in fundamentals. NASDAQ doubled in 2000 without commensurate good news in the prospect of telecom and internet companies. Similar was Bitcoin's tenfolding, or whatever, in 2018.

3\. Huge downward movements in price without fundamental news. Again, NASDAQ decreased by 3/4 of its value in a year and a half even though there was only a short recession, rates were low, and economic fundamentals like productivity were growing fast. Part of the reason I listed downwards movements as separate from upwards is that volatility in valuation is an important feature in and of itself.

I'm curious if anyone has indicators to add to the list or is able to apply these indicators to current events.

And as always, even if you have identified a bubble, trading profitably on this is subject to the efficient market hypothesis.

<comment><USER12> The problem is not identifying bubbles, but knowing when they are going to burst. We have a massive real estate bubble here in Australia, yet I have not the slightest idea when it might burst.

<comment><USER11> "And as always, even if you have identified a bubble, trading profitably on this is subject to the efficient market hypothesis."

Timing is hard in the short run, certainly. However, if you believe you have identified a true bubble, it seems wise to scrutinize long term commitments requiring outsized returns from the underlying asset? Practically, this would mean not tying your career to bubble technologies; not settling down into a bubble-priced home-cum-retirement nest egg; etc.

<comment><USER12> Yes. I own a very overprice home, but I have avoided joining the masses and becoming a part-time landlord (the great Australian dream it seems).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Mediocrity + two years of tech experience = six figures. Kids who can code and are two years out of school, who are mediocre, are making $100,000-plus in the market. What's worse is that they believe they're worth it. If you can code, yay for you. But you have no real hard skills or management ability."

So, when this bubble breaks, companies will lay off the coders and have a bunch of managers managing each other into profitability? Makes perfect sense.

Implying Management is a "hard skill" and coding isn't Is disingenuous at best.

<comment><USER14> Have you ever been laid off? Because that's EXACTLY how it happens. The young, new, and expensively specialized are dumped first. (It's less about hard and soft skills than it is about generalist vs specialist, and business school preaches that management science is a generalist practice.)

<comment><USER13> I have, and the companies then failed. Because without the developers, bugs weren't getting fixed, and new features weren't getting developed. If they trimmed from the middle, killing the layer of middle management first, they may still have failed, but not as quickly. The middle managers cost more than the developers, and by not maintaining the products they would not have shed paying customers as quickly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > Mediocrity + two years of tech experience = six figures. Kids who can code > and are two years out of school, who are mediocre, are making $100,000-plus > in the market

This has been true for almost a decade at this point.

<comment><USER16> If you adjust for inflation it's been true for about 50 years in every part of the software industry (especially games, fintech, insurtech, automation, web..) among the top companies. Everywhere you look people have made a ton of money whenever the state of the art gets to a point where you can apply software tech to something that's not been done with software before. It's a sort of ongoing 'goldrush' where developers move from one field to another as tech gets to the point where computers are fast enough and clever enough for an existing industry to realise there's enough value in optimization to make it worth paying for.

The only thing that's changed recently is that now startups aren't waiting for lumbering old incumbents of whatever industry it is to invite them in. Now software companies are pushing the incumbents out because the data that old industries use as a moat is open enough to not be a barrier any more.

<comment><USER17> I am not sure the situation is the same. Code used to be somewhat valuable, like in for example a game engine. Today code is to some extent free, and programming is a service. You don't sell software, you sell whatever investors wants to see. If the economy takes a hit programming won't necessarily be very valuable anymore.

<comment><USER18> > If the economy takes a hit programming won't necessarily be very valuable > anymore.

if the economy takes a hit, a lot of things won't be as valuable as they once were. that's kinda the idea of a recession.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> A website idea that I've had for a while now but haven't gotten around to implementing is a website to track predictions by people and whether they ever come to pass. Fear mongering is very profitable and it is very damaging to society. We should track every doom sayer's prediction so that when they inevitably make another we can see their track record.

>Mediocrity + two years of tech experience = six figures. Kids who can code and are two years out of school, who are mediocre, are making $100,000-plus in the market. What's worse is that they believe they're worth it. If you can code, yay for you. But you have no real hard skills or management ability. Not recognizing that you're overpaid means you won't have the funds to avoid your parents' basement when shit gets real.

Frankly, this person doesn't seem to know what he is talking about. The most profitable companies in the world are software businesses. Why? Because software is a nearly infinite margin product. The marginal cost of software is so inexpensive that the most profitable companies in the world give it away for free.

Given that selling software is so profitable and is a skilled trade (limiting the supply of developers) it is logical that the compensation of software engineers is so high and it will remain high as long as logic and a technical understanding of computers is required to develop software. Software's penetration into the economy is only just starting.

</comment><comment><USER20> All this post says is how things were the last time a tech bubble burst. It doesn't give any reasons why the timing should be the same for the next one.

When people say we're in a bubble, what they're implying is that the bubble is about to burst. Yes we're in a tech bubble, this is how life is now and I don't see it changing. If/when it bursts, we'll start growing into another one. No clear reason is given why the bubble we're in now can't keep growing for a while longer. If anything the trade war is deflating the bubble. At some point there will be an event or signal when the bubble pops if not sufficiently deflated. The post doesn't mention anything to this effect in my reading.

I think it's more interesting to consider the magnitude of the investors' and CEOs' filter bubble. Maybe that's what the article is trying to get at, and that makes some sense. That bubble is larger and more self-sustaining than any earlier time. I think it's going to take a steady series of failed unicorns to get that signal in.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm not sure how a professor at a pretty good school like NYU has a blunt tone like this.

