Jobs that no longer exist today - <AUTHOR> http://www.vintag.es/2015/01/10-jobs-that-no-longer-exist-today.html <comment><USER2> I thought this post looked familiar, and sure enough it's a straight copy-and- paste from an identical piece on a different site last year:

[http://www.boredpanda.com/extinct-jobs/](http://www.boredpanda.com/extinct- jobs/)

Not sure if it's licensed copying or blatant plagerism, since they technically give "credit" at the bottom, but if it's the latter, it would nice to see links to vintag.es banned from HN, since this is the sort of thing that just sucks the air out of the web.

<comment><USER3> 100% agree. Tasteless. I want to believe that there will be some sort of traffic consequence from this but I'm not sure.

For instance, will Huffington Post have issues later for starting to not care about the quality of their posts? Maybe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Switchboard operators still exist. They're used in the field in infantry units and they're part of the communication platoon in a Marine Corps infantry batallion's H&Q company, MOS 0612: [http://usmilitary.about.com/od/enlistedjo2/a/0612.htm](http://usmilitary.about.com/od/enlistedjo2/a/0612.htm)

In a combat situation, wires from fox holes that go to HQ or artillery are super important. These guys have to run over to fox holes laying or repairing wire from the switchboard during enemy fire. This type of communication cannot be jammed or intercepted remotely. At the switchboard they're doing exactly what you see in that picture, connecting lines to another manually, with like a SB-22:

[http://www.prc68.com/I/SB22.shtml](http://www.prc68.com/I/SB22.shtml)

Although there are more modern switchboards now, they aren't used by infantry. These things are sturdy and very simple to repair.

<comment><USER5> I know lectors also exist in cuban cigar factories.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The reason Log Drivers don't exist anymore isn't because of logging trucks, it's because the quality wood adjacent to rivers is mostly gone. Water transportation and sorting of logs is still very much a thing; come up to coastal BC Canada and you'll see it frequently.

<comment><USER7> Here in Brazil Log Drivers still exist, mostly in the Amazon Rainforest (lots, lots and lots of rivers, even between cities most transportation is by boat).

But usually it is done for illegal logging companies (it is illegal to log near a river, because the soil falls on the water and makes the river shallower).

<comment><USER8> Is there a reputable non-profit that works on stopping this illegial activity? This a good site to mention a legitimate charity? It would be great to hear from someone who lives in Brazil?

<comment><USER7> I think there are some non-profits, but I think they are mostly foreign.

First, Amazon rainforest is HUGE, VERY HUGE, dense, hard to navigate, among other things, this make patrolling it effectively impossible.

Second, there are still uncontacted tribes there, and they are very violent (it is the reason why they are still uncontacted, they DON'T want contact, and are not afraid to turn white or black people stalking around into arrow pincushions), and some other tribes that deeply distrust white people for past transgressions, thus wandering around is dangerous (including for the loggers, it is not uncommon to see natives vs loggers wars that leave a couple of people dead, also natives vs miners happen frequently too, Amazon rainforest soil is rich in very valuable minerals).

It is a very hairy problem, the brazillian government has two specialized agencies working on this (Funai, that works with native americans, and Ibama, that is the envionmental agency), has satellites dedicated to that (Brazil builds satellites to track deforestation, and I believe China launches them for us, since we exploded our launch platform and rocket), and there is the police and the army working with this.

That said, it is still not working, not because of the loggers, or miners, but because of corrupt politicians that own land there, there is a huge problem of politicians (and some other high power people, like judges) that "somehow" end with huge tracts of land that have only forest in it, then they clear the land to put cattle in it, the activity of illegally clearing forest to put cattle in its place is making the deforestation rate rise (instead of declining despite all the efforts).

Finally, a couple of non-profit workers and Ibama workers were murdered around the area, seemly usually by politicians, one notorious case two Ibama workers were murdered by a city mayor, that even after conviction and arrest still got re-elected (yay for democracy), and Dorathy Stang case [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Stang](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Stang)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Click-bait editors of sloppy lists on random topics will very soon be obsolete as well, if they aren't already.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Obsolete_occupations](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Obsolete_occupations)

Snarky meta-commentors who insist on proper attribution soon to follow.

[EDIT] It's worse, no editor here, only copy-paste operator: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8949065](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8949065)

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm a little disappointed they didn't mention "computer." In the original sense of that word:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_computer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_computer)

The computer put the computer out of work.

<comment><USER11> I've always wondered if there were techniques of parallel computation used to maximize the effectiveness of a roomful of human computers that would be useful for electronic computers with multiple processors.

<comment><USER10> I mean, it's a stretch, but if you think about it, this is essentially what the chalkboard/whiteboard/shared surface concept is about.

<comment><USER12> How do you mean?

<comment><USER10> I'm actually trying to unpack what I meant. I had one of those rare, sober bursts of the kind of trippy insight that usually occurs to people when stoned. :)

I'm guessing what I mean here is that chalkboards serve as a shared resource, on which multiple humans can perform operations together, or with larger problems addressed in smaller chunks in tandem. It's not "parallel computing" per se, but it's an analog analogue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I actually met an ice cutter fairly recently. He made a sizeable portion of his living hacking off chunks of icebergs from tidewater glaciers for fancy cocktails. He sold the ice to upscale Anchorage hotels and bars.

<comment><USER14> Here's a picture of an ice cutter from 2010, building the Icehotel in Sweden - [http://www.arcticphoto.co.uk/supergal/JJ/JJ03/jj0324-19.htm](http://www.arcticphoto.co.uk/supergal/JJ/JJ03/jj0324-19.htm) .

Here's one for the "Hotel of Ice near the glacial Balea Lac in the Romanian Carpathians" \- [http://www.depotpicture.com/2014/08/italy-romanian-balea- lac...](http://www.depotpicture.com/2014/08/italy-romanian-balea-lac-hotel- made.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It'd be a lot more interesting to see a list of these jobs from much later in history, rather than most being circa 100 years ago or so.

As for jobs that surprisingly still exist, how about the people who _manually_ , in San Francisco in 2015, set the Caltrain reader boards for each train at 4th and King.

</comment><comment><USER16> Apparently there are still 5 lamplighters on the payroll of British Gas.

[http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2015/01/15/377470376/carr...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2015/01/15/377470376/carrying- the-torch-for-londons-last-gas-lamps)

<comment><USER17> We still have gas lamps in Malvern, I wonder if that's why - or if we still have gas lamps anywhere else?

<comment><USER18> Düsseldorf still has many gas lights. I found a map of them, the information is recorded in OpenStreetMap: [http://www.itoworld.com/map/69?lon=6.77375&lat=51.22517&zoom...](http://www.itoworld.com/map/69?lon=6.77375&lat=51.22517&zoom=12)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> How common was use of stilts in the past?

Several of these jobs seem to involve poles. Other similar jobs, like [tree] fruit-picking, seem to lend themselves to use of stilts.

Stilts can be dangerous - but there are surely advantages too, a knocker-upper could knock on the window until they hear movement, they could also sell them a morning paper/loaf/whatever through the window; I'd imagine they could do their round faster too.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stilts](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stilts)

<comment><USER20> Stiltmen working hop fields.

[http://www.britishpathe.com/video/stiltmen-aka-stilt- men](http://www.britishpathe.com/video/stiltmen-aka-stilt-men)

My mother and her family used to pick hops. It was a holiday for them. They'd travel to the countryside for a week, work to pick hops and get a bit of money for it.

EDIT: thinking about stilts in an orchard are a bit scary. You have all that pressure on one skinny little stilt-foot, on mud which might be soft, walking through grass which might be long. I don't know if that's difficult or if I just have terrible coordination.

EDIT2: a google image search for [stilt-men orchards] returns many interesting images of stilts being used in orchards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Aren't exterminators, aka rat-catchers, still around?

</comment><comment><USER22> I figure in the next ten about any job requiring a driver may be automated out of existence, excepting last mile delivery. Freight,buses, and the like.

While a lot of jobs won't vanish the numbers needed should be drastically reduced.

</comment><comment><USER23> Let us have a thought for the the profession of longshoreman, eliminated by the commercial viability of the shipping container in the 60's and subsequent total automation of port operations.

</comment><comment><USER24> #10 still exists, it's podcasts and the people who make podcasts!

</comment><comment><USER25> 2\. Human alarm clock

Don't they still do this within, say, hotels?

<comment><USER26> I actually use such a service at home sometimes. If I am supposed to take an important early flight, I use a service called "Personlig väckning" \- Personal wakeup. Its been around forever. You call them, tell them that you want to be woken up at 04. They call you at that time. Its a bit safer option than the alarm clock for me. Because I actually have to answer the phone, say good morning and say my name to confirm they called the right number. One time they called me again because I didnt sound fullt awake.

Of course there a modern solutions to this problem but I kind of like the "human contact aspect" of it. It costs like $5.

<comment><USER25> That's pretty neat, is it Eniros? Never knew it existed. I like the personal aspect of it. And on that topic I remember the recent app "Wakie" [0] that has a similar concept, maybe more towards the fun aspect.

[0] [http://wakie.com/](http://wakie.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The thing that really jumps out to me is how gaunt everyone looks, aside from the one woman who is apparently waking people up with a blowgun.

