Odds Are, It's Wrong - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/57091/title/Odds_are,_its_wrong <comment><USER2> I'm somewhat amused to see people complain that "commonly accepted" alphas of .05 are yielding high error rates. Surprise: setting your confidence interval at one-sigma yields a ton of false positives. There's a reason particle physics uses three-sigma as a threshold for further investigation, and five- sigma for discovery.

The difficulty is that in biology, psychology, and other really complicated systems, attaining even two or three sigma can be difficult and expensive. That suggest that we should continue to use low-confidence results... but accept their tentative nature instead of bestowing them with the aura of truth.

And before you start treating a few hundred thousand people with a drug, get a bigger sample size. :)

<comment><USER3> That isn't the only problem addressed.

Misinterpretation and/or abuse of statistics is prevalent in scientific literature more often then you would think. Repeatability, consensus and peer review are good ways of minimizing this problem but it is still true that any random paper you open on say arXiv or even a standard journal is probably going to contain some form of abuse intentional or not.

Is this a serious problem? Mostly in those fields plagued by low confidence results and heavy approximations being made but it exists in all levels.

The article is rather alarmist though for my taste.

<comment><USER2> Oh, yeah, the 5% thing is only a small part of the article. I've just read four or five "OMG 80% of science is wrong!" articles this month, and think it's kinda tired.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> One thing to note is that there's a ton of selection bias: noteworthy findings get published, non noteworthy ones do not. Therefore scientists will submit papers containing noteworthy findings.

If you do 1,000 experiments in your lab, and (a) absolutely nothing interesting happens; (b) you get a naturally noisy dataset on each, and (c) you write up only those phenomena which would occur randomly only 5% of the time

... you will submit 50 articles, each of them claiming something noteworthy, and all of them false.

Perhaps there are a few actually noteworthy things that were discovered in your lab. ...in which case in addition to the 50 BS papers, you'll also submit 1 or 2 that describe some real effect.

</comment><comment><USER5> A great article on how the Naymen-Pearson Hypothesis Testing is not particularly useful as a method of inference (e.g. the way most people tend to think of statistics with p-values and 5% significance doesn't say much). Some of what he is saying is a little shoddy, since Fisher actually came up with a much more robust, but less used, method of inference called Maximum likelihood estimation (MLE), which currently stands with The Bayesian Theory as the competing (yet partially complimentary) theories of statistical inference. Strict, but arbitrary, distinction between the null H0 and alternative H1 hypotheses, which is what p-values suggest, is as careless as the article points out.

</comment><comment><USER6> I see no one commenting on this interesting article has yet mentioned an article on experiment design by a scientist-hacker, Peter Norvig,

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

that I mention frequently in comments here on HN because

1) it is accessible to general readers,

2) it is written by someone with excellent formal training and work experience in the subject,

3) it links to excellent primary source literature for further reading,

and

4) it gives cogent, thought-provoking examples relating to errors of reasoning that are common even among trained scientists.

Because I like science, and I like science to progress based on firmly verified factual conclusions, I like my friends here on HN to know about the pitfalls to look out for when anyone does experimental research. Thanks for the submission of the latest journalistic article on related issues here, which also gives us a lot to think about and which has elicited informative comments.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is an interesting critique, but equating science with "a crapshoot" is journalistically irresponsible. IANAS, but I read a few science blogs, and the impression I get is that most scientific papers hedge and qualify extensively, laboriously mentioning statistical significance, noting possible alternative explanations for the observed data and imagining future experiments that ought to be run to provide extra confidence in the findings.

He gives the example of all the studies linking genetic variants to acute coronary syndrome, only one of which was confirmed in a later (presumably larger?) study. Well, what does it mean for a study to link a gene to a condition? Maybe they concluded, "gene FOO19 causes heart attacks, bitches!" Or maybe it was more like, "4 out of 5 coronary sufferers we studied had this FOO19 gene. Someone should look into it." Those are two very different statements; one is way out-of-line, and the other is responsible reportage.</comment>


I'm a Muslim, a woman and an immigrant. I voted for Trump - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2016/11/10/im-a-muslim-a-woman-and-an-immigrant-i-voted-for-trump <comment><USER2> This is what she says: "Yes, I want equal pay. No, I reject Trump's "locker room" banter, the idea of a "wall" between the United States and Mexico and a plan to "ban" Muslims. But I trust the United States and don't buy the political hyperbole — agenda-driven identity politics of its own — that demonized Trump and his supporters."

Trump's "locker room" banter ? I don't buy the political hyperbole ?

I'm neutral on the election, but the theme I repeatedly see in a lot of Trump supporters is how they assume he does not mean what he says.

Personally I would hate if my manager said things that he did not want me to understand.

<comment><USER3> I'm seeing that too. People are locking on a piece they like and hoping that he's just kidding about the rest.

She's hoping he'll be tough on radical extremists but that he's just kidding about banning muslims or creating a registry.

<comment><USER4> We don't have bright line ideological tests but we already pretty much have a registry of inbound travelers.

I say bright line test because many visas require an in person interview prior to travel. That's a big opportunity to have de facto tests for the 'wrong' sort of person.

<comment><USER5> I think registry he means is the proposed registry of all muslims in the US. Trump also mentioned that it should be illegal for muslims to not report their neighbors, family and friends for registration too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Donald Trump's campaign gave white supremacists a soap box upon which to legitimize their beliefs of hate and fear. Hate and fear lead to totalitarian states and the authors opinion that Islamic state is the greatest threat to this country as opposed to the hate and fear that trumps campaign legitimized is unfortunate for the future of our country.

<comment><USER7> Absolutely, this. They feel their platform is now legitimized, as evidenced by Trump supporters marching through colleges shouting "white rule", klansmen walking around in klan garb... daily reports of Muslims being harassed in schools, streets and elsewhere. Although Trump won't institute any overtly racist policies, he will also not oppose the racists who supported him. This, In their minds gives them the legitimacy to operate in the open. We've already seen this start.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "I have absolutely no fears about being a Muslim in a "Trump America." The checks and balances in America and our rich history of social justice and civil rights will never allow the fear-mongering that has been attached to candidate Trump's rhetoric to come to fruition."

That's a pretty high-stakes bet.

America's institutions have never really been tested in this way before: Trump has lots of gifts to offer to congress in exchange for their cooperation with his plans, and he will probably get to select the controlling votes on the supreme court. Those forces potentially mitigate all of the checks and balances.

America _will_ look very different in 4 years and Trump will be right at the fulcrum of that change.

</comment><comment><USER8> The relevant bit:

>The revelations of multimillion-dollar donations to the Clinton Foundation from Qatar and Saudi Arabia killed my support for Clinton

</comment><comment><USER9> Well written, and goes to a point I made yesterday to someone who was dumbfounded why Theil would support Trump. There are lots of issues. No one candidate will line up with every single issue you have so you have decide which ones are most important.

As an aside, Reason magazine (a libertarian mag) made a similar argument for Bernie Sanders being the 'best' candidate. The issues he could change lined up well with the libertarian agenda, and the issues that did not line up he likely could not/would not do anyway.

</comment><comment><USER10> People assume all Trump supporters were that - Trump supporters. Like many recent elections, it came down to who someone disliked less, for many people, for many different reasons.

I know plenty of intelligent, middle class men and women who voted for Trump despite his best efforts of acting like a racist idiotic clown, not because they liked him in any way, but because their dislike for Hillary was that strong.

</comment><comment><USER11> > where I see rural America and ordinary Americans, like me, still struggling > to make ends meet, after eight years of the Obama administration.

Blaming the President for your situation is pathetic. You are responsible for improving your situation and cannot expect government to fix everything for you.

</comment><comment><USER12> First I guess let me say that I would love to hear more of this kind of thing, as I think the rest of the US would right now, because a lot of us are shocked by the outcome of the election.

And while I can understand her feelings about Obamacare etc., it's very frustrating to hear someone voting for a candidate based on the actions of islamic extremists. The danger of being harmed or killed by terrorism is extremely low, especially here in the US. It's like people being afraid of flying, but having no problem driving or riding in cars every day, when statistically you're far more likely to be harmed in a car than a plane.

<comment><USER10> Do you live in a major metro area? Because I don't think the rest of the country is shocked outside of them. I live in Chicago and I spent most of the prime election campaigning time travelling (mostly by car) on the weekends for bike races with my fiancee, and after seeing what the US 2 hours outside of big cities felt like, I was predicting a Trump victory despite all of my friends telling me I was insane.

To your other point, almost everyone has a hot button issue that matters to them. For many it's abortion, for many it's gun control, and they will almost always vote for that issue, and not the candidate. It should be no surprise someone from an Islam background cares so much about what's happening in Islamic nations and our response to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Good that the author wrote this. I hope more Trump supporters can provide insight into their motivations, as they're clearly poorly understood by the opposition.

That said, I don't see how someone who sees climate change as a threat could justify voting for a candidate who's pledged to, basically, undo all progress the previous administration made towards actually addressing the problem. Climate change is an existential threat, all the rest of the issues pale in comparison.

</comment><comment><USER14> Urgh.

> But I am a single mother who can't afford health insurance under Obamacare. > The president's mortgage-loan modification program, "HOPE NOW," didn't help > me. Tuesday, I drove into Virginia from my hometown of Morgantown, W.Va., > where I see rural America and ordinary Americans, like me, still struggling > to make ends meet, after eight years of the Obama administration.

"So... I voted for a party whose battle cry since Obamacare has been to make sure _no one_ can afford it, and whose policies are proven to do nothing for rural america - unlike the other side, whose policies are well intentioned but not as effective as I'd like."

