UK police seek powers to access browsing history of computer users - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/oct/30/police-seek-powers-to-access-browsing-history-of-uk-computer-users <comment><USER2>
      He accepted it would be "far too intrusive" for officers to
      be able to access content of internet searches and social
      media messaging without additional safeguards, such as the
      requirement for a judicial warrant.

When you need to scale the walls of a seemingly impenetrable castle, it is easier to slowly and quietly dig under the foundations until they fall of they own accord.

Once they have this, then don't be surprised that in a few years time they will need some kind of "temporary emergency powers" that actually end up lasting 45 years, allowing them to access the data without a warrant.

Which funnily enough they are doing already. They just get the NSA to do it for them on UK citizens and GCHQ return the favour.

It's like asking for a apple after you've stolen one already.

As a side note the Anti-Tertorism legislation was supposed to be temporary emergency powers. They got extended and extended and expanded and expanded. Didn't matter which government came and went. They all bent the knee.

<comment><USER3> You skipped this part:

"Five years ago, [a suspect] could have physically walked into a bank and carried out a transaction. We could have put a surveillance team on that but now, most of it is done online. We just want to know about the visit."

Willie sutton robbed banks cause "That's where the money is". When bad guys use the internet to do bad things, you have to go 'where the money is' or suffer the consequences if you don't.

<comment><USER4> That "physical transaction" analogy would be correct if it was putting a surveillance team on every single person in the UK 24/7/365 recording everything they do, just in case any man, woman, or child turned into a bank robber at any time.

<comment><USER5> Sounds like the Starzi.

<comment><USER6> You mean the StaSi (Staatssicherheit - state security)?

<comment><USER5> Pedanzi.

<comment><USER6> I went on a google search to figure out what you could have meant. There are many things I do not know, and a single word without context is seldomly enough to assume. (Starzi appears to be a last name and not much more.)

Also, if I'm googling it, most of the time there are others wondering.

<comment><USER5> Fair enough :-). I just assumed everyone knew who the Stasi were! I can't recommend the film The Lives of Others enough. Really is a scary insight into the end game of a surveillance state...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can see it now.

A wizened old judge sits in court, looming down on the accused (the term defendant implies they have a hope in hell of defending themselves), presiding over a trial he doesn't understand. A young man did something dangerous with a computer.

There is no jury, because this is a secret trial - what is being discussed here is a matter of national security. The young man is suspected of some kind of technological terrorism, the judge understands. The young man looks unhealthy, sallow - the judge doesn't consider that he has spent a month in a holding facility being politely but forcefully questioned about his political beliefs, his thoughts on terror, his religion, his economic orientation.

The trial proceeds. Great stacks of print-out of browser history are wheeled out on trolleys. The volumes are enormous. The young man must be pathological. The security cleared expert witnesses explain that this young man clearly uses the internet heavily, he is possibly an addict, many of these "URLs" are very technical, possibly dangerous. It appears he has been hacking thousands of websites. He is clearly a threat, a dangerous product of a world gone mad that the judge only knows to fear. His wife is making casserole and he wants to get home.

Sentencing is passed. The young man is not allowed to talk about these proceedings lest a harsher sentence yet be meted out. He is sentenced to prison and is thus conveyed. His life in this society is effectively over, and his future holds only scrutiny and prejudice, to which he is not permitted to respond, and cannot even have the solace of mute rage, as the drugs he is made to take by the state for his dangerous addictive and compulsive tendencies prohibit such.

In his cell he sits and reflects on his crime - being a web developer who retweeted a link to a leaked GCHQ document.

With enough data and the right apparatus, you can achieve political harmony within your populace in the matter of a generation.

</comment><comment><USER8> How long until News internationals pet bent coppers are selling the browsing habits of celebs - sounds like the MET police is getting overmighty again - time to let Therasa of her leash.

For those not familiar with history post ww1 the Met Police wanted to take over MI5's job.

</comment><comment><USER9> > were they on Facebook, or a banking site, or an illegal child-abuse image- > sharing website?

well, that escalated quickly

<comment><USER10> Got to toss that last one in so people toss their reasoning out and go with pure emotions. Sometimes I wonder if such material was made as offensive as it is currently viewed as a tool to spearhead attacks of this nature. It wouldn't be the oddest social engineering a group like the CIA has done (look at the abstract art discussion on HN from earlier this week).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am not sure if dnscrypt helps much, but it at least makes them work a bit harder. Here is a guide for getting off your ISP's DNS and encrypting the traffic:

[http://blog.lowsnr.net/2014/08/08/dns-privacy-using- opennic-...](http://blog.lowsnr.net/2014/08/08/dns-privacy-using-opennic-and- dnscrypt/)

</comment><comment><USER12> It would be nice if I could access this article with https, so that my ISP cannot see what I am reading at theguardian.

</comment><comment><USER13> How polite, the British police ask for access, while the Americans just barge right in.

I mean, I don't have proof, beyond my experience when the police came a knocking.

<comment><USER14> They've asked for access, but this doesn't mean they're not doing it already.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Also [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10478677](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10478677).</comment>


2Gbps Wireless Chip - <AUTHOR> http://asia.cnet.com/ntu-scientists-unveil-2gbps-wireless-chip-for-mobile-devices-62215709.htm

<comment><USER2> 2 Gbps chips have been already demonstrated years ago. Imec from Belgium just showed a 7 Gbps chip ([http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4372113/IMEC- transce...](http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4372113/IMEC-transceiver- Gbps-data)). It looks like we will have 60GHz technology in our mobile phones soon but probably it will be short range as a replacement to Bluetooth considering the high attenuation and human-blockage characteristics of 60 GHz waves. It is interesting to think of possible applications that can make use of this large bandwidth in short range. We will probably see some digital kiosks in airports to buy and download movies in a few seconds.

<comment><USER3> How about a TV with no input / output wires to the various devices? Or a better AirPlay for tv's

<comment><USER4> Sync non-cloud data to your desktop/laptop/house computer wirelessly once you walk inside or outside your house.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This technology isn't exactly new but it seems like now it is coming to market. I think the implications of this in mobile phones could be huge, especially for peripherals such as Google Glasses, Sixth Sense, etc. The more I think about it, this could be huge for the wireless personal electronics space.

</comment><comment><USER6> I love the name of the center that developed the chip:

 _Virtus IC Design Centre of Excellence_

:)</comment>


Ask HN: Are non-English YouTube comment threads just as bad? - <AUTHOR>

YouTube comments are notoriously bad/offensive. Unless the video is very targeted, I almost never look at the comments. The bloggers and podcasters I follow usually dismiss them completely as something to be ignored. But the context for this appraisal has always been English-dominated comment threads.<p>Are non-English comment threads just as bad? I was wondering if there were pockets of the YouTube ecosystem that behaved very differently than what I see in the predominantly English comments. <comment><USER2> I can read Japanese. Youtube makes me wish I couldn't.

<comment><USER3> How bad is it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As a Greek I can only say that Greek Youtube comments is same story different package. Welcome to the human condition baby :D

To be fair though loads of people with very good sense of humour in youtube. I love to read comments on funny videos because the comments are even funnier than the video itself.

Also plenty of intelligent and well informed discussion if you have the patience to search for it. Usually its on technical videos, for example I never had a problem on the comments of my youtube videos (which tend to be technical and technology driven) and I think I deleted comments only once or twice . To give you an idea my most popular video has 400k views.Spam has been more of a problem for me.

</comment><comment><USER5> You dont want to read french comments either.

</comment><comment><USER6> Dutchie here, can confirm just as shitty if not even more.

</comment><comment><USER7> Comments in Hindi are not much better either. I suppose being shitty on the internet transcends any language barrier.

</comment><comment><USER8> Please don't even ask about Russian.

</comment><comment><USER9> Same in Spanish</comment>


Coding Math - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm9bqSSiIdo&list=PL7wAPgl1JVvUEb0dIygHzO4698tmcwLk9&index=1 <comment><USER2> Watching videos is _glacial_. Text is faster, more flexible, searchable, and easier to backup and go over things again.

Please, can someone suggest an equivalent resource that doesn't use video?</comment>


How to Improve the Y Combinator Interview - <AUTHOR> http://mitchellwfox.com/2013/01/16/improve-the-y-combinator-interview/

<comment><AUTHOR> I would love to find out if other YC candidates on HN felt similarly. I strove to keep my suggestions realistic, while reflecting honestly on the benefits and disappointments of our YC interview experience 2 months ago.</comment>


Account Association Security Threats for Google Single Sign-On - <AUTHOR> http://blog.idonethis.com/post/31859424118/openid-security

<comment><USER2> TL;DR: Be conscious of who you trust. OpenID AX attributes may give you an email address, but this creates two potential issues:

* Can you be sure that the attribute has not been tampered with in transit? Check the signature (or make sure your library is checking the signature).

* Can you trust the OpenID provider to give you a correct and verified email address? Maybe if that provider is Google. Anyone else, probably not.

I prefer Mozilla Persona's approach to this problem; your identity effectively _is_ an email address. It's also trivial to integrate.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're exactly right stickfigure.

* You have to make sure the attributes are properly signed by the OpenID provider which is what the security advisories by Google and OpenID foundation were about.