<comment><USER28> I wonder if that's an artifact of the camera producing harsh shadows on the people's cheekbones. Also, some of them are wearing very poorly fitting clothes, which, on a skinny person, could cause them to look even skinnier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> When I was in Thailand at a bowling alley they had people manually raise the pins, so pinsetters do at least still exist there.

</comment><comment><USER30> 9 out of 10 have explanatory text. Curious that the 'switchboard operator' is apparently a 'modern' enough occupation not to warrant an explanation. Funny, because I don't think many currently five year old kids will ever know what a switchboard operator did without websites like this teaching them.

</comment><comment><USER31> Office art departments that just made charts for people to use in reports and poster presentations.

</comment><comment><USER32> Would it be ok add "Webmaster" to no longer existing positions list? :)

</comment><comment><USER33> flash developer

<comment><USER34> No, unfortunately there's still quite a few of those lurking around.

<comment><AUTHOR> Old platforms never die, they just go into maintenance. Even mumps is still around in quite a few hospitals.

<comment><USER35> The upcoming Finnish patient information system will apparently be written in mumps. The total estimated cost of the system is 1.8 billion euros.

<comment><AUTHOR> That, for want of a better word is absolutely incredible. I keep using that word and I think I know what it means but really, what were they smoking?

MUMPS (har har) has it's origins in the medical world so there are a lot more people versed in mumps in that world that have domain expertise regarding hospitals but you'd hope that that chapter of the Cambrian explosion in programming was closed by now and that someone would come to their senses and would say: absolutely no more new development in MUMPS. (And 'Mapper' for that matter.)

They were dead-ends 30 years ago, they're not magically going to be better in 2015. Of course it would be hard to get rid of 1.8B euros using any other available technology so maybe that's were we can find part of the answer of why this happened.

Maintaining MUMPS code is an interesting exercise in pasta consumption, the language more or less dictates it.

See also: [http://thedailywtf.com/articles/A_Case_of_the_MUMPS](http://thedailywtf.com/articles/A_Case_of_the_MUMPS)

<comment><USER36> Hmmmm....

Anyone want to build an LLVM backend + FFI module? Probably worth a small fortune to shops that want to migrate out of MUMPS

<comment><AUTHOR> Good luck with that. MUMPS is an interesting beast. Before you embark on that I suggest you look into some medium sized MUMPS based project to get an idea of the kind of flavor of madness you'll be engaging.

But I agree with you that if you can pull this off you'll be doing well financially.

Even better: a MUMPS -> Java automatic translator (or maybe Python or Ruby, but I think the Java would be an easier sell in that market).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> One thing that struck me as I read through the list that 'programmer' will be the first one to go once we do reach that 'hard AI' goal. We'll be the first profession to make ourselves obsolete, I guess that serves us right for doing the same to lots of other professions.

<comment><USER37> What jobs do remain relevant, though, assuming hard AI? Is there anything a human person can do better than a software person if the latter can duplicate itself, requisition a larger brain to work on a hard problem, and communicate hundreds of times faster?

<comment><USER38> None--in the presence of strong AI, then by definition machines could do anything humans can do, but faster and more consistently, so machines would eventually make human labor totally obsolete.

I don't see it happening in my lifetime, though. I think we're still millenia away from that.

<comment><USER39> Is the term "strong AI" generally considered to imply that it's faster and more efficient than humans? I usually only think about it in terms of breadth of capabilities, and I expect that when we do build it, it will initially be extremely power-hungry and not necessarily real-time by human standards.

<comment><USER38> Perhaps, but then because it's strong AI, wouldn't it be capable of gathering and applying resources toward improving and reproducing itself? Even if it's very expensive and slow at first, theoretically it would be smart enough to work on making itself faster, cheaper, and better.

Perhaps I've seen too many science fiction movies, like Transcendence, but I thought that was basically what was meant by "strong AI."

<comment><USER39> It's _assumed_ that strong AI will be able to improve itself, in an exponential fashion according to Moore's Law. But an AI still has to overcome the same very real challenges that we humans face in trying to build ever- faster computers. A strong AI can only work magic on the software problems; it can't make ultrapure silicon crystals grow any faster and it can't make electron leakage just disappear. It still faces the same risk of silicon semiconductors being fundamentally unable to scale to the performance level required, forcing humans or AI to start over with an alternative computing substrate. It can't solve any of these hardware challenges overnight because they require physical experimentation.

So I think it's reasonable to think that the development of a strong AI _won 't_ change things overnight and we could see _decades_ of lag between first having a computer capable of strong AI at any speed and having a strong AI that outpaces humans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Koz's Minibowl in milwaukee still has pinsetters. fun place!

</comment><comment><USER41> The more jobs technology makes obsolete, the better, amiright?

</comment><comment><USER42> Director developer</comment>


NASA Proposes Combining a Rail Gun and a Scramjet to Fire Spacecraft Into Orbit - <AUTHOR> http://www.jwz.org/blog/2010/12/scramjet-rail-gun/

<comment><USER2> Get rid of the pilot and then you aren't constrained to the limits of human survivability. Extend the track to achieve Mach 4, and the plan is simplified, plus no more horrific memories for school children as it blows into tiny bits on CNN.

</comment><comment><USER3> Putting the space plane _under_ the rocket instead of on top seems like a really good idea. Using a first-stage turbojet/scramjet combo to take advantage of the readily available oxidizers in the lower atmosphere seems like it could be a huge weight and cost saver. The railgun sounds flashy and probably unnecessary, but the acceleration is so low that it may actually be practical.</comment>


Battle Pits Dolly Parton Against Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/04/technology/internet/04wireless.html

<comment><USER2> Does the FCC really not see the potential of this kind of internet penetration? We're already the laughing stock of the rest of the developed world in that regard, this would at least be a step in the right direction.

<comment><USER3> What a waste of NAB's resources. Innovate your business not hold onto a dinosaur.

Arguments heard in story, "Falling light due to no communication," uh use Internet communication like Skype, instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Dolly is a cold, cold woman. I wonder whatever happened to Jolene...</comment>


Any remote data science/ analytics bootcamps? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Coursera has a 'specilization' on Data Science. It's good, not great though. It costs about US$500.

It's not really a boot camp, but a MooC. There are 9 courses and first 3 courses are really easy. For a beginner they might be intimidating, so it depends on your prior experience. The course #6 is on Statistics which is really bad. The classes are not that explanatory and exercises seem very difficult. So, I suggest you to do another Coursera course on statistics by Duke university. This course is usually referred as DASI.

Currently I am at course #6. I have to complete 3 more and a capstone project at the end to complete the data science specialisation

</comment><comment><USER3> Not from what I've seen - there are some pretty nice Graduate Ceritifcates though from UWash, Harvard, Stanford and North Western though. Also the Georgia Tech MOOC Masters thing.

</comment><comment><USER4> Udacity Data science nanodegree</comment>


Dijkstra's Algorithm - hn-user http://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2016/10/26/DijkstrasAlg.html <comment><AUTHOR> For those who want to learn about Dijkstra's Algorithm:

I would prefer reading the original paper[0] written by Dijsktra himself. The explanation is so clear that I wish all algorithms were written and taught like this. The data structure and the steps are explained simply in plain english rather than a pseudo-code. Really. He's a very good writer. I'm not his student but by reading about him, the most important part in software/hardware development that I learned from him (especially on a large team) is to write a documentation/specification first before writing the code[1].

 _Their mode of interaction remains a model of disciplined engineering: They would first decide upon the interface between the hardware and the software, by writing a programming manual. Then the hardware designers would have to be faithful to their part of the contract, while Dijkstra, the programmer, would write software for the nonexistent machine. Two of the lessons he learned from this experience were the importance of clear documentation, and that program debugging can be largely avoided through careful design._

[0] - [http://www-m3.ma.tum.de/foswiki/pub/MN0506/WebHome/dijkstra....](http://www-m3.ma.tum.de/foswiki/pub/MN0506/WebHome/dijkstra.pdf)

[1] - [https://web.archive.org/web/20031210213835/http://www.utexas...](https://web.archive.org/web/20031210213835/http://www.utexas.edu/faculty/council/2002-2003/memorials/Dijkstra/dijkstra.html)

<comment><USER2> This sort of algorithm is also a demonstration of how useful different types of presentation can be when learning. The original paper isn't a bad source, but it's very wordy because words are all it uses. There's an animated diagram on the Wikipedia page for Dijkstra's algorithm[1] that probably is worth a thousand words, and given a brief introduction to the idea so you know what the diagram is illustrating, together with the pseudocode for the full algorithm shown later on that page, I reckon someone who understands the problem but didn't previously know this solution could understand the solution and write their own implementation in a few minutes.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dijkstra%27s_algorithm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dijkstra%27s_algorithm)

<comment><USER3> Best introduction to Dijkstra algorithm and A*, with great visualisations is [http://www.redblobgames.com/pathfinding/a-star/introduction....](http://www.redblobgames.com/pathfinding/a-star/introduction.html)

<comment><USER4> I was going to challenge you, since I thought that was going to be the older [http://theory.stanford.edu/~amitp/GameProgramming/AStarCompa...](http://theory.stanford.edu/~amitp/GameProgramming/AStarComparison.html) reference which I never found very helpful. The best intro I had to these was in a Game AI course and we basically implemented all these visualizations and more (bad screenshot: [http://www.thejach.com/imgs/visibility_with_astar.png](http://www.thejach.com/imgs/visibility_with_astar.png)) to fully understand it. But the newer reference you linked is great and I'd agree it's the best public introduction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This seems a little bit like

1) Draw two circles.

