Inadequacy and Modesty - <AUTHOR> https://www.lesserwrong.com/posts/zsG9yKcriht2doRhM/inadequacy-and-modesty <comment><USER2> Wow. The section beginning from _"If I had to name the single epistemic feat..."_ and ending at _"...on modern-day Earth."_ might be the most riveting description of finance I've read in recent memory. If that series of bullet points doesn't grab someone's interest and make them want to engage in the robust hyper-competition of modern capitalism, I'm not sure anything will.

Really, that entire example of price discovery as a demonstrable core competency and _focus_ of humanity is very interesting to think about. This is a great (and cynical) observation, though it's much more powerfully delivered in the context of the article:

"Our civilization _cares_ about whether Microsoft stock will be priced at $37.70 or $37.75 tomorrow afternoon."

<comment><USER3> > "Our civilization cares about whether Microsoft stock will be priced at > $37.70 or $37.75 tomorrow afternoon."

This is not a good thing. Vastly more effort is being poured into this than is being dedicated to averting climate catastrophe.

In the future, this era will be looked back on as the pinnacle of the grotesque irrationality and chaos of Capitalism, if there's anyone even left to have such thoughts.

<comment><USER4> Somewhat ironically, if you want less societal resources to be spend on price discovery, you have to make price discovery easier. Ie unleash the full powers of the market via unlimited short selling, exotic derivatives, elimination of the sub penny rule ([https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2012/hft_whats_broken.htm...](https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2012/hft_whats_broken.html)) etc. If less effort can discover prices quicker, there will be less money to be made total, and thus in equilibrium those bright PhDs will rather go and help eg Google sell more ads.

<comment><USER5> Im not a believer in the efficient market hypothesis. Remember, it's a hypothesis.

Also, The grand central station analogy is just that, an analogy.

Both of these dangerously oversimplify the phenomenon they try to describe. Modern Markets are unfathomably complex systems.

The Efficient market hypothesis is useful as a tool in reaching approximate, generalized, comprehension (ie: for lays and as a peripheral complement for practictioners), but not at all useful in application (some wonderful historical examples out there, study up!).

The fact is that price and markets are not mechanistic. Price has some seemingly objective measures, but those are actually based on projections of future value.

Price is based on collectively determined projections/belief of future value, sure, but this talk of markets becoming more efficient is moot, as we are seeing that, while reacting faster and in more iterations due to transaction efficiency, those don't help us find a 'better' indexable measure of the future value. Furthermore, transactuon costs have lowered, but it's arguable that the diversity of perspectives governing price have been reduced quite drastically.

1) unquestioning belief in efficient market hypothesis is a classic 'confuse the word-concept rose with the actual rose' fallacy. It doesn't work in making actual decisions.

2) price is a subjective gauge of expected future value. As we arent in the future it's impossible to have a more efficient price, since there is no objectivity with which to match.

3) price finding efficiency ≠ transaction efficiency

4) transaction efficiency has improved concurrently with the hyperstandardization of perspective, method and hypercentralization of participation, which has made price-finding of 'financial markets' much less effective as a universal gauge with any bearing on physical markets composed of commercial transactions with merit to anyone other than speculators in abstract 'markets.'

5\. Considering all of the above, your argument that improved transaction efficiency is the same as improved price efficiency, and that faster and cheaper transactions will reduce brain-drain seems about as silly as the 'we don't need to worry about babyloniancivilization-induced mass-extinction because singularity.'

<comment><USER4> The term 'efficient market hypothesis' is a bit of a misnomer in the singular. It's actually a bunch of hypothesis that eg differ in strength. The strongest form, that markets knows everything, is probably wrong. The weakest form, that it's hard work to beat those traders at hedge funds and Goldman Sachs with information you got out of the evening news, is almost certainly true. Exactly which strength in the middle applies in the real world is an empirical question and depends eg on the markets under observation.

In any case, [https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2012/hft_whats_broken.htm...](https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2012/hft_whats_broken.html) makes for some interesting arguments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really appreciate this essay, if just for categorizing a type of argument I've run into multiple times myself. I've often shared ideas with others and found that when ideas cross a certain "weirdness threshold" and are sufficiently deviant from mainstream thought, the "modest epistemology" argument crops up. After all - if weird idea X was so great, it should already exist. I've never had a proper standard response to this sort objection.

Sometimes the key to recognizing something is wrong is the ability to categorize it.

<comment><USER7> That's likely to simply flip your current intuitions in favor of investigating more ideas that pass the weirdness threshold. Without considering the specific context of ideas under discussion, I'm not sure that gets you anywhere.

<comment><USER8> One convenient metric is "how likely is it that someone with the particular knowledge required to think of this also has the problem I do?"

<comment><USER9> Maybe. But there are two modalities to this:

1) Implementation often takes _one clever person_ with the requisite knowledge and then everybody copies it if it's a good idea. BitTorrent is a good example. Lots of people could have developed BitTorrent or developed something _almost_ like BitTorrent, but Bram Cohen pulled it all together into one neat, usable package. This modality is probably harder to spot as the "Am I actually clever?" question is difficult to answer with good Bayesian priors.

2) Implementation requires someone with an intersection of skills that limits how many people can exist. My last experience getting an EEG is a good example: the individual pieces of EEG equipment are absolutely primitive to any decent electrical engineer and the user interface to the software is horrifically bad (one step up on reading a paper chart strip). Yet, to improve it, you need an intersection of low-noise analog design, UI programing, signal feature detection and extraction, machine learning applicable to signals, and knowledge of how EEG's work and are used for diagnosis. There simply aren't that many people with all of those characteristics that could move the front forward. However, this modality is _VERY_ easy to spot: "Do I have the intersection of skills necessary to be this person?" is a very straightforward question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have been operating at the intersection of engineering and entrepreneurship for my whole career. Two key traits I notice in entrepreneurs is overwhelming optimism and the ability to take huge risks without batting an eyelash.

Conversely, on the engineering side, my fellow nerds are almost paralyzed by over-thinking things and wondering about what the "experts" say, if a decision is "safe", agonizing over career moves, etc. The result is a safe, careful life with above-average to upper-class income, but avoiding the risks that would lead to super-charged results.

This essay reads to me like the ultimate nerd analysis of why you should never take any risks. Why start a company when every good idea is taken, and MicroApple AmaGooFace can destroy you the moment you get traction? Why buy any stock when the smartest people on the planet already priced it accurately (surely you don't know more than them)? Why do anything outside of mainstream thought at all?

I assume future chapters of his book will address why the rational market hypothesis is incorrect, or why it can be rational to buy AMZN when the market (obviously) knows more than you, but I wanted to comment on this specific post.

The truth is that infinite opportunities exist to make money, make an impact, start something worthwhile. However there is a limited supply of people with the balls (or ovaries) to seize these opportunities and take the necessary risks. So many people settle for the cushy life, handcuffed to the big company.

The risk takers earn the rewards, and even if they fail, the journey to failure almost always leads to meeting tons of people, tons of opportunities, and a future path that leads back to the cushy high-paying job they tried to avoid.

So buy the stock, start the company, assume you know more than the experts, take the risks. You can always go back to the safe life.

<comment><USER11> The author is not saying that you shouldn't take any risks or disagree with the masses - nearly the opposite. Essentially the article states that while there are some circumstances where it is true that you almost certainly can't 'beat the market' (the stock market being one), one _shouldn 't_ believe that if something was a good idea it would have already been done. Apparently in the next chapter he will lay out a framework for identifying the specific areas that are most likely to present these opportunities.

<comment><USER12> What's beating the market mean to you?

The meme that the s&p's performance +/\- is as good as you should expect to do is so bizarre to me. I know where it comes from -- I've read the same stuff about warren buffet's bet and everything else.

After having traded a while myself it's just so hard to believe. I don't think it's axiomatic for people who don't have enough capital to overcome liquidity. I wonder if someone has ever paid a PR firm to perpetuate that idea.

If the PR firm were successful, it would drive more people away from active investing towards index funds, lowering volatility. That would help explain why shorting the VIX has c-c-c-c-clobbered the S&P's performance for a few years. If I start to see news stories about rags to riches stories I'll probably start going long volatility. Haha.

My most successful trades this year have been betting against the consensus. The consensus is hilarious and terrible about a lot of things. I bought shares of a good property/casualty insurance company the friday ahead of irma. It was down like 35% in a month as the news convinced traders florida was going to sink. My theory was that if the storm was as bad as advertised, the stock would move about sideways. If it was anything less than there was money to be made. I was up 20% on the trade by Monday.

In August when North Korea news hype was peaked and missiles were being tested, I shorted the vix hard. I didn't think the panic was sustainable. Because of how much I put on it that was probably my riskiest trade. Made the S&P's YTD twice over in 2 weeks.

In June I saw silver flash crash to 14$ an ounce and that just felt stupidly cheap for such a useful precious metal. Sold it for the S&Ps YTD about a week after. There was no research in this, I was just into hobby jewelry making and thought "hmph that isn't right."

I watch the news pretty regularly and I'm mostly happy to stay uninvested unless I see an opportunity to bet against hype. Then I put about 10-20% of my savings on the hypothesis and I beat the market pretty handily doing that, with less of my cash on the line and everything.

I guess one of these days I'll have so much money my block trades will get me sniped or I'll lose 5x in a row and start investing in the S&P again or something. Haha.

