62% of Americans Have Under $1,000 in Savings, Survey Finds - <AUTHOR> http://www.gobankingrates.com/savings-account/62-percent-americans-under-1000-savings-survey-finds/ <comment><USER3> There's a conversation to be had about many Americans living in precarious financial situations, but the reason why most Americans don't currently view their savings _accounts_ as priorities is because in the current interest rate environment savings accounts and CDs are products with vanishingly little to recommend them.

The APY my bank offers is _one basis point_. That's $1 per year for every $10k held in the account. You can imagine that if I suddenly found $100k burning a hole in my pocket I would not immediately think "Sweet! All I have to do is stuff that it the bank for a year and then I can almost afford an entire movie ticket!"

<comment><USER4> If you need liquid savings, cash is king.

I opened a savings account with my son a few weeks ago. In my day, those accounts paid 3-7%. There was a story of compounding interest to tell. Now, I feel like I'm teaching my kid to be a sucker.

<comment><USER5> I think if I ever have a kid I'll let him open a "bank of Dad" account which pays a decent interest rate just to get him into the habit of investing.

<comment><USER6> Best example ever: [http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2015/05/20/what-im- teaching-m...](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2015/05/20/what-im-teaching-my- son-about-money/)

<comment><USER7> MMM has at least two rental properties and is a phoney.

He can teach his kid to be a rentier by borrowing long and taking advantage of the separation between the value of labour vs assets when fiat money is over- issued by private banks.

And how to run a web-site about being frugal whilst deriving rental income from three families who cannot save because they are busy working hard to keep MMM pumping out half-truths on the internet.

Can we all take up three times as many houses as we need and live off the rental income siphoned off from the labour of others? No.

<comment><USER6> How does owning rental properties invalidate his message of "avoid rampant, unnecessary consumerism"? Certainly, not everyone can derive their retirement income from rentals (the numbers don't work out). But lucky for you: There are other forms of investment.

BTW: I currently rent. It's the financially prudent thing to do in my situation, and I certainly don't begrudge my landlords for it -- they're the ones locked into an illiquid, overvalued asset.

<comment><USER8> If you work at say Target 40 hours a week, squeak in the occasional overtime and work on every holiday you take home about 12-15k a year after taxes that's about half of what MMM gets from rent.

MMM hasn't come within ten grand of frugality in his life.

It doesn't strictly invalidate his message but it's a grain of salt that should not be forgotten.

<comment><USER6> I get that he earns a lot from rent. But I still don't understand the animosity. Would you be equally up in arms if he just invested in municipal bonds -- the bonds that pay for your parks, roads, fire stations, police upgrades, and schools? There are reasonable tax-free bond funds (eg. PMF) that pay >6% annually.

I've read most of his posts. He harps on things like biking instead of buying a new car. Or "why spend $150/mo on a cellphone bill when you can use Google Fi for half that?" Using that latter example, that's a difference of $900/yr -- or 8% of your Target family's net annual income; enough to make a downpayment after just a few years.

To be honest: It seems like y'all are taking away the wrong message. The problems you see are legit, but directing your animosity at a guy providing free, online insights and advise seems misguided. YMMV.

<comment><USER8> The animosity isn't specifically at MMM. People who think "have you tried spending less" is insight, thats what who we hate. Believe me poor people are way ahead of you on the spending less money idea.

<comment><USER5> That advice isn't aimed at people who are genuinely poor, it's aimed at middle class whiners who earn middle-class money and still complain that they "can't get ahead" and "will never be able to retire".

MMM has never claimed to be frugal -- indeed, he likes to talk about the "extravagance" of his $25K pa spend for a family of four.

<comment><USER8> >MMM has never claimed to be frugal -- indeed, he likes to talk about the "extravagance" of his $25K pa spend for a family of four.

And imagine how well that sarcasm goes with those of us who have never seen 25,000.

<comment><USER5> And if you're in that situation then MMM isn't for you. People in that situation need a blog on how to earn more money, not one on how to spend less.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A lot of people here think this is about you parse "savings". It's not:

 _47% of Americans say they lack the cash to pay a surprise $400 bill_

[http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/jun/09/...](http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/jun/09/hunter- schwarz/47-say-they-lack-ready-cash-pay-surprise-400-bill/)

<comment><USER10> I think the audience on this site is mainly out of touch. When you're making a fine salary it's easy to forget that most people don't. When you're spending your time looking up at those above you and positioning to get to their level (because upward mobility is an option) it's easy to forget to look at the piles of people below you where it isn't

It's easy to assume throwing $100 around here or there is normal when you're able to throw $800 on an impulse iPhone without a problem. Many people can't.

I'm probably just as guilty too.

<comment> nommm-nommm >I think the audience on this site is mainly out of touch

Yep!!

I grew up in an entirely different mindset than the upper middle class office workers I work with. I often feel like that I can't fit in or relate to them in many ways because they seem very out of touch with the world outside of their own upper middle class existence. Even in college they never worried about bills or living expenses, their parents paid.

It wasn't that long ago (less than a decade) that spending $600 on a car repair was absolutely unbearable for me. I went through that stress and now it almost seems surreal that sort of money was such a stress in my life when I look back on it.

I will never, ever, lose touch with the sort of lifestyle that my income can provide me (though I prefer to blow $800 on a weekend trip instead of an iPhone...)

The most interesting thing is that having so much extra money provides so much more opportunity to earn even more money. The old "You gotta have money to make money" really is true. I do money making activities outside my day job that I would never be able to do if I didn't have several thousands of dollar on hand to float for a month or so. If you are talking about real estate you need tens of thousands of dollars. The more money you have the easier it is to obtain more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This should be more explicit in saying "Savings Account" and not just savings.

I have plenty of savings yet have 0 savings accounts (since they're practically useless). A little misleading here when many people just keep their money in checking or investment/retirement accounts.

<comment><USER12> Well, I think it's relevant to consider that any type of investment vehicle outside of an insured savings account is subject to risk. Of course there are varying risk profiles, but in cold, hard terms an insured savings account (FDIC) is, conceptually, a secure store of funds. No downside risk and access without penalty to 100% of funds is something I don't think many investment vehicles can claim.

<comment><USER13> Checking accounts are also insured by the FDIC, and most people wouldn't include their checking balance when asked about a "savings account"

<comment><USER5> I probably would, because I'm not sure I see the distinction.

I'd also answer "none of your business" if asked.

<comment><USER14> In the US there is a legal distinction between savings accounts and checking accounts, which governs how many "convenient" transfers can be made to/from savings accounts, among other things. The question is specifically asking whether people have money in the legal "savings account" category, not whether they have savings in any random bank account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> And people wonder why they say Tech is out of touch. Reading the comments here is a great demonstration.

Examples:

> who uses savings accounts anymore?

> Cash on hand or it's invested in stocks, bonds and my home.

> The truth is you're losing more money by not having any of it generating > higher potential yields.

> the total net worth of my wife and me is many orders of magnitude greater > than what our savings account reflects

These kind of statements just show that _the audience here is woefully out of touch with the average person_.

The average person in the US is unable to absorb a $1000 emergency. The average person in the US avoids going to the doctor because they can't afford it. The average person in the US _doesn 't have enough money to justify an investment account of any kind_.

But we in tech are privileged and goddamnit if we're not mostly (as a group) utterly blind to it... or worse - in denial that we are (and aggressively defensive about it).

The median _household_ income in the US is $51,939 the median _individual_ income in the US is $28,567. Note: median, not mean. That is the financial reality of the average american.

In tech we're used to making 6 figures and then bitching that other people aren't _trying hard enough_. We quibble over what "in savings" means. We try our hardest to minimize problems that we ourselves don't experience rather than work on the very real, very clear, issues at hand. This feels like we have a maturity and empathy problem as an industry to me...

<comment><USER16> This doesn't parse. You just said the median household income is $51,939. That's a ton of money. I and many spend far less than that. [http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2015/01/16/exposed-the-mmm- fa...](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2015/01/16/exposed-the-mmm- familys-2014-spending/)

Even throwing on a mortgage payment a couple can easily afford this - and this is a lot of luxury.

<comment><USER17> Aggressive MMM savings strategies aside, $52k isn't a ton of money... Your profile says you are in Kansas City, so lets run some numbers really quick...

$52k means take-home (after tax) is about $38.5k.

This site [1] says monthly rent is about $1.4k plus $150 in utilities. One car payment on modest transportation will be about $200/month and insurance and gas might cost $200 more.

We're up to about $2k/month in expenses for what is a relatively normal cost structure. That monthly take-home on $38.5k annually? $3.2k.

We're down to $1.2k remaining cash each month and haven't considered heathcare, food, student loans, retirement, savings. And there aren't any kids in this equation yet, which causes another pile of problems if we assume the 1.8/family rate from the CIA Factbook.

These are just ball-park, but then, so is that household income. It is _very_ easy to eat up income without living an extravagant lifestyle full of smartphones, laptops, and luxury vehicles.

[1] [https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/kansas- city](https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/kansas-city)

<comment><USER18> $1.4k is way too much for somewhere that you're still driving to work from. I think a lot of people overestimate the value of a big house. You just end up filling it with junk.

If you get a smaller house - say $1k/month - suddenly you can afford to live very comfortably, and save some as well. $52k is absolutely a lot of money; of course there's always more things to spend it on, and I won't pretend more money isn't very nice, but $52k really should be plenty. Putting it another way: if $52k isn't enough to make you happy, $100k probably won't be either.