2) Draw the rest of the owl.

I don't see that TDD is helping 'form' the algorithm at all. The format of the input and output, sure, but the core intellectual leap seems glossed over.

</comment><comment><USER6> I can't understand how someone calls himself a "clean coder" but implements a graph algorithm entirely with strings. That is messy.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's easy to come up with tests if you already know the solution. Nonetheless, this religious approach to TDD is a waste of time.

</comment><comment><USER8> For those who are searching for improved Dijkstra's algorithm, delta-stepping is a good one: [https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~pingali/CS395T/2012sp/papers/delt...](https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~pingali/CS395T/2012sp/papers/delta- stepping.pdf)

<comment><USER9> Cool!

Another (more modest) improvement is Uniform Cost Search[1] (see comparison with DA: [https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/SOCS/SOCS11/paper/viewFil...](https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/SOCS/SOCS11/paper/viewFile/4017/4357) ) which then leads naturally to A* and bidirectional search which can be augmented with pre-processing. (Good summary: [https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/research/publication/point-t...](https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/research/publication/point-to-point-shortest-path-algorithms-with- preprocessing/) )

[1] Despite what wikipedia says, UCS is not the same as DA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Implementation in Lisp,

[https://github.com/matlisp/matlisp/blob/master/src/graph/gra...](https://github.com/matlisp/matlisp/blob/master/src/graph/graph.lisp#L261)

</comment><comment><USER11> PathFinder is poorly designed imo. What is the result of calling getPath or getMinLength before calling findPath? The correct way of returning the path calculation is

Path findPath();

not void findPath() which stores the results as fields on PathFinder.

</comment><comment><USER12> Is it only me who finds this website unreadable?

<comment><USER13> No, I find the UX dreadful coming from a website that title itself "clean code". The style is bare and the author still manages poor presentation. At the very least a different style for the code would have been nice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Finally, this made it onto the front page...

I like seeing an example of the TDD process with a more real algorithm than you usually see. Bowling score counters and reverse-polish calculators get a little tedious.

I've been meaning to go through this series in depth [http://www.daedtech.com/tag/chesstdd/](http://www.daedtech.com/tag/chesstdd/)

It's hard to cultivate the proper mindset when you're constantly in get-shit- done-now-now-now mode all the time...</comment>


Combining finances - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mitchjlee.com/2019/combining-finances <comment><USER3> We pretty much do this, although it's a little subject to the same thing that "unlimited PTO" is - one person may feel guiltier about spending money than the other and it may crop up in various ways.

The only thing we haven't quite figured out how to account for yet is that we are occupying pretty 'conventional' roles by choice and by practicality. I can make a lot more money for many reasons, most of them have nothing to do with me, and they certainly don't have /anything/ to do with me working harder or being more valuable than my wife. It is what it is, and we mostly are okay with it.

However, because a ton of my wife's work is still unseen and undervalued (by society, and sometimes by me) and even though we have both agreed that she shouldn't work a low paying job she hates just for the sake of working, and even though we both see that much of her labor is in the traditionally feminine realm of home-making, emotional support, maintaining social connections, etc (which are all very valuable! They make my life immeasurably better! I couldn't afford to pay for them at market rates!)

So our arrangement works well for us if we stay married of course, yet if we don't, I am arguably in a much stronger position of being able to make money, still have an intact work history, etc etc. Yes historically this is where alimony comes in, but it is still hard to grapple with. You never want to think about your relationship ending, yet you also want to work together to make sure that the choices that you have both made that work best for you while you are together don't become something far worse in retrospect if you choose to part.

<comment><USER4> It's a very real concern that really comes to a peak when you get older. My mom, as well as my wife's mom and step mom really felt the pressure of being financially dependent on their husband once they got to their 50s and 60s. It's not only the lost earning power—even social security forces you into dependency, since your benefits are keyed to what you earned while working. The one with the most peace of mind now seems to be my wife's ex step mom, who never had her own kids and maintained her career the whole time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think this skips the biggest source of tension in my household with regards to money. The only way I know to describe that is 'it's worth less to you than to me'.

For instance, I would tomorrow gladly outsource the entirety of our laundry work to a service. It would be much cheaper than other monthly expenses we have that I value much less highly. But my wife has shot that down. She has all manner of reasons why its not a good idea and none of them are related to the bare economics of the problem.

As academic economics has found, so does my family, the models need to be sensitive to lots of data that is not captured in price to make reasoning about these things workable.

<comment><USER6> Have you considered something like asking for laundry service as a birthday gift?

My wife and I have similar spending patterns, but if we had different valuations on something, I would want to be able to talk about it (express my desire), show a willingness to compromise (in exchange of a birthday gift) but in a way that respected her valuation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The flows are the easy part, the stocks are much harder.

1 partner enters the marriage with a $500K paid off house, the other enters with nothing. They divorce 20 years later and the house is appraised at $2.5M, should:

A: partner 1 receive $2.5M, partner 2 receive $0?

B: partner 1 receive $1.25M, partner 2 receive $1.25M?

C: partner 1 receive $1.5M, partner 2 receive $1M? D: other?

How does this answer change if the house can be sold vs can't be sold? How does this answer change if partner 1 comes into the marriage with a partially paid off mortgage and both contribute to mortgage payments afterwards? How does it change if the house is underwater instead?

The problem is all of the above models are legitimate models of how to split ownership, but they're incompatible views. So you need to reach alignment at the start of the relationship over which model to use, otherwise what could have been an amicable parting ends in bitter recrimination.

<comment><USER8> The general rule is that property owned prior to a marriage remains the separate property of that owner. So the answer to your first question is generally A.

The answers to your other questions will depend on whether the couple is in a marital property state or a community property state, because the default rules regarding marital income are different.

<comment><USER9> Not sure why you've been downvoted. This is how it works in my country and I think this makes sense.

<comment><USER10> Because the topic is not "what's the default legal situation".

<comment><USER11> But if you don't discuss beforehand and come to an agreement, the default legal situation applies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is what my SO and me have been doing for 8 ish years now and it's great. We call it "pocket money". I can't complain when she spends it all on shoes and bags, she can't complain when I spend it all on beer and hamburgers.

When we were poor, we both only got a little pocket money each month. Now that we're richer, we both get more. I buy hotel breakfasts now sometimes (the buffet ones), on normal work days, in my home town. It's terribly decadent but hey, it's my money. Other people buy iPhones. I have nobody to answer to but me. It's lovely.

I warmly recommend pocket money.

<comment><USER13> Does it lead to overspending? Since you have your pocket money - then you need to spend it?

<comment><USER14> If budgeted for properly, this should in their reduce overspending because the amount you can freely spend is one you've previously accounted for as "an appropriate amount."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My wife and I do the share model. However money is a very emotional thing.

The only thing I'm strict about is big picture. IE, Do we have enough savings? Are we on track of retirement?

If I focused on keeping a fun money budget things would get stressful. IE is her hair, nails from fun money? When I take the kids to laser quest is that my fun money? Did we really need new placemats? Should that be fun money?

When there are no kids and both work full time it's simple enough I guess. But when you are a parents it just gets too complicated.

</comment><comment><USER16> We've had separate finances for 12 years and it's seemed to work well for us. We combine the "I've got it" approach for little things and "Let's split it" for large shared purchases. It leads to healthy communication and negotiation on large purchases, plus personal responsibility of our own incomes, expenses and savings. Large purchases that are not shared can be subject to opinion, but never control. Of course, there's no substitute for financial compatibility.

</comment><comment><USER17> #4 misses some other cases. My spouse and I are firmly in this category, but we also have different spending habits for sure! They buy a lot of little stuff that I don't see as particularly useful, while I don't buy anything at all for months on end, until I spend a whole hell of a lot all at once.

Should be a recipe for disaster, right?

Except it isn't. We just accept that this is who we are, and we're comfortable with that.

The author correctly notes that things can change over time, but they seem to ignore the most important thing to this entire process working: we use our words and talk about things before they become an actual problem.

Since my spouse and I have accepted this scenario as being perfectly fine for us now, our normal doesn't frustrate either of us, even though we are wildly different in our spending approaches. And when things change, we're _both_ comfortable making changes to accommodate those changes.

Some of you might be saying "but yes, averaged out over the year you probably spend the same", and the answer is no. Not even close. I may spend 600$ on a gaming monitor with a 6 month gap on either side, but my spouse ends up spending more like 4000$ on little bits and bobs throughout that same year period. Guess what? This inequality doesn't bother either of us. Why should it? We're in this together and both of us need to be happy with what we're doing. I don't need 6.6667 gaming monitors, and the point isn't to try to equalize our expenditures. Buy what you need to make your life better, and then buy no more.