<comment><USER13> From where comes your confidence that you are not "picking up pennies in front of a steamroller"?

<comment><USER12> I have very little confidence. That's why I stay mostly in cash and largely avoid single company equities. I capture my gains when it feels "early" and I leave a lot of money on the table doing this. All these behaviors come from trying to limit my exposure to the steamroller. The trades I get excited about though are ones that feel like the steamroller has already gone through and may have arrived prematurely.

The S&P gives me even less confidence.

The sector rotation often feels so artificial and controlled. Couple weeks ago when Apple had their keynote and the market reacted badly to it, I noticed bank stocks rising the next day about exactly as much as Apple lost market cap. Just feels like there's a smoothing function running on the S&P right now. If that function has operators then there's an enormous and still growing short opportunity for them to someday turn it off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _When we critique a government, we don't usually get to see what would actually happen if the government took our advice. But in this one case, less than a month after my exchange with John, the Bank of Japan—under the new leadership of Haruhiko Kuroda, and under unprecedented pressure from recently elected Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who included monetary policy in his campaign platform—embarked on an attempt to print huge amounts of money, with a stated goal of doubling the Japanese money supply.5

Immediately after, Japan experienced real GDP growth of 2.3%, where the previous trend was for falling RGDP. Their economy was operating that far under capacity due to lack of money.6_

Given that Japan has been in a slump for nearly 2 decades and that everything tried before didn't work (including stimulus spending), it's reasonable that there would be skepticism.

<comment><USER15> The fundamental assumption of the article seemed to be that the Bank Japan's committee are idiots; any further inquiry into why they make the decision they do stops there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I found this article convincing. However, I also found Scott Alexander's article about epistemic learned helplessness convincing:

[http://squid314.livejournal.com/350090.html](http://squid314.livejournal.com/350090.html)

<comment><USER17> That Scott Alexander's "Epistemic learned helplessness" blog post (2013) -- is an excellent generic rebuttal against Eliezer's arguments.

Eliezer's argumentation is bright, inspiring and mostly right. But then Eliezer makes a critical mistake in his reasoning and the overall conclusion is just plain wrong (such as "buy cryogenics").

<comment><USER18> > That Scott Alexander's "Epistemic learned helplessness" blog post (2013) -- > is an excellent generic rebuttal against Eliezer's arguments.

It's a fully general counterargument against _anything_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Most bad decisions find their origin in either relying to heavily on ones own thoughts, or not sufficiently trusting them.

Having a good meta-instinct for knowing when to cede to conventional wisdom and when to trust your own instincts is like a superpower. It's standing on the shoulders of giants and then reaching a little further.

Building a strong conceptual foundation around this problem could be really useful.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is very eloquent but somewhat verbose and rambling in parts. The only solid take aways i pulled from it are:

1\. The assumption that if its easy than any one would have done it in some markets is very true but is not a universal maxim.

2\. You have to search out the markets where that is less true.

To expand on the station analogy with the $20 bill they mention in the middle of the station where the traffic is highest but what about in the alley behind the station or next to the stand with the new careless employee? Arbitrage isnt just limited to the most trodden popular paths (s&p 500). The context always changes the ebb and flow surrounding arbitrage, whereas you cant fight the raging river and expect to beat it, you may find opportunity in a swirling eddie

<comment><USER21> It's not really true. There are real cases where people have radical, obvious insights. Look at history of science and math!

<comment><USER22> Science and math are a repeating story of _civilization-level of knowledge_ reaching a threshold at which some breakthroughs become easy to figure out, followed by a bunch of smart people making those breakthroughs simultaneously.

I.e. the famous scientists were not _that_ smart - they were just the smartest and therefore first to react to the waterline of knowledge in their domain rising high enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> LesserWrong? What is its relation to LessWrong? It talks about itself as "LessWrong 2.0". Is that an official statement or a figure of speech?

Edit: This is embarrassing. I had had written "its" as "it's". I need to find a way to do penance.

<comment><USER24> It seems to be a rewrite of the site that will have LessWrong data migrated to it if things go well: [http://lesswrong.com/lw/pfl/lw_20_open_beta_live/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/pfl/lw_20_open_beta_live/)

<comment><USER25> Yunyu's correct. (I'm one of the people on the transition team.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The market price is based on people's intuition multiplied by the money they control. There are plenty of situations where the majority of the money ends up on the opposite side from the smart bettors. Eventually, in a long enough time frame where agents don't die, yes the smart bettors will control most of the money. But the world is imperfect, there are plenty of fools still with money.

</comment><comment><USER27> Next chapter has been posted: [https://equilibriabook.com/an-equilibrium-of- no-free-energy/](https://equilibriabook.com/an-equilibrium-of-no-free-energy/)

</comment><comment><USER28> For a somewhat contrary view, there is Richard Feynman and _Disregard!_ [1]

I tend to fundamentally disagree with the notion of this paper. For a reason why let's consider something like quantum mechanics and relativity. Right now relativity and quantum mechanics are incompatible in domains where they intersect. There is an absolutely _enormous_ incentive to reconcile this. The Nobel Prize would be little more than a formality for a discovery of this magnitude. And the best and brightest in the world have been working on this for many decades.

So the implication of this paper is that, thus, you probably shouldn't try to improve the work here. Of course that's nonsensical since it's obviously provably in need of improvement. And there will be some individual, or group of individuals, that manage to succeed here and push humanity that much more forward.

He relies on examples that are not falsifiable. The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. In particular in his stock market example, he argues that it is operating optimally by little more than an appeal to authority and a lack of contrary evidence. It's like saying that no human will be able to run faster than Usain Bolt since lots of people (and massive supporting teams) are spending their lives trying to do just that (with 0 barriers to entry) and all have failed, so there's no reason to believe any given individual could ever do better. Of course the one thing the olympics shows is that records are set only to be broken.

I suppose it depends on your life view, but I think people should pursue that which interests them - even if an objective analysis would lead them to believe that their chances of _meaningful_ (and who gets to determine that?) success are negligible. And I would take this a step further. Not only _should_ people do this but the entire progression of humanity is _contingent_ on people doing this. The people that make true progress in a field tend to love that field. And their progress is more a consequence of that love than any sort of higher level objective analysis of fields where their best chances of success lay.

Maybe it's best to conclude with a simple counter example. He mentions, repeatedly, you should question yourself if you see a $20 bill laying on the floor in a populated area for hours. And this is supposed to be meaningful. However, instead of relying on a likely very rare outside force (somebody dropping a $20 bill) let's consider something that's an entirely typical and common social phenomena - elevators. How many people have come to a crowded area just outside an elevator, only to find that the problem is that nobody has pushed the button? There's certainly a major incentive to push that button, and there's no barrier to entry other than the arrogance of thinking everybody else might be a bit silly - yet time and again we find _nobody pushed the button._

[1] - [https://stepsandleaps.wordpress.com/2017/10/17/feynmans- brea...](https://stepsandleaps.wordpress.com/2017/10/17/feynmans-breakthrough- disregard-others/)

<comment><USER29> I don't think the article is arguing that no one should pursue hard problems that have economic incentives to be solved, it is saying that when you are a non-expert, you should defer to popular opinion. There's nothing stopping people from pursing the hard (yet profitable pursuits), the article mentions people who make their livelihoods in these arenas and does not say they are wasting their time.

> He relies on examples that are not falsifiable. The absence of evidence is > not evidence of absence. In particular in his stock market example,

The article includes an counter-example, and we all know that they exist. People have bet against the market prices and come out ahead. The article is saying that such an event should not attributed to skill.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Eliezer, as always, vastly overstates the value of his own intelligence and intelligence in general. I believe this essay is one of the worst he has ever written.

The reasoning on this is correct. The problem is, he is arguing from hilariously inaccurate axioms. For instance, he seems axiomatically convinced that "creating trillions of dollars of value" is an objective good. That is totally fine for people ideologically "all in" to ideologically cooky notions of macroeconomics, which is one of the most intellectually shaky disciplines still in circulation.

Since he seems familiar with the "two economists walking down the street" parable, I will offer him this one:

===

Two economists were walking down the street one day when they passed two large piles of dog turds.

The first economist said to the other, "I'll pay you $20,000 to eat one of those piles of turds." The second one agrees and chooses one of the piles and eats it. The first economist pays him his $20,000.

Then the second economist says, "I'll pay you $20,000 to eat the other pile of turds." The first one says okay, and eats the turds. The second economist pays him the $20,000.

They resume walking down the street.

After a while, the second economist says, "You know, I don't feel very good. We both have the same amount of money as when we started. The only difference is we've both eaten turds."

The first economist says: "Ah, but you're ignoring the fact that we've engaged in $40,000 worth of trade!"

<comment><USER19> Disagree with your view of the essay, but your anecdote is interesting. I learned something from analyzing the anecdote with inappropriate sincerity.

Why- of their own free will- would each economist offer $20,000 to eat the turd? There can essentially only be one answer. They value the schadenfreude or sense of power derived from watching their fellow economist eat the turn at greater than $20,000.

Why would each economist eat the turd? They value an extra $20,000 more than they value avoiding the disgust associated with eating the turd.

Long story short, that $40,000 of seemingly destructive trade appears to have improved both their lives according to their own value functions.

<comment><USER31> This story is a remarkable reductio-ad-absurdum of the Subjective Theory of Value.