<comment><USER17> I appreciate the critique - I'm not from the KC area, so I don't have local intuition. Seattle rents in the city are about $1.2k to $1.6k for a _single- bedroom_ apartment, and a 2-bedroom (as would befit a couple or small family) are north of $2k, so I don't have local context.

Can I ask what you mean by "really should be plenty"? I left out costs which, in my part of the country, would vastly exceed the remaining $1.2k in our little exercise. I guess I should have been explicit about this assumption. I am better off than the average American by far, but even so, student loans from my grad school (an extravagance, I know) hurt to the tune of $1k/month. I don't have kids, but feeding/clothing/sheltering them would take a pretty penny too, nevermind the costs to time, commute, etc.

Any one of the un-accounted-for expenses could vary wildly person to person, and could easily swallow up all that excess. I'm all for frugality and feel like folks have a lot to learn in that regard. Still, $52k for a household doesn't seem to math out without a whole lot of scrimping and luck.

<comment><USER18> I'm not from KC either, so I may be off base there. I do live somewhere with a higher average salary than nationally though.

Certainly there are places (SF in particular) where you're in a pretty bad place if you're making the national median, but I think anyone making the _local_ median in those places is doing all right. The median is by definition not going to be a good place for keeping up worth the joneses. But if you opt out of the competitive things and just spend on what you need, I really think $52k is a pretty good place to be, and if you're struggling at that level (and aren't tied to a job in an expensive city) you should seriously look at downsizing your house/car/whatever your biggest expense is, because I have to wonder where all that money's going.

Of course plenty of people really are struggling - half of the country is on less than $52k after all. Below about $40k I'd definitely say "it's not you, it's your income" or something on those lines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So many people live paycheck to paycheck that saving is just this intangible concept that "wealthier" people do. No one they know saves, no one taught them to save growing up, and even if they tried, they probably couldn't. Cost of living has outmatched wage growth; it's a mess.

On the personal responsibility side of it though, I'm willing to bet that over recent decades, another thing that has also inflated is many peoples "minimum standard of living". I've seen people who, for probably very cathartic reasons, will make very poor spending choices on food, electronics, gas guzzling cars and other things instead of plan for items that move their lives forward.

And the sad part is that everyones minimum standard of living SHOULD be going up, we all SHOULD be living better then our previous generation. But the actions of many in the governance tier of our society have chosen otherwise for us.

<comment><USER8> >, and even if they tried, they probably couldn't

For instance near as I can tell it takes like 10 grand to get into an index fund. Even if that didn't represent _years_ of savings for most families there are so many things that 10 grand needs to be used for before [[2-5%/y return on investment over 20-30 year period IF the market doesn't crash shortly before you need to start drawing on it]] is a compelling proposition

<comment><USER20> You can buy Vangard market index ETFs. VOO is their S&P500 ETF and BND is their bond ETF. Maintaining a 60/40 split of VOO/BND is hard to beat over long time frames. Substitute VYM for VOO for more cash flow at the expense of higher volatility.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My gut feeling is that the population of commenters here may exhibit some selection bias. As in, leveling criticism that the article doesn't include "investment vehicles" is a negative may be a valid point in some circles, but as a profile of the general population in the US, is a valid approach. With housing having gone through a giant bubble cycle and rents approaching all- time highs IIRC, there really isn't any extraneous income to invest (well, _save_ ) with a large portion of the population. I'll refer to the following chart as relevant to supporting my perspective:

[http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/im...](http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2013/09/Rich%20vs%20Poor_0.jpg)

<comment><USER11> How does not including other vehicles help give an accurate picture of "savings"?

<comment><USER21> The vast majority of the population is not saying "I have nothing in savings" because all their money is tied up in yachts and Manhattan real estate; it's because they have no money.

<comment><USER12> Thank you for that take on it. As a 30 something, I've been "coached" over time that savings is for liquidity in the case of an unexpected event - <USER2> of job for X months (cover bills with savings), medical emergency (cover bills with savings), or potential family development (need to purchase vehice for teenager). These events are not _supposed_ to be covered by "dipping" into retirement funds, e.g. IRA or 401k.

The _ideal_ method of financial planning I was taught is to invest for retirement through financial products which minimize risk and are not liquid assets, while concurrently saving in a "traditional" account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'll bet a lot of people have money elsewhere. However, I have a lot of friends who are poor (by that I mean that they qualify for food stamps), and it's amazing to see the way they spend money. When I was poor I bought the very cheapest shampoo ($1) and bought generic everything. The poor people I know now buy name-brand products and buy a ton of Christmas and birthday presents. My husband and I have savings but we don't do any of these things!

<comment><USER23> My partner's family lives in government subsidized housing and they get the full array of benefits including disability and food stamps. His mother buys new luxury items like purses from Coach regularly with cash from under the table jobs. They have more TVs, newer smartphones and iPads and lots of other expensive goods, and yet they have zero savings. I don't understand the thinking there.

I just hope their retirement plan isn't to live with my partner and I.

<comment><USER24> At least in the U.S., putting that cash into savings would make it visible, putting their government benefits at risk. They probably don't make enough to survive -- those TV's and smartphones might only add up to a month or two of rent alone -- so they're trapped.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> There is a lot here about the interpretation of "savings account" and I agree that it is problematic. I have 10x as much in investment/checking as savings. However I don't think that fixing the semantic issues would change the overall issue: the distribution of wealth is even more skewed than the distribution of income. Most of this country would be utterly ruined if they got into a car crash and owed $10k to medical/repairs. And then there are people like most of HN (and me) who get paid ~$100k and save 20-60% of it and are not worried about that situation at all. It's not because we are better people or really that we deserve anything, we just have the right skills/opportunities at the right time. We are the few.

I was born into the wealthiest gender of the wealthiest race in the wealthiest nation and I happen to find working in one of the wealthiest industries to be not only easy but enjoyable. I have won the lottery. I have no idea what it would feel like to be at the other end of the spectrum, I just hope I don't forget how lucky I have been.

<comment><USER26> I applaud you trying to maintain perspective because a lot of people lack it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Theres a big difference between "savings" and "cash in a savings account."

Given the current interest rate situation theres essentially no difference between money in a checking account and money in a savings account, other than that the checking account likely has a debit card of some sort directly linked to it. Both are likely earning near 0% or so close to 0% it makes no difference. Not that long ago CDs were paying >5% so it made sense to put cash into such instruments. Right now a CD is essentially pointless.

I would agree, though, that too many people have far too little cash on hand (regardless of where its stored). I often see people that live in a million dollar home but don't have enough cash in their bank account to pay the cable bill. These so called "asset rich cash poor" people are playing with fire since it's often that they banked too much on the appreciation of those assets to justify the situation they've put themselves in.

People should maintain a healthy chunk of readily accessible liquid assets which could include non-retirement non-speculative investments and some good old hard cash too.

</comment><comment><USER28> The whole economy in America has no margin of safety and is a house of cards just waiting to fall down.

The average employee lives paycheck-to-paycheck.

The small business owner is constantly worrying about making payroll, and is constantly on credit hold with his suppliers.

The large corporations are holding profits offshore and are draining away the opportunities by offshoring.

The banks and Private Equity are conjuring up ways to rip the small business owner and common folk off.

</comment><comment><USER29> It is worth noting that these statistics never take into account people's retirement funds. The survey also does not ask how much people have saved, but rather how much they have in their _Savings Account_. Many people keep all of their money in a checking account. Hence 1 in 5 people saying they don't even have a savings account. This is a rather misleading statistic overall. But yes, most Americans do not save. They have absolutely no education when it comes to personal finance, and feel absolutely no responsibility to educate themselves. They honestly think they can figure out their budgets on their own. This is shown by a lot of other similar statistics as well as many books on personal finance. The reality is we live in a debt culture. Most people do not understand why savings is necessary not optional. When shit happens, they just think, "There's no way I could have prepared for that." But the reality is that shit always happens. That's the whole purpose of saving.

<comment><USER30> Here's some interesting info on retirement accounts for those 50-64.

[http://www.economicpolicyresearch.org/guaranteeing- retiremen...](http://www.economicpolicyresearch.org/guaranteeing-retirement- income/528-retirement-account-balances-by-income-even-the-highest-earners- dont-have-enough.html)

In short, very few Americans will be retiring at all, much less comfortably.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> "Savings account"? I have $5 in my savings account to keep in good stead with the credit union. Despite that, one can rest assured that the total net worth of my wife and me is many orders of magnitude greater than what our savings account reflects.

Maybe I'm out of touch, but asking about savings accounts strike as being in the same vein as asking how much I feed my horse.

<comment><USER12> I'm not criticizing, but would like to point out you may fit the definition of "asset rich and cash flow poor" and, under certain circumstances, could essentially be bankrupt due to an inability to access funds. A recent example would be the entertainer 50 Cent declaring bankruptcy in the context of a judgment totaling in the millions. Also, based on my experience on Wall Street (note: not a licensed advisor or broker), I remember when the Auction Rate Securities market collapsed, and hundreds of millions of dollars in "as good as cash" (sic) structures were suddenly rendered illiquid. I mention this simply as context for what _can_ happen in the financial markets in undesirable scenarios.

<comment><USER31> Not taken as criticism, and I absolutely know where you're coming from; solid advice. My mitigation is tight stops, and yes, I know what the downsides of those can be in a crashing market. The risk/reward for me versus a savings account at 0.5% is acceptable to me.