Or, at least, that has worked for us for the last 15 years. Things could change! Things can always change. But I'm not even remotely worried about that; because that's when we make dinner and sit in front of a couple laptops with a bottle of wine and work out a much more strict budget and emphasize a more restrained approach toward both of our spending patterns. It's happened before, it may happen again, but we'll be fine because we come to a consensus on our financial goals and priorities and neither of us have ever acted in bad faith with regards to achieving those goals and priorities. And if that changes? Well, a more fundamental thing has changed, and maybe we SHOULD have marital strife. And that's okay too.

<comment><USER12> The case #4 missed is "yay we have so much disposable income that really it doesn't matter, and this entire article is academic". That might be common on Bay Area-dominated HN, but not in most of the world, where I suppose this article is targeted at. I guess wealthy people don't need advice on how to combine finances :-)

Personally I find "she spends $4000 a year on stuff I don't see the value of but I'm fine with that" nearly unimaginable. I could only see myself have that attitude if we really had thousands of dollars (or euros, in our case) of net disposable income every month, after retirement savings and everything.

<comment><USER18> I don't think that's particularly fair; I think you just have to scale it to your own situation to see how you feel about it. For you, jointly spending $4600 a year on fun stuff sounds ridiculous. That's totally fine, but it's missing the point. (The parent might be ok with $4k a year but not $8k a year. Everyone has limits, and it could be a source of conflict if his spouse wants to expand her spending.)

$4000/$600 is 6.67. Let's say you spend $50 a year on your own fun purchases. Would you be ok (both financially and emotionally) with your spouse spending $333 a year on their own fun purchases? I'm of course making up the $50 number, so set that to whatever's reality for you, do the math, and see how you feel.

Maybe it works out that you're only comfortable with your spouse spending 4x what you do, or 3x, or 2x. Or maybe it's the reverse, and you're the bigger spender, and you need to find out what your spouse is comfortable with That's fine. The point of this is to negotiate with your spouse to get to a point where you're not anxious or constantly arguing about spending levels.

<comment><USER12> No, my whole argument is that that factor (your 4x, 3x, 2x) example becomes irrelevant once you're wealthy enough. Other stuff starts to matter more. My theory is that the GGP is in this position.

But when her buying 2000 euros worth of shoes means I can't get a new pair of jeans anymore then we have a problem.

<comment><USER17> I'm sorry if my intention wasn't clear enough!

You're absolutely right that right now, we are wealthy enough to be able to spend 4600$ on various "things" without either of us really batting an eye. That isn't really the important bit; when we first got started, I was making 42k USD in total comp, and she was making 26k in total comp. Our first house was 54,000 USD and our mortgage was 456$ per month.

We were not wealthy, but we were _okay_. And at that point in our lives, we still had a joint account as our only account. We didn't buy fun stuff or convenience stuff without a discussion first, and we had to discuss these things pretty much every week. That worked for us, because we still communicated, and the important thing - the thing most vital to my previous comment even working - is that we put our family first and ourselves second.

Now that my new home cost me 12 times what my previous cost me, and now that I'm bringing in about a quarter million USD a year, you're _absolutely_ right that we are wealthy and the 4600$ isn't a major problem to us. But if for some reason it ever did happen - say, I lost my job and we relied only on my spouse's income, neither of us would be spending any money at all that wasn't absolutely required.

What I was trying to drive home with #4 is that if you and your spouse are always on the same page about what comes first; your personal desires - <USER2> your family's needs, goals, and then desires (in that order), then it works really well.

I know plenty of couples where one or more of the spouses is an incredibly selfish person by nature. Perhaps one of the other bullets in this article would accommodate that well enough, and I doubt #4 would even remotely work for them.

But for my family unit, a single joint account with both incomes going into it still works for us, even if we have very different spending habits between us - and it works for both of us _really_ well. From our early days straight out of college making relatively low income until now where we make entirely too much, this way has worked solely since both of us are able to modulate and restrain our spending _when times require it_ , especially since we put our family before ourselves. #4, as in the article, didn't allow for any wiggle room like that. That's okay, though, since it was hardly purporting to be an exhaustive listing and description of income:spending strategies! I just wanted to share that #4 can absolutely work even for couples without the same spending patterns, as long as they're willing to put family over self.

<comment><USER17> Maybe another way to put it: #4 works as long as neither party is overly selfish. That doesn't mean that both will spend the same, though. Equality of expenditure isn't as important as equality of happiness/contentedness. Prizing the latter more than the former is the real goal, so really - however you get there? As long as it works for you and your family, go with it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The article, and comments so far, focus on income only. This is the easy part. A lot of people have savings or investments going in. Perhaps one is renting and the other owns a house. This is where it gets tricky. Especially considering it would be prudent to lay plans that also work well in the event of a divorce.

</comment><comment><USER20> My partner is what some might call a trust fund baby. Her family is fortunate enough that she need not work. She will likely receive a sizable inheritance. Her parents have shielded her from their wealth, while making sure she always has enough to be comfortable. Neither of us knows how much wealth her family holds. They are very discrete.

I come from a middle class family that spent their money and saved poorly. I took loans out to go to college. I've worked my way up in my career in tech and now make a comfortable salary.

This puts us in a situation I feel like this article doesn't really cover. She doesn't have a "salary", but she "makes" more money than I do - however much she needs. I do not plan around her family's wealth. That is her family's money, and if/until we ever decide to start our own family, I do not involve myself in their affairs.

What we've found works for us, is simply a joint credit card. We put shared expenses on it and split it at the end of the month. We use our shared points on vacations we spend together. It is a way of treating each other as equals, and helps prevent either of us feeling taking advantage of. I maintain my own savings and retirement account. She maintains her own investments. I spend my money however I want and have my own personal card, and her the same.

If I was out a job, she would support me. If her investments tank or her money were cut off, I would support her. It's rather simple.

The tension we face actually comes from her wealth rather than our lack of it. There are times where she would happily use her wealth as an expression of love. I would never be ok with her father buying us a home. She doesn't understand why not - I was raised to value my own financial independence. I would never feel comfortable living in a home that I did not earn.

How do couples in other similar situations handle this?

<comment><USER21> Effectively you're under their families power, being "discreet" and doling out money adhoc I wouldn't view as positive, it's them maintaining permanent control. I've long thought that the approach taken by my parents with far less money was pretty good- you get an allocation at 18, more if you're using to to go to uni. If there's any left over at 21 you get the remainder but after that there's nothing more and no expectation of inheritance. I'd try to follow something like this regardless of scale, if it's a couple of million maybe set up a fund that stops at 25

<comment><USER22> I think tax might complicate this.

But, remember, familial power tapers with time, no matter what. And in time you might value the power and leverage that you have to deal with children who display a shocking lack of sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I see lots of choices out there, and different things work for different people... and sometimes things evolve, and like relationships the finances should / will too, even when you don't want them to.

It became clear that when my wife went back to school we couldn't sit and do math or rearrange everything all the time. We just put it altogether.

Nothing is easier when married than just putting it into one pot and it is all "our" money. It's not about who does what (maybe one day someone does more dishes, makes more money) and it's all "ours".

But even than if you have a couple with very different spending and someone is more responsible, I don't think it is bad to establish an "allowance" for everyone for as the article describes "splurges".

The important thing is to always be communicating about it.

</comment><comment><USER24> This sounds basically like have one pot of money, but allow both people to blow some of it every month on unnecessary stuff. Which is the opposite of what a saver personality would like to do. I don't see how it would work in a relationship where one person is blowing the "fun money" every month while the other person saves it. There would still be resentment.

<comment><USER25> My wife and I do this, and while we're both savers by nature, I'm _more_ of a saver, so I end up piling up the fun money while she tends to spend hers (I think. Mostly. I don't actually know how much she has in her personal account because I don't care)

There's no resentment because we already agreed that fun money isn't part of savings or long-term planning. And the fun money is a small enough part of our overall budget that it doesn't impact important goals.

From a "resentment" point of view, it's much better for me to have pre-agreed on $x a month that's going to be spent frivolously than it is to have a conversation about each frivolous purchase as it comes.

And I do still spend my fun money, I just spend it in larger chunks. She's more likely to spend regularly on things like lunch and events with friends, I'm more likely to save up for a while then buy a new power tool, or rent a cabin for a weekend ski trip.

<comment><USER26> > Mostly. I don't actually know how much she has in her personal account > because I don't care

If you divorce you will, since she will be taking half of yours if she didn't save anything.

<comment><USER27> The point of 'fun money' is that it isn't money that goes into savings. There's money allocated into savings before any 'fun money' allocations. Anything you have in your 'fun money' account isn't part of your savings, and can (and should) be spent guilt free.

This works as an individual as well, and is the mechanism I used to get myself out of debt. The vast majority of my remaining income after essentials went into paying down debt, or into my savings account. A small amount went into a discretionary spending ('fun money') account. Anything I didn't spend that month simply rolled over to the next month. It never went into my savings, and eventually got spent (usually after several months of 'saving' in the 'fun money' account, in order to buy a new phone / other gadget)

<comment><USER26> > The point of 'fun money' is that it isn't money that goes into savings.

This is wrong since they specifically talked about saving their fun money.

<comment><USER27> > > > > And I do still spend my fun money, I just spend it in larger chunks. > She's more likely to spend regularly on things like lunch and events with > friends, I'm more likely to save up for a while then buy a new power tool, > or rent a cabin for a weekend ski trip.

