Ask HN: How did your passion for computer stuff start? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> As kids we embarked on a quest across a (small) country, to my cousins house, to collect a copy of Doom 2. We were so excited we took turns holding the floppy discs on the bus home.

When we finally got there and installed it, it ran at about 2 frames per second. My friend didn't let it phase him. He played it in slow motion for weeks in my attic. Shoot. Wait. Wait. Missed. Shoot again. Wait Wait...

I couldn't take it, and eventually learned about autoexec.exe & config.sys, about the different types of memory etc. Trying to get games like this to run.

Even from the outset its been a battle of hate & love :P

</comment><comment><USER3> My fascination with computers started when I watched the movie Hackers (1995) [1]. I just liked the idea of the underdogs upping the ante over their well- funded bureaucrats and being smart and stubborn. Even though this was rather a bland movie (by today's standards), I appreciate the fact that this movie pushed me into the realms of software and computers in general.

[1] [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113243/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113243/)

<comment><USER4> Hackers was one of the two movies that got me into development. The other was Antitrust (2001) [1]. I ended up taking AP Computer Programming in high school that year (back when it was C++) and had dreams of going to UIUC and starting a startup in the garage with my good friend.

[1] [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0218817/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0218817/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I fell in love with computers under serendipitous circumstances -- I was pretty lucky that I went to the only hackathon near me in my freshman year of high school. I ended up loving it so much (I made a meme generator at the event) that I wanted to create a hands-on coding club at my school, which only continued to fuel my love for code as I found a community of young coders when I started my school's chapter of Hack Club. After the club began, my peers at my school and I finally felt like we had a group of students excited about code and its impact, leading us to create many coding initiatives in our relatively under-served community.

After us, 3 other Hack Clubs popped up, and it's been magical to see them hosting school hackathons and summer camps. I really hope that this continues so we can show more students what pushed us into the wild coding world!

</comment><comment><USER6> The local arcade got a Pong machine, then later, a Lunar Lander, and many others as they came out.

I went from playing pinball, to video games, and fell in love with it all. In about the 7th grade I started to design my own games, working out how they'd play and the layout of screens ( on graph paper...lol ) etc...

Later I earned enough cash to get an Apple II+ with all the programming manuals it came with, and spent most of my highschool nights recreating games I'd played and designing new ones in Basic and then eventually 6502 assembly.

Without money for college, I spent my 20's working odd jobs and continued to program on the side. Eventually I got my foot in the door at a national news paper's budding computer department, writing help files and documenting all the existing systems... and worked my way into web development from there.

</comment><comment><USER7> I grew up poor and didn't want to spend my adult life that way. So I got my hands on a used computer and some tools, and learned to code.

I'm only in it for the money.

<comment><USER8> Didn't grow up poor, still in it for the money. Every other benefit that comes with it ( highly flexible workibg hours, intelectually teasing tasks) are just bonuses on top. Can't remember I ever wrote a line of code that hasn't been paid for (except whilst studying)

The one thing that pushed me to follow this path was a joy for pc gaming, an enthusiastic teacher and income per profession rankings showing that computer science pays quite well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Playing moon landing on an old TI programmable calculator[1].

From there I used to travel into the Computing Teaching Centre in Oxford University on weekends to write BASIC on a CTL Modular One[2]. I had no idea of the significance at the time but I met Tony Hoare[3] there on numerous occasions. It was a friend who got us in, I think he just knocked on the door and said can we play with your computers and remarkably they said yes. I was 14 or 15 at the time.

The first computer I owned was an Acorn System 1[4], 1KB RAM, 512 bytes ROM and a 7 segment calculator display. I had to work through the summer holidays picking fruit to pay for it. I spent countless hours hand assembling code for it, I think the biggest project I did was a Forth like language.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI-57](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI-57) [2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Technology_Limited#Th...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Technology_Limited#The_Modular_One) [3]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Hoare](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Hoare) [4]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_System_1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_System_1)

</comment><comment><USER10> A guy took control on my computer when I was 12. He opened a Matrix-stylized chat window (black background, green font color) and started to talk with me. He told me I had a trojan and than I should clean my computer. Then he restarted my computer to show me what he could do.

After this event, I learnt how to clean and tweak Windows. I started searching and comparing programs. I installed Firefox, adblock, an antivirus and a firewall, etc. I remember also asking my parents if I could open the computer to see how it works. It's also the period I started to spend a lot of time on forums. I discovered MMORPGs. Then I built my own gaming computer and made a basic website about the game I was playing.

</comment><comment><USER11> When I originally went to university, I went for music because I thought it was fun.

However, I was terrible at my music classes because I didn't enjoy many of them. Theory, conducting, and just doing scales all day. At some point I was determined to turn things around, and I decided to build an excel spreadsheet to help figure out what I needed to make in order to bring my grades up.

This was when I discovered VBA for excel. I had never programmed before, but I thought it was such a fun challenge. So I ended up making this over-engineered gradebook for my classes... At the end of the semester my grades were awful, but I changed schools, got my GPA back up, and changed my major to CS.

</comment><comment><USER12> Grade school. I learned that computers followed rules. And if you learned the rules, you could make it do interesting things.

My classroom was the first class in the school to get a computer. At the time, nobody knew how to work the things, so instead of rotating around all of the different classrooms each week, it was left in our room for half of the year.

During that time, I got to use it a lot and became more fluent on it than the teacher. Eventually, a local news crew came to do a story on this rollout of computers in the classroom, and I got to be on local TV showing the reporter how to do stuff on this 'new technology'.

I learned that not everyone 'got' computers like I did.

</comment><comment><USER13> I've been coding since I was about 10, though not well. It was more messing around with computers and playing video games. I think I was mostly interested once I discovered all the things computers could do - but I didn't know how to do them.

Around the time I was looking to get serious about coding, my friend mentioned he attended a sort of code club. I was immediately curious and looked it up. It turned out to be run together with Hack Club[0], an organization helping kids run computer science clubs internationally. Unfortunately, I didn't go to his high school (and there wasn't one at mine) so I was unable to attend his coding club. However, I could still join the Hack Club Slack[1] where I've been helped by many (and have begun to help others).

I'm looking forward to starting a Hack Club at my high school this upcoming school year, and hope many more can have the experience I had, sooner. I don't work for Hack Club but can personally recommend them.

[0]: [https://hackclub.com](https://hackclub.com)

[1]: [https://slack.hackclub.com](https://slack.hackclub.com)

</comment><comment><USER14> I was always into "computer stuff", but nothing serious where I could earn any money (gaming > programming). So the programming part, where I ended up in the end as software developer, took off very late for me.

I studied computer science, but didn't really know why I did it. I learned about all this programming syntax, solving smaller problems, but it was always difficult for me grasping the bigger picture. But there was one seminar for half a year which open my eyes: Distributed Systems. Suddenly the bigger picture, having webservices, IOT or mobile devices, made so much more sense to me. Everything is connected with an API and not till then the acronym made sense for me. After the seminar I saw this huge potential in programming, because everything could be connected. That's when I started to develop serious interest in programming. If you are interested about it , you can read the whole story over [here]([https://www.robinwieruch.de/what-is-an-api- javascript/](https://www.robinwieruch.de/what-is-an-api-javascript/)).

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't think I have a passion for "computer stuff", but I really enjoy the craft of programming (and related application design and experience design and general hacky problem solving).

When I was a kid, home computers were barely a thing. We had one, but I only played with it. I thought maybe I'd grow up to be an architect. I took a few programming classes in middle school (logo and basic), but I started messing around with web pages in high school in the late 90's--mostly for publishing, since I liked to write and draw. JavaScript code was relatively small and rarely obfuscated then, so I learned a lot by reading the source of pages with cool layouts or effects. Haven't stopped since then.