* You can't trust any OpenID provider to give you a correct and verified email address. For the specific case of Google single sign-on, you can trust the Google OpenID provider.</comment></comment>


America doesn't want your High Tech jobs - <AUTHOR> http://www.anybeat.com/public_square/4eb1cf5903605d76af0000fe/Politics/4f4a179adda88043e9001bd0

<comment><USER2> I am from Australia and currently in Canada on a work visa. It was so easy to get (a 2 year visa) and have been enjoying living outside of Australia. Every time I have looked into working in the US it is so difficult that I don't even bother applying.

The funny thing is we also got a 2 year tourist visa for the US so we can could travel around. It was such a painful process. You have to get there as early as possible or you will wait for hours. My appointment was at 9am but I got my visa at 11am. I arrived there at 7am. Once you go through security you cannot leave otherwise you lose your spot. They don't have toilets there so you're screwed if you have to go. I had to bring a gazillion documents proving I could support myself and it was all so unwelcoming.

I have always felt uneasy travelling through the US. It is almost as if they assume everybody is trying to smuggle themselves into the country to stay permanently.

The US government needs to chill.

<comment><USER3> Sorry for not adding anything of intellect, but I couldn't agree more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is anti-obama / pro-republican propaganda. (Your first clue is the mention of 'Obamacare' as a reason for not working in the US, the second is 'high corporate taxes' meme).

<comment><USER5> I upvoted you because this sort of thing shouldn't be anywhere near News.YC.

"owing to Obamacare"? Really? You mean employers weren't paying employee health care before Obama?

You have to LOL at the reasoning in this article, and the poorly reasoned/thought out tirade against "liberals".

Wait, you mean, Singapore created all these incentives ... because of Obama, right?

The funniest thing about the "Obamacare" thing in this post is that the author is actually arguing _for_ universal health care (guess what Singapore has? :). You're essentially offloading your corporate health care costs onto the government. Hehe.

<comment><USER6> The point being made is that the health care costs in the US are very high. The author editorializes that this is "due to Obamacare". Costs were high before Obamacare, and they're higher now, and non-partisan projections (CBO, etc.) indicate they're going higher still. How you want to apportion blame is up to you - the _fact_ that costs are high is inarguable. So is the _fact_ that it costs jobs.

Also, you apparently don't know much about Singapore. Their (quite excellent) health care system works by forced savings - it's not, in any way, "socialized medicine" as the term is used in the US.

In fact, government spending on health care in Singapore is around 3-4% of GDP. Government spending on health care in the US is approximately twice that, as a share of GDP. So yeah, moving from the US system to the Singapore system would be "offloading your corporate health care costs onto the government" if by that you mean "transferring health care costs _from_ the government _to_ the private sector".

But please, don't let me get in the way of a good partisan food fight.

(And as for the "meme" that high taxes in the US aren't really killing jobs... Let's see, unemployment in Singapore these days is around 2%. What's _your_ explanation?)

<comment><USER4> You make my point nicely.

You are correct that I don't know anything about Singapore other than what I read in the press like the Economist and the CIA Factbook.

However I do know quite a bit about analyzing high tech enterprises, and the creation of said enterprises. And that analysis is a bit more nuanced than 'health care is more expensive.'

The Singapore Statistics Office disagrees with some of your numbers [1] they claim 4% unemployment. But it doesn't say what they spend on health care.

But lets say your ideal employee in Singapore cost your $70,000 USD / year. In California you can get health care on an individual basis for $500/month for most people, $1000 a month for older people (60+), and a lot less for young healthy people. But lets say you spend $1000 a month. So that means a $12,000 per employee per year health cost penalty. Now 25 employees at 70K each is a salary pool of $1,750,000. If you hire Californians at $70,000 and give them each $12,000 for health care ($82,000 effective salary) then you can only hire $1,750,000/$82,000 or 21 of them (and $28,000 left over in your pool)

So here is a different, but an important question. Can you achieve with 21 engineers in California what you can achieve with 25 engineers in Singapore? (this happens to be an interesting number because for those of us who have lived in the Bay Area for a few decades there is a saying that goes "With 20 people and a good idea I can change the world!")

I'm not trying to take anything away from Singapore, I'm sure its a great place and everything I read says it has great infrastructure and a very business friendly climate. What I'm saying is that using health care costs in this way is not an effective reasoning tool with regards to a high tech endeavor. Twenty technical employees who have already done a start-up or two each are going to be hugely more productive getting a new endeavor off the ground.

[1] [http://www.mom.gov.sg/statistics-publications/national- labou...](http://www.mom.gov.sg/statistics-publications/national-labour- market-information/publications/pages/report-labour-force-2010.aspx)

<comment><USER6> Okay, first, a minor point: Unemployment has continued to fall in Singapore; your link is for 2010, but it's lower now[1].

Next, let's assume you're correct about health care costs. There are still two logical errors in your argument:

1) There are a _lot_ of differences between the US and Singapore. Health care is only one of them; the original article listed several more. Even if you're right that health care costs _alone_ only lead to a 16% advantage (which is probably off by a factor of 3-4, given overall health care spending in each country), don't forget all the other areas.

2) Not everywhere is the Bay Area. Perhaps the Bay Area can compete with Singapore, but the Bay Area has a lot of unique advantages. Are we writing off everyone not in the Bay Area? And don't say "oh, they can just move here"; the infrastructure won't support it.

The original author wants to talk about Singapore and high tech jobs; you picked only one of several differences which made Singapore attractive, and then compared it to the most attractive region in the US. And even on that basis, it looks a bit like a toss up.

Let's close by turning back to Singapore. As you admit, Singapore is much more business friendly. And it has very enviable economic statistics. I already mentioned the 2% unemployment, so let's look at GDP per capita. Using PPP, Singapore comes in 3rd worldwide in 2011 according to the IMF[2], with a per capita GDP of $60k - 24% higher than the US.

Remember that per capita GDP is a measure of the value added in an economy. In concrete terms, those numbers mean that the average person in Singapore is so productive that they can afford a lifestyle 24% nicer than the average person in America. Your example tried to argue that Americans are so much more productive than Singaporeans that you can cover the health care costs and still come out ahead. The statistics say that on average, it actually the Singaporeans who are more productive.

(Mind you: Singapore is small, and in many ways unique. I'm not suggesting that it's possible or desirable to copy their model on the scale of the US. Also, they have high inequality, and poor protection of civil liberties. I suspect many Americans value their relatively low inequality and strong civil liberties. And yet...repealing Obamacare and _properly_ reforming American health care to be along more Singaporean lines would not obviously lead to higher inequality or weaker civil liberties, and it is clear that it could lead to a wealthier society and higher job growth. Something to keep in mind...)

[1]: [http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Singapore/Story/STI...](http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_761247.html) [2]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_\(PPP\)_per_capita)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's too issues here:

1) It is too difficult to gain citizenship in the USA. We should make this process easier and attract people with high-tech degrees.

2) Our corporate tax rate is not too high. Think of all of the protections and benefits that this tax rate can afford businesses and citizens in the US. There are numerous examples, but we have a lot of public infrastructure that Singapore does not because of our high tax rate.</comment>


Richard Feynman and the Connection Machine (1989) - <AUTHOR> http://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-machine/ <comment><USER2> Heh, this reminds me of my time at Avici Systems: they made a 3d toroidal mesh-based "Terabit Switch Router" using wormhole routing with virtual channels to avoid head of line blocking (Bill Dally was associated with the company..). The company went public and provided the core routers for AT&T for a number of years. (Superseded by Cisco's HFR (Huge F*ing Router..).

The questions involved how much can you get away with (before deadlock) if you don't have enough virtual channels. Also is it ever worth extra buffering outside of the VCs. Also, how to get more bandwidth if one VC does not provide enough. The TSR used source routing (a list of turns on the head flit I think..), so how do you compute the routing list for arbitrarily incomplete meshes?

It's interesting that Feynman was involved in this field of interconnection networks, although for actual papers I do find his son's writing on the CM-5.

</comment><comment><USER3> "The charming side of Richard helped people forgive him for his uncharming characteristics. For example, in many ways Richard was a sexist. Whenever it came time for his daily bowl of soup he would look around for the nearest "girl" and ask if she would fetch it to him. It did not matter if she was the cook, an engineer, or the president of the company. I once asked a female engineer who had just been a victim of this if it bothered her. "Yes, it really annoys me," she said. "On the other hand, he is the only one who ever explained quantum mechanics to me as if I could understand it." That was the essence of Richard's charm."

A good counterpoint to the "I don't care if you landed a spacecraft on a comet, you're still a sexist pig" crowd.

<comment><USER4> Rather than thinking about it as a "counterpoint," I think it's an excellent illustration of the fact that people are complicated, and are capable of simultaneously being sexist pigs in some ways and progressive and gifted educators in others.

Something that I think really complicates these kinds of discussions is our propensity to think of people in zero-sum and reductionist ways. Examples: "I don't care if you landed a spacecraft on a comet, you're still a sexist pig!", "I don't care what a sexist pig you are, you landed a spacecraft on a comet!".

The one does not somehow "cancel out" or "make up for" the other; both facts ("sexist pig", "landed spacecraft on comet"[1]) can exist and be considered simultaneously. We contain multitudes, etc.- something that the female engineer quoted clearly understood. She made no bones about the fact that she found certain aspects of Feynman's behavior toward her offensive, but was also clear that there were other aspects that she found admirable. This is how socially mature human beings think and talk about one another, IMHO.

1: Or, in the case of Feynman, "had horrifically retrograde and damaging opinions about women's roles in society" and "was ahead of many of his peers in some respects".