> > It never went into my savings, and eventually got spent (usually after > several months of 'saving' in the 'fun money' account, in order to buy a new > phone / other gadget)

> This is wrong since they specifically talked about saving their fun money.

Saving multiple months of fun money to blow on something frivolous should probably not be the same as a savings account. That's not what the article (nor myself, nor I suspect the GGGGP) was talking about. Savings are for long term planning, for long term investments, for large scale purchases. If you need to save >12 months of 'fun money' for a purchase, then this might not be the correct approach for you, as you're right, and that's effectively a savings account at that point.

<comment><USER24> >That's not what the article (nor myself, nor I suspect the GGGGP) was talking about.

It was exactly what I was talking about actually. I'm not going to blow money period, so I'd end up saving the >12 months of 'fun money' not for a purchase at all.

<comment><USER28> Actually, I suspect oarsinsync was referring to this comment: [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ianferrel](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ianferrel)

Although I could be wrong. GGGGP would point to your comment, while the statement makes more sense applied to the other.

And you are going to be spending the money on a purchase, just not right now.

<comment><USER24> >And you are going to be spending the money on a purchase, just not right now.

How do you figure?

<comment><USER28> Why would anyone save money, if not to eventually spend it as the need arises?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> My biggest challenge, not discussed here at all, is how to force my wife into taking financial decisions. Numerous times I've tried to walk her through our finances, trying to make our life choices and trade offs more explicit. Yes we could move to a nicer place but we'll have to cut down on kids activities. I feel I'm taking all the decisions myself.

<comment><USER30> Can't really force anyone to do anything. For awhile my spouse and I did a monthly "money talk" where we walked through the monthly income and expenses and talked about things coming up. Eventually they decided they'd rather just not pay attention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This was the least surprising result. I thought "combined finances, with an allowance" was basically the default for married couples who have been together a long time and/or since they were fairly young.

Currently my wife and I just contribute an equal amount to a joint account for the mortgage and car, and the rest is basically "I've got it" in a proportional sense. It basically works because we spend less than we make, so we have savings. I'm currently out a TON of money for an upcoming vacation, but I kind of have the sense that it all works out in the end, because I am not (yet) out of money, and if I have to dip into "my" savings to pay the bills from the trip, well, from a net perspective "we" still have the same amount of money as if I asked her to pony up some to pay my credit card this month.

But of course, this fails plenty of tests, and will have to be re-thought if one of us ends up out of work.

<comment><USER32> Amongst my social group your approach is relatively unusual. A sizable fraction of adults can't be bothered to form a budget and do bookkeeping. This always surprises me, but it seems to be true. You can't really have an allowance system without some amount of tracking/budgeting.

Of course, most couples in my social circle are extremely wealthy by non-Bay Area standards, so that gives people a lot less direct incentive to be especially thrifty.

My parents, and my marriage, have a different system: we ask ourselves about every purchase if it's likely to bring us as much joy as we feel the money is worth, and just don't buy that much stuff because most things don't seem like they'd bring us enough joy to be worth the outlay.

Then, when we want something expensive, and say "yes, a new couch will bring me joy even if it doesn't bring you much joy", we don't worry about the cost all that much.

But having a non-scarcity mentality about this sort of thing is obviously a super privileged position to be in. When my father remarried, he tried this system with my stepmother and she... spent all their money on frivolities they couldn't afford, and now he's retired and barely has any savings.

So I don't really recommend this system unless you and your partner have reasonably similar utility functions.

<comment><USER31> "My" approach is just the chip-in. The allowance system is what I ASSUME most people use (the one the article is advocating). I'm surprised the author thinks it's novel.

I agree on budgeting and bookkeeping. Frankly, we do neither. I buy a bigass TV because I want it, my wife buys some awesome workout gear because she wants it. It just works. But yes, it's a position of luxury to not have to budget.

<comment><USER12> FWIW My SO and me are the only people I know who do the allowance thing. My friends routinely talk about "he/she spent so and so much on $USELESS_ITEM, grumble grumble". I say "pocket money!" and they nod and laugh and don't do it because it makes them feel like children.

<comment><USER33> Doesn't that encourage waste? You seem to have decided that a certain portion of income will just be blown on random stuff.

I go with double-approval. You could call it a veto system. Both must agree before spending.

There is pre-approval for unavoidable expenses like bills, groceries, fuel, emergencies, and tolls.

<comment><USER30> You have to decide on your priorities. Accepting a certain amount of "waste" in exchange for happy spouses is a worthwhile trade for many couples, including my wife and me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> What if one spouse makes seven figures and the other is unemployed and takes care of the household? The income disparity then is too high for this, it seems to me, but maybe it's just me.

<comment><USER35> My spouse and I have a simple plan. I make the money, and my spouse spends it. :)

When money was tighter, we would coordinate more closely and more frequently about expenses and timing. Now I just maintain a certain balance in checking and we coordinate over large payments to make sure they don't hit checking all at once.

If you or your spouse is making seven figures, you shouldn't have actual money problems -- even if taxes take half, you can save half and still have 250k/year to spend; spend half of that on a $5M mortgage, and you've still got more spending money than US median income. Your money management priorities should be around limiting the time it takes to manage, unless you get enjoyment out of micro managing it.

<comment><USER36> My relationship is the same. I make a lot of money, and there's not much I want. I get a lot of joy out of watching my wife get things she wants though (which almost always makes my life better in ways I don't always expect).

Certainly when we made less money we had to coordinate much more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This is exactly the system that we use. The downsides that we have encountered so far:

\- Pooling our money in a shared account makes it seem like we have money than we actually do, leading to overspending

\- We each have different ideas of what is a necessary expense

To fix this, we had to start communicating a lot more about finances than we used to. We wound up creating a spreadsheet to track recurring expenses and calculate our monthly budget. We decide ahead of time what we're going to spend money on, and talk about it when unexpected expenses occur.

The benefits of this system seem to outweigh the downsides, so we'll probably keep doing this for the foreseeable future.

</comment><comment><USER38> This is interesting. I looked around a bit for decent surveys or studies that break down statistics about couples who share finances this way versus using some other system, but I'm having a hard time finding any.

There are some surveys on why couples with joint accounts also maintain individual accounts, one of which seems to indicate independence is the biggest factor (38% of respondents). Only 16% said they did it for ease of budgeting, which to me seems to indicate that the system recommended by the article is relatively uncommon. [0]

For us, we keep it relatively simple. We have some savings from before the marriage in separate accounts that we use for stuff like surprise gifts or security when we need to pay something that requires a direct transfer online. Everything else comes from the joint account or goes through a joint credit card that we pay off every month.

Although our opinions still differ slightly on some long term goals that we won't have to decide on for a while, generally if there's a disagreement we just talk it out. We consult each other on expensive purchases, generally non- necessities over a certain amount. We've both supported each other through periods of temporary unemployment or income differences. Admittedly, having similar values and living in a low cost of living area helps a lot with this.

I'm not sure the system in the article would help too much for resolving expensive decisions unrelated to individual hobbies. For example, if one person wants to spend a larger portion of income on housing that requires more joint contribution, there's still a possible conflict. It does make those kind of decisions have a discussion built in by default though, which is definitely a good thing.

Overall it seems to me that the key thing is that people are having healthy discussions and making decisions together - including decisions around what to leave totally up to the other person, like the article's system does. Some conflict might be totally avoidable, but I think there's no way around just learning how to resolve disagreements respectfully.

[0] [https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/td-bank-survey- find...](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/td-bank-survey-finds-many- couples-maintain-separate-bank-accounts-251917121.html)

</comment><comment><USER39> Our system: I make more, and I pay for the biggest expenses (mortgage, and previously cars and student loans before we paid those off) and have healthcare and whatnot taken from my paycheck.

She makes less but still a decent amount and pay for the smaller bills.

Every once in a while, she'll pay for a big-ticket item (like a vacation or a large house repair) out of her savings, which accumulate faster than mine, to catch up.

It works because we started together with next to nothing, so we're both big savers: Our combined income our first year together after college a little over ten years ago was probably a quarter of what we'll make this year. We both max out (or come very close to maxing out) retirement now. She has more cash on hand because I'm paid proportionately more in various types of stock incentives, so when my incentives vest I tend to sell the company stock to diversify but keep the money in investments).

We live in a small house, no kids, reasonably cheap cars, vacations are often tacked on to work trips to save money, no expensive hobbies.

I doubt I'll "retire" early but our savings mean if I decide to leave tech in a decade and become a woodworker or park ranger, I can with no monetary consequences.

</comment><comment><USER40> Betting the OP doesn't have kids. Until you have kids you are playing the game on easy mode

The biggest problem with the approach is large, optional purchases that effect quality of life. Things that are too big for "fun money"

Remodeling or Upgrading a house Private school for kids Vacations Vacation property Nice cars College savings Rainy day funds

One way to handle such is for both partners to agree on % saved out of the joint account and/or minimum balance

<comment><USER18> Only two of the things you mentioned (private school and college savings) are unique to people with children.

All kid-related expenses (including private school and college fund) should be considered joint expenses and come out of the shared pool of money. Parents should agree on how much to spend monthly/yearly on non-essential/fun stuff for the kids (similar to how the parents each get their own fun money allocation). If one parent wants to exceed that for a one-off thing (and the other parent disagrees), they can dip into their own fun-money allocation.