<comment><USER32> No, it isn't. It introduces a non-standard situation where the actors' motivations are hard to model, and results in a non-standard outcome. That doesn't help build the firmer X-free worldmodel that I would count as a refutation of X.

It requires us to posit someone who's money-hungry enough to do something disgusting for a large amount of money and yet who still would spend _all_ of that gain to get some (for-most-people) trivial kick out of seeing someone else do the same.

Well, yes, if two people both had that bizarre preference set, and you fully intuited the implications of that situation, it _wouldn 't_ be strange to view it as creation of that much value, because both of them satisfied each other's values.

I don't see how this parable carries more kick than if you cut off the parable halfway through and said, "hah! Someone ate feces for money! That's silly, isn't it?" Yes, bizarre values lead to bizarre outcomes. But then, if that's all you want to prove, then just "go Rule 34" and link some fetish sites.

To the extent that the parable has a valuable lesson, it's "back-and-forth exchange of money for services, if officially canceled out, is a kind of gain in utility that doesn't show up in formal accounting". (E.g. Alice provides romantic satisfaction to Bob, who simultaneously provides romantic satisfaction to Alice. They do not transfer money on net. "We're right where we were before, and didn't create any value." Um, yeah you did.)

Or, if the point is that decisions can be regretted (which you could tweak the Alice/Bob example to include) , sure, but that doesn't shed a lot of light on the Subjective Theory of Value.

<comment><USER30> It seems abundantly clear to me that humans routinely take actions that are far more irrational than eating a turd for $20,000. There are literally TV shows dedicated to that type of thing.

The whole point is to draw absurdity to the Subjective Theory of Value -- the claim that, if a trade occurs, the trade must be Good, because both participants (with full information!) made a rational (!) calculation that this trade was in their best (!) long-term (!) interests. I find this proposition -- one that rests at the heart of economics -- to be incredibly dangerous and outrageously wrong, but since our entire economy / political system sort of depends on this being true, I don't know what to do about it.

<comment><USER32> I was replying to the idea that the parable demonstrates those points for someone who doesn't already agree. (And that's not the SVT you're describing, but the SVT plus some ancillary claims that I agree are flawed -- see the last paragraphs of my other reply.)

<comment><USER30> I'm curious to pick your brain about this. What is a better concept to describe the idea that "if a trade occurs, it is Good?" I agree STV does contain real insights about the nature of trading, but there's some ideological extrapolation that transforms obviously correct things like marginal diminishing utility to "justifying every trade as it occurs as inexorably good"

See also: [http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html)

<comment><USER32> You're actually right, I think -- I don't know of a specific (standard) term to describe that fallacy, and every time I've criticized its appearance, I've had to make up a neologism or spell it out expliclity [1]. ("Vulgar Keynesianism" is one term for it, but it's not the only school that does it so it's a fair term for the precice concept.)

In any case, I was just trying to make the point that

a) The turd-trade example does not help the debate about the underlying concepts -- regardless of label -- because it's uses an intuition breaking situation to build intuitions, which is no more insightful than pointing and laughing at people with bizarre preferences.

b) STV is not the same as the thing the parable is criticizing.

[1] Example comment I remember: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12242525#12243088](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12242525#12243088)

<comment><USER30> Man. Thank you so much. "Vulgar Keynesianism" is indeed a very good summary of my central complaint. although it arrives at it from a totally opposite direction. Sidenote: I miss when Paul Krugman was actually good :(.

[http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/vulgar.html](http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/vulgar.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I got a snortchuckle out of "Comments sorted by magical algorithm".

</comment><comment><USER34> A truly fascinating read. Actually inspired me to preorder the mentioned book. I've never read a book this strongly Econ, but it interests me to no end so this should be an interesting journey.

</comment><comment><USER35> That was a good read, thanks for posting.

</comment><comment><USER36> Wow, that constantly updating page title is irritating. Couldn't even read because of the constant animation at the top of the page.

<comment><USER37> It's a new site and is on the todo list to fix.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Does this blog have a RSS feed?

<comment><USER39> Yes: [https://www.lesserwrong.com/feed.xml](https://www.lesserwrong.com/feed.xml). Firefox auto-detected it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> All that Eliezer's argumentation is thought provoking and fun.

Just keep in mind that Eliezer is good at suggesting mental frameworks for making decisions, but fails when trying to make the best practical decisions himself.</comment>


The Complex Contracts Between Ke$ha, Dr. Luke and Sony - <AUTHOR> http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/6890375/shouldnt-keshas-fans-advocate-for-sony-to-set-dr-luke-free-instead <comment><USER2> link should be changed to original source:

[http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/shouldnt-keshas- fan...](http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/shouldnt-keshas-fans- advocate-sony-869749)</comment>


Fingerprint Sensor on Your Phone Is Not as Safe as You Think - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/10/technology/fingerprint-security-smartphones-apple-google-samsung.html <comment><USER2> Fingerprints don't have to be perfect security, they merely have to be sufficient for the application.</comment>


Show HN: Milkshake – Make Websites from a Phone - <AUTHOR> https://milkshake.app <comment><USER3> This is high quality product that produces high quality media and, most importantly, it is a breeze to use (proof: [https://msha.ke/ronilan/](https://msha.ke/ronilan/))

However, "Make Websites from a Phone" is an illusive target. I've had a startup circa 2013 with a somewhat similar focus. It got to a working MVP (sort of) and VC term-sheet before it imploded. All that's left is this video ([https://vimeo.com/68029789](https://vimeo.com/68029789)). There have been multiple other teams/products trying to crack the same nut, generally without success, or with success that is significantly smaller than what the desktop platforms (wix, strikingly etc.) have had in same time period.

The "You Only Link Once" and Instagram focus are a smart angle. Hope this one flys.

<comment><USER4> Have you tried opening the page from a desktop browser? It's just stuck in a tiny phone-sized box..

<comment><AUTHOR> :-) Yes that's intentional, we've started life completely focused on mobile and Instagram (which is broadly only used on mobile).

It means that we get to try to focus on making one experience strong. That said, ultimately the user is providing data which is independent of the look, so evolving a desktop variant is totally doable.

We're (currently) keen to not necessarily run towards traditional responsive design. The reason being that you have a lot of design consequences / unintentional visual limitations - it's one of the reasons a lot of websites kind of look the same, especially from website builders and tools (they go heavy on block layouts to make it easy to deal with responsive).

All that said, it's iteration 1, and our launch is really a 'beta' launch more than anything.

<comment><USER5> > you have a lot of design consequences / unintentional visual limitations

Would you mind elaborating on what you think those limitations are?

I feel like it's easy to say 'nah we don't do responsive' instead of figuring out a way do just do it. I can't come up with a single example that I couldn't translate from mobile to desktop in some way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, I didn't write that very well. I think the consequences are pragmatic ones. In order to achieve more complicated visual designs you have to do a lot more work to make them considerate of all the different situations they might appear in. So pragmatically you either make less designs, or you limit the designs to simpler to scale paradigms (like block layouts) which require less pre-consideration.

As the foundation of this app is the idea that a user can just switch layout/visuals, it needs a lot of visual looks to switch between. Doing a lot of those, and having the responsiveness, and then iterating on app/data model features (which need updates to those designs) is quite a drain on speed.

All that said, since you asked for a single _actual_ example, I have one which I think is quite problematic (though could be addressed in _some_ way, just not easily). We've kicked around the idea of letting users place stickers over the top of their design in order to customise them (a little like Instagram Stories), it's not obvious how to migrate a user input visual through a responsive set of designs without a lot of trouble (the most obvious solution being to guess and then let the user tweak at different responsive breaks).

Hopefully that convinces you that it wasn't _just_ a throwaway 'nah we don't do responsive' :) I'm sure we could do better than where we currently are, and it is an iteration one release!

<comment><USER6> How about if you flip phone vertically app user can see what tablets and computers see.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wish you nothing but the best. Made an aggregator website in literally 10 clicks as I was on the toilet. Will share it on my story

Just my $0.02 — $9/mo and it's a done deal... Later.com offers that linkin.bio which starts from their $19.90/mo plan (I use Buffer though for my agency's marketing contracts)

This one's super lightweight, can probably be optimised (if it isn't already) to be even more lightweight. Fantastic. Join us at Reddit.com/r/saas (I'm a moderator there) and tell us the story — anything u need, let me know

<comment><USER8> Assuming the target segment for this product really is "Instagram users who want a link in their bio" per someone else's comment in this thread, I'd price it

$1.99/mo for limited concurrent users / bandwidth $9.99/mo for premium with """unlimited""" users / bandwidth

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Honestly surprised there's a "need" for this. This is the kind of thing I would shoot down as a business idea, simply from the standpoint of - <USER2> needs that.

I'm obviously wrong as there are successful examples like universe out there. But boy does it show me that I'm often completely detached from the consumer in these instances.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fwiw I can remember a time when I was like "Why on earth would anyone want Squarespace when they can _host_ their own site!?"

These days I try to assume I probably don't understand! For the start of this product, we had a Design Sprint where we came up with the idea, and then brought in real Instagram users to test the idea on (with very lowfi prototypes) befor actually building!

<comment><USER10> _These days I try to assume I probably don 't understand!_

We could learn so much more in life and have such better interactions if this were the default condition going into the unknown.

