Suburban moms are delivering groceries - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2019/05/25/722811953/why-suburban-moms-are-delivering-your-groceries <comment><USER2> Anecdotally, I've noticed this here on the central coast of California. We don't use Instacart or Uber Eats a lot, but when we do, its usually delivered by women/moms in their 40s or 50s (as this article points out).

I will point out one thing I haven't seen mentioned yet: despite the gig economy's downsides, doing this is probably better than getting sucked into the pyramid schemes and MLMs which tend to prey on the same demographic.

<comment><USER3> I spoke to one such mom, asking her why she doesn't do Uber or Lyft instead, and she said because kids make a mess in the car and she can't clean it every time before taking passengers.

<comment><USER2> I suppose that's a fair point but I've personally looked at that problem as an opportunity.

We rented out our house on AirBnB _specifically_ so we could force ourselves to get organized and our kids clean their rooms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My wife uses Shipt to order the groceries and in our neighborhood, anecdotally, most of the Shipt shoppers are suburban moms. We usually order our groceries about mid-day and they are delivered mid-afternoon. For a SAHM with kids in school this works out perfect as you can get a few hours of work in when you would otherwise be at home. Lots of women in my area (including my wife) are SAHMs.

Secondly I think moms are a good fit for Shipt shoppers. We had a lot of trouble in the beginning with shipt because the shoppers were young people not used to picking out produce and staples for a family. Over time I noticed more moms delivering our groceries and they seemed to get it right more often. Naturally they could guess what my wife wanted when substitutions were necessary or instructions were needed. They always ask first but sometimes you don't have time to text them back before they're done shopping. It's nice when they show up to the door and say "they didn't have ____, but I could see you're making chili, so I got you ____".

<comment><USER5> We order through a store and inexperienced shoppers are definitely a problem, not just produce but also picking the correct size of things ie cereal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> While I love living in California for various reasons (moving here from the East coast), I can't help but wonder to what extent the gig economy is papering over the stupidity that is current housing policy, postponing the inevitable collapse until after far too many people have been consumed by innocently adding a "side hustle" or two trying to help make ends meet.

<comment><USER7> My own impression is that you likely think it's being "papered over" because you live in California. If you lived out here in flyover country you'd probably be able to see that for a lot of people, there has already been a collapse of the old economic order. Things for a lot of people right now are not all that great around where I live.

A lot of them would love to be able to deliver groceries. Even that in some areas would be too risky though with the opioid epidemic being what it is around here.

<comment><USER8> There's no papering over now. There may have been years ago. But there simply isn't enough to go around. Between 2011-2015 SJ added 500,000 jobs and built 65,000 housing units. Not even making a dent in the demand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think the while the article paints a picture of "choice" with the highlighted examples, there is probably a much darker reality of "suburban moms" having fallen out of job prospects and doing those gigs to make ends meet, akin to a minimal wage job.

In more prosperous times, suburban moms (and most people with regular gigs) wouldn't even think about "delivering groceries"...

</comment><comment><USER10> The answer is in the first few paragraphs: they live beyond their means in a high income tax state, have 3 kids and farm animals, are addicted to consumerism - and want to participate without spending the little money they have.

<comment><USER11> It's also funny that she thinks she's not out spending money, when she is consuming fuel, wear and tear on the vehicle, and increasing risk of morbidity/mortality by driving around, also leading to more sitting.

<comment><USER12> She specifically mentions factoring in her costs, and the comment that you cite was about the fact that she enjoys shopping but is spending other people's money.

<comment><USER11> I did misinterpret that. Oops! However, there is no way she's profiting anything at $0.60 per mile reimbursement from Instacart.

<comment><USER13> If you already have a car, it only costs about 25cents/mile at the margin. Half the cost is just depreciation from buying it.

<comment><USER14> The cost is more than 25 cents/mile. There is a lot to factor in. Typically when you are a salaried employee and use your vehicle for business, this mileage allowance is on top of your pay. She is not earning anything other than what Instacart pays. By the time it's all said and done, she'll be lucky if to brake even. Maybe that's enough for her.

Here is what he IRS has determined the cost of driving is. I would imagine the costs in CA are greater due to gasoline prices, traffic, and general cost of living.

[https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-issues-standard-mileage- rat...](https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-issues-standard-mileage-rates- for-2019)

 __54.5 cents per mile __The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has issued the 2018 optional standard mileage rates and beginning on January 1, 2018, the standard mileage rates for the use of a car, van, pickup or panel truck will be: 54.5 cents per mile for business miles driven (up from 53.5 cents in 2017)Dec 14, 2017

Includes gas, oil, repairs, tires, insurance, registration fees, licenses, and depreciation (or lease payments) attributable to the portion of the total miles driven that are business miles.

<comment><USER15> > Includes gas, oil, repairs, tires, insurance, registration fees, licenses, > and depreciation (or lease payments) attributable to the portion of the > total miles driven that are business miles.

"Attributable to the portion" sounds like you divide it by total miles, which is going to give you a number that's bigger than marginal cost, and possibly a lot bigger. For some cars, doubling the miles might only increase non-fuel costs 20%.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It occurs to me that such gigs may solve the isolation problem that people who work at home often report

</comment><comment><USER17> After watching this from Vice [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6eujSJ0-RU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6eujSJ0-RU) one of my takeaways is that it can be incredibly isolating and egodestroying to be a suburban stay-at-home parent.

What came up time and time again in the Vice video to me was that these women were often financially okay, but life in suburbia had left them socially isolated. The need for a social network that provided them with positive affirmation, even one that is as fake as a pyramid scheme's drove it. Some of the women in the video had even taken out rent on storefronts, or dedicated large portions of their homes as showrooms or for inventory, which has massive hidden (or not so hidden) costs associated with it.

I think this article adds some more color to the phenomenon. It describes people who again, aren't necessarily over extended, but are living pretty close to the line. Who don't want to give up suburban life and all the activities they want to provide their kids + bored housemoms during the day who can maybe make a few extra dollars putting their expensive SUVs to work doing menial tasks for other people instead of their own family.

I would be if all the costs and earning were added up, these women would be making less than minimum wage. Sitting around in an expensive car all day looking for gigs that pay $.60/mi + tip is terrible income. Her cost per hour for having the vehicle "employed" probably annihilates most of the "earnings" anyways, but she's not thinking of the deferred costs that will come later with higher maintenance. They describe a day as making $133 in 10 hours ($13.30/hr), but that includes the payment per delivery mile.

