What makes for a stable marriage? - <AUTHOR> http://www.randalolson.com/2014/10/10/what-makes-for-a-stable-marriage/ <comment><USER3> This is a fascinating topic to me. I read it with great interest, and I might even go and do a bunch of my own analysis of the data. But I can't help but think that in a way the whole thing deeply misses the point. My skepticism started when I got to the third point: "How often you go to church". The results seem obvious to me. In general, churches frown on divorce, so of course church goers are going to have lower divorce rates! But that's irrelevant if the result is that a bunch of people are miserable because they're staying in marriages that make them unhappy. I used to be a regular church goer and I absolutely saw this. People would stay in miserable marriages because they thought it was the right thing to do.

So I hypothesize that what really matters is not divorce rate, but happy marriage rate. Unfortunately that data is not in this study. And furthermore, if it was, I would suspect significant bias. In the church world that I was a part of there was significant pressure to keep up appearances. So I don't think you would be able to trust either the married persons' self assessment of happiness nor the external assessment of the people who know them.

With this new metric in mind, I went back and re-thought the logic in each of the OP's significant predictors. First stop, "How much money you make". IMO this one falls flat on its face. It's easy to imagine situations where someone would stay in an unhappy marriage just because their partner has money. It's also easy to imagine situations where someone makes a lot of money, but stays in an unhappy marriage because their partner would get half of it in a divorce. Another factor that I think is suspect is "How many people attended the wedding". When a lot of people saw you get married it seems like there might be more pressure to stay in an unhappy marriage to save face to all the people who attended your wedding. I'm a little bit less confident about the reasoning here, but it still seems plausible.

The rest of the predictors seem reasonable to me, especially "How long you were dating". This one stands up under the happiness test and just seems to make sense, provided that the extended dating years were as similar as possible to the married years, minus the marriage license.

<comment><USER4> From my experience, the happiest marriages are of people who don't just "go" to church, but actually try to "live" their church's teachings in all areas of their lives. Churches usually promote selflessness, sacrifice, honesty, gentleness, and sincere love. So it's a recipe for happiness inside or out of marriage, but especially inside marriage.

<comment><USER5> YMMV. Other churches promote killing everyone that don't believe in the same god, or believe in the same god but have a method to pray, or has other social habits.

I think that it's not a problem of a specific religion. Most religion has peaceful periods but 300 years later the "same" religion has a violent period and 300 year later the "same" religion is peaceful again, ...

And sometimes, some members of the same church are peaceful and some are violent. It's more complicated.

<comment><USER6> Churches/religions can condone violence to others _while still promoting healthy marriage_ , so your point doesn't necessarily mean anything about the topic at hand.

(Obviously, your point _is_ important in a larger context. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Another interesting statistic to add to this: divorce risk increases significantly the more sexual partners you've had before marriage: [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2003....](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2003.00444.x/abstract).

However, cohabitation and sex with your eventual spouse before marriage helps your chances.

This is all correlation, of course.

<comment><USER8> Note that the previous sexual partner correlation with divorce is for _females_ only.

Look away! Look away!

<comment><AUTHOR> I was very worried until I noticed that. Damn my young adventurous years!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A couple of subjective thoughts - the only two points that don't jive for me are that spending huge amounts on a wedding significantly increase the likelihood of divorce, while having 200+ people at your wedding severely decreases it. It seems likely to me that the amount of people who attend the wedding is insignificant, but it can be a good indicator of the importance of close family and community of friends.

The only other thought is how church comes in to play. This is a touch of a sore spot, because my parents stayed in a bad marriage for probably a decade longer than necessary due to religious stigma. As it is, my mother still won't acknowledge her divorce to the church because she would be denied certain things that are important to her, personally.

So I'm not sure that religion makes a marriage stronger, it just places a higher degree of shame and stigma on divorce.

But again, these are just my personal observations, from someone happily married for a decade who has a big family, spent less than $10k on a wedding with less than 50 people, and is (and whose partner is) agnostic.

<comment><USER10> "So I'm not sure that religion makes a marriage stronger, it just places a higher degree of shame and stigma on divorce."

But perhaps any social pressure that encourages marriage would do the same thing? I've got quite a few friends that have had arranged marriages - <USER2> marry strangers and work to build a happy marriage from it because their families expect it.

On the other hand, "staying in a bad marriage" is a misnomer - there's not really such a thing as a bad marriage so much as selfish participants. When one more both of the partners refuse to work towards a better marriage, it's practically impossible to make that marriage last.

<comment><USER9> > there's not really such a thing as a bad marriage so much as selfish > participants

This is absurd. It's constructed of a series of suppositions, only a few of which I'll address.

First is that people are static. This simply isn't true. We all know that we all change - not just in age, wisdom, and so on, but in tastes, politics, religious dedication, and the lines we draw between wrong and right, just to name a few.

In just these ways, people can grow apart. The distance between these changes can, in fact, cause "irreconcilable differences."

Sometimes these changes are brought about by dramatic stress events, from the death of a child to major swings in financial stability. The way in which these events change the unwilling participants can again lead to incompatibility where once there was compatibility.

But worst is the idea that if people just "work on it" they can overcome anything. Sometimes overcoming growing apart - be it over time or rather quickly - is best done by removing yourself from a situation that is no longer positive, and has little ability to become positive again.

This is where I find religion quite often inserts itself negatively. While I agree with a poster above that regular attendance at religious gatherings does often help a couple share a support network, share common beliefs and similar circles of friends, etc., religion often tells you only divorce or failed marriage is an abomination, and a personal failure requiring lifetime penance. It then follows by labeling that person as an outcast, no longer worthy of the community they had once belonged to.

These are just a few reasons (not to mention physical/substance abuse, and so on) that marriages can fail without it being personal failure. Your assertion does nothing but pile on further stigma to those who have gone through divorce. No one wants their marriage to fail, but when it does, it isn't always personal failure that requires additional shaming from outsiders.

<comment><USER11> Gotta disagree with you: marriage is a contract, forsaking all others, so long as you both shall live. Divorce means your word is worthless, and that your own wants are more important than your word.

It IS a personal failure, but go ahead, rationalize all you want.

<comment><USER12> > marriage is a contract, forsaking all others, so long as you both shall live

Not everyone views marriage as a contract or as something that cannot be broken ever. The legal status of marriage in a jurisdiction != how people feel about and treat marriage.

> Divorce means your word is worthless, and that your own wants are more > important than your word.

Giving your word on something isn't a clause that requires you to give up your own wants and needs. For example, if you married someone and one day they become abusive, you are not obligated to stay and take said abuse.

> It IS a personal failure, but go ahead, rationalize all you want.

This attitude is so unhelpful and smacks of a superiority complex.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I find studies produced by the Gottman institute far more compelling because they're much more prescriptive. In particular they analyze the "four horsemen" of conflict in a marriage and how these undermine marriage stability: [http://www.gottmanblog.com/2013/04/the-four-horsemen- recogni...](http://www.gottmanblog.com/2013/04/the-four-horsemen-recognizing- criticism.html?m=1)

The long term presence of these "four horsemen" is a strong predictor of divorce, and the recognition of their presence is a good sign that a marriage needs help.

</comment><comment><USER14> Slightly off topic, but I'm genuinely curious why forward-thinking secular people in the west still want to get married. Historically, and still in many parts of the world, its arguably an incredibly sexist tradition that has its roots in religious and patriarchal control. In many ways it has been completely re-defined, at least in the west, and doesn't have any/many of those connotations any more - but it begs the question, why actually bother now? Why not just partner up with the person you love? Create your own private culture of love and respect between each other. How many couples stay in unhappy situations, and raise children in sad/angry environments, because of the stigma of divorce? Seems like this statistical fretting and min-maxing doesn't help that either.

<comment><USER15> There are gov't benefits to being married. For example, when one spouse dies the joint assets don't need to go through probate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Anyone who thinks the number of guest at your wedding is one of the "7 biggest factors" of a successful marriage has either never been married, is unfamiliar with the different between causality and correlation, or both.

This article is irritating in its language to the extreme:

"What struck me about this study is that it basically laid out what makes for a stable marriage in the U.S. I've highlighted 7 of the biggest factors below."

No you haven't. You cherry picked 7 metrics and mapped them against divorce rates.

"Clearly, this shows us that having a large group of family and friends who support the marriage is critically important to long-term marital stability"

No, it "clearly" doesn't show that at all. I could argue instead that it "clearly means" that most people are highly malleable to peer pressure, and don't want to look stupid/ashamed/embarrassed that they can't make their marriage work, so they stay married (Note, I don't think divorce is about an inability to make a marriage "work", I'm simply pointing out a reasonable reaction for married people to have).