"Maybe there's something here to be learned"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> You need to get this on Android. For the majority of iOS users, they have access to a larger screen so will prefer creating on that. The problem this solves is less pronounced. But for emerging markets, their Android phone is the first and only access to the internet. Designing a website on a phone isn't a novelty, it's the only way they'll ever move beyond social media profiles to establish an online presence.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agree completely! We have a spike this week to look at the work to roll out an Android version. That said, we also need to weigh up the roadmap overall and tradeoffs of what the iOS app users need out of the gates

<comment><USER11> I would almost be tempted to drop iOS. The holy grail for a product is to find the problem you can provide a 10x better solution to. I wonder if you'll ever be able to be 10x better for creating a website for the vast majority of iOS users. But I would bet a lot of money that you can be 10x better for a majority of Android users. Earning revenue from that market is harder, but it's not an insurmountable challenge.

Anyway, you know what's best for your product. Great work on what you've done so far.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a such a weird niche. Personally I love "business card" websites but I feel that this is not a correct way to approach this.

Why stick with this weird format instead of some responsive grid/flex design? Why only limit to two slide pages? It seems like you guys reinventing wheel here and burdening yourself with unecessary restrictions.

I swear the first person to adapt hugo/lektor/pelican for casual mobile markets will strike gold. It's a static website that you can charge like 2$/month and still have a 90% profit margin.

Sorry if I come out negative but Milkshake looks a bit of a wasted opportunity here.

<comment><USER13> Because almost nobody browses Instagram from a desktop website. IG themselves discourage it by providing a gimped experience on web. So there is a 90%+ chance that anybody clicking on the link in the IG bio is already on a mobile device.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Messaging feedback: try leading with the imagery in your video (i didn't play the video until reading the whole page and still not understanding what the product was):

\- shot of instagram profile page, with highlighted link to website \- shot of what that website looks like

"oh, that's what this is for." and maybe even more specifically: why do you need one of these? so you can sell shit.

In hindsight, I see how "Insta website" was trying to convey this, but it wasn't clear to me that "Insta" was referring specifically to Instagram /directly/\--I thought it was just millenial-hip short of "instant."

And "turn your link in bio into" I at first parsed as "turn your linkedin bio into." Then I was like "oh I guess that's not a typo" but I still wasn't sure which bio it was referring to and it seemed like odd phrasing.

Then I hit "Pick a card. Cards are..." and was like "ugh, yep, this is very much a hip app thing i'm not going to understand." instead of leading with a vocab word and then defining it, just skip the vocab word and use its definition. "Pick a page template. Visitors can swipe between your pages just like an instagram story."

(obviously, i'm an old soul and don't really understand instagram. maybe "card" is already more familiar than "page" for instagram folks?)

good luck.

</comment><comment><USER15> Congrats. This looks great. I had wished for something similar not a long while ago [0], and I'm really looking forward to using it. In Asia esp, commerce over IM apps is huge.

So, the only suggestion I'd like to give (without having used it) is that is it possible to make it so simple that folks could create websites from messaging apps like WhatsApp?

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19772719](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19772719)

PS With Firefox+uMatrix I'm unable to view the video on your landing page. Just thought you should know if you choose to fix it.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a cool idea! I will give that some mulling with the team!

(And thanks for the bug report, will get it sorted)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Milkshake as a product and company looks well executed.

However, I wonder if these website builders are a fallacy. If you make money with your business get a team building your custom site, if not just put your opening times right on Google Business without having a website. A half-baken website also done with a builder is still work and if nobody drives by, why the hassle?

And most builders I know still have subpar mobile responsiveness. How is Milkshake in this regard? Are there any examples?

<comment><USER17> Having a site on a domain you own is critical as an anchor, if you only list on third party sites and for whatever reason they take your listing down your business evaporates overnight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Had a similar idea, but did not think of leveraging Insta for this, really smart ! What about the pricing for this ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!!

Pricing wise, we've been thinking to delay until we see traction. The cost of hosting the sites is fairly trivial because they are static output, which means we can let it grow for a while before introducing some kind of paid _something_ (extra cards, or extra looks, or domains).

<comment><USER19> @paid extras: analytics! People love their likes and views, at a modest price it would be an easy sell.

PS: Super cool app and execution

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes! And I think there's some interesting experimentation to be done between 'integrate Google Analytics' versus, make a really dead simple analytics / stats tool. I'm used to GA so assume people understand it, but it's actually quite a confusing thing if you step back and assume you know nothing about how the internet plumbing works :)

<comment><USER20> I would pay to have "made with - milkshake" removed. Maybe $5 maximum but, yep.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> There's a YC company who seemed to create something similar.

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/universe-website- builder/id1...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/universe-website- builder/id1211437633?mt=8)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes! universe are trailblazers! They've taken a different paradigm approach, but a pretty neat one :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is how I started programming.

There were many mobile site builders in WAP era.

I did not have my own PC and it was easiest way to build something as alternative would be to go to library.

Good times. It's nice this stuff is re-born.

This can be starting point for Young folks in programming!

</comment><comment><USER23> Couldn't help but laugh reading some of the comments here saying they "don't get it" or "why doesn't it have X feature only a developer or small business would care about?"

Every wannabe influencer on instagram (literally millions of people globally) is going to want one of these—-especially given the design aesthetic that hits the target market right between the eyes. We're talking about 17 yr old kids here, not enterprise customers. The lower the friction and the more simple it is, the better.

This is going to take off like crazy and I'm both jealous I didn't make it first and also sad that I'm not an investor.

<comment><USER24> I'm just afraid Instagram will find a way to block it if it eats into their profits. Most companies don't like when you try to get around their money maker.

And yes, I also thought you meant instantaneous homepage creation :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't have much to say about the your project itself, but I thought I'd let you know that Milkshake profiles don't scroll right in mobile Safari–you can't tap on the top of the screen to get the page to scroll.

</comment><comment><USER26> From the Terms: "You must be 13 years or over to create a Milkshake account. If you are under 18 years of age, you will need the permission of a parent or legal guardian (who is at least 18 years of age) to create a Milkshake account."

Seeing that Instagram only requires the age of 13, I wonder if teens will actually bother with permission from their parents/guardians to use Milkshake. Or is this something that will only be enforced after being revealed as under 18? And why 18?

<comment><USER27> >Seeing that Instagram only requires the age of 13,

That sounds wrong though

<comment><USER28> It isn't though. For children under 13, COPPA [0] imposes additional requirements,so most sites have similar terms in their policies. From Instagram's terms of use [1], "You must be at least 13 years old".

[0] [https://www.socalinternetlawyer.com/legal-requirements- socia...](https://www.socalinternetlawyer.com/legal-requirements-social-media- websites/)

[1][https://help.instagram.com/478745558852511/](https://help.instagram.com/478745558852511/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Another approach to this (doing quite well): [https://onuniverse.com/](https://onuniverse.com/)

</comment><comment><USER30> Sorry, but where is the value on this project? Only 2 screens, one that has your profile photo and some description with a style on it and another screen with the same link to go back to Instagram. I find this surprisingly useless but I wish you luck on your project, i hope to be wrong.

</comment><comment> V-2 The very first thing I got to see on the website: the "Watch this" link obscured by the down arrow, and thus unclickable on my 1920x1080 laptop screen. This is not the first impression you want to give, especially when the product itself is about design, of all things.

</comment><comment><USER31> \tangent Can you serve a website from your phone?

My mobile data provider seems to block incoming packets... (but I can receive if initiated from my phone (as in ftp), so maybe it's just that my IP address isn't known?) I couldn't work it out.

<comment><USER32> Yes you can. You might be behind NAT what this means is your public IP address is being shared with 100s of other users so for the outside world there's no way to reach you.

If you are on IPV6 you most probably will have public unique IP and should be able to access a website hosted on phone without any issue. ISP might not be explicitly blocking incoming packets. NAT was a necessary evil that we needed when we had limited address space. We should move to Ipv6 as early as possible and kill NAT. I think that will open up tonne of opportunities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> The homepage is gorgeous! I certainly trust it to make a good website. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER34> Great idea! Very smart to focus it on building profile pages for Instagram users, then it's a focused use case rather than the general "make a website."

One suggestion: I found the whole term "Insta website" to be more confusing than helpful. I think of Insta as short for Instagram so it confused me to keep seeing it in another context. Honestly, I don't think you even need to define that term. Just focus on the benefits and why the user, as an Instagram user, should want a great page linked on their profile. "Get a profile page like all the top influencers...", "Grow your other social profiles...", etc.

Just a suggestion, hope the idea works out!

</comment><comment><USER35> Was hoping for a codeeditor with sftp but neat project for the masses.

<comment><USER13> The target audience for this are likely to use off-the-shelf solutions as much as possible. Apps like Adobe Spark make that clear; while Illustrator and InDesign are superior choices for the professional, IG is all about speed and frequency of posting.

So Adobe Spark lets you grab pre-made, somewhat professional looking templates abd make basic edits to colors and typography. It's a much faster and less rigorous workflow than what a designer would go through to create pro content for IG/Twitter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> You've had a good opportunity with your short URI. Now it doesn't "pronounce" as Milkshake. If this makes sense, grab the domain, otherwise let me know

<comment><USER37> what do you mean?

msha.ke is shorter than milksha.ke

Or were you thinking of another domain?

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> No example sites to browse on mobile, other than a video (?)