Or if you mean it's all tied up in a 401K, yeah, I hear ya. The vast majority of our funds are in there. The mitigation to _that_ is a goodly amount of cash (easily get by for a year with no income) in a standard brokerage account that has a debit card and a checkbook I've got lying around the house somewhere, under the assumption that something like AAPL should be liquid _enough_ should we need the cash. But, see above...

<comment><USER12> Very cool! Also, a nice elaboration without getting too granular. I'm hoping none of these scenarios come to pass...but they aren't called "rainy day funds" because of sunny outlooks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> To me savings is liquid cash that you have on hand. It is an emergency buffer account. Every month (or whenever I get paid) since I have been employed or my wife has I have had money taken out of our checking account and put into another account. It doesn't really matter that its savings or checking account but that I can get immediate access to the account.

When the account has gotten too big we just apply some of the money elsewhere (which is not really hard).

I understand how the truly impoverished unable to save but I'm sort of disturbed to read so many here post that they think their 401K/Roth IRA is an emergency cash account.

I actually once tried to sell stock to get liquid cash. Perhaps it was just Scottrade sucking but it took a significant amount of time... so much so that I had to use my emergency buffer (savings account). Its been awhile since I have tried so maybe things have changed.

<comment><USER33> How long is a "significant amount of time"? If it's anything less than a month a credit card could cover that with 0 interest right?

<comment><USER32> There is a surprising amount of things that don't take credit cards particularly emergency house repair. There was another time when I had to put a down payment right away or else some one else would buy it. I suppose that is not that much of an emergency but I still think it's good to have a reserve with auto deposit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Every extra cent I've had for the past 5-6 years has gone towards paying off medical bills from a hospital visit that exceeded my insurance policy's maximum by about $138k... I now have under $8k left to pay (everyone that would take sane payment arrangements or reductions has been paid off at this point). It's been very tough, I emptied my retirement accounts and have handed over tax returns etc. to pay it all off...

After this coming year, my plan is to start putting 20% of post-tax income into a Roth IRA.

<comment><USER35> Stories like this make me very happy not to be an ill person in the USA...

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Since this discussion turned into a conversation over semantics and investing, I'm curious to see if there are any trends in HN readership. I expect some people won't feel comfortable commenting about this so I created a poll:

What is your NET worth?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10355745](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10355745)

</comment><comment><USER37> Any given dollar is primarily a representation of someone else's debt. Since the number of dollars can only expand through debt, the sum total of dollars (savings) over all people will always be near 0.

You'd need most of the debt to be taken out by corporations or governments for the people to have a >0 average savings.

</comment><comment><USER38> Does savings include 401k? If not then I would fall under the less than $1,000 only because I made a large purchase a few weeks ago.

If I had over 10k in savings I would try to invest at least some of it in something that would give a marginal return in a few years. It would be better than just letting it sit in a savings account.

<comment><USER39> Reposting my comment to another commenter:

A 40 is not liquid - if something happens and you need money tomorrow yo don't have immediate access to those funds. There may also be heavy fees if you pull funds out before you are 60.

<comment><USER38> That is true but why should I let the bank make all the money off my savings? If I were to lose my job today I could easily find a bartending job like I did in college to support myself in the time it takes to find a new job. My situation may be different than a lot of people and I live in a large city.

If I had 15k in savings to buy a house in two years I could put 10k into a CD and still make something like $300. The 5k could be for emergencies and the 10k is still more liquid than a 401k.

<comment><USER40> _f I were to lose my job today I could easily find a bartending job like I did in college to support myself in the time it takes to find a new job. My situation may be different than a lot of people and I live in a large city._

This is not an option for a lot of people, particularly those with families.

That said, your follow-up makes sense, and I've typically done something similar.

<comment> nommm-nommm Don't count on the fact that a bartending job will always be easy to come by just because it once was.

Back in 2008 any job (even fast food) was hard to come by in my area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Some manage to live frugally, and retire within 5 years: [http://earlyretirementextreme.com/how-i-became- financially-i...](http://earlyretirementextreme.com/how-i-became-financially- independent-in-5-years-part-i.html)

My personal savings-rate is around 80% (I spend about 1.2k CHF and make around 6.5k CHF) - I probably can also retire in five years or I will keep on working 20%-40, when I have kids.

I live in Zurich, read my story here: "Eight reasons why I moved to Switzerland (to work in IT)" [https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons- why-i-moved-t...](https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-moved- to-switzerland-to-work-in-it-c7ac18af4f90))

</comment><comment><USER42> Less than 86% even have enough for a proper emergency fund. This is very sad.

Either they have found a place to put it other than a savings account (which we all know doesn't provide even enough interest to cover inflation), or people are in a world of hurt right now.

</comment><comment><USER43> So what do we do about this? Should we have a society where people are working full-time and living paycheck-to-paycheck? Is that a fair and equitable thing?

After we fix our government corruption in this country, we should look towards more socialism - I'd rather live in a society that houses homeless children, cares for its disabled, helps its sick, and empowers its poor, then one that doesn't - and I think most people share my view.

<comment><USER44> Yeah, I share that view--where we differ is you're saying "socialism is these things, and capitalism isn't," and I disagree.

<comment><USER45> Does it really matter what it's called?

<comment><USER44> No, it matters how it's accomplished. Socialism and capitalism differ in that regard.

<comment><USER43> correct! capitalism doesn't help those without capital.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> My savings account is pointless. The interest rate is about 0.01%. The question should probably be restated to get a more accurate response in how much of their own money people actually have access to in emergencies.

I have over 10k in checking, more in 401k/IRA and 0 in savings. The last time I had 1k in savings they gave me 1 cent in interest.

</comment><comment><USER47> I dont keep any money in my Savings account. The interest rate is rubbish. I just invest it someplace better.

</comment><comment><USER48> It's not just the ability to save, the return on savings, but also the ability to draw on credit that discourages savings.

The permissive rules that allow credit cards to bypass state regulations make it easier for them to encourage this kind of precarious situation.

</comment><comment><USER49> The US financial industry has been consistently reducing the value of consumer savings accounts. Their interest is poor, their rules are arcane, they're awkward to work with, and they're often oversold as a feature to consumers who neither need nor want them.

In many institutions, interest bearing checking accounts with sufficient minimum balances deliver HIGHER returns than savings accounts for the same balances. In most cases, the march of inflation means your savings account is a pretty depressing way to LOSE money over time.

The savings account is a legacy product from an entirely different era in the American banking system. For the most part, consumers realize this and avoid them.

</comment><comment><USER50> The articles says that "The responses are representative of the U.S. internet population, with a margin of error within 1.70 percent." They don't give us any information I could use to refute that assertion. So with that, we can assume that the people who reported <$1000 savings were not people with diversified portfolios or people who voluntarily eschew savings accounts because the interest rate is not profitable for them. It's astounding what a bubble this communitiy lives in that it could forget that most of the country doesn't have a bunch of money lying to around to invest.

</comment><comment><USER51> When you have 0 interest rate people will park/invest their money _anywhere_ but saving account.

checking accounts, investing, real estates etc, check all of those big-data then you can get the real picture.

</comment><comment><USER52> Interesting article, but I wonder why they did not use red=>green for "No Savings"=>More than 10k. It seems like an easier way to visualize the information.

</comment><comment><USER53> Flawed survey, it asks "How much money do you have saved in your savings account?" Which isn't the same as "how much savings do you have?"

</comment><comment><USER54> As others are pointing out it is a totally meaningless survey. They asked, "How much money do you have saved in your savings account?".

Many people will only keep a small emergency fund in cash plus some money in a checking account and have everything else invested. Do those investment accounts and retirement accounts qualify as "savings accounts"? Probably not if people are reading the question literally.

<comment><USER39> Those accounts that you mention are not liquid - if something happens and you need money tomorrow yo don't have immediate access to those funds. Also, sot retirement accounts levy fees if you pull funds out before you are 60.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> It actually surprises me how many people keep >$10,000 of cash in their savings account. That would make sense to me if you have a large expense coming up like a house or a car, but if it were me then most of that money would just be sitting there and I'd rather have it somewhere that it's making more money for me.

</comment><comment><USER56> Metacomment: Great example of how to turn a cheap Google Consumer Survey into a blog post that gets a bunch of traction.

</comment><comment><USER57> I don't have a savings account, but I do have more than that to spare and spend on whatever I want or not...

</comment><comment><USER58> Individuals have a variety of options for where to invest excess cash. On a slightly different subject, does anybody have any advice what a small business should do with cash? Are there practical or relatively safe ways to get a return on a corp's cash on hand beyond basic interest?

</comment><comment><USER59> What do people use to save? I use Qapital, I know a lot of people like Digit. I know they can't foundationally help the problem but they can help a lot of people who are capable of saving but aren't - which I would suspect is probably close to the majority of these folks.

</comment><comment><USER60> It's interesting to see this juxtaposed with the story about extreme poverty dropping globally:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10352189](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10352189)

</comment><comment><USER61> Does anyone know the survey sample size or where/how this survey was conducted?

Title says "savings", article is about savings accounts. Also, the definition of millennials, is quite eye popping

</comment><comment><USER62> Keep in mind median household income is below 60k. This isn't surprising. I wonder what the statistics for our social economic level are.

<comment><USER63> "our"?

<comment><USER62> I bet most people on here make more than 50k a year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> As others have pointed out, the article is stupid because it asks a misleading question.