<comment><USER5> I think the contradiction is most _ist people think group X in less capable of some activity. So, someone that says you're an intelligent and capable person, but cultural norms let me dump demeaning task Y on you is not really the same thing. The closest neutral example I can think of is how the new person in a group is often dumped on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Let me tell you how we did it at Los Alamos." ~ [http://youtube.com/watch?v=0ogSC6JKkrY](http://youtube.com/watch?v=0ogSC6JKkrY)

</comment><comment><USER7> "It was amateurs who made the progress"

This is a great way to explain why the term <subject matter expert> irritates me so much. Sometimes knowing nothing is a good thing.

<comment><USER8> An amateur isn't really someone who knows nothing about a particular subject. On the contrary, every amateur by definition knows at least something about their subject matter. An amateur is simply someone who engages that subject in a non-paid capacity, for personal enjoyment or some other reason. Indeed, amateurs can be, and many are, subject matter experts.

<comment><USER9> Similar to what I was thinking amateur doesn't mean stupid or lazy it just means someone who has little or no experience (yet) but has an interest in the subject.

<comment><USER8> I wouldn't even go this far. An amateur can have tons of experience, and even be an expert in their field. It's true, many people use the word "amateur" to mean unskilled, beginner, etc, but in actuality it's simply someone who engages in some activity for something other than payment. ("Amateur" means "lover of" in Old French, apparently.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "One way to do this calculation is to use a discrete four-dimensional lattice to model a section of space-time. Finding the solution involves adding up the contributions of all of the possible configurations of certain matrices on the links of the lattice, or at least some large representative sample."

Did anyone see where I put my sandwich?

</comment><comment><USER11> That was a really great read.

</comment><comment><USER12> Great story. Love the anecdotes of Feyman's contributions to CM-1. I worked for a few companies in the 128 tech corridor back in the early nineties, and the whole area still resonates with the echoes of titans.

</comment><comment><USER13> I love reading this well-written anecdote every time it's posted on HN. :-)

</comment><comment><USER14> It's too bad feynman didn't teach him how to tell a story.

<comment><USER15> Feynman didn't have to. That was a very good story that was told very well.

I now have a low opinion of you.

<comment><USER14> Feynman would have got my joke. And I disagree about the quality of the story. If it was interesting it wouldn't be on tedx

My heart is broken that you think less of me <//3

<comment><USER16> Your joke was a poor one, one that Feynman would probably have demurred.

The story was decently told, whatever your view of the later TED performance. It gives the reader yet another aspect with which to view Richard Feynman. The reader comes away with more respect for Richard Feynman the man. And a little bit more understanding of Richard Feynman, the genius.

(The Long Now Foundation dates from 1996. Danny Hillis has been involved since the beginning. I believe the Danny Hillis / Richard Feynman / Connection Machine story dates from not long after. Which is long before TED.)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Scientists discover the world contains dramatically more trees than was thought - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/09/02/scientists-discover-that-the-world-contains-dramatically-more-trees-than-previously-thought/ <comment><USER2> I really wonder why, when talking about climate change, the reference to deforestation has been downplayed so much compared to a few years ago. Isn't that just as important as CO2 emissions?

<comment><USER3> Did some programming on the Kyoto accord. At the time, old forests were thought to be carbon neutral (e.g. in a steady state), while a growing forest clearly absorbs carbon, and we assumed cut trees were released carbon into the atmosphere.

I am curious about the last assumption: Wood products can hang around for quite a while, so while long-term decomposition may release their carbon into the atmosphere, in the short term we have some very old wood around. Hell, maybe we could grow trees and sink them into oxygen-deprived water where they never decay.

Ultimately investment in this area has been reduced as the truth could be very inconvenient for the economies that rely on tree farming or land created by deforestation. See the disgraceful yellow blob: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Protocol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Protocol)

<comment><USER4> > I am curious about the last assumption: Wood products can hang around for > quite a while, so while long-term decomposition may release their carbon > into the atmosphere, in the short term we have some very old wood around.

I have a hard time thinking of significant amounts of wood that doesn't decompose, unless treated by humans. There are exceptions, including petrified wood or maybe wood in oxygen-deprived water (I don't know much about that) but I doubt it adds up to much. I know I've read studies about the carbon released by decaying organic matter in rivers and river deltas; it's a well-studied process as far as I know.

<comment><USER5> What about architecture? There are plenty of buildings which have lasted over 100 years.

<comment><USER4> > What about architecture? There are plenty of buildings which have lasted > over 100 years.

Agreed. That's what I was thinking of to when I wrote, "unless treated by humans".

<comment><USER5> Ah, I was thinking of pressure-treated wood [0][1] as opposed to "raw" wood.

[0] [http://www.homedepot.com/c/discover_benefit_pressure_treated...](http://www.homedepot.com/c/discover_benefit_pressure_treated_wood_HT_BG_LC)

[1] [http://www.strongtie.com/productuse/ptwoodfaqs.html](http://www.strongtie.com/productuse/ptwoodfaqs.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If only we could plug these new numbers into the climate models and press "recompute".

<comment><USER7> It makes no difference. The amount of carbon in the atmosphere has not changed. If anything, this might mean that trees are less effective at reducing carbon than we thought, because there are more trees than we thought there were.

<comment><USER8> I think you're right, I read a few months back that grass is actually much more efficient in terms of reducing carbon. I'll have to look that up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How on earth can you miscalculate something like that by almost an order of magnitude when we have satellite imaging around for decades?

<comment><USER10> From the article:

"satellite observations and ground-based ecological work. The former gives an overall view of where forests do and don't exist on the Earth's surface. But the latter goes underneath the canopy to determine how many trees exist in a given area in a given type of forest."

It seems that satellites give a good measure of the acreage covered by forests but are not suitable for differentiating individual trees. To do that requires on the ground sampling and as more sampling is done it is being discovered that the actual number of trees differs substantially from previously established estimates.

<comment><USER9> So basically we have no way of counting trees from pictures? I mean it shouldn't be that hard, right? You have green pixels and brown ones. We have software that can discern car license plates in urban environments where you have a gazillion of different colors in the picture.

I guess the need never arise for an automated tree counting algorithm.

<comment><USER11> > _So basically we have no way of counting trees from pictures? I mean it > shouldn 't be that hard, right?_

Are you a programmer? Have you never had to deal with someone who thinks they're smarter than they are and thinks they know everything get pushy about the simplicity of doing things that are not as simple as they assume? I have, and I can't say I'm a fan of those conversations or the people who initiate them. Your comment feels a lot like that.

<comment><USER12> His comment reminded my of xkcd: [https://xkcd.com/793/](https://xkcd.com/793/)

<comment><USER13> Not [http://xkcd.com/1425/](http://xkcd.com/1425/) ?

<comment><USER12> I guess the "I mean it shouldn't be that hard, right?" struck me the most, but yeah, both comics would apply :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Scientists discover the world can support dramatically more humans that was thought after zillions of spermatozoans were found in each male human.

A 10 cm trunk diameter pine is not a tree, is a... (let's invent a new word for this) a 'treeddler', a baby. This is a classical case of apparent amount of population after dissapearing of the older trees. You can pack instead a lot of little trees in less space, but is not even remotely the same and only one or two will survive.

<comment><USER15> > a 'treeddler'

Only if it treeddles! If not, might sapling be a satisfactory existing word? Some dictionaries constrain sapling to 4 inches, which is ~10 cm.

<comment><USER14> Sapling is too generic to me. Two leaves in a 2 cm stick is a sapling but a juvenile 5 m high tree is also a sapling. Some trees grow really slow, some plants are not trees but have a 'similar' function in nature (bamboo for example) and a lot of trees begin as multitrunked shrubs. Is not trivial to count trees in a forest when several trunks share the same root system so we can expect a lot of troubles and variations. We should focus in measuring live biomass probably instead. To group different saplings of different species and try to cook a result from this is always a problem.

Maybe to make people understanding the consequences of deforestation we need to create a new system and talk instead of ecological categories like seed, seedling, 'treedler', tree and perhaps 'treelder', but I'm just having fun with the words.

Ash, for example, is equal to "a common tree" but people forget often that the morphospecies "a 500 years ash" is extinct in most forests (as all species that depend on it). This is like if we try to define and understand human societies just looking at "people from 20 years or less".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Maybe there is an issue with the idea of "discover"... This sort of hubris is insidious.

<comment><USER17> Perhaps "awakened to their sheer lack of perspective?" That a global total estimate could be off by 8x, should probably bring a few other global estimations into question, but probably won't. Epistemology is a lost art.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> _The study also finds that there are 46 percent fewer trees on Earth than there were before humans_ came into the picture.

</comment><comment><USER19> Maybe it's me being grumpy this morning, or I'm too used to thinking in log- scales, but 7.6x doesn't strike me as "dramatically" more. It's not even an order of magnitude more! Sounds within the bounds of estimation error, which is what the scientist do, because surely they're not going out there and counting trees one at a time.

<comment><USER20> What's "dramatically more" is all about context, it's not just about the relative change regarless of what's changed.

Wouldn't you consider a 7.6x change in your salary "dramatically more"?

> _It 's not even an order of magnitude more!_

That's irrelevant. Even in software profiling, making something run "merely" 2x as fast can result in HUGE profits and savings (e.g. the movie studio that gets its rendering done in 3 months instead of 6).