The real question to me is why aren't these women going to work in local businesses? If they're satisfied working gig jobs, why not go work at a local restaurant or as a bookkeeper or secretary at some local business? A quick side story, my brother works lots of odd jobs. He works these jobs because at some point those jobs, during certain conditions, offered some crazy payout per day (think thousands of dollars per day). He thinks (and there's no dissuading him from this) that if he can just get things lines up just right, he can tap into a mythical gravy train where this money is the normal payout for him. For example, he owns and stores a large snowplow and a very large expensive truck so that when it snows in the winter, he can grab a road clearing contract. In his mind, a few good snows and he's made his normal income for the year. He rarely gets on those contracts and his expenses far outweigh his earnings in terms of storage and maintenance costs on tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment.

However, it's these prospective earnings that absolutely dominate his thinking, but his other earnings are so generally small.

I think it's the prospect of days like the best one described, where she made $21.25/hr which is around $44,200 year which, if the other person in the household is working for around $20k/yr puts them above median for the U.S. ($61,372/yr/household) which ain't terrible (I know the tech workers here are gasping at so little!) It's just too bad that these gig workers will probably make much less than that.

<comment><USER18> You mention suburbia a lot. What do you think is different about life in suburbia compared to a city or rural area that makes life there any more isolating?

<comment><USER17> I don't know if its any more isolating in the general sense (I have my own anecdotes about all three kinds of places). But I think the phenomenon of these kinds of gig jobs being predominantly (or targeting) otherwise idle suburban house-wives is incredibly fascinating and seems to be digging at a deeper underlying phenomenon.

<comment><USER18> Maybe they're just targeting idle house-wives, and they happen to be often located in suburbia, but the suburban part is irrelevant?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Instacart told NPR that more than 50% of people who shop for the app are women. DoorDash said women make up more than 50% of its "dashers" in rural and suburban areas and more than 60% in urban areas."

This ratio seems quite normal. Anyone knows how it compares to Uber/Lyft?</comment>


Large Scale Distributed Deep Networks (by Jeff Dean et al) - <AUTHOR> http://research.google.com/archive/large_deep_networks_nips2012.html? <comment><AUTHOR> Also submitted yesterday, by someone else, but it got buried: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4775644>

I resubmitted since I'm pretty sure this is of interest to many HN readers. Examples of why it's interesting include:

1\. Google's deep learning work is now being used to power Android voice search ([http://googleresearch.blogspot.ca/2012/08/speech- recognition...](http://googleresearch.blogspot.ca/2012/08/speech-recognition- and-deep-learning.html) ); and

2\. Dean claims that "We are seeing better than human-level performance in some visual tasks," in particular, for the problem of extracting house numbers in photos taken by Google's Street View cars, a job that used to be done by a large team of people ([http://www.technologyreview.com/news/429442/google- puts-its-...](http://www.technologyreview.com/news/429442/google-puts-its- virtual-brain-technology-to-work/) ).

<comment><USER2> It's not obvious to me what it means to have "better than human-level performance" since most of the time the ground-truth itself is defined by humans :)

<comment><USER3> One example I can think of is a computer could read a house number or a street sign from 100 feet away, where a human with good vision might be able to make out the same text at 20 feet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I did my postdoctoral research on deep learning, and got into it back when Geoff Hinton's work was just an unpublished tech report.

So if anyone has any questions on it, I will try to answer.

<comment><USER5> Is there any open source ML framework that includes support for DNN?

Do you know of any tutorial that may guide the beginner using DNN, I have no idea how to choose the number of hidden layers and activation functions.

Thanks!

<comment><USER6> Ask me again in two weeks when my online course in advanced machine learning for extreme beginners kicks off. We won't start with deep learning immediately, but it's in the pipeline not too soon after launch.

<comment><USER5> I hope I'm not getting too off-topic, but will this course be taught in coursera or somewhere else? (I want to put a reminder to check this out).

Thanks!

<comment><USER6> It'll be on a new site for teaching complex things in non-complicated ways. The goal is to allow everyone from clever middle school students through retired people to understand the coming changes to the world. There's a huge on-site community focus too. We don't _want_ there to be 100,000 anonymous people just going through the motions. There will be plenty of interaction between course material and community feedback. It's kinda awesome.

Topics will be presented in multiple ways (simple and intermediate) so you can have plenty of different views on the same material. The material works as both zero-knowledge intro to the topics as well as quick refreshers if you haven't seen the material in a while (quick -- what's an eigenvector?!).

The launch courses will be 1.) real-world applications of probability and statistics (signal extractions), 2.) linear algebra for computer science, and 3.) wildcard (a random assortment of whatever the heck we think is important or entertaining to know). Future courses are: introduction to neural networks, introduction to computational neuroscience, introduction to deep learning, advanced deep learning, how to take over the world with a few dozen GPUs, avenues by which google will become irrelevant, and robotics for fun and evil.

This is phase zero of a four phase plan. I'll get some pre-launch material together to shove down HN shortly, then it'll launch a few days later. Hopefully you'll hear about the project again.

<comment><USER7> Great work. It's so cool, can't wait to take part in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A year ago, I would have no idea what this was about. I'm very thankful that I live in a world where I can take high quality classes from Coursera that have given me the foundation to at least understand the abstract. :)

<comment><USER9> Which courses did you take out of interest?

I struggle with the mathematics used in neural networks. I can understand code but as soon as I start to see calculus my brain freezes over. Does anyone know of a good online course that can give me a crash course in the mathematics required for neural networks?

My CS bachelors covered this, but I was lazy and drank too much beer. Now 20 years later I want to understand it properly.

<comment><USER8> I've taken Andrew Ng's Machine Learning class, Daphne Koller's Probabilistic Graphical Models class, Dan Jurafsky and Christopher Manning's Natural Language Processing class, and currently Geoff Hinton's Neural Networks class.

I have spent a lot of time on Khan Academy to learn the calculus. In my experience you can get by with a surprisingly small amount of calculus, but it happens to be a small amount from a high level.