The "goes to church" factor is also very open to interpretation. Are people with strong united faith more likely to stay together? That is probable. Equally likely are that many faiths frown upon or outright forbid the concept of divorce. As my grandmother told me years ago, "Catholics, Billy, do not get divorced."

I appreciate studies that try to collect this information, but these aren't direct factors. They are, at best, secondary metrics that help reveal information about the traits and values of the people getting married. This still valuable, you just need to frame it in the right light.

Married after dating for a month? Hmmm, Sounds like people who aren't thinking things through and considering the long term consequences of their actions.

Lots of family at a wedding? The bride/groom is probably someone who has lots of experience dealing with people they love, but who can be difficult, and where leaving isn't really an option because they are family. Sounds like a good trait to help resolve the issues that will come up in a marriage.

People who aren't superficial about money or looks? Yeah, those are mature people with reasonable expectations in life. Bet they are going to do much better than someone who wants a trophy wife or a gold digger.

Really, this is all just absurd to paint these as "factors" in your marriage.

</comment><comment><USER17> As someone who only sometimes attends church, I wonder why that has a higher risk of divorce than never attending or always attending. Maybe lack of commitment?

It's sad how much of a difference money makes. Ideally, money would have no bearing on love or marriage. I'd like to think that if I was well-off (or if my spouse was) and then something disastrous happened, that we would still support each other throughout.

Also, the "looks" thing is kind of surprising. Attractiveness is a binary prerequisite for dating (at least for me) but once married it wouldn't matter to me, in terms of keeping the relationship stable. What if one of you gets in an accident and is horribly disfigured or gains or loses a bunch of weight?

Lots of interesting data -- there are many other correlates I'd like to see. How do personality characteristics (BPD, narcissism, extraversion) correlate? How does constancy of morals/values correlate (someone whose values remain the same over many years vs someone who is always changing their values)?

What would be even more intriguing would be to find the subset of the population that describes themselves as having near-perfect, long-lasting marriages and compare those people to the general population. I would _really_ love to see that.

My opinion is that most marriages dissolve when one (or both) people lose the ability (or never had it to begin with) to be empathetic toward the other person.

<comment><USER18> >> It's sad how much of a difference money makes. Ideally, money would have no bearing on love or marriage. I'd like to think that if I was well-off (or if my spouse was) and then something disastrous happened, that we would still support each other throughout.

Marriage are bonded over factors more than love and people in love get divorces. The money aspect of the study is simply showing that the more money a couple has the less likely non-love factors are able to break up a marriage. Seems completely reasonable to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The book "The Five Love Languages" really helped my marriage.

</comment><comment><USER20> Secret of a stable marriage: Invite 200+ attendees to your wedding while keeping the budget below 1000 USD.

<comment><USER7> Pretty funny. Potluck wedding?

<comment><USER21> You might be surprised, but it happens pretty regularly. Sure, there are some parts of American culture where you're expected to throw a huge fancy ceremony with a $15,000 dress and a limo and a 7-course meal. But there are parts of American culture where the expected wedding reception is cake and punch, buying a dress on clearance is a mark of pride, and you either drive your own car or borrow a friend's car if yours is well below median crapitude.

Our total wedding expenses weren't quite that low -- 200+ people came in at around $4k, including brunch (it was a mid-morning wedding,) a dress hand-made by the mother of the bride, and rental of a horse-drawn Amish buggy from the farmer next door to the church.

Of course, both "lots of people at the wedding" and "spend little money" signify something -- lots of people signifies a lot of social support, and friends and family who think this is a good idea; spending little money is an indicator that the important part is the life you're making together, without too much emphasis on the initial celebration. (I have read studies to this effect, though it's been a long time and I couldn't now tell you where they were published.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wonder how many of these factors are causation vs correlation. My guess is that, for example, that eloping doesn't ruin your marriage and having a big wedding doesn't improve it; it's just that people who elope are reflecting the reality that their attitude is "we're in this alone", and people who have a big wedding are reflecting their confidence and their sense that friends' and families' support is important.

<comment><USER23> As someone who dabbles in psychology research (mostly Big Five stuff), I had this same reaction: this is great correlation stuff, but I hardly expect it's casual. This is my grip with books like "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" \-- picking up those habits won't make you necessarily effective.

<comment><USER24> The 7 Habits title emphasizes correlation. The actual habits and content of the book is much more causal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Here's the paper from Emory that the post was based on

[http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2501480&u...](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2501480&utm_content=buffer734c1&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin.com&utm_campaign=buffer)

The only thing that was contradictory was the parts about the wedding. How can you not spend 20k or more when there are 200 or more guests?

<comment><USER26> I had almost 400 guests at my wedding and it cost < $10k.

Venue: grandparent's backyard. Had that not been available a local church's community center would have worked (usually free or "free" with a donation of like $500).

Food: simple catered food. The wedding had a picnic theme (summer wedding) so we went w/ sliders and other finger foods. $8/head

Chairs and tables: Rented, but set up ourselves.

Photographer: Flew in someone from out of state. Much cheaper than a local LA photographer.

Dance Floor: Rented ($800) DJ: iPod with a playlist

Decorations: made our own decorations, borrowed strands of lights, etc.

It was a great wedding, wasn't terribly expensive and had a lot of guests.

<comment><USER27> I have a similar experience; my wife and I spent about $4000 on our wedding,and had about 150 guests, and it was a perfectly lovely (if not particularly fancy) ceremony. We got sandwichs, cheese & crackers, and fruit trays (plus some baked goods my wife and some friends made) for the meal, it worked out to about $2 a person, and no one left hungry. The reception was in the church hall, my wife got her dress off Kijiji (think Canadian Craigslist), and I just wore the suit I already owned (why waste enough money to buy a new suit on renting a tux? I looked sharp, and no one cares how the groom's dressed anyway). We bought flowers for the bouquets, but none for decoration (again, why? where does it make the experience better?) Photography was probably our biggest single expense, and we got that cheaply because my wife knew a woman who was just getting her business started and wanted to build a portfolio (our wedding photos are great, and we have digital copies of all of them we can make as many prints of as we want).

The short version is we planned our wedding with a mindset of "we want as many of the people we care about to be able to share this day with us as possible, and since we have a limited budget we're only going to spend it on things that make a positive difference in the day".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think that marriage itself is completely irrelevant - it's the relationship that matters; Although we're getting married next year (we joke about _sealing the deal_ , since we both agree it's just a nice-to-have) after 7 years and 4 kids of a relationship. We've had ups and downs which we're all connected to our financial situation. While I was bootstrapping my startup ([https://codeable.io](https://codeable.io)), things at some point started to look really bad and we had to borrow money - which brought a lot of stress to the table, which led to a lot of arguments (although I can't say we were anywhere near the breaking point). After we closed our first investment, things got much easier (financially speaking) and I was able to spend more time with my family and bonded with them more. So the pillars of a good _relationship_ are mutual respect and support, lots of love, some financial stability (yes, it matters) and compromises. And spending quality time together, you can't bond if you're not around.

</comment><comment><USER29> I would suggest that if you want a good and wonderful marriage, then respect is key. Have someone observe the couple and watch the dynamic. I wonder how much of the various graphs could correlate with likelihood of respecting the other.

I am surprised by the length to proposal. My opinion is that once you meet someone that really clicks, then it works out quickly and well. I wonder if there is another dynamic that correlates with the religious as well, one that perhaps is more in the vein of arranged marriages, so to speak.

<comment><USER30> > My opinion is that once you meet someone that really clicks, then it works > out quickly and well.

Usually that feeling of "click" passes after 2 years and transforms into a mellower , longer lastin kind of love. So if you stay longer, you see how you both fit together under this new kind of love.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> _About a decade ago, the gossip on everyone's lips was that "1 /2 of all marriages in the U.S. end in divorce." That factoid was later disproven[0]_

Whoa, not so fast. If you follow the link, you'll see that it wasn't disproven at all. Rather, the linked article attempts to _supplant_ this statistic with a different one: the fraction of _people_ who get married who ever divorce.

The difference between the two statistics comes, of course, from the existence of serial divorcers. It's reasonable to offer a different statistic that filters those people out. But the original statistic is actually correct as stated: about half of all _marriages_ end in divorce.

[0] [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/19/health/19divo.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/19/health/19divo.html)

<comment><USER32> An even more cynical view is:

       50% of marriages end in divorce,
       the other 50% end in death.
       Mazel tov.