Turns out there's a whole field where you can design things to solve problems or create experiences and make them come into being just by thinking about them carefully (and writing down your thoughts). The feedback loop for satisfaction and learning is very tight compared to architecture.

</comment><comment><USER16> I was 5.

My dad was really into electronics and got a Windows 95 for home use. He insisted that my sister and I learn how to type.

He also made the fatal mistake of sharing the MechWarrior 2 and MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries CDs that came with our computer with me. I popped them in and got hooked. So I learned how to type, but I also developed a huge love for video games.

Basically, the rest of my childhood was spent thwarting the various ways my parents devised to try and lock me out of using the Internet/playing games. The more my parents tried to keep me off the computer, the more I wanted to be on.

My fascination with video games also made it so I wanted to learn to program. I learned some basic control flows in C++ at 13. Never really went much past that, because I started working in technical theatre and lighting, and spent more of my time programming lights and setting up lighting networks.

Picked it back up again in college, when I started taking game development classes and having to build stuff in Unity and GameMaker.

</comment><comment><USER17> It started with the C64: Games and the ability to quickly create something of your own with BASIC.

Interestingly, with the web it was quite similar: "View > Page Source" and the ability to quickly learn and create something yourself really fascinated me about the web. Accessibility in my opinion was one of the key aspects that really made the web take off.

</comment><comment><USER18> My uncle was the computer guy of the family. I remember playing on his Amstrad 1640 when I was very young. I always wanted a home computer desperately but my dad never had an interest or saw it useful to encourage my passion for it. It wasn't until my uncle eventually upgraded from his 8086/640KB Amstrad to a Pentium 60 then he gave me the old Amstrad and I was hooked. This was probably about 96/97 so this was already vintage hardware and my attempts to run anything contemporary was frustrating, but that didn't stop me trying to squeeze out every drop of performance from the old beast. I had it for many years and eventually my experiments in trying to get more out of it broke it and it went to the tip. I could probably have repaired it easily just a few years later but I guess that's the tragedy of youth. I'm tempted to buy another 1640 to remember those days but I know it would never be the same.

</comment><comment><USER19> My parents moved house when I was around 11. I suspect as a result of the recent house-purchase my parents basically bought one christmas present for my two sisters and myself: A 48k ZX Spectrum home computer.

The computer came with ~10 casette-tapes, a casette-player for loading them, and the computer itself. Unfortunately the casette-player we received in our bundle was broken. Which meant that we couldn't load any games.

So I read the manual instead, and experimented with programming in BASIC. A week later, or so, (all the shops being closed around Christmas time in the UK back then), we had a working system. My sisters played games, and while I did too I was hooked on programming.

A few more details here:

[https://blog.steve.fi/how_i_started_programming.html](https://blog.steve.fi/how_i_started_programming.html)

</comment><comment><USER20> My dad got us a TRS-80 from Radio Shack. We used out TV as a monitor. I remember typing in games in Basic, and then saving them to an audio casette so we could load them up again later.

That was my first taste of a computer, and of programming. And I've loved both ever since.

</comment><comment><USER21> I must have been 6 or 7 with Windows 95 at home and I double-clicked that mysterious black and orange hazard icon on my dad's desktop. Duke Nukem proceeded to captivate me, then I blinked, and now I'm over 30.

<comment><USER22> Same here, it started when I found Duke Nukem's Penthouse Paradise and Leisure Suit Larry 6 on my dads PC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The amount of money I could make not doing computer stuff was quickly eclipsed by the amount of money I make doing computer stuff.

</comment><comment><USER24> Wrote a post about this awhile back, easier to just link to it instead of copy + paste :)

[https://esheavyindustries.com/2017/01/i-owe-my-career-to- bei...](https://esheavyindustries.com/2017/01/i-owe-my-career-to-being-a- script-kiddie/)

</comment><comment><USER25> The birth of my daughter combined with an affinity for HTML/CSS and website creation combined with a realization that what I was originally setting out to do in life (music) just wasn't going to work the way I had anticipated.

I'm really glad it worked out the way it did. I enjoy this a lot more than I ever could have thought.

</comment><comment><USER26> Well, I had a grandfather who owned a print shop and had an extra computer. He gave it to my family when I was 9 and then I discovered Runescape and have been hooked on computers ever since. My first real foray into programming was through making mods for a game called Toribash.

</comment><comment><USER27> I was interested when I got my first computer for sure, but when I got my first modem I was hooked.

</comment><comment><USER28> Oregon trail on an apple 2 in kindergarten.

Then taking apart my parent's IBM work computer to see how it worked, mostly got it back together..

Found a book on basic in the library around age 8 and was hooked.

</comment><comment><USER29> Myspace in middle school. Looking at the themes and editing them turned into creating my own own one-page website. It showed me the complete control you can have with a computer.

</comment><comment><USER30> I had computers in the house since I was born, as my dad was a software engineer. I started programming in QBASIC, trying to make games.

</comment><comment><USER31> in the 80s a friend dragged me into a department store where they sold PCs. He typed into one "10 Print Hello; 20 Goto 10" and pressed return. What I saw on the screen seemed like magic to me and I got hooked since then. Later got my own VC20 and spent most of my time with that piece.

</comment><comment><USER32> Writing simple programs was a blast. Then I learned they could be simply interfaced to external circuits.

</comment><comment><USER33> I've always been the kid who was into technical stuff. Before I was in elementary school, I would insist that my dad let me help put together my Hot Wheels tracks and such. On a rainy day when I was 8, I had locked myself in my room to avoid my family, and I was lucky to have a computer to myself there. I turned my focus for that day towards it, and I wondered how it worked, so I googled "How to code". The first result that came up at the time (circa 2006) was [https://www.cprogramming.com/tutorial/c-tutorial.html](https://www.cprogramming.com/tutorial/c-tutorial.html), and an hour or two later, I had learned the basics of my first programming language.

I didn't really care that much about computers at the time, though. Over the years, I became a power user of Windows, iOS, and macOS, but I was way more into sports, particularly baseball. After a while, though, I became the fat kid that all the pitchers liked to hit, and when the pitchers started learning to throw 80 MPH fastballs in early high school, I decided I needed a new hobby. That's when I started getting serious about understanding code and becoming a developer.

I bounced around free tutorial after tutorial online, and I ended up with a solid understanding of how to make a static website. I saw a few ads between YouTube videos for a more cohesive online coding school called Treehouse, and they were running a promotion at the time where if you bought one of their pro subscriptions, they'd give one for a year for free to a public high school student. I thought to myself, "Hey, I'm a public high school student. I wonder how I can get on the receiving end of that?", and so after some googling, I found their CEO's email address, and asked him. He got me set up with that, and I've been hooked ever since. I taught myself everything from the web front-end to scripting languages like Python to mobile development. Nowadays I'm a moderator on their community forums, supporting myself as a freelance iOS/web developer.

In high school, I was also really into the technical clubs I had available to me. I went for the majority of my Junior year to a high school in suburban Philadelphia, where I joined the robotics club, which got pretty much all my attention and passion while I was there. There was also a computer science club there, too, which was part of the Hack Club family of high school coding clubs. I loved that club, too. It was a great time to stop worrying about the stresses of they day/week before, and just sit back and work and learn about code with other people who're into it. I enjoyed it so much that when I went back to my former high school in suburban Nashville for my Senior year, I started another Hack Club there, too. Since then, I've pretty well known what my life's passion is, and now I'm trying to use it to start a career.

