Why Luck Plays a Big Role in Making You Rich - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-01/why-luck-plays-a-big-role-in-making-you-rich <comment><USER2> It's nice to see this getting discussed more, especially in a business outlet like Bloomberg. Warren Buffett has long been honest about how lucky he is; see his talk about the Ovarian Lottery.

The just-world fallacy [1] is enormously pernicious. I find myself falling for it all the time, and on both sides of it. My successes are clearly a sign of my genius; my failures are obvious proof of my permanent cretinism. It was Nassim Nicholas Taleb's "Fooled by Randomness" [2] that finally got me to buy fewer tickets for what Kent Beck calls the "genius-shithead rollercoaster". Perhaps one day I can stop riding it altogether.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just- world_hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis)

[2] [https://www.amazon.com/Fooled-Randomness-Hidden-Markets- Ince...](https://www.amazon.com/Fooled-Randomness-Hidden-Markets- Incerto/dp/0812975219)

<comment> saiya-jin fallacy or not, I do believe that doing good is... good for mankind, especially long term. it might not come back to you personally, maybe your kids and maybe not, but it will make a small difference. and at the end big difference is nothing but a sum of small differences

<comment><USER2> How does that relate to the just-world fallacy?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The note about technology increasing winner-take-all systems is important, and one that has applied throughout human history; technology has always run ahead of our normal capacity for work, so that by increasing the power of any individual, it ends up increasing the power of whatever individual is lucky enough to be the first to hit it big. More lines of communication and the encroachment of AI onto more industries could push this issue into true unsustainability, with the one hardworking pioneer lucky enough to capture the market owning more means of production than ever.

<comment><USER4> I do not think it is possible for me to agree with you more! I've always had a hard time trying to articulate it as well as that however.

I came at it from a rather clumsy angle of damage/destruction. Imagine 500 years ago, how much damage could one person do to others. Now as humans have become so much more efficient in almost every aspect, how much damage could be done by a single person? An erratic leader with nukes, a big global tech company running essential services, or even heads of financial institutions and the monetary supply. One wrong move, even if accidental, can be amplified so much in this day and age.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Luck is huge, but remember the old saying that "fortune favors the bold".

Timing and good fortune are often presented as a chance, but you have to be in the game to take advantage of them. Hard work is a big part of that.

<comment><USER6> It always amazes me how many people refuse to even put themselves in a position to be lucky. The small amount of success I've had in my life has been 99% related to just showing up.

<comment><USER7> Conflating risk with "position to be lucky". It so happens that to most people, actual big opportunity is often available only at the levels of existential risk.

As in "you may become homeless" level of risk.

<comment><USER6> Not necessarily. Sometimes all it takes to be in the position to be lucky is to reach out to executives at companies you are interested in via a cold email. Some people are too afraid of rejection to do something like that. But I've found that in 1% of those cold email attempts, something really amazing happens. Just gotta put yourself out there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Self-repost from another thread [0]... This reminds me of a bit from "The Dilbert Future" (1997):

> Most people won't admit how they got their current jobs unless you push them > up against a built-in wall unit and punch them in the stomach until they > spill their drink and start yelling, "I'LL NEVER INVITE YOU TO ONE OF MY > PARTIES AGAIN, YOU DRUNKEN FOOL!"

> I think the reason these annoying people won't tell me how they got their > jobs is because they are embarrassed to admit luck was involved.

> I can't blame them. Typically the pre-luck part of their careers involved > doing something enormously pathetic. Take me, for example. I'm a successful > cartoonist and author because I'm a complete failure at being an employee of > the local phone company.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11123374](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11123374)

</comment><comment><USER9> Conversely, bad luck can play a big role in making you poor. For example, Nick Leeson singlehandedly brought down the world's second oldest merchant bank, Bearings Bank which was founded in 1762. Lesson was working in Singapore in a bank that was purchased by Bearings and was allowed to do rogue trading because the bank's controls weren't yet put in place in the subsidiary.

 _What brought everything down was Lesson placed a short straddle on the Tokyo and Singapore stock markets on January 16, 1995 betting there would not be significant market movement. The Kobe earthquake hit early in the morning the next day, Jan 17._

That was the beginning of the end.

Lesson did serve jail time, but published a book, Rogue Trader, and a major movie was made as well. Also a documentary.

</comment><comment><USER10> That was an interesting read. I wish people in our industry were less hostile to the notion that luck plays a large role in determining success.

</comment><comment><USER11> In regards to a progressive/punitive consumption tax --

"The most successful people will still be able to afford the best stuff–the waterfront homes, the front-row seats, the haute couture—but they'll feel less pressure to spend and they'll have less competition for the rarest luxury goods."

Or put another way, tranfer of consumption from consumer goods to public/lobbyist-influenced goods.

</comment><comment><USER12> Most of the wealthy people I know are not lucky, but the opposite: They were bullied, sexually or physically abused, had their parents die as kids...

People like Elon Musk for example had lots of problems as a kid, he was bullied a lot.

Steve Jobs also had a lot of problems and as a person he was very difficult to manage.

Steve Blank had lots of problems in his childhood too.

I personally know well one of the richest persons in the planet, because of a common hobby. I am not that rich, I don't envy this person and what he went through.Life becomes so easy after that, even in hard times.

It is fairly common, it looks like if you survive such strong experiences it can benefit or punish the rest of your life. Some will go to the streets , others will rule companies.

In particular, I believe it has a lot to do with your attitudes toward risk. And of course luck, but most of these people can help but keep trying.

If you try 10 times and fail most people just leave. But if you continue and success in the 12th, it is no luck. In fact if you never succeed your behavior will be called and obsessive compulsive and pathologic.