</comment><comment><USER39> You might be interested to check:

[https://carrd.co/](https://carrd.co/)

Been here forever, fantastic to use with or without phone :).

</comment><comment><USER40> Cool idea! You should do some influencer marketing :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks exolymph - that's our plan!! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> It's free. What's the business model?

<comment><USER42> Probably the same as instagram itself: incessant, vapid marketing to teenagers

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I saw a talk of yours on side projects. It was pretty inspiring. Did you build this with those same principals?

<comment><USER44> Can you share the link? :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure thing! It's at: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwWEc4PhmJI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwWEc4PhmJI)

(14 views ... was a popular talk :-D

<comment><USER44> thx!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> What about an Android version?

</comment><comment><USER46> Posts saying "wow, coolest ever, bye" are about as constructive as posts saying "boo, shit".

For what it's worth I think it's long overdue that there was a good way to produce actual websites for those who only have/use phones. As far as I can tell though, this is much more limited in scope.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Y_Y it is definitely quite limited at the moment, and intentionally so. We wanted to scope down to something we could pull together and launch as a team who'd never made an iOS app before and wanted to get out to market to validate before getting too excited about patting ourselves on the back.

Hopefully from here we can iterate to a bigger scope (without overblowing it :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> The site doesn't load well for me. Too much JS maybe?

</comment><comment><USER48> This looks really solid. I can see it getting big. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER49> This is prime for Zucquisition. Congrats.

</comment><comment><USER50> Need to create Android apps too on the go!

</comment><comment><USER51> Where do you host the generated web site?

</comment><comment><USER52> This looks awesome!! Well done!!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Matt!

(very pumped that it's on HN's homepage :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Does your milkshake bring all the boys to the yard?</comment>


SpiderOak: Get Unlimited Storage in Honor of World Backup Day - <AUTHOR> https://spideroak.com/blog/20140327085145-spideroak-offers-unlimited-storage-honor-world-backup-day

<comment><USER2> So right now I'm backing up 80gb of data to Google Drive for $2 per month. Switching back to SpiderOak would allow me to add my media collection that I always considered too large to back up online.

But is this SpiderOak plan sustainable? Let's say the average person who gets this plan backs up 500 GB in the first month. Hard drives cost ~$0.04 per GB, so that would cost $40 to store assuming they store it on 2 drives. Let's double it since we're estimating, add a bit for bandwidth, and it seems doable.

As long as people don't keep backing up more and more year after year, that seems pretty sustainable, since they keep getting $125/year.

I guess I should sign up.

</comment><comment><USER3> Somewhat surprising move considering their earlier statement[1] on unlimited storage. Still, my renewal is coming up soon anyway, so the extra 25$ (against the 100$ annual for 100GB) doesn't seem like a bad deal.

[1][https://spideroak.com/blog/20110202135038-whaaaat- unlimited-...](https://spideroak.com/blog/20110202135038-whaaaat-unlimited- storage-for-499-a-month-not-a-viable-business-model)</comment>


Virginia DMV Tells Uber And Lyft To Stop Operating - <AUTHOR> http://dcist.com/2014/06/virginia_tells_uber_and_lyft_to_sto.php

<comment><AUTHOR> Key quotes from the article:

"In the cease and desist letters, DMV Commissioner Richard Holcomb told representatives for both companies that he is "once again making clear" that they must stop operating in Virginia until they get the proper authority."

"Lyft will continue to operate in Virginia. From a spokesperson: 'We've reviewed state transportation codes and believe we are following the applicable rules. We'll continue normal operations as we work to make policy progress.'"</comment>


VoloMedia Awarded the "Patent for Podcasting" - <AUTHOR> http://newteevee.com/2009/07/29/volomedia-awarded-the-patent-for-podcasting/

<comment><USER2> Further proof that patent decisions are made by people who have not had meaningful contact with the world for several hundred years.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure that the indep claim covers the way podcasts are delivered nowadays. Claim 1 seems to require a single channel which both provides notification of new content and from which new content is downloaded. But, an RSS feed for a podcast just provides a URL pointing to the content. No one really downloads anything from an RSS feed.

My guess is that if this patent reads on any technology in use now, it's probably something more like dvrs or on demand TV.

Caveat: I haven't read the specification, so it's possible that there's a special definition that I'm missing.

</comment><comment><USER4> "VoloMedia, which used be called Podbridge, filed for this particular patent in November 2003 — a time, Navar said, before it was obvious that people would download episodic content such as podcasts."

Ok, now 2003 still a little late to the game as far as I'm concerned, but 5.5 years to award a patent? Whether or not patents are a good thing, the patent office and the tech industry cannot work together with such long lead times.

</comment><comment><USER5> oh please...

<http://www.princeton.edu/newmedia/podcast/2002.xml>

<comment><USER6> @radley, this is interesting, given that the effective filing date of the patent was in November 2003. If this was a January 2002 podcast, it would come under Section 102(b) of the patent statute, which says: "A person shall be entitled to a patent unless - ... (b) the invention was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country ___or in public use_ __or on sale in this country, __ _more than one year prior to the date of the application for patent_ __in the United States ...."

And section 103(a) says: "(a) A patent may not be obtained though the invention is not identically disclosed or described as set forth in section 102 of this title, if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains. ..."

<comment><USER3> The problem that I can see with this document is that there's no clear indication of when this document was first made available to the public.

I get that the lectures were published in '02, but what's at issue is when this particular page was published. As far as I can tell, the only thing that dates this document particularly is the lastBuildDate in '06.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would argue that the term Podcasting has already been genericized.</comment>


The State of Robo Advisors – Personal Financial Advisors as a Service - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@vimarshk/the-state-of-robo-advisors-personal-financial-advisor-as-a-service-70fb0519642b <comment><USER2> I think there are legitimate hurdles robo-advisors need to climb to convince potential clients to join. Investing is something that should be done with a fairly long time-frame (10+ years). Of the companies listed here, how many do you think will exist in 10 years?

The concern isn't that your money will disappear once the company folds (though maybe this is a fear some have), but rather that it will create a large burden once it happens, and possibly have tax implications? I doubt we will see many of these companies convince older folks to trust them with their money, at least not for a little while.

I say this with the experience of having some money in WiseBanyan, which appears to be superior on cost to most of the others out there, except that it looks like it's losing the publicity/marketing/AUM race, so my fear is that it will fold. It's keeping me from putting more money there.

<comment><USER3> I think that the whole space may suffer from the, "If they are so good at making money from money, why do they need to solicit my money? Why don't they take their own money and use their own strategies to make their own profits?" problem.

Maybe I am wrong. Is there a 0-cost Robo Advisor (that actually produces real returns) in existence?

<comment><USER4> > If they are so good at making money from money, why do they need to solicit > my money?

You mean the VC's? Because the strategies of these conservative robo advisors is far from the kind of expected return that a VC wants.

You mean the customers? Why pay anybody to manage a stock portfolio? Each one has a slightly different value proposition, but in the end, it is just easier. It is valuable to some people. Just like paying anybody else for a service.

> Is there a 0-cost Robo Advisor

Wisebanyan is going with a "free" service and upselling extras. I don't forsee it going well unless their costs are actually low. I do have an account with them and 4 other robos.

> (that actually produces real returns) in existence?

You mean for the VCs? dunno.

For customers? Of course. Most are just index funds. If the market is up then they all had real returns. Did you mean real returns in excess of some alternative? Depends on the alternative.

<comment><USER3> If a Robo Advisor is just a front-end to SPX...is it really an Advisor? If I have to pay money for such advice, then it's just a middle man working for transaction fees.

>Did you mean real returns in excess of some alternative?

I would define real returns as that quality on the "return" which exceeds those qualities of the original investment. It's not just a matter of comparing the absolute dollar amount (assuming $ denominated measurement) that was given to the amount that was received. The realized return must have some new quality about it; probably, this is typically talked about as "purchasing power", or similar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What I don't see here is what I'm most interested in: how effective are robo- advisors? What percentage of the time do they beat the market, if ever? Am I better off simply investing in S&P 500 or a Vanguard target fund? Or does FutureAdvisor or Betterment or Wealthfront provide some unseen benefit?

FWIW, I've seen stats that suggest that 85% of advisors (robo or otherwise) perform _below_ the S&P 500, which frankly is not a great sign for that industry.

<comment><AUTHOR> Am I better off simply investing in S&P 500 or a Vanguard target fund? Or does FutureAdvisor or Betterment or Wealthfront provide some unseen benefit? >> The space is relatively not mature yet to be able to gauge effectiveness. Time will tell. However, what we observed was some robo advisors are creative in a way to prevent losses. Also, another observation was who is in their team. Sometimes we see prominent brokers/experts on the team which may/may not translate to a better return, while there are clearly some who do not have stock investment experts which translates to weaker investment strategies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> ... which says nothing about the state of Robo Advisors, and a lot of the state of the business of running a Robo Advisor.

<comment><USER3> The purpose of Robo Advisors is to generate fees for the businesses running them. Article seems on point.

<comment><AUTHOR> The target audience for the Robo Advisors are people approximately between 25 and 35 who have large amounts of money to invest but no time. The issue is there are not very many of them. Hence, they have to get huge distribution to get more AUM. The AUM growth translates to more fees. Looking at their margins they have a long way to go to hit considerable revenue. This also highlights the fact that these companies have massive valuations fueled by investments from VCs with exits very far away in the future.