For example, backpropagation is just repeated application of the chain rule. Did take a while to get a handle on the derivatives, but it's worth it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is written by THE Jeff Dean, who is essentially the programming equivalent of Chuck Norris at Google ( [http://www.quora.com/Jeff-Dean/What- are-all-the-Jeff-Dean-fa...](http://www.quora.com/Jeff-Dean/What-are-all-the- Jeff-Dean-facts) )</comment>


Facebook debunked - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2007/08/20/facebook-debunked/ <comment><USER2> Alright, you heard the man. The Internet has been solved. You can all go home now. Thanks for playing, bye.</comment>


305 Russian GRU operatives unmasked because they registered their cars to GRU HQ - <AUTHOR> https://www.snip.today/main/post/personal-info-of-305-russian-intelligence-operatives-leaked-because-they-registered-their-cars-to-gru-hq/ <comment><USER2> This makes me wonder if they are stalking horses, and the real agents are not so bad at tradecraft

<comment><AUTHOR> Occam's Razor says they acted dumbly. But perhaps.</comment></comment>


Sample Job Descriptions - <AUTHOR> http://resources.workable.com/recruiting/sample-job-descriptions

<comment><USER2> Although I appreciate your effort, willingness to share&help,as well as clever marketing, I consider publishing such boilerplates rather bad idea. It can hurt all parties involved: employers,candidates and your business. Why? For companies, taking such a shortcut (let's be honest-many people will use them with just cosmetic changes) is not only damage for their image and failure to differentiate and attract talent. It's also shifting focus from precisely defined competencies which are specific for the company to generic metrics which lead to wrong hiring decisions. For candidates indistinguishable job offers result in wrong career choices and wasted time/opportunities. For you it means more inadequate applications to process and as consequence bigger challenge whike convincing the customers to the value that you deliver. Hope you'll take it as an inspiration not a rant :)

<comment><USER3> What seems to you like a marketing effort started from a real customer need, believe it or not.

Would I use a boilerplate? No. Do I think boilerplates are useful as a start for many people? Absolutely. I wish I could show you some of the job descriptions that companies put up using our software. They are hideous, wrong, uninformative, clearly showing you that people have no idea how to write a good job description.

We started off by creating some simple templates, as a guidance, so we help our customers make something nicer. We ended up building a small library and thus we decided to share them. (I guess that counts as marketing, but at least you get something useful)

Back to the original question.. are boileplates a bad thing? My answer is "it depends on what you would do without them". If you can write a half-decent description of the person you need, in your own words, then by all means don't use boilerplates.

If you're a very small company, hiring for the first time maybe and you need to start off by customising something, get some inspiration.. boilerplates are useful.

We make software for the small and medium company. We feel that software is not just the buttons. It's also the method. It's every kickstart you can give your customer to do his job a bit better. (for some, our guides on how to hire is the best form of help, others want to get the canned thing and make a few changes..)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> They could at least have included 20 sample job applications.</comment>


Ask HN: Moto X or HTC One or Nexus 5? - <AUTHOR>

What are you getting and why ? <comment><USER2> Nexus 5. What most people failed to mention is this is an unlocked $350 smartphone going head to head with $700 - $900 handsets.

If you want a smartphone that's fast, responsive and powerful, void of all the bloatware and secondary network branding and feels and looks great - go with Nexus 5. The camera isn't as great at the Moto X and HTC One but all else it can hold its own. You own the phone outright, get Android updates first, no monthly fees for the device and you take it wherever you want to only pay for service. How much better can it possibly get :)

The other phones are great as well - but no where can you find a better value than a Nexus device.

</comment><comment><USER3> Personally went with N5.. I was due an upgrade from my galaxy nexus and I like the raw Android experience. I don't use that many apps in all honesty. Great screen, great battery life. Very happy with my purchase and shall have it for a good while.

</comment><comment><USER4> HTC One has been an excellent handset; high standard of build quality, "basics" all fine (calls, battery, etc), with its main benefit for us being the fast camera (fast is vital when photographing young kids!). I hear from a fellow parent the Nexus 5 camera isn't quite fast enough for a speedy toddler but no personal experience of it.

<comment><USER3> Yes, Update 4.4.1 and 4.4.2 address this :)

<comment><USER4> Really, so you mean the Nexus 5 has fast camera performance with these updates? I would definitely be interested in one, but fast picture taking really would be a "must have" for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Moto X feels great in your hand, which for some reason isn't talked about too much in Interent forums, but I think is as important as the software version it ships with.

</comment><comment><USER6> I got a Nexus 5. It was bigger than I expected and I was initially unhappy. After a few days of use, I'm loving it. "Ok Google" is a winner.

</comment><comment><USER7> Moto X. The hotphrase detector + Google Now makes you feel like you're on the Enterprise.

</comment><comment><USER8> If you want smaller phone and with more battery life get the Moto X. If you want a phone that always receives the latest version of Android first and a 1080p screen get the Nexus 5.

</comment><comment><USER9> Moto G</comment>


Band faked a fanbase, got booked for a European tour that nobody attended - <AUTHOR> http://www.metalinjection.net/its-just-business/la-band-threatin-faked-a-fanbase-got-a-european-tour-booked-that-nobody-attended <comment><USER2> Is it me or does this sound a lot like a TV show/film plot? The whole idea of a band pretending they're more popular than they are and then performing to an empty theatre feels like something from a zany sitcom...

Still, I'm not too surprised it happened. It's quite common for 'influencers' to fake their popularity online, and I've seen thousands of pseudo celebrities buy followers/make fake accounts to try and trick advertisers into thinking they're more popular than they actually are. Happens quite a bit with authors and books too; the likes of Robert Stanek and Gloria Tesch relied almost entirely on shills and paid marketing in an attempt to make people think their works had an actual fanbase/were going to be the next big thing.

Still, guess it's the logical extreme for the whole 'fake it till you make it' thing. If you can't build a real audience after doing that, this is what you're left with.

</comment><comment><USER3> Isn't this what people here refer to as "growth hacking"?

<comment><USER4> not really

<comment><USER5> No, actually it is. It's just that this one didn't work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> They can still turn this around. Shoot some documentary video & turn it into a Borat-style wry comedy, pretend it was all a commentary on something or other.

</comment><comment><USER7> Many of the small venues struggle to survive as it is without some jerk ripping them off because he thinks it's funny. Yet get a good band in one and they are almost always the best gigs by miles.

That he goes into a huff because one venue asked him to actually pay their expenses says it all.

I hope the other venues chase him for costs and lost bar sales.

</comment><comment><USER8> What a crappy thing to do. Most people in the music industry barely get by, and that includes the people who depend on booked acts bringing paying patrons to live music venues.