I just had to post that, one of my favorite quips. I'm in my 20th year of marriage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm a bit surprised to see the conclusions on this post getting so much love on HN.

Let's assume it's tongue in cheek that the author says the best marriage is when "you've been dating at least 3 years before getting engaged, making a combined $125k salary, go to church together regularly, and don't worry about your partner's wealth nor looks".

All the data says is that those happen to be some attributes of long lasting marriages and not necessarily when combined together.

How can we know what about the pressures of a marriage where the the couple can't afford to go away on a Honeymoon? What social pressures could there be on a couple that spend over $20k on a wedding? How can we know about the stigma of ending a religious marriage when you go to church every week and invite 200 people to your wedding?

Most importantly - there's zero information about the quality of the marriage...

The site is responding intermittently but as rhiever says you can get it here [https://i.imgur.com/rABtgo9.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/rABtgo9.jpg)

edit: I hate to write so negatively so I'd like to say that it's great that there's so much useful and honest marriage advice on here as a result of this discussion.

</comment><comment><USER34> Warren Buffett once expressed his opinion on this here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2a9Lx9J8uSs#t=2147](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2a9Lx9J8uSs#t=2147)

It's actually really good advice for many other things too.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here is a rehost of the web page since it went down: [https://i.imgur.com/rABtgo9.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/rABtgo9.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER35> When I told my father I wanted to get married he just asked, "Do you get along?" I think that's the most important question if you're expecting to stay married for the rest of your life.

Many of the things cited in TFA are symptoms of not getting along.

Also, I recommend always assuming you're the one who's wrong when there's a disagreement. You probably are, and if you're not it still works out better :)

<comment><USER36> "Getting along" is a key aspect of robustness in a relationship: [http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=1021](http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=1021)

Robustness is under-rated in the romantic ideals people are sold (and I do mean "sold"), which emphasize "perfection" under various guises.

The romantic ideal is someone who is not just a perfect match for you, but is a unique match for you, not because of your history and shared experiences but because of some supposedly inherent qualities.

The robust ideal is someone you get along with, who you agree with on a few fundamentals--which are mostly about attitude--who you've got enough history with to trust and understand and accept, and who you can negotiate with when you disagree. There could be a million people out there like that if the accidents of history were different, and at least half of those properties are in the relationship, not the person.

Another way I put this is, "You should marry someone you could go through a divorce with and still love them when you're done." I've seen friends with fragile relationships go through horrific divorces, whereas ones with robust relationships, while still unpleasant, generally still love each other when the dust has settled.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> _Couples who elope are 12.5x more likely to end up divorced than couples who get married at a wedding with 200+ people._

So this article is conflating elopement with not having wedding guests. They aren't the same thing. I eloped -- got married in secret. No, there were no wedding guests. That does not mean the two things are identical.

Though, Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elopement_(marriage)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elopement_\(marriage\)) says:

 _To elope, most literally, merely means to run away and to not come back to the point of origination.[1] More specifically, elopement is often used to refer to a marriage conducted in sudden and secretive fashion, usually involving hurried flight away from one 's place of residence together with one's beloved with the intention of getting married.

Today the term "elopement" is colloquially used for any marriage performed in haste, with a limited public engagement period or without a public engagement period. Some couples elope because they dislike or cannot afford an expensive wedding ceremony, or wish to avoid objections from parents, or religious obligations._

Which gives me pause because, on the one hand, I married in secret. On the other hand, I did not actually go anywhere and our circle of mutual friends all knew our intentions to marry for like a year or more beforehand.

We did end up divorced but we were married for more than 2 decades and the divorce was amicable. I think it lasted as long as it did and fared as well as it did in part because we handled our marriage as a very private matter. I don't think you will ever get me in front of 200+ people to marry. If I ever remarry, I expect it to be a good marriage that lasts for many years.

</comment><comment><USER38> Interesting! I'm confused though: if you have 200+ people attending your wedding, you're over 90 percent less likely to divorce. However if you spend only $1k on the wedding, you're also much less likely to divorce. How does that add up? The most successful marriages somehow have lots of people on a marriage for almost no money at all?

<comment><USER39> I'd be interested to know if the amount spent on the wedding is the amount the couple personally spent on the wedding or if it's the total amount that was spent on the wedding.

If it's the former, that means couples whose parents paid the full (or most) of the cost of the wedding could fall into the 200+ attendees while personally paying nothing.

<comment><USER40> Those pretty much have to be correlates for something, but I wonder what?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> As the co-author of "The New I Do: Reshaping Marriage for Skeptics, Realists and Rebels" (Seal Press, Sept. 28) I find the post and the following comments intriguing. Correlation is not causation, and sociologist Philip Cohen has done a fine job of pointing out the difference with similar findings reported by the National Marriage Project ([http://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/my- rejectio...](http://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/my-rejection-of- the-national-marriage-projects-before-i-do/)).

I love what Scott Burson says, "Your marriage will be what you make it." Amen! A marriage license doesn't dictate how you set up your marriage. It doesn't require that the couples live together, have kids or not, be monogamous, etc. That is up to the couple to decide and in truth, we don't all marry for the same reasons. The license grants you more than 1,000 government perks (and why the government gives those out based on a person's love life is a curious thing) and marriage still matters to many of us, otherwise you wouldn't see the push by same-sex couples to be treated equally.

Our book offers seven alt models that couples have already chosen to break free of the one-size-fits-all, until death-do-us-part traditional model, which doesn't work anymore. We no longer marry for the same reasons that marriage was created. Time for new models that set up couples for success by how they define success, not just longevity. Please check out what we're doing: [http://sealpress.com/books/the-new-i-do/](http://sealpress.com/books/the-new- i-do/)

</comment><comment><USER42> Lots of data, graphs, and interesting thinking, but what sticks out the most:

881 words about "What makes for a stable marriage" and not one of them is "love".

This piece demonstrates two of the most common memes that continue to perpetuate hn:

1\. correlation != causation

2\. academia != real life

I wonder if OP is married and how the joys and challenges of maintaining a stable marriage for many years would have affected this post.

<comment><USER43> Of all the things you can objectively measure in the world, I am sure a significant majority would disagree that you can measure love.

It is possible to love someone deeply and still separate. The cause of separation might be out of love.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> One critical note to

 _" The particularly scary part here is that the average cost of a wedding in the U.S. is well over $30,000, which doesn't bode well for the future of American marriages."_

Since wedding costs are not Gaussian (quick guess exponential), the mean is not very informative. Even misleading.

</comment><comment><USER45> This is a misleading article in the following sense: the implication is "here are these seven surprising factors that are correlated with successful marriages". Except, in recent decades US divorce rates have bifurcated into two groups — well educated, affluent people who get married later and have lower divorce rates, and less well-off people who have a higher divorce rate. Given this one fact, most of the factors in the article are completely unsurprising. For example, it would be surprising if going on a honeymoon was _not_ correlated positively with a successful marriage given that it is positively correlated with income.

</comment><comment><USER46> I wonder how this correlates to gay marriage.

</comment><comment><USER47> I can't help but feel that there must be some other underlying variables and the ones they measured are just reflections. For instance, the culture -- I'd imagine Mormons tend to not get divorced, have lots of attendees without spending a lot of money, and they seem to really be into marriage, so perhaps some of this could reduce to just "be Mormon".

</comment><comment><USER4> Anyone else drawn the connection to [http://xkcd.com/55/](http://xkcd.com/55/) yet?

</comment><comment><USER4> Funny how we feel the need to do statistics and draw charts to figure out what makes a good marriage, when all that's really needed is a little common sense.

1\. Communicate your feelings instead of bottling them up.

2\. Be selfless and stop focusing so much on getting your wants and desires, and trust that your needs will be met.

3\. Be realistic, expect that you won't always get your way, things will go wrong sometimes, and you just have to do your best.

4\. If you make a vow that your marriage is going to be forever, try sticking to that instead of thinking divorce is even an option.

5\. Stop focusing so much on pleasure. Even Plato got this one right. Life isn't about maximizing your pleasure and minimizing pain, it's about doing what's right. Obsessing over getting pleasure KILLS marriages. It's what gave men the stereotype of being sex-driven and what gave women the stereotype of lying there in bed just waiting for it to be over.

6\. Stop believing the media. They completely get marriage and sex wrong, in every sense, in every place. Turn off your TVs and think for yourselves about what it should look like and be. Sex is a wonderful way to celebrate the most intimate union of your marriage, but it's not this amazing thing everyone should obsess about getting all the time.