So, instead of discussing that, I'd like to ask: roughly what savings do HN readers have?

How much should I be saving at the minute? What should I be saving it in?

I'm a PhD student in my early 20s, living in London, and I only have about ~£500 in savings. I'm trying to save £1000-£2000 per year. At the minute, I just keep my savings in a separate current account to my main account -- which also has higher interest (3%).

</comment><comment><USER65> I wonder how many of those people are paying off mortgage with what would be their savings.

<comment><USER66> You should be able to pay off your mortgage and still maintain & increase savings. If you can't, you have too much mortgage.

<comment><USER18> I've been overpaying on my mortgage by 150% all year; that's the money that I would otherwise have saved. Savings account would give me 3% tops; stocks would give me more but not risk-adjusted more. Paying my mortgage off early is 4.2%, risk-free.

Am I being dumb? It's quite possible there's something I've missed.

<comment><USER67> Long term fixed rate? Why bother paying early. Interest rates must rise eventually. If even if they don't the future dollars are much cheaper anyway becuase inflation won't stop. In real terms, your interest rate goes down every year, to the point where is can reach 0 or negative. Locking the money in the house means opportunity costs to take advantage higher rates later.

<comment><USER18> Medium-term I guess. I've got 2 years left on the fix, then it floats.

Everyone says rates have to rise eventually. But so far we've gone 7 years of near-zero rates. If there were a dramatic shift I could take a payment holiday and put it all into savings, but I doubt I would. As for inflation, it affects any form of saving equally - nominal 4% interest is better than nominal 3% whatever that is in real terms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Too bad that a far more interesting discussion about Libertarian communism got flagged (or at least is not visible on a main page). [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10351830](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10351830)

</comment><comment><USER69> This is a silly article, who uses savings accounts anymore?

<comment><USER70> Lots of people. My ally savings account is 1%, about the same as a CD.. so I keep 2 months of expenses in it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> I wonder what the numbers are like for Canadians

</comment><comment><USER72> So 38% of Americans are have more than $1000 sitting around becoming less valuable everyday? That may be a more interesting conversation to have.

<comment><USER73> Only 38% of Americans are capable of being self-reliant in the event they miss a paycheck or two.

edit: Why the downvotes? Is there a problem with being moderately self- reliant?

<comment><USER18> Savings accounts aren't the only way to achieve that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Good! Savings account is the worst place to keep money. Mine are in my 401k, investments, tied up in my home, or just sitting in checking ready to be used.

I really hate these "OMG USA IS THE WORST" articles. How we handle money in the US is different than some countries. American cash is often invested and/or invested in their retirement via the 401k system, as opposed to the pension system controlled by the government or a union.

There's probably a good discussion to have about spending, how poor young people are, college tuition, and retirement savings and such, but not with this data. Net worth is probably what people are looking for when having these kinds of conversations.

[http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/01/26/the- average...](http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/01/26/the-average- americans-net-worth-by-age-heres-where.aspx)</comment>


Ask HN: How do you become a better problem solver? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I came across an article published by a MIT professor on solving complex problems. I'm going crazy right now because I can't seem to find it anywhere. However, I did come across this site which looked interesting. Perhaps you'll get something out of it.

[https://ccmit.mit.edu/problem-solving/](https://ccmit.mit.edu/problem- solving/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I understand that solving new problems is helpful but how do you ensure that you don't develop specific domain knowledge and instead improve your overall problem solving capabilities.</comment>


Facebook pay cuts for remote employees who move prove that labor market rigged? - <AUTHOR> https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2020/05/22/facebook-pay-cuts-for-remote-employees-who-move-to-nevada-or-texas-prove-that-the-labor-market-is-rigged/ <comment><USER2> Don't overthink this:

" It's odd to see Valley types, in light of the FB WFH news, debating whether comp should follow a 'cost plus' or 'fraction of value added' model.

In my experience it's always followed the Goldman Sachs bonus algorithm: Exactly $1 more than your walkaway price as an employee."

[https://twitter.com/antoniogm/status/1263586217183965184?s=2...](https://twitter.com/antoniogm/status/1263586217183965184?s=21)

</comment><comment><USER3> I've seen a bunch of these arguments recently, and they seem pretty baffling to me. It's not "rigging", it's supply and demand, nothing more. As an employee competing against other potential employers, you're going to demand a rate of pay that you think is "worth it" to you. The issue is, many people would be willing to work for less if they could stretch those dollars further in a lower cost locale.

I've generally been a fan of Greenspun's blog, but this conclusion seems nonsensical to me.

<comment><USER4> I don't think this is quite supply and demand. The remote worker is already hired and then they move. The value Facebook gets presumably hasn't changed but they are now paying a different rate. If this were about starting salaries, you might be right.

<comment><USER5> Facebook employees working in London are paid, say, half as much as the ones in SV.

If we follow your reasoning, London employees are half as productive as the SV ones.

<comment><USER6> If I knew my colleague in the same position as me was making twice as much as I do just by virtue of physical location, I'd be pretty miffed. I probably won't work at much more than half capacity, if even that much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The future will be personalized pricing for everything.

I just wonder if it will work.

I've heard people say "folks in california are ok with their taxes and paying more for things". Which makes me think of "people don't care about their privacy".

Thing is, people do care, but they can do very little about what is done to them.

<comment><USER8> _The future will be personalized pricing for everything._

It will be a strange world with strange incentives. For example what motivates me to earn more if I can't buy more because my personalised price for everything goes up by the same amount?

Airlines already use sleazy tactics to extract more money (perhaps they regret that now), but will this go further down the chain and I pay more for say food as well?

<comment><USER9> Why would they regret being bailed out? In these circumstances, society requires safety valves where we can freeze financial activity to address more pressing concerns. Such mechanisms need improvements. But the crisis do highlight practices of ie. stock buybacks where short-term thinking is encouraged and even _rewarded_. These are just prelude to the next financial meltdown, unless mitigated beforehand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Also this isn't new or unique. Amazon pays 10% more in the bay than in Seattle. Google has pays more in Seattle than in Atlanta, and more in SF/NYC than in Seattle.

<comment><USER11> Agree with your point but the 10% discount for Seattle is super easy to justify: no state sales tax. So there's no cost of living adjustment for Seattle, just an equalization due to the tax situation.

<comment><USER12> Why should the benefactor of the state's tax policy for employees be the company and not the employee?

<comment><USER13> because the powerful party is more powerful

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Heh, this certainly isn't meant to happen in theory. If Facebook manages to carry this decision it suggests something really odd is happening in the programmer labour market - the buyer shouldn't have enough power to do this in a competitive market.

Companies just don't pay people high salaries because of 'need'.

<comment><USER15> Its probably too early to tell how this pandemic will impact software engineers. There have been plenty of high profile layoffs, but there are also plenty of companies that are going gang busters right now (zoom, netflix, etc..).

However, I would not be surprised if Facebook did some internal polling of their employees and saw really high levels of interest in leaving the Bay areas[1]. So its possible that the salary adjustments were brought up as a way to counterbalance the interest levels. If 2/3 of company decides to just pick up and leave the Bay area, that could cause some problems.

[1] [https://www.sfgate.com/living-in-sf/article/2-out- of-3-tech-...](https://www.sfgate.com/living-in-sf/article/2-out-of-3-tech- workers-would-leave-SF-15289316.php)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Yes. But that market that is rigged is the housing market in California.

Too much NIMBYism has resulted in a highly distorted market that then spreads to other related markets.

<comment><USER17> It would be too good if the NIMBY landlords would suddenly loose a good amount of tenants.

> "We'll adjust salary to your location at that point," said Zuckerberg, > citing that this is necessary for taxes and accounting

Well, he's not wrong (on the tax/etc calculation on the salary) though even with a change on the base salary to non-SF salaries the move might be worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Salary based on an individual's needs is quite the "hmmmmm" moment.

It is one of the reasons Violet Newstead — Lily Tomlin's character in _9 to 5_ — is given when she furiously demands to know why she was passed over for a fair promotion.

The guy who got the job instead? Well had a wife and kids to support. He needed it more.

<comment><USER19> Regarding having a family: that's also a signal for stability. If you have a family and have settled down, there's less risk for the employer that you'll quit. I don't know how large the difference is for men and women with children and who's family planning is complete.

For young women who have no children, the "risk" (from the employer's perspective) of pregnancy and motherhood is another large factor.

<comment><USER20> You'll quit as a young, single anything if you are treated without respect... Besides, the line in this film was to point out the sexism in society where women work for free - in this case, the man's wife who is at home with the children while the boss is able to take advantage of this situation to get more out of his worker. On top of, the obviousness that the worker is less likely to quit because of the family 'burden' where, back to the circular sexism, the wife cannot be the one getting the job because she is a woman..

Remote working hugely serves to balance the possibility of everyone regardless of gender and nationality to access the jobs that best fit their talent and work ethic. I'll be very very interested to see what happens to traditional gender and nationality roles once it's fully entrenched.

<comment><USER19> I'm sorry, I don't know the movie, my comment wasn't on its story.

The "has family" checkbox isn't so much a sexist thing, I believe. A woman with children is also much less likely to just pack her bag and move to India on her search for enlightenment, she has more things tying her down, making her more predictable. If you want a long term employee, you'll pick a woman with children over a single man without children, all other things being equal.

