"This is stupid. Your program doesn't work," my wife told me - <AUTHOR> http://stevehanov.ca/blog/index.php?id=101

<comment><USER2> This is a great improvement to the color wheel! I'd love to see it implemented in Gimp and Inkscape as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> UI is always a mix of usability and discoverability, I think. The color wheel is perfectly usable, but little changes might affect discoverability.

That said, I think far too many UIs (window managers, etc) confuse the two. I'm only a newbie at a system _once_. If it takes a little longer to learn, then it's totally worth some initial confusion.

<comment><USER4> _If it takes a little longer to learn, then it's totally worth some initial confusion._

I'd hope that if it takes longer to learn because of initial confusion, that it's worth it because it's better than something that took less time to learn or that didn't have initial confusion. I'm not so sure I'd want to bear the cost of initial confusion just for the "benefit" of it taking longer to learn.

<comment><USER3> Meh, that's what I get for switching up my sentence in the middle. :)

You're right -- should be: if it's better in the long run, it's totally worth the initial confusion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Talking about the colors, when I draw text, then click on the wheel to change the color, it doesn't work. I need to change the font(?) then, it refreshes itself.

Amazing app, I like that.

<comment><USER6> I get the same bug.

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US) Firefox/3.6.3</comment></comment>


How teens are sending secret messages in the Digital Age - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/01/st_thompson_secretmessages/

<comment><USER2> I don't think that posting song lyrics that your parents don't understands is quite as steganographically advanced as hiding messages under wax tablets. Not much new here.

<comment><USER3> Nothing new, absolutely. Sophisticated, definitely.

Ask any non-English speaker: Idiomatic speech is one of the toughest codes to crack because the meaning is "stored" in the reference, not the language. Imagine deciphering these without knowing the idiom: "That takes the cake", "A stitch in time...", "Use the force, Luke", etc.

Drawing idioms and fragments of idioms from music and video games rather than larger culture is a brilliant way to fly under the parent's radar.</comment></comment>


Introducing Bob - <AUTHOR> http://create.it/entry/introducing-bob

<comment><AUTHOR> A scenario is Bob would be deployed in protected ocean areas that are frequently trespassed. Though these areas are protected on paper, the areas are so vast, and the actual guards so few that the protection is non-existent. Bob could sit on the ocean floor listening for boat engines and the like, on detection he can rise to the surface and signal the relevant authorities for help. Once done bobbing, he can descend and go back into power saving/listening mode.</comment>


Post-mortem interview with Bitcoin guru Sam Cole about KnC Miner - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BgjKOvTlRA <comment><AUTHOR> It's really interesting that he is so open about the failure and why they are closing down. A rare thing here in Sweden.</comment>


Warning to Facebook app developers:  mind reading skills required! - <AUTHOR>

When you submit your app to Facebook's Product Directory, it may be rejected with a very vague reason such as this:<p>"Thanks for your submission of "<appname>" to the Facebook Platform's Product Directory.  We have reviewed your application, and unfortunately cannot yet add it to the directory because it is unfinished or under construction.  Please fix this problem and resubmit the application."<p>Now you get to have lots of fun trying to guess what this is all about.  In fact, looking through the Developers' group might give you some ideas. Maybe one day you might stumble upon the reason for the rejection.  Or maybe not. <comment><USER2> This is by far not the only gotcha in Facebook apping.

The Applications Settings form is a magical mess of spagetti logic. The first thing your learn is your can't even access the most useful applications settings in the form unless you choose "other users can install this application" ... then magically the form explodes with all the options you really need to set ... wtf? ...and then the About text for your app is entered in two different forms. Choosing developed by a company vs. developed by individual causes different kind of linkage on the app About page.... The most drunken delusional designer at Microsoft could not design a worse form than this.

Another thing you learn on your own is Facebook does not tell you the end user's ID unless the user installed your application. Their docs talk about the login process but are silent on explaining the difference between login vs. install which leads to this madness about "infinite sessions". All it means is if the user installs your application == infinite session. If user "logs into" your application == 24 hour session. Needless to say it is easier if user installed your application, again not mentioned in the docs.

Oh and another thing, Facebook does not save application data for you. Saving user settings and data is totally your problem to solve. It'd be nice if Facebook had an API to stash just a little bit of data for each app user but no dice.

...oh and finally try submitting your application to the product directory... SORRY! Your application needs to have at least 5 users before it will be listed!! How does an application that hasn't lanuched yet and isn't even listed get 5 users??? Such are the mysteries of Facebook.

<comment><USER3> Their form also asks for like 7 different URLs (canvas, ToS, unistall, install, etc), while many FB apps don't care about all these URLs. It would be nice if they had an option "use the same URL for everything", or, better yet, made everything but the "canvas" URL optional.

<comment><USER4> Trailing slashes (or forgetting them) can also lead to problems. Luckily the guides are pretty explicit about telling you to specify them. (RoR at least)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> As an update on this, what you need to do is send a request for elaboration to firstname.lastname@example.com. I got detailed feedback by doing so.

</comment><comment><USER5> This type of stuff has to be expected when you're working in a walled garden, which is what facebook platform is...

</comment><comment><USER6> Facebook is reminding me more and more of Microsoft, it would be good for them if they remind us of Google or something. [ microsoft = bad. google = ok.]

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> One of the rumors mentioned in the Developer's group is that you need to supply a post-remove url, presumably to delete all the user's data upon uninstallation of your app. But is that even a good idea? What if the user adds it again? Shouldn't the data be retained?

<comment><USER7> It probably is a good idea to flag the account as inactive, and move it to separate table to keep the primary table clean. AFAIK FaceBook won't know that you're not removing the data completely, and this will allow you to restore the user if they want to, but not bloat your app with outdated entries.

<comment><USER8> If I find your application useless then I don't want you to retain any information about me.

<comment><AUTHOR> What if you accidentally uninstall my app and lose many hours of work?

<comment><USER8> I understand what you mean. But, who is going to be entering valuable, unreproducible data into Facebook? If they re-install your app then they will probably be pretty happy to enter everything all over again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> BTW, the app in question is here:

<http://apps.facebook.com/studystickies>

Any hints on what might be wrong with it?

<comment><USER4> I dunno, possibly it could use more polish? (not my opinion, just theory on what they might not like about it)

It'd be nice if the books on the main page all had thumbnails at least.</comment></comment>


Exercising but Gaining Weight - <AUTHOR> http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/12/exercising-but-gaining-weight/?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&bicmp=AD&bicmlukp=WT.mc_id&bicmst=1409232722000&bicmet=1419773522000&abt=0002&abg=0&_r=0 <comment><USER2> Running on a treadmill for an hour is about 600 calories. Eating an extra snack before bed can easily be that. To be calorie deficient and lose weight, it is so much easier to eat less than to exercise more. On top of that, exercising more can stimulate your appetite... leading to over eating. Basically you just have to be vigilant with not eating too much. I don't think counting calories is important, but 3 small meals (by american standards) or 2 regular meals a day, with low carbs, no sugar, and low dairy, will drop you to normal proportions very quickly.

<comment><USER3> I made massive changes to my diet a few months ago, after being diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes. The doctor said diet and exercise needed. Trying to keep it simple I didn't worry about the exercise, just changed the diet, the weight started falling off easily, as long as I ate regularly and kept my carbs to what was required.

I started riding to work this week. I am so god damn hungry right now.

I think if you are really needing weight loss you need your doctor involved. There is so much I have learned through having blood test results etc to work from.

My tips if you are interested:

* Cut out any added sugar. No sugar in coffee or whatever. Easy way to reduce energy intake. No more soft drink. * Have enough carbs each meal so your body hormones etc are getting stuff to work with. * Stay away from processed foods, keep out of those aisles. * Make exercise a normal part of life and skip the gym. Gyms are demotivational hell holes of despair. Climb the stairs at work, ride the bike, park further away, just go for a walk around the block, walk randomly around the city to explore.