</comment><comment><USER9> The growth hack is half complete. He can ride this for all it's worth as a documentary on marketing: [https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/434gqw/i-made- my-shed-the...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/434gqw/i-made-my-shed-the- top-rated-restaurant-on-tripadvisor) or hire fake fans to show up to the concert like that fake screaming fangirls video that made Justin Bieber an instant sensation.

<comment><USER10> It worked for Balloon Boy!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVbV_Sis99o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVbV_Sis99o)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Plot twist: a bunch of people turn up to the non-existent shows at the end of the tour, just to see a non-show...

</comment><comment><USER12> Okay so my first thought was, why would the venues care, don't they have the ticket money anyway. Is there something I am missing about how these things are arranged, such that the venue doesn't get paid if people don't show up? If so, why?

<comment><USER13> Well, no:

Article: " _...they told the venue they sold 150 tickets (a sell out) and only one person actually showed up who bought a ticket._ "

Even if they pay the band only after the show, the venue might get $16 for several hours of staffed operation.

People attending a show buy tickets, food, and drinks from the venue.

So, the band's payment is typically easily recouped because the venue expects a minimum guaranteed income (say 40% capacity, average of $6/attendee spent on incidentals).

If zero people show up, they have the expense without the income, having sacrificed the night that could have gone to a more popular band, while also paying workers and incurring utility expenses.

<comment><USER12> Aha! Yes, that would explain the unhappiness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I fear he might have thought to get away with it and jump start a career or something. That would make it pretty sad and pathetic.

</comment><comment><USER15> And his name is not Tommy Wiseau!

<comment><USER16> Exactly, this is The Artist, the Musical! His youtube channel is him talking to a mirror or playing with pieces of broken mirror or a mirror frame...

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoAm6zb9ruDaD7Ba7FZQI6g/vid...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoAm6zb9ruDaD7Ba7FZQI6g/videos)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> If a band plays in the woods and no one hears them should we talk about it?

</comment><comment><USER18> Fake it until you make it. Keep hustling.</comment>


Which Tech Giant Would You Drop? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/10/technology/Ranking-Apple-Amazon-Facebook-Microsoft-Google.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> I am probably gonna look like a dumbass typing this comment but who's Alphabet ? Never even heard of them while the other are consistently bombarded on my face but you menting it with them is making me feel like I live under a rock haha Whats something that they made thats really popular ?

<comment><USER3> I can't resist... Try Googling it! Or Alphabeting it. Or whatever they're calling themselves these days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Weird question. For me at least, the order changes based on whether I'm considering their utility, what I think of their ethics/monopoly abuse, or both.

</comment><comment><USER5> I picked microsoft last because my job is coding in .net. Not sure if that counts.</comment>


Ideas are worthless. Execution is everything - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/youd-be-hard-pressed-to-come-up-with-an-idea-so-bad-that-it-couldnt-succeed-with-the-right-execution-and-it-would-2010-6?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider+(Silicon+Alley+Insider)

<comment><USER2> Common sense for anyone who's had a few ideas. Which is everyone.</comment>


Drones Get Ready to Fly, Unseen, Into Everyday Life  - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703631704575551954273159086.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read

<comment><USER2> What scares me the most is not the military use, it this one:

> _But the real prize may be in civilian applications. "The military stuff is > kind of passe," Ms. Cummings said. "It doesn't take a rocket scientist from > MIT to tell you if we can do it for a soldier in the field, we can do it for > anybody." As a parent of a 3-year-old, she said, she could use the same > technology to track her daughter on her way to school (she would need to > plant an electronic bug in her lunch box or backpack). That would "bring a > whole new meaning to a hover parent," she said. Schools could even use > drones for perimeter control._

I don't want my kids to be controlled by drones, I don't want kids to be looked behind on their way to school like animals. If you don't give a bit of freedom to your kids, if you are always on their back, they will never mature and reach adulthood. They will never have the feeling of freedom they need to develop themselves and be great creators, scientists, whatever. They will be sheep controlled by the sheepdog of the moment.

</comment><comment><USER3> What scares me the most is the possibility that they can be used for assassinations; at present drones are not fast enough, manuveable enough or stealthy enough, but thats a technical limitation that isn't likely to last for that long.

The main fear with this is that those who are going to be protecting other people are very unlikely to see this coming, nor to be especially prepared for it. The secret service (who are not the only ones who do protection, or even the main ones, but no doubt the best) are really good at closing of every attack route that they know of, but even so it is widely known that it is impossible or nearly so to stop an assassin who is willing to give up his own life. With this technology, this may become true of any person who can get an internet connection (until drones become able to navigate autonomously) and is willing to sacrifice a drone -- which is going to be a larger number of people that those who are willing go sacrifice their life.

I sincerely hope I am wrong, because I wouldn't like the kind of society that would have to be created to prevent somebody from doing this, nor the kind of surveillance methods that would be required to prevent somebody from building a drone (if your are going to kill people, you don't care if building a drone is technically illegal).

<comment><USER4> _The main fear with this is that those who are going to be protecting other people are very unlikely to see this coming, nor to be especially prepared for it._

Why, you think working in security means not reading a newspaper? I rather suspect that the people with the high-stakes jobs hold them because they are actually proactive rather than the sort of people who stand around waiting for something to happen.

<comment><USER3> No, I don't think that applies to people working in security.

But I know that it applies to a large number of people working in the government.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Could these be used for last mile transportation? As a way to deliver a letter, or perhaps even a pizza, at least during nice weather?

<comment><USER6> I don't see why not, but there'd be a payload weight limit, and if popularity increased, you'd need some kind of routing system to keep bots from colliding.

<comment><USER7> You are correct that these issues need to be addressed, the FAA already has a system in place to prevent aerial collisions of commercial and private planes. I'm sure the existing regulations can be modified to be more suitable for uavs and city-scale flight patterns. For example, stay at odd-hundred elevation for north and east travel and stay at even-hundred for south and west travel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So will we soon see a co-evolutionary arms race as ever stealthier drones are harassed, blocked or outright disabled by ever more aggressive counter measures?

I could see the paparazzi style flying eyes being dealt with by LIDAR countermeasures. The tracking drones are already vulnerable to a number of the same tactics that involve shaking a tail of any sort. I foresee some exciting new precedents getting set from this conflict though.

<comment><USER9> Stephenson's Diamond Age theorizes on what happens nation-states develop nano- drones. Funky stuff.