Couples without kids still have to decide what to do about home improvements, vacations, vacation property, cars, and rainy day funds. It's just that couples with kids may have less money to allocate toward those things, or have to make harsher compromises. But hey, if you decide to have kids, that's what you've signed up for.

A couple might agree that replacing the old, fraying carpets is obviously a joint expense, but the fancy car that only one spouse wants and cares about is a personal/fun-money expense. Having or not having kids doesn't change that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> In Prudent, you can combine multiple journals. Your wife can maintain a separate journal while you maintain another one. This way, both parties can do whatever they want or agree to some set of rules. Most importantly, at any time, you or your wife can see the combined financial strength, or individual financial situation. Awareness of both can make a big difference in making important financial decisions. Avoid being penny wise, pound foolish. The combined report (of savings, etc.) gives both of you better insights on the financial journey that you can embark together (i.e. buying a house, having kids, moving cities, etc.)

[https://docs.prudent.me/docs/combining](https://docs.prudent.me/docs/combining)

</comment><comment><USER42> We just have joined everything. If we split, it would be 50/50 but I'd probably end up giving her most of the stuff, I already find that we have way too much stuff as it is. I like the simplicity of it all even though it might not be advantageous financially for me.

Personally, I find that "fun money" is the easy part. We both splurge from time to time but it is reasonable for the most part. The hard part is the big shared expenses which you'll never be able to cover with "fun money" or it sucks to do alone (house renovations, cars, trips, entertainment etc.) for which 1 partner doesn't see the value of the shared expense.

</comment><comment><USER43> I'll bite it.

With nowadays lifestyle and state of Law doesn't make sense to marry in the traditional sense. Ok you can do a pre-nup but that is a huge hassle for the couple.

People value stuff differently and on the long term ignoring that is a certain path to regrets. So the best, IMHO, each one should keep _legally_ their stuff with some _joint ventures_ on common projects (house, etc). However I'm not saying to strictly split every expense or be stingy. I'm happy to pay most of daily expenses, holydays or extras. I just don't want to wake up one day feeling used neither _legally_ get stuff from my partner or her family.

</comment><comment><USER44> Me and my boyfriend are students. I have a good student job, while my boyfriend has a large amount of savings. The last system here would just amount to him giving me his savings.

Our system is that we have a shared account, and we keep track of how much money we have both put into that account. I've put in about half what he has put in, because he spent a lot of money when we bought all of the furniture etc. for our rented apartment, when we moved in. So then I just put in a bit more than him each month, until we reach the same level.

</comment><comment><USER45> While I'm sure it works for the OP, I'm guessing most other options would work.

My take is that this approach just moves the discussion to what qualifies as "fun money" or should come out of the shared account.

Maybe it's because we are too young yet, but me and my SO just have a shared account and contribute to it equally (she insisted, I wanted to do proportional). We make sure to put in there enough to cover the bills and some more to have some "emergency money".

Aside from that we keep separate savings accounts and some investments.

</comment><comment><USER30> My wife and I had split finances while we were dating and for a few years after we got married. The thing that tipped us into "everything shared" was when we were expecting our first kid and my wife left her job. At that point split finances just didn't make any sense. Now we have a system basically identical to the OP's system and everybody is happy with it.

</comment><comment><USER46> I would be very frustrated if I explicity had less fun money than my spouse.

<comment><USER47> That is exactly the opposite of what the article suggests.

> Both partners have equal access to it, and both partners will continue to > receive the same monthly allocation for fun money no matter how much each > person makes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My wife and I have been married 7 years and we just got a joint account last year so we could deposit a check endorses to us jointly. We have two kids together, but sharing finances seems terrifying.

<comment><USER48> How do you handle joint expenses like rent/mortgage and all the kid stuff?

<comment><USER4> We split them up, roughly based on ability to pay. It reduces friction, but the downside is that I think it reduces our ability to optimize expenditures. (You don't have two person sign off on most expenses.)

<comment><USER48> My wife and I basically do this with a joint checking account + credit card that we contribute to (somewhat unequally) every month an amount that is designed to cover 1 month's of expenses plus a little buffer.

I find it makes it a lot easier to know that $X thousand/month is my "family expense" and then everything for that is easily accounted for in a way that is totally separate from my personal finances.

I actually have two separate mint accounts, one for family expenses and one for my personal stuff.

<comment><USER4> That makes a lot of sense. We've been trying to set that up just for simplicity of keeping track of auto payments and whatnot, but it's so hard to switch everything over.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Where there is a social issue, there is an engineer with analysis and a clever system to "fix" it.

Budgeting is one thing. But developing a fairness system... are you sure you should be married to this person in the first place? Might want to go and tweak _that_ algorithm a bit.

In all seriousness, systems like this are brittle and really only work if you're on the same page anyway. In which case, you don't need the system. If your SO likes to spend, he or she may not agree that the "fun money" allocation is enough. You may think it's too much. So you come up with some middle ground. Resentment builds over time because your SO can't always afford the things they want, and you resent having too much allocated to his/her pile of fun money.

tl;dr: if you're not on the same page financially, a fancy system won't save your marriage. Fancy systems and over-analysis can also bring problems, YMMV.

<comment><USER50> I also find all this clerical nonsense funny. If your SO and you are not on the same page regarding goals and what both are willing to prioritize or sacrifice to achieve them, then it's all moot.</comment></comment>


16 programming languages you need to know in 2016 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@kevindeasis/16-programming-languages-you-need-to-know-in-2016-ced155514b4c#.fakn6ytn6 <comment><USER2> The title could be more _16 PL Kevin de Asis likes_. For example it didn't include Nim, but Nim is one of the more popular open source PL on GH. Crystal is also rising, even if the buzz generated in 2015 can be false buzz (like the buzz generated by GO 3/4 years ago). ALso the place of Matlab in this list is questionable. It's globally not used in programming, execpt in some niche, for example, DSP filter design...but in a general way you don't "need" it.</comment>


IBM tells employees working at home to get back to the office - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/19/technology/ibm-work-at-home/index.html <comment><USER2> A lot of the chatter around this story has been that this is a "stealth layoff", meant to get around WARN rules and avoid shareholder disclosure regulations. Should sharp changes in policy, which vastly change the working arrangement and have the potential to cause a lot of people to leave be counted as layoffs?</comment>


Ask HN: How do you manage your learning while being busy with a full time job? - <AUTHOR> I'm a curious person and I have thirst for knowledge and learning. There are tons of stuff that I've always wanted to learn. When I was a BSc student, I remember I used to learn actively and I used to do self-defined projects. But after graduation and getting employed things have changed. Let's say I want to learn a new programming language by doing a self-defined project or some math like abstract algebra. The problem is that when I come back home from a software engineering job I like to chill or socialize. I like to watch a comedy. Not even drama or documentary. Only comedy. something that boosts your tiredness. I don't call it laziness. It's just that you are mentally tired and like to socialize or chill. So I will have only weekends and some of these stuff should be done daily otherwise it takes months to finish (like studying a math book). As a result of this it's been a couple of years that I have not done any self-defined projects or I have not learned anything outside of my daily job although that I feel the thirst for knowledge and learning.<p>Have you faced this problem? How do you deal with it? <comment><USER2> The motivation-sapping aspects of your day job are great practice for entrepreneurship if you use them that way. Is your boss unreasonable or difficult? Someday you'll be dealing with difficult customers, co-founders or investors. Learn to keep your cool, communicate effectively, and succeed despite that obstacle. Do some of your work seem tedious or inconsequential? When you run your own business, you'll be responsible for everything. Initially, you'll be highly motivated, but months or years down the line some aspects of the job will seem tedious or inconsequential too. Learn how to deal with it now and you'll be ready. Also, for better learning, you need to find a mentor who can show you a path, before you start your learning experiences start finding a mentor who can understand your goals and guide you accordingly. GETAPY Mentoring Platform can help you in finding the right mentors to manage your learning even when you're working fulltime. [http://getapy.com/](http://getapy.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> [random remarks from the internet]

Student/non-student is a high impedance mental model. High impedance when it comes to life-long learning because the student is always directed toward short term goals. Not just tonight's homework, the test next week and the required course. On the scale of adult life, even a four year degree is short.

But so much can be learned in four years. Years are the scale of life-long learning. Life-long learning means that sometimes life is going to get in the way. It will get in the way inevitably because we change as we grow and we didn't stop growing when we walked across the stage in a funny cap and baggy clothes.

With a bit of average luck there are sixty or seventy years of learning left and that's time to learn deeply and create things that elicit "How the hell did I do that?" when looking back five or ten years later. Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you aren't learning interesting and useful things in your current job maybe re-think it. Most people don't want to work >8 hours a day on technology related stuff and you definitely won't have time to sell/solve business problems if you're doing that all the time. Sure it's nice to learn new stuff, but better if there is a reason behind it and short sprints / clear goals

</comment><comment><USER5> Yes, I too have been sucked in by the void of easily consumed entertainment. It's a trap.

To get out of it I first realized it was crap and cut down my consumption by a factor of 10. Not cut out entirely, but raised the bar of what I'd be willing to consume. Secondly I started waking up earlier (and going to be earlier). That gave me space before work to have a fresh brain and work on my own stuff. A hour a day in the morning can make a lot of difference in a personal project.