> Finally, as a liberal Muslim who has experienced, first-hand, Islamic > extremism in this world, I have been opposed to the decision by President > Obama and the Democratic Party to tap dance around the "Islam" in Islamic > State. Of course, Trump's rhetoric has been far more than indelicate and > folks can have policy differences with his recommendations, but, to me, it > has been exaggerated and demonized by the governments of Qatar and Saudi > Arabia, their media channels, such as Al Jazeera, and their proxies in the > West, in a convenient distraction from the issue that most worries me as a > human being on this earth: extremist Islam of the kind that has spilled > blood from the hallways of the Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai to the dance floor > of the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla.

"So I voted for the guy whose blundering about will do more to swell the ranks of Radical Islamic Terrorism, by removing the grey zone and therefore playing directly into ISIS's stated strategy, than any over-caution the other side may have been guilty of displaying."

> By mid-October, it was one Aug. 17, 2014, email from the WikiLeaks treasure > trove of Clinton emails that poisoned the well for me. In it, Clinton told > aide John Podesta: "We need to use our diplomatic and more traditional > intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi > Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to > ISIL," the politically correct name for the Islamic State, "and other > radical Sunni groups in the region."

It took all the spin of RT, Assange, Wikileaks and the right-wing side of the press to turn Clinton's attempt to use existing ties to pressure foreign governments to reduce their support for terrorism, into its opposite.

I'm sorry but my only conclusion from reading this article is that this woman has a fatally flawed understanding of how the world works. She voted for the opposite of what she wants, because she let herself be bamboozled by the decadent press and Trump's bombastic con-man spiel.

Final kicker:

> No, I reject Trump's "locker room" banter, the idea of a "wall" between the > United States and Mexico and a plan to "ban" Muslims. But I trust the United > States and don't buy the political hyperbole — agenda-driven identity > politics of its own — that demonized Trump and his supporters.

Hannah Arendt, a highly intelligent thinker, on the topic, points out that when politicians are allowed to say one thing and do the opposite, totalitarianism is not far behind.

<comment><USER15> Then totalitarianism did actually start a long time before Trump.

> It took all the spin of RT, Assange, Wikileaks and the right-wing side of > the press to turn Clinton's attempt to use existing ties to pressure foreign > governments to reduce their support for terrorism, into its opposite.

Clinton did accept money from the same governments that provides support to ISIL and she didn't report that to the administration while she was secretary of state. When you look at many things its hard to ignore "pay for play" shady dealings via clinton's charity while she was secretary of state. Which is important, locker room talk? If Trump raped somebody, there would've been an actual case against him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Under every post we can find all the range of opinions, all fundamentally equivalent without a debate. In reality, we as persons are who we are because of our history, heritage, body and culture so for me, from my country and in my own skin, it is pretty difficult not considering stupid a muslim immigrant woman voting Trump.

</comment><comment><USER17> This podcast by Sam Harris is worth contemplating.

"Sam Harris - President Trump and the Failure of the Left" [1]

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f27qaDQ1uG8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f27qaDQ1uG8)

</comment><comment><USER18> Nice good looking turkey getting invited for Thanks Giving and Christmas this year! Enjoy!

</comment><comment><USER19> You can always find someone in a sea of 100 million that acts against their own self interest.

<comment><USER20> Please try a bit harder to really internalize that you don't have perfect comprehension of this extremely complex situation. And that it is impossible to know what the future holds.

<comment><USER8> People like to believe there must be some really complex explication for each thing that happens, but just a few hundred years ago we burned a lot of women for being "witches" and a lot of homosexuals because we didn't like how they used their genitals, so many times the explication of "a big chunk of people can be really really stupid" is the actual answer, despute not feeling satisfying.</comment></comment></comment>


Houses are assets, not goods - <AUTHOR> https://bankunderground.co.uk/2019/09/05/houses-are-assets-not-goods-what-the-difference-between-bulbs-and-flowers-tells-us-about-the-housing-market/ <comment><USER2> I guess this is one of the reasons I'll never be rich, but to some of us houses are _homes_ , not just figures on a balance sheet.

I find the clinical discussion of asset values and such in the context of a bizarre market which leaves local families on modest incomes priced out of owning properties in their neighborhood (in extreme cases like London often owned by dubious foreign organisations) and the disruptive ("dynamic") trend to transience of others' communities in pursuit of the individual's bank balance distasteful and anti-social.

<comment><USER3> I have come to realize that not everything in our lives can be modeled as a monetary value after reading Varoufakis' book «Talking to My Daughter About the Economy». One example is the work done by parents to raise children. If we really were fixated on the monetary value of things, then parents would only raise children if they got a salary for the work.

It seems we have two worlds: first the world of the well-known monetary value but also the perhaps even more important world of the — let me entertain this notion — reverential value.

After this insight I understand many weird things a lot better and also why many economists, business people and leaders fail if they don't consider the second world.

<comment><USER4> You can quantify any value in monetary terms, but that doesn't mean that only cash is value. Indeed, economics inherently involves trading cash for things of quantifiable but intangible value. It's not like economists can't explain why people buy roller coaster rides.

But with respect to raising children you can see economics in action. In first world countries, the opportunity cost of raising kids has gone way up. Kids cost more, and having kids requires you to give up more consumption. So people have many fewer kids.

<comment><USER3> This doesn't explain everything. That's the economical fallacy: that everything can be exchanged for money, even things which have intangible value. I believed that, too.

In the book there is a story about a girl helping a man (diving for a lost anchor in a Greek harbour), and when the man offered payment, the girl was offended.

This gives trouble to people who believe that everything can be traded.

<comment><USER4> It's not the economical fallacy. It doesn't presuppose everything can be traded for money. It presupposes that money can be a common measure for exchange between in-kind things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The problem I see with this article and arguably all classical economics is that housing as a market is lead by irrational concerns (feelings), you could list many of them... for example I've bought a 1960 absolutely disgusting council flat for probably too much money but once renovations are done up I should be able to rent the rooms for near £2800 while the mortgage is £1600 per month. A Victorian house in the same area barely rents for more (£3400-600) but the mortgage with a 10% deposit would lose you money renting it out.

This makes zero sense, but regularly happens. Also property is not fungible as no two properties or areas are the same.

<comment><USER6> Economists talk about aggregates. Layman thinks individual houses and their differences. The differences in individual houses smooth over in large scale.

The context of the article is whole economy at macro level. They specially mention how they ignore even regional differences.

<comment><USER7> > The differences in individual houses smooth over in large scale.

Not really. In aggregate you get the same discrepancy between rental prices and purchase prices in many ways including different areas. [https://smartasset.com/mortgage/price-to-rent-ratio-in-us- ci...](https://smartasset.com/mortgage/price-to-rent-ratio-in-us-cities). That exists because renters and buyers have measurably different desires, for example buyers want more space than renters as transaction costs are higher. This is often true when it's the same person is considering buying vs renting.

Ignoring those differences does not smooth them out, it just ignores them.

<comment><USER6> As they say in the article.

Can you explain how these differences are relevant to the subject of the article?

<comment><USER7> Sure, when increasing a regions housing supply it matters what kind of housing is being added. Adding single family homes in the suburbs is different than a 60 story apartment building down town.

The markets responds differently to price drops. Land lords care about occupancy and generally respond more quickly than people selling their homes who will wait longer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can somebody try to answer a real question for me, please?

I'm 30, single, a software engineer working remotely, making ~100k a year, saved around 70k so far. I'm not very interested in investing it in any kind of active business. So I see 2 options:

\- buy stock ( some kind of index)

\- put a downpayment on an apartment(house)

Both have pros and cons. I lean towards getting an apartment. Something around ~350-400k with low HOA and taxes should get me into something nice, having smaller mortgage payment than if I'd rent it. Say we're talking about San Diego or Austin. After crunching some numbers ( in a very primitive way ) I feel having to pay amount that is less than I would typically pay for rent and most of that payment going towards my saving is a very good situation to be in.

Can somebody run some sort of calculation with above variables and tell me something I don't know/think of?

<comment><USER9> I had a longer answer, but I think this short answer suffices: Everything is a terrible investment at the moment. Everything is overpriced. Everyone is expecting a recession imminently. Therefore whatever you do you will lose money, and lots of it. So, don't take risks, but do whatever will make you happier.

For example if you don't like paying rent to a landlord every month and not being able to decorate the walls, maybe you'd be happier if you owned a house. (This may not apply to you, it's only an example)

<comment><USER10> > Everything is a terrible investment at the moment

I would agree, but: you can also invest in things that thrive in a downturn (e.g. gold is considered to be a safe asset, some would say Bitcoin as well), or simply invest in risk-free assets (e.g. govt bonds), or in savings accounts that pay you 1.5-2% annual interests.

<comment><USER11> No one would consider Bitcoin to be a safe asset

Safe investments in a downturn include REITs that invest in apartments.

<comment><USER10> > No one would consider Bitcoin to be a safe asset

Pretty wrong. I personally know several people that do, and most of them compare it to "digital" gold.

REITs can go down as much as stocks, or more, in a downturn.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "But at the end of each sales chain is either another landlord or someone who was previously renting."

Or, in many cities, on the end of many sales chains is a Chinese or Saudi who is trying to get wealth away from an oppressive regime.

<comment><USER13> Or they are part of the oppressive regime and want to launder their money.

<comment><USER14> Both, they benefit from the regime but don't want their children to grow up under the circumstances they helped to create.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Land is an asset, but if there's a house on it, it is an unproductive asset that you pay property taxes on.

The building is an asset, but you also pay property taxes on it, and in the US, about 60% of "home owners" have a mortgage on which they are paying interest and principle. Furthermore, it is a deteriorating asset that must be maintained and updated in order to hold value, and that has continuing operating costs such as sewer, water, electric, etc. that may otherwise be bundled into rents.