Beside personally criticizing people by their personal choice, which I found baseless, there is zero information here. There are people with that life style like that all the time, just because they happen to be tech CEO doesn't mean it's a sign to a macro thing like bubble.

One thing I've been regreting the most after 10 year living in the valley is that I shouldn't have listened to the 'tech bubble' propaganda back in 2016, nor delayed buying my first house, which should have saved me ton of cash.

</comment><comment><USER22> Coders aren't safe because they don't have hard skills like _management ability_.

<comment><USER23> Yes not sure what he's getting at - the MBA who went straight from a Batchelors to a MBA are more of a concern.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The bubble is always almost bursting... And the next recession is always just around the corner...

If you predict often enough, one day you will be right...

</comment><comment><USER25> Some other leading indicators of "formal" recessions [%]:

* as others mention, yield curve inversion. e.g: [https://financial-charts.effingapp.com/yield-curve](https://financial-charts.effingapp.com/yield-curve)

* unemployment rate climbing after hitting a local minima. e.g. [https://financial-charts.effingapp.com/usa-unemployment](https://financial-charts.effingapp.com/usa-unemployment)

Some other indicators that expected long-term stock market returns may be low:

* valuation ratios -- in terms of P/B, P/E, CA(P/E), etc, are high [+], compared to historical norms. e.g. [https://www.starcapital.de/en/research/stock-market-expectat...](https://www.starcapital.de/en/research/stock-market-expectations/)

* supply & demand factors, in terms of how much the average investor has allocated to the stock market [@]. e.g. [https://financial-charts.effingapp.com/](https://financial-charts.effingapp.com/)

[%] periods when recessions occur tend to be formally defined after the fact, by economists looking backwards at historical data. this may not be particularly helpful for anyone trying to time the market before a crash. "Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future." \-- Bohr.

[+] some people may push back on this, saying "stocks are priced high relative to what alternatives?" \-- if all alternative asset classes are also "overpriced", then maybe that just means there's far too much cash floating about, and not many good investment opportunities remaining. but if all asset prices are "overpriced", then nothing is, cash is just devalued...

[@] n.b. the blog post that this indicator is based on is intended as somewhat of a joke, as an example of how it is possible to construct rather arbitrary and misleading indicators that look good --- but it's an interesting read: [http://www.philosophicaleconomics.com/2013/12/the-single- gre...](http://www.philosophicaleconomics.com/2013/12/the-single-greatest- predictor-of-future-stock-market-returns/)

<comment><USER26> The unemployment rate that everyone uses (U.3) actually only counts people who have looked for work in the last 4 weeks since the BLS survey is taken. After that, they fall into (U.6), which is for people who have looked for work in the past year, and after that, they disappear from the stats all together.

Because of this, counterintuitively, the official (U.3) employment rate can go up during a prolonged recession. This happened in 2008 - 2009 when people stopped looking for work.

An estimate of the actual employment rate, including long term discouraged workers, is here: [http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment- chart...](http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts)

If you don't trust that site, here is the Civilian labor force participation rate, which indicates the percentage of the working population is actually engaged in the labor force:

[https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian- lab...](https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-labor-force- participation-rate.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I like the behavioral signs pointed out in this article - of both people and organizations. The signs of a bubble are becoming much more pronounced than 3 or 4 years ago. Add to that the temporary yield curve inversion a few months ago, and again this week. Along with negative 10-year yields in Germany today...

I took a large hedge against a recession in my portfolio today because I think this one can be severe given the amount of QE.

</comment><comment><USER28> This sort of prediction: "Things are going really well therefore they must be about to turn really bad." Has a certain emotional appeal but they are not a reliable indication of when a recession is about to occur.

</comment><comment><USER29> The long hangover from 2008 has put the cycle out of whack, but I always remember a quote from - I thought it was someone like Soros - saying that the number cranes on the skyline was an indicator of an impending crash. Apparently there is something called the Skyscraper Index which makes largely the same point.

There are a lot of cranes in Manchester and London at the moment.

<comment><USER30> The Irish Times do something similar with the view from their Dublin Office. Only difference being they use it as a measure of economic growth.

<comment><USER29> I suppose it must be a trailing indicator of economic growth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> seem to remember reading that by now, internet companies have created more value than was destroyed in the dot com crash.

Maybe people are just speculating wildly because they stakes are high - <USER2> that's not even wrong behavior?

Also interested in the "giant penises" description of high building. Isn't it simply space efficient to build high rather than flat? At least if space is restricted, like on Manhattan Island, it makes sense. Maybe not so much if you are located in a desert with unlimited space in all directions.

Also, there is a signalling aspect to marketing. Being able to afford expensive marketing (including huge building, expensive ads) proves that you have at least some kind of success so that you were able to come up with the money.

</comment><comment><USER32> Talk is cheap. How much is he putting his own money on the line to support this bearish position?

</comment><comment><USER33> Can we please have a moratorium on Medium articles? They are now a paywalled site and even content providers are invited to pay to view their bloated blog pages. The site itself offers nothing in addition to the content we freely provided them.

</comment><comment><USER34> > Warning Signs That a Bubble Is About to Burst

Multiplication of people writing frantic click bait articles about how bad the current state is.

</comment><comment><USER35> So there's a bubble because some f __*boy didn 't get to buy himself a jet? Bad way to start an article.