<comment><USER21> Commercial aviation industry aimed at an annual improvement in fleet efficiency of 1.5% from 2010 to 2020. The estimated cost was $1.3 trillion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> From what I've heard, it sounds like this is really "new method of counting trees produces much bigger results". The new estimate may be better, but it may not.

Paul.

<comment><USER23> Why do you sign your comment with your first name?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Now that's an inconvenient truth!</comment>


Show HN: JavaScript Cache Size Measurement - <AUTHOR> https://www.fromwhenceitca.me/cache_size/cache_size.html <comment><USER2> For those hitting errors, the code is on GitHub [0]

And here's my own results: [1]

EDIT: I've also mirrored the repo, and turned it into a site using GitLab CI: [2]

[0] [https://github.com/allanlw/cache_size](https://github.com/allanlw/cache_size)

[1] [http://i.imgur.com/LKIvyCt.png](http://i.imgur.com/LKIvyCt.png)

[2] [http://shakna-israel.gitlab.io/cache_size/cache_size.html](http://shakna- israel.gitlab.io/cache_size/cache_size.html)

<comment><USER3> Are there distinct lines at 32k, 256k, 4M because of different levels of caches? I feel like 32k is the L1 cache and so on.

<comment><USER2> On a less powerful machine, I got 32k, 1M, and 8M.

Just where the caching is happening inside the JS engine would be interesting but probably take me weeks to dig down. Any ideas?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I get an error trying to visit the site on ssl on win 10 chrome: "This site can't provide a secure connection

fromwhenceitca.me sent an invalid response. Try running Windows Network Diagnostics. ERR_SSL_PROTOCOL_ERROR"

Edit: not ssl works, so go to [http://www.fromwhenceitca.me/cache_size/cache_size.html](http://www.fromwhenceitca.me/cache_size/cache_size.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Lets just say I had some infra problems... I think everything should be better now?

<comment><USER4> Looks good! You might consider leaving padding between rows so that the table doesn't adjust when adding the red, it's a bit annoying as is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Results on a 15" Touchbar MBP [0]

Curious about why there's a big jump from 4MB to 8MB — I know my L3 cache size is 8M [1]

[0] [http://imgur.com/a/8QNKO](http://imgur.com/a/8QNKO) [1] [http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs/](http://www.apple.com/macbook- pro/specs/)

<comment><USER6> I have the same effect on my machine. My guess is that since the L3 cache is shared between cores space used by processes running on other cores is causing a bit of 'blurring' of the performance on the boundary based on how much will data will fit.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it's this too. The L3 cache seems to be consistently harder to measure than the L1 or L2 caches. I suspect it's just noise from other cores, but I have no strong evidence to support that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> $nslookup www.fromwhenceitca.me Server: 192.168.0.1 Address: 192.168.0.1#53

 __server can 't find www.fromwhenceitca.me: SERVFAIL

$ dig www.fromwhenceitca.me

; <<>> DiG 9.10.3-P4-Ubuntu <<>> www.fromwhenceitca.me ;; global options: +cmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<\- opcode: QUERY, status: SERVFAIL, id: 23762 ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION: ; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 512 ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;www.fromwhenceitca.me. IN A

;; Query time: 209 msec ;; SERVER: 192.168.0.1#53(192.168.0.1) ;; WHEN: Sat Dec 10 20:37:22 EST 2016 ;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 50

From Waterloo Canada

<comment><USER2> I'd try flushing your DNS, as the whois host points to a IP in Cloudflare's range.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I can see some pretty strong effects (and false positives) from what seem to be TLB misses. On my system, on Firefox, the L2 size is not detected correctly if transparent huge pages are enabled, but on Chromium it is. I'd like to take a closer at what's going on, but the tooling for performance-related debugging in browsers seem to be more or less missing. I've opened a pull request for some fixes to the C implementation though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the PR!

It's certainly possible that there are some TLB issues with transparent huge pages that mess up the results. I've had a terrible time debugging the performance across different machines, browsers and OSes, and there seem to be an uncountable number of things that can go wrong, especially with the JITs in play. I'll try to track this one down later today, but I can't make any promises.</comment></comment>


Sony, NTT, Intel to form 6G partnership; "one charge a year" phones on agenda - <AUTHOR> https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/Beyond-5G-Sony-NTT-and-Intel-to-form-6G-partnership <comment><AUTHOR> If you hit a paywall, archived link: [https://archive.is/zytG7](https://archive.is/zytG7)</comment>


Standing invitation: if you want to talk software, I want to talk to you - <AUTHOR> http://www.kalzumeus.com/standing-invitation/

<comment><AUTHOR> Sharing my personal experience in reaching out to random people:

A few months back, after reading lots of posts on HN here of people sharing their experience in "cold emailing" people, I reached out to quite a few people on the web - people whom I thought would be able to offer valuable insights on some thing I'm building. And, I was surprised how many people actually diligently replied to my email, and spent a lot of time offering suggestions etc.

A few things I learned in the process:

* Making the email as short and as highly targeted as possible made a difference (anecdotal, not measured)

* When somebody replied saying that they will look into it in a day or so, I did not immediately reply back saying "Thank you" etc. Instead I waited for a day or two and then replied. The second email actually served as a gentle reminder and I got a response immediately after that.

* In many cases, I specifically looked for people looking at a specific problem which what I was building helped to alleviate. This naturally increased the response rates.

* Lastly, people are generally wary of people selling things. So, I suggest genuinely trying to seek people's insights and guidance rather than directly sell them your idea. If people liked your idea, they themselves will go out of their way to do that.

And for what it's worth, I am going to shamelessly use this opportunity to offer the same: if you are looking for design related feedback on what you are building, say hello (email in profile!)

<comment><USER2> This really, really works, and these are great tips.

A couple of other factors:

* Write when someone is less likely to be flooded with other emails.

This is obvious but non-trivial. We are most likely to want to email people when they are busiest, because they have recently done something to get everyone's attention.

* Do some research to figure out the best means of communication. For Patrick, and for most people, it's email.

On the other hand, Nassim Taleb, an author, despises email. He is very active on his Facebook page.

And, a good chunk of the work I did last year stemmed from a cold call to a company's receptionist. They are small, and so I was only one step away from the person who could instantly make a decision. If an email would have been better, she would have told me so rather than passing the phone over.

You probably already know who the 3-5 people are in your field who could make a difference to your work. It only takes 5-30 minutes to write a good email, and there's no downside.

So go say hi.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> So I wasn't expecting this to get on the front page of HN (which was, in hindsight, stupid): my mental model was just "I'll put this on my blog's navigation bar so that over the coming years people will know about it" rather than "Man, I totally don't know what I'm going to do on Thursday. I know, maybe I'll get folks to send me a lot of email."

My priority inbox is hovering at around 100 right now. I'm getting to them as time permits. n.b. I also have a busy schedule today so I don't think I will clear this queue.

This isn't a time-bounded offer from me, this is just a formalization of the policy that I've had for six years. If I don't get back to you, I'll still be in this industry tomorrow, in April, in 2013, etc, so feel free to send it to me again.

</comment><comment><USER4> This all applies to me, except s/patrick@/cperciva@/, s/patio11/cperciva/, and s/Central Japan/Vancouver, Canada/.

I'll add another tip, though: Make sure that you say something which tells me why you're emailing _me_. I've been getting a lot of "I got your address off HN" email lately and most of it looks like it was probably spammed to every account they could find -- those emails go straight into the junk folder.

<comment><USER5> Woohoo! Vancouver represents!

Thank you for your invitation Colin, questions coming up as soon as I have time to write them!

<comment><USER4> I don't know if I can give any particularly Vancouver-relevant advice, but I'm happy to help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Thank you Patrick. At present I run a niche email marketing company. It can be rather isolating and my social circle or friends find it challenging to offer support/insight/help.

Reading blog posts (and comments on HN) from open, insightful, and yes inspirational people such as yourself has been great. I've often thought how wonderful it would be to meet or otherwise meaningfully communicate with those I respect and admire - and have made an effort in the last year to get out to Meetups (such as the Hacker News one in London last week). I've considered setting up my own sort of 'pay it forward' network; generally it's easier to provide meaningful insight or analysis into others issues, than it is to move forward on ones own.

I just wanted to let you know that your offer is greatly appreciated. I sincerely look forward to speaking or meeting with you.

</comment><comment><USER7> That's a wonderful offer, Patrick. Your generosity (with your time and knowledge) is, as always, inspiring.

<comment><USER3> It's really nothing other than what I've done since forever.

(n.b. I won't say $PARTICULAR_PERSON would do this without their permission first, but there are very many people in our industry who have this policy or fairly close variants of it. They just don't spell it out in detail on their websites. Since I have recent experience in the land of "Essentially everyone who I'd like to talk to is too busy to talk to me" delusions I thought I'd make it explicit.)

<comment><USER8> I want to thank you too :) . You've been very supportive of everyone in HN, and give insightful answers to even obscure threads like my aborted attempt at a micropayments startup :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've emailed Patrick a few times asking for help. He's always super nice and helpful. I had the pleasure of meeting him last year and he is a really down to earth geek.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm starting to work on a platform for people to explicitly state who they want to connect with, and to handle the social flow from "hello stranger" to "let's talk".

Anyone interested in helping out, please message me (josh at tristara dot com).

</comment><comment><USER11> My respect for Patrick goes up yet another notch. Which is weird because I thought it was already as high as it could go.