Treehouse: [https://teamtreehouse.com](https://teamtreehouse.com) Hack Club: [https://hackclub.com](https://hackclub.com) My website: [https://hulet.tech](https://hulet.tech)

<comment><USER34> Oh boy, treehouse... I did most of my girlfriend's treehouse training for her new job, the parts that weren't on google word-for-word. She's something of a legend at her company for finishing those CSS snd JavaScript modules so fast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Games

<comment><USER34> It's the gateway drug. Gaming (at least used to) gets you into save-file editing, then into modding, then into programming.

Not to mention all the general IT fiddle-frigging that was involved in making games run, or fixing your PC after something went disastrously wrong with that, and you needed to get it back in a working state before the parents noticed that you'd broken the computer...

<comment><USER35> Yes, all of that, but particulairly because I want(ed) to make my own game(s). I actually took a detour via 3D modelling (Blender) for gaming and then becoming interested in writing my own Python scripts, so I learned how to code and forgot all about my original aspirations with Blender.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> <script>alert(1);</script></comment>


Ask HN: How are you preparing yourself for a recession? - <AUTHOR> We know the recession is going to happen sooner or later. Are you concerned about this effecting your profession. How are you preparing yourself personally, professionally and financially. <comment><USER3> I know this is a non-answer, but if you have healthy financial habits, you won't need specific preparation for a recession.

I believe you can't time the market so 'preparing for a recession' is a moot point. Instead set financial goals that align with your risk tolerance and that make you comfortable.

That being said, the advice that I would give is just standard stuff. I think some sources do a much better job at explaining those so I'll let others answer. Big strokes is just the usual stuff: prepare a emergency fund, contribute up to your employer match (or more), set up a budget, etc.

One important point is, if you invest in the market, just keep investing, no matter what others do.

<comment><USER4> I was just going to say "I'm just getting off my ass and tightening up my financial habits".

For those of you like me, who like spreadsheets but don't know exactly where to start, I can recommend Tiller Money: [https://tillerhq.com](https://tillerhq.com). Sometimes the best place to start is just "knowing where you stand". But there's lots of great tools for personal finance. Pick one and hop to it.

But there's no secret magic there, and I'm not even sure I'm doing anything different now that I shouldn't have already been doing 2 years ago. I may not have spent so much money... but that's a _me_ problem not the "result of a recession" problem.

<comment><USER5> > I can recommend Tiller Money: [https://tillerhq.com](https://tillerhq.com)

Looks interesting. Appears to be sign in with Google only, which is a shame.

<comment><USER6> Moneydance is another paid option (with free trial) - pay once, and you own the software. No cloud connectivity other than uploading file to Dropbox (Optional) for anyone who respects the privacy of their financial data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I always try to have at least a year's worth of living expenses in my emergency fund. And that's in cash not in stocks or index funds - a lot of people on places like reddit criticize this ("You're missing out on much higher returns you'd get if you had it in the market!") but on days (weeks) like this I'm glad it's in cash.

Beyond that, I tend to live by this maxim: "When times are good prepare for them to be bad. When times are bad prepare for them to be good."

So the question to ask soon is how will you prepare for the post-recession recovery? Asking this will keep you from despairing. Yes, this recession could last a while and be quite nasty, but it won't last forever.

<comment><USER8> Why not government bonds? Unless your country's government crashes, you're guaranteed to have your money back.

<comment><USER9> > Unless your country's government crashes

To be perfectly honest, I think there's a high enough chance that this will happen (although still a low chance) that I have to take it into account in my emergency plans.

<comment><USER8> If your country collapses to the point where it can't return your bonds, your money won't be worth anything anyway :p

<comment><USER10> Exactly. That's the problem BitCoin solves.

<comment><USER8> Except bitcoin is speculation, not investing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> We have been preparing my professional services company for recession for the last year or two. Key steps

1) carry no "real" debt, build cash reserves.

2) focus on profitability over growth. Typically driving growth means hiring sales/marketing in advance of the growth and spending profit to do it. Adding new services staff requires carrying about 90 days of the employee costs due to non billing the first month, and the 60-90 days until we receive cash from their first billings. Focusing on profit means raising prices, shedding overhead, getting long term contracts, driving efficiencies.

3) Focus on recession resistant industries.

4) Focus on acquiring more local businesses to reduce travel overhead required to clients.

5) no long term purchasing contracts

6) maximize credit line. Renew in advance of recession. During recessions banks kill lines of credit. As we start to get into a recession we will max out our line and then move the cash to another bank.

Personally

1) Shed leveraged real estate assets, they are very hard to liquidate during a recession

2) Reduce debt usage

3) increase lines of credit

4) build 2 years of cash reserves (min of 6 months during normal times). Lots of money is made during recessions, you need ready cash to take advantage.

5) reduce spending now

<comment><USER12> >"Focus on recession resistant industries."

How have you approached identifying these?

<comment><USER13> Think about the point of market entry for a given product or service.

Electricity? Pretty recession proof most likely.

Toilet paper and nappies? Going to need those any time regardless of what's going on in the economy.

Going to the movies? Can always say no and entertain yourself otherwise.

Got into a car accident and need repairs? Going to happen regardless of whether it's a recession or not. I might only choose to do the minimum and not splurge but I'm still going to have to spend the money.

Etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I fully expect a recession (and a pretty severe one), but I'm not doing anything special to prepare for it. The financial and professional habits I already have are what I would do in preparation anyway. Primarily, this boils down to being (largely) debt-free, having a large cash reserve, and ensuring that my skillset is up-to-date so that I can get work or start a business in almost any climate.

<comment><USER14> How big of a cash reserve do you recommend?

<comment><USER15> The cash reserve should depend on your particular situation. True cash (e-fund) should probably be 3-6 months of your expenses (that is, you should be able to live on it, not party on it, but live on it). More if you're in an expensive area with a home you can't easily get rid of, or think you'll have difficulty getting a new job or income source.

I have a very stable job, I have about 3 months reserve. I want more, but that's what I feel I need. It's more to cover things like emergency expenses for medical or other causes than job loss. Other money is invested and that's what I would touch if I ever needed to, but hope not to.

I have a friend who spent years in the video game industry, he has generally kept close to a year in reserve. He got laid off _a lot_ over the years as game projects wound down and they didn't need the staff. That gave him the ability to continue living without any real fear or discomfort.

If you're particularly risk averse but in a stable spot, you may want to push towards that higher number too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm a little bit concerned, but just a little bit. I'm primarily a software engineer, but in the past I've worked other white collar jobs and also blue collar odd jobs (sushi-man, deli-man, laundry, dry cleaning) and I'm used to hard labor, waking up early, etc. I think I'm pretty adaptable.

Financially, I don't have that much savings because I use the money to help family members. But again, I'm not concerned about myself. I'm more concerned about them.

<comment><USER17> same boat. I've made it through a lot of tough events in my life and have worked at a bunch of different jobs...never had much of savings due to life events anyway. Also have never really expected to retire so having my minuscule 401k lose money isn't really hurting me.

<comment> non-entity I just have absolutely atrocious financial habits, so losing job atm would probably be game over for me. I'm not overly worried about it, as I dont really see that happening, and if it does, there isnt much I can do but roll with it

<comment><USER9> Recession or not, you should probably begin doing the needful to solidify your financial situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm thinking of moving a couple silly side projects off EC2 to a spare home server to save $10/mo

Eating out less, cooking at home with family instead

Sitting on almost a year's salary in cash

pay off major debt, but I finished that a couple years back. If you have a mortgage, it's about to be a great time to refinance the way bond yields are looking.

The big one though, trying to work up the resolve to put to bed either my netflix subscription or my hulu subscription. Probably hulu. Haven't pulled the trigger yet.