</comment><comment><USER36> Author isn't saying anything new or insightful

Until he can say when and how the debt collection chain will break down and spiral out of control, what types of non performing loans will spark a recession, and how he's going to hedge and make money off that recession, not interested

Just product placement for his new book

</comment><comment><USER37> _" too inexperienced to be running companies that hundreds or thousands of families depend on for their livelihood"_

Did the author just implied that one would start or/and run a company out of some moral responsibility for others' families livelihood?

</comment><comment><USER25> sing along: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6IQ_FOCE6I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6IQ_FOCE6I)

</comment><comment><USER38> This is probably the weakest "why you should listen to me for timing the market" post that I've seen in a while.

Markets crash based on fundamentals. The specific examples - Meyer, Holmes - are not indicative of market crashes let a lone direct signals or full on causes of them even when a few are grouped together.

Remember the time when people said Trump would kill the market? Dow 22k? I'm not saying it won't eventually happen with the next correction, but if I listened to those guys then, I would've missed ~10%. We don 't know if that correction will be 5, 10, 50%.

Dave Ramsey - Don't time the market. Buy Indicies.</comment>


Comparing Rust and Java - <AUTHOR> https://llogiq.github.io/2016/02/28/java-rust.html <comment><USER2> I love both Java and Rust, this is a great write up! I've been writing C++ recently and when I run into unexpected undefined behavior during run time I very much miss Rust and Java as neither would have happened in either. I'm just not as good at C++ as I am at the other two so that explains it. It does feel freeing in C++ to not have to worry about borrow checking, but I know it will get me into trouble I would have avoided with Rust. I can see the use case for both. Sometimes you just want some code without worrying about doing it perfectly, and sometimes you want to build a nice big application where things are fine tuned and as bug free as possible and in that case I'll probably want to choose Rust.

Nothing in my mind though really beats the ecosystem around Java of these three in terms of IDE support, tooling and just simplicity in getting code out fast when you don't need low level access to things. Netty really brings great things to Java, and the many mature web frameworks for JVM languages are probably better than anything available for Rust right now. I'm not sure a sane person would write backend for a web site in C++. :P

Anyway I love both Rust and Java 8 and it's great to see them thriving.

<comment><USER3> Speaking of tooling, correct me if I'm wrong but one thing I miss when working on Java (I've not worked much on Java) is intuitive and build/package manager. Java build tools seems to be painful to use outside IDE. Cargo on other hand, I can get started working in minute.

<comment><USER4> I have found the opposite to be true in my experience. IDE's have some level of trouble with most popular Java build tools (Maven and Gradle), while they are quite capable command line tools, and they themselves know how to work well with the IDE's (They each have plugins to create the 'meta' files for the most popular IDE's)

What issues have you had with which build tool when using it outside the IDE?

<comment><USER5> IDEA's Maven and Gradle support is pretty good. I haven't had to use any Maven plugins to generate project files for an IDE since IDEA 7. But yeah, mvn and gradle are the definitive, the IDE support is a nice to have.

<comment><USER6> IDEA's native Gradle support is excellent. I haven't had to use Gradle's IntelliJ plugin (the Gradle bit that generates the IDE files) for at least two years now. All I have to do is (on Mac OS X):

        open -a /Applications/IntelliJ\ IDEA\ 15\ CE.app build.gradle

At work, we have a Gradle project with 346 submodules. We have about 200 engineers working on the codebase. Gradle/IDEA combination works well beautifully.

There are a few rough edges, especially when one uses custom source sets. IDEA 16 is going to get better support for that [1].

[1]: [http://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2015/12/intellij- idea-16-eap-...](http://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2015/12/intellij-idea-16-eap- starts-the-faster-release-cycle/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great writeup, especially that you are really fair to both and make good statements.

> Java has a lot going for it, and I probably will keep using it for some > time.

Me, too. And I will always keep an eye on rust, especially since I also use Scala. ;) However the only downside of rust, is that crates.io doesn't has so powerful things like Java has in maven. However comparing Libraries of a 20 year old language vs a "some" year old language is somewhat unfair. What I would like would be Java <-> Rust FFI.

<comment><USER8> This may make you happy then: [https://github.com/sureshg/java-rust- ffi](https://github.com/sureshg/java-rust-ffi)

<comment><USER9> Heh, I wonder if I could write a Minecraft mod in Rust with this

<comment><USER10> I have written a native extension library for Java in Rust. It's really no different from doing it in C. Mind you it was pretty simple. The only slightly bizarre bit is matching the java types to the libc equivalents, and telling rustc that you don't want to enforce snake naming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > It may be harder to write Rust code than Java code, but it's _a lot harder_ > to write _incorrect_ Rust code than _incorrect_ Java code.

This. 10x.

And, if Rust's type checker could be integrated with an SMT solver to statically verify array/vector indexing (instead of performing bounds checks at runtime, or using unsafe code), that 10x would become 100x.

<comment><USER12> Like Liquid Haskell?

[http://www.haskellforall.com/2015/12/compile-time-memory- saf...](http://www.haskellforall.com/2015/12/compile-time-memory-safety-using- liquid.html)

<comment><USER13> Well, yes and no. You can prove all the properties liquid types can without actually using liquid types, just by running the algorithms that infer them. Either way (inferring with or without types) the problem of indexing is undecidable, and cannot be verified in the general case (but it can in many common usages).