Complicating the economics is the fact that lots and houses are very non- standard and hard to value and the fact that when selling it the transaction costs will be about 10% of the selling price. Consequently if your mortgage is 60% of the selling price, you will lose 25% of your equity.

Psychologically, homes are more like jewelry, since people have strong likes and dislikes which depend on fashion, and people get attached to the pieces that they have.

<comment><USER16> Except this doesn't factor in the utility they provide.

<comment><USER15> True, but the practical utility of owning versus renting a house is pretty equal. Owning a house has the added utilities of allowing for social signalling through personalized home improvements and selective social group membership, also associated with educational opportunities for the children.

<comment><USER17> Also control of your life and certainty in your Costs. Landlords can kick tenants out via renovictions etc, raise rents as much as they can, and never improve the space. If you are renting are you sure you can stay there for 5 years, 10 years, 25 years?

I think if your time horizons are longer than 5 years the certainty of owning would also provide some value. I have been a tenant, am a landlord for 4 units, and a home owner.

All properties are partnerships which makes it easier to deal with operations and maintenance.

<comment><USER18> I "own" my home (ie pay a mortgage), but being worried about being kicked out of my place wouldn't be a deciding factor. You can always move and rent somewhere else easily in most of the country.

We bought a house for a lot of reasons, but one was an inflation hedge. We don't have to worry about our home prices increasing except for property taxes and insurance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "If they fall to 5%, the value of that same stream of flowers doubles to £2,000."

How would that work? The idea is that people would sell assets that have below-market returns and buy assets that have above-market returns. Asset prices will adjust accordingly and so will the respective returns which are a function of price. And this will go on until return rates equalise across all assets.

This is the theory, but it's hard to imagine that in most circumstances a house can be traded for another asset. Why? Because having a place to live is a pre-requisite for being a functioning member of society. If tulips are under-performing sure I can sell my stock of tulips. If houses are under- performing I don't care. I'm not going to sell my house and buy something else, because I need a house. Thus I'm sceptical that the theory will work in the case of the housing market.

<comment><USER20> You need _a house_ but you don't necessarily need _exactly that particular house_. More importantly, this also applies to anyone who's moving house right now.

Suppose you need a new house, and you want to own rather than rent. You will be willing to buy a more expensive house if the mortgage interest rate is 1% than if it's 10%, because the amount you actually have to pay is lower when the mortgage rate is lower. Mortgage rates vary along with other interest rates. So when interest rates are lower, mortgage rates are lower, and people can and do pay more for houses.

<comment><USER19> Trading a house for another house has no effect on the prices of other assets (i.e. non-housing assets) or their rate of return, which was what the original argument was about.

<comment><USER20> Was it? I thought the original argument was mostly about how interest rates affect housing prices. The particular bit you quoted --

> _If they fall to 5%, the value of that same stream of flowers doubles to > £2,000_

\-- and asked "how would that work?" about, wasn't about how buying and selling houses affects the prices or rates-of-return of other assets, it was about how prevailing interest rates affect the prices of houses. Which is what my comment addressed.

Incidentally, it's very rare to "trade a house for another house". You buy houses for money, and sell houses for money. (You often do those two things together, but often the house you buy is quite different in price from the house you sell, and in any case the buyer and the seller are different people, so this still isn't equivalent to trading one house for another.) This isn't just nitpickery; it's because houses are bought and sold for money that could be used for other things that their prices can interact with the prices of other things.

<comment><USER19> He says "interest rates on other assets", which I take to mean "rate of return of other assets" since the phrase "interest rates on other assets" doesn't make sense. Interest rate is a particular rate of return, that of money.

<comment><USER20> He does indeed say those words. And what he means by them is that _house prices_ change if _interest rates_ change, not the other way around.

(Whether he means interest rates specifically, or rates of return on other assets like equities, I'm not certain, but those things have some tendency to vary together and I would expect all of them to influence house prices in a similar way.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I found this a more helpful explanation of the rise in house prices.

[https://medium.com/iipp-blog/why-cant-you-afford-a- home-9c5c...](https://medium.com/iipp-blog/why-cant-you-afford-a- home-9c5cf009be21)

I also can't help but wonder whether the change in house prices has been a factor in the rise of populist politicians. It feels impossible to prove or disprove, but in places like the UK and US, a high cultural value is placed on home ownership. And at the same time, housing is unaffordable. In that gap dissatisfaction grows. And a more obvious target of blame is immigration than cost and availability of credit.

I emphasize, the above is an hypothesis. I look for evidence to either prove or disprove.

</comment><comment><USER22> A house is a liability. _Land_ is an asset

<comment><USER23> Nah, a house is an asset. A depreciating asset but an asset nonetheless.

Depreciating asset !== liability.

<comment><USER24> It can be both, an asset because it is a store of value, a liability because you need to maintain it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't understand why house prices should rise. Buildings have a limited lifespan. If a modern reinforced concrete building only lasts 80 years then it should lose 1% or more of its value every year.

<comment><USER26> The value of a house is normally a fraction (in my case in London, about 20%) of the value of the plot. Rebuild cost is something you see on your home insurance, and is normally much lower than market value.

<comment><USER27> Any "prominent" city and particularly London are not good examples.

In a non-main city the cost of a newly built house is basically the cost of the land + the cost of construction (done at a more industrial level, i.e. let's say a lot of 16 houses or a building with 30-40 flats is built with costs that are some 20-30% lower than those to re-build a single house/flat) + the margin of the builder/developer (which often is not exceeding 15 or 20%).

I will give you some real world costs for my area (Italy, Tuscany, non-main- city):

Plot/land (incidence on built surface) 500 Euro/m2

Building costs 1200-1400 Euro/m2

Projects/Taxes/permits/financial costs 500 Euro/m2

Final sale price 2800-3000 Euro/m2

Same in the nearest "main" city , Florence:

Plot/land (incidence on built surface[1][2]) 1500-2000 Euro/m2

Building (re-building) costs 1300-1500 Euro/m2

Projects/Taxes/permits/financial costs 800 Euro/m2

Final sale price 4000-6000 Euro/m2[2]

[1] largely this is about buying, (partially) demolishing and rebuilding an existing building as there are very few possibilites of a completely new building on a "virgin" land plot

[2] of course this depends a lot on the exact location

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Second post in the series at [https://bankunderground.co.uk/2019/09/06/houses- are-assets-n...](https://bankunderground.co.uk/2019/09/06/houses-are-assets- not-goods-taking-the-theory-to-the-uk-data/) with data from the UK market.

</comment><comment><USER29> Cars are expensive purchases. So there's a competitive marketplace around leasing them.

Leasing housing - i.e. rent-to-own - could solve the need to save for a large down-payment.

Why isn't there a competitive and fair marketplace there ?

<comment><USER30> Here in the UK where 'rent to own' is a concept that exists but has never quite taken off, the traditional business model is to borrow money to build houses and then sell as soon as possible to recoup the investment. Often the buyers will then rent out the house to someone else at a premium.

It's a hugely inefficient process that results in poor build quality and high costs.

Build-to-rent is an option that mass-housebuilders are catching on to (maybe 15 years too late) but there is still resistance to changing existing business models.

I believe the real problem is that people like to own the house they live in and will pay any price to achieve this. In a bubble of ever increasing house prices though, who can blame them?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Capitalism has bled into every aspect of our lives. Employees are 'resources', houses are 'assets', etc.

I like capitalism for most things, but if left unregulated, it really dehumanizes us.

<comment><USER32> My absolute biggest pet peeve along those lines is that we are all nothing but "consumers". Words matter.

<comment><USER16> And users. It's trivial but I always replace 'user' table with something like humans or players or creators. Because yes, words do matter.

<comment><USER33> Do you add a separate table for credentials held by applications?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Good: a product or service which can command a price when sold.

You can argue that a house and housing are two separate goods, but they are still goods.

Everyone needs housing. But people also seek houses to provide themselves with housing or to generate rental income.</comment>


Time of day effects on problem solving: When the non-optimal is optimal - <AUTHOR> http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13546783.2011.625663

<comment><AUTHOR> The study is from 2011, but seems to address in a more scientific way the "what's the best time to work" question.</comment>


Knight Ridder promo video from 1994 describes iPad-esque tablet device [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.edibleapple.com/knight-ridder-promo-video-from-1994-describes-ipad-esque-tablet-device-video/

<comment><USER2> That's a pretty interesting video and it's surprising to see how much carried on through newton, palm and so on to iPad.

As a completely unrelated aside, is it just me or was anyone else secretly hopping that ridder was a typo and that we were going to see something from Knight Rider?

<comment><USER3> Ill admit when I first read the title I thought oh yeah that car probably did have some iPad like thing in it haha!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very interesting combination of concepts and total prediction failures. To anyone debating, it's worth watching.

My personal favorite was "People don't buy generic news, they buy a specific newspaper, with a branded identity". I wonder what caused the change. Poor digital adoption by newspapers, paywalls, and aggregators that do a better job matching your interests get my votes.

edit: I wonder if newspapers wouldn't be in such bad shape today if they had embraced tech like the video suggests. I still boggle at how much resistance they seem to have to change - you'd think a _news agency_ would have noticed the struggling/death of others with similar behavior that they had been reporting on, and realized it applies to them as well.

</comment><comment><USER5> Let's assume that the tablet isn't the end-all of consumer computing interfaces. If people were prototyping tablets 15 years ago, what are people prototyping today that will overtake tablets in another 15 years?

I'd guess more seamless integration between mobile devices and stationary components (displays, keyboards). I'd also like to see more portable, hands- free displays, e.g. in glasses or contact lenses.