<comment><USER3> It seems more like the target audience of Robo Advisors is VCs looking for passive income on trivial transactions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is an interesting area for startups. Are there any regulations to become a robo advisor

<comment><AUTHOR> This area is heavily regulated. Even though these companies are not public they have to submit their AUM and other operational details to SEC.</comment></comment>


The Case for Lowering Your Expectations - <AUTHOR> https://www.outsideonline.com/2280216/lower-bar <comment><USER3> Happiness = reality - <USER2>

Remember that formula and you will be fine.

It's not a case for lowering your expectations, but it does set a framework for approaching different endeavours. It forces you to ask the question, if this goes amazingly well, how good is that really? Furthermore, it forces you to ask whether you are putting too much energy into your expectations. Finally, it's why slot machines (based on unexpected and uneven payouts) work so well. :)

<comment><USER4> While I don't disagree with the thrust of your argument, the equation would seem to imply that happiness + expectations = reality and unfortunately I don't think it quite works that way?

<comment><USER5> OK, I'll bite. It does seem to match my observations that if your expectations are excessively high vs. reality then your happiness will be low. And, I have observed that people in truely... difficult(?) situations (living in North Korea/South African slums) are often still happy because what they hope for are the basics of survival, friendship and family.

<comment><USER6> I think there have been a number of studies showing that poverty does directly make people unhappy, though - or at the very least, happiness is definitely correlated with wealth. Being poor is extremely stressful. Being stressed is not necessarily going to make you unhappy, but it's certainly likely to.

<comment><USER7> There are numerous studies showing that people with basic need expectations are stressed but not depressed, while people who don't struggle about fulfilling basic needs, but have high luxury and social expectations are more depressed. Same thing has been shown at a the societal level in term of suicide levels.

Basically, the level of stress in a population or experienced by an individual has little to no correlation with happiness. The type of stress, especially the more insidious one, is probably more important.

Then, I'll add that it's all about your expectation. If we hope to put food on the table everyday, and we succeed most of the time, we will be proud and happy most of the time. If we expect to strike millions by being an entrepreneur, because we all know that we're nobody if we're not an entrepreneur, we will endure a roller-coaster of deception and small victories, with no quantifiable bearing on our success or lack thereof...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Some people shoot for doing great things, instead of personal happiness. It is unlikely that they hit their highest goals and are likely to be less happy than most, but I'm glad a decent number of people go this route in life. I quite enjoy their great endeavors and think humanity is net positive for their efforts.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think it's true that lowering your expectations will increase your happiness. But it will also decrease progress in the world. Happiness isn't the only thing one can strife for and not everybody should.

<comment><USER10> What's progress, if not an increase of happiness?

<comment><USER11> Even if we take it to be aggregate happiness to be progress, it can make a lot of sense to sacrifice one's own happiness to gain more happiness for others.

We could measure a decrease in the happiness of a suddenly very driven and successful engineer alongside the increase in their income, take that surplus income, and then convert it into happiness for others by way of purchasing critical medicines for impoverished people.

Summed up, it's possible for it to be good for certain people to decrease their own happiness to increase their outputted value, and then leverage that increase in value to provide much more happiness for many more than 1 other.

<comment><USER12> Depending on how one defines the "objective function" for progress more or less anything we want (or don't want) can be rationalised

One perspective might be defining progress to be maximising the expected long- term survival (that is, non-extinction) of our species. This framework could justify any amount of suffering of individuals - what's good for the population isn't necessarily good for individuals, and vice versa. [https://nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html](https://nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html)

If happiness is subjective, perhaps some individuals are naturally capable of greater levels of happiness than others -- [https://www.smbc- comics.com/comic/2012-04-03](https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-04-03)

Another perspective might be to get a bit carried away with using accounting heuristics when trading off happiness now versus happiness in the future, and decide that a 4% annual happiness discount rate makes sense, so 100 units of happiness now is better than 2 units of happiness in 100 years time (this kind of valuation might be consistent with the human endeavour's response to the threat of climate change).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Happiness means nothing to me. I just want to have meaning and purpose." - Jon Krakauer

</comment><comment><USER14> I feel this contradicts with the ideas about Positive Thinking and Law of Attraction.

[https://greatist.com/connect/law-of- attraction](https://greatist.com/connect/law-of-attraction)

Many successful people use positive thinking to help them succeed in challenging situations. If you lower your expectation, then you will never become successful.

I think having expectation oftentimes create psychological disorders what Logotherapy identifies as anticipatory anxiety and hyper-intention...

I think key is to actually NOT to have expectation. Expectation are result focused. What's important is to be process focused. And process is more about thinking positively on each step. Or better yet... use Paradoxical intention to face our worst fears.

</comment><comment> yjftsjthsd-h Perhaps, "The case for _realistic_ expectations"? Not give up and lower your sights, just accept that expecting the impossible doesn't make it possible.</comment>


Google is labeling a Trump-supporting Republican state senator a "BIGOT" - <AUTHOR> https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/4354nb/google-is-labeling-trump-supporting-republican-state-senator-a-bigot <comment><USER2> Vice: high quality journalism.</comment>


Take control of your email and achieve inbox zero - <AUTHOR> http://www.limedaring.com/take-control-of-your-email-and-achieve-inbox-zero/

<comment><USER2> The multiple-inbox + starring trick is really key. Every morning I'll dive into my emails starting with the oldest and archive+next using the ] shortcut while starring any emails I have to act on later. Once I've gone through all my Inbox emails, I work through the starred emails.

Your inbox should be like the lobby of the emergency room—that's where you do your triage.

<comment><USER3> Exactly. My inbox has only emails I wasn't expecting to get. Everything, and I do mean everything, else gets filtered into an appropriate category. So family, friends, mailing lists, etc. are all tagged appropriately and not a one of them makes it into my inbox proper. Boring parts of mailing lists and whatnot get marked as read and I sort through the others as I have time.

At this point, very little goes into my inbox to begin with, and most of what does is important.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I tend to get about fifteen emails a day, and only two or three actually demand any kind of response, so these sorts of articles make me wonder whether I should feel grateful or lonely.

</comment><comment><USER5> Inbox Zero has become super easy for me since I started using <http://www.boomeranggmail.com/>

<comment><USER6> <http://sanebox.com> is helpful too if you don't want to configure all those folders in gmail.

<comment><AUTHOR> Taking a few minutes to configure folders is better than paying $60/yr, IMHO. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The fundamental assumption here is that having an empty inbox is a desirable goal. Why? Is it just the satisfaction of seeing an empty screen? I don't get it, seems basically pointless. Is there any real evidence that achieving that goal would improve my productivity or make me more successful?

<comment><AUTHOR> If you correlate your inbox with "things to do/read/act on", then of course, an empty inbox is a desirable goal. I certainly get too many emails and it's too important to me to respond to everyone that emails me. If they were mixed up in a messy inbox, I might miss an important message.

<comment><USER7> How many is too many? Why is it important to respond to everyone? This seems like "cargo cult" style productivity, spending a lot of time on activities that look like work but don't actually generate much value.

<comment><AUTHOR> People take the time to email me directly. Even if it isn't something worth my time ("Hey I see you're doing a startup! How about you quit that and join mine?"), I'm still going to respond with "No." Or a canned response.

Consider it a personal philosophy — if someone takes the time to email me, I'm going to respond. It might not seem to give much value, but it actually makes me and my personal brand look better. Do you want to appear like a douche by not even deigning to respond?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would like a single click shortcut to filtering message like these out of my inbox. How does one make "Filter messages like these" faster?

Archive+next using the ] shortcut is a very fast way to plow through one message. Maybe 100 ms. Because it takes only a single keystroke.

But "Filter messages like these" takes several clicks and at least 10 seconds (maybe more) for intermediate pages to load. The filter is usually correct. How can I do that?

</comment><comment><USER9> I use imapfilter for date-based expiration. Most of the cruft that accumulates in my inbox are straightforward notifications that don't really warrant manual refiling. Imapfilter is amazingly versatile and configs are portable. Sparrow and iPhone for scanning and Wanderlust/Emacs for more heavy duty reading and response. Mu for indexing and searching GBs of email.

</comment><comment><USER10> I have two folders - 'archive' and 'inbox'. Once 'inbox' gets to be a large number (3-4k usually), I'll just move everything into 'archive', if only to make searching on the iphone a little faster. Otherwise, why organize when you can search?

</comment><comment><USER11> Filtering is the key step in organizing your mailbox. I subscribe to LKML, FreeBSD-Current, Full-Disclosure, among others and would have drowned under the deluge without procmail.

</comment><comment><USER12> This was one of the most helpful articles I've read. I don't have anything constructive to say - but thanks!

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm a firm believer in the label + archive technique ... works really well for me!</comment>


Why won't Bitcoin die? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/21/4348064/why-wont-bitcoin-die

<comment><USER2> It will eventually. Vinkle-Loss twins are not exactly an omen of success. And what currency has a director?? Sounds like someone got carried away a bit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Bitcoin is both a payment system and a currency. And essentially all currencies have directors, too. But absolutely all payment systems do.</comment></comment>


If programming languages were vehicles, what would they look like? - <AUTHOR> http://machinegestalt.posterous.com/if-programming-languages-were-cars

<comment><USER2> Light and amusing (as one would expect from the title).

I chortled at Haskell.