<comment><USER11> The point to using types is that they make static analyses more compositional. Types enforce invariants across module boundaries, without requiring the entire program to be checked in a single pass.

<comment><USER13> Yes, but they may also lose information in the process... As usual, it's a tradeoff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> " so it's just-in-time compiled" and "As a fully compiled language, Rust isn't as portable as Java (in theory)"

Look, JIT and static compilation are just compilation mechanisms. You can apply them to pretty much any language you want. You can statically compile java[1]. You can JIT Rust. You can compile java with llvm (Azul does it). You can interpret java, rust, C++, etc.

You can have hybrids where you start with an optimized statically compiled form and reoptimize it at runtime.

Don't ever tie current optimization mechanisms to comparisons of _languages_. If it's really important to gain performance, someone will do it.

For example, JIT of C++ is often not done because it's not worth it compared to automatic profiling and other reoptimization mechanisms. But it can be done :)

If you want to compare languages, compare languages. If you want to compare particular implementations of languages, compare particular implementations of languages. Don't say you are doing one and do the other, because it's confusing, and, well, if it matters enough, someone will come along and make you wrong.

:)

[1] If you are willing to guarantee no class loading. Otherwise, you can statically compile everything that is loaded or run an interpreter or do what you want to new code at runtime

<comment><USER11> In theory, a programming language only has a syntax and a semantics, and everything else is an implementation detail. In practice, programming languages are designed for specific use cases, and lend themselves to specific implementation strategies. For example:

(0) Type-checking C++ templates requires expanding them. However, nothing forces a C++ implementor to translate the individual template instantiations to machine code (or whatever target language is used). A C++ implementor could use a strategy similar to what is used in Java and C#, and re-instantiate every template on demand at runtime. Of course, nobody does this, because it's bad for the implementor (more work, because instantiating templates is more complex than instantiating generics, so better not do it at runtime if it's already been done at compile time), bad for the user (worse runtime performance), and good for noone (except perhaps C++ detractors).

(1) A Python implementor could use whole-program analysis to assign variables and expressions more useful static types than `AnyObject` - similar to what STALIN does for Scheme. But, again, this is bad for the implementor (more work), bad for the user (less interactivity and instant gratification, due to the constant rechecking of the whole program every time a change is made), and good for noone (except perhaps Python detractors).

Now, there exist language designs that are less biased towards a fixed implementation strategy. For example, Common Lisp, Standard ML and Haskell. But these languages are also markedly less popular, which perhaps suggests that programmers usually prefer languages that have a concrete story about what use cases their design optimizes for.

<comment><USER15> > A C++ implementor could use a strategy similar to what is used in Java and > C#, and re-instantiate every template on demand at runtime.

Are you sure? Expanding templates can affect the parsing of subsequent code, as this example illustrates: [http://yosefk.com/c++fqa/web- vs-c++.html#misfeature-3](http://yosefk.com/c++fqa/web- vs-c++.html#misfeature-3) You pretty much have to expand them at compile time.

(This sort of complexity illustrates why I prefer generics to templates, incidentally.)

<comment><USER11> What I meant is:

(0) Expand the templates at compile-time, in order to type-check the code.

(1) Don't generate target language code for each specific instantiation, though.

(2) Re-expand the templates (or some representation of them) at runtime.

It's a very silly implementation strategy, of course. But I don't see why it's fundamentally impossible to do this - it's just undesirable.

And, yes, I agree about generics being better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Many great points. It is interesting to note that Rust IDE, when it comes, is most likely to have Java based GUI.

> Both Rust and Java keep their generics to compile time.

I thought Rust generics are also available at runtime so they are different from Java.

<comment><USER17> no, you can have "trait objects" in Rust, which are boxed and use dynamic dispatch instead of static dispatch, but they lose the original type (type erasure -- another similarity with java :)), so they aren't true generics.

For example, you could use the `Read` trait as a type:

        fn some_func(a: Box<Read>) { }

but then only the `Read` methods would be available on `a`, you wouldn't be able to access methods from the original type of `a`.

<comment><USER18> > so they aren't true generics.

Why does type erasure mean they aren't true generics?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you don't have a hard requirement for manual memory management then there are good rust-like options on the JVM - Scala if you want java-like maturity and tool support, perhaps Ceylon if you want rust-like new-language elegance.

</comment><comment><USER20> [https://github.com/PistonDevelopers/VisualRust](https://github.com/PistonDevelopers/VisualRust) Rust development in Visual Studio.

<comment><USER9> I looked at this but never got past Hello World. Have you used it much?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> A minor point on a great article, but "On the other hand, Java's enum values are really singleton classes under the hood – so one can define an abstract method in the enum to implement differently in each value, something that would require a match expression (or hash-table, whose construction at compile time some enterprising Rustaceans have built a crate for) in Rust" isn't quite true -- you can implement methods on enums in Rust, too: [http://is.gd/M3VJJR](http://is.gd/M3VJJR)

<comment><USER22> I suspect the author was talking about defining methods for individual variants of an enum, something like

      enum Foo { A, B }
      impl Foo::A { fn method_on_a(&self) {} }

<comment><USER23> There is an RFC[1] for making enum variants first-class types.

[1]: [https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/pull/1450](https://github.com/rust- lang/rfcs/pull/1450)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> One language I encourage people to try is myrddin [http://myrlang.org/](http://myrlang.org/).</comment>


Appoint - a learning calendar app - <AUTHOR> http://www.appointcal.com

<comment><USER2> Where's the version for Android?