</comment><comment><USER6> Some suggestions:

1) Don't go home, you have a habit of going home and "chillin", so just don't self study there.

2) Stay at your office and self-study there after work. You're already in the environment where you generally "work", so just add on hours afterwards.

3) Enroll in a physical class, like a community college class where you're forced to attend class and actively participate.</comment>


If your teacher likes you, you might get better grades - <AUTHOR> http://www.mprnews.org/story/2015/02/22/npr-teachers-pets

<comment><USER2> Water is wet?

To be more constructive, did we need to study about this? This seems like common sense to me.

<comment><USER3> Nonsense. Next you'll be telling me that attractive people make more money and get promoted more often.</comment></comment>


Work-Life. Balance: America Needs Paid Family Leave. Fathers Need to Use It - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/initialized-capital/work-life-balance-2163f7cedcc8 <comment><USER3> There is this thing called _money_ , that _iff_ you're able to _save_ it, can enable one to do many things - take leave for a newborn, work less longer term to spend consistent time with a growing child, bootstrap a business, explore a completely different field, and many other innumerable things that can matter to a person but don't necessarily fit into top-down policy.

So the real question is why are people unable to just rely on saved wealth to take whatever leave they would like? And the answer is that the financialization of everything has left most everyone essentially living paycheck to paycheck - even the upper middle class! Yet we continue to be distracted by feel good narratives proposing to throw a bone to one popular group or another, rather than pushing to directly reform the economy away from being a treadmill for "full time" work.

It's not a foregone conclusion that things have to be this way. The present conditions are _explicit government policy_ \- any time anything would give individuals more economic power (eg technology, productivity increases, women entering the workforce, offshoring, etc), prices are deliberately increased by printing enough new money to erode any gains! It's no secret why "the rent is too damn high", it's just politically inconvenient to bring it up.

</comment><comment><USER4> An anecdotal argument like this is generally unconvincing. I have a myriad of personal problems, but I can't go to a senator and say "America needs a solution to <the problem I had>", no matter how many other people have had the same problem. Where the latter fact becomes real leverage is in the data - <USER2> without the data my argument would not amount to much more than whining. Furthermore, the data needs to prove not that such leave prevents personal distress, but that it's good for America's bottom line. Unfortunately for fathers, the objective fact might be that such leave is worse for the bottom line. There's a reason workaholic cultures like Japan's bring about economic miracles, albeit along with a plethora of social issues. Economics is a huge focus of policies, for better or for worse.

<comment><USER5> Obviously having parents leave a company for any length of time is bad for the "bottom line". This is an objective fact, because the company must fill in the role somehow and wait for an amount of time before that person, who will be guaranteed their job when they return, can work again (assuming that the way it would work now is extended to fathers, where the job is guaranteed). If the government also subsidizes the family then it also costs the government money as well, which also affects the "bottom line".

However there have been numerous psychological studies that look at the outcome of the baby and the parents when allowed to take m/paternity leave and it's hugely beneficial for all involved. So if you look solely at money then the argument for family leave is "don't do it" but money is not the only important thing when looking at topics like this.

<comment><USER6> The studies I've seen showed correlative links between m/paternity leave itself with improved psychological results, not necessarily ones that are specific to reproductive rather than personal leave or aren't also tied to the workplace/society having better social support. Somebody with an employer or in a society that allows people X weeks/months off for personal reasons -- whether it's a matter of choosing to reproduce, finish a degree, caring for an ailing loved one/pet, or combating burnout -- is likely to fare much better psychologically than somebody required to work continuously regardless of their personal circumstances.

An interesting parallel occurred a while back when there was sudden widespread adoption of Finland's "baby box" of supplies for new parents after the BBC noticed that Finland's infant mortality rate plummeted after their introduction. The results have been lackluster, however, because people had overlooked that the improvement in Finland had been tied to a whole bunch of policies & healthcare changes, with the box being only a tiny part of the result.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's more that we need people to live in such a way that they're not paycheck to paycheck.

If everyone spends up to their limit on rent/food/cars/etc then you end up with whole swathes of individuals who "need" concessions from their employer because they have no leverage.

It's not solely an individual decision, of course, because if other people outbid you for housing then your choices can be limited.

The American model seems to be that most people just work for 40 years with a few weeks off per year and that's their entire adult life.

The above is completely stark raving bonkers to me. Economic cogs.</comment>


Why isn't Big Tech embraced in its own backyard? - <AUTHOR> https://www.expressvpn.com/blog/why-isnt-big-tech-embraced-in-its-own-backyard/ <comment><AUTHOR> Interesting read on why California stays ahead of the curve</comment>


Why more offshoring is inevitable: 55K graduates for 160K CS jobs (2008 data) - <AUTHOR> http://csl.stanford.edu/~pal/ed/index.html

<comment><USER2> According to the Insitution of Engineering and Technology in the UK, Computer Science students are more likely to be unemployed than graduates of any other STEM subject (16%).

Computer Science graduates are more likely to be unemployed 6 months after graduating than Social Studies, or All Graduates, both of which are ~10%.

I realize these figures are for America, but I have to suspect something is up. Outside Silicon Valley, software industry wages don't reflect a deficit like that. In the UK, Finance and Management graduate programs remain much better paid than Software Engineering, with better wage prospects. I think if there really was the lack of talent described, we'd see a correction.

(Figures 2011-2012, Page 4 IET Magazine Vol 8 Issue 7)

<comment><USER3> > Outside Silicon Valley, software industry wages don't reflect a deficit like > that.

I don't know that wages are really that high in Silicon Valley either. People get paid well there because it's crazy expensive to live there. By the time you have paid the premium for living in the area, you may not be walking away with much more than you would living and working anywhere else in the U.S.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Deep learning researchers, what tools do you use most on a daily basis? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Prototype with Keras and then native TensorFlow if I want to fine tune.</comment>


Deep Neural Networks for YouTube Recommendations - <AUTHOR> http://research.google.com/pubs/pub45530.html <comment><USER2> One of the very best recommendation engines I've encountered is the "Discover Weekly" playlist from Spotify. It's helped me reconsider my relationship to music which I basically thought was dead since I had hit a rut on exploring new artists.

There's an interesting presentation of how it's created on SlideShare

[http://www.slideshare.net/MrChrisJohnson/from-idea-to- execut...](http://www.slideshare.net/MrChrisJohnson/from-idea-to-execution- spotifys-discover-weekly/8-Discover_Weekly_Started_in_2006)

<comment><USER3> > One of the very best recommendation engines I've encountered is the > "Discover Weekly" playlist from Spotify.

The addition of Discover Weekly really confused me. Shouldn't the features that create a radio station from an artist or a playlist fill this need already? Why is it only updated weekly? I haven't tried other services much but it feels like Spotify isn't doing as much as they can with recommendations.

<comment><USER4> I think it's because people are used to listening to their Playlists. It feels more natural to check your "Discover Weekly" playlist then a whole new section within Spotify. And I think the decision to only update it ever Monday was pretty genius. Most people aren't particularly excited when Monday rolls around.. but when they think about the fact that it's Monday they are likely to remember they have a brand new Discover Weekly playlist to listen to. It's one of the good things about their Monday and becomes a habit over time.

<comment><USER5> I have Android Auto in my car, and my favorite part of the terrible, traffic- ridden commute from Redmond to Bellevue is listening to my Discover Weekly playlist. Even though I only really like about 10% of what it picks, usually in that 10% I find an artist I really enjoy and dig into that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm skeptic about recommendation feature. My reaction to them, in these rare occasions when not get ignored all together, in all sites ranges from 'huh?' to 'wtf?'. Specifically Youtube gives geographic location too much weight -- just because I live in a certain country, it doesn't I'm interesting in all these trending local shit-pop music or stupid 'fun' videos.

<comment><USER7> I can confirm this. I saw a lot of region-based, really stereotyping videos when I got a new computer and visited YouTube. While I understand they need to fill up the home page with something, I just prefer they can be a little more creative about the whole thing.

After glancing through the top few, I quickly went for the search box. To their credit, once I do a few searches, the recommendations drastically improved when visiting next time.

A side effect of this, of course, is that you can study all kinds of stereotyping and biases by repeating my experiment in various regions I suppose.

<comment><USER8> if they don't have any good information about you other than your location what else would you recommend rather than the most popular in that location?

<comment><USER9> When you lack the information to make a good recommendation, "the best we can guess from really generic or sparse information" tends to be annoying. That's really bad.

Yes, I watched a bunch of Dota replays during a recent tournament. No, I don't normally go on youtube. So I watched a daily show video clip that was linked. All my "watch next" and "recommended" are Dota. That's not smart, that's aggravating. I would have been ok watching a couple more ds clips, but instead exclusively bad recommendations were made based on poor data.

I dislike the idea that my world gets filtered by algorithms, but I really hate when they're obviously bad at it. Although I suppose I should be grateful that it's easily spotted when it's bad?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Author here - happy to answer questions about the techniques in the paper. We're super excited to finally share this work externally. Feedback about YouTube recommendations in general also welcome.