<comment><USER8> That's exactly what I was thinking of; I figured the reference would be obvious to those who'd read the book and useless to those who hadn't though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Have you heard the noise these things make? They're about as "stealth" as lawnmowers.

<comment><USER7> My startup makes small (2.5lbs) electric helicopter uavs. At 50ft you can't hear them any more. If you are inside your car, I could position the heli within 5-10ft of you before you might even notice.

<comment><USER11> What's your startup?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> After viewing the video of the MIT lab using the AR Drone I'm confused...

From the Development License of the SDK Drone API (Article 5 v):

"AR.Drone, shall have for sole purpose to be used by a User for entertaining, game, leisure or training. The creation of applications for the use of the PARROT Drone for military, and, without limitation, security, watching, spying, defence, cartography is strictly forbidden."

<comment><USER13> Radar detectors are sold under the same sort of disclaimer that they're never, ever, ever to be used to circumvent speed limit laws. It's safe to say we can all roll our eyes at this boilerplate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> _Several efforts to develop personal drones are scheduled for completion in the next year._

If only scheduling innovation was so easy...

</comment><comment><USER15> I would get one to fly ahead of me when I'm driving and monitor for the road work and traffic congestion. That's until the car native navigation is finally capable of collecting this information on its own. And I want a touch screen with pinch zoom on that damn antiquated piece of hardware already. And a satellite imagery! :)

</comment><comment><USER16> If I would want to spy on my <wife, child, whatever> I would simply write a GPS logger application and plant in on his/her Android/iPhone/whatever, I think that would be more practical and cost effective, still I can't take photos with that, so I guess this would be nice too.</comment>


Ask HN: Are you rich or famous? How did it affect your ability to trust others? - <AUTHOR> Have you become rich or famous? How did it affect the way people treated you? (most notably, potential dates/significant others)<p>It sounds like it could be a double-edged sword: not having close relationships, you invest yourself in your work, thus becoming rich and/or famous. Then, when rich and/or famous, people are more attracted to you. But, you suspect, for the wrong reasons. <comment><USER2> It's one of the reasons why rich people often date other rich people. If you're dating someone with the same level of wealth as you then the "wrong reasons" become much less likely.

Also remember that you don't have to tell people how much money you have. Assuming you're in the few million range, other than maybe a bigger house or nicer car there's not a huge amount of lifestyle difference from someone earning 150k/year so if you don't disclose how much money you have it's probably not as obvious as you think.

Obviously if you're famous this is harder.

</comment><comment><USER3> I suppose I am famous in some circles. It hasn't had the effect you suggest; but it has led people towards forming (not necessarily accurate) opinions prior to meeting me.

Or to paraphrase something I've heard from several people in the past couple of years: "You're not nearly as arrogant as I expected".

</comment><comment><USER4> I wouldn't say rich or famous, but in certain niches in niches I've been well known.

I sometimes meet people at events (particularly in the UK) where people know who I am before I've met them, this used to lead to embarrassing situations where I'd try to work out if I'd met them before, but these days I'm used to it.

I have some friends that are quite rich and it seems quite stressful, in terms of the keeping up appearances aspect and social pressures, but a lot of that is to do with the culture in that country. When they come over to the UK all that evaporates and they can chill out with slobs like us :)</comment>


In Investing, It's When You Start and When You Finish (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/01/02/business/20110102-metrics-graphic.html <comment><USER2> To reiterate my comment another time this was posted in a comment thread:

I feel this graphic, while informative and delightful, is insidious in its choice of scale and its lack of comparisons.

On scale, it colors +3% to +7% real returns as "neutral". This makes it seem like the stock market is sometimes good sometimes bad but overall it may as well be just okay. I feel that 0% nominal returns, or even 0% real returns, is more honest as a neutral anchor, and even with the latter it would need some comparisons against other asset classes to paint an accurate picture.

On comparisons, it does a disservice to its readers by not adding a tab showing bond yields and a tab showing cash/treasury yields (which would be dark red across the board except light red around 1930).

These slights in the graphic unfairly make the stock market look unfavorable and makes the suboptimal strategy of keeping your money out of the market seem much more favorable than it is.

Adding a specific example, the "worst 20 years" is 1961 to 1981 with a BIG RED -2.0% a year, as if someone loses money and in retrospect would have been better stowing cash away under one's mattress. According to the BLS[1], US inflation was 5.7% over that period, so the mattress strategy yields at best -5.7% in real returns, not at all better than investing in the S&P.

[1] - [http://data.bls.gov/cgi- bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=1&year1=1961&ye...](http://data.bls.gov/cgi- bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=1&year1=1961&year2=1981): $1 in 1961 was $3.04 in 1981, 3.04^(1/20) = 1.057

<comment><USER3> These returns are before taxes. There is no inflation discount on taxes so your real after tax returns can be negative with a 1% nominal ROI.

Further people don't really invest all their money in year X, and then take it all out in year Y. Cost dollar averaging helps returns and needing to take money out to live off of in down years hurts returns.

Finally the baseline is not the mattress strategy, it's spending all your money now and investing nothing.

<comment><USER4> I'm pretty sure I replied to you last time ;) One important aspect of looking at returns is comparing different strategies, but another one is in realistic planning. There's a lot of literature and marketing out there touting, in my view, grossly unrealistic numbers like 7-8% annualized compound returns as a reasonable expectation for sticking your money in an index fun on the S&P. Considering the huge differences in the effect of small changes to the annualized returns, it's important people have a realistic idea of the volatility in that expected number when they allocate the amount of money they save for the kind of retirement they want.

This graphic is awesome primarily because it shows that it is not correct to assume that volatility in the equity markets is averaged out completely during a timespan that is comparable to the average savings portion of a career.

edit: oops, meant to reply to GP

<comment><USER2> Thank you for the reply again :). I saw your comment previously and I think you make a great point. As much as I criticize the chart for being unfairly pessimistic about equity returns, there is far too much literature suggesting you can get 7-8% real returns by parking your money in X, especially in the <20 year time frame for stocks. In comparison this chart is a good factual dose.

My concern is, that while this comparison is useful for people further along in their research trying to understand the volatility of the stock market, this chart has a number of misleading (IMO) traits that can dangerously/unfairly steer people who are newer to managing their own money away from index funds altogether.

I would hope that people see this chart, my comment, yours, and FabHK's excellent comparison to bond yields. But if you have limited attention and are getting started, I would hate for the original link to be the only thing you see.