<comment><USER48> Oh if it were simply _at 's really needed is a little common sense_

None of this really bears out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Despite good intentions, I think the article would be better off with a title like spurious correlations.

Please see [http://tylervigen.com/](http://tylervigen.com/) for more intriguing, though meaningless correlations.

</comment><comment><USER50> Communication.

</comment><comment><USER51> For the majority: real integration with the family.

</comment><comment><USER52> I think the folk who cry "how is this topic relevant to hn" are silent when the topic is interesting to them, and then will speak up if they get bored.

</comment><comment><USER53> That there are no rogue couples.

</comment><comment><USER54> Separate bathrooms.

</comment><comment><USER55> regular sex

</comment><comment><USER56> Ability of _each_ to continuously change/evolve/learn - not to get stuck as some "set in stone" personality, to be always attractive as a "new" personality.

</comment><comment><USER57> The way I read that graphs - people in upper middle and high class tend to avoid divorce (probably for saving face). It says nothing about stability of the marriage.

</comment><comment><USER58> Two horses.</comment>


Yes, Ageism Is a Problem in Tech. But Vanity Is a Bigger One - <AUTHOR> https://www.inc.com/matt-haber/silicon-valley-vanity-ageism-startup-founders.html <comment><USER2> The author of _American Psycho_ said if it would have be made today it would star Silicon Valley workers instead of Wall Streeters.

[https://www.independent.co.uk/arts- entertainment/films/news/...](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts- entertainment/films/news/patrick-bateman-would-be-working-in-silicon-valley- with-mark-zuckerberg-now-says-american-psycho-a6897466.html)

The _vanity_ described in the article is not something I've seen in European tech scene were tech wages are lower and more on par with all knowledge based jobs, outside of management consulting, medicine and law. I feel people here get into tech because the enjoy it, not because it's a quick way to get rich, because it definitely isn't.

To me, it seems like vanity just follows the money and has nothing to to with tech specifically, making such articles fairly pointless. 30 years ago it was Wall Street now it's SV and with all that VC money floating around it's bount to attract various types of personas.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's a problem but it's also an opportunity. Maybe I should only look at pitches from founders under 6ft, since I'll get a bargain playing off of people's dumb instincts.

<comment><USER4> That called being a contrarian investor, a successful strategy at times, but investing is "Keynesian beauty competition". To win such a game, one must bet on the contestant that one thinks is considerate most fair by all, not one's personal preference.

<comment><USER5> There are key differences between startup investing and that model. You just have to get sufficient amount of investors to recognize the diamond in the rough. Not a majority or anything near that. With enough money you don't have to convince anyone else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not surprised that attractive people, all else being equal, are likely to be more successful in life than someone who is not, but that applies to almost everything and has nothing specifically to do with "tech."

</comment><comment><USER7> Surprisingly shallow article that focuses on the ageism amongst startup founders.

What I wanna know is how difficult it is for that 50+ veteran with 25+ years of experience to find an engineering position in today's market.

<comment><USER8> > _focuses on the ageism amongst startup founders._

Shallow, perhaps. But the article isn't even _about_ ageism; it's about vanity in the tech world. And it says as much in the title.

The best part:

"Neumann would be Odin, striding around with his retinue. He does look rather like a Viking."

Neumann is 6'5, skinny and "nerdy". Is that what the stereotypical viking looks like nowadays? The idea that being above average height makes you some physical specimen is absurd.

<comment><USER9> lol, I didn't know what Neumann and his wife looked like, before I read this article.

I looked them up, expecting them to look like actors from Vikings or LotR, but they looked rather average to me.

But I also couldn't understand the hype about the Snap CEO, who looked to me like an average nerd put in some fancy suite to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There is reverse ageism in enterprise tech where experience counts for more than youthfulness. All the senior folks at enterprise positions are over 50. Companies that range from SAP, Oracle, IBM, Microsoft etc... tech is not just consumer-facing apps or startups. Try to get funding for an enterprise startup without having co-founders are 45 or older and have years of industry experience.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I think the ageism comes from engineers who, for no fault of their own, have stayed in their positions for decades. All of sudden, they're 45 or 55 and earning senior comp at an 'enterprise tech'. These people are the usually the first to go because they are the most expensive. The senior execs are in a different position, where it may be viewed experience and seasoning complement the younger staffs' vision. A senior exec--with exit event or public company experience--tends to be very sought after.</comment></comment>


Canadian University Puts IT Whiz Kids in 'Dormcubator' - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,142920/article.html

<comment><USER2> > the newest stuff like AJAX and PHP

Yup, when that is new, you have a problem. Other than that, I am so envious of those kids.

<comment><USER3> I laughed at the quote myself.

But, think back to when you were 18, were you right on top of things? Or slowly trying to catch up and a few years behind? A program like this could have a few kids say 'Hey! lets check out Arc, pg says its cool!' and learn a new way of looking at programming.

I am moderately angry my alma mater didn't have this in place when I went. However, I think it would be a great dorm to visit, not to live in. My priorities were not the same during those years.

Waterloo is really turning into a startup hub, but RIM's aggressive hiring lately has turned most of my entrepreneur friends in the area into drones!

<comment><USER4> Startup-related activity in the areas seem to have greatly increased over the the last year or so. It was interesting to see 70 or so people at Waterloo StartupCamp I, and then probably double that number at Waterloo StartupCamp II a few months later.

<comment><USER3> I suggest the entrepreneurship week conferences, I met a lot great people there. Hundreds attend. <http://www.entrepreneurweek.ca/section/view/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "With these start-ups, the real question is: will we have enough funds?"

\- Does anyone smell another ycomb clone ?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> "Learning about speaking about and selling your idea or product is usually the most important part"

What about building it?

<comment><USER6> Second most important.

Success and quality seem to be only loosely correlated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Dormcubator? More like _dorkubator_ , am I right, folks? Am I right?

<comment><USER8> Oh come one guys, you know you were thinking dorkubator too. I guarantee the other kids on campus have figured that one out. I was going to say it myself but I thought it was too obvious!</comment></comment>


Negotiators Lose Last Chance to Salvage the TPP by Caving on Copyright Extension - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/02/negotiators-burn-their-last-opportunity-salvage-tpp-caving-copyright-term <comment> k-mcgrady >> "If the copyright holder is an individual, the minimum copyright term would extend to the lifetime of the creator plus 70 years after her death."

I'm quite a big supporter of copyright but that's absolutely ridiculous. I think the lifetime of the creator is very reasonable. I can even understand throwing in a decade after that so that the family of a creator who dies young/suddenly are supported for a while. 70 years is 3 or 4 generations of family.

<comment><USER2> I don't see why copyright terms need to be empirically justified. Land is passed down from generation to generation, and few people ask: "what's the empirically justifiable duration of land rights?" If we're going to have inheritance of property,[1] I see no reason to extend stronger protections to dirt peoples' ancestors stole from native Americans than to creative works they brought into the universe through their own ingenuity.

[1] Which is a controversial issue, but a separate one.

<comment><USER3> I can create a new copy of a book in a few milliseconds. I cannot create a new piece of land, at all. What a dumb argument.

<comment><USER2> What does the ease of copying have to do with the moral justification for protecting something? Creating a _new book_ certainly isn't an act that happens in a few milliseconds.

As for creating land--the majority of land came into private ownership in the U.S. via one of two means: 1) granted to wealthy people by European kings; or 2) annexed by the sweat of the brow (i.e. clearing a patch of wilderness and farming it). Those acts were sufficient to morally justify a perpetual property right, passed down from generation to generation. In a way, authors do something very similar to (2). Every sequence of bits is already out there in the aether--authors do the hard work of cultivating a particular sequence of bits into something valuable. It's no different than putting in work to bring land out of the wilderness into civilized use.

<comment><USER4> The public domain provides the raw material for most new works. For example. all of the original Disney cartoons would not have been possible except for the fact that earlier works were in the public domain.

The constitution does not pretend that intellectual property is the same as real property and for good reason. For some reason I don't see anyone who says they are equivalent also saying that copyright holders should also pay property taxes on copyrighted works like they do their house. So even the proponents of this, realize that intellectual property is different than real property.

These giant corporations that are bribing (er I mean lobbying) politicians to extend copyright to infinite terms are destroying our cultural heritage for short term profit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What about a contract like this: the copyright holder declares the value of the copyright (on the quarter; on the year; but the declared value may only increase); we then tax them on that value---say 1%. The flip side is that the copyright may be purchased 'into the public domain' by simply paying the full amount of the copyright to the owner of the copyright. (The owner has no right of refusal; however, they may increase the value of the copyright by paying the difference in taxes.)