Hoping to get to Nagoya someday in the not too distant future.

</comment><comment><USER12> "I'm easy to spot: tall geeky guy with glasses wearing (90%+ probability) a red Twilio jacket."

That's really funny. I got one of those same jackets for speaking at Twilio Conference (btw, your session was great!) and it barely leaves my back. My wife doesn't like it because I'm always wearing it when she does the laundry so it's difficult to schedule its laundering.

</comment><comment><USER13> Patrick, I'm going to email you in a month when the initial flood of emails you're going to get dies down. I don't have much to offer except possibly interesting conversation about software and educational software in particular.

This comment is more a reminder for me than anything. :-)

</comment><comment><USER14> I like the Generic Tips .

</comment><comment><USER15> Please upvote this comment if you'd like patio11 (Patrick McKenzie) to someday write a book on any topic he chooses. This is something I'd gladly pay for.

<comment><USER15> I'm going to let this stand, even though it's costing me Karma.</comment></comment>


An Analysis of MMORPG Player Demographics and MMORPG Player Stereotypes - <AUTHOR> http://themetricsystem.rjmetrics.com/2009/06/24/who-plays-mmos-an-analysis-of-mmorpg-player-demographics-and-mmorpg-player-stereotypes/

<comment><USER2> The most interesting statistic to me was the one that seems to indicate MMO playing cuts into (or replaces) TV watching time. That's actually kind of reassuring to me. I think it's healthier for people to play MMO's for hours on end, then to veg out watching sit-coms. At least with an MMO you're using your brain, right?

<comment><USER3> It mostly replaced TV watching for me. Then I kicked WoW and started running a business. Less dragons to kill, sadly, but _much_ better loot.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a raid on the old inbox. I've had customer support on farm status for a while now but still feel the need to do it every day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Perhaps this doesn't show that most MMORPG players are unhealthier than the average American in terms of spending too much time on unproductive electronic media. Perhaps what this shows is that American society as a whole wastes too much time!

<http://images.salon.com/16dec1995/comix/tombug.gif>

<comment><USER5> absolutely - if those people spent the time doing something productive (like forming a startup), they could make a huge difference to their lives.

I used to play WoW extensively, but quit after it became to time intensive - now I sit in front of a computer working on personal projects and freelance work.

<comment><USER6> Disclosure: I enjoy playing a certain MMO. I _really_ enjoy it. It's a primary hobby of mine along with motorcycles, hiking, and (other) video games.

I think a large part of the appeal of MMOs is that they provide an easy artificial hit of accomplishment. Self-growth is measurable in an extremely concrete manner. At the same time the effort involved is much less than is required for most 'real life' accomplishments. All you have to do is show up.

When you combine a dose of accomplishment with easy access, fantastic realms, and social interaction the appeal of the game becomes extremely strong. As a replacement for TV I think MMOs are a healthy improvement, in moderation. The underlying focus on personal improvement is a far sight better than watching Al Bundy's latest exploits, or the sensationalism and fear-mongering of the latest news special.

I recently moved to Seattle, where I knew one friend from college and had several online acquaintances. By hooking in to their social lives I now have a healthy amount of social interaction. My list of friends here would be much thinner if not for these online encounters.

Certainly there are more productive ways to spend one's time than to play video games online. But there's nothing wrong with kicking back and quaffing a virtual ale with a few friends.

My thoughts on this subject are still undergoing rapid evolution. My embryonic project which I want to develop into a startup is taking some of these ideas and running with them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> >currently only 60% of MMO players are male (BBC) and this percentage continues to shrink as more and more females are starting to play MMOs.

I love stating the obvious.

This article actually jives pretty well with me. The statistics in this article seem to match my group of friends that play WoW.

</comment><comment><USER8> We're building a casual MMO, and find that our user base is 50/50 male/female. This is awesome for building a community (nobody wants a sausage-fest), but hard for gameplay, as the 2 groups want totally different things...</comment>


Half of Millennials Live Paycheck to Paycheck, Study Finds - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/most-millennials-dont-see-becoming-millionaires-study-finds-1470229204 <comment><USER2> Unsurprised.

I wonder what's Millennials' suicide rate.</comment>


Building a Treasury Bond Ladder - <AUTHOR> https://terenz.io/blog/20180828_building_a_treasury_bond_ladder.html <comment><USER2> This under-represents the risks of bond investment. While it's true that the credit risk of treasuries is incredibly low, interest rate and inflation risk needs to be addressed more seriously than it is in this post.

In today's market, it's easy to think of holding a bond until maturity under adverse interest rate movements as "not losing money". This is a false model. For example, a ten year treasury purchased at issue in mid-2016 is paying less than the current rate of inflation. When interest rates increase, bond holders lose money. Holding the bond just changes the accounting (and exposure to future swings).

Diversification of bond duration is important in terms of risk management and not just cash flow concerns. Prudent portfolios include equities as well as debt.

While I'm currently in tech, I worked on Wall Street for years (both the trading business and IT).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment. I was trying to make clear this is a short-term strategy in a rising rate environment where you eventually want the principal back and don't want to take much risk. In accounts with longer term goals like retirement accounts you'd probably mix equities and more diversified bond funds.

Is there a way you think the strategy and when it's appropriate could be made more clear?

<comment><USER2> It's a good article and the strategy is appropriate as part of a more diverse portfolio. My point wasn't that the article was bad, but that holding till maturity only gives the illusion of bypassing interest rate risk.

"The only real risk to principal is being locked in to a rate that's lower than inflation for an extended period."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Responding in general to the meme of "but what is your time worth?"

people often underestimate their ability to change their own utility functions. If you're watching 4 hours of TV every night (or reading or w/e other "mental recharge" activity) simply change your utility function to let financial planning "recharge you."

The ultimate arb is changing your own utility function.

Obviously this may be harder or easier for some people, but it's a very learnable skill.

<comment><USER4> >simply change your utility function

... how?

<comment><USER5> First you have to take an introduction to neo-classical microecomics class... and then not delve any deeper into economics _whatsoever_. This will lead you to believe, as OP does, and as such give you the ability to change by the means of your belief!

<comment><USER6> I realize your post is in jest but I can't help but wonder if the parent comment is also a Randian parody or not

<comment><USER5> Jesting jesters trolling trolls jesting je...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great explanation. One of the things I consider, as someone who will eventually find enough resources to do this, is the separation of individual economic activity into risk-reward segment tiers.

The first being direct trading of time for money, wage-salary work. Second is service, which runs the gamut from contracting to consulting. Third is deal- making, which composes together individual service providers, the value-add being management, to create business vehicles. Fourth being business, the creation of a firm that employs human resources to scale up a product or service. Fifth is finance, which treats businesses as the economic units, either through trading financial instruments or through acquisition of entire businesses.

At what point does the risk-reward profile start to favor investment into the next level of economic activity? Is it worthwhile to try to skip over a tier, how does one think clearly about the endeavor?

For example, I don't see financial investment as worthwhile for the career individual except in two cases, home purchase, and retirement planning. It just doesn't provide enough returns, and the time investment involved in trading saps quickly assumes second job status.

What amount of capital should you have liquid before you can intelligibly make a foray into a particular tier? Such that you can throw money at problems rather than invest more time into understanding the situation? I don't need two careers, nobody needs two careers. Smart people can make forays into segments close to their careers and move up that way.

The mindset for rational and sane upward mobility seems to remain stubbornly out of reach, causing many honest, decent people to save up nest eggs which are then extremely vulnerable to scammers. If we had a body of information available that's better than the current personal finance advice, which seems geared for retirement planning, then we could cut down on a lot of tragic outcomes.

<comment><AUTHOR> > The mindset for rational and sane upward mobility seems to remain stubbornly > out of reach, causing many honest, decent people to save up nest eggs which > are then extremely vulnerable to scammers. If we had a body of information > available that's better than the current personal finance advice, which > seems geared for retirement planning, then we could cut down on a lot of > tragic outcomes.

For me, writing this post, I was hoping to make some information available to all that could promote a narrow part of investing that is safe and helps people get the most out of their shorter-term savings. But there is a much bigger picture. Personal finance basics (ex. how to save, how to spend, investing, debt, credit, buy vs. borrow, day-to-day stuff) are sorely lacking in our society and it leaves people vulnerable. It's a huge issue that is going to take a lot to address... This is just a tiny part but I hope to do more.

Please feel free to email me if you ever want to discuss more topics like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This advice is dangerous and misguided. If you think rates will rise, don't be long duration. Holding to maturity does not insulate you from interest rate risk--you will certainly make nominal dollars, but in real terms, you will under-perform or even lose.

There are reasons to avoid bond funds (management fees, trading costs, tax implications), but this isn't one of them.

[https://www.northerntrust.com/documents/commentary/investmen...](https://www.northerntrust.com/documents/commentary/investment- commentary/maturity-bond-funds-vs-individual-bonds.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER9> The Treasury lets you buy Treasuries directly [1]. No broker, no markup, no account fees.

[1] [https://www.treasurydirect.gov](https://www.treasurydirect.gov)

<comment><USER10> Although you'll have to interact with TreasuryDirect, one of the worst, 90's era security decision websites. Their idea of secure password entry is (mandatory) clicking buttons on an on-screen keyboard.

<comment><USER11> This Bookmarklet makes the field editable: javascript:$(":password").removeAttr("readonly")

I agree TreasuryDirect is not the best website. No trading on the secondary market either. But it has some nice benefits. It has zero fees lower minimums than other institutions. You can also purchase savings bonds and transfer in existing paper bonds.