<comment><USER19> The cultural and intellectual purchases are for me, the point of existence. So while tightening up the necessary and utilitarian aspects of life, I think we should not put ourselves under austerity.

For instance, skipping three restaurant meals can be exchanged for an amazing home cooked meal, with top of the line ingredients and drinks, while being less than the cost of a single restaurant meal. Have a friend over as well, we don't have to cut off access to whole world.

Don't trade the restaurant meal and hulu for a package of top ramen and 4chan. No one benefits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It will hit hard and mostly people struggling already from the 2008 crisis, which is only going to further social unrest and claims to fight inequalities, rightly so. As for the people following this website, it should strengthen their resolutions to innovate at local level, possibly implementing solutions already validated in comparable environments and markets (e.g. here in Italy, more smart working like in the Northern Europe and more cultural business like in the UK).

<comment><USER21> It's funny - not in the "haha" way.

I don't want others to suffer; who really does? But no one willfully gives up power.

We're so very close to being technically capable in terms of eliminating poverty or feeding all people. Hopefully, the upcoming recession will push over the edge towards total solidarity.

<comment><USER22> > But no one willfully gives up power.

And they don't want to work hard to pay for others that don't work, either. If _feeding_ the people is the goal, we can already do that. Trivially in first world countries, but also world wide. It's getting everybody a high living standard that's expensive and hard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm in the camp of more preparedness is better, and actions need to be taken. For me it's about studying recession histories, stay calm, keep investing.

Sharing what I posted in another thread: my look into the 2008 Great Recession was very helpful with my pattern matching. 98 out of 100 stocks lost money during that recession, but most of them did super well during the longest recovery period in U.S. history. Even AIG made people a bunch of money.

Here's the full dataset of 1363 mid cap + stocks that traded during the 2008 recession, and their performances: [https://shan.io/writing/learnings-from- the-2008-great-recess...](https://shan.io/writing/learnings-from- the-2008-great-recession/)

</comment><comment><USER24> Stability is good. Think twice about joining the next hot startup. If VC freezes up startups will run out of money quickly. Don't take on debt.

I haven't experienced it myself but from what I have observed it's a bad time to graduate from school once a recession hits. You won't find a decent job and when things get better companies will hire shiny new grads and the grads from the years before will be left behind.

</comment><comment><USER25> Not really. I have a good emergency fund - something every good financial guru has been preaching since before I was born. Beyond that, so long as I have my job I'll keep living. If I lose my job - it won't be the first time - I'll just cut my expenses and in the worst case I can flip burgers for something to live on until this blows over.

</comment><comment><USER26> I am prepared by keeping 20 grand cash on hand.

I'm a foreigner on a work permit. I'll be fine _financially_ in a recession but if I get laid off suddenly my legal residency is threatened, and I need to have an emergency fund to deal with any fallout from that

</comment><comment><USER27> We bought a ridiculously cheap place in the countryside with over 2 hectares (5 US non-SI units) of land in my significant other's native country. Holiday house, place to meet friends _and_ dirt cheap insurance against many pitch black swans.

<comment><USER28> just curious, which country?

<comment><USER19> Moldova

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Try to stay away from news and news aggregators :(

<comment><USER30> This is very very important.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Was working professionally through the last one and I'd say:

a) don't retire

b) if big corps are your thing, B2B big corps fare way better than consumer oriented ones so if you need to decide between two job offers, pick the one with the least chance of layoffs. There are no guarantees.

c) have cash standby. You should have this regardless of the state of the market. If you need cash and a recession is coming, it becomes a self- fulfilling prophecy. I learned to have at least one year of expenses in my checking account after witnessing the layoffs in 2008-2009 and then the trigger happy RIFs which followed well through the 2010's.

d) learn or be willing to learn or pivot your skills

<comment><USER32> I wonder if there's a good way to distinguish different B2B businesses that are more or less effected.

For instance, my dad used to be a mechanical engineer designing large construction equipment. Maybe 10% of equipment was replaced a year, so if there was a demand for 10% more equipment one year then they'd have 2x sales. But if there was a 10% decline in demand, then they'd have 0 sales, the broken equipment was acceptable attrition.

So... that industry really sucked. But if the businesses have to pay for your services just to keep running, then it won't be too bad. So server sales might go up and down a lot, but AWS demand will be much smoother.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> As long as law and order doesn't dissolve I won't change anything. If anything I would have more dynamic behavior in a bull market. I may be delaying a job switch soon because my current employment is in a stable sector.

</comment><comment><USER34> I've been preparing for it since 2008 when my business was effectively killed. Anyone that felt 2008 has been expecting this. I saved, I split my eggs into many baskets, I made a spreadsheet.

<comment><USER30> Mind sharing which baskets or type of baskets?

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> It's going to affect all professions somewhat.

Personally, a long time ago I realized that stuff happens, and you have to both deal with an unpredictable world and change. You can't really prepare except in general terms, so you mostly make the best of the situation you're in. Keep an eye on where you want to go with your life, and do your best to make it happen, but accept that it may not and there may not be anything you can do about that.

Professionally, my skills will be in demand one way or another no matter what happens. Whether I'm cheaper to hire than the competition will depend on what I'm willing to do to earn a paycheck at various levels. I've always wanted to optimize that so I can spend more time living and less working, so I'm planning to cut my costs long term and live cheaper if I can.

Financially... there's not much I can start doing now that will insulate me against a recession other than the above. I don't have long term investments except in myself and my skills, and I don't expect to ever be able to retire. I will probably change careers at some point, however. In a recession economy I will still be able to find a job, just maybe not at the pay level I'd like or in an area I want to work in, but I'll survive.

If your hope is that you can prepare and thus insulate yourself from the effects of a bad economy... it's only partly true.

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm going to try and remove any kind of political talk from this as I can.

To be honest, with Brexit looming and uncertainty around a possible election, I've spent the last year preparing myself for a recession. Over the last few years I've noticed a few businesses in Bristol contract their operations back to the capital, and salaries for software engineers overall have dropped, so I've largely been preparing for what I thought was the worst-case scenario:

1\. A bad Brexit, lots of uncertainty, job losses, etc.

2\. Increase in price of essential goods. We have a cupboard full of long-life essentials to last a few weeks, so we definitely won't starve. We're lucky enough to have enough room to store things in bulk, so we don't need to panic buy - and quite frankly I don't see a point in buying a ton of stuff I might not need when there are loads of people that will definitely need it.

3\. A quick access fund with enough money to last me and my wife a few months, if needed.

4\. In the long-term, increasing my skills in case I need to find a new job in short notice.

Many of these steps will help for Coronavirus, but a concern of ours is what our "worst-case scenario" looks like with a Pandemic AND Brexit.

</comment><comment><USER13> Well... Preparing for the recession is something you start doing 10 years before the recession, not 10 weeks before the recession.

It's just good habits constantly.

</comment><comment><USER37> After my last startup failed 5 years ago, I planned to buy my first house somewhere in 2021, hoping that by then some crisis would happen to lower house prices and to give me some time to pile up a bit less than 400k$. I don't want to spend more than that on a house even if I had more money, I don't like mortgages and I had no idea in which country I wanted to live, so renting was a convenient option. I had to decide whether to put it in indexes or to save cash in tax free saving accounts. I went with the saving accounts so I'm sitting on cash.

I often half regretted not going with indexes but having 5 years of time before settling down wasn't enough time to risk it.

If I lose my job I'll start eating into my savings and get a smaller house / delay the stable house plan. The good side of being laid off, would be spending more time with my sons.