For patents, have the tax be $300 for each year of the age of the patent. Surely, a patent is worth $300 in its first year; and, any patent that is still 'interesting' after 10 years is worth at least $3000?

Multinational patents/copyrights are payed to the originating country, so that there's no multiple payment issue.

<comment><USER6> This is a bad idea. You want to impose a tax on people when they create something? Penalizing people for innovation is the exact opposite of what copyright protection is intended to do.

If I create something, and a corporation with deep pockets wants to take it from me, they can just keep upping their bid until the tax for me to keep it would bankrupt me, forcing me to give it up? No thanks.

<comment><USER7> With the stipulation that it's a graduated tax which applies only to extensions, I think it's a fine idea.

Your first 7-14 years are free, a modest fee for the next 14 year extension. Then they start rising steeply.

If the work's worth the extension, you can continue to file. If not, it lapses to PD.

And you only get so long regardless -- 56 years should be long enough for anybody.

<comment><USER8> I like the idea of an exponential increase. $1 for the first year, then double it for each subsequent year. If you don't want to pay a $1 then it probably doesn't deserve protection. If you can't afford $2047 over ten years then maybe you don't need a decade of protection. You don't even need to put in an explicit limit, since the available money on the planet will present a natural one eventually.

<comment><USER7> Yes, though the overhead of requiring annual extensions might be a bit much.

The pre-1976 scheme required a filing and fee, though it was relatively modest. All non-registered works were public domain, and the circle-C symbol (or phonogram cicle-P) and notice were _required_.

I really wish we'd go back to something more like that.

<comment><USER8> It could be adjusted pretty easily. For example, do it every five years, and multiply by 100 each time, or whatever seems to make sense. Heck, if you're worried about people who aren't aware of the requirements getting screwed, have automagic and free copyright for the first five or ten years, then start requiring filing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The EFF is correct that this is a travesty, but the real scandal is the undemocratic way the TPP is being negotiated in the first place.

<comment><USER10> It's being negotiated the same way every single international agreement has been negotiated, so that's probably not a scandal.

<comment><USER11> But it is much more powerful than the trade deals of the previous generation. Whereas those earlier deals dealt exclusively with trade, new deals also include 'non-tariff barriers', i.e. things which are a mixture of trade and domestic policy, like regulation of food, product safety and the environment. But the mechanism for negotiating the deal remains the same as before. That is manifestly unacceptable.

<comment><USER10> From the U.S. perspective, NAFTA and GATT are more powerful than TPP would be. Both address NTBs and were negotiated this way.

On top of that, international security agreements like NATO and the Anti- Ballistic Missile Treaty were negotiated this way, and those arguably have more serious import for a nation than trade.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> We need a more nuanced copyright system, that takes into account the on going use of a work. I can completely understand the Disney should still have a copyright on the image of Mickey Mouse. But only b/c it is still relevant to their on-going business. The idea of somehow putting a value on a copyright, so the public could conceivably buy it out once it's value falls into an affordable range, that makes a lot of sense, but how to do that fairly?

<comment><USER13> Do you think that Disney is the only company who should be able to tell stories involving Mickey Mouse?

<comment><USER12> Until Disney goes out of business, I think that is just, yes.

<comment><USER14> And yet many of Disney's most successful movies retell much older stories, only possible because those stories went into the public domain. Bit of hypocrisy there.

<comment><USER15> Those characters and stories were not (substantially) created by Disney though.

Everyone else /should/ be able to make those same stories in similar media. Disney /really/ needs to be more proactive about using their brand name's trademark within advertising as the consumer protection measure as that is the intended to function of trademarks.

That, BTW, is what is stopping others from making a Disney(tm)'s Mickey Mouse(tm) in steamboat willy(c, expired); and not stopping others from making a more generic 'mouse piloting a steam boat' movie.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This[1] linked chapter in Lawrence Lessigs book "Free Culture" is absolutely fascinating, well worth the read if you have the time.

[1] [http://www.authorama.com/free- culture-18.html](http://www.authorama.com/free-culture-18.html)

</comment><comment><USER17> Are the criminal provisions for archivists and DMCA-for-cafes still present?

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2014/10/17/latest...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2014/10/17/latest- tpp-leak-shows-even-harsher-copyright-rules/)

 _"If the US gets its way, then criminal penalties will apply even against users who were not seeking financial gain from sharing or making available copyrighted works, such as fans and archivists," write Jeremy Malcolm and Maira Sutton of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). "Such a broad definition is ripe for abuse."

... while the last leaked draft of the TPP, dated November 2013, showed strong international opposition to this criminalization plan, Canada now seems to be the only serious hold-out. This may, suggests James Love of Knowledge Ecology International, be because this new draft gives some countries extra time to implement the agreement – meaning that current governments won't necessarily have to carry the can for their decisions."_

The European version of TPP is called TTIP: [http://www.computerworlduk.com/blogs/open-enterprise/ttip- up...](http://www.computerworlduk.com/blogs/open-enterprise/ttip-updates--the- glyn-moody-blogs-3569438/)

</comment><comment><USER18> Can someone explain to me what the carrot and/or stick is, in getting these countries to sign this agreement?

<comment><USER19> These agreements are supposed to reduce barriers in both directions, so there is an interest for businesses on both sides to reduce friction and allow greater access to foreign markets.

Unfortunately, this laudable process has been more and more hijacked by special interest groups, to the point where international treaties are used as backdoors to impose legislation that would otherwise be very unpopular at home. An MP voting in, say, New Zealand to extend copyright terms, would get a lot of stick; but now he can say "hey, there is some good with the bad, less barriers are good for the economy blablabla" and vote for the whole bundle with significant political cover; he can then collect his copyright-lobby cheque AND keep his seat, win-win.

In a way, this is natural; this sort of dealmaking was commonplace at local and national level at most times in history, and it took a lot of effort to make it fairly transparent through the democratic process; now it gets done at a global level, where there isn't a democratic process yet -- we don't vote for a "world parliament" where this sort of issues could be thrashed out in public, we rely on ambassadors and special envoys with wide negotiating powers and no accountability, which naturally results in corruption.

<comment><USER20> Actually, for New Zealand, there are huge benefits in terms of market access for their primary industries (milk and meat).

Add to that the indirect benefits that the movie industry brings to the tourism industry (yep, they measured it), and you have an agreement that is beneficial to the top two industries.

New Zealand wants to sell Americans milk and lamb. Then they're going to want to come over and teach Americans how to grow your _own_ milk and lamb.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> TBH, I would imagine that the reason that there is no requirement to renew copyright is because Big Content knows people are lazy and that the more content from the past stays copyrighted by default (even if the author doesn't care to assert that right) means there will be less free content to compete for attention in the future.

Not requiring formal registration and renewal is a clear attempt to reduce the commons, not merely protect the copyrights owned by Big Content.

</comment><comment><USER22> > multinational entertainment conglomerates, who have twisted what is > notionally a trade negotiation into a special interest money-grab

Honest question here, is there really a difference between the two? Is there some doctrine somewhere that specifies exactly what constitutes a trade negotiation and what is considered corruption of said negotiation? I see these kinds of statements thrown around a lot without a lot of justification.

</comment><comment><USER23> Good essay somewhat related to this, about being pro-market but anti-business: [http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbli...](http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2015/02/anti- business.html)

</comment><comment><USER24> Not that the TPP is a good thing, but personally I think that the fight to not extend copyright terms beyond the term US have now is more important.

</comment><comment><USER25> Article title is wishful thinking. There's no sign the TPP is failing.

If they're arguing about a last chance of salvaging legitimacy for the TPP process, I think that was a long time ago.

</comment><comment><USER26> Sad (libertarian!) panda.</comment>


The myth of the pilotless commercial plane - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/2011/08/04/can_jetliners_fly_themselves/

<comment><USER2> Speaking as an armchair pilot, I can't believe someone who flew F/A-18s in the Air Force would perpetuate such lies about commercial aviation.

First off, ILS is rarely, and I repeat -- _rarely_ used on most major commercial aircraft. The only true "autoland" is CAT III ILS, and you ONLY use CAT III in weather where visibility is so poor you can barely make out the runway lights. Most landings are performed manually if weather permits (and it usually does.)

Second, like the author of the article says, it is true that there are ZERO, I repeat, ZERO takeoffs that take place autonomously. For sake of safety, all takeoffs must be handled with a live crew, because computers still cannot process all of the variables required to perform a takeoff.