<comment><USER6> probably first we see something like in Final Fantasy - The Spirits Within. A holographic device on your wrist, then we get into cyberpunk with glasses, then contact lenses and then implants ..

<comment><USER7> Actually, I think the holographic wrist device could be done with a pair of augmented reality glasses and a wristband with a little AR marker on it for orientation. Of course, you'd be the only one able to see it (unless you're linked up with other people with the same glasses). Actually, that brings up an interesting idea. If a lot of people have AR glasses, they can all experience a shared reality with all kinds of crazy "holographic" stuff flying around. Of course, it's going to be weird for the people who don't have the glasses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just think if this had been pushed harder by the company or sold to Apple, IBM or Microsoft. That could have changed our current landscape of tech giants. It was an amazing prototype at the time but it seemed there was no execution and it was too far ahead to make it a reality.

I also thought this was a typo and Knight Rider the show had some "IPad" type device on it.

<comment><USER9> In 1994, tablets weren't exactly science fiction, they were real shipping products. (Apple Newton, AT&T Go Tablet, various PCs with Pen Windows, etc.)

What's shown in the video is simply a smaller/lighter/colorful version of what already existed -- perhaps predicting it would take iPad-like proportions to make a tablet successful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love how his wife at around 5minutes is already annoyed by him using this device while they are eating in a cafe.

</comment><comment><USER11> "around the turn of the century" - we are 10 years late people!

</comment><comment><USER12> hmmmm, I'm guessing they didn't take any patents at that time then ... but Apple sure as hell did ...

</comment><comment><USER13> Prior art ...

</comment><comment><USER14> Let us not forget the Acorn NewsPAD:

<http://acorn.chriswhy.co.uk/Computers/NC.html#NewsPAD>

[http://acorn.chriswhy.co.uk/docs/Acorn/ART/ART_DS003_NewsPAD...](http://acorn.chriswhy.co.uk/docs/Acorn/ART/ART_DS003_NewsPAD.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER6> watch the movie Demolition man. It's from 1993 and you see the first appearance of a tablet like an iPad ..

<comment><USER15> Star Trek: TNG started in 1987 and they were carrying around iPad-esque devices in some episodes. I seem to remember Geordi Laforge often having one when interacting with the ship's engineering computer or whatever.

I'm mostly surprised by the fact that people are surprised by this video -- Fujitsu and others have been making tablets commercially for 15+ years. Alan Kay was talking about them in the 70s. The iPad was the right device at the right time (which is hugely important), but hardly a new idea in any way.

<comment><USER16> You're referring to the PADD:

<http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/PADD></comment></comment></comment>


Tell HN: Lessons Learned from Y Combinator Rejection - <AUTHOR> http://nitrogen.posterous.com/lessons-learned-ycombinator-summer-2010-rejec

<comment><USER2> > Last time, my cousin agreed to let me use him as a token cofounder.

This is interesting in that it's kind of the culmination of the 'get a cofounder!' idea from YC. Rather than actually having a good one as per YC's actual intentions, people are just dressing up a dummy in the passenger seat to try and get in the carpool lane. My guess is that this sort of thing is fairly easy to spot, though, and doesn't look good.

<comment><USER3> yes, it's easy for us to spot and will not help the application

<comment><USER4> Why do you guys insist on a cofounder. Harj, you of all people should know that alot of the coding work can be outsourced. A visionary sometimes doesnt like having an equal to deal with.

<comment><USER2> They do not insist on it: they have funded a few single founders. It's just a model they see works well, so, all other things being equal, they go for it.

<comment><USER4> Dude you potentially miss a lot of opportunities when you filter on the basis of having a cofounder. PG claims a startup is too much work for one person. duh. Thats why you hire employees.

And things are never all else equal.

<comment><USER2> Well, it's their money, they do as they see fit. If some other, similar seed- funding group accepts lots of single founders and does better than YC, maybe they'll change.

It's not just them saying this, though. I really wish I had someone to work with myself; it would help things a lot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Maybe a better lesson is - screw YC, who needs them? Honestly, if you need the money to bootstrap, freelance. If you need the connections, go network.

Think of it positively - this way you get to keep 100% of your equity.

<comment><USER6> That's not a good lesson at all. YC offers a good deal of value for 6% equity in terms of connections, encouragement, advice, some money, and so on. Why apply in the first place if getting rejected is considered a good outcome?

The "Screw YC" attitude is a silly rationalization, if you ask me. And this comes from a guy who's bootstrapping and has never applied to YC.

<comment><USER5> I too have built a company bootstrapping and I've never applied to YC.

I'm not saying YC is necessarily a bad deal if you want to go through the VC funnel and flip your business - in fact, in that case, I think it makes a great deal of sense.

What I am saying is that if you don't have access to that opportunity, well, screw it, realize it's one among many and you can make things work anyway. Plus, whenever something negative happens, always look at the positive side - in this case, you get to keep equity.

Or, if you want a more Chinese perspective on the issue, an old story:

There was a farmer who lived in a village with son and they had a horse. One day the farmer's horse ran away. His neighbors came by and said, "What bad luck! Your only horse ran away! Now how will you till the fields?" The farmer replied, "Good or bad, who can say?" The next day, the horse returned with five wild horses. "What good luck!" the neighbors exclaimed. "You've got five free horses!" The farmer replied, "Good or bad, who can say?" While the farmer's son was breaking in the five wild horses, one of the horses stepped on the son's leg and broke it. "What bad luck!" cried the neighbors. "Your only son has broken his leg. Who will help you run the farm?" The farmer replied, "Good or bad, who can say?" A few weeks later, war breaks out and all healthy young men are drafted into the army. Since the son's leg is broken, he cannot be drafted. "You're so lucky!" the neighbors say, and the farmer says, "Good or bad, who can say?"

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the story, that was really neat.

Lots of wisdom in old cultures.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I was surprised to read "Assuming they would read my demo page this time, I spent all of my time focusing on the demo instead of the application" given the start of the application form specifically says "We look at online demos only for the most promising applications, so don't skimp on the application because you're relying on a good demo".

Did you miss that or just interpret it differently to me?

<comment><AUTHOR> I assumed that, since they saw the demo last time, my application must be good enough already, so just make the demo better this time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Upvoted for publishing a very well-written self-reflection piece on the process. I feel like most people in the same situation would just write a ranting reaction to disappointing news like this, but this was very well thought-out and as such, will help others going through the application process.

I wouldn't read into the subtle differences between this application and your last - maybe they didn't have time to check your URL this time because they got a lot more applications and they were on a bigger time crunch. Persistence is key - keep on trucking dude!

</comment><comment><USER10> If it makes you happy, I answered no to those questions and still got rejected ;)

</comment><comment><USER11> Thanks for sharing your experience and giving us some useful insight. Just based on your whole approach to the process and dealing with the rejection, I think you will be fine with or without the YC experience.

best of luck

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> tl,dr: have a cofounder, remove distractions from the application.

Yes, I'm posting a tldr for my own post :).

<comment><USER12> If it's worth the read, it's worth the read. Otherwise why write it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question. I wrote the blog post for myself mostly, so I could document my experiences and reactions, but with the hope that someone else might find it useful. I intended the tldr summary as an experiment, and to provide some benefit to anyone who doesn't read the full post.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Probably should have worn a shirt in the video, too.

</comment><comment><USER4> YC is so 1999. pg thinks he can replicate his success from before dot.com bubble burst. Really, of the startups hes funded, besides dropbox, who really needs that shit?

<comment><USER14> At the _very least_ , YC partners are trying a novel experiment nobody has tried before, and if you're a curious person, it's interesting where it will go. If it succeeds, great! If it fails, at least it's a really interesting thing to try, and it inspired hundreds (thousands?) of people to strive to do great things.

I honestly want to know, what compels you to knock smart, energetic people trying new, interesting things? Even if the idea is ridiculous, who could it possibly hurt?

<comment><USER6> [devil's advocate]

YC could end up hurting all the founders. YC is selling a message that it's OK not to worry about a business model or revenue (or profit!), and that may turn out to be horrendous advice. In this case YC is partly responsible for the creation of a new web 2.0 no-revenue-required bubble.

So what you call "knocking smart energetic people" may just be a highly needed reality check, to keep people from dropping out of college and investing their savings and future into doomed ventures.

[/devil's advocate]

<comment><USER4> Thank you for referring to me as the devil. Thats quite a compliment.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Sean Parker's "Airtime" launched to Public - <AUTHOR> https://www.airtime.com/ <comment><USER2> For a website created to get people into the service, its terrible that I have to click the tiny-ass 'About' link at the bottom to learn anything about the service.

"Create shared experiences with people you know, and people you want to know" sounds like social web buzz-word bullshit.

My advice to the web designer - put some real info on the front page, and don't require me to watch a video. If you can't explain it with text, then you probably don't have a product.

<comment><USER3> I understand (and agree) but you really should watch the video [1]. I'd have a hard time putting most of that into words.

Here's an attempt [2] _"Airtime is a Web-based application designed to foster spontaneous sharing and interaction with video. There's no download or registration required"_

[1] <http://vimeo.com/43359572>

[2] [http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57447417-93/sean-parkers- ai...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57447417-93/sean-parkers-airtime- video-chat-service-launches/)

<comment><USER4> > _Airtime is a Web-based application designed to foster spontaneous sharing > and interaction with video. There's no download or registration required_

How about this instead:

 _"Airtime is Chatroulette limited to your Facebook social graph. Eg, no more random strangers' private parts, but instead chat with your friends, and meet their friends, via video."_

It's basically curated Chatroulette, automating the curation with your FB social graph.

It's also pretty cool in that it's using Flash multicast to stream video P2P instead of via central server.