</comment><comment><USER38> Snapping up gold in what I see as the inevitable return of inflation.

The US is aggressively deficit spending in the boom times and in order to keep up this unsustainable spending in the bust times, the gov't will have no choice but to juice inflation.

<comment><USER39> I agree, there is really no palatable option than for the government than to run inflation high, much higher than the 2% target. The next downturn will see some extraordinary measures, maybe it's already starting with the 10-year treasury at .5%.

Really the only other option is a deflationary bust and nobody's political career will survive that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I believe that there won't be a real recession until globalization and especially the position between China and the West is settled. No side will be willing to slow down. As a consequence, there will be full demand for whoever is willing to get something done.

However, there will be countries that will lose contact to the state of art in some areas. As a consequence, I am sorting my belongings to be able to move freely should that happen to my niche.

In the still not so unlikely event of a recession, I hope that I can use that opportunity to start something new when rent and wages are cheap and governments try to stimulate the market.

</comment><comment><USER41> There will always be jobs. Just less unnecessary ones, more jobs revolving around saving money. Some people are getting rich off a recession, so people will still spend on luxury jets and wagyu steak.

Advertising will still be hot - companies will need money, so FB, Google will still do well. Anything that saves money will do well. Anything that raises efficiency and doing more with less manpower will do well.

My wife sells cheap lasagna and her business is absolutely booming now, especially since things like KFC has become a luxury.

It's also a good time to hold on to cash, gold, and possibly crypto if you expect deflation.

</comment><comment><USER42> For a couple years now I've kept the vast majority of my savings in investments (Betterment) to keep them from depreciating, and because I can withdraw them in an emergency given 3 days' notice.

Obviously we're entering a season where that's to be avoided. So I'll probably start redirecting my surplus income to my regular savings account for a while just to give myself an extra buffer. Not _withdrawing_ from the market, mind you, just taking a break from depositing into it.

</comment><comment><USER43> Save extra money - my experience from the dot com crash and financial crash is that you should assume you are going to need 6 months of runway and so build up an extra rainy day fund that you will have when it hits.

For me, this means deferring big purchases etc. until this is built up again.

Note, this is in addition to your retirement, which you DO NOT WANT TO SPEND during the recession, since the stock market will have crashed then and you will be spending premium dollars there that you want invested for the recovery.

</comment><comment><USER44> My dad is taking all the low interest business/housing loans before some of the banks grinds to the ground.

Buying poor shares expected to bounce back. That's about it, I guess.

</comment><comment><USER45> By trying to find a job in tech again so I can start saving up an emergency fund. Otherwise I'll have to move to a lower COL region.

</comment><comment><USER46> Keeping my network strong, keeping my skills in tune with the local market, and keeping my fixed expenses low.

Companies were still hiring contractors during the last recession, but they could be more picky and you had to be able to hit the ground running.

As far as benefits, my wife works for the state education department doing an "essential service". We can switch to her insurance if necessary.

</comment><comment><USER47> I'd love to say I'm setting aside cash to buy real-estate, tangible goods, and promising stocks.

But I'm not. I'm at the tail end of my school 'career' and I'm praying I graduate. I'm continually coming to terms with the fact that I'm not nearly as smart as some of the kids I'm in classes with. Maybe it has to do with habits?

<comment><USER48> i was nowhere near the smartest kid in my school or my uni class but Im more successful than them by miles. Don't let it discourage you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Maybe I am the dumbest. The official world gouvernance plan for this time is/was(?) to freeze paying dividends; debt-repayment, interest, ...

To accomplish the commanded view, the companys will stop given quarterly reports to the share market and start to give half-yearly reports... yearly... telling us: "We do this for your customer satisfaction" ?!

</comment><comment><USER50> What recession? A 8% loss in DJIA is not a recession. 1987 had bigger losses and no recession for example. 2012 had similary terrible oil prices and losses. Why is everyone so eager to jump on the panic train. Both on corona,this,Iran crisis,etc... The panic is more dangerous than the event,let us try to be level headed without being naive.

<comment><USER51> Preparation != Panic

<comment><USER50> Buying toilet paper to last a few weeks is preparing,a few months is panic

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> \- Bought condo outside of USA for cash with renter already in place - bringing ~$1k/mo

\- Sold vested Co shares - not at the top of the market but 25% ago - <USER2> crash - and bought place in NV with much lower cost of living - moving out of CA soon.

\- Some cash saved that with frugal living could keep us going for a year or so with no issues.

</comment><comment><USER53> Nothing new or different. Keep a 6-month cash reserve, save for retirement, live within our means, and hope for the best. We have plenty of monthly expenses we can cut if needed, but won't until forced to do so. Beyond that, anything else feels like panicking.

</comment><comment><USER54> I have 2 years of living expenses in cash. Hoping for a nice vacation from the industry...

</comment><comment><USER55> No debt, enough savings, a house with a lot of land out in the boonies, a willingness to do any job. The 2008 recession did affect me, but I managed. Will manage this time, too. As long as you can learn and adapt, nothing's a problem.

</comment><comment><USER56> 2000 puts on SPY @210, 5/10.

Everything in cash/treasuries before the market crumbled.

This was eminently predictable from a payoff perspective. The market lagged the info coming out of China for a long time.

</comment><comment><USER57> Plant a vegtable garden! Learn to make your own kombucha, just kidding but learn to grow onions. People will kill each other over neccessaties like onions, matches and deoderant.

</comment><comment><USER58> Trading options that reflect market pullback and volatility. VIX being one method in short term. Trading put vertical options on SPY as another.

</comment><comment><USER59> I have studied asset allocation (per Bogleheads.org) and understand my comfort zone.

Recessions are inevitable. I hope I'm ready, I feel like I am.

</comment><comment><USER60> I work for a hedge fund that inverses the market. I'm mostly buying properties offshore, and trying not to get divorced.

<comment><USER61> Getting divorced during a recession is the worst. The recession takes half your money, your spouse takes half of what's left, and the lawyers take half of what's left of what's left. So you end up with about 12.5% of what you started with.

<comment><USER60> Why is a market crash worse than a divorce? You lose half your stuff and your wife is still there!

(jk tho, everything is good at home and I'm #teamvirus.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Savings

Financial prudence

A good stock of bare essentials

Ensure my car and house is well maintained (no costly surprises)

Make sure I am demonstrating and showing value in my place of work.

</comment><comment><USER63> It's happening now. Today is "black monday".

I've got broad market puts (SPY) as well as puts on Square which are literally printing me money right now. If puts are consistently making money, than you're likely to be laid off in the next few months. I consider market shorts to be a form of insurance for this reason. If I lose my investment, than it means I keep my job. If my investment moons, than I'm about to lose my job.

<comment><USER64> Why Square?

<comment><USER63> Only company that was up on the first day of market panic so the puts were super cheap.

Ended up printing me money today though :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> I went through a few scenarios with a developer lens here: [https://www.swyx.io/writing/coronavirus- recession/](https://www.swyx.io/writing/coronavirus-recession/)

TLDR:

\- If you make buying decisions (e.g. running a company or a department): think about how you can __turn fixed cost into variable cost __. If you were kinda half remote anyway, maybe go full remote or swap the office for a coworking space subscription. Hire contractors instead of full-time. __Buy SaaS services instead of build internally. __Focus on conversion and retention rather than inorganic user acquisition. \- If you are a freelancer or agency: Think ahead to how your clients could be affected - you may need to aggressively grow your funnel while also __planning for more downtime __between work. \- If you are an employee: You can 't do much about your options or 401k. But recognize that you are doubly long the economy in terms of both your stock compensation and your job (and real estate in affected states). \- If you work at a startup that has a cash burn necessitating future fundraising, be aware that this can become very very relevant to you __if the funds don 't materialize __, through no fault of the founders. Think through second order effects - the funds may not materialize not just because VCs are less willing to part with cash, but also because the startup itself may fail to meet targets because of the broader economic environment.