How many times Elon Musk tried to launch and then land a rocket?, the personal risk that he took was astronomical, most normal people will leave soon under the same circumstances.

I have seen people doing that, succeeding only at the end, for example when normal people did it in search for gold it was called the "gold fever", because people kept trying and trying, even with failure after failure.

Of course when you succeed everybody knew you were the man(the same people that criticized you when you failed), everybody wants to be your friend, and politicians want the money you have(and want to raise your taxes with excuses like how lucky you are or not being fair).

<comment><USER13> "But if you continue and success in the 12th, it is no luck. In fact if you never succeed your behavior will be called and obsessive compulsive and pathologic."

You say that if you eventually succeed after many failures, it's not luck. But then you also acknowledge all of the people who never succeed despite their dogged persistence. How do you reconcile those two statements?

<comment><USER7> There are failures and there are critical failures...

For the less well off (initially lucky), the line between those is much thinner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Which would you rather drive, he asks, a $150,000 Porsche on a well- > maintained highway, or a $333,000 Ferrari on roads with deep potholes?

Great way to sum up paying higher taxes. I'm going to try and remember that one the next time I get in a similar discussion.

<comment><USER7> Except there aren't any in the air or on water. One of the favourite ways of spending guide amounts of money is a yacht or private plane.

<comment><USER14> Good point - still have to take off and land in the airplane right? I used to fly in my Dad's two seater, and I can remember him being very grateful there was a small, municipal airport in Dubois, WY where we could land and fuel up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Being lucky is mostly about attitude:

[http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/as-luck-would- have...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/as-luck-would-have-it/)

"Lucky" people are those who looks for innovative ways of doing things while "unlucky" people are those who just blindly does what they are told. There are opportunities everywhere, you just have to open your eyes to see them!

</comment><comment><USER9> But there are certain ethnic groups that if you are a member, you have a higher likelihood of being wealthy. For example, take a look at the Forbes 400.

</comment><comment><USER16> Luck = Skill + Opportunity

<comment><USER10> Could you explain how that isn't circular? As I see it, opportunity is infrequently in one's control. Whether one can take advantage of it is less infrequent, but still often enough outside of one's control. The only thing about opportunity that isn't heavily influenced by luck is whether, having the means, one takes advantage of the opportunity.

<comment><USER17> The point is that there no such thing as luck as we generally understand it, but rather it is equivalent to opportunity plus skill (or better, preparedness). That is, you need to be prepared for the opportunity when it presents itself. Most people aren't and they deem themselves unlucky.

<comment><USER10> My point was that you're kind of defining luck as a form of opportunity, which is itself a product of chance. I think maybe you're just describing luck in different terms without altering what is meant by the concept.

<comment><USER17> Well luck is usually thought of as favorable chance occurrences, usually as a way of rationalizing why some people have success in some area and some don't. The argument is that this form of "luck" doesn't exist. Certainly chance occurrences are a part of reality, and some of those happen to be favorable for some people. But ultimately "favorable chance occurrences" isn't a good explanation for the observed disparity of success. What is a good explanation is chance occurrences plus preparedness. And so what we generally refer to as luck is really better understood this way.

<comment><USER10> How is your explanation better? What studies and research support that?

<comment><USER17> I don't think the meaning of concepts are the types of things studies generally shed light on. It's just a philosophical argument. Feel free to accept it or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If you really believe that luck plays such a big role in making you wealthy, why not quit your job, spend all the money you have on blackjack and lottery tickets, and hope for the best?

Go on - what's stopping you?

<comment><USER19> _Go on - what 's stopping you?_

The fact that I understand context and false equivalencies, which you apparently don't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Rubbish

> There was a car accident a few hundred yards away from where Frank > collapsed. Two ambulances responded but the injuries were minor and only one > was needed.

Or could it be he was on a tennis court (in the slums perhaps?) that had great medical reply rate, two ambulances sent when one wasn't even needed.

Unless you badly loophole it, via the luck gene or luck parents, which are part of 'YOU' so I don't think that's allowed.

Your future is what you make of it don't blame or rely on luck, that's a fools game.

<comment><USER21> Two ambulances where sent to a different, but very close location. Only one of those where needed. If that other ambulance was sent somewhere else or stayed at base he would probably have died.

At best his location, health, and timing may have raised his survival from the default rate of around 2% to around 10-50%, but that's still not great odds.

<comment><USER20> > cardiac arrest..kills 98 percent of its victims.. most of the rest > permanently impaired. .... two weeks later... back on the tennis court.

You really buy into this?

It's 6%-18% depending where! You can chose where you live :) and bloomberg .... 6% is the lower end not relevant to the story.

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/9687421/Cardiac-...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/9687421/Cardiac- arrest-survival-rates-dire-and-not-improving.html)

<comment><USER21> Sudden cardiac arrest is a much more dangerous type of heart attack. There is none of the pain in extremity early warning and it has very low survival odds. Remember you normally get some blood flow in a heart attack but this is normal to zero in seconds.

Much like how blood clots are dangerous but getting a blood clot in your lungs, brain, or heart are far worse than average.

PS: You could be sitting and talking to your Doctor and it would still have good odds of killing you.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why doesn't this code simply return a to z as the output? - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4098345

<comment><USER2> It seems to me that the issue is that $i++ is nonsensical if $i is a string (and $i _is_ a string, not a character). But instead of raising an error, PHP soldiers on and tries to apply some completely unexpected function.

<comment><USER3> Perl does this, too. And is it really _that_ unexpected? How many possible things could 'z'+1 return? The only possibilities that make sense to me are "{", "aa", or an error. I like PHP because it's flexible, and this often makes life easier. If you're really going to try to use strings as integers, then you deserve what's coming to you. If you're going to use this behavior as a feature, then you've just saved yourself a chunk of time.