This article offers quite a bit of good insight into commercial aviation and I agree with it completely.</comment>


A Memo on the Secret Features of the Hitachi 6309 processor (1992) - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/hitachi/6309/a_memo_on_the_secret_features_of_6309 <comment><USER2> I had TRS-80 color computers throughout the 1980s before I did a data processing job for my Uncle and used the money to get a 286 PC.

The CoCo3 had a memory management unit similar to the PDP-11 minicomputers which could do very coarse paging. I ran an operating system called OS/9 which was a minaturized Unix, I had a few UARTS and two terminals plugged in: a TRS-80 Model 100 and an old Dec Correspondent printing terminal.

There are many "paths not taken" in the computer industry, but surely Radio Shack thought about a Coco 4 which could go up against the Amiga -- the 68k had the dirty secret that it didn't perform better than upgraded versions of the 6502, 6809, Z80, etc.

The Apple ][gs was a similar dead-end. Steve Jobs underestimated the lifespan of the Apple ][, so he rushed to make the non-compatible Apple ///, the expensive Lisa, the underpowered first Macintosh.

In the meantime Apple ][ had a durable lead and Apple kept upgrading it in little ways.

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

It had an underclocked

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WDC_65C816](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WDC_65C816)

which could address 24-bit extended memory, just like a System/360 of old (way bigger than the PDP-11.)

It was underclocked because an unhobbled Applie ][gs would outperform a much more expensive Mac 2.

Apple stagged through multiple near-death experiences with the Mac. What if Apple had kept the ][ line going and built on the momentum that the ][ had? Today we might be running a 64-bit derivative of the 6502!

<comment><USER3> > Today we might be running a 64-bit derivative of the 6502!

The designers of ARM used 6502 before and one of designers admits there was some inspiration from that:

[https://people.cs.clemson.edu/~mark/admired_designs.html#wil...](https://people.cs.clemson.edu/~mark/admired_designs.html#wilson)

"I learned about pipelines from it (by comparison with the 6800) and its designers were clear believers in the KISS principle. Plus the syntax of its assembler and general accessibility of it from the machine code perspective. I can still write in hex for it - things like A9 (LDA #) are tattoed on the inside of my skull. The assembly language syntax (but obviously not the mnemonics or the way you write code) and general feel of things are inspirations for ARM's assembly language and also for FirePath's. I'd hesitate to say that the actual design of the 6502 inspired anything in particular - both ARM and FirePath come from that mysterious ideas pool which we can't really define (its hard to believe that ARM was designed just from using the 6502, 16032 and reading the original Berkeley RISC I paper - ARM seems to have not much in common with any of them!)."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > The features was originally reported in a magazine, Oh!FM (1988 Apr.), which > was written in Japanese.

Fun fact [0]: Oh!FM was published by SoftBank [1]. It, and a bunch of other magazines called Oh!${arch}, were Masayoshi Son's second line of business, after the computer parts store which started it all.

[0] for small values of fun

[1] [https://www.msx.org/wiki/Oh!_Hit_Bit](https://www.msx.org/wiki/Oh!_Hit_Bit)

</comment><comment><USER5> Any idea on why would a company keep some features as a secret and not use them as a competitive advantage against competitors? Was this to protect another (costlier) line of products?

<comment><USER4> In this case, my guess would be that the 6309 was marketed as a drop-in compatible replacement for the Motorola 6809. In that case, there is no point advertising other features, because code written for the 6809 won't use them anyway. Rather, you market it on the fact that it's cheaper, uses less power, can be clocked higher, etc. Disclosing all sorts of ISA changes might even scare people off, thinking that the compatibility might be compromised.

So why did they put all those extra features in at all? My guess would be that they had a big buyer, who was in a position to write their own software to make use of those features. This is why you end up with undocumented features in Intel chips today, and the buyers are either big datacentre operators, like Google or Facebook, or government organisations, like the DoD or NSA.

I don't know who such a buyer would be for the 6309, though. It came out in 1982, the same year that Intel released the 286, and Motorola released the 68010 (and National Semiconductor released the NS32016). Also in 1982, Osaka University built what was then the world's fastest supercomputer using Z8001 microprocessors (check out the cooling system in the photo!):

[http://museum.ipsj.or.jp/en/computer/other/0013.html](http://museum.ipsj.or.jp/en/computer/other/0013.html)

If you were a government agency, wouldn't you rather have a 16 MHz 32-bit 68k than a 5 MHz 8-bit 6309? Or even the 4-10 MHz 16-bit Z8001 that Osaka had used? Of course, if you were a Japanese government agency, you would have to import the 68k or Z-8001 from the USA, whereas the 6309 was made in Japan.

On the other hand, the Motorola 6809 was used for some arcade games, including Defender and Robotron. Maybe Hitachi planned to sell the 6309 to games companies? I assume that games companies controlled their entire software stack, and games always need more performance at an affordable price, so the 6309, as a 6809 but with opportunities to go faster, would have been pretty appealing. The arcade version of Double Dragon used the 6309, although five years after it came out:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Dragon_(video_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Dragon_\(video_game\))

<comment><USER6> I know for a fact that 90s era Liebert brand data center coolers used a 6809 based SCADA board. Presumably running microware OS-9. The business confusion at Hitachi was does management want us to innovate a hardware drop in replacement 2.0 for Liebert's coolers, or do they want us to just ship a second source for replacement parts for Liebert? Using Liebert solely as an example I'm aware of for actual customers.

Speed doesn't really matter to Liebert as its not like data center cooler thermostats are going to be typed on 10x faster by caffeinated humans or fans will spin 10x faster. Although denser code DOES mean more marketable features could be added to the firmware. Of course if you compile for the more advanced 6309 then you no longer have a second source for hardware and theoretically Hitachi could screw you over by charging a lot more than motorola charges for 6809 processors once you're dev team is stuck on the 6309. All I can say for certain is in the end, if you open a 90s era Liebert you'll see a thermostat / early-SCADA PCB with a genuine motorola 6809 on it, so that was THEIR final decision.

90s era Saturn automatic transmissions had a similar issue and they shipped with genuine motorola 68hc11 chips. Again, its not like a 10x faster processor will decrease 0-60 times by ten times, so ...

Generally Hitachi's business strategy WRT CPU licensing seems not to have worked?</comment></comment></comment>


Formula 1 wants more dramatic-looking cars that race better in 2021 - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/?p=1375939 <comment><USER2> I doubt they end up looking much like this aside from the front wing and sidepods. Just from first glance the halo looks much too thin to have the same stability as the one from this year. The power unit regulations are also still up in the air to my knowledge, and that's more important to the overall health of the sport IMO.</comment>


Basic Principles of Visual Design - <AUTHOR> https://blog.prototypr.io/10-basic-principles-of-visual-design-55b86b9f7241 <comment><USER2> This article touches on _what_ knobs you have to control in a visual design, but a beginning designer often struggles to put these to service in a bigger context.

I really enjoyed this talk from Apple's conference this year—it gives a great overview of the sort of conceptual framework a designer has when making specific choices:

[https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2017/802/](https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2017/802/)

<comment><USER3> Can someone please explain to me what the _underline_ at the beginning and end of a word is supposed to mean? I'm sure it's not proper writing or rule of grammar but I see it frequently in sites where there's a high concentration of techies. Is it some carryover from coding? If so it's bad practice outside of code. Don't stain the standards.

<comment><USER4> > _Is it some carryover from coding? If so it 's bad practice outside of code. > Don't stain the standards._

Nah, it's sort of carryover from old days of plaintext e-mails, except we still communicate with plaintext a lot, so it's still relevant. It originates from the same space that gave you ALL CAPS = SHOUTING and emoticons.

Typical emphasis characters are underscore and asterisks. Many software will recognize them. Like Markdown parsers. Or like HN, wich _italicizes_ text between asterisks. Or Skype, which responds both to asterisks, underscores, and then probably some more.

Complaining about this is kind of like complaining about using punctuation in an English sentence. It's not the users who are the problem - it's the other crowd, that doesn't know the rules and traditions of the medium.

<comment><USER5> And it's most likely a carry over from when typewriters where in use, where you go back and add underscores under the characters by typing over them. Underscores where of course the _italics_ of a typewriter font, unless you had a _really_ fancy typewriter.

On a _terminal_ you can't - or couldn't compose characters, so you add a hint in the front and the end of the word.

Just deal with it.

It's like the characters added for simulated deletion, that jokingly tell other suckers^H^H^H^H^H^H^H people what you really think. On a suitably incompatible terminal (or vastly overrated editor), this was actually what it looked like when trying to delete text by pressing backspace or some obscure control-character.