I'm struggling to think of a vehicular parallel to Erlang.

Maybe the Bluesmobile with the megaphone on the top? Sends messages and survives many crashes?

<comment><USER3> I think a ghostbusters kindof ambulance would suit better. It can go really fast in urgent situations but it looks weird and not everyone can drive it.

[http://images2.makefive.com/images/entertainment/other/top-5...](http://images2.makefive.com/images/entertainment/other/top-5-famous- cars-from-movies-or-television/ghostbusters-car-7.jpg)

<comment><USER2> Erlang: Dan Aykroyd drives it!</comment></comment></comment>


Writing your own Toy OS - <AUTHOR> http://linuxgazette.net/issue77/krishnakumar.html

<comment> a-priori While writing your own boot loader may be fun, I think it's a waste of time. If you are interested in operating systems programming, I recommend you skip the boot loader stage and use GRUB to boot your kernel.

It's actually pretty simple to get a "hello world" kernel booting using GRUB. After that, you have real, actual operating systems programming like implementing paging, multitasking, interrupts, and so on.

<comment><USER2> _Writing_ one is not a waste of time, because you learn what's really going on just after POST. But trying to actually use your own and maintain it is pretty much a waste. Write one to learn how it works, then throw it away and use Grub.

<comment> a-priori If you consider that valuable knowledge, then I agree with you there. There may be some merit to writing (and understanding) a minimal bootloader that enables A20, switches to protected mode, and loads a kernel from a floppy disc. Just getting that far will teach you quite a bit about writing and debugging low-level assembly code. However, if you go this route then, as you say, you should definitely consider it throwaway code.

But, I don't think that knowledge is important. You'll gain much of the same knowledge from implementing virtual memory and multitasking. Besides, the bootloading process is highly architecture-specific. Switch to an ARM or PPC chip, and it's a completely different process.

<comment><USER2>
      Switch to an ARM or PPC chip, and it's a completely
      different process.

Yup. That's why you should do it for learning purposes - getting your head around how a machine bootstraps itself is, to my mind, one of the harder things to understand about a computing system. Part of that is because someone who doesn't know how it works might look at booting mechanisms as a sort of "black box", or just magic. Once you peer into the black box and understand some of it, suddenly, none of it seems all that mysterious anymore, even if you've only learned the particulars for one specific machine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Parts two and three:

<http://linuxgazette.net/issue79/krishnakumar.html> <http://lg.paracoda.com/issue82/raghu.html>

</comment><comment><USER4> What's a floppy?

<comment> a-priori A USB drive, hard drive, or CD ROM all work just fine. Floppies are just a simple and conventional way to get a kernel booting. Personally, I like netbooting the best.</comment></comment>


Germany to tell people to stockpile food and water in case of attacks - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-security-stockpiling-idUSKCN10W0MJ <comment><USER4> How to make a headline from boring stuff...:

"oblige" and "required" are pretty strong words for what can't be more than a recommendation. ("Die Bevölkerung _wird angehalten_ , einen individuellen Vorrat [...]" is the German quote, which I'd maybe translate as "the public _is asked to_ ")

Also, as far as I can tell from the news reports, the report and it's recommendations are about general disaster preparedness, not terrorism or other attacks specifically. The stockpile recommendations also are nothing new, and I suspect they'll be ignored in the future just as much as they are now. People in areas with bad-ish infrastructure or regular emergencies (floodings, ...) will be prepared, others less so. I suspect civil defense authorities in most countries have similar recommendations.

The headline as it stands is highly misleading.

<comment><USER5> Those are indeed strong words. Governments in Europe have considerably more power than in the new world. They can do these things - they view statehood as literally the community. Sometimes that has advantages, sometimes not.

Even scarier, is the fact that this is even being done.

Since there are no external threats and 0 chance of environmental disaster (Germany doesn't get floods and hurricanes etc.) - it speaks to a terrorist threat.

Over 1.5 million people flooded into Germany. 1 million official. Of those, only 1/4 were 'refugees' \- i.e. displaced people from Syria and Iraq. The remainder were young men from Algeria, Morocco, Pakistan, Tunisia, Egypt seeking a better life.

Of course, I don't blame anyone for seeking a better life, but arbitrary infusion of 100's of thousands of people into farily ethnically homogenous state that already has problems with integration re: Turks, who stand out strongly among other immigrants in terms of their non-integration - is crazy.

'Bleeding hearts' need to be met with 'responsible, pragmatic minds'.

Yes - we need to help refugees. Of course. But we have to be responsible about it.

Angela Merkels unilateral and now unpopular policy of just opening the doors is absurd. She later said she was 'surprised' that so many 'non refugees' would decide to come - which illustrates how astonishingly politicos are out of touch with human nature.

The moment she opened the gates, I assumed the outcome - millions would try to come, by hook or by crook.

Canada and USA are shielded by oceans - but they and the UK have the right approach - they take a specific number from UN camps - such refugees are well vetted, they are credibly refugees and not terrorists, families instead of just young men, and it happens at a controlled pace.

<comment><USER6> > there are no external threats and 0 chance of environmental disaster > (Germany doesn't get floods and hurricanes etc.) - it speaks to a terrorist > threat.

You have no idea what you are talking about.

Germany has floods, snow storms, etc. The government has to think about disaster protection and what it means in a modern society, which depends on concepts like 'always on'. Plans are twenty years old and need to be updated.

A few years ago there were some parts of Germany without electricity for a few days and some were not reachable, because of a winter storm, which damaged large power lines.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyrill_(storm)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyrill_\(storm\))

Example for a flood: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_European_floods](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_European_floods)

<comment><USER5> Yes, every country has such issues, but they are very minor in Germany in comparison to other places, which is what I meant to say. Furthermore - <USER2> 'threats' have existed for two thousand year, the motivation for the current mandate has nothing to do with environmental threats and 100% to do with terrorists threats.

There are terrorists attacks monthly in Europe (you don't get the headlines here in the US, and often, the 'attacks' are individuals with knives on trains, or who attack a single family so they don't get attention) - <USER3> European governments are really in a difficult situation - they don't know what to do. So this mandate kind of a 'knee jerk reaction' to some extent, possibly even 'political cover' so that they seem as though they are doing something, if you want a cynical take.

<comment><USER6> That's all complete bullshit.

The North Sea coast, where I live here in Germany 100km away, has always seen floods and violent storms. Additionally there are floods from heavy rains in the Elbe region. I live in such a region, where such a flood is possible.

Germany has disaster protection plans. It has organizations to provide help, like the THW. Etc. etc. The plan mentioned here has been in preparation for several years now.

The plans have nothing to do with knife attacks in trains. You are clearly clueless about this government paper.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I really despise this new news cycle, where random conspiracy blogs stumble upon a rudimentary and minor policy change, take it out of context, put their alarmist, sensationalist spin on it, spread it through their blog networks and facebook groups and make it appear like legitimate news. Always under the pretense that they want to educate citizens when all they really care about is advertising money. And 24 hours later the whole ruckus is forgotten and a new piece of information is taken out of context. Most people develop good filters with regard to such news while others don't and then feel like the world might come to an end any second.

</comment><comment><USER8> How is this in any way noteworthy? Lots of governments recommend a small personal stockpile. The Swiss government recommends that every resident stockpiles at least six weeks'[0] worth of food.

Making an issue of such a policy in light of recent attacks is nothing but fear-mongering.

[0] It may have been six months' worth. I forget, and don't have the source on me right now.

</comment><comment><USER9> There are elections in two states and federal elections coming up in 2017. Security and refugees are the main topics. The governing parties are trying to sound hard to stop the rise of the populist AFD by adjusting to the right. Especially the CSU, which since the beginning of time governs Bavaria (where the attacks happended) and traditionally was the rightmost not yet extremist party, tries to compete with populism. Claims to forbid burkas and stuff like that have been made.

When the Munich shooting happened the whole city was locked down, the minister of defence unilaterally set military troops on call who for obvious historic reasons are only allowed to act inside Germany if the alternative would literally be "no Germany left", so she got bashed for that, police forces from neighbouring German states were called to Munich, the federal special unit GSG9 came, and even Austrian Cobra forces came to help.

As bad as this sounds: This was only a mass shooting from a crazy person and while there was misinformation and panic spreading, after the initial catastrophe the situation was immediately under control. The shooter is dead, the guy who sold him the weapon got caught.

There is really no reason to panic here, to bully muslims or let alone allow the military to act inside the borders. Not having soldiers on the streets (or police who act like soldiers for that matter) is a privilege we should not give up so easily.

And I don't think it is reasonable to expect any terrorist group to be able to keep me locked inside my home for 5 days, when authorities here are already calling foreign forces and keep the military on call, as soon as a teenager with a Glock goes crazy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just to underscore that, the leader of the Alternative for Germany party (Frauke Petry) only yesterday spoke out in favor of people arming themselves with guns and self-defense devices after all the violent attacks last month:

"German right-wing leader backs citizens' right to arm themselves" \- [http://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCAKCN10V0A5](http://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCAKCN10V0A5)

<comment><USER9> I think with a population of 80 million, you cannot entirely avoid shootings. 9 people died in Munich and this is horrible. And while each one on there is terrible, the Wikipedia category for German shootings [0] is small. The obvious comparison with the US shows that arming the population would be _very_ counterproductive. So when I read stuff like that, I am asking myself whether she actually is that stupid or whether she knows exactly what she says and just tries to manipulate the people and what would be worse.