<comment><USER4> >How many possible things could 'z'+1 return?

That are less than or equal to z?

<comment><USER5> To z or to 'z'?

<comment><USER4> Yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well, the choice was between having 'z'++ go to 'aa' vs. '{'. In most cases when you are comparing strings you want to do so alphabetically, not by their underlying character code. As mentioned in the thread there, Perl made the same decision. If you want to compare by character code, use ord() on it.

Writing a loop like that is also a bit of a weird edge-case. You would typically just call range('a','z') to get an array of a through z.

<comment><USER7> There is a third, correct choice: don't allow incrementing of strings. Everything you say about _comparing_ is true, but that's a separate issue.

<comment><USER3> Please explain: what makes this choice "correct?" Is it because it's your personal preference?

Different languages have different features. I've been coding PHP for years, and I've never encountered this feature before. I suspect that's true because I don't usually treat strings like integers. However, now that I know it's possible, I might actually use it to generate random strings or do something useful. I don't see it as something that is incorrect, I see it as how the language is implemented.

<comment><USER8> $x++ doesn't overflow (repeat a value you've already seen), yet produces a value less than the prior $x. This means PHP has two different total orderings over strings, one of which is inaccessible except by brute force. I find that indefensibly wrong. The odds I wanted this are zero, so silently getting it anyway is the kind of ridiculous misbehavior that makes me glad I can avoid the language.

<comment><USER9> > The odds I wanted this are zero, so silently getting it anyway is the kind > of ridiculous misbehavior that makes me glad I can avoid the language.

Not all useful values have to be order-able. If you just want to generate dictionary keys or unique IDs, you don't care about the ordering property of the values at all. And if you do care, all that matters is that ordering a given set of values is consistent. This behavior satisfies that criteria.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> That is ridiculous.

<comment><USER11> PHP is like that. Few other languages would feel comfortable with simultaneously defining 'z'+1 as 'aa', while asserting that 'aa' is strictly less than 'z'.

<comment><USER12> While I agree that 'z'++ being 'aa' is a bit silly, I can't ever see anyone making the case that 'aa' should be greater than 'z'.

<comment><USER13> 'z'++ is _not_ 'aa'. 'z'++ is not even valid PHP. $z='z';$p=$z++; does nothing either.

it's only in the for-loop context.

<comment><USER14> Not really, after $p = $z++ $p is 'z', $z is 'aa', as you'd kind-of expect. But the difference between literals and expressions/variable references of course just adds icing to the cake of bizareness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This actually makes perfect sense to me. Knowing this would have really come in handy a while back when I was creating my dynamic excel spreadsheet generator in PHP. While it doesn't follow ASCII char indexes, it follows a base 26 numbering system.

Edit: Oh... and if anyone was wondering, PHP's "char" function (provided an index) should perform similar to incrementing an ASCII char in C/C++.

<comment><USER16> Note: _chr_ not _char_

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> people talk about RoR, Django, Haskell++, Node.js, you name it. me? i'm sticking with PHP. i'm gonna be damn good at this language eventually.

<comment><USER17> PHP can remain insane longer than you can remain alive.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Google's reCAPTCHA is very toxic, can you please stop using it? - <AUTHOR> Thanks. Because with my privacy addons, I cant solve it most of the time. <comment><USER2> Yeah. Even with the privacy aspect aside, I'm quite tired of tagging self- driving car data for Waymo to use.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this a complain against HN or against the whole Internet?</comment>


Mitchell Baker Named CEO of Mozilla - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2020/04/08/mitchell-baker-named-ceo-of-mozilla/ <comment><USER2> If that name rings familiar it is because Mitchel has been the chief lizard wrangler at the Mozilla foundation since forever.

I think they stopped with the wrangler title and changed it to chair woman though.

She now sits as the head of both the foundation and the corporation.

<comment><USER3> Mark Surman is the Executive Director (CEO)[1] of the Mozilla Foundation.

[1] - An executive director is a chief executive officer (CEO) or managing director of an organization, company, or corporation. The title is widely used in North American non-profit organizations, though many United States nonprofits have adopted the title president or CEO. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_director](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_director)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Mozilla is quite dead as a company, sadly.

And I really LOVE using Firefox...when it works.

But I extra especially HATE building FF from source. I'll take chromium any day for that.

<comment><USER5> Uh, really? In my experience Chromium takes far longer than Firefox to build, especially from scratch. Not to mention all the steps and bespoke repo- management tools involved in just checking out the code and bringing up a working build environment.

What problems did you run into building Firefox?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does anyone can tell anything positive about her?

I am not saying there isn't any, I don't know her. My limited knowledge about her, is that while she was chairwomen and interim ceo, Firefox marketshare dropped a lot, while her compensation went up a lot - and it seems she was responsible for firing 70 people from the mozilla workforce, while she never wrote any line of code of firefox.

[https://www.i-programmer.info/news/86-browsers/13394-mozilla...](https://www.i-programmer.info/news/86-browsers/13394-mozilla- layoffs.html)

So from my limited understanding as an outsider: she does not really seem the best fit, for the job.

<comment><USER2> She created the foundation and has had a leading role in it since forever.

She's not someone who came in left field as an interim and started firing people left and right.

I'm not sure why you think a ceo should also be a programmer.

<comment><USER7> I think a programmer might well do a better job than a lawyer.

Some years ago, Mozilla decided to relaunch their browser under the name "Firebird". That was a poor choice of name, because there was already a free- software database using it.

There was a kerfuffle about it for some time before Mozilla switched to the (much better) name "Firefox".

During that period, the Mozilla lawyer running the show (one Mitchell Baker) was insistent that there was no reason to change because their legal advice was that they weren't infringing on any trademarks.