Speaking for experience with family and friends, too many good people scared by charts like this bought gold in 2011 or trusted mutual fund managers to buy into funds with 4% front-end loads and 2% AUM fees.

<comment><USER4> It's funny because I agree with all those statements and add "people will listen to Jeff Siegel and just jam their money into index funds and close their eyes until its time to retire". So they lose coming and going (but lose less relying on index funds than buying gold funds).

Personally I think actively managing your money is the better solution, but the active desire not to manage money from so many people (even otherwise active and engaged people like the HN crowd) has led me to being in favor of a stronger govt-backed pension system rather than tax-deferred accounts that hurt our tax base and are a windfall for trustees.

<comment><USER5> > Personally I think actively managing your money is the better solution...

To what degree do you believe people should actively manage their money? Are you advocating that people should be more active in choosing their distribution of assets across risk:reward categories, or are you advocating for more active trading?

<comment><USER4> I think the short answer to your question is "both". You need a portfolio with diversified product risk and diversified strategies. You don't need to be a quant to make a basic stab at this with the typical retail portfolio size, there are tons of tools for free on the internet to do this kind of thing. Most people who know enough to not be in managed funds still have no idea how to have anything but basically a 100% long equity market portfolio (I'm intentionally grouping together mostly meaningless 'diversification' between highly correlated segments like midcap/largecap/nasdaq/dow) except to make it long bonds. So I think there's basic product and strategy knowhow to organizing and maintaining a portfolio.

The reason I said both is because of the 'maintaining' part. Without some level of activity, its effectively impossible to be engaged with the market enough to take advantage of opportunities and manage your portfolio to keep enough diversification and reduce the internal correlations in your holdings/strategies.

It might sound complicated but it can be learned and it isn't rocket science, and there is a lot of great technology to assist anyone, not just software devs. Managing your life savings is a better investment of time than many other pursuits, in my view.

<comment><USER6> Sounds good in principle but how well does advice like this scale? Similar problem to Waze - side streets are great when you're the only one taking them, but once everyone does your advantage is gone. It's hard to expect a large population of amateur investors with no edge to outperform the market. In the general case, what's the marginal return on time and effort spent actively managing your money vs dumping it in a vanguard 50 and learning a different hobby?

<comment><USER4> That's possible, but it isn't currently the case. At a minimum, having a long vanguard 500 position has a roughly 50% + positive drift - fees chance of success. Part of the long vanguard 500 price bakes in the unlimited theoretical upside that comes along with it. Selling option contracts against that long position to give up that upside beyond a certain price reduces your cost basis and pushes your position's success rate over 50%. Repeated over many events creates a net positive expected value.

Even if there was no edge in the market, as in your premise, it's still the case that the upside of a long S&P 500 equity position is unlimited, and the upside of a long S&P 500 equity position with an option sold against it is limited, therefore would be priced to have a superior chance of success relatively speaking. More market participants would improve the price accuracy of risk, it wouldn't reduce the price of risk to zero.

As for whether its worth it, I think the aggregate effect is significant and, of course, is subject to the benefits of compounded returns, so it doesn't take much to severely outperform your other prospects in the long term. It's up to each of us to decide if its worth learning.

edit: typo

<comment><USER7> it sounds like you're basically advocating something like an s&p 500 buy-write index investment instead of just an s&p index investment, right? basically selling covered calls on your index investment.

I agree with your premise, and make a pleasant bit of side-income selling covered calls on individual stocks that I own, but it seems like the buy-write indices don't actually fare well, or at least $BXM doesn't. Way worse than I would have expected actually...any idea why?

<comment><USER8> If the strategy worked, that would mean that calls were overpriced. Why would that be? Why wouldn't their price reflect their value?

Since indexes by themselves have such low overhead costs, more complex strategies have difficulty generating superior returns.

<comment><USER7> that's a good point -- i suspect the s&p 500 receives so much attention in comparison to any particular individual stock that there is very probably little change to fish out of its couch cushions

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's interesting to note that at the beginning of the best periods to invest (the big green regions on the graph, like 1942-1960s or 1980s-2000), the stock market was often not just low in terms of broad valuation. It was just "empty". It had typically gone through many years of very little participation, little activity and low liquidity.

E.g. in 1980 the (Belgian) stock market was pretty much comatose. The typical stock owners were wealthy families, often holding their family fortune as a large stake in a single company. To most non-financial people in 1980, owning public common stock would have been something from a bygone era. They didn't consider it an option.

Rather, people in 1980 were standing in line to buy gold coins. People then feared that Volcker's dramatic rate hikes would cause severe problems. When the stock market sprang to life in early and mid 80s, back offices were often not able to keep pace and doing transactions could be cumbersome.

Compare this with 2016, where central bankers are walking on egg shells to hike rates with as little as 0.25%. Stocks and bonds are more expensive than ever. Yet almost everybody I know has a trading account. Regular people can trade advanced derivatives with minimal hassle. Every time I visit a bank, I see desks and booths filled with people getting talked into investing their savings into various kinds of "high" yielding constructions. Because "TINA".

Feels to me like the worst time to invest. 36 years of buy-the-dip reinforcement learning. But then again I've felt like this for years.

<comment><USER10> "Stocks and bonds are more expensive than ever."

Which is what you would expect most of the time in a growing economy.

<comment><USER11> Growing economy?

The growth rate in the past several years in the developed world has been the lowest in any economic expansion. In the US, around 1.5% lately and is only positive because the inflation rate calculated by the government (by which it is adjusted) is significantly under-estimated.

<comment><USER10> I wasn't making a political statement.

<comment><USER12> I don't think his was a political statement either, just that your implication that it's the result of growth doesn't seem accurate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> And that's the S&P 500, based on American stock exchanges, which have probably had the best & most consistent returns over the past 100 years than stock exchanges everywhere else.

The past 100 years witnessed the rise of American domination of global business. Even if American business stays dominant, there's probably less growth from #1 -> #1 then there was during the rise to #1. And that's a big if.

In other words, the future returns of the S&P 500 is probably going to look more like the returns of a basket of international stock markets over the past 100 years than it will look like the returns of the S&P 500 over the past 100 years.

Many people believe that since the S&P 500 has never lost money over any 10 year period that it's never going to do so. It may be highly unlikely, but if you keep rolling those dice eventually you're going to come up snake eyes.