Remote working _might_ have an impact there. But if you believe that there are hidden biases holding some people back, they won't just go away, and remote working isn't going to change that, unless you completely anonymize any communication between the employees and the company. Would be a fun experiment, but I don't know how practical it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Of course the labour market is rigged. It's a power struggle.

Facebook will only pay what they have to. You'll take the best offer you can get - there or elsewhere. That's how it works isn't it?

If you're in the gig economy the employer has the power since they have plenty of alternatives to go for. If you're in the talent economy then the employer either takes your price or doesn't do the thing they want to do and you go to one of the other people after your services.

And that's the difference. Workers tend not to have a a 'no deal, I'll not bother option'. Because if they do that eventually they starve. The lower down the tree they are the quicker they starve.

I think it was Beveridge that pointed this out originally. Essentially companies only hire when there is a chance of a profit, whereas workers have to get hired or they starve. That's the asymmetry of power which Beveridge hoped to correct by ensuring there were always more jobs on offer than people who wanted them.

Right at the moment Facebook knows you don't have too many alternatives - given the state of the economy. Zuckerberg is taking advantage of that to reduce his costs while still appearing to be magnanimous.

Welcome to the gig economy.

<comment><USER22> On the flip side thanks to the way Zuckerbergs mind works, he will attract only certain sections of the 'best and brightest' spectrum.

Nothing new in what he is doing and we have seen what trajectories companies take - you just end up becoming either a Yahoo or an Oracle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The competitiveness of the job market sets the price. Looking at the Bay Area vs really everywhere else in the us you'll find less liquidity in tech which depresses the price.

Conversely, you're paying for access to the labor market with your rent, so good markets have high rent.

The company is paying for your costs, plus providing you a margin. If your cost are lower, your margin is the same but the absolute number is smaller.

<comment><USER19> > The company is paying for your costs, plus providing you a margin. If your > cost are lower, your margin is the same but the absolute number is smaller.

In that case, they'd look at your lease to see what you are paying. They don't, and whether you live in a cheap apartment or in a luxury one does not matter, even though it can easily change that "margin" by 100%.

You're right regarding the competitiveness setting the price. And once the company is fully remote, the competition is no longer constrained by locality. It does not make any sense to pay more or less because the remote worker lives in some location, and unless there is no competition, somebody else will just pay them more and you will not get the employees you were looking to get for cheap.

<comment><USER24> Remote employers right now need to decide whether they want to hire the kinds of people who relocated to the bay area to benefit their careers, because that means they still have to compete with bay area offers. If remote work becomes the norm, at that point bay area offers will no longer be higher (and some of us will leave). Maybe American offers overall will no longer be higher....

<comment><USER23> The second part of this is to remember that moving to a large metro area is good for the employee too. It makes it easy to find the next job, and easy to get highend internet.

The candidate can always choose to relocate to make their offer make sense, but I somehow don't think we'll see a lot of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> 2 things:

1) Buffer I think does this. Pay adjusted based on location/cost of living.

2) There's a world of difference between Montana and 'Palo Alto' where they can come in once a week, or whenever needed, or for meetings, or to pick something up, or for a 2-week crunch etc..

Basically: 'local remote' is different than 'really remote'.

Also, time zones matter, countries matter, languages matter.

</comment><comment><USER26> All it would take would be one other FAANG employer to not reduce pay based on location for them to start losing talent.

</comment><comment><USER27> the underlying point, which isn't explicitly spelled out, is that labor should be priced by the value it accrues to the buyer, regardless of the cost of that labor (locationally in taxes, mortgages, etc.). it's hypocritical of facebook not to price it's own products (advertising rates) on a cost-plus basis, if it believes so strongly that its employees should do so. or, they should accept that labor can be priced on value just as it prices its own products.

<comment><USER15> Facebook could probably layoff half their staff without even the tiniest impact on revenues. The vast majority of engineers in these companies are replaceable. The high salaries are largely due to the competitive market and the FAANG obsession of only hiring the best. While some employees have a high enough profile/reputation that they can demand value based salaries, for the average engineer, the pay is essentially a slight premium over what the next lower tier of candidates would cost.

<comment><USER27> not sure what to make of your comment. you're simultaneously asserting that the engineering labor market is cost-plus ("the pay is ... a slight premium"), but with its "high" salaries, it's not.

that's incoherent--similarly incoherent to facebook pushing employees into cost-plus pricing while enjoying value-based pricing for itself.

absent significant outside influence, markets, including labor markets, will naturally drive prices down to cost-plus levels through competitive dynamics. if a market has outsized value-based pricing, it's a prime signal of inefficiency, and competitors should enter (not being a _free_ market is a significant barrier, but a different issue).

<comment><USER15> Not everyone makes FAANG level salaries. There is a very steep gradient of salary levels in tech. At the top is FAANG, right below them are unicorns, and a few more tiers down you get to the bottom feeders, underfunded startups offering worthless equity and hopes and dreams instead of salary.

FAANG salaries are product of the hiring competition between each other and their self-imposed selectivity. Lowering the interview bar would likely open up the hiring pool enough where they could also get away with lower offers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> If you are a remote employee in the Bay Area, do you keep your Bay Area salary? As a thought exercise, what would prevent someone to rent a very cheap closet in a flat share and use it as an official address? What if you start spending 50% of your time visiting your relatives in Montana?

I expect that a new US remote salary standard will eventually emerge out of all of this. The company would pay you a certain amount and the free market will help you decide which state/city you decide to go live in.

New York is expensive but is also seen as more desirable than Omaha or Phoenix, individuals should pay more to live in more expensive and more desirable areas.

Paying employees more to be remote in high CoL cities means that you subsidize their rent or mortgage.

<comment><USER29> I'm not a lawyer, but I'm guessing this counts as fraud. Facebook could terminate you if they found out and try to recover wages from you. Nevada might not care since it has no income tax, but most states would care if you were actually resident there and not paying taxes. If you moved to Portland for its lower cost of living, tax officials might not like that you aren't paying taxes to Oregon.

It's a little weird, but most companies seem to want to vary salaries by location, even for remote work. It might not seem fair or correct, but I do think there are reasons you couldn't pull of a scheme like that. The IRS has information sharing agreements with most states.

Let's say you pick Arizona. What happens when your car is registered in Arizona and the IRS tells Arizona that you earned a lot of money and should have paid them thousands? Do you register your car in California, keep a CA license, buy car insurance at the CA address that it isn't garaged at? I know that these are small things and often people don't change this stuff for a few years after college, but at some point it starts adding up to more and more evidence of one's intent to defraud. Do you set up a non-USPS mail-forwarding scheme to make it seem like you're still in CA? If you get into a car crash, will your insurance start looking into why you're always in Arizona?

For Facebook, it wouldn't be too hard for them to figure it out. You'll be connecting to their servers for work from an IP address. Do you keep a server in the CA flat share to proxy everything? What if the box goes down? Worse, this shows real thought going into the fraud. It wasn't a casual, "oh, I thought I was going to be spending most of my time in the $500/mo flat share and just innocently forgot to update that I'm in Arizona basically always" and rather something really intended to defraud.

To keep tax collectors off your back, you'd have to let FB pay CA and then you'd have to pay AZ tax out of your pocket. Even a cheap $500 flat share eats into the profitability of this scheme. If you're earning $200k in CA and offered $150k in AZ, $13k of that will likely be eaten up by expenditures. Plus, with roommate turnover, at what point do people think it's weird to have someone on the lease that basically doesn't exist? How much time and money do you spend on flights for administrative things like flying back to CA to renew your license? Heck, do you vote in CA despite not living there?

It could certainly be profitable, but it does seem like there's significant risk of being caught. I'm not a lawyer, but this feels like defrauding an employer and different states handle background checks differently, but it seems like something that might go on a record that wouldn't be great to explain away. Like, "I was 19 and we thought it would be fun to steal the University sign" is a lot easier to explain than "I thought the company should pay me more so I defrauded them out of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars."

<comment><USER30> The simpler solution to all of this is to stay in state, even within a theoretically possible commute distance, but in a low-COL area.

Unless they start giving people raises for moving to a nicer part of town, they aren't going to lower your wages for moving to the next town over.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> FB should pay more to remote workers. Cost of having a worker in an office (even in the tragedy of a city Menlo Park is) is very non-trivial. Now remote work is the new norm, and companies make the worker pay for space, furniture, internet, some equipment, parking, and, in case of FB, food. On top of that worker doesn't come to the office, and doesn't consume these valuable resources there. If worker moves out of the Bay Area, or even better, California, FB doesn't have to pay high local taxes. So FB should give bonus for working from home, not tax it.

I joke with my friends working at Google/FB/MS/Amazon that soon company will make them pay for the office - "want to come the office? Pay the rent yourself".

<comment><USER32> >FB should pay more to remote workers.

All your arguments are about why FB _can_ pay more to remote workers, but just because they can doesn't mean they _should_ and definitely doesn't mean they _will_.

<comment><USER13> the arguments were about why they should. specifically mentioned were costs transferred from the corporation to the employee

<comment><USER33> Which have nothing to do with how salaries are calculated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> >Readers: Does the fact that Facebook can unilaterally set the price it will pay for labor depending on the cost of housing from which the labor toils show that the market for Silicon Valley labor is rigged?

I don't understand what he is asking. What does "rigged" mean in this context?

Is he asking if SV employers are rigging wages too low? This seems to be evidence almost the opposite of that, because SV employers are paying remote SV employees more than remote non-SV employees.