It's pretty much made for a Facebook aquisition. Completely dependent on FB's social API, co-founded by Sean Parker, adds social video to FB, and released right after FB's IPO.

I can't help but wonder a few things - could a FB acquisition of Airtime actually _help_ FB's stock price? It's a rather brilliant addition to FB.

Also, could FB buy Spotify too? There are several parallels - It's also a P2P service that integrates the FB API (not quite so dependent on it as Airtime is though), Sean Parker is a board member.

Facebook + Spotify + Airtime (+ Instagram) covers almost all the social media bases. Only thing missing is movies and TV, but that's not as social as music or user-generated pictures and videos. That would be a hell of a social web company.

<comment><USER5> interesting point. did sean parker see the missing link in facebooks product? aka the google hangout for facebook?

<comment><USER4> Probably. I think Airtime originally came about just from seeing Chatroulette's initial wild success and traction. He and Fanning saw an opportunity to do it better. Then that idea got some validation as Chatroulette filled up with pervs and imploded. Which is the big problem Airtime solves.

But beside that, it's a pretty obvious next step for the world's largest social network and I'm sure he saw that early on. As did Google with hangouts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks cool and well designed, but I think Sean has overestimated the demand for video chat and talking to strangers with webcams.

<comment><USER5> that's the thing with video chat - it seems horrendously cool, looking at the video on vimeo ( <http://vimeo.com/43359572> ). however most of the people in the video have some very visual talent they can show off. I would certainly like to try out such a service (I really liked chatroulette at the time it was big), however I don't have anything to show off. the thing with those video chats is that they need a certain amount of anonymity otherwise those meetings might turn awkward. being quickly introduced to numerous people at a party can be strenuous, doing the same to up to 20 people might get you exhausted pretty quickly, if you always try to be at your best in terms of behaviour. chatroulette had this veil of anonymity because every jerk could join and you knew anything that happened there wasn't supposed to be taken seriously. airtime tries to take this to the next level, but I don't think I'll be up for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> So from the About video it looks like it's intended to help you meet people based on shared interests and... showing off neat tricks. That's... nice... but who exactly was asking for this kind of service? Isn't this just a terribly shallow way to make friends - judging by some attractive feature of them instead of how they think or who they are?

My hope is one day we have a social network which contains no pictures. I know, it would never make any money, but they have had them for a while in a format called 'forums'. You would have discussions about a variety of topics and over time form friendships based on content, and not if someone looked like they were having tons of fun on a beach with other hot people, or if they could play the ukelele.

edit: rephrase

<comment><USER8> > _My hope is one day we have a social network which contains no pictures._

I don't think you understand how humans work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting that they decided to launch in New York instead of San Francisco given they are based in SF.

Also, I'm not sure how to feel about all the celebrities. I mean, I expect Sarah Jessica Parker to hock hair care products on TV for some giant multinational, not launch a chat system for Facebook.

Still I wish them the best of luck!

<comment><USER10> They launched on the intertubes. Why do they have to have a party in a city?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> So basically a SFW Chatroulette with tight Facebook integration. I could see that work out.

</comment><comment><USER11> Facebook log in only .... meh.

</comment><comment><USER12> Looks like Airtime is experiencing some downtime. Here's a CNET article talking about what this service is:

[http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57447417-93/sean-parkers- ai...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57447417-93/sean-parkers-airtime- video-chat-service-launches/)

<comment><USER13> So this is a Chat Roulette clone that doesn't work? WTF?

<comment><USER14> Yes, but it's not near as 'roulette'. I get the impression it connects you with people that are a part of or near your social network, and/or people that have similarities according to your interests, likes, etc.

Edit: There's also no anonymity to it. Your identity is there for all to see, so there's an inherent level of accountability there that should deter the...exhibitionists. :p

<comment><USER3> Are you sure there's no anonymity? Check out the Airtime video [1]. The first few seconds clearly indicate that names are anonymous until you 'add' each other.

[1] <https://www.airtime.com/about>

Edit: Of course, I do agree that the FB link will deter exhibitionists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Uhoh. Dan Shipper's web-based business (<http://www.airtimehq.com/>) has run into a serious namespace collision.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm not sure why I'd want to use a service to video chat with my existing facebook friends. Those are presumably people I already have connections with, and can use existing tools to chat with, or see in person. Maybe there's some use for friends-of-friends for dating, but meh.

</comment><comment><USER17> Very surprised that this didn't launch with a native mobile offering.

Parker asked where the cool stuff on the Web went. It went mobile. People don't want to be chained to their desks to do something cool anymore. It'd be pretty neat to chat with a stranger while strolling the Louvre.

<comment><USER18> > It'd be pretty neat to chat with a stranger while strolling the Louvre.

Please tell me you meant while THEY'RE strolling the Louvre. Please. Because if you're using a web app to talk to a stranger while simultaneously strolling the Louvre (I'm not sure "strolling" is what one does to the Louvre) I believe there's something wrong with you.

<comment><USER17> My specific example was you can get more context about something you've never seen before, potentially getting a personalized tour, before you go.

Sorta like what we're doing now, but with video. Is that scary to you?

<comment><USER18> Yes, the notion of people using ChatRoulette while they're at the Louvre is scary as shit to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Airtime is to Chatroulette what Facebook was to MySpace.

</comment><comment><USER20> Interesting that all of the engineering positions require BS or higher in Computer Science when both of the founders skipped college

<comment><USER17> The best thing you can do is hire people smarter than you. There's no shame in it.

Nevertheless, I think it's safe to say the accomplishments of both founders far exceeds the career expectations of a degree-toting computer engineer.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, because we all know how degrees prove how smart a person is.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-Term_Capital_Management>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> _the first live video network._ huh? what about Justin.tv, Ustream.tv, etc?

</comment><comment><USER22> this is the only service for which I think , login with facebook makes sense .

</comment><comment><USER23> So, is this just Google Hangouts for Facebook?

</comment><comment><USER24> it asks for too much personal exposure for many people.

</comment><comment><USER25> Wasn't this exactly what color.com was supposed to be?

<comment><USER26> No, color was more about app + location based browsing of photos, while this is web video chat</comment></comment>


Ex Edge developer blames Google tricks in part for move to Chromium - <AUTHOR> https://www.onmsft.com/news/ex-edge-developer-blames-google-tricks-in-part-for-move-to-chromium <comment><USER2> How is this not at the front page??</comment>


Unlocking my Lenovo laptop battery - <AUTHOR> http://www.zmatt.net/unlocking-my-lenovo-laptop-part-1/ <comment><USER2> I remember running into a similar issue with my W520. The WiFi card had died and, given that this is a simple mPCIe card, I simply ordered a replacement. Turns out, Lenovo hard-codes the valid PCI IDs in the BIOS (some sources said it was for FCC compliance) and refuses to boot if you plug in an invalid card. In the end, I had to flash the BIOS with a cracked one I found somewhere on the web to get the system running again...

<comment><USER3> MSI did that. I tried to sub out a RealTek card with a good athenos. That was a bit frustrating and turned me off from buying from MSI.

<comment><USER4> MSI in general seems to be all pain. Back during the netbook craze their take shipped a Suse install with missing drivers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cached version [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:J4bxSli...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:J4bxSliXq8oJ:www.zmatt.net/unlocking- my-lenovo-laptop-part-1)

<comment><USER6> Why are there viagra urls at the bottom?

<comment><USER7> This used to happen to me when I would run poorly secured sites for personal stuff. Super annoying, taught me to take even personal stuff more seriously.

They'll hack in and then just add affiliate / ad links hidden everywhere from view so they can try to raise the google ranking of some other site (like one that sells viagra). Google has done much better recently fighting this type of reputation spam.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Devil's Advocate: non-genuine batteries have been linked to devices catching fire

<comment><USER9> Reminds me of buying a new battery for my Macbook a few months ago.

Me : I need a new battery for my Macbook.

Apple : Okay, but be sure to get a battery directly from Apple. Third-party batteries are no good!

Me : Fine, I wanna order an A1280 battery.

Apple : Oh, we don't sell those anymore. You'll have to get one somewhere else.

<comment><USER10> Oh, yes, I had some funny experiences like this as well. Wanted to have the battery of my 17" MacBook (5.5 years old) replaced, as it started to inflate. (I have to admit, the battery had performed much better and longer than I had expected!) Made an appointment with the AppleStore; was told, that there are no replacement batteries for any MacBooks older than 5 years. As Apple doesn't officially recommend third-party batteries, this means in consequence, that you would be obliged to throw away the machine.

I told one of my customers, who has a lot of MacBooks in his company, about this. So he started to bring all MacBooks older than 4.5 years to Apple to get the batteries replaced. And every single time Apple made some suspicous battery-quality-tests and declared that the batteries were still good and didn't need to get replaced. (The batteries generally had a runtime of less than 30 minutes after 4.5 years).

"No, battery needs no replacement.", the Genius would reply. "I do not ask for a free replacement, you know, I am aware I have to pay 140,- Euro for it. The battery runs only for 20 minutes, I do not think it is good." "Yeah, maybe you have to calibrate it. But the test says, the battery is good." "So, in 6 months I will get no new battery, as the model is legacy?" "Ah, yes, this is true." "So, would you please replace the battery, for 140,- Euro, please, please?" "OK".

This dialog repeated for every single MacBook.

I switched to ThinkPad/Linux shortly after. Battery-wise doesn't seem to be much of a difference ;-)

<comment><USER9> Following that new "Error 53" debacle, it does seem that Apple's policy regarding repairs is "If it breaks after a year, throw it away".

I think my Macbook was the last model that even had an easily replaceable battery. I think they glue 'em in now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Awesome post(s). Looking forward to part three.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, regardless of whether this is a good idea or not, it's an absolutely fascinating read. I love this kind of low-level reverse engineering.