<comment><USER4> > * Have enough carbs each meal so your body hormones etc are getting stuff to > work with.

Your body doesn't actually need any carbs to function. It can run off of ketones rather than glucose. You might be interested to look into the keto diet, which works beautifully for people with diabetes. You eat low carb, but high fat. The FAQ of /r/keto on reddit is a good place to start.

<comment><USER5> Keto In A Nutshell: [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gZfJejOM8fJsX1iCilmnpp1q...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gZfJejOM8fJsX1iCilmnpp1qmT_KncJwWCR4-EsaEHc/edit?pli=1)

/r/keto FAQ: [https://www.reddit.com/r/keto/wiki/faq](https://www.reddit.com/r/keto/wiki/faq)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> People are ridiculously bad at estimating the caloric content of food they eat. We can see the volume of food, feel the weight, taste it but we cannot without practice and training easily guess how many calories it will be.

Also people are just as bad at estimating how many calories they would burn by exercisng or walking.

We've all heard it -- "I'll need to walk around the block after eating that piece of cheese cake" phrase. I've said it myself many times. Even though I know it will take hours and hours of walking around a very large block to burn it off so to speak.

One more thing. There is a negative aspect of exercising in relation to weight that is often overlooked. Because of the pervious 2 points, people who do exercise will rationalize eating more food because "they will burn them off in 15 min on treadmill".

Now I am using "calories" here in a simplistic way, but we had long discussions before about how it is not as simple as calories and calories out. It is bit more complicated -- hunger, hormones, insulin level, fat storage rates etc.

<comment><USER7> People are bad at estimating calories, but our bodies are really good at regulating them, if you feed it properly. The low fat diet advice has done horrendous things to people's metabolisms, leaving people insulin and leptin resistant. The insulin resistance disregulates the flow of fat through adipose membranes, favoring storage; the leptin resistance disregulates the appetite homeostasis that should regulate appetite, hunger, and weight. It can all be tracked back to the disproven diet heart hypothesis, and the fear of fat that ensued (and became enshrined like a religion).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'll add my single datum here. I lost a bunch of weight using the Hacker's Diet [1] when I was in university. I've occasionally put myself back on it as I get older, but there are two things that I believe are true about the way that I personally lose weight:

1) Losing weight while exercising is tough. I usually choose diet or exercise at any given time (or just light exercise so I'm not completely unfit by the end of the diet). I've had poor luck with exercise to lose weight, but it is very effective for maintaining it.

2) Fasting at the start of the diet -- and only at the very beginning -- seems to be critical to my success at losing weight [2]. Perhaps this has something to do with gut bacteria, metabolism or some psychosomatic factors. I'm not sure, but I basically cannot lose weight without that start.

As an aside, I've been very tempted to start an intermittent fast (even while not losing weight!) after seeing Michael Mosley's program on BBC a few years back. [3]

[1] [https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/www/hackdiet.html](https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/www/hackdiet.html)

[2] [https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/www/subsubsection1_3_3_0_3...](https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/www/subsubsection1_3_3_0_3_4.html#SECTION0330340000000000000)

[3] [http://www.bbc.com/news/health-19112549](http://www.bbc.com/news/health-19112549)

</comment><comment><USER9> Anyone with even a rudimentary training knows this fact: Exercise don't help you loose weight. Even the heavy routines burn minuscule amount of calories that would be compensated by just couple of slices of bread. Exercise helps you build cardio and/or muscle strengths which is very different than loosing weight. The only sure shot way of loosing weight is diet control. Just stop eating simple carbs (aka white floor/grain/corn stuff and sugars from non- natural sources) and you can drop weight and keep it that way.

<comment><USER10> > Exercise don't help you loose weight. Even the heavy routines burn minuscule > amount of calories that would be compensated by just couple of slices of > bread. Exercise helps you build cardio and/or muscle strengths which is very > different than loosing weight.

Increased muscle mass produces increased resting metabolic rate -- exercise often isn't a short-term help to losing weight, but its a long term help.

More importantly, "losing weight" is usually not the real objective, its a proxy measure for _improving overall health and fitness_ , for which exercise is useful, even without weight loss.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This study shows a bit of what the general public really needs to understand about personal health: it's very hard to train multiple aspects of your fitness with only one type of activity.

Doing cardio makes you better at cardio. Strength training makes you stronger. Diet and hypertrophy improves your body composition.

You'll always hear people say "Oh your legs must be so strong from all those marathons you do." Entirely false, their cardio-vascular system is strong. I can virtually guarantee that any moderately dedicated powerlifter can squat more than a long-distance runner (form notwithstanding). Similarly, a marathoner's lean physique is a result of their diet, which they require in order to be successful at running, not because of their training.

I really wish that more people would take the time to sit down, identify their fitness goals, and ensure that their lifestyle is focused towards achieving their goals. For most people, all this is taking a good look at your diet!

</comment><comment><USER12> So the ones who gained weight were the one who said to themselves "I can have this extra donut, I'm working out now". Fascinating stuff.

</comment><comment><USER13> >While this study didn't track the women's eating and movement habits away from the lab, it is likely that those who gained weight began eating more and moving less when they weren't on the treadmills, "probably without meaning to," Dr. Gaesser said.

Without knowing the whole picture, it seems hard to draw any sort of meaningful conclusion. Weight loss is almost entirely diet-based.

<comment><USER14> People often overeat when they start exercising, either because they're hungry from the exercise, or because they feel can indulge a bit as a reward.

My view is that most people should ignore exercise and fix their diet first, only easing in to an exercise routine slowly once they start to see weight loss results.

<comment><USER13> >My view is that most people should ignore exercise and fix their diet first, only easing in to an exercise routine slowly once they start to see weight loss results.

Agreed. In the last few months, I've lost about 20 pounds via diet alone. I'm starting to incorporate exercise now, and it's a lot easier to keep going day after day since I can move easier, so I don't get discouraged as easily.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> this is what I would have predicted from the description of the experimental setup. My understanding of human metabolism (which could be flawed, I'm a biochem PhD, not a nutrition PhD) For most people, regular aerobic exercise results in the body more regularly entering starvation mode and saving energy = storing fat. However, I suspect there are people with that signal defective, who can run like crazy and become thin as rails. For most of the rest of people, building muscle is a better strategy for losing weight.

<comment><USER16> Starvation mode in the sense that you seem to intend is a myth: [http://examine.com/faq/how-do-i-stay-out-of-starvation- mode....](http://examine.com/faq/how-do-i-stay-out-of-starvation-mode.html)

Probably. I'm not an expert.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Exercise controls mainly muscle composition.

Diet controls mainly fat composition.

Exercising to lose weight is a stupid idea.

Stop getting your health research from the news. Go read a book written by a doctor.