<comment><AUTHOR> This seems to be an iPhone only app

<comment><USER2> Well, yes, that's why I asked…</comment></comment></comment>


Google now highlights search results directly on webpages - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/4/21280115/google-search-engine-yellow-highlight-featured-snippet-anchor-text <comment><AUTHOR> The Chrome feature is "Scroll to Text Fragment" and uses a magic fragment that looks like this:

        http://example.com/#:~:text=illustrative%20examples

docs:

[https://chromestatus.com/feature/4733392803332096](https://chromestatus.com/feature/4733392803332096)</comment>


Ask HN: Are there better options than PR Web out there? - <AUTHOR>

I'm trying to increase my SEO so I wanted to start using a PR service that could help and I'm wondering if anyone has any thoughts and/or recommendations if whether PR Web is the best way to go or if there are competitor sites out there that are as efficient at a better cost. I know you got to spend money to make money but with their prices ranging from 80 - 360 USD per press release, it could really ad up. Especially because I'm in the ticket domain (www.tickettrunk.com) so I'll need to do it several times.<p>Thanks! <comment><USER2> SEO via PR releases? That sounds like a terrible idea. Why don't you start a topical blog? Spend that money to hire a subject expert to write a few blog posts for you to get you started.

SEO is comprised of two things: original, relevant, fresh content and strategies to make that content visible. Your content is the most important thing -period-. The SEO "strategies" are tools to help Google understand your content. If your content isn't good, it doesn't even matter what else you do.

<comment><USER3> i think his intent for SEO via PR releases is that they provide a well-written release and people will scrape it for content to throw on their own sites, providing contextual backlinks.

which is an ok plan, i suppose.

/not a SEO expert but plays one on tv

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea that's essentially what i was thinking and I honestly don't know if that's even a good idea, not an expert either.

We have a news section on the site, as I decided to treat our facebook fan page (havent published yet) as our blog since I think the big problem with fan pages is that they dont have ongoing content. But realizing the need for content on the site, I thought a 'news' section would suffice. These same news articles I was thinking of publishing using PR web (or something like it), as I had come to understand that it could help your SEO.

I suppose its worth mentioning that I don't event know if that's a great use of our money since we operate in the ticket domain so to imporve our ceo we would be competing with the mega-sites who crush us in resources. So thinking of that way, maybe its worth more my time to spend the money on advertising?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I know you didn't ask for feedback on your site - but for SEO purposes - I'd recommend putting the search box + a few recommended events on the front page.

Additionally - I'd mess with the title tags to be more descriptive/targeted like for the home page "Buy & Sell Tickets Online - TicketTrunk" or for the events page "Tickets for events in Ontario" (same with search result pages)

Lastly, multiple press releases being released one after the other (in my opinion - I don't know for sure) will likely be picked up/flagged as trying to game Google & will have a negative effect.

I try to space mine out for important things like launch, system improvements, milestones & event sponsorship.

with that said - I recommend ereleases.com very good syndication (onto high quality sites like Forbes, etc)

<comment><AUTHOR> haha, I didnt ask for feedback on my site directly because I wanted to make sure the information was general enough for anyone to use but thanks for taking that extra step!

Valid point about the search box and recommended events. As you see, we do exactly that on the "buy tickets" page and the reason why we didn't do that on the name page as one of our goals was to be as intuitive and non-cluttered as possible. So we were very particular about where we spaced things, in case you were curious why.

Re: Title tags, great point.

And valid points about the press releases. Part of my marketing strategy has been giving away free events to NGos, charities, etc. (and not to mention, it helps us really put our money where our mouth is in terms of being the opposite of Ticketmaster) so I thought I could do a press release for each time I did this. Now at the rate I'm doing this, it would happen about twice a week however the LAST thing I want to be is a spammer so spacing it out for larger announcements makes sense from this perspective.

thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> PRWeb is probably the best press release distributor, as far as PR for SEO goes. People do read them, they rank well, etc.

I agree with the others, with reservations: the thing to remember about SEO is that the results compound; if you bring in 20% more visitors with your off- site marketing, and you get 20% higher conversions with your on-site redesign, that's 44% more customers. If you're going to do a PR, make sure you have a blog for your new visitors to read, too.

(Incidentally, I work at a company that does SEO, including press releases. Email address is in the profile).

<comment><AUTHOR> I asked this in a question above, would a company news section accomplish the same objective of a blog? i.e. Ticket Trunk sponsors charity event (news) vs Why we sponsor Charities (Blog).

To my limited understanding they would and if that's the case, then is having a news section itself an SEO strategy?

<comment><USER5> A news section looks more official; a blog section gets more traffic. If you have enough time for both, do it; if you have to pick, do a blog.

One problem with a news section is that you can't do one if you aren't generating news. Your blog can be trivial, but your news section needs to have higher standards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd be interested to know if mass press releases work at all. I wonder if anyone really reads them when they come from no-name startups.

<comment><USER4> Definitely! As long as the story is interesting or engaging or sometimes you just have to be relevant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm interested to hear the PR responses.