Is he asking if SV employers are rigging wages too high? What motivation would they have to do that?

</comment><comment><USER35> How is this even legal? FB signed contract to pay X amount of dollars and now it can lower that amount unilaterally and without any kind of warning?

Mind boggling to me, but then again I live in Europe... So, how does it work in US?

<comment><USER36> I guess the work contract also said that the Facebook employee has to show up for X hours per week at Facebook HQ to fulfill their duties. In other words: the permanent home office arrangement requires a new work contract anyway.

<comment><USER37> there is no "work contract" for employment in the US. It's at-will employment, the employer can change the terms at any time and if the employee doesn't like it, he can go elsewhere. Not saying this is a good thing (European countries do have work contracts for instance), or even expressing a preference (I personally think having a contract would be a good thing), just stating the state of affairs in US employment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Doesn't this just boil down to externalities like colocation preventing the market from being efficient? I don't understand why people regard this as such a puzzle.

</comment><comment><USER39> It might still be worth it to move away from monopoly landlords and rogue city governments existing on bad housing policies

</comment><comment><USER40> Most of my friends are blue collar workers. It's absolutely delicious to see valley types express concerns that "poor people from somewhere else will steal their jobs."

<comment><USER28> EDIT: What I was trying to express (without being snarky) is that stereotypically what you see in the bay area is very rich successful people moralizing others on liberal values from their high horses. I have a hard time to put this together with people earning a fortune, doing minimal things to actually help others and feel threatened when there is a risk that other people might benefit from opening bay area jobs to a wider audience.

<comment><USER41> I don't understand how one can make such broad stroke judgements about tens of thousands of engineers, their opinions, their morality and their political affiliations all at once.

What's even more amazing is these engineers that live in the bay area, many of them are from diverse backgrounds around the world, not just the US. I have no idea how one can bundle all that up with one generalization. Must feel good to think you're looking down from a higher horse.

<comment><USER28> You made a good point, I edited my comment. I didn't mean to be snarky about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> No, it just proves that Marx was right about the nature of the wage/salary. The value of labour power is the cost of reproducing/maintaining that worker at a particular standard of living, not some particular fraction of the value generated at work.

<comment><USER24> Marx was a crank who speculated about work and value but never tried to hire anyone. Why would they know or care about your standard of living? _Supply and demand_ determine the wage they need to offer to keep you. If you move to a labor market with lower local demand, you now have fewer potential employers making offers that Facebook must outbid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> They should take it further and pay equivalent employees in the same office different rates based on whether they live in an expensive neighborhood or not.

Rent makes up the biggest expense living in Sydney by far but it can vary wildly depending on which area. Pay those in rich areas more to cover costs and watch the leaps of logic unfold.

</comment><comment><USER44> This is what most companies do. I worked for companies 20 years ago that would let you move to anywhere they had an office but you would be paid according to that location.

</comment><comment><USER45> Of course it does and the only force strong enough to counterbalance Zuckerberg would be a Facebook union. This is why organized labor has always pressed to set a floor for wages and other terms. Otherwise, the people who run the places will always try to pit different groups of workers against each other like this.

</comment><comment><USER46> yUo

KNow

_It

_Only

_Needs saying once.

</comment><comment><USER47> Zuckerberg's failure to graduate and build his enterprise via his former ivy league institution is showing.

Most of them have the same perceptions of their workforce: that employees are indentured servants who owe the company their time. The difference is Zuckerberg is willing to 'mask-off' admit this disregard for everyone but himself.

</comment><comment><USER48> They are sides to the coin, as they say. Salaries are X in San Francisco and NYC because its competitive and cost of living is high. So are taxes. But then ,if Facebook hired 12000 people in SF it means that they are worth the (say) $250K each a year and then some. If they work from Vietnam or Small Town, Georgia FB still gets the same benefits but the employees would have like a triple or quintuple salary.

I don't have an answer to this, but I'm almost certain that people in a foreign country office don't get paid the same as those that work in SF or NYC. But then, FB, Google and the likes are already super-profitable so it's hard to argue in their favor.

<comment><USER49> Maybe the value is in having the employees nearby?</comment></comment>


Education, Skills & Slavery… and why we're probably screwed. - <AUTHOR> http://www.marcus-povey.co.uk/2012/04/03/education-skills-slavery-and-why-were-probably-screwed/

<comment><USER2> Yeah, we don't need sales & marketing, art, fashion, good taste (I'd literally pay somebody to shop with me, if I didn't have a friend to help), good food, therapy, entertainment, fitness instructors... just coders. Yep.

You seem to be showing a really limited understanding of the value that is provided by the current and future workforce. It will shift towards creativity, rather than production, as production becomes more automated, but how is that a thing to be worried about?

Anecdotal: I know somebody who recently took a five euro stool from IKEA, and some colorful marble chips, and somehow fashioned it into this thing with a mosaic of a rose on it. I'm usually indifferent to this stuff, but I've seen it and it really is awesome. This person is considering selling these online, and I think it is not the worst idea. What the hell does this have to do with coding? Designing the unique rose and choosing the colours and having the idea in the first place were the value adding parts.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hmm. So let me see if I understand the article. To paraphrase:

We in the west are becoming ever richer as a society; material wealth beyond the dreams of our ancestors lies at our feet. The low skilled have a quality of life that the kings and queens of France would have killed for. Where once 90% of us had to till the soil in order for us to eat, now only a tiny fraction of society truly "needs" to work in order for us all to achieve unprecedented material wealth. Where once the poorest among us starved, now they have iPhones.

...and this is terrible.

Look, this may be right, but that's an awfully big jump that needs some explaining. And while we're at it, maybe a little more attention on why it would be possible or desirable for everyone to have a computer science degree would be nice. A lot of people would suggest that we're already in the middle of a massive education bubble, and that with the possible exception of some STEM fields, we have _too many_ people going to university.

But the biggest problem is that there is a fundamental disconnect between "we're getting richer and more productive" and "the poor are going to starve to death". The "managed decline" section of the post seems particular confused; it can't seem to decide if we're all getting richer or not. If we can't afford welfare, then we clearly aren't - but it was the process of getting richer that was meant to lead to an employment crisis. The implicit model behind this post appears wildly inconsistent, to put it mildly.

<comment><USER4> This is not about materials needs of the low skilled, but about the philosophical needs of the author. It's difficult to be a Marxist when, as you say, minimum wage routinely affords material comforts old royalty could only dream of. But, with a bit of effort, every Don Quixote finds his windmills.

<comment><USER5> Who affords comforts on minimum wage? I don't know anyone making that little who can even afford to move away from their parents.

<comment><USER4> You know what? I've worked for minimum wage, not so long ago. I could still afford running water, Internet, TV, electric lighting, refrigeration, my own automobile (second-hand ofc), and even a cross-country flight once. Weren't these unbelievable luxuries for the first 5000 years of civilization? What king or queen could have afforded half of them in 3000BC, 2000BC, 1000BC, 1AD, 1000AD, or even in Marx's time?

<comment><USER5> >I've worked for minimum wage, not so long ago. I could still afford running water, Internet, TV, electric lighting, refrigeration, my own automobile (second-hand ofc), and even a cross-country flight once.

Where were you living?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think what always annoys me about articles like this is that the author spends the entire article telling us how everything is changing and the future is completely different but the answer is to tax the rich a bit more. The answer to everything for certain people has always been "just tax the rich a bit more" apparently in this world of ours which is changing beyond recognition, that part never changes.

<comment><USER7> This is the go-to "solution" for people that don't know how to solve a problem.

<comment><USER8> To be fair, the rich are getting exorbitantly richer. CEOs are making multiple hundreds of times what one of their workers makes. We are heading back to the age of Rockefellers and Carnegies, where wealth is taken from the many so the few can be insanely rich.

And it's not like the educated aren't doing much better either. Google makes billions but doesn't pay a ton more than anywhere else. Wages and salaries have been pretty stagnant for those making less than 200k. Meanwhile, costs increase for a net loss of income.

So what else is there to do, other than tax the rich? That's the reality they are building for themselves by being so greedy.

<comment><USER9> But the poor are getting exorbitantly richer too. The so-called poor in our society pay $100+ a month for cable, have cell phones with data plans for all their 10+-year-old kids etc. And these are the people that get welfare for food and live in subsidized housing. They are not _poor_.

The fact that the rich are richer is not a problem when the entire population is getting richer.

<comment><USER8> The poor have an increasing standard of living but that hardly means they are getting 'richer'. The poor may have a roof over their heads, three square meals a day, and maybe even a vehicle, but they don't have health insurance and are typically locked in jobs and locations. Meanwhile, services that help the poor generally get cut - like public transportation, education, etc. But at least we'll always fund the jails.

The rich getting richer is definitely a problem when that wealth is never converted into something that benefits society and just sits around generation after generation. In the US we've completely removed the so-called 'death tax' which was actually a great thing. It forced wealth to be used instead of horded. Currently there's no incentive in the US to build a company to pass on to your kids, it's better just to keep it all in cash and hand that over. Minimal investment happens with such a system. Sure some is in stocks and bonds but generally in super-safe stuff so you just pay low capital gains and not real income tax.

There's just no excuse for CEO wages currently. The new CEO of JCPenny just got $53 million in stock for 4 months work. The stock is down since he joined. How many employees could've gotten even a little better wage instead of it going to 1 man?