</comment><comment><USER18> For the purpose of this study, "exercise" means "walked on treadmills ... three times per week for 30 minutes". I'd be cautious about extrapolating the results to more than homeopathic doses.</comment>


Journeymen Ply Their Trades in Europe, Medieval Style - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/07/world/europe/europe-journeymen.html <comment><USER2> I've seen the digital equivalent of this. It would be hard not to carry a phone (or accept cash), but traveling around the world while you're young sounds great.</comment>


MD Anderson Fires IBM Watson in Setback for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2017/02/19/md-anderson-benches-ibm-watson-in-setback-for-artificial-intelligence-in-medicine/#70e810923776 <comment><USER2> Is this actually a setback? While AI will undoubtedly have an impact in medicine, Watson is an NLP system-cum-amalgamated marketing machine that from what I have seen has done little more than to undermine the promise of properly implemented AI technologies with a lot of marketing gibberish and half-delivered results.</comment>


Build a low latency Python app with a globally distributed DB - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/chetan_/using-python-to-create-a-globally-replicated-database-on-macrometa-5ebm <comment><AUTHOR> A repl.it repo with a python example of a simple database app (an address book) that stores and queries data from Macrometa's serverless geo-distributed database running in California, Virgina, Germany and India.</comment>


Remote DoS for all versions of Apache in the wild. - <AUTHOR> https://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=51714

<comment><AUTHOR> CVE draft: [http://marc.info/?l=apache-httpd-dev&m=131418828705324&#...</a></comment>


Knuth: Fantasia Apocalyptica - <AUTHOR> http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/fant.html <comment><USER2> > 2) I also spell some things out by using Morse code. For instance, the > rhythm "dash dot dash" in measures 12, 13, 16, 17, etc. of Chapter 1 is > Morse code for "invitation to transmit".

As a software engineer who is Catholic and appreciates puns, I find this to be pure gold.

This is a very complex piece and I expect many renditions and adaptations will arise out of it, both in the classical/traditional circles as well as avant- garde jazz ones.

<comment><USER3> If you haven't read them, you would probably also like his _3:16 Bible Texts Illuminated_ and _Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> On top of being a genius, reading Knuth is such a pleasant experience. Without having ever interacted with him, he comes across as such a wonderful soul.

<comment><USER5> Yes, that's one advantage of being a genius - reading books that seem difficult to others becomes a pleasant experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not how I took that. There are large parts of his books that are difficult to read. Yes. However, they are a lot more approachable than you would think. Most of them are oddly written, but his humor is pleasant and I have found thinking of algorithms similar to how he puts them helps. A lot.

It has helped humble me though, to know that pretty much everything he presents requires study. I have had few things from his book that I just got. Most required trying several times before they clicked.

And, if you ever read some of his afterwards, there are plenty of places where he concedes mistakes he made. Is really nice to see.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "And of course a musical work on the Apocalypse should also contain calypso."

</comment><comment><USER7> Prof. Knuth's willingness to take on such ambitious projects and his persistence in completing so many of them is an inspiration.

</comment><comment><USER8> I would dearly love to see this lost work, if only because it was written by Dr. Knuth:

 _I spent a lot of time in high school reading books on orchestration, and I wrote a fairly good-sized work for symphonic band entitled Milton and the Rhinocerous. (It was a spoof of Peter and the Wolf, using a story by Roger Price that I didn 't know was protected by copyright. I was blithely ignorant about intellectual property.) I proudly presented that piece to the band director, and he proceeded to lose it. As far as I know, no trace of that piece remains; and everybody, including me, is probably better off as a result._

</comment><comment><USER9> The book of Revelation fascinated me from childhood into my teenage years. As an adult I have some negative opinions about it since it has inspired so much terrible behavior over the years. It has a very complicated and controversial history[1], and the preacher at my mother's church completely refused to talk about it. I sometimes wonder what the world would be like if it hadn't been included in the cannon (it almost didn't make the cut and still isn't accepted by some churches).

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

</comment><comment><USER10> Interesting (but not surprising, really) that the typeset score was produced with Sibelius and not LilyPond or something similar.

<comment><USER7> Can you elaborate?

<comment><USER11> Not the OP, but LilyPond is a TeX-like music editor. Sibelius is a WYSIWYG editor. One might expect the author of TeX to prefer a similar approach to typesetting music. Like the OP, though, I don't find it surprising. Writing in your native language is relatively easy. Writing music is a lot harder, especially for an amateur (like me). Using the most intuitive software available is probably a good idea.

<comment><USER12> LilyPond is a pain to write in by hand. When looking at the text, it's difficult to see the cleffs side-by-side. I think most people who use LilyPond use one of the GUI editors.

LilyPond text format is best seen as an open file-format in ascii, primarily for machine consumption, not human.

<comment><USER13> That's not my experience. I did quite a bit of engraving using LilyPond as part of my music publishing company (a catalog of around 100 organ, choral, and/or instrumental works, many of them quite complex). I always entered the notation by hand, using the Frescobaldi editor to give easier previewing and various shortcuts.

I'm an organist myself, and entering music that way became extremely fluid—to the point that I felt like I was "playing" the music as I typed. For complex three-stave music, I got up to a pace of a couple of pages per hour. Polyphonic music with well-written voice-leading (i.e. independent voices, rather than big chunks of notes) was especially pleasant to engrave in this way.

<comment><USER12> Cool. Do you have a sample of some music you did, so I can figure out how to work with it easily? Thanks.

<comment><USER14> I'm not remotely proficient in music engraving, but I found it pretty straight forward to type a few pages of music into Lilypond format a few years ago, just using a regular plain text editor.

Comparable to writing (La)TeX for mathematics I'd say.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Here's a great talk Knuth did at CCRMA @ Stanford last year, on writing pipe organ compositions using Constraint Based techniques.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_1a6bHGQGo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_1a6bHGQGo)

</comment><comment><USER16> I heard a performance of a couple chapters last month. I'm not musically or scripturally sophisticated enough to appreciate the verse-by-verse mapping to Revelation, but the music on its own was enjoyable.

</comment><comment><USER17> Not my thing. But it is Knuth. And the one thing that guarantees is that it _will_ be interesting.

</comment><comment><USER18> Before I attempt it, has anyone scanned the scores to MIDI to hear what they sound like?

</comment><comment><USER19> Did not know Knuth was a Lutheran Christian.

</comment><comment><USER20> the sortest link to listen to it?

</comment><comment><USER21> Mindblowing.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is cool. The organ is infrequently used because it is so huge but if you want high drama it's the right tool for the job.

Interstellar on church organ is intense. Feel inspired here:

[https://youtu.be/zg5QMysuSYg](https://youtu.be/zg5QMysuSYg)

<comment> david-given I love organ music; but you have to listen to it live. The low notes don't come across properly on recorded media (also you don't feel your chest resonate).

Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, one of the most famous pieces of organ music ever, played on an organ built in 1730 (and, if I read the history right, it was actually _specified_ by Bach):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nnuq9PXbywA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nnuq9PXbywA)

You can hear the recording simply outright fail on the low notes. The organ has a 32-foot pipe, which produces 16Hz notes. The reocrding simply doesn't do it justice; if you ever get the chance, listen to it live; it's an almost transcendent experience.

There are, however, apparently two organs in the world with 64-foot pipes (8Hz!) and several more which can synthesise an 8Hz subharmonic using smaller pipes, but I haven't found a recording I trust of it yet.

<comment><USER22> I'm sure you're right, bach it's pretty damn good! Sometimes you can just sense history through the music.

I probably wouldn't pick up on loss, I expect it is like enjoying real bean coffee vs the granulated matter that passes as a substitute. It takes a while for your taste buds to discern the difference and I expect it is the same for our ears.

Having said that I also have been listening to experimental ambient music so I know I enjoy the deeper vibrations you get at that level.</comment></comment></comment>


How do you leave a warning that lasts as long as nuclear waste? - the-mitr https://mosaicscience.com/story/how-do-you-leave-warning-lasts-long-nuclear-waste/ <comment><AUTHOR> Well you could cover the ground around the storage area with highly radioactive material. Anyone who approaches dies. Skeletons tend to be an obvious clue. People tend to avoid areas with lots of skeletons.

Also note that rather than "storing" the nuclear material you could use it as a perpetual power source, driving a heat engine, making the area physically too hot (over 100C) to approach. People tend to avoid volcanos without any signs.

Or, with careful design, it could be stored in a matrix such that moving any member would make it immediately go critical. People tend to avoid things that blow up.

In summary, change from the idea of "store it safely", to "store it danerously". Make it painfully obvious that, like a cliff edge, this is something to avoid.