<comment><USER9> > "S&P has never lost money over any 10 year period"

Investing a dollar in 1929 meant 20 bad years. Sitting on that dollar for 3 years and investing it in 1932 meant no bad years.

If I look at some expectations and common beliefs that people hold in 2016, I can't help but wonder whether we have one of those 20 bad year periods coming up.

(By the way, part of the success of US assets is definitely related to American companies leading the way in business innovation like IT. But another part is related to the US running trade deficits and the dollar being the reserve currency, meaning large amounts of dollar liquidity flooded back into the US and mostly into its financial system.)

<comment><USER13> Where "20 bad years" meant that your investment did not keep up with inflation, or barely kept up with inflation, but it still grew in dollar terms.

In terms of bad things happening, that's fairly benign. It could be worse, and probably will be some time. I'm just not going to predict when.

<comment><USER14> And only because there was an exceptionally fast run-up in 1929. If you had bought in 1928 instead, for example, you weren't down nearly as much in 1930.

<comment><USER9> The chart from the article disagrees.

Investing in the mid- to late 20s generally, a period of overvaluation, you would have done well initially. But for people who didn't have perfect timing to cash out (aka most shmuks like me), every buy-and-hold dollar invested in that timespan would remain deeply in the red for a very long period of time.

Due to the severity of the actual 1929 crash, a brief moment of semi-good investment returns (measured over multiple timespans from a few years to decades) occurred in 1933-1935.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The larger, updated versions of that chart are available here: [http://www.crestmontresearch.com/stock-matrix- options/](http://www.crestmontresearch.com/stock-matrix-options/)

The real question is your investing period. I'm 48; my 90% life expectancy is around 90. So, yes, I make the assumption that I'll get around 3% after inflation, taxes, etc.

</comment><comment><USER16> CAPE (aka price-to-ten-year-earnings, PE10[1]) helps devising a rule of thumb for timing.

Stocks don't deviate from their expected earnings for long, so when the ratio jumps over the median PE10, the market becomes expensive.

Holding cash during the period of high PE10 and investing it in stocks under low PE10 is a good idea for a person who's saving for retirement and doesn't want to become a professional investor.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclically_adjusted_price- to-e...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclically_adjusted_price-to- earnings_ratio)

<comment><USER17> What is the current value of CAPE/PE10? Where can I find the current value of it?

<comment><USER18> This webpage seems to have the current value: [http://www.multpl.com/shiller- pe/](http://www.multpl.com/shiller-pe/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's really important to remember that these are inflation adjusted returns, meaning that in most cases, if you were not invested, you would have lost even more money than this graphic indicates.

</comment><comment><USER20> It should be noted that the chart shows s&p 500 which does not include dividends. Real returns are higher when dividends are accounted for.

<comment><USER21> Note that they do include dividends though, according to the legend. So probably using the total return or net total return index.

<comment><USER20> Indeed, I stand corrected. I missed that part. I thought the returns were too low to include dividends, but that must me the inflation adjustment tricking me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is how a couple of university endowment funds do investing:

     	                Harvard	Yale
      Domestic Equity	15%	14%
      Foreign Equity	15%	14%
      Private Equity	13%	17%
      Fixed Income (bonds)	27%	5%
      Real Assets	        23%	25%
      hedge funds	        12%	25%

<comment><USER23> Your Harvard column adds up to 105%.

<comment><USER22> Corrections are welcome

<comment><USER23> According to [http://www.frontierim.com/files/file/download/id/1220](http://www.frontierim.com/files/file/download/id/1220) the top 20 US Endowment funds allocate their assets like:

      Private Equity                   19%
      Domestic Equity                  13%
      Global Equity                     8%
      Emerging Equity                   8%
      Global Bonds                      9%
      Global Real Estate               10%
      Commodities/Natural Resources     8%
      Hedge Funds/Managed Futures      21%
      Cash                              4%

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Shouldn't this be compared to an alternative like buying bonds or holding the money in an average bank account? If inflation ate up the gains from the index value increase, wouldn't the same be true for other forms of investment?

"The Standard & Poor's 500-stock index has posted double-digit gains for the second year in a row. But the index is still below where it was in early 1999."

Is this true when adjusted for inflation?

[https://www.google.ch/search?hl=en&q=Standard%20&ei=EuQEWOaq...](https://www.google.ch/search?hl=en&q=Standard%20&ei=EuQEWOaqIojnswGbiqPgBw#hl=en&q=Standard+poor+500)

<comment><USER25> Right, there are two questions: "What should I invest in?" and "How much do I need to save?".

In answering the first question inflation-adjusting is useless because inflation hits all investments equally, but in answering the second you do need to adjust for inflation.

<comment><USER24> Thanks! I think I get it now. The message of the article/figure is "You probably need to save more than you think in order to retire with X USD in savings."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> _Investors often have expectations of real annual returns greater than 7 percent — the areas in green. But over 20 years or longer, rates that high are rare._

The 7% annual return figure may be related to something Warren Buffet said around 2013:

 _The economy, as measured by gross domestic product, can be expected to grow at an annual rate of about 3 percent over the long term, and inflation of 2 percent would push nominal GDP growth to 5 percent, Buffett said. Stocks will probably rise at about that rate and dividend payments will boost total returns to 6 percent to 7 percent, he said."_ [1]

Note that Buffet's 6-7% estimate is for _nominal annual returns._ His estimate of _real annual returns_ is _4-5%_

There was a recent McKinsey study [2] also describing a likely long-term scenario of 4% real returns on US equities.