</comment><comment><USER66> I'm much more worried about the virus than a recession. The latter... is going to suck, for a lot of people, but with the right policies in place, we can get through it. The virus is simply going to kill a lot of people if it's not checked.

<comment><USER67> Not trying to be cold-hearted about it, but if the virus ultimately kills off a lot of sick/edlerly people, wouldn't the aftermath of that be a boon for the economy?

<comment><USER66> > boon for the economy

Maybe, but at best this means... buying a few more things, taking a few more trips.

Whereas

> elderly people,

Is my mom and dad.

<comment><USER67> > Maybe, but at best this means... buying a few more things, taking a few more > trips.

I can think of some better effects than that. How about a bunch of California homes coming on the market and collecting property taxes proportional to their current value for the first time in decades?

<comment><USER68> IIRC, it is common for houses to be inherited after the owner's death, and the tax basis is inherited with the house.

As such (at least in my area on the Central Coast), many of these houses just become (high) market rate rentals with no change in tax status.

I could be wrong about this, but I know some people who own some properties in the area who tell me that's the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Putting my USD in an 2.63% Indian FCNR(B) account

</comment><comment><USER70> make sure you're someplace with a few quarters of runway and make yourself too valuable to lay off

</comment><comment><USER71> just buy so much dip as you can

</comment><comment><USER72> If you know that you have to prepare for the incoming recession it's probably too late to do it.

<comment><USER73> It depends on how far out you're looking. If you started preparing when the yield curve inverted over a year ago[0], you've had plenty of time to prepare.

[0] [https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-12-03/u-s- yi...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-12-03/u-s-yield-curve- just-inverted-that-s-huge)

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> My recession started around this time last year due to some health issues I wasn't aware of, causing the most severe burnout I've ever had, which led to a falling out with my job. So take what I'm saying with a grain of salt:

* Don't count on contracting or remote work as a fallback. I've been trying my luck at it without success. The last time I did it was 5 years ago but it's totally saturated now, with most of the clients going through upwork.com and freelancer.com with 10-50 applications per gig. Go see for yourself under common searches like PHP or React.

* The jobs really will all dry up. Go on something like indeed.com right now and see how many there are. Now imagine the same scenario after everyone has cut their workforce by 10-50% like after the dot bomb in 2000 or the housing bubble popping in 2008. Your selection may change from software developer to driving a delivery truck so it's good to have something you can fall back on. In my case it's moving furniture, but, at 42 I'm getting too old to do it. There will probably always be work in warehouses and restaurants though, like in the old ITT tech commercial.

* Assume that any possessions other than big ticket items like a home or car are only worth 10% of their value. You can get 25% at a pawn shop generally, but not after a recession when everything gets dumped on the market in triplicate. So all of the consumer electronics in your home are probably worth less than $1000 and won't sustain you for long even if you sell all of them.

* Find your poorest friends or relatives right now and ask them how they get by. This is a good time to learn about donating plasma, collecting unemployment insurance, signing up for food stamps, etc. You'll be able to make about $300-600 per month through these sorts of tools, but it will take all of your time. The US no longer has an operational social safety net (compared to healthy economies in, say, Europe) so the psychological toll of poverty has a way of locking people into its cycle by paying just barely enough to keep you in a state of slow decline. Best to avoid that by arming yourself with knowledge and knowing your rights.

* Consider getting involved in politics. The problems looming in this next recession are severe and exacerbated by the fact that no real legislation happened to correct the original causes of the 2008 great recession. Expect there to be no cash or credit available. Millions of people will be calling for reforms and there could be ways to help in causes like a new version of Occupy Wall Street. Assume that politicians are asleep at the wheel on this so any help from them will either not come or be too little too late. We'll have to pick ourselves up by our bootstraps again.

This will be the third severe recession I've gone through since I graduated from college in 1999. Unfortunately my brain has adapted for survival instead of contributing to society at the level I had hoped for. I'm planning on the next recession lasting at least 3 years, starting around the time of the election. If it starts by summer, then Trump will almost certainly lose, so in the meantime we can count on an influx of capital from the private sector to keep us afloat. But next winter could be quite grim. Try to have enough money on hand to make rent until spring, roughly $3-6,000 for the average American. Note that the bottom half of the country has no savings, so there's nothing they can really do to hedge against what's coming.

</comment><comment><USER75> Anyone think the housing market will also crash at the next recession?

</comment><comment><USER76> I'm learning Rust. It helps to have a recession-proof skill. And there's a lot of software that will be re-written in Rust over the next decade to make the world safer in general.

<comment><USER77> If you need a recession-proof skill, I believe you should be learning Python or Java.

<comment><USER78> catching pythons and making cups of java</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are there any free APIs that do speech transcription? - <AUTHOR>

 Like how Google Voice and Twilio offers Speech->Text on their services.
I have yet to find a API that does this. Is there a reason this is not available yet? Cost issues?
I suppose piggybacking of Twilio's API is the closest I found but it looks that feature cost $.05/min. :\ <comment><AUTHOR> So I continued my search and veered into iOS integrations which I should have mentioned was my initial intention.

This may interest some,

<http://www.politepix.com/openears/> (free + does not need network) <http://cmusphinx.sourceforge.net/>

I think that no-network piece is vital since alot of the solutions require a ping to the server because of sheer vocabulary limitation. Hope that helps!

</comment><comment><USER2> I found this on Quora, looks like it's up your alley, and there is a free trial: <http://koemei.com/pricing>

Also, this gentleman talks about accessing the undocumented Google Speech API: [http://mikepultz.com/2011/03/accessing-google-speech-api- chr...](http://mikepultz.com/2011/03/accessing-google-speech-api-chrome-11/)

<comment><USER3> You can use the speech API of google but if you plan to build an app/product on it you'll be detected/blocked quickly

<comment><USER4> Have you tried this?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Speech->Text conversion is really harder than simple Voice Recognition. There are not a lot of companies doing this right now the most famous being Nuance and Google of course. Nuance has been acquiring a lot of companies the last three years that were doing a lot of improvements to the technologies (SVOX, VLingo, etc.) and powers Siri technology.</comment>


Code Fellows Alumni Stats - <AUTHOR> http://www.codefellows.org/alumni-stats

<comment><USER2> What really bothers me about coding schools is that their application process pretty much sets them up for success.

They aggressively filter applicants (on prior work experience, passion, etc.) to only keep the ones most likely succeed and make their program look good (not unlike most private high schools, and a lot of private universities). And a lot of them charge crazy tuition (not far from the most expensive US universities if you bring it to a cost per week of instruction), further narrowing the funnel.

There's not a lot of merit in having a very high success rate if your students were going to succeed anyway. That's where the real educational challenges lie, and why public universities or non-profits who aim to reach precisely the people who couldn't get in those bootcamps have much lower success rates.

At my current workplace, we just hired a developer who came from a dev bootcamp. She's fantastic- but she also has an undergraduate degree in math, she wrote some C++ out of college, and has an MBA as well as pretty impressive work experience. Of course she was very likely to do well in a cookie-cutter Ruby course!

Try teaching former convicts, unemployed people, veterans, teenagers from poor neighborhoods, etc. But, it's much harder work, less glamorous, and surely less profitable (I've taught CS/programming in public universities and to disadvantaged teenagers).

<comment><USER3> It's not only the application process. Some of these programs kick out some successful applicants in the first few weeks, further reducing the field from which they pluck these success figures.