You don't need s aign if the thing itself is obviously dangerous.

Not the most popular solution, I will admit.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Also note: We may have found a use for a black hole. A "laboratory sized" black hole would be a great place to put stuff. Although I suspect the boundary radiation would be at least as intense as anything thrown into it, radioactive or not.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Randell Monroe (xkcd, as if you didn't know) might have come up with these ideas before me :-)</comment>


Jack Dorsey Donates $3M for Universal Basic Income Pilot Programs in 15 Cities - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/angelauyeung/2020/07/09/jack-dorsey-donates-3-million-to-us-mayors-for-universal-basic-income-pilot-programs-in-15-cities/#42f8d3a78555 <comment><USER2> How about he takes that money and makes Twitter less of a shithole for most people?

<comment><USER3> I like seeing that 1 billion dollars (or 2.6 it seems) is being given away for a good cause. Twitter's business problems are probably not lack of cash.</comment></comment>


What is DevOps? - <AUTHOR> http://dev-spout.blogspot.com/2011/07/what-is-devops.html

<comment><USER2> DevOps: The term applied when it was rediscovered that IT pros do more than fight fires.

Organizations cut their IT staff down to just helpdesk types, because they are cheap and that's what they interact with daily. Constantly growing the number of fire fighters, but hiring no one to create fire resistant systems.</comment>


Ask HN: playin' the stocks game - <AUTHOR>

I'm a 21yr. old, soon to be college graduate, possibly on his way to grad school, and I want to have a hand at the stock market. I'm planning to start with a measly two grand or so in hopes of gaining some capital.
I just finished reading 'Real Money,' by Jim Cramer, where he outlines some of the basics of stock investing - Multiples, P/E ratio, dividends, yields, etc. I'm not sure if I've attained sufficient knowledge to jump into stocks, or whether I should do a bit more reading on the field.
Being a complete beginner, what resources would you recommend to help lay the basic foundation? And after I've obtained enough information, what are the initial steps do you suggest I take? What tools do you use? Suggestions of brokers? How's the market treated you? What kind of 'investor' are you - a trader or more long term?
I think it'd be interesting to hear the hacker's guide to investing, although often times the market is wildly irrational - a trait most of you hackers lack from what I've read here.
So, everything from suggested investment methods to tools you use to keep track of what's happening.
Thanks all. <comment><USER2> First of all, ignore Jim Cramer!! Stay as far away from him as possible. The little bits of truth he speaks are not worth wading through the coin tosses, just stay away.

Next, when you're trying to figure out which stocks to buy, forget about the stocks. Don't look to PE's, and all the other ratios to figure out where the market is going.

Look at the world around you. Look at where the /world/ is going. Which things are going to be hot 20 years from now? Those are the things that are going to be your biggest wins. You only need one or two or three really big winners to set you for life and you have many years to find them.

Don't look at the latest headlines to decide where to put your money. You may make money trading stocks, buying at $22 and selling at $26, it is possible and that is very likely to happen.

But that is not the goal. Four dollars is not the goal. Four million dollars is the goal and that takes years and years.

So, take your time. Don't invest any real dollars for a year. Take the dollars you would invest and put them into books and education and paper trading. I know it sounds lame and where's the fun in that, but if fun is what you are looking for, go to vegas. Poker is more exciting and easier to figure out how to win and you can make a lot of money with a $2,000 bank roll if you play your cards right.

If you are just absolutely itching to put that money into the market, look in to index funds. Index funds are easily managed funds that don't cost a lot of money to keep running but are still diversified.

Put your money into one of those, like buy the QQQQ or something -- IT MAY CRASH right after you buy it, the point isn't to make money, the point is to pay attention. Pay attention to the short term swings in the market, but don't buy or sell based on them.

Look at the fundamentals of the entire market to decide when to make big moves. Make little moves on little time frames, big moves on big time frames.

For example, you could have looked at the markets a couple years back and known that the future didn't look so hot. You probably didn't know when everything was going to collapse, but you knew the fundamentals weren't looking very good. Okay, so then you might want to tend toward market underweight.

Anyway, lots of useless advice summed up in a couple words: Don't get trigger happy. Use your head. Practice makes perfect. Stocks are not a get rich quick scheme.

</comment><comment><USER3> Expect to lose your $2000. I'm not trying to dissuade you -- investing is a skill, and if it only costs $2000 to learn it, you've done great. If you're not afraid to lose your capital, you'll be much better positioned to take calculated risks.

Be aware of commissions. If you have only $2000, you will have to engage in fewer, more profitable trades -- otherwise commissions will completely erode your profits. Let's say it costs $10 to make a round-trip buy/sell trade. That's already 0.5% of your capital right there. If you do 10 trades a year, you're starting off with an annual return of -5%.

Traditional stock picking really isn't my thing. It's nearly impossible to have an informational advantage. The professionals can barely beat their benchmark on a regular basis. It just doesn't make sense to play the stock picking game unless you have a credible reason to believe that you have an edge over the competition.

A great place to hang out is www.nuclearphynance.com. It's the best message board for quant finance. Lurk there for a while and learn about the computational and quantitative side of finance. Traditional stock picking isn't really related to hacking, but there are sides of finance that are.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, as far as informational advantage, all company related information seems to be public - balance sheets, conference calls, etc. Are you referring to information that deals with the second to second fluctuations of stock prices due to sell-offs and fund activity?

Are there any services that help to narrow the informational gap between common investors and professional managers?

<comment><USER4> If there are, everyone has access to the information, neutralizing it's utility to you. A few things you might want to read:

[http://www.wallstreetselfdefensemanual.com/the_wall_street_s...](http://www.wallstreetselfdefensemanual.com/the_wall_street_selfdefen/2007/02/7_meet_your_com.html) [http://www.sanfranmag.com/story/best-investment-advice- youll...](http://www.sanfranmag.com/story/best-investment-advice-youll-never- get)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> With $2,000, the best investment you can make is purchasing quality, non- perishable dry goods in bulk as you spot them on sale.

That's not sarcasm. You'll be eating and wearing out your stuff one way or another and buying a year's worth of rice, grass seed, socks, underwear, cat litter, detergent, toothpaste, etc. when you spot it on sale could shave 20%+ off your living expenses.

So, a greater than 20% return. No risk, no taxes, and no commission paid. You really can't do better than that to put an extra $500 in your pocket two years from now.

<comment><USER6> Risk of theft, fire and cost of storage.

(Might still be a good idea.)

<comment><USER5> You get a gold star for pedantry but if those risks aren't already covered by your home/apartment insurance, that should be the first thing you purchase.

If you don't have enough space to store extra rice and underwear, you're unlikely to have sufficient assets to invest in the first place.

<comment><USER6> Ok, the most important risk I see in practise is that you will move and it's cumbersome to carry around stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My favorite posts and sites:

Mark Cuban's post on stocks: <http://blogmaverick.com/2008/09/08/talking- stocks-and-money/>

A blog of a hedge fund trader in Japan: <http://nihoncassandra.blogspot.com>

A blog of a hedge fund trader in London: <http://macro-man.blogspot.com/>

_Reminices of a stock operator_ \- written in the 1920's, everything he says still applies today.

If you really want to understand both the economy and stocks, try doing this search in google: site:blogs.cfr.org/setser/ mencius moldbug and read every comment by Mencius.

Finally, I recommend a short comment I made about stocks and investing here: <http://www.newmogul.com/item?id=2587>

I was a huge fan of the book "A Random Walk Down Wall St" when I first read it. But now I believe that it is seriously misguided. The stock market is a far different beast than it was in 1970.

</comment><comment><USER8> Index funds. As a broad generalization, index funds are superior to managed funds due to higher long-term returns and far lower fees.