A programmer might have realised earlier that trademark law isn't the only relevant consideration in a situation like this (consider, for example, what `apt-get install firebird` is going to do).

<comment><USER8> You can go back a bit further too as Firefox was called Phoenix before being called Firebird and Phoenix Technologies was not happy: [http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=83507](http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=83507)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Seems to me like every year there's a new mozilla CEO.

<comment><USER10> Not sure why you have that impression. Chris Beard, the previous CEO served from 2014 until December.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I guess some people tactically flagged the post, it's 3-4 pages from the front page now.</comment>


AndOTP: Open-source two-factor authentication for Android - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/andOTP/andOTP <comment><USER2> A little bit ago in another HN article ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20232164](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20232164)) where AndOTP popped up, a link was shared with a nice discourse between the AndOTP author and a newer one, Aegis:

[https://old.reddit.com/r/androidapps/comments/b45zrj/dev_aeg...](https://old.reddit.com/r/androidapps/comments/b45zrj/dev_aegis_authenticator_secure_two_factor/ej4dfzw/)

AndOTP isn't seeing a lot of development, but Aegis is moving like gangbusters and recently passed the 1.0 mark. Thanks to that HN trail of info, I've switched from AndOTP to Aegis:

[https://github.com/beemdevelopment/Aegis](https://github.com/beemdevelopment/Aegis)

The Aegis devs have been doing a bang up job and the app is worth a look, it can import your AndOTP (and other apps) data. This is not a slight against AndOTP, just what I personally see as a natural progression based on that reddit thread above.

<comment><USER3> Thank you for this recommendation. Just tried Aegis on Android:

1\. Its UX is more polished than andOTP; the AMOLED theme in particular is well done.

2\. It also supports fingerprint unlocking, the lack of which was the biggest pain point when regularly using andOTP.

3\. Supports imports from popular 2FA apps, though this requires root access.

A few issues I noticed:

1\. While importing from andOTP, the issuer is blank when the 2FA token was manually added to andOTP. So now I have a list of 2FA codes with no indication as to which website they belong to. [Screenshot]([https://gopi.dev/images/aegis.jpg](https://gopi.dev/images/aegis.jpg))

2\. The 'Vault is unlocked' notification persists even on closing the app.

3\. OpenPGP integration for backups isn't available.

<comment><USER2> For issue #1 - try going into settings and enabling Account Name, I believe it's off by default. I, like you, had to edit each entry after import; Aegis has multiple metadata fields and I think the old data imports into the (not visible) Account field if I recall my experience correctly.

<comment><USER4> This (issuer saved in account name field) is what I got when I just imported my andOTP data. If you long-press and edit an entry, you can see and change both fields.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here are some alternatives:

* FreeOTP [https://github.com/freeotp/freeotp-android](https://github.com/freeotp/freeotp-android)

* FreeOTP+ [https://github.com/helloworld1/FreeOTPPlus](https://github.com/helloworld1/FreeOTPPlus)

* Password Store[3] (pass[4]) supports pass-otp[5]

3: [https://github.com/zeapo/Android-Password- Store](https://github.com/zeapo/Android-Password-Store)

4: [https://www.passwordstore.org/](https://www.passwordstore.org/)

5: [https://github.com/tadfisher/pass-otp](https://github.com/tadfisher/pass- otp)

<comment><USER6> FreeOTP hasn't had a commit since Dec 14, 2017, according to the GitHub repo. Also Android 10 gave a warning when I ran it. That is was developed for an older version of Android.

<comment><USER7> > FreeOTP hasn't had a commit since Dec 14, 2017

Why is this seen as a necessarily bad thing? Neither the requirements nor the TOTP protocol has changed since then.

<comment><USER6> Well it hasn't been updated for Android 10. Android 10 gives a warning the first time you run it. Not a positive thing.

<comment><USER7> Yes the comment I responded to said that, but after the word "also," implying it wasn't the only or even main reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is there a reason people don't use their password manager for OTP? In my case I'm using 1Password, which supports OTP but I know most other password managers support it too including clients for Keepass.

I guess there is the issue of your password manager being compromised but honestly I'm way less worried about that than website x or y getting compromised.

<comment><USER9> It isn't much of a second factor if it is the same factor as your password.

<comment><USER10> You can make an argument for a second factor (other than hardware key) being of fairly little value to anyone using an _offline_ password manager and generating passwords with a huge amount of entropy.

I don't think this is entirely true, and so I often use TOTP with important sites. But I'm okay with storing the TOTP key in my password manager (which encrypts the password database with a long key phrase _and_ a key file). Even on top of the very little chance that any of my long passwords are going to get leaked or broken, I think the chance that this happens because my password manager gets hacked along with the TOTP keys (as opposed to me getting phished or a vulnerability in a website) is pretty remote.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I use this extensively. Took a little while to swap all my codes from Authy - but well worth it.

Simple app, encrypted backups, and open source. What's not to like?

</comment><comment><USER12> Being able to move without having to hold Q/R codes is good. I have to maintain PGP encoded (and keystore held) images of screengrabs of Q/R codes because very few of the OTP out there want to acknowledge you _might_ want to move a 2FA to another system.

These are not secrets which have to stay locked in one cupboard. They are secrets which might stay locked in several cupboards: I have two phones. Is it not sensible to share the Q/R initialized state amongst them?

</comment><comment><USER13> I still prefer the much simpler FreeOTP+. Just start, tap and go. Can be easily backed up and restored: either via Import/Export or plain Titanium Backup.

</comment><comment><USER14> Been using AndOTP for months and i love that it supports android's keystore and device credentials for authentication. I had switched to it from Authy, which was quite heavy.