Savings bonds are just as secure as US treasury bonds. It's not popular to worry about inflation these days but if you are worried, take a look at Series I savings bonds.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, I'm familiar with I bonds and EE bonds — that's why I'm familiar with the TreasuryDirect website.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you want exposure to interest rate risk, you're generally better off getting it in the futures market than the physical one. Roughly speaking, instead of buying $200k of 2-year treasuries, you can open a single 2-year treasury futures contract, fully fund it with a 3-month treasury bill purchase, and get the same return.

Why do this? Treasury bond income gets taxed as ordinary income, while treasury futures get treated as 60% long-term and 40% short-term capital gains. The extra compensation you receive for taking on this risk is more favorably taxed if you do so through futures.

(You also don't have to _fully_ fund the futures position, but that's a longer and separate discussion. From a theoretical perspective, a stock/bond portfolio should take the best risk-adjusted return mix and then lever it up or down somewhere short of the Kelley Criterion maximum, depending on personal timeline. The best place to take on leverage is where you have the most information about what you're levering, so this means treasuries in general and short-term treasuries in particular. There's also bet-against-beta as an investing factor - rational market participants can have leverage restrictions, so they rationally overbid on investments that need less leverage to get the desired return. This holds generally across markets, and in treasuries it means that getting duration through 2-year treasury futures is cheaper than through 30-year treasuries).

<comment><USER13> Hello from the Bogleheads 90/60 thread ;-)

For others, you can extend this to building a 60/40 balanced equity portfolio. See: [https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=256020](https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=256020)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is something I've always wondered: Are treasury bond ladders _strictly better_ than an equivalent treasury bond fund (say VFITX), because the interest rate risk can cause the bond fund to lose value while the treasury bond ladder is guaranteed to not lose value if held to maturation?

Or is there some finance black magic that causes treasury bond ladders and treasury bond funds with the same effective maturity to have the same return (ignoring expense ratio for now) after a long period of time?

<comment><USER15> No, bond ladders are not strictly better than a bond fund. In theory, they are equivalent. In a bond fund, you simply see your loss on rising interest rates more directly.

Scenario 1 (holding bonds to maturity, i.e. bond ladder):

Let's imagine you invest in a $100 1yr bond at a 2% rate. You will be paid $102 in a year's time. Immediately after you buy the bond, the rate goes to 3%. You are locked into the bond, so you can't switch to the higher rate (i.e. you've lost out on a potential $1).

Scenario 2 (bond funds, ignoring reinvestment):

Instead imagine that you invest $100 in a fund that currently holds 1yr bonds at a 2% rate. You expect to be able to sell this fund in a year's time for $102. Now the rate changes to 3%. You are not locked into the fund, but the fund is locked into the bonds that they bought. If you can sell your shares in the fund for $100, you could then buy the new 3% rate bonds directly (i.e. you have avoided the loss due to the interest rate change). This would be a risk- free arbitrage between the fund and the new bonds. The price of the fund needs to drop to ~$99 to be "fair" (to be precise, it's 1.02/1.03, not exactly 99). If you sell at ~$99 and buy new 3% bonds directly, you will receive $102 in a year's time, just like scenario 1.

In short, the bond fund loses value because you maintain the optionality to withdraw whenever you want (and invest at higher rates if rates go up). The expected value between bond funds and bond ladders is still the same. In essence, the difference is between holding bonds to maturity and having the possibility of selling them, which doesn't change the expected value.

<comment><USER16> VFITX is down ~2% since January. If I had bought shares of it in January, I would have less money than I started with. If I had bought individual treasury bonds in January, I would have more money than I started with. That seems like a significant difference between bonds and bond funds.

<comment><USER15> I looked up VFITX. It looks like they pay distributions (i.e. dividends) that are roughly proportional to the expectation of the interest rate over the average maturity of their holdings, so you need to take this into account when considering "what-if". They have paid approximately 1.4% in dividends during 2018. That makes their total losses around 0.6%.

This doesn't fully explain the underperformance of VFITX compared to a 3 year bond (which should have made 8 mo/12 mo * 2% = 1.3% in interest and lost around 0.7% on rising interest rates), a net gain of 0.6%.

So VFITX underperformed a three year bond by 1.2%. 0.13% of this is their management fee (0.2% * 8 mo/12 mo). I'm not able to explain the last 1% of difference.

However, in theory, a bond fund loses just as much value on an interest rate rise as the bonds it is holding lose. In my example above, the bond is worth ~$99 after the increase to a 3% rate, just like the fund. The only difference between the bond and the fund is the choice of when to liquidate or roll.

It's possible that VFITX got unlucky on the timing of their bond rolling (see cousin comment).

<comment><USER17> According to the VFITX portfolio page ([https://investor.vanguard.com/mutual- funds/profile/portfolio...](https://investor.vanguard.com/mutual- funds/profile/portfolio/vfitx)), the average maturity of its holdings in 6 years, which probably explains why its performance is different than that of a 3 year treasury bond.

<comment><USER15> Five and ten year US bonds have had lost less value than the three year bond in the past 8 months, so that doesn't seem sufficient to explain it (i.e. it makes the difference worse).

That said, I was very loose in my calculations. Without exact knowledge of their holdings and careful calculations, I'm not surprised that the numbers don't fully add up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This seems overly complicated. The market for bonds reflects the current inflation and interest conditions so selling bonds at any moment in time should on average be as profitable as holding them to maturity (except for broker fees which are usually quite small). I would just buy bonds and sell them if and when required.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure that works universally. If you buy a bond with a 2% yield today that matures in 3 years and you decide to sell in 1 year instead and at that point the current rate is 3% the price you sell at will be lower than the price you paid so you won't make a 2% return in the first year...

Re: fees depends on your platform. Fidelity charges no fees or markups for treasuries but if your platform does it's something to consider in addition to bid/ask spread.

<comment><USER18> What you're missing is that on average the market would have factored that into the price of the 1 year bond.

If you look at past data there is on average no difference between buying 1 year bonds and keeping them to maturity and buying 3 year bonds and selling after 1 year.

The only case maybe for buying 1 year bonds is where you have another contract which matures in 1 year denominated in the same currency. E.g. I have a mortgage payment of $1020 that I have to make in 1 year so I should invest $1000 into a bond that pays 2% interest.

<comment><USER19> > past data

Can you link that data? Is it data from the past 5-10 years? Or much more historical?

<comment><USER18> This paper has data up to 2016 [https://www.valueeconomics.com/data/The%20Bond%20Ladder%20Fa...](https://www.valueeconomics.com/data/The%20Bond%20Ladder%20Fallacy%20-%2005-20-2016.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > bond prices fall as interest rates rise. You can avoid this by buying > individual bonds and holding them until they mature (pay out their full > value).

Isn't this the same fallacy as "buy and hold" stock strategies? Basically, it ignores opportunity cost? If the cost to sell the discounted bond is less than the upside of the better payout of a new bond, you should sell.

</comment><comment><USER21> You can also just buy a bond fund and "hold to maturity" exactly like a ladder does. That is, if you buy an intermediate bond fund, you need to hold for the 5-7 years in order to receive the stated return.

The only difference is a bond fund allows you see the true value of your holdings at any given time, where the ladder approach blissfully ignores the increasing/declining value due to interest rate movement and simply holds everything to maturity.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am not sure if that's true for non-fixed-maturity funds because the fund manager will keep the ladder rolling after 5-7 years, ie. the fund won't just pay out at maturity - they will keep reinvesting further and further into the future.

There are some bond funds called fixed-maturity funds that actually mature on a date and pay back the principal. Ie. they let all the bonds inside mature without reinvesting them. iShares iBonds are an example. But this is not the norm for bond funds.

<comment><USER21> I think you should read [https://personal.vanguard.com/pdf/ICRIBI.pdf](https://personal.vanguard.com/pdf/ICRIBI.pdf)

You generally seem to be conflating face (static) value with market (dynamic) value. You're not wrong but your article makes a number of statements implying a ladder is better/safer simply because you refuse to recognize that the current value will deviate from par.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool. I will read that. I'm trying to address the practical case of buying something, earning interest, then selling it and/or having it mature, not holding into perpetuity. Maybe I can be more clear about this in the post so after I read this I can make an update. Thanks for linking!

I added: Some readers have pointed out that over the long term there isn't a difference between building a ladder and using a similar bond fund. This strategy assumes that eventually you'll want to move your principle out of bonds and into something else like a down payment (while rates are still rising), but you don't have a well-defined timeline. If you are planning on keeping your principle invested in bonds into perpetuity then a bond fund might be a more suitable investment.

Thoughts?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One thing that is not discussed is that one can participate in U.S. Treasury auctions at brokerages (as well as TreasuryDirect but I sympathize with those who would want to avoid that site). Fidelity and Schwab both promise retail investors the so-called "high rate", with no bid/ask spread on new treasury auctions. There are no markups or fees. Furthermore, at Fidelity one can manually roll over treasuries into new auctions and at Schwab it is not much harder but is done manually a day or two before the auction.