<comment><USER11> It's a striking reminder that, although the systems we use day-to-day may be intimidatingly complex, they _are_ hackable. Moreover, even someone with a comparatively basic understanding of reverse engineering (e.g. me) can see how it works. Very exciting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Another reason to never buy Lenovo. Meanwhile Dell recycles bad parts and Apple glues batteries in is there an oem worth buying?

<comment><USER14> Panasonic? But their laptops are expensive.

<comment><USER4> More and more i get the feel that humanity need to relearn to pay for quality.

<comment><USER15> It seems like economies of scale have steamrolled quality. If one company can sell 1000x the volume to people who don't know better, then even those who do know better will often find the high-volume choice more practical due to cost and industry support just being too good to ignore.

<comment><USER4> Yeah i find myself reminded of an anecdote about a young lady that wanted to treat herself after landing her first job out of college.

So she went to market somewhere in Asia, fund a stall selling handbags, and started to haggling by pointing out the various ways the bags where fake.

Eventually she settled on a bag. She knew it was fake, she knew it would not last as long as the real thing, but she hoped it would at least hold until she climbed the corporate ladder enough that she could replace it with the real thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's interesting how a non-genuine battery for this laptop is even sold. If the laptop refuses to charge it out of the box then nobody will buy it, since it does not work. Why sell it if everyone will just try it and return it immediately?

<comment><USER17> Physically the same model batteries have been used on several generations of the ThinkPads. The actual change was from the 55+/55++ battery generation to the 70+/70++ battery generation with the 2012 laptops.

Per a Lenovo staff member in their forums [1], "The machine will boot (with a warning message displayed by BIOS and by Power Manager), and it will even discharge the unauthenticated battery. The issue is that the machine will not charge the unauthenticated battery. With many of the new systems supporting RapidCharge where you can get to 80% charge in 30 minutes, it is just too dangerous to try to charge someone's aftermarket ebay battery."

[1] [https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-P-and-W-Series- Mobile/...](https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-P-and-W-Series- Mobile/27-Slice-vs-28-Slice-Differences/td-p/788873#)

<comment><USER8> Seems like they could just disable RapidCharge on unauthenticated batteries but perhaps that's asking too much.

<comment><USER4> Why do that when you can just sell a whole new laptop?

The whole pile of turtles is about shipping new units...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Part 3: [http://www.zmatt.net/unlocking-my-lenovo-laptop- part-3/](http://www.zmatt.net/unlocking-my-lenovo-laptop-part-3/)

</comment><comment><USER19> Is it legal for a company to do something like this? I could understand a message on boot-up saying "This is not a Lenovo certified battery and we are not responsible for damages caused by it."

I don't know, any one here familiar with the laws pertaining to this?

<comment><USER20> I'm not sure, but I doubt that there are laws against not charging unauthorized batteries. I am fairly sure that they could be held liable for any damages caused by fires, etc caused by trying to charge a poorly-made battery, and that you cannot release that liability with any kind of boot-up message or contract.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Very interesting! Slicing through the layers of firmware like I've never seen before

</comment><comment><USER22> TIL: Tiny USB logic analyzers are a thing. It seems the company mentioned in this post (CWAV USBee) has gone out of business. Are there other good quality USB logic analyzers?

<comment><USER23> The hardware is based on a Cypress FX2 chip and there are lots of cheap clones which can be bought from Chinese sellers for £10. See [http://sigrok.org/wiki/Fx2lafw](http://sigrok.org/wiki/Fx2lafw)

<comment><USER22> Exactly what I needed to know, and answers my question about Linux too. Thanks.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: our bitcoin only group buying site has cheap .co domains for sale  - <AUTHOR> http://coinforest.com/gandi.php <comment><AUTHOR> Though they're not selling so hot, any suggestions? Places to go market?</comment>


ActFramework: Java MVC Framework Inspired by Play1 - <AUTHOR> http://actframework.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> Received this mail in the morning by known and respected PlayFramework 1 contributor Gelin Luo:

It's been 5 years since the community break with the appearance of Play2. I am unfortunately on the side against Play2 and never come back to PlayFramework since 2013. Though I've contributed a set of modules/plugins including play- morphia, play-excel, play-rythm etc.

However I still keep my vision on Play 1 and that inspired me to start my own project ([http://actframework.org](http://actframework.org)) at the end of 2015. Now I've get the first release published to Maven central repository. Feel like it is the time to tell other people who share the common feeling with me on Play1. I guess you might want to take a look:

* Official website: [http://actframework.org](http://actframework.org) * Github repo: [https://github.com/actframework/actframework](https://github.com/actframework/actframework) * TodoBackend Impl: [https://github.com/greenlaw110/todomvc-act](https://github.com/greenlaw110/todomvc-act) * Play's zencontact sample port to act: [https://github.com/greenlaw110/act-zencontact](https://github.com/greenlaw110/act-zencontact) * Video collection: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9Nmeir_4QLJGinjAh8Hj...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9Nmeir_4QLJGinjAh8HjfCQY5yTuyneK)

Looking forward to seeing your response.

Cheers, Green</comment>


Bloomberg on why farmers can't work in information technology - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/petermentes/status/1228518467776761856 <comment><USER2> Done both. Farming is harder.

Bloomberg has no clue whatsoever. Farming is not just gardening. That would be like saying programming is just typing. Wrong.

<comment><USER3> To expand on this, Agriculture is so god-blessed complicated when it comes to doing it in a way that gets you worthwhile returns.

Off the top of my head: Plant Ag: Soil quality is an art form of it's own. Figure out what your soil is, and ameliorate the he'll out of it to get it fertile again.

Plant/crop choice: Guess what? Now you get to learn the biology of every crop you're familiar with, their cultivars, and the effect they have on soils/the local fauna. Decide whether you are going mono-culture, or companion planting. If monoculture, Note your lifecycle (for harvest times and other necessary processing ) then proceed to equipment maintenance, operation, and financials. If companion planting, get ready for making your jigsaw of a planting space, and figure out your crop rotation for the next few seasons; then jump to equipment operation, maintenance, and financial buggery. Oh yeah, make sure your choice properly reflects what your environment can support, and decide whether or not you're going no-till or not, pesticide/herbicide free and adjust accordingly.

Did you remember pollination? Them Bees hardly ever just grow on trees anymore! Better make friends with a bee keeper!

Animal Ag: Welcome to fence and belligerent animal hell. Make sure you have your herd culled of any children of the last sure, or you've rotated out last season's males, as inbreeding is a big fat nono. Keep your males spread out if you don't want injuries and be ready when your carefully orchestrated separation fails because somebody got randy.

Farmers could make fantastic frigging programmers, I have no doubt; what I doubt they'll be is the most accommodating or tolerant of the typical code or feature mill environment; and for that God bless 'em. Besides which, I'm fairly sure you'd have some serious tech culture shock as the other side of the intellectual landscape filtered in. These are people who have become optimized in figuring out how to do things without creating extra work.

If the man truly had the gall to suggest IT is somehow harder than farming, I hate to bust bubbles, but he needs a reality check. It often only looks easy because years of hard work have gone into the land and processes to keep it productive.

<comment><AUTHOR> There is a general derisiveness towards farmers because we produce a lot of value and give it away for so very little. It became worse with govt subsidies and market forces because it further devalued what we do.

Tech does not help farming and ag. Whatever 'Agtech' is happening now is a data play. Every technology out there that has gotten funding is because they collect data and that data is a commodity that can be sold for more than the value of the food produced by farmers who are at the bottom most rung of the supply chain.

I do say this with a touch of bitterness because I applied for YC twice and won't again because I was told that there is no money. (Without serving the data gods) I get the logic of it, but that doesn't stop me from being bitter.

It is particularly nauseating that Bloomberg should say this because the most invested Agtech is for commodity crops that get traded on Wall Street and the kind of crops like corn and soy and input companies and land surveys etc. and it's business.

I will never vote for Bloomberg even though he was in my shortlist. Something has been triggered that bought forth all that I have witnessed and subconsciously recorded about the devaluation of farming by tech and business communities since 2011 when I first started looking into at ways to improve ag with tech. The bubble just burst when I read that. This quote was from 2016.

<comment><USER2> I remotely occasionally support a bunch of farmers with fleets of raspberry pi, arduino and psoc. Those guys probably directly look after more computers than a lot of webguys. Writing C/python seems the most common.

<comment><AUTHOR> Farmers can learn anything. Still laughing over Mike Bloomberg's instructions for growing corn "1. Dig a hole.."

Show me a guy who digs a hole to grow corn..and I will show you someone who has never farmed before.

Don't need gray matter for that..

<comment><USER2> Programming is just typing fast after all. Don't need to think either. Just need a dark room, a hoodie and the light of green text reflecting on your face.

Or something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> He clearly is talking pre the information age (500 years ago) farming was not complex.

Which it wasn't.

Now farmers have to use robots, and machinery and data services and chemicals, breeding patterns.

It is far more complex.

Fake News FTW.

On Twitter even. The clip is specifically cut to be bad, but actually is in context if you have ears, but it seems people are really really stupid.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not Fake News

[https://www.theblaze.com/news/bloomberg-triggers- bipartisan-...](https://www.theblaze.com/news/bloomberg-triggers-bipartisan- backlash-for-condescending-remarks-about-farmers)

[..]While speaking at the University of Oxford Saïd Business School in 2016, Bloomberg was asked if Americans living on the coasts — who are generally more liberal — could be unified with those who live in middle America, who are generally more conservative.

In response, Bloomberg implied that anyone could be a farmer because it requires a low-level of intelligence to be successful.

I could teach anybody, even people in this room, no offense intended, to be a farmer.