But as far as SEO goes - do you have a blog or any original content? That's a good place to start. Also, here's a great cheat sheet:

[http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-web-developers-seo-cheat- shee...](http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-web-developers-seo-cheat-sheet)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, that's handy. Wish I had been thinking of this before the build!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where can I get a remote mentor (software development) - <AUTHOR> I currently don't have access to a good mentor in the company or town I work in.
Do you have any tips on where I might find a remote mentor who can give me advice on my career? <comment><USER2> It would help if you could tell us a little more about what kind of software development you are interested in. It's a very wide field - what I do, writing code for embedded devices, is not all that helpful for people writing web applications (except maybe as far as striving to embody general software engineering best practices).

</comment><comment><USER3> If you've exhausted your options, you can check out Codementor: [https://www.codementor.io](https://www.codementor.io)</comment>


Facebook Go Libraries - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/facebookgo

<comment><USER2> This is neat. I like that everything's packaged independently like this.

httpcontrol looks particularly handy:

[https://github.com/facebookgo/httpcontrol](https://github.com/facebookgo/httpcontrol)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is the first time I see a patent file in an open source project [1] and now I know I won't use this until my lawiers take a look at it. Sad world...

[1] [https://github.com/facebookgo/runcmd/blob/master/patents](https://github.com/facebookgo/runcmd/blob/master/patents)

<comment><USER4> Well, if you read the file you'd see that it's a grant of rights to use this software regardless of any patents Facebook has that may apply to said software.

It looks to be more or less the same as the relevant clause in the Apache 2.0 license that says "you can use our patents but if you sue us your right to use this software is automatically revoked."

<comment><USER5> "Well, if you read the file you'd see that it's a grant of rights to use this software regardless of any patents Facebook has that may apply to said software.

It looks to be more or less the same as the relevant clause in the Apache 2.0 license that says "you can use our patents but if you sue us your right to use this software is automatically revoked." "

It 100% is not the same as Apache.

1\. If you challenge any facebook patent's validity, at all, you lose the right to use the software. Apache has no such clause. (This is the "(b) that any right in any patent claim of Facebook is invalid or unenforceable.")

2\. Apache is a tit for tat clause (for lack of a better term). If you have apache licensed software X, and sue someone about patents in X, you lose any granted patent rights to X. You keep rights to other software.

In Facebook's wording, if you have facebook software X, and sue Facebook about software Y, you lose granted patent rights to X.

The breadth is not the problem though. I'm perfectly fine with folks trying to prevent others from suing them.

However, _this_ broad clause also applies to counter claims.

So if _facebook sues you_ , and you _counter claim_ , at all, you lose patents rights to _all_ facebook software.

I actually know they have their good reasons to want to do this, but it is not a simple "you should feel good about this" type of situation.

<comment><USER4> I was merely trying to point out that contrary to what the OP seemed to be suggesting, this file is not a list of patents that Facebook says apply to this code, or anything else particularly nefarious.

Also, your paraphrasing leaves out the crucial bit that you only lose your rights _if you sue Facebook for patent infringment_. If, say, you decide to sue Facebook because you're sick of seeing the stupid Buzzfeed articles your so-called friends keep liking in your news feed, you can continue using their software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks more like Naitik Shah's open-source libraries.

<comment><USER7> These were all developed on the Parse team. Naitik is a huge contributor :)

I believe we're the only ones doing using Go in production at Facebook. Join us! [https://parse.com/about#jobs](https://parse.com/about#jobs)

<comment><USER8> Nice. Thanks for open sourcing these libs :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have no idea how to evaluate this, or even tell what it is. Could someone help me out?

I see that it's a bunch of packages, under the heading of "Facebook Go". I assume this is something related to Google's Golang?

I click on "tool" ("Go library that wraps the go tool"). This has a README that points to a documentation link. And that documentation says things like, "Build the Command and return the path to the binary."

So, I guess we're talking about some kind of compiler here? A Golang compiler? How to I get it, how do I use it, and what -- if anything -- does this whole mess have to do with Facebook?

<comment><USER10> The name of the language is Go, not Golang. This is a collection of tools and libraries for Go that Facebook has developed. I don't see any compiler, though one of them wraps the Go tool that is used to compile Go programs.

<comment><USER9> Thanks!

> This is a collection of tools and libraries for Go that Facebook has > developed.

How did you figure that out? (And thus, in the future, how can _I_ figure it out?)

<comment><USER10> Well, I think the primary difference is that I'm a little more familiar with Go, so I have slightly more context. Most of these say things like "Package that provides such-and-such functions" or "Library for doing this thing".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> OT but I think GitHub should show tabs as 4 columns. I find Go code is hard to read with all this whitespace.

<comment><USER12> Or better, we should save source code files replacing tabs with spaces. That's the best practice that makes everybody happy.

<comment><USER13> Go uses tabs. That's the law. It's in the documentation.

Groups of spaces and tabs are semantically different. Tabs mean indentation. Spaces mean spaces.

<comment><USER14> Spaces are tolerated, but the usage of tabs is very encouraged.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wow, Facebook sure uses a lot of languages. PHP, Hack, C++, Erlang, OCaml, D, Go, JavaScript, …

<comment><USER16> ... Python, ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is there any repo of Facebook D code? I thought they were making an investment in D. But this is a bit surprising because it seems possible that they use more Go than D.

<comment><USER18> This is not a lot of Go - it's mostly small contained packages for doing useful things. It was also written by the Parse team, who are the only people using Go at FB in production[0].