Ahh, and simulated hangup noise that you get when you are criticising Hacker New, although that have never happ485734095-.sdf834-...####+3+323803040830

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think for beginners (in webdesign) there are some very simple rules to start with:

      * Only use one font to start with
      * Only choose 3 colors max
      * Only choose 3 font sizes max
      * Only choose 3 margin sizes max
      * Align everything
      * Make sure text has contrast with the background

Those limits help you to create a connected design.

After that you can start changing colors, changing margins and sizes, until you think it looks very nice. But don't start adding colors and margins and font and sizes because as a beginner that is very hard to handle.

<comment><USER6> By the way: to know when your design is finished you can use this simple rule:

      * If you don't know what to change it's finished.

This, of course, will change over time and might be different for every design.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The issue with most 'basic principles', is for somebody who's looking for the basics (a beginner), they're super hard to apply to their actual work. I think basic principles are much better learnt through analysing, and imitating other works.

<comment><USER8> > I think basic principles are much better learnt through analysing, and > imitating other works.

Well then you aren't understanding principles so much as developing heuristics.

If you actually learned principles this way, you could describe them at least semi-formally such that a beginner could actually study them and then understand how to apply them.

<comment><USER9> The original article here doesn't really have "principles" to explain. It is just a list of 10 topics related to graphic design. Each of those topics could be expanded into a book filled with many principles, criteria, heuristics, etc., formal or otherwise.

To be honest I'm not sure who is upvoting the article or why. It doesn't really have much concrete content.

It's sort of like if you had an article "Principles of software engineering: logic, programming languages, compilers, networking, operating systems, data structures, computational complexity, hardware, system architecture", and then wrote a paragraph of oversimplified fluff about how each one was related to software. First, those aren't principles, but more to the point, that wouldn't be particularly useful for someone trying to learn the discipline of software engineering.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As a designer I would say that design is somehow like chess. The openings in design are the main style used. These styles are exaustively studied and connected with trends. Nowadays is minimalism. Every designer can put out something within the style. When they need to differenciate (middle game) problems appear, as moves are not so clearly studied.

</comment><comment><USER11> If anyone is interested in visual design as it applies to the web, I have a free email course on the subject here: designbynumbers.io

</comment><comment><USER12> This article talked about obvious concepts such as points, lines and colors, then proceeded to use those concepts to create a minimal design. I'm not impressed.

Minimal design looks great... but lets be honest here, while it may take a long time to plan out a minimal design... modern design due to minimalism also requires minimal talent. I respect the person who can paint a mona lisa and not the hack who can adjust font size and spacing then put a square background behind it because anybody can do that.

Some may argue that it's not about the simplicity of the elements but the elements put together as a whole... To this I say to you.. even the composition of these simplistic elements into a final design requires almost no talent or skill.

<comment><USER13> > even the composition of these simplistic elements into a final design > requires almost no talent or skill.

I don't want to watch your minimal designs if you think that way.

The principles required to make a beautiful composition with minimal elements are exactly the same as those to create beautiful composition in a baroque setting. Conversely, a minimal design may also look like shit if done carelessly.

<comment><USER12> Then don't. Not to be insulting but I believe you and many people who think Modern Design is hard are deluded. It's really similar to the douche baggery present in Modern Art.

Composition is easy as pie, humans are already masters of composition.

Let me give you an example.

Try to concoct in your imagination a very beautiful girl, don't do it from memory just picture for you what would be the most ideal woman in the world... easy right? That is composition. You composed body parts and facial features and composed something.

Now draw that beautiful girl naked with perfect anatomical correctness as if you were looking at her through a fish eye lens from an extreme angle... That is hard or near impossible from a person without years of practice. This is true art and talent that I respect....

What is a website but a composition of geometric shapes, premade pictures and text? My beautiful woman example is an exaggeration compared to web design, but it illustrates a principle that is true. A minimal design takes time and effort to construct but we have the instinctual knowledge of what looks good and what grabs attention and what improves UX. Thus almost _anybody_ has what it takes to "Design" stuff. _Especially_ if it's minimal.

Rendering a design is significantly easier than fine art. Artistically, the units of a web page already exist, cover pictures, stock photos, fonts, geometric tools in illustration programs all allow us to render a website design with little talent.

It will not take years for someone to learn photoshop and HTML and it certainly takes very little time to recognize the elements of modern flat design. The latest overused trend I've been seeing is the layering of a quote over a big ass full page cover photo,... props to the leonardo da vinci who can do that:

[http://mkshft.org/](http://mkshft.org/)

<comment><USER13> I'm a gay man, imagining a "most ideal woman" would give me the creeps 8-P

I had a long reply addresssing each of your points, but I'll keep it to the essentials:

\- A beautiful woman composed from parts may be anatomically perfect, or can be a Frankenstein monster made of stitches of out-of-proportion body parts, even if every part is individually perfect. Knowing _how_ to put together the parts into a harmonious whole is an art on itself - the art of composition. You can't dismiss this skill with "but it looks good in my mind". The difficult part is taking the nebulous, incomplete visual image in your mind and building a physical object that matches how you feel it should look. You speak as if this "execution phase" is trivial, but it's not; it's what distinguishes an artist from a wannabe.

> we have the instinctual knowledge of what looks good and what grabs > attention and what improves UX. Thus almost anybody has what it takes to > "Design" stuff.

\- This is a fallacy. Being able to instinctively recognize whether a design is beautiful doesn't mean that you'd be able to build a beautiful one yourself from scratch. The first is easy as your brain is hardwired to do it; but the second is incredibly hard.

It's not the same to see that a Greek sculpture is beautiful, than to model a beautiful clay figurine with your hands. You'll know that your current wreck is not correct, but won't know of to change it to make it better. It's exactly the same when you try compositing individual elements into a proportional design. No matter how simple or complex are those elements, the skills required to make a good composition are the same, and they are not easy; it takes years to learn them and apply them properly. It's the reason why a professional designer can make better designs than a developer who learns all the photoshop commands.

Seriously, I think you're falling to the Dunning–Kruger effect; it seems that you don't even _know_ what you're missing in terms of the quality of a design, if you think that any amount of basic elements can simply be thrown together without regards of the Gestalt laws of grouping[1] that govern your brain and are the basis of composition, even for very minimalist designs. The hardest part of art is not learning those mechanical techniques for making it photo- realistic, that you seem to value more than it's worth; it's learning these intangible rules and mastering them to make the result graceful.[2]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestalt_psychology#Pr.C3.A4gna...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestalt_psychology#Pr.C3.A4gnanz)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_(visual_arts)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_\(visual_arts\))

P.S. Learning to draw a photo-realistic image from life (i.e. looking at the object while you draw it) doesn't take years, it can be done in a few days with a good teacher; (metaphorically) half your brain is literally built for doing just that. You just need to learn how to shut down the symbolic other half of the brain which messes with the results. Betty Edwards _Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain_ method[3] is a good way to do it on your own.

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Edwards](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Edwards)

<comment><USER12> >Learning to draw a photo-realistic image from life

Did i say from life? I meant draw it from an imagined women in your mind through an imagined fish eye lens from an imagined extreme angle with perfect detail. Learning programming is easier than this...

> A beautiful woman composed from parts may be anatomically perfect, or can be > a Frankenstein monster made of stitches of out-of-proportion body parts, > even if every part is individually perfect. Knowing how to put together the > parts into a harmonious whole is an art on itself - the art of composition. > You can't dismiss this skill with "but it looks good in my mind".

I didn't dismiss this skill. Read my post again. I clearly separated design from implementation, the actual rendering of the woman (or man in your case). The design happens in your mind and is trivial almost instinctual, the engineering or rendering happens in reality. Design is easy because it happens in your imagination.

Implementing a modern design is even easier because of the minimal nature of the style and the canned graphics that are available for you to move around and resize.

>Seriously, I think you're falling to the Dunning–Kruger effect; it seems that you don't even know what you're missing in terms of the quality of a design, if you think that any amount of basic elements can simply be thrown together without regards of the Gestalt laws of grouping[1] that govern your brain and are the basis of composition, even for very minimalist designs. The hardest part of art is not learning those mechanical techniques for making it photo- realistic, that you seem to value more than it's worth; it's learning these intangible rules and mastering them to make the result graceful.[2]

These rules can be mastered in a week man. Also these principles are just formalizations of things that humans already instinctively know. No design can be thrown together willy nilly but any human can do it with effort not talent or skill.