It's a process. You dig a hole, you put a seed in, you put dirt on top, add water, up comes the corn. You could learn that. Then we had 300 years of the industrial society. You put the piece of metal on the lathe, you turn the crank in the direction of the arrow and you can have a job. And we created a lot of jobs. At one point, 98 percent of the world worked in agriculture; today it's 2 percent in the United States.

Now comes the information economy. And the information economy is fundamentally different because it's built around replacing people with technology and the skill sets that you have to learn are how to think and analyze, and that is a whole degree level different. You have to have a different skill set, you have to have a lot more gray matter.[..]

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> [..] Bloomberg on why farmers can't work in information technology

MB: "I can teach anyone how to be a farmer 1 dig a hole 2 put a seed in 3 put dirt on top 4 add water 5 up comes the corn"

The skill 4information technology is completely different you need more grey matter[..]

</comment><comment><USER5> What an idiot. We deserve better leadership</comment>


Airbnb Audit Results - <AUTHOR> https://buer.haus/2017/03/08/airbnb-when-bypassing-json-encoding-xss-filter-waf-csp-and-auditor-turns-into-eight-vulnerabilities/ <comment><USER2> Anyone know of a good intro-to-web-app-security-best-practices resource? I don't have the resources to hire a security person and don't have the time to begin learning it all from scratch. I'm generally aware of what attack vectors look like (e.g. XSS, SQL injection, etc.) but am generally unfamiliar with solid low-cost, low-overhead ways of dealing with these problems. I don't have the time or the money (at-present) to set up a WAF -- but I know how important security can be. Where do I go to learn more?

<comment><USER3> [https://detectify.com/](https://detectify.com/) Automatically scans for vulnerabilities (including owasp top 10 mentioned in the previous comments). Not a knowledge resources as you were looking for but solve the same problem with less work for you =)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This appears to be a bad headline: it's not the result of an audit on Airbnb, but instead a list of findings as part of a bug bounty.

Further: while this is good work, clever findings, and an excellent writeup, it's a series of attacks on a single endpoint; sort of the XSS equivalent of a bug chain for a browser vulnerability. You could quibble over "8 vulnerabilities", since they all add up to the same vulnerability in the same piece of code.

The best headline would be the article's own, or, failing that:

Bypassing JSON Encoding, XSS Filter, WAF, CSP, and Auditor at Airbnb

<comment><USER5> Strongly agree. The headline appears to me to be borderline deceptive. It strongly implies Airbnb commissioned a formal assessment, not that the authors participated in a bug bounty.

Also agreed re: vulnerability numbers. As a rule I typically report multiple vulnerabilities in one endpoint that require chaining or which are all exploited using the same failure as one coherent finding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Site is wobbling; Google cache version: [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:l3pDsj...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:l3pDsjc5p6gJ:https://buer.haus/2017/03/08/airbnb- when-bypassing-json-encoding-xss-filter-waf-csp-and-auditor-turns-into-eight- vulnerabilities/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

<comment><USER7> archive.is version too [http://archive.is/CY0Nf](http://archive.is/CY0Nf)</comment></comment>


Mental Model: Second Order Thinking - <AUTHOR> https://models.substack.com/p/second-order-thinking <comment><USER2> Here's a mental model I've discovered that has been useful for me:

"Even if you have cleverly identified a second-order effect in the opposite direction, it doesn't mean it actually outweighs the magnitude of the first- order effect – you still have to check."

<comment><USER3> Just to add to that mental model:

In simple systems, first order effects tend to dominate.

In complex systems, higher order effects tend to dominate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The mental model notes are quite interesting to read but applying them is another matter. I have been reading mental models for a couple decades now and I honed in on one - invert always invert. This _one_ simple rule has been really hard to apply.

Let me give an analogy of trying to reason about physical properties from first principles. This is another popular exhortation - think from first principles just like Feynman or Fermi. I can think from first principles in one extremely narrow field where I happen to have half a decade of education and 20 years of experience. To reason from first principles like Fermi or Feynman in a broad domain like physics requires a world class mind, a world class education and a world of experience.

Most mental model writing is akin to consuming youtube fitness porn. It looks easy to do, you look cool doing it and the end results are just spectacular. However, like Arnold or David Goggins it requires an inhuman dedication, purpose, ability to withstand pain, bounce back from trauma and just keep sacrificing. Most of the time the only person benefiting is the video creator from the ad-roll.

I appreciate the posts but I now believe these mental models are incredibly hard to do and like most of the self-improvement/growth hacking genre is just good for entertainment and commerce 99.99% of the time.

</comment><comment><USER5> A better method would be 5 whys([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_whys](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_whys)). Keep asking whys until you discover the root cause. Or in this case until you discover the larger impact of an event.

</comment><comment><USER6> I find that the difference between how I make decisions and how people I consider smart make decisions is a difference of first order and second order thinking. In many ways I got lucky. I chose the computer science major and happened to love it, I became a software engineer and happened to love it. I did not think very deeply about these decisions. It's ironic because my job is to think about the control flow of methods, and the potential consequences that could arise from some current design.

I am trying very hard to integrate second order thinking into my decision making process.

</comment><comment><USER7> Question from me would be, what are the necessary conditions in an organization to create a culture that rewards recognizing and mitigating cognitive biases? Imagining that a series of Rationalist interview questions would seem a bit culty, and run the risk of going full Bridgewater.

<comment><USER8> I would imagine asking "When you approach a problem, do you apply any techniques to evaluate any cognitive biases that might be applicable" would elicit some sort of response without upsetting people.

I don't know how important this is for most line employees. As a code monkey, I rarely have some strong bias besides "Angular is my personal preference over React" which immediately leads to "Well, should we use React anyway because the team knows it better and blah blah."

<comment><USER9> If you want to be a software engineer instead of a "code monkey", this is part of it. The software engineer has to be able to see the second order effects of changes to the code.

<comment><USER8> In my opinion it's almost a given that any senior dev considers these. You can't be a senior dev / team lead / architect without thinking about how the system will be affected by decisions in the long run. From "MongoDB is faster, but it won't integrate with BI as well down the line" to "Well, GCP is great, but Google has a history of not supporting services in the long run."

<comment><USER10> Of course MongoDB does integrate with BI these days via its BI connector :-)

<comment><USER8> Haha, well, I won't start an argument given your affiliation, but let's just say that most BI tools CLAIMED to be able to integrate with Mongo well, but in the end, we ended up dumping the data into SQL for the BI tools. This was 4 years ago, and we tested about 5 major BI providers and were willing to pay them ridiculous sums.

With that said, I enjoy Mongo, for its specific use cases.

<comment><USER10> We built our BI connector a few years ago for all the reasons you outline. Definitely worth a spin if you have this challenge again. Basically makes MongoDB look like MySQL (if that floats your boat :-)).

<comment><USER8> I will check it out, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nassim Taleb has been saying this forever, he first talked about it in at least Antifragile IIRC.

</comment><comment><USER12> Is there any software that helps to perform the second order thinking?

<comment><USER3> No, because it's a mental practice. That said, you can use a template.

[https://untools.co/second-order-thinking](https://untools.co/second-order- thinking)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> well, the article itself mentions it is "an age old idea"..

</comment><comment><USER14> it's called speculation and it gets more speculative with each successive assumption</comment>


A GeekDad's 8-Year Old Daughter Reinvents Chess - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2011/04/geekdads-daughter-reinvents-chess/ <comment><USER2> The age of the daughter is not a surprise--- the number of children who learn chess and happen to be 8 is actually quite large(and no I don't have a citation, this is anecdotal). However of that group the number who the next day or so invent fairy-chess with a Fisher(kind of) variation is probably pretty close to 1! Were I the father, I'd be enormously proud and more than a little stunned. Shaking that off, I'd begin to encourage this spark as much as I could...

<comment><USER3> Agreed. All my boys were playing chess at 5. However, they have no desire to create a variation. Their #1 goal is to beat Dad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Found a link to the rules in the comments: [http://changizi.wordpress.com/2011/04/20/plastic-animal- ches...](http://changizi.wordpress.com/2011/04/20/plastic-animal-chess-my- daughters-chess-game/)

</comment><comment><USER5> _Chess is a revered institution. What kind of heretic plays chess once and immediately presumes to do better?_

<http://lesswrong.com/lw/qs/einsteins_superpowers/>

</comment><comment><USER6> There has been some debate regarding PG's "naughtiness" criteria for founders. Maybe irreverence would be a better word? To truly believe in their venture, founders need to have a certain irreverence for how things are done today or how the world is missing out on their idea.

</comment><comment><USER7> I know I have mentioned this here before but while in college I played a version of chess that used the dice from a game of Risk. If you didn't like your opponents move you could challenge it by rolling the dice. The player defending a the valid move would get the 3 white dice and the "attacker" would get the 2 red ones. Just like in Risk the highest point total won. I think if the defender lost the roll then they had to choose another move, if the attacker lost the roll then they lost their turn. Anyway it led to matches where you would try and get your queen behind the opponent's pawns and start taking out large pieces.

The rules that the girl came up with remind me of some of the stuff I see in modern video games medic, civilians, etc.

It also made me think about something I read recently that said that the average I.Q. is increasing all around the world from generation to generation.

</comment><comment><USER8> Kid makes up a new game. It's quite shocking really.

</comment><comment><USER9> >" _So, on the one hand we have my daughter's irreverence to a great institution ("bad girl!")._ "

I don't understand how it's irreverent to make up your own game inspired by another?

<comment><USER10> I think the point he's trying to make is that we're all so conditioned to accept institutions without question ("we do it that way because we've ALWAYS done it that way"). This is beaten into us (and creativity beaten OUT OF us) as children, especially through the public schools. Clearly it's not irreverent to innovate, but I can imagine the shock/horror of the mainstream at the "reinvention" of chess.