As another broad generalization, you can have higher returns than index funds (aka the market) only at the cost of increased risk.

<comment><USER9> I recall reading somewhere that most pro traders can't even beat the common index funds.

<comment><USER2> Well, I think about 75% of mutual funds underperform market index funds that charge fractions of the fees. And those are managed by pros with years and years of training and experience.

It's a tough world for the individual. Yes, the risk is higher, but the reward is also higher.

One of the first things to learn is your own risk tolerance. That's key.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I would absolutely recommend reading "A Random Walk Down Wall Street" by Burton Malkiel. Its a great introduction to the theory of efficient markets.

<comment><USER7> How can you believe the efficient market theory after the events of October 2008? The stock market may be unpredictable, but it is far from rational. IMHO, the analysis "A Random Walk Down Wall St" does not really understand the nature of the modern stock market (although reading it is better than listening to Jim Cramer).

<comment><USER11> The efficient market hypothesis says that you cannot predict stock returns using past prices and indicators; future price movements are due to news. Since news are unpredictable (by definition), returns are random.

In October 2008 there were some pretty shocking news and the market went down. I don't see how that invalidates the hypothesis.

EMH might have its weaknesses, and it might be even seriously flawed. But it's not invalidated because there was a crash or because people do "irrational" things, unless this irrationality is predictable.

(I believe the definition of "news" must be a bit wide for the hypothesis to work. If a big investor changes his mind about his risk tolerance and decides to sell a big chunk of stock, this is "news".)

<comment><USER7> It's not the crash that invalidates it, it's the extreme variance. At one point, the S&P had _two swings of 10% in one day_. These kinds of swings were common, and they often happened without any shocking news arriving in between the swings.

Since the mid-1980's, stocks have traded as collectibles, not as cash flows. Thus the price of stocks is not based on fundamentals, but on game theory. The stock market is a coordination game with massive feedback loops in it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Read "The Intelligent Investor". It was written many years ago and is still relevant today (it's actually scary how history seems to repeat itself). Regarding fees, note that commissions are not the only costs to transactions. Remember the bid/ask spread and that as a small investor you will be taken advantage of.

Long term is the way to go, IMHO. It is nearly impossible to predict short term price movements. Also, forget the efficient market hypotheses; if the SP500 can go up 5% one day and down 5% the next it's obviously bogus. You can count on the average stock owner to be either overly optimistic or overly pessimistic (and not just a little bit). Do you homework first and keep your head.

Find companies with business models you can understand: how are they making revenue, what are their costs, what are their risks? Use discounted cash flows (i.e. NPV) to find a fair market price (P/E is good rough estimate). Be very conservative when doing this, especially with regards to expected EPS and growth. Double digit growth _cannot_ be maintained and generally high growth companies are overvalued. Most libraries have S&P reports that you can study for free (good for EPS data although take it with a grain of salt). Some discount brokers also offer stock reports. Note that analysis recommendations are usually bogus but it doesn't hurt to take note.

Index funds are a good way to diversity but watch out for fees (I like Vanguard, especially their ETFs) and too much portfolio turnover (some are just badly designed). However, it's my opinion that you can do better than the indexes with a little common sense (see above) and if you can stomach the extra risk. Stick to large cap stocks because they are more liquid and less susceptible to insider information. It doesn't hurt to look at insider activity (although note the effects of stock options).

$2000 is not much money, probably not enough to start messing with individual stocks. I would stick it low fee, value ETF and forget about it. $10,000 is probably a more reasonable starting amount, say 25% in high-grade bonds, 25% in a index fund, and 50% in individual stocks of your choosing (say 2 or 3).

</comment><comment><USER13> For me, Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger's investment advice resonates the most. You could start here:

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

Also, before buying mutual funds, read this:

[http://www.sanfranmag.com/story/best-investment-advice- youll...](http://www.sanfranmag.com/story/best-investment-advice-youll-never- get#story_top)

</comment><comment><USER14> Benjamin Graham's The Intelligent Investor is a classic you should probably read. Burton Malkiel's Random Walk Down Wall Street was also interesting. I hear that Hull's Options Futures and Other Derivatives is a good intro to the more mathematically sophisticated instruments, but I haven't read it myself.

</comment><comment><USER15> Save your money and spend it on something useful instead.

Or buy a newspaper stock section blown up to wall-size, a monkey, and some darts.

But seriously, Google "survivorship bias".

The ones selling advice are doing so because they were the ones lucky enough to survive and smart enough to realize that selling advice is more predictably profitable than playing the market.

<comment><USER16> _The ones selling advice are doing so because they were the ones lucky enough to survive and smart enough to realize that selling advice is more predictably profitable than playing the market._

Don't be so quick to judge. There are plenty of guys out there that trade their own money as well as have services on the side. The investment service field is lucrative to proven traders because it is much less volatile and risky than their current proffestion.

Brian Shannon is one example (alphatrends.net). He sells books and seminars but he also sticks his neck out there and actually admits when he's wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The nickel version of _A Random Walk Down Wall Street_ (which many folks here have recommended) is on Philip Greenspun's site:

<http://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/money>

I'd like to call out one small part of that essay:

"In every office there is at least one sorry loser checking the market every ten minutes, going home at night to read financial reports, running charts, and buying software to manage his complex portfolio. If he were a managing a $10 billion mutual fund, perhaps this effort would be worth it. But to try to beat the index by 2% with a portfolio of $50,000? That's $1,000 extra/year. Even assuming that he can get that extra 2%, he would have earned far more per hour working the night shift at the local 7-Eleven. Your time is valuable. If you must be greedy, then be greedy and smart and take a consulting job. Or enjoy the extra time with your friends and family. Don't waste it trying to beat the market."

</comment><comment><USER18> Avoid individual stocks. Without insider knowledge, an individual is basically gambling when they invest in individual companies. Try finding a fund that provides good returns, and let a professional who has hundreds of millions of dollars in leverage and much better insider knowledge make the specific decisions.

The other key is to look abroad, especially in emerging markets right now. That, and Chinese infrastructure (i.e., airports).

<comment><USER19> > Without insider knowledge

> Try finding a fund that provides good returns

Based on what, exactly?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Do not "play the stocks game" if you think it's a game. The point of investing is to make money. Don't invest in any company unless you have valid reasons to believe the company will go up in value in whatever time frame you're looking for results. And this should be true every week, or you should sell when you don't feel comfortable with the stock any longer. Because the way you feel, so will other investors, and if for whatever reason they don't feel comfortable, they will pull their money, so you might as well react on that feeling first. If the stock continues its devaluation, then it was a good call by you, if the stock actually gets more valuable, then you still might feel good about leaving it since it might now be even more likely to drop now at its higher price. Don't invest in stock simply because you don't know what else to do with the money. And don't invest money you might need in the next six months; the point is to keep money but make logical bets from time to time on companies when you feel you have a much larger informational advantage than most everybody else, using money you won't need in the near future. The point is not to lose money, though if you do lose a bit, it won't be tomorrow's mortgage payment.

The most important thing to realize is that the best thing you could with the money is to put it in a savings account and try to release lots of software or web apps for feedback and practice in running a business. Your salary and job opportunities will increase, as well as give you a chance to make money on the side, as well, pay for retirement, and a small runway for you to go full time if you want to take your ideas further. Because with stocks, you're buying companies, not pieces of paper, and finding a company that returns 2x or 3x the investment will be hard to do at the scale of companies listed on NASDAQ, and a micro-cap company where you have enough knowledge or control would be hard to find either. But if you invest your time towards creating things, you'll raise the worth of your skills (or at least, remain competitive and diversified), get "free" business lessons from your experience, and may be able to make thousands of dollars on the side per year or month, on top of that, as a bonus. This is almost a guaranteed investment. And if you could use some of the money you saved up to start a company and figure out the accounting behind it, so the only thing you have to worry about is creating stuff, then you'll be basically set for life. Why?