The only positive thing to note about the latest rise of the far-right parties in Europe is that it nicely debunked the morale high ground of women in politics. They can be just as evil/corrupt/populist/human, the liberal ones were just the first who showed up.

[0] [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kategorie:Amoklauf_in_Deutschl...](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kategorie:Amoklauf_in_Deutschland)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's a joke in my country (from which many people emigrated to Germany):

        - What would you do if tomorrow is the Judgement day?
        - I'd pack my family and go straight to Germany.

I guess not anymore...

</comment><comment><USER11> The German government has recommended this for decades already. What's new is that someone important with nothing else to do probably stumbled over this topic and decided it should be taken more seriously.

<comment><USER12> This is pretty much the equivalent to the random reading of TOS or the DoS Travel Security Advice [1]: It's always there in that pretty same wording, yet is only read or of general interest when it's changed.

[1] [https://travel.state.gov/content/passports/en/country/german...](https://travel.state.gov/content/passports/en/country/germany.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'd imagine that most people would have enough food to last for 10 days in their pantry, fridge, and freezer.

Obviously, the water part is a bit different, most people won't have 15-odd litres of water just sitting around.

I'm fairly sure that most countries advise residents to keep 3 days supply of food and water stockpiled, or maybe it's just the countries that are disaster- prone.

More interesting than the food stockpile though:

> and pressed for plans for the military to train more closely with police in > preparing for potential large-scale militant attacks.

Isn't the military constitutionally barred from operating domestically in Germany?

<comment><USER14> > Isn't the military constitutionally barred from operating domestically in > Germany?

It is, except for disaster relief (e.g. major floods). During the Munich nazi amok run, the Feldjäger (military police) were alerted, though, and politicians are widely talking about increased cooperation and joint exercises between police and military.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> German speaking here. It's important to know that there are regional (Landtag) elections coming up, and the right-wing AfD tries to paint current politicians as a bunch of incompetent people incapable of providing security for the German people - and the established politicians react with populist stuff like this and the idea of forbidding double citizenship and Niqabs.

Everything that sounds like populist bullsh*t coming from Germany should be regarded with the elections in mind.

<comment><USER5> By 'populism' you mean 'people speaking their minds'? And that they should be ignored?

By 'populism' do you mean the vast majority of Europeans and clear majority of Germans who are not supportive of the 'open doors' immigration policy?

Especially those made by diktat - without popular consultation, without legal consideration, without a vote in parliament - which affects the entirety of Europe?

Maybe Germans can have their 'leaders' stop forcing policy on the rest of Europe?

And by the way - your argument does not work in your favour: it is not the AfD telling people to prepare - it's the actual government wherein there is no AfD people to make such claims.

The very fact that the government - weary of people acting out against Muslims - is willing to make this statement says a lot about the actual threat environment.

<comment><USER14> > By 'populism' you mean 'people speaking their minds'? And that they should > be ignored?

AfD is openly cooperating with organized neo-nazis (e.g. PEGIDA).

> By 'populism' do you mean the vast majority of Europeans and clear majority > of Germans who are not supportive of the 'open doors' immigration policy?

"clear majority of Germans"? Oh no. AfD and friends are a tiny, but vocal and hateful group. Just like Trump.

> And by the way - your argument does not work in your favour: it is not the > AfD telling people to prepare - it's the actual government wherein there is > no AfD people to make such claims.

The ones responsible for the fear-mongering are the conservative parties in the government (CDU, CSU). They desperately want to prevent more success for the AfD by copying the fear-mongering strategy of the AfD. Needless to say that the "appeasement" policy both fuels the AfD and moves the direction of the government more and more to the right end.

> The very fact that the government - weary of people acting out against > Muslims - is willing to make this statement says a lot about the actual > threat environment.

The threat is not Islamist terrorism. The threat is a massive explosion of right-extremist violence - in 2015 alone, over a thousand attacks on refugee camps/homes occurred, 92 of those arsons, the rest open violence, Hakenkreuz graffitis etc; just recently neo-Nazis stabbed a young member of Die LINKE party, a pro-Refugee mayor (Henriette Reker of Cologne) got stabbed, neo-Nazis rioted in Heidenau exactly one year ago.

<comment><USER15> How are you able to consider Trump hateful?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There's an insane amount of shipping going on right now and I seriously can't imagine terrorists can disrupt those supply chains. We'll just reroute around them - there is plenty of duplicate shipping channels in the world. If terrorists can get us to slide to the _assumption_ of attacks instead of realizing shit happens and we're trying to fix it...well, they've already won.

<comment><USER17> _> there is plenty of duplicate shipping channels in the world_

But there are choke points, too. For example, the Strait of Malacca ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strait_of_Malacca](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strait_of_Malacca)), the relatively narrow passage that connects the Indian Ocean to the Pacific. Something like 25% of the entire world's shipped goods pass through the Strait; and it's especially important for China, as nearly all of the imported oil that keeps her industrial machine running is shipped to them from the Middle East via that route.

A terrorist attack on the Strait isn't inconceivable, either. Al Qaeda experimented with attacks on ships in the years before 9/11, culminating in the attacks on the USS _Cole_ in 2000 ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Cole_bombing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Cole_bombing)) and the oil tanker MV _Limburg_ in 2002 ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maritime_Jewel#Bombing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maritime_Jewel#Bombing)). This line of effort petered out following the capture of the "terrorist entrepreneur" who had driven it, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abd_al-Rahim_al- Nashiri](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abd_al-Rahim_al-Nashiri)), but that doesn't mean some other ambitious fellow won't pick it up again in the future.

None of which is to say that the sky is falling and people (in Germany or elsewhere) need to start stockpiling water and digging their Apocalypse Bunkers, of course. It's just worth noting that the space through which goods can be shipped is narrower than most people may realize.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I never thought about it before but now I wonder if I should have a small stock just in case. Nothing serious, maybe 2 weeks worth of stuff to live on. That I can have and forget, not maintain indefinately. Anyone have something like that? Any tips?

<comment><USER13> Everyone should have at least 3 days of food and water stockpiled. Especially if you live in an area where you might experience a natural or man-made disaster (doesn't Turkey get lots of earthquakes?).

You want food that can be eaten unheated, all the better if it's not in cans so you don't need a can opener. Get some biscuits or crackers, some canned meat (corned beef or tuna), and canned or dehydrated vegetables (soaking them works well enough). Dehydrated potatoes are also light and compact, and provide good energy. Chocolate is also a great compact source of energy, and lasts for a long time. Grab some muesli/granola bars as well for eating on the go.

A standard tin of corned beef will last a couple of days. A mixture of corned beef, dehydrated potatoes, and dehydrated peas will keep you going for a long time. I've eaten a pot of it all mixed together and gone until the evening eating hardly anything while climbing mountains.

As for water, you'll want at least 2 litres per day, and you'll want to rotate your stock every 6-12 months as water does go stale.

If you want to set yourself up for longer term, I'd suggest getting a gas cooker or something to cook on, and then you can also boil water to get clean water. The alternative for long term water is iodine or other purification tablets, but they taste nasty.

Apart from food, you'll also want to keep some medical supplies: bandages, sling, tape, gloves (these are important!). Toilet paper is also essential.

You'll want to keep all this stuff in a box or bag that you can easily grab and get the fuck out. I live in an earthquake prone area, so it pays to be prepared here.

<comment><USER19> For people that are healthy, 3 days of food is pretty much only a matter of comfort.

Peanut butter is about 2x as calorie dense as canned meat (and it tastes good and is going to be more nutritious than cheap canned meat).

<comment><USER13> Forgot about peanut butter. It's one of my essentials when going hunting or hiking. Goes surprisingly well with corned beef and bread, like a half-arsed satay.

Canned meat (especially tuna) is a good source of protein, which peanut butter doesn't really provide. There's also a moral effect of eating meat. You could just stockpile a few boxes of muesli bars, which are calorie dense, but you'd get pretty upset with eating them after a day or two.

Even the Army realises this, and attempts to give variation in their MREs and in their First Strike ration packs. You could feed a soldier on a fat/sugar/vitamin/fibre mix, but you'd kill their morale pretty damn quick.

<comment><USER19> I'd find spam a lot more demoralizing than peanut butter.

I looked in the cupboard. Tuna, which is almost just protein and water, has 17 grams of protein in a 74 gram serving. Chunky peanut butter has 7 grams of protein in a 32 gram serving ([http://www.jif.com/products/extra-crunchy- peanut-butter](http://www.jif.com/products/extra-crunchy-peanut-butter)).

The tuna is 70 calories. The peanut butter is 190 calories (it has quite a lot of fat in it).

Searching online, canned ham appears to be ~100 calories for 50-some grams, with 10 grams of protein. Spam compares to the peanut butter, with 180 calories per serving and 7 grams of protein ([http://www.spam.com/varieties/spam- classic](http://www.spam.com/varieties/spam-classic)).

So by mass, the peanut butter does a pretty great job of supplying protein, and it comes with a bunch of calories too. Oil packed tuna would do better with the calories, but I find it off-putting.

edit: Here's a link for tuna:

[http://starkist.com/products/chunk-light-tuna-in-water- can](http://starkist.com/products/chunk-light-tuna-in-water-can)

It's a different product than I looked at, but close enough.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>