<comment><USER6> I think the modern financial system is pretty efficient at using that cash while it's "sitting around", if it's in the bank it's being lent out to somebody, if it's in bonds it's financing either government or corporate activity and if it's in stocks then it's in a partial ownership of a company that helps capitalise that company. Just because that money is concentrated in a particular place doesn't mean it's not doing society some good.

I don't think people get rich or stay rich without putting in an incredible amount of work and I truly don't understand why you would penalise people for being successful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I agree with his heading _the future looks pretty dire for the low skilled_ , but he then descends into hyperbole. As hessenwolf says, there are plenty of non-technical skills that are very much in demand.

Those without such skills have always been at the bottom of the pile, but he's right in that things are going to get very much worse for them. If all you have to offer the world is your manual labour, you are not going to have a fun time of the next few decades.

However, his hope that _the tide of human suffering rises high enough for the murmurs of discontent from the slave castes turn to cries of revolution_ is mistaken. Every revolution in history has been made by the educated - sometimes _in the name of_ the proletariat, but never actually _by_ them.

The uneducated just get Bread and Circuses, and if the modern world knows how to make _anything_ , it's Bread and Circuses.

<comment><USER11> To be fair, most revolutions are started / headed by the bourgeois, but the foot solders are generally from the working class. Also, other than the American Revolution, most are about the suffering of the masses - at least plausibly.

<comment><USER8> Even some of the bourgeois can see inequality and act upon it. Slaves typically don't free themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> >A smart and socially responsible government would be ploughing every penny they can into education and welfare. Education to bring the technical competence of the population up to a level where they stand a chance of competing for the few ultra high skilled jobs the economy of the future has...

This makes no sense. If there are such a small number of ultra high skilled jobs the money you spend on education already will be enough to fill them. There's no point in spending buckets of money training people for jobs that aren't there. There are already a bunch of countries around the world where people with advanced degrees are selling trinkets to tourists because there aren't any jobs.

>His candour shocked me, and I asked what he suggested as a recommended course of action; "Leave.", was his reply, "Before it gets really bad."

And go where? If the situation really is as you've described, there isn't going to be anywhere to go.

</comment><comment><USER13> For at least 100,000 years, we've lived in a desperately poor world in which (to rip off Our Lady Peace) "every calorie's a war". We still live in one, if you take a global perspective, but we're moving out of such a state.

What do I mean by "desperately poor"? (I'm making a tall assertion since there's no economic comparison, at least none that we know of, to human history.) I mean that we're biologically programmed to rapidly exceed any carrying capacity. Economic growth throughout most of human history has been so slow as to be absorbed entirely in population growth, which has been great for priests and kings but terrible for subjects. Per-capita well-being almost hadn't changed (on a global scale; there were local ups and downs) between 10,000 BC and about 1840 AD. Technological advances were absorbed entirely into the task of supporting larger populations.

In a desperately poor world, you need to force everyone to work. People who aren't working are "lazy" and need to be punished. What most dictators actually want is to mechanize work: to replace these complex, difficult organisms (that sometimes break down and stop working) with mechanical ones without family ties, without belief in gods except the ones favorable to "the state", and without creativity or self-awareness or any desire for autonomy. That applies to ancient, semi-fictional dictators like Gilgamesh and it applies to modern, faceless dictatorships like 20th-century authoritarian communism. We're finally finding our way to the compromise, which is to use technology to create those mechanical workers (robots)-- because humans despise being treated as machines, and we're also really bad at the work they do well. Early computers were actually slower than human "computers", but had a lot more in the way of endurance.

Now we're moving toward a rich world and we're totally unprepared for it. We have millennia-old assumptions about peoples' relationships with work (that there will always be useful work for people to do, making it fair and reasonable to structure a society where everyone who can work must) that are about to become invalid, and none of our social structures are prepared for this change even on a national scale, much less a world one.

I'm starting to think we should just give stuff away. Instead of the IMF and World Bank putting these African countries into debt, let's just tax rich people a little more and pay people to build safe water systems. For free. There's plenty of infrastructural and environmental that the world needs, and if there aren't market incentives for people to do the right thing, then that's a perfect place for government to get involved: tax the rich, and pay underemployed Americans to do things that are good for the country and for the world.

For the record, world poverty is a complex problem and most of what we call "aid" isn't what we need to heal the world. Giving money to poor countries just makes their elites richer. We should be giving away water, medicine, technological access, and (most importantly) education.

<comment><USER14> Sorry, I don't think your comment is very well thought-out.

How about Roman and Byzantine (Costantinople) cities, where bread was distributed for free each day to every one in the city?

And both Rome and Byzantium suffered large population declines during some of their history.

Other counter-examples include medieval Europe, where average life expectancy was 60+ and they worked less hours than present-day Americans.

<comment><USER15> You can thank slave labor for the good life during these times. I am not talking about sweat shops, I'm talking about real slavery. It wasn't uncommon for the military to enslave people and take their land. If you had a problem making bread for 15 hrs a day or having the empire use your land to grow wheat without paying you, then you can just be killed. Most of the time it was done publicly.

Production of products back then wasn't too advanced. Many of the slaves had the experience and skills to contribute to a specific value chain of these empires. Using bread as an example, in their culture the slaves had experience baking and farming. The only difference is they aregoing to do it for free and the stuff they produce will go to their rulers. Any problems with that, you can get murdered.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > and in a few years time, not being able to code will be as big an impairment > as not being able to read and write.

Because, y'know, writing code is the _easiest thing in the world_. And, y'know, _anyone can do it_ , y'know.

<comment><USER17> The point is not that coding is easy. After all, reading and writing are difficult for the illiterate. I think what he's trying to get across is that technical skills are going to be necessary, not optional, if you wish to be employed in the future.

<comment><USER18> Well, as long as coders still need to shit, plumbers will still fetch good money.

<comment><USER19> Until engineers are finally able to build autonomous robots to fix your plumbing. And if they can fix your plumbing they can certainly fix a lot of other things.

<comment><USER18> That level of robotics (and generation of cheap energy to run them) will lead to a world where goods are plentiful and cheap. That in turn means the poor win, or rather the definition of "poor" is re-defined, as it always is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> _In the latter example, a single member of staff can now do the job of a row of checkout clerks, supported by maybe a trained engineer to fix faults in all the stores in a given region. Soon, maybe these too will become redundant (perhaps replaced by RFID scanners to scan your bags and bill your credit card automatically when leaving the store)._

One for PG's 'startup ideas so disruptive they're scary' list

</comment><comment> UK-AL I believe low skilled jobs will become few. The ones that will survive will be localised, but many more people will trying to get into them. So that will still be a problem.

The only way to solve this is in education. There is always something to discover or invent, but there is only so much plumbing work.

</comment><comment><USER21> Safe intelligence augmentation is a "when," not an "if."

Hell, Piracetam is extremely safe and seems to be worth around 10 IQ points. There's going to be lots more innovation on that frontier. We're already making anti-degenerative-diseases progress and hopefully figuring out nutrition for real, as well as cracking DNA and various personalized medicines.

Intelligence augmentation will be bitterly debated and fought against when it comes online, but it's a hell of a lot better than some of the alternatives.

<comment><USER22> Tell me more about Piracetam? I want 10IQ points :)

<comment><USER23> <http://www.thinkinginanutshell.com/nootropics>

But saying it's worth "10 IQ points" is a bit of a stretch. There's no drug that's like the one in _Limitless_. Piracetam and most other nootropics are either stimulants, like caffeine, or agents that protect against/repair damage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> i found an article that might be relevant

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism</comment>


The End of Google+ Games - <AUTHOR> http://www.insidesocialgames.com/2013/06/18/the-end-of-google-games/

<comment><USER2> It might have done better if it was open. They only allowed a few companies in with the idea that later they would open it up. Treating a web gaming market like consoles did not in fact work. Chrome Store was open so this always boggled my mind, considering Facebook was open as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> Google Games failed because Google+ is really just not that popular.

<comment><USER4> The article seem to suggest that they are just going with their new games platform which supports multiple platforms. Do you have a source on it's popularity?

<comment><USER3> No, just personal experience. Nobody I know uses G+ as a social network, and I also learned a bit about the social gaming audience when I interned at a social gaming analytics company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am reminded of Steve Yegge's "Platforms" rant.

> Our Google+ team took a look at the aftermarket and said: "Gosh, it looks > like we need some games. Let's go contract someone to, um, write some games > for us." Do you begin to see how incredibly wrong that thinking is now? The > problem is that we are trying to predict what people want and deliver it for > them.

[https://plus.google.com/112678702228711889851/posts/eVeouesv...](https://plus.google.com/112678702228711889851/posts/eVeouesvaVX)

</comment><comment><USER6> I wasn't even aware of their existence, but now, I feel better knowing g+ will not become a place where you have to block each game or person individually if you don't play games - like on the other social network.

<comment><USER7> From the beginning, G+ games were forbidden from polluting your stream. You only saw your friends' game activity when you explicitly went to the Game tab.

<comment><USER6> and that should bring another + to G+

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I never understood why they choose to do games and not have an easy to use event planning system. IMO that's why G+ is now a ghost town. Event planning on Facebook is dead simple and is the only thing keeping on there.</comment>


Elastic Energy Storage Systems Built W Nanotubes Could Match Li-Ion Battery - <AUTHOR> http://www.greencarcongress.com/2009/09/cnt-20090919.html <comment><USER2> A 2009 article? Seriously?</comment>


The Hot Startup Destination You Didn't Know About - <AUTHOR> http://www.dnfblog.com/estonia-the-hot-startup-destination-you-didnt-know-about/

<comment><USER2> Fail spam post linking to a 404 page and an auto play animation.