Because as someone trying to run a business, as well as someone who follows the latest in technology, you'll be in a better position than almost any other investor regarding knowing when to invest in tech companies. On top of that, I can imagine that at some point you could even be a seed investor in companies that are not even on the stock exchange. You will also be the go-to guy at your company. Finally, your company might even become profitable enough for you to go full-time or worth enough to somebody that they'll pay you five, six, or maybe even seven figures for it.

Investing is not gambling. And you're paying $7-14 a trade, so it's probably better to stick with 5 companies or so, which helps to diversify, and if you have to sell your whole position to buy a better one, you can sell all of it for just that fee, instead of trying to sell a bunch of different ones for $7-14 each.

Don't invest in companies you wouldn't buy from. Invest in companies that seem well run and on the upward trend, that at the same time, you feel that other people, once they find out how good it is in the next few months, will invest in as well, and therefore you would make your money back and then some, based on lots of new people learning about the company and buying their product and increasing their earnings, as well as the influx of buyers of their stock, sending the price of it up by way of more means than one.

Finally, the trends of the last 40 years are irrelevant to what will happen in the next 40. This is 100% true. Investing is not a tax, and you should not treat it as such (i.e. it leaves your bank account, and if it comes back to help you in any way, then that's great! No, it's not how this works.)

<comment><USER2> Oh, it's a game all right. The points are dollars. You want to make as many dollars as possible by playing the game right. The hard part is figuring out the rules. Because a lot of people don't know and they still get paid a lot of money to tell the world the wrong ones.

<comment><USER20> >> Oh, it's a game all right. You want to make as many dollars as possible by playing the game right.

No, you don't. You want to make as many dollars as possible regardless of what you're doing, be it trading stocks or otherwise. But with trading, you're risking what you already have, so you want to invest, and not confuse the word investing with gambling. And with that, it's entirely possible that not investing in the stock market whatsoever may be your best option throughout your whole life, if you're a software developer. If you're not one, then try to run a business in a different area to learn about the way things work, while saving your money to make a very reasonable bet on a few bets, not feeling like you have to have your money tied in the stock markets just because other people do.

Now, if we knew that the stock market in general would go up 5-15% on average every year for the next 40 years, that would be different, and I would buy an index fund at the very minimum. But we do not know what will happen, nor can we even slightly base our financial decisions on what happened before. That would not be investing, that would be time machine traveling or being hopeful things will work out. And as software developers, we have more control over more things such that running one's own tech business while learning about new developments will put us in the right mindset to understand and evaluate the rare great buys in the stock market correctly, as well as how consumers think based on having first hand experience running a company oneself.

And true investing is not just putting money into "the stock market" void every month, but actually following developments and researching every week for at least an hour a week per stock (this is actually Cramer's advice.) And you want to have 5 stocks to diversify (Cramer's advice.) So with those 5 hours a week, could you not create and maintain a web app, or two or three? Have fun reading Hacker News like you normally might do, sure, whether you invest in stock or not. But just take the time you would spend researching and discussing the companies you hold (as well as new companies you might be interested in) and take that time to actually develop software. In either case, you might only make a few hundred or thousand dollars a year profit. That alone shows you might as well be investing in yourself. But that's not all!

With creating your own software, you learned new skills, kept current ones sharp, created a portfolio, became confident in yourself, and all of this may raise your salary by $20,000-$50,000 a year and work the same amount of hours, be confident in pursuing contracting opportunities based on the evidence you can create stuff, sell off various web apps you created, even for just a few thousand, and establish a reputation. So those hundred to thousand dollars a year, or any money made, or even a loss of $200-$500 a year due to web hosting and such and zero profit, can easily return ten, twenty, or thirty thousand dollars for a 21 year old, more than anything else, in just one year.

But with "investing" as a 21 year old, making a hundred or thousand dollars a year is about the best you could do. In fact, it is possible to lose the entire investment, as well. So the net return might be negative (e.g. you'd be better off not putting money in the stock market.) Subtract account fees as well. And now, subtract all that research you did, and how many hours you spent on it, at let's say $10-$30 an hour. And subtract the lost opportunity cost of being able to have used that time to create anything, anything at all for experience and other reasons I mentioned previously! Subtract the stress and worry!

Let's go nuts here. Even if you were guaranteed not to lose money you invest in the stock market, and you turn your $2,000 into $4,000, and let's say you did it by luck so you spent zero hours researching anything and just left your money in the account, investing the time and money towards furthering your own education is just a much better use of resources for a 21 year old, even in the best case scenario here.

And, as he mentioned he has debts, he should just try to pay them off. If the debt is at 7% for college, 15% credit card, and other, pay those off first!

<comment><USER2> Definitely go straight for the debt, that's sure money!

I agree with you, definitely on the same page. I wish I could say more right now, but I gotta run. Anyway, point being, education first.

Yes, go build a software system to help you manage a lifetime of trading. It's a life long job, not something you go do for 5 years. You may get so good at it you want to take that software and sell it and make tons of money so you can make tons of tons of more money when you return to the market in 3 years or 5 years or whenever you want to return focus to it.

Money is a life long game. Not a sort term game. There's a lot more money to be made in other facets of life than there is to be made in stocks over the short term. Right now, I wouldn't even bother with stocks to be honest. I have some random index funds, fairly diversified and some retirement money, but other than that I'm all cash.

And I'm not recommending that for anyone, just saying that's where I am, just to be on the up and up.

But 100% cash isn't right for everyone right now and it may turn out to be the wrong decision, everyone has to decide for him or herself where their money should be to maintain a certain level of happiness and vision toward the future.

A long lived low stress life has a value too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Today there are so many ways you can "practice" trading I'd recommend using a stock market game before jumping in. You will make many mistakes in trading; might as well make them on a simulator.

<http://vse.marketwatch.com/Game/Homepage.aspx>

The people saying "be prepared to lose it all" are crazy. You only need to be prepared to loose it all if you're undertaking a really risky strategy.

Of course this depends on your goals. If you're just picking individual stocks based on thin information with little industry knowledge and hopes to make a quick buck, then, yeah be prepared to lose it all.

If you are trying to enter the market for the first time with a long-term portfolio strategy, you're doing it wrong if you must also prepare to lose it all.

<comment><USER21> One more thing... +1 for the people suggesting to read stuff by Warren Buffet and doing index funds. Long-term, buy-and-hold, diversified investing is the best way to go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> You might want to try using the free Stock Market Game UpDown for a few weeks/months to practice investing:

<http://www.updown.com/?_refer=36311>

They give you $1 million in play money to invest, but you actually make real money based on your performance (no minimum transfer amount -- I've made a whooping $0.82 so far, but I can withdraw it if I want).

</comment><comment><USER16> I run a stock options website (investingwithoptions.com) and am known as one of the better options guys out there.

2k won't get you far in terms of trading. You should probably look into passive investing. You will get much larger returns investing in yourself than trying to speculate on the market.

If you do want to speculate, you might want to look into index verticals. They limit your risk (50-150 loss max ) and have less comission vs trading stock ($3 vs $10). You'll at least lose money more slowly. And your delta risk initially isn't a lot so you can unwind a position with much less loss early than if you were to get into futures/stock.

Me personally I trade options using technical and sentimental analysis, which is heresy around these "effecient market" places.

Oh, and don't listen to Cramer or CNBC. They're asshats.

I've got a pretty decent blogroll built up on my site with bloggers that risk their own money for a living, so that's a good place to start.

</comment><comment><USER23> $2000 really isn't enough to "play the market". As the other comments have suggested there is too much stacked against you.