Aegis' design looks a lot less dense than AndOTP on the screenshots, though it seems to be widely recommended. I'll have to check what that's all about

<comment><USER2> The density is configurable in Aegis, 3 "View Modes" \- Normal (what you see by default I think?), Compact and Small. You can then choose to show or hide the Account name to further reduce size, and it supports Groups to organize.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The best AndOTP feature for me is the fact that it integrates with OpenKeyChain thus allowing the use of PGP keys for backups. I also wish there were more apps that use OpenKeyChain. For example something that allowed notetaking.

</comment><comment><USER16> Yep, it's pretty good. For regular Linux I can also recommend oathtool: [https://www.nongnu.org/oath-toolkit/](https://www.nongnu.org/oath-toolkit/)

</comment><comment><USER17> I used to use this app frequently until my workspace required me to switch to iOS. I need to manually set all my OTPs to OTP Auth due to its backup incompactibility. Does anyone knows a way to do that?

<comment><USER18> You can export your keys to JSON from andOTP, I'm not sure if there's import functionality in the iOS app, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Another alternative is: [https://github.com/tijme/raivo](https://github.com/tijme/raivo)

Unfortunately it's only for iOS

</comment><comment><USER20> I have used this for years. I don't know a better solution.

</comment><comment><USER21> Also try [https://avain.app](https://avain.app)</comment>


Facebook outage caused by server configuration change - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/facebook/status/1106229690069442560 <comment><USER2> Mhmmmm.</comment>


Why is finance so complex? (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/2669.html <comment><USER2> The world of finance makes these aspects of your life function:

* Allows you to get a mortgage

* Allows you to protect yourself with health/car/life/home/title/etc insurance

* Pays for your highways/stadiums/schools and other public works

* Protects your deposits

* Pays for your retirement

* Funds the college fund that paid for your school

* ... Or the student loans that allowed you to attend school

* Supports the global supply chain that brings you your iPhone, stocks the grocery store/your favorite restaurants with food, and puts the clothes on your back.

* Funds the growth of corporations large and small, giving you the job that allows you to buy an iPhone

* Funds the massive philanthropy expenditures that help those in need everyday

* Pays the pensions of the elderly

Financial innovation make our lives more predictable and less sensitive to chance. One could argue a huge amount of human progress is owed to modern-day financial institutions.

Like a software system, it's extremely naive to think that complexity is a sign that a system is rotten. Finance is an art, not a science. Sometimes we make products that we don't always completely understand until later. But the vast majority of financial innovations are deeply ingrained in the good life that you get to enjoy every day.

<comment><USER3> *If you life in a first world country and come from at least a lower-middle class background

You are talking about money. Not modern wall-street finance.

> huge amount of human progress is owed to modern-day financial institutions.

Like synthetic credit default swaps?

> Like a software system, it's extremely naive to think that complexity is a > sign that a system is rotten.

Complexity that can't be coped with is rotten! The Linux kernel is quite complex but each part of it is well understood and there are a lot mechanisms in software to reduce complexity.

> But the vast majority of financial innovations are deeply ingrained in the > good life that you get to enjoy every day.

Tell that to Greece people that got into the Euro because of clever CDS from Goldman Sachs or the masses of people that are stuck in debt from their education or credit cards.

> Sometimes we make products that we don't always completely understand until > later.

That does not stop you from selling them and acting like you do. However recent financial crises have shown that banks offering these products for the most part understand them... the persons buying them don't.

> Funds the massive philanthropy expenditures that help those in need everyday

That shouldn't be needed in the first place if there wouldn't be such a huge inequality. Philanthropy is not a good idea for a good-working society. There are laws and a justice system that is more fair than a few far too rich persons with a selectively good cause.

> Finance is an art, not a science.

And it should be a tool not an art. A means to an end.

<comment><USER4> > Like synthetic credit default swaps?

If you're against CDS, you should explain why.

Like any financial product, CDS is not perfect, but it's also intellectually dishonest to argue that it doesn't offer any benefit to society. For example, CDS is used widely by the insurers that the parent noted help individuals protect themselves and their property.

> Complexity that can't be coped with is rotten! The Linux kernel is quite > complex but each part of it is well understood and there are a lot > mechanisms in software to reduce complexity.

You apparently assume that the financial markets are too complex to be managed but poll people on a busy street in any major city and many will probably tell you they feel computer software is unmanageably complex too. Should we call software rotten because some people who used it have suffered some loss as a result?

> Tell that to Greece people that got into the Euro because of clever CDS from > Goldman Sachs or the masses of people that are stuck in debt from their > education or credit cards.

It takes two to tango. It would be unfair to pretend that some of the near countless individuals and companies active in providing financial services have not acted immorally or even illegally, but it's intellectually dishonest to pretend that every person who has taken on more debt than he or she can manage is a victim who was coerced into making financially imprudent decisions.

This applies to countries too.

> However recent financial crises have shown that banks offering these > products for the most part understand them... the persons buying them don't.

Save for Lehman, which was allowed to fail, the large banks were bailed out. If they were as savvy as you seem to think, why did they need bailouts?

<comment><USER5> CDS are not bad but the capital reserve requirements are way to low. If selling a CDS required a 1/3 capital reserve then they would be priced at reasonable levels and actually be wotprth something. Instead upper mid level employees used CDS to make a classic bet, in the worst case the company fails so it does not really matter how much it fails therefore my average expected downside is limited and the upside is unlimited, therefore lets go insane.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Finance is complex because:

1\. If a transaction is complex, it's easy to sucker people into buying. Why would anyone buy a structured product?

2\. If a transaction is complex, both sides can claim an immediate profit based on their idea of how it should be valued.

3\. A lot of complexity in finance is driven by the fact that big banks can borrow at 0% while true inflation is higher. Via various derivatives, this government interest rate subsidy is packaged and sold. For example, I can't borrow at 0% to buy stock, but if I buy a call option, the bank can borrow at 0% to finance their hedge.