I wish I could down vote this.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Page not found", and painful auto-play animation kicks in.</comment>


Ask HN: How do freelancers compete with ulta-low bids? - <AUTHOR> I have experience in web application development and am looking to get into freelancing and consultancy(I'm currently a full-time employee as a software developer). How do I compete with individuals who market themselves overseas at impossible rates for living in first world countries? (~$7/hr) <comment><USER2> Simply put, we don't. Just exclude ourselves from that market by setting a much higher rate, and work for those for who money is not the object. This is in a way good, because they tend to be 'consumer' clients and market is easier made in that segment.

</comment><comment><USER3> Keep in mind that clients who pay low rates are not necessarily the best clients to work with, or ones you'd want to work for in the long run.

With that said, there are some niche freelance marketplaces you can consider using, but whether or not you can be a freelancer on those types of platforms depend on your skills as a developer. If your ability is not there yet, I'd recommend on working on that first to help build out your portfolio.</comment>


A RISC-V chip with built-in neural networks - <AUTHOR> https://hackaday.com/2018/10/08/new-part-day-the-risc-v-chip-with-built-in-neural-networks/ <comment><USER2> From the comments by user Zepan:

Hi, thanks for your report ! I'm zepan, the shopkeeper of Sipeed Tech. Taobao shop, Sipeed M1 is our first AI moulde ,and the second RISC-V module.

I need correct some mistake in your article, and supplement some information.

1\. The chip name is K210, not K201; and it is RV64GC.

2\. It have 8MB high speed SRAM, not 6MB.

3\. There are 5.9MB SRAM can be used for convolutional neural network acceleration, so, it is possible to run small model like tiny-yolo v2,MobileNet, as you see in face detection routine video.

4\. It isn't preoder mode before 10.7, but it is too popular that it is sold out in 10.7, and I change it to preorder mode.

More information:

1\. It can be up to 800MHz if you want, and give you more than 0.5TOPS, 240FPS detection speed @ QVGA.

2\. It is low power consume, unlike other ARM board; It only consume 0.35W when running face detection routine.

3\. Its IO speed in simple test is up to 300MHz

4\. It is possible to run openwrt on it as it have MMU, but too tight in ram.

5\. We're adding micropython to the board, and soon you can simply run python on it, you know python is the best lang for DL.

6\. We also have Mic Array board, and another fancy board in development.

7\. We have best price for those solution, Sipeed M1 module in $6, M1w(with wifi) in $7.5, the simple dev board with LCD, 2M pixel Camera, I2S MIC, Speaker PA, on board downloader, in $15.

8\. We have model shop soon, you can sell your model on our online modelshop.

9\. Our telgram link: [https://t.me/joinchat/IoJz2UoLTnlscC0WrCCNrg](https://t.me/joinchat/IoJz2UoLTnlscC0WrCCNrg)

Our qq group: 878189804 for AI, 826307240 (3k members group) for common discussion.

<comment><USER3> Possibly a very nice chip. A couple of questions: \- any ADC on board? \- I presume it uses QSPI flash memory? \- will the items be available on aliexpress?

<comment><USER4> I don't think it has a GP ADC on board, and the GPIO section only seems to talk about interrupts bus width configuration, so probably no ADC on those pins either; but the datasheet does mention an Audio Processing Unit "APU".

<comment><USER5> There's a I2S bus that's used for communicating with external component (audio codec) that has ADC/DAC. Perhaps APU is meant for that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here is a bit detail of the neural network chip. [1]

Anything aside, as a former embedded dev, I would never use there kinds of voodoo chinese chips. Don't get me wrong, it's not because it's from China. It is because of __zero__ well-written public documentation.

Just listing specs in datasheets is meaningless. The datasheet is translated but it does nothing to devs because it has absolutely zero about low level peripherals and its core. You cannot imagine how painful writing hardware- level code is when the documentation doesn't help. I'm 100% sure even the chinese version documentation has almost zero information too.

Look, they have a sort of SDKs and the only example is one-line-long Hello World. [2]

[1]; [https://github.com/kendryte/kendryte-doc- ds/blob/master/en/0...](https://github.com/kendryte/kendryte-doc- ds/blob/master/en/003.md#neural-network-processor-kpu)

[2]: [https://github.com/kendryte/kendryte-freertos- sdk/blob/devel...](https://github.com/kendryte/kendryte-freertos- sdk/blob/develop/src/hello_world/main.c)

<comment><USER7> It seems like it quantizes FP16 into INT8. That's a waste, because many models can work perfectly fine with binary/ternary weights, and some can even tolerate low precision activations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _"Documentation is available, although the datasheet will need to be translated"_

That's one way to see it. An alternative is _"If you're a young hacker, you better start learning Chinese, just as young hackers fifty-ish years ago didn't wait for translations, but learnt English"_

<comment><USER9> Lol, I'm literally already doing that (duolingo + Bunnie's Shenzhen book is a pretty good combo).

FWIW, there's not much in the datasheet. Pin assignments and broad features, but no ISA for the KPU (the CNN accelerator), no registers or addresses except some of the SRAM as far as I can see. More 'datasheet' than 'reference manual' since those terms get thrown around meaning different things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Since RISC-V is being mentioned here, thought maybe I took the opportunity to ask about it. I would like to learn more about instruction set, I know very little about it so I was planning on purchasing a book called _Computer Organization and Design_ , it comes in three flavors: MIPS, RISC-V, and ARM. Which one would be the best option to read of those given, or which one would be the most relevant where I would get the most value out of it. Can anyone provide a minimal suggestion? Thank you in advance!

<comment><USER11> They're all RISC architectures (ARM maybe isn't any longer given all the extensions), so the treatment will be largely the same. RISC-V is the newest of those instruction set architectures and is the most cleanly designed, so the book probably won't need to explain legacy cruft that MIPS and ARM include but that aren't essential to understanding how computers work.

Unless you have a reason to work with MIPS or ARM I would go with the RISC-V edition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Since Nvidia is replacing Falcon with RISC-V there is also neural networks with build in RISC-V.

</comment><comment><USER13> Once it becomes available again I would really like to order one (or more), but the web page linked from the article for ordering is in Chinese, and I didn't see any way to get to an English language ordering page.

<comment><USER14> Use a Taobao agent. They buy the stuff from Taobao, and remail it to you.

yoybuy.com is an example for one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This offers an order of magnitude more computation per $ or per watt than anything else in its field.

I bet they'll be out of stock for a really long time sadly :-(

</comment><comment><USER16> Please let me know the URL for online purchase of Sipeed M1 K210</comment>


Startup solving quitting smoking via cognitive behavioural therapy?Feedback pls - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/app/quit-genius-a-new-way-to-quit-smoking/id1234288038?mt=8 <comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone!

We're a small London-based team who have spent the last year working on Quit Genius - an iOS app which delivers cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) to help people quit smoking.

It's in early beta so feedback appreciated!

<comment><USER2> Attempting to try out the app on a slow internet connection and it's not letting me past the signup page (probably my fault because of slow internet).

Is it necessary to make users sign up and login before trying the app out? Especially given that it's a 50MB download. The DoB, password (8+ characters), confirm password fields are also quite annoying for a first time user just wanting to check out the app, but maybe that's just me

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. We've noticed that signing up can take a while on a slow connection and are rebuilding our backend to address that.

Really appreciate the feedback with respect to forcing signup/login before trying the app out. We'll definitely explore alternatives to get people started on the programme quicker!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Very nice :)</comment>


Ask HN: If I had to do a phD in ML(CS) which area do I focus on? - <AUTHOR> I am trying to understand which are the areas in ML that are still in the nascent stages and require extensive research. NLP has been around for half a decade now and is well understand but a few pretty well. CV is picking up now and with the large number of startups it is bound to make great progress.
If I had to start a phD in the near future - which area should I focus on - such that 5-8 years from now it will be commercialized.
I do understand that there is an inherent risk involved. Understanding those risks I am interested to see what other folks think. <comment><USER2> I graduated with my PhD (in CS/SE) 18 months ago after working in the industry for a very long time before that.

Doing a PhD in ML/CS is a very good idea if you already have a solid understanding. Based on my experiences and observations the most critical success factor is the research group you join and who your supervisory team are. Joining a sub-optimal group (relative to your area of interest) makes the journey much harder and most likely it will take longer too.

My advice is that you track down (Google Scholar is good for this) papers in ML that are of interest to you. Many will be behind paywalls, but you will get an idea of what they cover from the abstracts. While doing this, record the names of the authors and their affiliations. Fairly quickly you will notice who the thought leaders are in your area of interest. Then check out their biographies on their websites. Based on that you should write a proposal for what you are interested in and email them.

If you get the opportunity to keep working (even if part-time) then many research groups will be even more interested in you joining them. Industry- academia collaborations are relatively rare, but much sought after.

You mention NLP. Whilst there have been some impressive breakthroughs, most NLP based systems are guessing using statistics and not applying any logical inferences. That is an area that I have a strong interest in but so far no takers for post-doc work in that area. If you or anybody reading this is interested, then please contact me on my profile's email address.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the reply! I could not find your email address on your profile. If you could please share - then I had a few more follow up questions and I am curious about the opportunity you have written about. Thanks again</comment></comment>