Bid/ask spreads are an annoying feature of OTC bond markets since bonds are not currently traded on exchanges (hello SEC! Please fix this) for retail customers since they don't have the volume to obtain the tightest spreads. So, one can just avoid spreads entirely by only participating in auctions, at least while building/maintaining a ladder.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is a fantastic post, thanks for sharing jterenzio. I'm working on building something that does something similar, and would love feedback from folks. If you are interested in chatting, please drop me a note at km at shivala dot com.

<comment><USER22> whoops the email is - km at shivala dot in

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Thanks for an instructive article! But may I offer the somewhat petty advice that your writing in this field would be greatly enhanced if you did not write "principle" for "principal"?

</comment><comment><USER24> YES! This is the kind of content I love to see on HN!

I see no tip jar OP. Let me know how I can buy you a beer.

<comment><USER25> Second this! I know the community is heavily "tactical tech" only (eg: react, js, go, etc) - but I love me some complex finance discussions. [Note: I agree ladders are not complex, but fun to see anyways]

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Nice! Bonds seem to be a bit out of favor today, but they have the advantage of reduced volatility.

Glad to see this one on HN.

</comment><comment><USER27> My favorite bond fund is the LQD etf. Good returns, stability, medium duration, low fees

</comment><comment><USER28> If you're not a HNWI I wouldn't bother buying individual bonds (and if you are, you're probably paying someone to do it for you). You can get 99% of the benefit of this full ladder just using a few etfs. Check out $VGSH, $VGIT, $VGLT - expense ratios are only 0.07. But also if you're young you probably shouldn't worry about this. You don't hold many bonds anyway and you shouldn't be trying to time the market - just buy a total bond fund and forget it.

If however, you do want some pizzazz in your bonds, also check out barbells and bullets. The concept is the same as a ladder except you're not equal- weighted across time. And then check out Vanguard's short, intermediate and long corporate bonds and you can do similar things in the corporate space.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree for long-term investments a fund might be better (ex. in a retirement account mixed with equity funds) but if you bought those bond funds in the past few years and sold them you might not have made much of a return. For example in the past 1 year the price of VGSH went from 60.83 to 59.87 so you lost over 1% on the price change which cancels out most of the interest yield. My point is that for short-term savings in a rising rate environment this can work better.

<comment><USER29> Isn't that ignoring dividend payouts? This says it's like -0.2% over the last 12 months including payouts vs -1.6%. No idea how accurate this is but it's an important correction to just the price returns if you're talking about holding the shares.

[https://www.etfreplay.com/chart_totalreturn.aspx](https://www.etfreplay.com/chart_totalreturn.aspx)

<comment><USER19> Yes that is ignoring dividend payouts, which for a bond (edit: bond fund) is a substantial part of the return.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Amid debate, all 2016 American Nobel laureates are immigrants - <AUTHOR> http://thehill.com/latino/300237-all-american-2016-nobel-prize-honorees-are-immigrants <comment><USER2> Hate to play devil's advocate. But there just might be a reason or two to explain Trump's supporter base without using phrases like "white supremacist" and "racist xenophobe"...

[http://www.nationalreview.com/article/440334/immigration- nat...](http://www.nationalreview.com/article/440334/immigration-national- academies-sciences-report-fiscal-economic-impact-native-born)

Bottom section is the critical point, about native born workers having 500 bn in wealth transferred from the labor class to the ownership class as a result of immigration.

We live in a very comfortable echo chamber where we usually don't actually compete with illegal immigrants for jobs. Not everyone is so lucky. And those people deserve to be heard instead of being shouted down and drowned out with negative "-ist" arguments designed to censor them.

<comment><USER3> Sure. I actually agree with what you write... up to the conclusion.

Why does this reasoning end up blaming people that by circumstance was born elsewhere for competing by doing a better/cheaper job, instead of blaming the system for allowing that transfer of resources between classes? Why not use $100bn of those 500 for betterment/education/job creation/etc for those less "lucky"?

<comment><USER2> Because of capitalism I think, you can't just appropriate someone's profits, that's not capitalism.

There are two basic ideas to solve this though, you can put more and more taxes on the capital owning class to "make them pay their fair share" for, from what I gather the humanists want, an unlimited number of economic migrants because it's the human thing to do. Now an important thing to note, might be Trump's comments in the second debate, that while everyone is going on about how he legally avoided paying maximal amounts of taxes (which I would do as well, I think most everyone pays as little tax as they legally can), Hillary's donors also use those loopholes. It takes a lot more research into the respective tax plans to see if "making the rich pay their fair share" is a campaign line or an actual plan, so that takes checking.

I gather that the arguments against this are that if people can't be rich in the USA, they will go be rich somewhere else. The USA, from Trump's rhetoric, I haven't checked this, has some of the higher corporate tax rates in the world, and seeing as how manufacturing has already spread outside the USA, is it really crazy to assume the capital will as well (especially when selling the goods to America is facilitated by free trade deals that are in place, making it less costly to move your business to another country).

This is the Democratic party tack to deal with wealth inequality.

The second plan is to cause a shortage of labor, which would increase it's value, which would make wages go up. The common ways to do this would be: to make it expensive to import goods into America (which lessens the effect of labor in foreign factories which export into the USA) by getting rid of free trade agreements; and to lower the number of people in the USA competing for that labor. We attempt to do this by having an immigration procedure, with quotas, so that we can accept as immigrants into our labor force the number of people needed at various skill levels (this would be why it's easier for a doctor to get in than a farmer, say). Trump's "wall" is basically just a way to say "we should enforce the quotas that our immigration experts are setting so that our labor force isn't glutted by excess supply in any relative tier".

This is the republican tack to tackle wealth disparity.

The arguments against this are mostly humanitarian, from what I gather. A significant portion of the population consider's it America's duty and legacy to be the harbor for the indigent. There's also arguments for cultural enrichment etc.

I think that's why so much emotion is involved in opposing it, and why so much backlash is rightfully indignant and angry. One side is hurt by this betrayal of the American identity by building a wall to oppress the poor and keep them from the upward path -- and then begins to call the other side hateful things... When the other side tried to start an economic conversation.

This is just my interpretation of the situation.

<comment><USER2> edit: it's not letting me edit.

As is apparent, I have a bit of a Trump tilt. I would actually really appreciate knowing more arguments against locked down borders in general (like Switzerland, say), besides social ones.

<comment><USER4> The majority of illegal immigrants are people who have overstayed their visas. A wall is expensive and won't stop them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is a difference between legal immigrants, illegal immigrants, immigrants with advanced education and immigrants with low levels of education. To evaluate the contribution of all of them together and say that the are the same is like taking a look at all Americans and saying, Americans are doing great, look at our per capita income.

There is a debate to be had about who and how and how many people from where we allow to settle. We are outliers in how many people we take in. And I think we should tailor policies with the impact on Americans in mind.

We're no longer in a steep growth phase, we're a mature economy which can successfully absorb so many new people into viable jobs. We need to work harder to get our underemployed better employed before we employ the surplus workers from elsewhere.

That's not to say no immigration. Just controlled and proportional to need and population of origin so that both a Senegalese and Indian and Cuban have reasonable equality in obtaining a visa.

There is no reason we can't set data driven quotas to allow, say, 2MM per annum to fill needs for ditch diggers and doctors, etc. But base it on need and do it with some balance.

<comment><USER6> Yes, but hostility towards one group of immigrants often bleeds over into hostility towards immigrants in general.

<comment><USER7> Can you show how, say, a hostility to uneducated Latin Americans would bleed over to upper-middle-class Chinese immigrants and their descendants?

<comment><USER5> It's less likely because professionals have a. different options when job pressures arise, b. usually opt for civil options to address shortcomings. So, by the nature of the demographics, the reaction to jobs pressures will be different.

But... regardless, we should always proceed civilly and petition the gov't rather than lash out on a population, legal or not.

For example, in England /UK we witness outlash toward Poles, despite their not being outwardly different, but for language. Again, lower classes feel undue labor pressure and take it out on working class immigrants.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> And again they give a false implication that _legal_ immigration would be at stake here. I don't mind if people support Trump or Hillary or whoever, but this intellectual dishonesty about newsreporting should cease.

<comment><USER9> intellectual dishonesty.

if you think that trump has been talking about illegal immigration only, I would like to point you to the term "dog whistle politics". Do you think that the white supremacists that have come out in support of him are only referring to illegal immigrants when they talk about the threat posed to "our" culture?

Lee Atwater once explained in a speech that because of changes in social moirés you couldn't call black people "n*" anymore. Instead you could refer to racial issues in terms of tax cuts and school busing. Tax cuts keep your hard earned money from benefiting "those"" people and school busing...they were going to make your kids schools worse by bringing "them" in.

Are there issues with the US immigration system. Yes. Has that been at issue in this election? Not really. That's just not what's going on here. The issue of immigration is a surrogate for a perceived loss of power by one population relative to another.

<comment><USER10> there's more to it. The disenfranchised poor white didn't have a political voice. I know many out-of-work ex-democrat ex-liberal 50+ white males that are supporters of trump. Just last weekend, I was talking to an avid environmentalist in an interracial marriage who supports trump. To say "well some ignorant people are just racist" misses the true thing that's going on.

<comment><USER11> But if there really is a large group that does have real problems so that they need fundamental change in politics -- why then do they need a fact-free, intimidating, racist, conspiracy-addicted non-politician like Trump to fight for their cause? Do they vote for a guy like that because they feel the system must crash, and this is the only way to do it?

<comment><USER12> Why do they need a politician like Trump to fight for their cause?

Because both parties have abandoned them, and class politics, in favor of identity politics.