0: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8601850](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8601850)</comment></comment>


How to Avoid Stressful Forex Trading? - <AUTHOR> https://startupcountryblog.wordpress.com/2016/10/19/forex-trading-stressful/ <comment><USER2> Not that much helpful sir ! If you were a trader only then you could have understood it.</comment>


Dedicated Kafka Clusters on Heroku Now GA - <AUTHOR> https://blog.heroku.com/kafka-on-heroku-generally-available <comment><USER2> Addons page: [https://elements.heroku.com/addons/heroku- kafka](https://elements.heroku.com/addons/heroku-kafka)

Starting at $1,500/mo for 3 brokers, 150GB capacity, max 2 week retention. Plans up to 8 brokers, 2.4TB capacity, 6 week retention.

I'm torn because it's quite expensive and 150GB seems kind of small. However, it's been quite an undertaking to try to set up a Zookeeper and Kafka cluster myself in AWS.

<comment><USER3> Heroku is cool, but there are other options too for managed Kafka. Check out [https://aiven.io/kafka](https://aiven.io/kafka) and [https://www.cloudkafka.com/](https://www.cloudkafka.com/) for two providers starting at 3 brokers/90GB at $200/mo and 1 broker/20GB at $99/mo respectively.</comment></comment>


Bits and Barbarism - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/23/opinion/krugman-bits-and-barbarism.html

<comment><USER2> What an odd piece. I wish he had given some rationale for his attack. It's a badly fallacious argument as it stands (perhaps he has written more technical and correct essays elsewhere?).

<comment><USER3> I expect he assumes you are already familiar with Keynes: "In truth, the gold standard is already a barbarous relic. Monetary Reform (1924), p. 172" ( cut & paste from Wikiquote )

Krugman is directly opposed to hard-money thinking, which he views as in the ascendant.</comment></comment>


Sacklers agree to give up Purdue Pharma, want to continue to sell Oxy overseas - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/30/health/purdue-sacklers-opioids-settlement.html <comment><USER2> I too would like to give up a toxic shtbag of liability.</comment>


HTC's Answer To iCloud: A New Deal With Dropbox - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/26/htcs-answer-to-icloud-a-new-deal-with-dropbox/

<comment><USER3> Am I the only one that thinks that it makes no sense to compare Dropbox and iCloud?

Dropbox is glorified rsync, and, in my eyes, is great for syncing files between my laptops that still use a file management paradigm from 20+ years ago.

iCloud abstracts files away from the user, so that the user doesn't need to worry about folders and extensions and filesystems. iCloud CAN do what Dropbox does, but it takes it so much further.

Am I totally off base?

<comment><USER4> Just because our file management paradigm is 20+ years old, is it so bad?

When you have a "lot of crap", you want some sort of organization to it. Folders do this well; gmail-esque labels arguably better.

I can't see how you can get away with "hiding files" themselves. In the end, a file can have multiple applications handle it (view, edit, etc.).. somewhere the files need to be visible.

On another note, Dropbox offers plenty more features. It is among the easiest ways to share files with another. And it runs on almost every platform; I can't even comment much on iCloud as I lack OS/X or an iOS device.

<comment><USER5> We needed a file management paradigm because we couldn't simply say to the filing system "bring me the X file, the one about Y". Now we can.

The machines have caught up to our need and we may now be lazy.

I am 46. I have worked in IT long enough to remember having to be obsessively organized.

Why? Because I had no choice. The machine could not help me.

I have become lazy in my dotage.

Why? Because the machine lets me.

gmail search is so fast I no longer organize email - it simply isn't worth organizing. I enter criteria, I find my email. When I was organized, I would have to break my current flow to remember my organizational method - <USER2> morphed over time, good luck with that.

find is now so fast - because of fast hardware - that I no longer even bother to try remembering where I filed things, I just type

       fndi criterion

(fndi, he said?

function fndi () {

            tgt="${1}"; shift

            echo find . -iname \*"${tgt}"\* "${@}"

    	find . -iname \*"${tgt}"\* "${@}"

}

In other words, case-insensitive search starting in CWD, with optional additional criteria.)

I remain somewhat organized, lest my search results be too chaotic for me to read. But I need not be as perfectly organized as I once was, for the machine can now be useful and not a hindrance.

<comment><USER4> I agree that find simplifies things, but I feel the ability to label is still important.

Just as I may need to "label" an email message from my boss telling me to do something, I may need to label documents by course.

Without labeling you lose (re-)discovery. I may want to read everything I wrote for a philosophy course a few years back. If I don't remember what I wrote about (and I don't), I can never find things again. (This has happened to me a lot with finding gmail messages)

As for files, the result of your search is just files. You need to be able to do multiple actions on them (use different programs).

So yes, our existent file managers are a bit limiting. They should focus more on labeling files (e.g. gmail) then folders. Search is already well-integrated into most operating systems. But in the end, at some level, you still work with files.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's amazing how quickly and thoroughly Google has ceded the lead in this area. I know that the Android market supports application and data backup, but IMO the implementation is not as slick or simple as iCloud at this point.

This is especially true for those of us with multiple Android devices (Phone + Tablet). But the lack of a comprehensive solution for photo synchronization is telling as well.

I am glad to see HTC addressing the issue, but the lack of leadership on Google's part is really unfortunate.

<comment><USER7> google has ceded the lead here because files suck. users don't want files or filesystems. look to how iOS works for how most users want to access their files: they open an app and the documents that are relevant to that app are available to them. whether that data is stored in a filesystem or in a database, locally or remotely is totally irrelevant. google docs works like this. picasaweb (or g+ photos now i guess) works like this. google music works like this. the very nature of dropbox is to not be the ideal solution to the problem they are solving. they're the realist's solution, google is going for the idealist's solution.

imho, google is leading the market here by not being a part of it.