4\. Because different people have different interest rates (banks borrow at 0%, large corporations borrow at 5%), banks can price a derivative at 3%, and both sides can LEGITIMATELY claim an immediate profit on the trade. (Bank borrows at 0% and lends at 3% to finance the derivative hedge. The corporation is borrowing at 3% instead of the 5% they normally would pay.)

<comment><USER7> Banks don't necessarily borrow at 0%. Granted, they are able to borrow at a much lower rate than you or me (closer to the Federal Funds Rate managed by the U.S. Federal Reserve), but they still pay interest on their loans.

Of course, real interest rates have gotten close to zero, but in general real interest rates of 0% are nonsensical in stable, developed economies. Economically speaking, if rates were 0%, it would in the long run _make sense to bulldoze the rocky mountains to save money on gas_ , because there is no marginal cost to consider.

<comment><USER8> "if rates were 0%, it would in the long run make sense to bulldoze the rocky mountains to save money on gas, because there is no marginal cost to consider"

Wait, run that by me again more slowly.

In general, it _does_ make sense to make large infrastructure investments in order to increase long term productivity, especially when interest rates are low, but in general, it's always the case. Hell, bits of the Rockies WERE bulldozed (And dynamited) to save money on railroad or freeway construction that would pay off on a fifty to a hundred year timescale. What does zero percent interest have to do with that? Presumably there are even some positive interest rate values for which the eventual gas savings outweigh the cost of hiring the guys with the bulldozers, if those are the only costs you care about.

If there's a quadrillion dollars worth of hydrocarbons on Titan, and it'll cost me a trillion dollars and fifty years to bring them to earth, it makes economic sense for me to do it, even if interest rates are 5%. I don't think it's the interest rate that makes these projects make sense or not make sense.

What's the magic that happens at zero that causes otherwise nonsensical projects to make economic sense?

<comment><USER9> Exactly. I think he's assuming he'll never have to pay back the principle.

<comment><USER7> (In response to above as well as parent)

> What's the magic that happens at zero that causes otherwise nonsensical > projects to make economic sense?

The bulldozing-mountains example is purposefully over-the-top (I believe I first heard it in an article by Bernanke[0]). The point that I am trying to illustrate is that at a 0% interest rate, the traditional marginal cost/marginal utility analysis breaks down, since as long as the marginal utility of the last investment dollar spent outweighs the marginal cost of spending that dollar (the interest rate), traditional economic thinking would have you spend that dollar.

> Exactly. I think he's assuming he'll never have to pay back the principle.

The rocky-mountain example does assume this, but it doesn't make a 0% interest rate any more ludicrous. Imagine that you could take out a loan for $x at 0%. Simply because of the fact that time gives assets the opportunity to grow, the future value of that loan when it is to be repaid is greater than the value when you received the loan [1]. Of course, the 0% rate would remove some traditional investment options (savings account, Treasury bonds, etc.), I think it is reasonable to assume that investments will still be able to appreciate _to some degree_.

However, this appreciation would be constrained in reality by inflation if the _real_ interest rate is 0%. If, on the other hand, the _nominal_ interest rate is 0%, then the loan effectively counteracts the headwind of inflation, and any return, no matter how small, winds up in your pocket.

[0 (7th paragraph)] [http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/ben- bernanke/posts/2015/03/31...](http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/ben- bernanke/posts/2015/03/31-why-interest-rates-low-secular-stagnation) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_value_of_money](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_value_of_money)

<comment><USER10> Time gives the money a chance to grow _if there is anywhere that offers a safe return_. Lending at a negative interest rate is paying someone to keep your money safe. Borrowing at a real negative interest rate may not make sense if you aren't sure you can do that.

<comment><USER6> Actually, it was a bad example.

Suppose you spend $1M to produce something worth $100k. You lost $900k.

But suppose you borrowed at 0% while inflation was (to use round numbers) 10%. After about 50 years of borrowing at 0%, your $100k is now worth more than $1M. (I'm too lazy to use logs to figure out the exact breakeven point right now.) You made a profit.

With 0% interest rates, your investment that destroyed $900k of value was (eventually) profitable. If you can avoid mark-to-market accounting, you can just borrow, wait for inflation, and eventually sell for a profit.

When interest rates are less than inflation, a capital-destroying investment can seem profitable.

<comment><USER11> So in this scenario, you either got an indefinite-term loan with a 0 interest payment, or you took a big risk by betting that the cost of borrowing would not increase until you could pay down the loan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> FWIW, I'm relatively quick, pick up languages (both CS and natural), frameworks, algorithms, etc. without much trouble.

But I've tried again and again to understand how our basic Federal Reserve System functions - Gov't debt, banks, reserve margins, mortgage loans, etc. etc.

I've NEVER gotten a basic "THIS IS HOW IT WORKS in 21 DAYS", Stack Exchange- type-answer. Lots of opinions...

This itself leads me to believe that Finance is corrupt.

 _I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.

T. Jefferson_

<comment><USER13> Lmao, can't understand it so it's corrupt.

Sounds like all the people that think the same about IT. It's "magic".

Buy and read some books, it's laid out pretty clearly. If you're not sure what to read, email some of the professors in finance at the University you went to.

<comment><USER14> If you think you understand the truly complex parts of finance, I would encourage you to re-evaluate. The world economy is still in turmoil and slow recovery because a huge amount of the experts didn't even properly understand the "innovative finance" they were using in 2008.

I don't understand it, and I have seen countless interviews and articles from respected economists who say there are financial products they don't totally understand either.