Note that these are returns on _equities,_ which is considered to be the riskiest asset class in a traditional investment portfolio. A balanced portfolio of equities and bonds is expected to have a long-term annual nominal return of just _4-4.5%_ (corresponding to an annual real return of _2-2.5%_ ) [3]

Pension funds and endowments typically invest in a mix of equities and bonds. These pension funds are structured by actuaries who have made outrageously optimistic assumptions about future returns, with the average US state pension plan assuming a 7.69% nominal annual return. [3] In a rare public admission, in 2008 a pension actuary for New York State declared his work to be "a step above voodoo." [4] In a more recent dose of reality, it was disclosed by Calpers that the public pension fund earned a return of _0.6%_ in 2015. [5]

Also, note that individual investors do not earn the "average long-term return" (which is just a theoretical number). Actual returns experienced by individual investors are more volatile and highly sensitive to the timing of when the started and finished invested. This timing is completely out of an individual's control, it is based on when a person was born and when they reach retirement age. One way to think about this problem is, what would be the cost of insuring investors against this "timing" volatility? Based on current market rates and some back of the envelope calculations, the rough answer is that it costs about 1.5 to 2% per year to buy such protection on a balanced portfolio. Once you deduct the insurance expense from the expected 2-2.5% real return, you are left with an expected _0% to 1% annual real return._ To put this in perspective, a $100,000 investment compounding at 1% for 20-years would earn just $22,000 over 20 years. Meanwhile, "millennials" are apparently banking on a 10% annual return on their investments. [6]

What all this says to me, personally, is that the traditional narrative of individual "retirement," "saving" and "investment" is a delusion. There is no "safe," "slow and steady" approach for lower and middle-class people to build up for financial survival later in life. A different kind of strategy is needed, one that is based on higher risk taking. This is one reason that I think doing a startup makes a lot of sense for people who are talented - better to take a big risk, invest yourself, amp up the risk massively, and then work extremely hard and gradually "derisk" by doing all the things that good startups do. This probably has better odds of a successful "retirement" than the traditional idea of working in a corporate job and trying to climb the overcrowded corporate ladder while saving little by little in a defined contribution group pension plan.

[1] [http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/The-Simple- Dollar/2013/050...](http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/The-Simple- Dollar/2013/0506/What-Warren-Buffett-s-stock-market-math-means-for-your- retirement)

[2] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-27/be- afraid...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-27/be-afraid-be- very-afraid-if-you-re-investing-for-the-long-run)

[3] [http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and- economics/21678812...](http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and- economics/21678812-pension-funds-and-endowments-are-too-optimistic-many- unhappy-returns)

[4] [http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/16/speaker- tosses-...](http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/16/speaker-tosses-work- of-voodoo-actuary/)

[5] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-18/calpers-l...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-18/calpers- largest-u-s-pension-fund-earned-0-6-last-fiscal-year)

[6] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-16/wanted- bi...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-16/wanted-big-returns- low-risk-and-millennials-they-want-10-2)

<comment><USER21> 1\. Agreed that people today banking on returns of 10%, or even 6%, are quite likely to be disappointed. I'd plan with a 3% real return assumption, and put in a substantial buffer, and also plan with at most 3% safe withdrawal rate (see Trinity study [1]).

2\. This in turn means that you have to accumulate, say, at least $1m (in today's dollars) at retirement, to live on a modest $2500 a month.

3\. This in turn means that you have to put aside basically $1100 a month for 40 years.

3b. In other words, whatever your target retirement income stream is, you'll have to set aside about half of that over your working life.

3c. Another way of looking at it is that you should put basically a quarter to a third of your income into retirement saving.

4\. Disagree that startups are the best option for most people. While the average return might be high, this is skewed by a few super successful ones. I posit that the median return is rather mediocre. Thus, startup might maximise your chance to retire super early and opulently. However, to maximise your chance to reach a certain (more modest) level of retirement income, living frugally with a "normal" well paying job might be best.

5\. A further problem I see with your "startup" suggestion is that it cannot work for everyone - if everyone pursued startups, there'd be no one to run the actual economy. However, if everyone reduced their consumption and ramped up their savings rate as much as I'd suggest, the economy would most likely collapse, as well. So, I dunno.

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

<comment><USER26> _Disagree that startups are the best option for most people._

Right, it is definitely not a good option for "most people." What I was saying is, " _startups make a lot of sense for people who are talented_."

To draw an analogy, if you are a highly talented athlete, then pursuing a career in professional sports might make a lot of sense for you, even though the expected payoff in pro sports is quite low for most people. Similarly, if you are a particularly talented artist, then that career path might make a lot more financial sense than a traditional corporate job. It seems obvious when we talk about sports and arts, but I think it is less common for people to think about their corporate careers in this way.

<comment><USER21> Fair enough, and I agree with your qualification to _highly talented_ and would add _highly motivated_ and _very lucky_.

It does not seem prudent to recommend that people become singers or actors or soccer players on the basis that Madonna and George Clooney and David Beckham have reached and exceeded their retirement saving goals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I liked this chart so much I made my own version that adds options for non- inflation adjusted and dollar-cost averaging instead of lump sum investment: [https://gregstoll.com/~gregstoll/stockmarketreturns/](https://gregstoll.com/~gregstoll/stockmarketreturns/)

<comment><USER25> Does your graphic take into account dividend payments?

<comment><USER27> I'm not sure - most mutual funds include that in their returns, but I'm not sure if stock prices/indexes do.

<comment><USER25> Ah, I just saw that you gave the sources of your data. It doesn't include dividend payments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Dave Ramsey, who is always telling everyone that average annualized returns are around 10%, will be so disappointed.

<comment><USER29> I mean Dave Ramsey is horrible, but AAR for the S&P 500 is in fact 10%, it's just that there is a large volatility to returns.

Although average real returns are much lower due to inflation, but that's another beast, though arguably more important beast.

<comment><USER28> Help me understand... I am seeing this article as showing the median returns for 20-year periods around 4.1%. Are you saying you don't buy the article's conclusion, or is there an apples/oranges thing that I'm missing here?

<comment><USER25> The article accounts for inflation. If you don't do that and you take an average over the entire history of the S&P500 then you get returns of 9.0% annually. That's not so far off from 10%.

Not accounting for inflation is fair enough in Dave Ramsey's case since he's all about tying to get people to invest more. Since people's cash is going to be hit just as hard by inflation as stocks it isn't necessary to account for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I miss d3.js at nyt. I would consider a few dollars a month if digital media meant digitally interactive. same goes for you Economist. let's agree to use the power of the web for all our web publishing, not just some of it.

<comment><USER31> To be fair, this is a fairly old article (2011). D3.js only came out that year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> It might have been useful to see a comparison of active-portfolio versus buy and hold (not the chart's stated purpose). Also, to someone who doesn't invest or who doesn't think about compound interest issues, a 4% annual return builds fairly quickly, so the chart's implicit conclusion may seem more bleak than it really is.

</comment><comment><USER33> The preview for OP link on Facebook is broken, which is unexpected from nytimes.com It's weird that it doesn't just grab the image from the article.

<comment><USER34> Article is from over 5 years ago! Open Graph had only been around for a few months.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> And that's why, if you are investing in indices, it's important to continuously invest.

</comment><comment><USER36> TWSS</comment>