<comment><USER11> While the point is valid, certain institutions do require some reverence and respect. Chess is certainly such a game. I'm not saying one has to be a Fischer to invent a new chess format; but unless the person has seriously understood/appreciated the complexities of chess, I'll have trouble taking them seriously.

Irreverence is good if it comes from deep understanding and knowledge or genius - otherwise it just comes off as arrogance.

<comment><USER12> That's only true if you're trying to invent something _better_ , Chess 2.0. If you're just trying to create something _different_ and fun with similar rules, it's not really necessary to deeply understand the strategic balance of chess.

<comment><USER9> Exactly. She appeared to make something more complex (though I didn't look at the rules). But perhaps it's something that allows here to make stories about it better, or something that uses her favourite toys, or something that is more fun for some other reason.

Now, if she'd said - that game is no good, it's not complex enough, it's not challenging enough or somesuch (and wasn't a grandmaster) then I think she would perhaps have been irreverent, though more likely ignorant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I invented a chess variant that my friends and I have been addicted to for years. Here's an overview and breakdown:

Overview: Team chess. The game is played using teams of 2 against each other. Each individual sets up their pieces in their side of the board.

Phase 1: In the first phase each person draws a team from the hat. White1, Black1, White2, and Black2.

Phase 2: Class draft. Using the order listed above, each person takes a turn drafting a class of their color for their control. For example, when you draft "rook", you personally control all of your colors rooks. Only 4 pawns are used by each side. This process continues until all classes have been drafted.

Phase 3: Board position. Using the same order, each player takes a turn selecting a side of the board.

Phase 4: Class placement. Using the same order, each player takes a turn placing 1 class of pieces within their start zone. Because each side of the board is used, pieces can not be placed into the corner cross sections to begin. So a player's available spots would appear as follows: xxooooxx for the first 2 rows of a player's side

Phase 5: Starting. A random player is chosen from the hat to begin. Order continues in W1,B1,W2,B2 format from starting position.

Additional notes:

1) A king owner must have the opportunity to get out of check. This means a king could be in check for 3 straight moves.

2) A pawn upgrades a piece to whatever it wants, but if a player upgrades his pawn to a class he doesn't own after reaching the opposite side of his starting position, his partner (that class owner) will take the piece's control.

3) Pawns can start anywhere within the start zone and still move 2 spaces in their first move.

4) A bishop owner can place his bishops on any squares in the start zone, including the same color.

I'm sure there's a few more minor things I've left out, but that's the basics. If anybody wants to help me build this into a web game, let me know. It's incredibly addictive.

TL;DR - Team chess = awesome.

</comment><comment><USER14> Is it in any sense news that people have developed variant forms of chess?

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

<http://mathworld.wolfram.com/FairyChess.html>

After all, isn't current Western chess itself a variant of the (possibly Indian) game from which it originated?

<http://www.tradgames.org.uk/games/Chess.htm>

<http://history.chess.free.fr/history.htm>

If you know people from China, Taiwan, or Vietnam, you may have had the opportunity to play Chinese chess,

<http://www.clubxiangqi.com/?F=rules>

which is definitely related to Western chess, but noticeably different in game play.

After edit: I wonder about the first reply to this comment here, "so you post this, which is hypocritical on the face of it," and how it fits with the HN guideline

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

"Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation.

"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

Above in my original comment, I am of course expressing the opinion that a new variant of chess is unremarkable. I am not slamming the eight-year-old girl who invented the variant (and I appreciate the link in the reply that shows her handwritten notes about the rules--putting the rules in writing at her age is impressive to me). It just seems to me that part of the context of the submitted article is a long and well documented history of many people in West and East developing variants of the game of chess--including the variant that has become the dominant international form of the game. And I raise the meta- issues here because of pg's recently expressed concern

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403696>

that HN has a problem with some of the comments submitted. I want my comments to be top-quality (and, thus, appreciate correction from other participants here), and I want to be aware of what generally desired behavior is here.

P.P.S. scott_s posted simultaneously with my editing the first time here, and I appreciate his comment explaining succinctly what was dissatisfying about what the submitted article emphasized. Yes, inventing variants of common games (something I have observed dozens of children do over the years) is part of a young person's process of developing creativity--"rewriting the rules" to dare to try new ways of doing things.

<comment><USER15> Here's mine -- "Divorce court chess:"

        QBNRRNBK
        PPPP....
        PPPP....
        ........
        ........
        ....PPPP
        ....PPPP
        KBNRRNBQ

I've played this a number of times. It flummoxes chess experts, and it's actually quite fun. Everyone speculates that it's a solvable game. Believe it or not, but in my brief experience, development of the queen has been a big part of this game.

<comment><USER16> What are the castling rules in this variation?

<comment><USER15> Oddly enough, they're the same! (Or more accurately the standard ones are easily adapted.)

EDIT: I think I see what you're getting at. The King moves farther when castling with the far Rook.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: looking for current openings to do a msc or phd with partial funding - <AUTHOR>

Hi all,
I'm a comp. sci. engineer with a masters (both obtained in a small poor country in Latin America, my origin country by the way), 29 y'old, and I'm looking for opportunities to do another master in 2011, just for the experience of living and studying (and getting the degree, of course) in a different place in the first world.
The thing is, i need some kind of partial time job to support that. Do you know of graduate programs (in engineering, preferably) with some financial support? or where students are somewhat allowed/encouraged to do partial work to fund their studies?
My google-fu has been insufficient to find current openings to do masters (or phds) where the students had chance to work as lab assistants, or programmers to finance their studies. Thats the kind of thing I'm looking for... whatever field. I'll code for studying abroad!
Please post something, that would be appreciated. <comment><USER2> have you ever tried this?

[http://www.google.de/search?q=site:edu+open+position+as+rese...](http://www.google.de/search?q=site:edu+open+position+as+researcher)

good luck in your search!</comment>


Wingify Launches A New A/B Testing Platform For People Without Coding Experience - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/25/wingify-launches-a-new-ab-testing-platform-for-people-without-coding-experience/

<comment><USER2> Hello, CEO here. We had been working on a completely new version of Visual Website Optimizer (called VWO). Here's the launch post: [https://vwo.com/blog/launching-new-vwo/](https://vwo.com/blog/launching-new- vwo/)

Happy to answer any questions on what's new and what's our vision of A/B testing.

<comment><USER3> High-level, I think that's a great message. Having moved out of engineering and into marketing, I like tools that don't force me to code. There's a pretty good correlation between "doesn't require a dev" and "easy to use, even if you could write code".

On the other hand, Optimizely is sending basically the same message. Is there something that you're doing differently than them? Or are you just trying to do what they do, but better?

<comment><USER2> We're evolving from just being an A/B testing tool to being a comprehensive platform for optimizing conversions. This means features like heatmaps, IdeaFactory, website reviews and personalization.

The whole package together allows a marketer to do regular conversion optimization (and not just A/B testing). Check out the feature set at [http://vwo.com/features](http://vwo.com/features)

<comment><USER3> Nice, got it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Congrats Paras! New dashboard is looking nice, and I especially like the ability to retroactively segment results based on different customer dimensions and discover new opportunities for personalization.

One thing that I've noticed is that traditional A/B testing is a pretty sub- optimal way of answering the question: 'What works better, A or B?'

In the most basic example of an A/B test, you have a variation A and a variation B each shown to 50% of your user base. By definition, this approach will be sending half of your users to a worse performing version during the entire duration of the test!

The automated approach is based on a bandit algorithm that dynamically updates the proportion of users shown a given variation. With each new piece of data that you collect on the test variations' conversion rates and confidence, the algorithm adjusts the percentages automatically so that better performing variations are promoted and worse performers are pruned away.

This leads to:

1) faster results, because your directing test resources (i.e.: users and their data) to validate what you actually care about (i.e.: confidence in the best variation's performance)

2) a higher average conversion rate during the test itself, because relatively more users are being sent to the better performing variation automatically, and

3) less time and effort required to actively manage your experiments.

Though the math behind this approach is slightly more complex than a traditional A/B test, it's a no-brainer for those that are really interested in making data-driven decisions because of how much better the results are that it produces.

For anyone interested, here's a post we put together on how it works: [http://splitforce.com/resources/auto- optimization/](http://splitforce.com/resources/auto-optimization/)

</comment><comment><USER5> The #1 problem I've had in using external A/B testing platforms is that they allow flashes of the old content before the new is shown (if perhaps only for some users). We've seen huge problems with conversion when testing with those tools which we don't see when running A/B tests using server-side implementations.

If Wingify/VWO has solved this once and for all, it'd be _wonderful_.

<comment><USER6> Curious about "huge problems". Is there must be some data you could share to demonstrate this?

(ie: conversions dipped x% when we didn't use a server-side implementation)

<comment><USER5> I'll have to look into the exact data, but conversions dipped at least 33% — even on the 'A' side.

<comment><USER7> That sounds incredibly high. What site is this on?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Which version of the site would Webcrawlers and indexing engines see? I'm just trying to work out whether this kind of tool has applicability when researching SEO tweaks on a site.

<comment><USER9> The control. JavaScript triggers the tests, and most testing suites explicitly don't serve tests to Googlebot or crawler IPs.

<comment><USER8> Cheers, that makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> just a heads up. links on wingify.com are giving a 404 [http://wingify.com/about](http://wingify.com/about) [http://wingify.com/careers](http://wingify.com/careers)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the heads up. Fixed it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Really nice design! Very well thought intuitive product for web and mobile optimisation !

<comment><USER2> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Three lettered domain name is really cool. Great product. Congratulations!</comment>