To "understand" something in finance is not quite the same as other disciplines. You can understand all the pieces and all the rules of something, but not truly "understand" it entirely. Economics involves a lot of sociology/psychology and difficult-to-predict human behavior. It is likely that no one is completely aware of all of these factors when it comes to any given financial instrument.

So, I don't think you should be laughing at someone and telling them to read books as if this is algebra or something.

<comment><USER13> I understand the parts I've worked in. No one likely has a clear understanding of 100% of finance (this actually crosses finance, accounting and economics, as well as statistics, programming and many other disciplines).

I have degrees in Finance and Economics, I'm a software engineer and my first job was as an Auditor for Andersen, so yeah, I've got a bit of a back ground in the "complex parts" of finance.

All it is for the most part is a fucking shell game FYI with different entities jumping through different nonsensical made up loopholes in tax law, financial regulations and anything else they can do to game the system.

Lots of people understood the "innovative finance" in 2008 and prior. For every stupid bet, there's someone on the other side. In fact, the reason we saw almost no finance people go to prison while the government gave billions, shows they know it far better than you give them credit.

You're right, reading a book about it is beyond most people. You have to actually pay attention as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Article appears to answer the question why does finance _exist_ , not why is it so complex.

I think the answer for why is it so complex is that it is a _human domain_ that _rewards complexity_.

First, humans that turn their full brain power on something inevitably make complicated structures. If you think about it, this becomes clear that it's true, even if there's _absolutely nothing there_. For instance, it's almost worth picking up a practitioner's book on numerology or astrology, a really "good" book that goes deep into the details and history, not just a superficial "intro" jobber, to witness the incredible complexity humans bring into a field that 90%+ of the readers of this comment will agree there is virtually no reason for it to possess, because there's no "there" there.

How much more complexity and richness we can bring to an already complex field!

And as others are pointing out already, finance also rewards complexity, both because people can hide things in the complexity and because people can fool themselves into thinking they understand the complex things, and because the interaction of all these complex things is even more complex.

You want another domain that works much like that? Consider any ol' pile of code that a software company runs on. It's bad enough that all software companies of any size are trying to solve a non-trivial problem, but throw a few hundred random developers at it and before you know it the "simple billing system" has 100-line buggy sorting functions sitting next to the double- booking accounting algorithms and all the other endless monstrosities we sometimes swap stories about on HN or various reddits. And then one day a trivial quirk in that sorting algorithm accidentally erases all the data in your customer database when it accidentally decided everybody had failed to pay their balances for over a thousand years or something. Computing is complicated even _before_ humans start humaning the place up, but then it gets even worse.

</comment><comment><USER16> >The core purpose of status quo finance is to coax people into accepting risks that they would not, if fully informed, consent to bear.

That is a pretty loaded statement. That would be like saying the core purpose of the software industry is to destroy jobs and in turn collect part of the salary that those jobs previously paid. It might technically be true, but it is twisting things to make them sound intentionally evil.

<comment><USER17> But it's actually true. I've personally had the experience (as a freelancer) of watching people that I had just recently met be laid off because of what I was being generously paid to do. I did not like it.

I could at least comfort myself by the fact that what I was doing was actually useful (and creating efficiencies that destroyed jobs), whereas concealing risk is actively deceitful and destructive.

<comment><USER18> According to the article though, this deceitfulness is actually good, not destructive. It puts us into a more productive Nash equilibrium than we'd be if we each individually assessed the risk of our single investment and said "na, too risky".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Financiers are buyers and sellers of risk. They do so at prices that are generally advantageous to them. They are able to do so because they make a profession out of it: they have a lot of capital to work with, and they spend a lot of time thinking about it.

To call finance intentionally opaque is a perhaps true, but it shouldn't be vilified much more than other goods and services, the providers which all maintain some level of "opacity" towards their customers. In a sense, it's a fundamental part of any capitalistic transaction. A farmer sells an apple for more than it costs for her to make it, but you're willing to pay her for it because you aren't that good at growing apples. To her, it might be worth what it cost her to grow it, but to you, it is clearly worth what you are willing to pay for it, because you have the added benefit (or requirement) of being able to eat it and survive. So it is worth more to you, less to her, and she profits.

One could see similarities in insurance (much closer to finance than apple- growing, if not finance itself). An insurer charges you (or maybe an aggregated group of "yous") more than it costs to provide a certain protection (or hedge against a certain risk). You are willing to pay the premium because clearly the risk protection matters more than getting some "theoretically optimal" price.

With increased availability in technology and information, certain kinds of finance are becoming easy to do "on your own" \- the most salient example is perhaps index investing. Many people are realizing that financiers cannot add value and they need less of a middleman.

I thought I'd share my contrasting thoughts, but I very much enjoyed the read.

</comment><comment><USER20> _Animal spirits are game theory_

Human behavior is a large part of the complexity because we try to use things like game theory to predict how someone will act based on a confined set of conditions which totally ignore the very long game which has been playing from long in the past and will continue long in the future. There are too many factors to account for which can make an actor appear irrational given the posited conditions, however the truth is there can never be a rational actor until we map every input and interaction in someones life. This is why the idea of a rational actor is horseshit.

Nick Szabo did a recent post that covers this:

 _A small-game fallacy occurs when game theorists, economists, or others trying to apply game-theoretic or microeconomic techniques to real-world problems, posit a simple, and thus cognizable, interaction, under a very limited and precise set of rules, whereas real-world analogous situations take place within longer-term and vastly more complicated games with many more players: "the games of life"._

[http://unenumerated.blogspot.com.au/2015/05/small-game- falla...](http://unenumerated.blogspot.com.au/2015/05/small-game- fallacies.html)

</comment><comment><USER21> Finance is not complex. It really isn't. if you know the right people you can find out all the information you need. However:

The very foundations of Finance are built on sand

What do I mean by that? Finance is built on the concept of value, or worth. "How much is this gold _worth_?", "how much is the client _willing_ to pay for this service?"