Why do so many politicians, activists, journalists, and other leaders ignore (or demonize) their cause?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was curious so I went to check for historical Nobel prizes. Wikipedia helpfully has the list of all laureates by country along with their birth origin (0). 98 out of 362 American Nobel laureates are born outside of the US (Bengt R. Holmström was listed under Finland for some reasons, otherwise it would be 99/363).

Also, first American Nobel laureate was Teddy Roosevelt. Now that is a surprise.

(0): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_cou...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_country#United_States)

</comment><comment><USER14> Do we really need Nobel Prizes to legitimize migration ? I mean, why can't someone just be allowed to move because life is too harsh in his home country or because he has an opportunity or a family in the other one ? Because seriously, all those antionalists have done to "earn" their nationality is grow in the belly of the right mom'

<comment><USER15> The argument being countered by showing the origin of the 2016 laureates is that immigration is bad for the destination country; on the contrary, immigrants have fantastic achievements, both as scientists and as entrepreneurs. This is not about the wellbeing of the immigrants themselves. Arguably, tough (yet reasonable) immigration policies act as somewhat of a barrier, causing "good" immigrants to flow in, and restricting the bad. I mean, you can't argue that on average, the population of prospective immigrants is any better than the indigenous American citizens, but those who make it past the immigration hoops are, evidently, pretty good.

If all immigration barriers were to be removed tomorrow, the influx of third world population would crush the USA - or any other western state - as we know it.

The challenge of the immigration system is being tough but fair, where you let more of the useful immigrants pass while filtering out the rest. The American system is not there; it's tough alright, but it's still missing on a huge amount of human potential.

(I'm not a US citizen)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> So where are the American-born Nobel laureates? Surely all six being immigrants it at least a little statistically strange. Is this a result of poor US primary education, an issue with culture, or something else at play?

<comment><USER17> It's statistics I believe. 6 billion vs 318 million. Beside that the people who get the chance to move to USA are cream of that 6 billion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> While on this side of the pond, amidst the Brexit debate, I note the UK born Nobel laureates appear to be emigrants. Maybe the US cup is half full?

</comment><comment><USER19> And none of them are illegal immigrants from Mexico

<comment><USER20> and none of them are Muslim immigrants.

<comment><USER21> And none of them American born Christians. What's your point?

Last year: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aziz_Sancar](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aziz_Sancar)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Oh you shouldn't have opened this can of worms.

Now that you have done so, I have a simple retort.

The only person of African descent to win a real* Nobel Prize was Sir William Arthur Lewis for Economics, and that chap was obviously fairly well anglicized. Just look at his bio!

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

* If we're working with the colloquial meaning of the phrase Nobel Prize, then winning it for 'Peace', while honorable and relevant to Alfred's original intent, isn't an intellectual feat. Intellectual prowess has nothing to do with morality, noble though it could be.

Now onto Muslims.

From Wikipedia:

Muslims make up over 23% of the world's population.[5][6][7] And as of 2015, twelve Nobel Prize winners have been Muslims.

Again, if you discount 'Peace' then only 3 Muslims have obtained a Nobel Prize for an intellectual reason.

If one categorizes writing as of equal intellectual consequence as physics or chemistry, you only get an additional 2 winners.

The long and short of it is that African and Middle Easterners are populations which are in the _billions_ but which have a single digit number of Nobel Prize winners.

That makes perfect sense even if you don't believe race is a real biological concept since those are the areas of our planet that have experienced the least amount of progress, dare I say civilization.

If you dispute the Nobel Prize as evidence of an objective way to measure intellectual prowess I'll completely agree with you (even though I believe more objective metrics are likely to yield similar results), there are many intelligent people who have performed feats who don't get a Nobel Prize, but then maybe it points to the idea you shouldn't write headlines like "Amid debate, all 2016 American Nobel laureates are immigrants" because that is total bullshit.

<comment><USER23> Wouldn't it seem purely logical that poorer countries would have less Nobel Prize winners? I suspect that there are not huge amounts of theoretical physicists in Afghanistan.

Trying to equate it to how "civilised" a nation is, is just racism.

<comment><USER22> > Trying to equate it to how "civilised" a nation is, is just racism.

Is that all you have got?

Your ideals are intellectually dysfunctional, leading to stagnation, anarchy and death as they have done so in every age. The whitewash job on history is peeling off and every day that passes undermines your credibility.

Watch, as Venezuela and South Africa collapse into an abyss.

Watch, as each generation sinks deeper into poverty than the one before it. Working harder, for less, every day.

Watch, as the fires rise in France and it becomes unsafe to walk the streets in our own cities.

That is your work devil.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> That's the point of the US immigration system - to attract top 5% of the bell curve.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I loved my NYC visit a couple of years ago. The statue of liberty was incredible, and reading that famous quote really inspiring:

"Give me your healthy, your rich, your educated masses yearning to contribute significantly to our GDP."

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> And every one of them would have been welcome to immigrate before the 1965 immigration law. That wouldn't be true many past winners but it's still important to point out that nobel prize winners aren't exactly evenly distributed among the source populations of immigrants.

I find it laughable that all immigrants are bundled under the banner of "immigrant". Apparently the category of "race" or even "ethnicity" should not be used but the category of "immigrant" despite origin is something that is of great value despite being far more general.

<comment><USER26> Are you suggesting that the immigration system should specifically make it easier for Europeans to immigrate, but not Mexicans/Middle-Easterners? Please sketch out some specific policy prescriptions.

<comment><USER25> Immigration should be mostly skills based and there is no reason to use race or ethnicity for determining who immigrates.

What I am suggesting is that this collective romanticism about immigrants is absurd. This was posted it the "latino" section of thehill to make an ideological point yet none of these people are of latin american origin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Brexiters want currently _legal_ EU immigrants to leave. It does affect science, because scientists and students who are currently working/studying legally in the UK may lose their rights.

Comments stressing immigration laws are only about illegal immigration are almost tautologic. Of course illegal immigrants are illegal, but the real issue is who the policy makers want to declare illegal.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm interested in the arguments against immigrants who have nearly nothing and little-formalised skills.

Historically is there any information on the quantities of migrants who have migrated to the USA with highly-formalised skills, or who are already wealthy vs. those who arrived with nearly empty pockets.

</comment><comment><USER29> They are not immigrants, they are expatriates.

<comment><USER3> When did they transition?

"An expatriate (often shortened to expat) is a person temporarily or permanently residing, as an immigrant, in a country other than that of their citizenship."

<comment><USER30> its a wordplay + bias by mainstream media.

expats = migrants from the 'elite' class. educated, wealthy, well-connected etc. most often referred to persons from so called '1st/2nd world' countries.

immigrants = migrants from the 'cattle' class. not-so-rich, varied education, mostly non-caucasians. most often referred to persons from so called '3rd world' countries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> In the non-Bayesian updating of progressives, if 100% of Nobel laureates are immigrants, this is evidence that diversity is good, but if 100% of Nobel laureates are born in the US, this is evidence of discrimination.</comment>


We built a Quick Switcher for Chrome that also saves your machine's memory - <AUTHOR> http://tabbs.pro/ <comment><AUTHOR> aaaaaand it's free and live on the Chrome Web Store</comment>


Ask HN: How do you handle blog post uploads for your website? - <AUTHOR> Currently, I'm adding markdown files to the github repo for my website, which then deploys through vercel. I use next js and the getStaticProps api and the dynamic routes functionality to generate a page for each markdown file. Right now, this works great as I only have 3 writings. But I imagine as a continue to post, this won't scale well. So I'm curious to hear what everyone else does for their website? <comment><USER2> I use a Node-based static site generator called Hexo [1] for the blog I'm most active with. I actually wrote about my experience setting up Hexo on that blog. [2] I went with Hexo because of the availability of themes, plugins and documentation.

My workflow goes like this: 1) Write blog post in markdown, making sure to include the YAML front-matter (JSON's also an option), 2) Generate the static pages from that blog post using `hexo generate` in my CLI, 3) Use `hexo server` in my CLI to preview my changes locally in my browser, 4) Upload my files to my remote server (I haven't automated this part yet)

Alternatively, I've tried static site generation & deployment with Node, TiddlyWiki [3] and GitHub Pages. Although TiddlyWiki's not meant to be a static site by default (nor a blog), there's a lot of helpful documentation out there [4] that explains how it can be used in that way. I got a static representation of my TiddlyWiki digital garden [5] up and running in an afternoon, whereas Hexo took me a few days to figure out.

[1]: [https://hexo.io/](https://hexo.io/)

[2]: [http://practicing.design/2020/05/02/my-review-of-hexo-a- node...](http://practicing.design/2020/05/02/my-review-of-hexo-a-node-powered- static-site-generator/)

[3]: [https://tiddlywiki.com/](https://tiddlywiki.com/)

[4]: [https://nesslabs.com/tiddlywiki-static-website- generator](https://nesslabs.com/tiddlywiki-static-website-generator)

[5]: [http://meet-me-in.space/](http://meet-me-in.space/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Just like you, I use github pages for hosting my blog, but I also use a static generator called Pelican[1] to generate its contents (pages and blog posts). Its written in python and open source, although other options like Jekyll and Hugo are also quite popular.

Using a static generator gives structure to your blog content and links, its also easier to maintain a static site compared to any other method.

[1]: [https://docs.getpelican.com/](https://docs.getpelican.com/)</comment>