To be fair, Code Fellow seems to be upfront about this, since only 88% of successful applicants actually graduate.

Edit: More related to your point above, they are also up front about previous degrees held. 82% of their students had degrees before entering their program.

<comment><USER4> Any stories on this / links?

 _Some of these programs kick out some successful applicants in the first few weeks, further reducing the field from which they pluck these success figures._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >Our alumni tell us that learning how to code professionally is like learning a super power

I feel like the real super power is the ability to learn effectively. Not just how to write code, but how to do _anything_. I get the feeling that a lot of people who have had just the right combination of upbringing + opportunities take this ability for granted. They do it very naturally.

Coding is only as powerful as your ability to think. I don't care how many monkeys are coding in PHP you're never going to get Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER6> Isn't this pretty much just an advertisement? How is this different from the usual numbers that lots of schools publish to attract new students?

</comment><comment><USER7> Anyone have thoughts on why nearly 14% of their students already studied CS? Maybe they reflect people who studied CS but did not graduate?

<comment><AUTHOR> We've had folks fresh out of CS degrees but didn't feel that they had software development skills, team skills, interview skills, negotiation skills, etc. Also we've had quite a few that studied CS, didn't use it for a long time or got stuck in a particular stack and used the intensive 8 week course as a way to quickly pick up and put the new skills to work. Make sense?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> A $75.6k average salary (with 70% of graduates making <$80k) seems low for a development position in Seattle.

<comment><USER9> Probably the salary they deserve I'd guess. I worked at a company that hired someone from a similar school in NYC. They ended up letting her go after a month or two. These schools are a scam for the people that think they'll gain a career from them as well as the companies that think they'll get a competent dev.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> When is this fad going to die out? You can't produce a competent web developer in 8 weeks. Maybe this would be useful to an experienced dev who is looking to pick up some web technologies in a structured atmosphere but there are so many resources available online, why bother?

<comment><USER8> The real interesting statistic would be to illustrate the correlation between post-secondary study and salary. (The post had the distribution of both, but no relationship)

It's entirely possible that the higher salaries are caused by the prior education and not the boot camp.

<comment><USER10> exactly my thoughts</comment></comment></comment>


The heritability of self-control: A meta-analysis - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763418307905 <comment><USER2> I think it's worth pointing out that "heritability" means something very unintuitive in the literature. It measure the fraction of the _variability_ that can be attributed to genetic variation, as opposed to environmental factors.

This does not mean what people think it means. In particular, the changes in environment can drastically affect the heritability of a trait.

An example: suppose you measure how fast people can run. If you take people and forbid them from training (say, lock them in a room), the variability will be fully heritable, since no one is training and the environment is exactly the same. The difference will be whatever the genes say it is. Conversely, if you make some of them train and other not, the variability will include environmental components, namely, who trains.

This has obvious implications for how to interpret this and similar results, depending on whether you find high heritability a good thing or a bad thing.

<comment><USER3> No, the studies are very clear, we take the variance of nature and variance of nurture at a population level and see how much a standard deviation effects some observable trait. Of course if you look at extreme cases of nature or nurture like being locked up your entire life or being born with a birth defect then that part will dominate, but we can still look at the overall population distribution and say something relevant about heritability since most people have pretty normal genes and environments.

<comment><USER4> Heritability (i.e. narrow-sense heritability as typically used in most research articles) is not so clear-cut as to be split between nature and nurture. Even the GP is slightly incorrect when saying:

> ...as opposed to environmental factors

because for heritability, the distinction is between the variance explained by additive genetic effects versus the total variance of the trait of interest. There are other sources of phenotypic variance like epigenetics, non-additive genetic effects, or complex interactions that fall outside the scope of heritability.

<comment><USER3> We have 3 sources of difference, genetic heritability, home environment and "others". The things you talk about would go under "others", and they aren't very interesting since we have basically no influence over them, as everything we can influence via nurture goes under home environment and nature via genetic heritage. So for example, of we compare growing up in a rich or a poor household (this includes going to a better school, better neighborhood, better food etc), most of these studies shows that it has almost no effect at all.

<comment><USER5> You influence "others" by putting your kids in a good school.

It's one of the main drivers of varying housing costs in the US.

<comment><USER3> Your parents determines your school, so the quality of your school can't be in "others". The only way school could be in "others" in these studies is if parents often put one twin in a good school and the other twin in a bad school, but I strongly believe that isn't the case.

<comment><USER5> In your own words:

> _We have 3 sources of difference, genetic heritability, home environment and > "others"_

Clearly, school is not home environment.

<comment><USER3> School is determines by your home environment, hence it is a part of the home environment bucket. "other" is not: "everything except home environment and genes", it is: "everything not determined by the home environment or genes".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This line of research has interesting implications for moral philosophy.

If the degree to which we are able to resist our impulses is partly determined by our genetics, does that affect our level of moral responsibility for our impulse-driven actions?

Or does it merely mean that people who are more "at risk" of having poor impulse control because of their genetics have a moral obligation to recognize that fact and take measures to combat the deficiency?

For instance, if I know that I have relatively poor impulse control, should I ask my spouse to handle our finances so I don't blow all of our money? And if I fail to do so, is that the moral failing I'm responsible for, rather than the moral failing related to making impulsive purchases?

<comment><USER7> One thing to consider is the Pygmalion effect[0]: If you and the people around you believe you inherently lack the moral fortitude to resist those impulses, you are much more likely to make irresponsible choices. Your weakness becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Then there is the risk of recreating castes. It is one thing if you abdicate the right and responsibility to control your finances, but what if that became institutionalized? What if only people who pass certain genetic tests have full citizenship rights? Maybe future governments will legalize gambling and recreational drugs, but only for those individuals that don't have a genetic predisposition to addiction.

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

<comment><USER8> You could make castes based on measured behavior, not genetic predisposition which is obviously unreliable.

We do this in school by separating kids into different classes according to our guess of their ability. Not very reliable, but it can be better overall than treating everyone equally. We also do genetic "castes" with sports separating males and females. Again, some people end up on the wrong side of the fence but overall it seems to help more than it harms.

I kind of think we should do this in wider society too. As it is, naturally low intelligence or low impulse control people are just thrown in the deep end and expected to compete with people who are biologically superior. They can't win, so all kinds of negative social effects compound, like crime, poor health, poor mental health, and even lower economic success.

<comment><USER9> > _We do this in school by separating kids into different classes according to > our guess of their ability. Not very reliable, but it can be better overall > than treating everyone equally._

Measured outcomes are generally worse overall. This system is popular with wealthy/high-status parents though.

The way to get better outcomes (in school and society) is to make sure that everyone has enough individual attention and support, not to sort and label everyone.

People who are impulsive or who integrate knowledge in a less regular way or ... are not "biologically inferior"; those differences are a complex trade- off, and our society needs a wide variety of personalities and thinking styles to function.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The `Three Laws of Behavior Genetics` need to be better known:

1\. All human behavioral traits are heritable.

2\. The effect of being raised in the same family is smaller than the effect of genes.

3\. A substantial portion of the variation in complex human behavioral traits is not accounted for by the effects of genes or families.

[http://humancond.org/papers/turkheimer00_three_laws_behavior...](http://humancond.org/papers/turkheimer00_three_laws_behavior_genetics)

<comment><USER10> _3\. A substantial portion of the variation in complex human behavioral traits is not accounted for by the effects of genes or families._

This is the one that I can't understand how do they know. Consider the case in which some behaviour is the result of a combination of genes. One of them is on in 95% of individuals and off in 5%. When one of them is on, the fen. is on. It's still genetics but, unless you are certain of every gene that takes part in the combination, how will you know?