If you really want to try your hand, I'd pick 1 moderately risky stock with a shot at long-term (5-7 years) surprise growth. There is a high probably your $2000 will become $200, but that probability exists almost universally.

Personally, if I was going to bet a $2000 chunk, I would throw it at Ford stock today (F). This is based on the fact that I used to work there (FSIC), still know several people in the company, and have a belief that they have a solid long-term strategy. There is a high probability that they'll run out of money before they can fully enact that strategy, but if they do, that $2.50 stock will easily be $25 in 7 years. Or $0. That's the fun of trying to make money on individual stock trades :)

In 5 years, you'll either have a decent chunk of money, or nothing. Neither outcome is life-changing anyway.

</comment><comment><USER24> The market isn't irrational - people are. Learn about psychology, sociology ad behavioral economics and you'll have an edge.

Here's a nobel prize lecture on behavioral economics to get you started: <http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/2002/>

And another really important tip: Make sure you can afford to lose all the money you put in.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is advice that people rarely take, and I'd probably ignore... but I'd recommend investing with a fake portfolio to start (there are "fantasy" investment sites that make this easy).

Making money is important - but I'd also recommend that you invest in things you believe in.

<comment><USER18> "Past returns are not an indicator of future performance." It would be very easy to be caught in an upswing in some market you're investing in--be it US technology in 2000 / 2006, or Czech railroads in 2009, or whatever--and be stunned when they dive when you start playing for real money. Investing in things one believes in is dangerous advice. Believing is important in many things in hacker culture; investing in public companies can't be one of them. You need more solid evidence, not just faith.

<comment><USER25> _and be stunned when they dive when you start playing for real money_

So you're saying practice makes you less prepared to invest for real? Don't follow this logic at all.

What it is good for is understanding the mechanics of the market. There is a lot more to it than buy/sell - even for simple investors are reporting periods, dividends, options, funds, exchange rates, interest rates, etc.

Practice lets you get a feel for those events and how they drive the market and your investing.

 _You need more solid evidence, not just faith._

When I say believe in, I mean something that fits your world view... Not that you (simply) believe will make money.

If you want to invest purely to make money, that's fine too - I find I'm more successful when I invest in areas that are closer to my own interests/world- view/whatever you want to call it.

<comment><USER18> I'm saying that "practice" doesn't affect your preparedness for something that's either intrinsically random (and I mean true-random), or affected by knowledge you don't have but others with tons of capital will. You can fool yourself into thinking you're better prepared, but you're not.

"Getting good" in fantasy stocks is the equivalent of flipping a coin a hundred times, and getting some heads streaks towards the end.

<comment><USER25> _"Getting good" in fantasy stocks is the equivalent of flipping a coin a hundred times, and getting some heads streaks towards the end._

So using real money instead mitigates this random process in some way? That doesn't follow.

I'm not going to get into your characterisation of the market. If you believe it random, then I'll let that influence your own investing... However, investing is still has a lot of technical aspects, and practice does improve your understanding of this.

<comment><USER18> Of course real money doesn't "mitigate the random process in some way." You're just more likely to switch to real money if you seem to be doing well as opposed to poorly, and I'm saying that the appearance of doing well is misplaced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The best advice I've heard about trading is poker advice.

"There's a sucker at every table. If you can't spot him, it's you."

Cycles like the one we're going through really illustrate this. Look at all the suckers who bought 2nd homes in Stockton as an "investment." If you realized this, you bet against that trend, and made money.

<comment><USER27> The sad truth is that there's often a lot of suckers at the table. Spotting the sucker doesn't mean you're not one.

<comment><USER26> True, but identifying the other sucker means that you know why the other guy is a sucker. If you can constrain your betting to betting against suckers, into their weak spot, its hard not to win. The hard part is being patient enough to avoid competing with the unknowns at the table.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> [http://www.amazon.com/Wall-Street-Self-defense-Manual- Intell...](http://www.amazon.com/Wall-Street-Self-defense-Manual- Intelligent/dp/0977743322)

Summary - buy index funds, keep your costs low, invest for the long term.

</comment><comment><USER29> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=248469>

Some good stuff here.

</comment><comment><USER30> To all the naysayers: remember that holding cash is holding a depreciating asset. That 2k is not going to be worth 2k in a year's time. So really by not investing you're taking a guaranteed loss of 3%-15% a year (depending on how pessimistic you are about future inflation) instead of some other possible loss that depends on how risky your make your portfolio.

For what it's worth my suggestion is to put your money in gold (GLD or DGP) or oil (USO, DXO or their variants.)

Edit: oh and of course go with an online discount broker instead of a major bank. You'd have to be insane to do otherwise. I'm in Canada so I use Questrade, and they are phenomenal.

<comment><USER6> As if gold was an investment with a rate of return.. And he isn't going to hide that 2k$ under his pillow.

<comment><USER30> DGP = 2x gold earnings

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31>
        Being a complete beginner, what resources would you
        recommend to help lay the basic foundation?

I tried this about four years ago. I started by playing the ASX simulated game to get a feel for it and confirmed that I was rubbish at picking day by day. Then I picked some long-term patterns I was confident with, mentally wrote off my starting money, and started playing with that. Sometimes I feel pulled towards stress by developments but then remind myself that I acknowledged it was gambling to start with and wrote off the money. Despite the downwards trend of the markets, I've only done somewhat badly and if I liquidated now would have still three quarters of the amount I started with. Experience aside, I would have been far better off keeping the money in cash and investing the time in my career. (On the other hand, the significant part of my position is anticipation of the world seeing significant uncertainty in paper currency and this has acted as a hedge against a career with a finance focus.)

The major thing I've learnt is the value of cash in terms of its flexibility. I now think about cash as being analogous to having a flexible option, whereas if you're locked into a self-imposed rule where you only sell on certain sorts of gain (e.g. purchase price plus 20%) then you lose flexibility that is valuable. Definitely on the bright side - at the time my family and accountant were advising me to buy a house and a get a huge mortgage. I'm in a far strong position than I would have been if I'd done that. I think that it is a poor decision for young, unattached people to buy houses to live in on mortgage because it limits their options to follow career opportunities and locks them into significant debt.

</comment><comment><USER32> Here are some things to keep in mind:

\- I think that it is best to invest directly in securities (only resorting to index funds if you really must outsource your thinking). You'll learn the most if you make the big decisions.

\- Learn how to analyze the public information available. Cash flows. Balance sheets. Income statements. Get an accounting book! Learn about the types of securities and alternatives to equity investing (especially the various kinds of bonds).

\- Market prices are based on combination of innumerable emotional and rational reactions to the real value of the companies behind the shares. Only over the long term will the price reflect the real value of these businesses. At any point, the price can be completely outside of reason, so beware of and be ready to take advantage of the stupidity of crowds.

\- Invest in types of businesses that you can understand, or plan on spending lots of time researching "in the field". Really focus on a few. When I was buying shares of Nabisco, I was spending late nights in the cookie aisle at Vons. When I started buying Apple, I spent serious time at their first toe- hold at CompUSA and later at their stores. I recently spent time at the Crocs stand at the mall to evaluate this company.

\- Learn the different investment mental models and build one for yourself. Graham. Buffett. Munger. Lynch. Fisher.

\- Learn about related fields. Psychology. Macroeconomics. Patent law. Whatever is important to industries that you are going to focus on.

\- Keep investing. When you are 40 or 50 years old you might be half-good at it.

</comment><comment><USER33> I just started reading Andrew Tobias's book, "The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need", and so far it looks like it will be good.