<comment><USER8> > google music works like this

It's funny, I like a lot of the ways Google has abstracted away from files (e.g. Google Docs or Picasa), but Google Music drives me batty.

Even though they're wonderful about streaming and "pinning" songs offline (even over 3G), I just want to download the music and know where it is. I often use players other than Google Music, so that's part of it, but I think I also just want tighter control over music than I want over other things. I've ended up using Amazon Cloud Player instead, even though I successfully download or stream over 3G once in a blue moon (if that).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Fascinating to me how histrionical the article headline is. I don't see a mention anywhere that this somehow competes against iCloud.

If the article headline is correct and HTC believes this is an answer, HTC's leadership is braindead. Giving your users 25 GB of free storage is _not_ the same as pervasive, painless syncing across every core service on your device, as well as giving 3rd party developers access to APIs to do the same.

<comment><USER10> I recently saw Android's voice recognition -- a feature that long preceded Siri -- described as the "Android's response to Siri". These headlines seldom have much basis in fact.

However I would point to two things on the Android side--

a) Preceding iCloud, again, has been a pervasive cloud-based backup system, including a third-party API - <http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/data/backup.html> I won't argue that it's the same thing, because it isn't, but it does provide the highest value functionality.

b) But you're not supposed to rely upon that anyways. As another poster mentioned, most of what you do in Android is already cloud based. Whether it's Google docs, or automatic uploads to Google+ or Flickr, etc.

<comment><USER11> That backup API is an oddity; it's been there for a while, but no-one seems to use it. In any case, it's a very small subset of what iCloud does ('iCloud' is an amorphous collection of stuff, and includes an internet version of the old iTunes backup system, which the Android API is similar to).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sounds like a smart deal.

Cloud syncing is now something that Android (or at least HTC's Androids) will do better than iOS.

Apple really should have done a similar deal with Dropbox when they found out they couldn't buy them, but I guess it really isn't in their DNA to rely heavily on 3rd party services. Unfortunately, doing cloud syncing right also isn't really in their DNA.

<comment><USER13> 6 months ago I would have agreed but Apple has surpassed Android in this respect. With iOS you get for free:

* Calendars, contacts, notes, reminders, bookmarks, reading list, etc.

* Full device back-up (including all third party applications, settings, etc)

* iCloud Documents / native APIs

* PhotoStream (photo syncing between devices)

For a price:

* iTunes Match

It's amazing how quickly things change.

<comment><USER14> To be fair, Android has had a lot of these features for a while.

* Calendars and contacts have always been synced with my gmail and across all my android devices since my G1.

* Bookmarks are now being synced through the new Chrome for android

* On Android you pretty much rely on Google Docs for your document needs, which of course is cloud-based

* Photos have been synced with picasa (now part of G+) across all my devices for a while now too

* Google music

(can't comment on google's book offering, as I haven't really used it yet)

Now, I'm not gonna say Google's implementation is better or anything, but a lot of that functionality has been there for so long, it seems at least comprable to apple's offering at this point (if a bit 'fragmented'). I only just got my first iOS device a few weeks ago (an ipad2 from my work), and since it's my only one I can't say I've tested out iCloud fully enough to give an in-depth comparison. I do hope google eventually come out with an API for their cloud storage for android though, as that seems to be the only major thing that's missing.

I will say one thing though, I find it quite nice that I can access all the synced data on my Android devices from any browser anywhere, conveniently within the services I already use, and not just from my Androids/personal computers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does Dropbox on Android sync on per-file granularity? If so, how does this combo support things like calendar and contacts entries? Sure you can put each piece of data in its own file and watch the directory with inotify, but that seems to be very inefficient.

<comment><USER16> Dropbox on Android is pretty pathetic. It doesn't actually do sync - you get a file browser not too much different than the dropbox web site interface, and can download files one at a time! You can also choose to upload files although you can't select an entire directory at once. This is closer to a crappy ftp client than the desktop sync solution everyone is familiar with. They did however recently just add auto upload of photos and videos.

It should be noted that Dropbox on iOS is even worse (same download one file at a time mechanism) since you can only upload photos and videos, rather than any arbitrary content. Every iOS app that wants Dropbox integration has to add its own code to do all of it. On Android there is a centralized accounts system where Dropbox, Skype, Linkedin, Facebook and any other app with relevant permissions can publish an account. Other apps can then access those accounts (without getting the username/password - just a token) so they don't require heavyweight integration.

Android doesn't do calendar and contacts like Apple does. There can be multiple providers and they can each do whatever they want. For example Google stores those in the cloud, as does Linked and Skype so there is nothing to do to have them in sync. You can see the union of all relevant providers at once.

BTW one huge advantage Android has over iOS is that you do not have to keep re-entering passwords all the time. It totally bewilders me that iOS users aren't up in arms at how often you have to keep entering it.

<comment><USER4> Android Dropbox isn't quite this bad. It has a concept of "favorites". Once a file is Favorited, it is automatically synced. I imagine this is done due to concerns about space on mobile devices.

<comment><USER16> Favourites only puts it in Dropbox's cache. You still have to manually "export" it if you want it in a particular location on the SD card.

The desktop client allows you to choose which directories you want to sync. Being able to do that would go most of the way towards being more useful for Android. (There was a votebox issue when I last looked.)</comment></comment></comment></comment>