Actually, when they say that behavioral traits are heritable, are they saying that these genes are identified or is it just statistics?

<comment><USER11> >Actually, when they say that behavioral traits are heritable, are they saying that these genes are identified or is it just statistics?

Typically it's just statistics (usually based on twin studies). In the last few years we have started doing large Genome-Wide Association Studies (with sample sizes of over a million in some cases) which are a first step toward identifying the relevant genes.

But there are still many limitations: GWAS typically use SNP arrays which only measure specific points in the genome instead of sequencing the whole thing (because it's much cheaper). The SNPs identified may not be causal themselves but simply correlated with the causal gene.

<comment><USER12> Just a few weeks ago someone posted the following study on hacker news:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3183507/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3183507/)

Here the authors claim that they were able to identify a particular gene that is likely to predispose an individual to extreme impulsiveness.

<comment><USER11> That's a candidate gene study, none of them replicate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> To me it is obvious that self-control depends significantly on your genes. I have ADD, but lived a long time without medication. I could barely do get anything done at all before I got medication, and then when I'm on medication I become one of the most dedicated workers you've ever seen. If something as simple as dopamine can have such a profound effect on my self-control then I have a hard time seeing how the myriad of other effects genes have on our brain can't also significantly alter our self-control.

</comment><comment><USER13> One of the results from the abstract were interesting:

"The heritability did differ across informants, with stronger heritability estimates based on parent report versus self-report or observations."

Parents see their kids differently than the kids see them selves I guess? I wonder if we tend to compare our kids to their siblings when we report on things like this. I wonder if only children would have different parent reported traits on things like this? I guess we all see ourselves different than others see us.

<comment><USER14> We are probably not the most accurate observers of our external behaviors, since it's too easy for us to mix memories of those with our internal state.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's important to understand that the way many people understand heritability usually isn't what most scientific researchers mean when they say "heritable."

> Heritability is an important concept in quantitative genetics, particularly > in selective breeding and behavior genetics (for instance, twin studies). It > is the source of much confusion due to the fact that its technical > definition is different from its commonly-understood folk definition. > Therefore, its use conveys the incorrect impression that behavioral traits > are "inherited" or specifically passed down through the genes.

...

> Heritability measures the fraction of phenotype variability that can be > attributed to genetic variation. This is not the same as saying that this > fraction of an individual phenotype is caused by genetics. For example, it > is incorrect to say that since the heritability of personality traits is > about .6, that means that 60% of your personality is inherited from your > parents and 40% comes from the environment. In addition, heritability can > change without any genetic change occurring, such as when the environment > starts contributing to more variation...High heritability of a trait, > consequently, does not necessarily mean that the trait is not very > susceptible to environmental influences. Heritability can also change as a > result of changes in the environment, migration, inbreeding, or the way in > which heritability itself is measured in the population under study. The > heritability of a trait should not be interpreted as a measure of the extent > to which said trait is genetically determined in an individual.

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

<comment><USER16> The example I heard that really drove this point home for me is that humans almost all have 10 fingers, and the ones who don't are almost entirely due to the environment (frostbite, table saw accidents, etc) so the number of fingers on a human hand is actually a low-heritability trait.

<comment><USER3> Did they actually do a twin study on finger count, or are you making things up? Otherwise you can't know for sure. For example, I'd bet that propensity to lose limbs correlate strongly with willingness to engage in risky activities, and risk taking has a significant genetic component according to other studies.

<comment><USER15> Even if you're right (and finger count is a common example for students to teach the concept of heritability), this will run counter to what people think when they hear "heritability."

Most people wouldn't think "number of fingers is heritable because their propensity for risk taking is genetic" they would say it's because the number of fingers we are born with is genetic, which would be a mostly _incorrect_ reason for any heritability statistic on number of fingers. I think your possible explanation about why number of fingers might be fairly heritable only reinforces my point about what most people understand about heritability.

And, for the same reason, while risk taking seems to be heritable, we don't know the particular genetic contribution to risk taking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've wondered for a long time whether being hardworking is a "talent" that some people naturally have more of. Self-control being heritable would be some support for that idea.

<comment><USER18> I always thought it erroneous when people say somebody "has the genes to be a great X" but made nothing of it. The ability to actualize those genes, itself, requires good genes for "executing" (motivation, discipline etc..). So if somebody is lazy, but with "great genes", then those genes are in fact not great.

<comment><USER19> But if you factor in environmental influence, such as having a tiger parent, then the great genes for X would still be activated without requiring the complimentary execution genes. Nurture nurtures nature.

<comment><USER18> No doubt, like all things genes, environment has a non-negligible impact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's scary if we found this to be genetic. Only because you know the potential consequences humans using this information. Fast forward to clone wars.

<comment><USER8> No because we already know IQ is largely genetic. Whatever fears you would have about impulse control, you should already have about IQ. In real life, people prefer to have inferior children that are their own, over superior children that aren't really their own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Of course it is heritable. The uncomfortable question is if its genetic.

<comment><AUTHOR> With the monozygotic twin correlation being twice the dizygotic twin correlation, what other explanations are there?

<comment><USER22> Is been fairly well established empirically that monozygotic twins are treated differently than dizygiyic twins. Specifically, they share a much more similar environment than dizgoyic twins.

In other words, the _equal environment assumption_ does not hold in reality.

<comment><USER3> How do you prove that? Environment are in large parts shaped by your genes. If you are an easy to please baby then your parents will like you more. If you sit quietly and study in class your teacher will like you more. If you are good looking people will want to be your friend. Basically the environment adapts to your natural traits and makes them stronger. This variance gets attributed to your genes and not nurture, since the environment was shaped by genes and not by artificial means like parental intervention.

<comment><USER22> Even if we accept this argument (I don't, to be clear), it could well be that what's heritable is the way MZ twins are treated versus the way DZ twins are treated, not self-control.

In that case, the fact that twin studies conclude that self-control is heritable is an artifact of the twin method.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Would be great if we get more info on epigenetic or gene expression.</comment>


The Pitch Drop Experiment - <AUTHOR> http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/pitch-drop-experiment <comment><USER2> While the experiement is certainlay interesting, the article must be from around 2009 (the experiment begun in 1927 and the article refers to this year as "82 years ago").

The 9th drop, mentioned in the article, fell in 2014.

Please refer to the Wikipedia article instead: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch_drop_experiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch_drop_experiment)</comment>


Should Twitter remove the 140-character limit? 11 arguments for and against it - <AUTHOR> http://meshedsociety.com/should-twitter-remove-the-140-character-limit-11-arguments-for-and-against-it <comment><USER2> Yup! I don't use Twitter, because I'm tired of abbreviating. I've heard all the made-up motives from people both inside and outside of the company but for many years already nobody has been using Twitter via SMS! Also, for years, phones have been splitting long messages into multiple short ones if necessary and composing them back as well. Remove the limit and save Twitter, please!

<comment><AUTHOR> Most likely, Twitter would not look the same anymore after that. It would morph into a totally different product. So I understand that such a step has to be well thought through.

<comment><USER2> Well, a new limit of, let's say, 500 characters will make a huge difference! Still short form, yet, not need to be abbreviating and using broken English, skip punctuation, etc. just to fit into the artificial 140 limit!</comment></comment></comment>


Usability Tip: Turn Inline Links Into Padded Blocks for Larger Clickable Areas - <AUTHOR> http://www.usabilitypost.com/post/13-usability-tip-inline-links-to-padded-blocks-for-larger-clickable-areas

<comment><USER2> Any drawbacks?</comment>