End of the first chapter:

 _"There are, in fact, very few ways to get rich quick. Fewer sill that are legal. Here's one: Take $5000 (borrow it if you have to), place it on 22 at the nearest roulette table, and win $175,000. Don't laugh. Many complicated schemes, if they were stripped of their trappings and somehow reduced to their underlying odds, would not be much less risky. It's the trappings - the story, the pitch - that obscure the odds and persuade people to ante up the $5000 they'd never dream of betting at roulette."_

He talks about how the book is about seeing the forest through the trees. You can learn all you want about a certain type of investment, but what you really need to know is whether you should be involved in that investment in the first place.

 _"For example: It is a fact that 90% or more of the people who play the commodities game get burned. I submit that you have now read all you need ever read about commodities."_

</comment><comment><USER34> It will be a great education for you into how markets work. I know it opened my eyes widely when I started playing around the same age. It will completely change you.

Couple of quick things. Don't listen to a word Cramer has to say. It is all in volume, earnings per share, FUTURE earnings per share, and ratio. Also, markets can be irrational. And no matter how smart you are there is enough FUD to cloud your decision.

Expect to lose a good portion of that to start but it will be one of the best classes you ever paid for.

With such low money and bad margins the odds are stacked against you but it is worth it for the awareness that you will gain with market insights.

See this: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jwEwlZnSFY>

In the end if you want a good chunk to be completely low fee and almost guaranteed just invest in index funds, now is a perfect time. Wait 5 years and they will be up quite a bit with usually a less than 1% fee.

</comment><comment><USER35> step 1) please forget anything you read from Jim Cramer

step 2) read The Black Swan by Taleb

step 3) make an account at caps.fool.com

step 4) get your score above 80

step 5) never invest more than 2% of your capital in any investment

step 6) figure out how to profit from your capital given rule #5

step 7) if you've figured out rule #6 you're set for life

</comment><comment><USER36> Here, save yourself some money, use it as others have mentioned to invest in yourself.

If you're doing it to learn, there's no reason to do it under fire.

I'll +1 to the other advice here: go fantasy to learn. They're real numbers, so the educational value is the same. You can think rationally without getting as emotionally attached to the money, so you'll learn better. (Hopefully you won't go with real money until you've learned to keep a clear head)

Most importantly, you'll know when you're actually good enough to do well in the market -- when you're doing better than your competition over a long period of time. That will tell you when it's skill instead of luck.

</comment><comment><USER37> Play on paper first. Pick a stock, pretend you bought N shares at X dollars today. Then see what happens. When you "sell" be sure to subtract transaction fees and short term capital gains tax from the profit. So play on paper for a month or two and see if you really are a market clairvoyant.

Anyone can profit in a rising market and claim they have a "system" for doing it. If 500 people go over Niagra Falls in barrells, about 200 survive. Then those 200 go over again, and 80 survive. Then those 80 go over again, then the last 30 survivors write books about how to survive going over Niagra Falls in a barrell. Take their advice with a grain of salt.

</comment><comment><USER38> Read this: <http://ycombinator.com/munger.html>

as well as the rest of the yc library (click on the library link at the bottom right of the front page).

</comment><comment><USER39> Seems to be a lot of people here who have a sound and rational knowledge of this game as the OP imagined there would be. I have a question and would be very grateful if someone could answer.

I have a good reason to believe that a relatively small Chinese company will be bought over by a massive US company this year. being a total newb, would it be feasible for me to buy shares in this company easily so that I can profit from them when it is bought? someone suggested sharebuilder.com. Anyone ever use them?

</comment><comment><USER40> I've never invested a penny in stocks, but my friend has and has his ups and downs..but is currently down..about $13,000 (he is your age). I highly recommend you do as others have mentioned and INVEST IN YOURSELF, not someone elses business. But if you insist.. I recommend you NOT be like every other "average investor" and have a read at what tim sykes has to say about it all ... <http://timothysykes.com/>

</comment><comment><USER41> Lots of good advice in this thread.

In addition, understand risk management. You don't have enough cash to diversify across stocks (and time, buying in stages) to really be effective. An index fund is probably your best bet.

That said, if you want to take a lot of risk, look into options trading. Deep in the money calls are a relatively low risk way to succeed. But the learning curve for options is steep.

</comment><comment><USER42> The only way to win in stocks is to invest in value and hold long. I would suggest just going in on a leveraged index ETF and just forget about for 5 years. I bet you'll get around a 20% return.

</comment><comment><USER43> I'm reading so many negative comments. If he's smart and interested in stocks, perhaps he can make money. What if Warren Buffet had posted an ask-HN before starting his career?

<comment><USER6> There was advice to read the "Intelligent Investor" written by Ben Graham, Buffet's mentor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Unless you want to do this full time, put it in a index fund.

</comment><comment><USER45> why all the pessimistic comments? invest that $2000 in a 401 or roth low-risk fund and you will likely get good returns in 50 years.

</comment><comment><USER46> As someone who once worked for a hedge fund, please allow me to give you some words of advice:

\- what advantage do you think you will have over others? Unless you have friends in high places and plan to do insider trading (which is very illegal), you will be one more amateur playing against the professionals in the banks and hedge funds. The pros work at least 12 hours a day and have years of experience. They are also better connected than you. So... what advantage do you think you have? If you can't answer this simple question, I advise you to choose a game where you have an advantage.

\- if you think I am being too pessimistic and defeatist, do read Prof. Larry Harris' paper _The Winners and Losers of the Zero-Sum Game: The Origins of Trading Profits, Price Efficiency and Market Liquidity_ at <http://www- rcf.usc.edu/~lharris/ABSTRACT/Zerosum.htm>

\- be ready to lose your $2000 (like someone else mentioned before) and accept it as a "price" to pay to learn something about investing.

\- brokers are crooks. All of them. They will "rape" you whenever they have a chance.

\- don't invest in stocks, invest in yourself. If you are on HN, I assume you like to write code. Investing $2000 in an idea you might have will likely yield better dividends in the long term.

I am not trying to be pedantic or anything. I am only trying to put things in perspective. Everybody would like to make money in the stock market, but few manage to do it... and the ones who do manage to make money consistently over the years (and within the law) most likely have years and years of experience and hard work under their belts.

<comment><USER47> \- I agree you don't have any advantage. On the other hand the meltdown has already happened, so the prices have been corrected already.

\- On the other hand, using the stock-market by investing for the long-term is the biggest crap someone can sell you. There are better ways to invest for the long term, assuming you have more money.

\- $2000 may be a lot to you, but it's not a lot of money. So assuming you are a fast learner, want high returns and you have the risk gene, I would recommend learn forex instead. You will learn a lot more in 6 months than what you will learn investing for the stock-market. You will probably lost at least 50% of your capital but you can't learn if you don't burn real money.

<comment><USER48> >\- I agree you don't have any advantage. On the other hand the meltdown has already happened, so the prices have been corrected already.

A couple of summers ago someone could just have easily said: "on the other hand, house prices have ballooned, so the massive undervaluations in the housing market have been corrected already"

You are arbitrarily calling a bottom without any justification other than an efficient market hypothesis, which, given recent volatility, is hard to put forward.

<comment><USER47> I am not in position to compare the two. But, the housing market was growing globally and so fast that the it was obvious it is artificial.

However, if you said that, yeah that's the answer you actually got.

"arbitrarily calling a bottom without any justification other than an efficient market hypothesis"

the deal is that you should not make predictions on what the outcome you need to be. Rather, correct you predictions and adjust your investments.

<comment><USER49> As I remember, there was only one major player who realised it. I think this is the definition of non-obvious.

If it was so obvious that is was artificial, then you would have taken the bet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Buy AAPL long.</comment>


Show HN: Pubcenter – a non-profit RSS archiving service - <AUTHOR> https://app.pub.center <comment><AUTHOR> Hi I built this and it's been archiving RSS feeds since last year. There's about 1700 feeds indexed, and 1.5 million articles cached. Thanks for checking it out!</comment>