<comment><USER11> Do you study the phenomenon of _information bubbles_ at Google? Let's say, a German user just happens to watch some right-wing populist video claiming that we need to stop Merkel's refugee politics. The next day the user might receive plenty of recommendations in their feed that confirm the message in the first video. They happen to stumble upon a video of some party convention by an uprising German populist party, and everything makes sense now! Video by video the user gets dragged into a right-wing ideology.

That is an information bubble. The algorithm cannot detect low quality or populism, neither can it recommend opposite standpoints, and at the end of the day it has a real effect on a country's politics and the well-being of many people.

Do you have means of quantifying such effects? What are possible countermeasures?

If you cannot talk about that, then this would be my feedback: Perhaps you could train a language model to find opposing views in video titles and tags and then diversify the video recommendations based on that.

<comment><USER12> What about the reverse scenario, though? Should someone who watches videos about refugee suffering be given anti-refugee video recommendations, lest they be dragged into a 'left wing ideology'? I don't see how that would be acceptable. Would Holocaust documentaries be 'diversified' with Holocaust denial videos?

'Information bubbles' have existed as long as people have had a choice of newspapers to buy and TV channels to watch. Calling for Youtube to artificially 'balance' videos seems like political interference.

<comment><USER13> Ah good old moral relativism.

<comment><USER14> Isn't the concept of an "information bubble" already inherently relativistic? sevenless was simply pointing out the relativism cuts both ways.

<comment><USER13> I was just pointing out the obvious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I noticed that YouTube's recommendations had suddenly gotten better! I wondered if they were using a new statistical approach, or had just started really optimizing at all because the old recommendations were extremely naive. I'm actually a little disappointed to find out that it might just be another deep learning thing. (Yes, it works, but I feel like you learn a little less about problem structure when what you read is mostly "we threw a generic function approximator and 30,000 hours of GPU time at it".)

<comment><USER16> Mine seem like they have gotten a lot more click-baity. I wonder if that's an artifact of their optimization goal.

<comment><USER17> If people fall for the click bait(they do), then they get more views from optimizing for it. It would be more surprising if an optimization algorithm for views didn't favor this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> During the last few months, YouTube has consistently recommended me videos I wasn't interested in (to put it in polite terms), in spite of the fact by now Google knows enough about me to answer quite reliably what I'm likely to be interested in. The only explanation that I can find is that their need to show me specific videos (what do they call it nowadays? "sponsored content"?) prevails over other considerations.

</comment><comment> rainy-day I don't feel like anyone has gotten recommendations right, even though one seemingly obvious approach has not been tried by anyone: allow ratings of favorite works across all media: movies, tv shows, books, music, radio programs, youtube videos. Make a very easy, efficient UI to add ratings. This way you will avoid superficial matches: if I just watched an excellent steampunk cartoon, let's offer a zillion of throwaway crap steampunk. It's not the steampunk part that I liked, it's that it was amazingly done.

If I was a huge fan of books, movies, music, youtube picks of another user, it may be there is a deeper connection of the kind of quality we are both looking for, and so his or her recommendations would be highly relevant.

<comment><USER19> You're kind of suggesting people go in reverse. Ratings were the initial way these things worked but then they moved to more implicit signals. Netflix used to be all about star ratings back in the day; now they want to measure what you're actually watching.

I think the issue of a system determining whether you like the steampunk genre vs the quality of only that particular steampunk video is separate from the issue of ratings.

<comment><USER20> But also view-time or view-count don't tell the full story of how much you liked that video.

I am not happy with YT recommendations because they suggest crap videos to me and not the finest one available for that topic, just as he said.

The system should rather suggest me a different topic but with the best quality/content available, rather than a super similar video with crappier quality/content.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Recommendation systems are a really interesting topic to study/engineer on. I think there's a lot of unexplored/undiscovered techniques still remaining.

<comment><USER22> Oddly... I have grown rather weary of them. I have yet to get a surprise recommendation that I cared for. At best, I have seen people surprised that some good recommendations came out of a system.

Which usually just leads to curation systems being key. And they work well, until they are gamed. And they will be gamed.

<comment><USER23> I felt the same way until I tried Spotify's Discover Weekly recommendation system. I don't know what they're doing, but I've found many songs I really enjoy that way.

<comment><USER24> Spotify's Discover Weekly is based on collaborative filtering. Some of the techniques they use are described in these slides: [http://www.slideshare.net/MrChrisJohnson/collaborative- filte...](http://www.slideshare.net/MrChrisJohnson/collaborative-filtering- with-spark/6)

<comment><USER21> That's a major technique in one of the social platforms I'm working on, too. Glad to see it working so well at scale!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Go through the comments of this video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGe4uWEvwe8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGe4uWEvwe8)

People were literally bizarred by youtube, saying they were there by recommendation. (I have this video in the recommendations also...)

<comment><USER26> Ahh...This happens to me also, there is one day, my recommendations is flooded with this CandianMum, and I didn't really watch that much, if any, video of relationship on Youtube.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I hate that one day I happened to click one video and watched it, then youtube starts to recommend videos on the same topic day after day, even if I marked them as not interested, they still show up time to time...

<comment><USER28> Or you watch something in privacy and now you can't open up Youtube in front of anyone anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'd be more interested if YouTube recommendations took into account users I've blocked.

Sometimes YouTube recommends me videos with clickbaity gross thumbnails or from YouTubers I dislike or have no desire to watch but there is nothing I can do to to stop it recommending these to me, why can't I just go to these users profiles and block them and have them removed from my YT experience?

Block just seems to stop people from messaging you, not from you being shown their videos by an algorithm.

</comment><comment><USER30> I use YT mostly for new music, interesting documentaries and the occasional fun. Beside that there are one-off searches for random topics. Regarding the latter recommendation won't help, because it's not fast enough to tell me which aspect I'm missing. Regarding the former three I'd love to know whether there are users who liked the same videos. So please, recommend users not videos and let me do the rest.

</comment><comment><USER31> Your recommender seems to be trying to predict (from logs) which video the user will watch next/soon, and how much watch time it will lead to.

If you used to have a bad recommendation system, and then you switch over to this system, then it will still be trained with data generated by users who saw the old recommendations, leading it to have a bias towards the same bad predictions.

Is there any way around that?

</comment><comment><USER32> Like others here I am also disappointed by the youtube recommended videos. So I was investigating building a better recommender myself. I was actually searching for how the youtube recommender works yesterday but could only find the 2010 paper. Now I am starting to believe that it is not the recommender that is the problem. It is that youtube consists of 99% low quality videos.

</comment><comment><USER33> Is this the source of all those Recommendations that I look at Ben and Holly cartoons in the middle of the day when my daughter is at school? Or more Italian daytime television when I've just watched a video my wife never would? In short, is this the reason why there's never anything interesting for me when I go to the frontpage of youtube?!?!

</comment><comment><USER31> You seem to be doing all the right things in this paper, yet user sentiment seems to still be negative. Do you think that's because maximizing watch time and impressing users are conflicting goals, or are there perfect recommendations out there which both impress users and maximize watch time, yet they haven't yet been found?

</comment><comment><USER34> would it be legal to re-use this technique on another commercial project without getting consent?</comment>


Kick ass torrents: The site ahead contains harmful programs - <AUTHOR> http://kat.cr/ <comment><USER2> It's Google's way of answering to MPAA's calls while pretending it's doing it for security purposes.</comment>


Simplified scientific study explanations - <AUTHOR> http://www.usefulscience.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> Brief explanation [http://www.usefulscience.org/about](http://www.usefulscience.org/about)

Excerpt: "Science is useful in daily life, and we're making it easy to find. From improving ADHD symptoms to exercising better and even optimizing noise levels for creativity, we'll tell you about it in 5 seconds or less."</comment>


Does Italy Have More Deaths Than Because They're Not Prescribing Chloroquine? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@adrianbye/is-the-high-coronavirus-death-rate-caused-by-wrong-official-treatment-guidelines-f4ef0a2903f3 <comment><USER2> I can't fathom why so few medical professionals would try hydroxychloroquine/chloroquine off-label, considering research showing how strongly effective it is in SARS, and considering it's safe for rheumatoid arthritis and malaria across age ranges.</comment>


Leaving Airbnb - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/salt-and-purpose/37e98df23f9b <comment><USER2> This makes me think of how my Dad fled Vietnam in his forties and started anew in America. All he had was us.

Family first.

</comment><comment><USER3> Totally understand!</comment>


Rhetoric of Cyber War Breeds Fear and More Cyber War - <AUTHOR> http://www.schneier.com/essay-421.html

<comment><USER2> s/Cyber //

<comment><AUTHOR> It would be great if your regex was used everywhere.

Leave it to Washington to unknowingly take a euphemism for sex chat and use it both for the name of a military branch ("Cyber Command") and for political rhetoric. Their mistake is mildly entertaining, but it really makes them look dumb. I wonder what they'll do with "ASL?"

<comment><USER3> Cyber- was a prefix long before AOL.

iirc, it was coined in '82 by Gibson and popularized in the cyberpunk genre of literature.

<comment><AUTHOR> The "cyber-" prefix is actually much older than Gibson. In English, the use came from the term "cybernetic" and that term came from or was based on Greek.

<http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/cyber->

<http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/cybernetics></comment></comment></comment></comment>