<comment><USER13> > Design is easy because it happens in your imagination.

Your argument is contradictory. If having an intuitive sense of composition is enough to build a proportional design, having an intuitive sense of the human body proportions should be enough to draw one. Yet you recognize that drawing a body requires more skills than simply imagining it in your mind, so why don't you also recognize this need for building a design with a proper composition?

> Implementing a modern design is even easier because of the minimal nature of > the style and the canned graphics that are available for you to move around > and resize.

This is like saying that drawing the contour of a human body in a complex pose is easy because you have pen and paper, you don't need to extract the pigments from rocks nor prepare the parchment from calf's skin. Building a proportionate desing requires more than having access to the basic elements.

These would be the equivalences in the components for a design, and for a human body drawing:

* web components == lines and points

* building a web page == scribbling a sketch on paper

* building an ugly minimalistic design == drawing a stick figure

* building a proportional minimalistic design with a beautiful composition == drawing a realistic human body in any posture and perspective

What is a drawing of a body, but a composition of lines and shapes on a paper? Yet having an instinct on how a proper body looks like (and this instinct is a strong sense; any distortion triggers the "uncanny valley") is not enough for knowing how to put it in paper. In the same way, having an instinct for recognizing a beautiful composition is not enough to build a good design. Building a page by laying down _" cover pictures, stock photos, fonts, geometric tools"_ is equivalent to drawing a stick figure. Yes, anyone can do it, but that's not the same as creating a succesful minimalistic design, any more than laying down some lines on paper to form a stick figure is making art. It _could_ be art, but it requires some skill beyond merely dropping the basic shapes anywhere on the canvas. The proper implementation _is_ difficult for the design as well, even if your imaginary mental image is perfect in your brain.

>> Gestalt laws

> These rules can be mastered in a week man.

Sure, the Gestalt laws can be learned in a week. In the same way, you can learn how to draw a basic canonic human figure with circles in an afternoon; and the laws of perspective are as simple as a vanishing point and some converging straight lines. But recognize than being a _master_ in either takes much more than learning the theory. If all it takes to be a master is learning a few rules by rote memory, why aren't there any courses to "become a professional designer and start your design company in 7 days"? And why rendering a human body requires more skill than just knowing the basic shapes for each body part?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Looks interesting, but it misses a basic principle: don't animate things that don't need to be animated; it distracts from the text. A mini-slideshow that you step through would be better.

(Sadly, this is all too common these days. It makes me almost nostalgic for the blink tag.)

<comment><USER15> It's interesting actually that the article doesn't cover animation. Personally I think it's actually one of the most overlooked parts of 'visual design' these days.. animation I think is looked at quite harshly and as an unnecessary flashy aspect, and I think there's a lot of guilt of exceptional misguided use of animation, but I would say today that animation isn't used enough in the right cases, good animation can improve visual confidence with hierarchy and relationship of data and influence users perception of how responsive and well a product appears to react to them. Google have some good guidelines with material design and I think they are only really scratching the surface with what is and isn't good use of animation.

<comment><USER16> I think the main issue is that animation should be restricted to 1. where the user is currently looking and 2. where they _should_ be looking [1]. When you're reading a text, you're looking at the text and ingesting it, so animated images will be irritating. If you really need to do an animation to illustrate your point, it should be click-to-play, so that it only moves when the user is actually purposefully looking at it.

[1] An example for this is how an app's symbol jumps on the macOS dock when there's activity in that app. (Although I would say that this particular instance is just a bit too annoying. When it jumps repeatedly, I frequently reply in my head "I KNOW that you have something to show me, but I need to finish this other thing first!".)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> #1 Nothing more than what is needed. I agreed with many of his points, but I always place this as number one.

</comment><comment><USER18> A good test for visual design is the word test. What are all the possible words that can be derived from your design? You don't have to agree with them. They just need to be possible. Then decide on three words you want people to think of the most when they see your design, and try to eliminate all inferences to the rest. Three is enough. And your goal is to make your design more explicit than the words themselves. This leads to concise and potent designs.

Visual design is visual expression, where expression is communicating a feeling. But I had it backwards for the longest time. I thought expression was to radiate something. Expressing happiness would be me being as happy as possible. I would radiate happiness. I would express myself.

Except, with visual design, our attention should be on communication. It should be on how the recipient feels. This makes expression an induction. Instead of me being as happy as possible, the right question to ask is instead, what would it take to make you feel as happy as possible?

When we are focused on ourselves, people could still be indifferent about you being happy. But when we focus on them, they get excited. It's about them being happy. The art is for them.

So a good graphics designer would need to have a thorough color vocabulary, as well as an understanding of what abstract shapes and lines convey what. Some shapes are friendlier, some are sexier, etc. Same with fonts. And at the end of the day, if you need to scream "car" just throw a car in there. But most importantly, you would need to understand your audience, and understand their visual vocabulary. If you make them feel something they've never felt before, you win. This is never easy.

I guess my point is, the original article is more about the elements than principles.</comment>


Over Time, Buddhism and Science Agree - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/36/aging/over-time-buddhism-and-science-agree-rp <comment><USER2> Indeed we could learn much from resource management from Native indians and we have equally gone from utilising the wind via the use of windmills and powering boats towards a thinking that they were not wrong.

Be nice for a large wind powered sailing ship of freighter size, as not all containers need to be that quick delivery.

More case of appreciating the philosophy's of ancient times and seeing them from a clear mathematical black and white and agreeing with them. Somewhat like you can put your finger in the air and know the right wind direction and scientifically needing to know the exact direction in degree's before it accepts the wind direction.

Equally today with have the climate and some people need more maths and reports to accept that things like recycling and responsible resource usage are the right things to be doing.

</comment><comment><USER3> The article mixes some Buddhism ideas and some scientific trivia, but it doesn't show any part where the Buddhism makes a clear verifiable (or refutable) prediction, that is the cornerstone of science.</comment>


Lineinfile be damned - <AUTHOR> https://chrisshort.net/lineinfile-be-damned/ <comment><USER2> It seems to me that the regular expressions used in the module's "regexp" and "insertafter"/"insertbefore" parameters could mess it all up in case the config files contain comments with the used strings, e.g. "# Following won't work without SSLEngine enabled".

Perhaps use the beginning-of-line anchor, e.g. "^[ \t]SSLEngine on[ \t]".

The trailing whitespace can be problematic as well - what if I have a line " SSLEngine on", that is, no whitespace after "on" ?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a valid concern. Thanks for pointing it out. I will update the article.

<comment><USER2> Glad to have helped. I find that whenever you do something non-trivial with regular expressions, it is a good idea to have someone else look at it, as no two minds work alike, and they can see what you don't.

I see you only updated the regex in one of the playbook tasks in your article. The issue I pointed out apply to all of the tasks, however, and also for "regexp", as well as "insertafter/before" parameters.</comment></comment></comment>


Flexible Identities in Git - <AUTHOR> https://belkadan.com/blog/2020/02/Flexible-Identities-in-git/ <comment><USER2> Whenever I read about the efforts of Microsoft in and around Git, I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, it is an amazing contribution to OSS. It really conquers complex architectural problems with better algorithms and does not only polish some administrative frontend nonsense. Their blog posts are always excellent outreach documentation.

On the other hand, I feel that Microsoft is abusing git with their bloat repositories, and now they even add bloat to the git ecosystem (if there even is one). Git was initially written for the Linux kernel. The Linux git repo is huge, but apparently Windows is so much bigger then Linux that it requires a 15GB repository. I have never seen 15GB of ASCII text (code). Everybody knows that Git is not for binary blobs (images, etc). Feels like they do something wrong, but I cannot tell. Also, using a monorepo might be the wrong choice in the beginning, but since they put so much engineering effort in solve these problems at the root, there seems to be some decision why they need git exactly in this very way.</comment>


Vaginas are hot property when it comes to tech - <AUTHOR> http://www.thememo.com/2016/08/04/period-tracker-pregnancy-technology-vagina-technology-iot-devices-health/ <comment><USER2> From the title i was expecting un-pc commentary on diversity programs</comment>


Scientists proof Ballmer Peak - moderate drinking helps creativity - <AUTHOR> http://duvet-dayz.com/archives/2012/04/13/1199/

<comment><USER2> This is the perfect article for a Friday.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's what I though - weekend is coming so don't sample too many different of these newly scientifically proven creativity enhancers to find out when creativity for your weekend project(s) will peak. (otherwise the sample might become non-random and you might have to repeat the test next weekend).

Science is fun!</comment></comment>