The concept of value and worth are subjective. They are in the eye of the beholder:

If you ask a thirsty backpacker stranded in the middle of the Sahara: How much are you willing to pay for a 2 litre bottle of water? The answer, most likely is many monies & possible limbs.

Now trying flogging the same water to city trader in a champagne bar.

I can hear you scoffing, "Oh but that's a silly example, the backpacker was practically dead" Correct, worth is subjective. Its based on your circumstances. There are many other examples, the Turner painting in a jumble sale, the sale of a sports car when the wife becomes pregnant, etc, etc.

Complex derivatives are really not complex. They are normally a "RAID" of different types of contracts. What then happens is the end user is deliberately bamboozled into not asking questions.

</comment><comment><USER22> The inherent role of finance is NOT to hide risk. Its role is to connect people who have one type of asset they no longer want with someone who does.

In that way bankers are just like lawyers and accountants. You pay someone to do things you don't have the time to do (or even learn how to do) so you can focus on your job. Its division of labour at the macroeconomic level and everyone benefits from specialisation.

Now, I agree that contemporary finance is bloated with opacity and that banks do benefit from this via corruption (tax code and compliance reform are needed ASAP). But its disingenuous to say that the value of finance is entirely "placebo".

</comment><comment><USER23> Curiously, placebos work even if the patient knows it is a placebo. Hence [http://placebobutton.com/](http://placebobutton.com/)

More on topic, this article is full of red herrings and poor analogies such as the above. Why on earth would you use game theory's payoff matrices as an analogy to what could perfectly be put into words? The authors thoughts on "financial institutions buffering fear" really don't require invocation of another complex framework unless he somehow wants to derive credibility from this, which would of course be poor form.

</comment><comment><USER24> Finance is just a set of tools. Just like anything else it really comes down to the moral fiber of the individual wielding that tool.

Fischer Black and Myron Scholes weren't sitting in front of their white board thinking about all the people they could rip off. They were genuinely trying to find a way to price options as a tool to mitigate risk.

I can use a hammer to build a house or sink the hammer into my enemies head. Either way, it's still a hammer.

</comment><comment><USER25> I disagree with the main thesis here. The author states that complexity is due to opacity. This may be true in some cases but there are a number of complexities in finance that are not opaque. For example, look at all the optionality and contingent payouts in an 'Power Reverse Dual Currency' derivative. It's a really complex thing. However, the term sheets tell you everything about the transaction and the ultimate payout of the derivative (it may be 50 pages long, but it's all there).

To say that all things in finance are complex because they are opaque is pretty wrong. Maybe the author is talking about a different dimension of finance (e.g. the unpredictability of human behavior, I mean sure, that's opaque, but that's not finance).

</comment><comment><USER26> _" The core purpose of status quo finance is to coax people into accepting risks that they would not, if fully informed, consent to bear."_

This. If you have money, and let it be known that you have money, you will be offered a large number of stupid deals. There is a huge range of financial products out there which underperform the market. Amazingly, people buy them. Wealthy people.

The deals offered poor people, such as payday loans, and crap auto loans, suck even worse. Most Americans were better off when we had regulated savings and loans, tightly regulated banks, and a much narrower range of financial products.

</comment><comment><USER27> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFDe5kUUyT0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFDe5kUUyT0) series is a good watch and will give you an idea why they "made" it complex.

</comment><comment><USER28> This reminded me of the concept of demurrage in currency [1]. The idea was brought up to solve that exact problem. The messy system of inflationary fiat currencies won, and even though it is probably better and more practical, the demurrage would have had the advantage of making it clear what we're trying to achieve. Inflation seems to be hated by many people which, judging from their other political viewpoints, should be supportive of it...

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demurrage_%28currency%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demurrage_%28currency%29)

</comment><comment><USER29> Taxes also had a lot to do of the complexity of the system.

</comment><comment><USER30> I think of it as an arms race between traders and regulators. The more complex the security, the longer it will take regulators to pass rules against its misuse, figure out taxation, etc. In the meantime, the inventor stands to make an enormous amount of money.

Also, there's an inherent information asymmetry favoring the inventor.

</comment><comment><USER31> Or, some investment decisions resemble Keynesian beauty contests:

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

</comment><comment><USER32> There was a nice result a while back that the efficient market hypothesis is true IFF P=NP.

[http://arxiv.org/pdf/1002.2284.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1002.2284.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER33> The fundamental reason is because we may create financial products. They can be socially very useful, they may endow their creators with vast profits, or both. So the creation of financial products is strongly incentivized both from the buyer- and seller-sides.

However, there are only really two _things_ that we can use to create these products: debt and risk. Thus, when we try to create financial products, we create structures composed entirely of debt and risk, which become very complex. The reason why they become so complex is similar to any other case in which you try to make highly sophisticated structures from only very simple/basic components: there ends up being a great number of details.

</comment><comment><USER34> Consider that the Brownian model of financial markets was discovered by Bachelier in 1900, five years before Einstein, and the pace of financial innovation in the intervening century, and you have your answer for why finance is complex.

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

<comment><USER35> The only good innovation in the intervening century was the ATM..

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Derivatives are instruments for transferring risk from those who understand it to those who do not.

</comment><comment><USER37> Credit (including fractional reserves) definitely makes things a lot more common located.

</comment><comment><USER38> Finance is complex because it's basically math. And math can get very complex.

</comment><comment><USER39> Because telling the future is complex

</comment><comment><USER40> Definitely read "fiance". Maybe I'm just projecting.

</comment><comment><USER41> "The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is the one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it."

John Kenneth Galbraith, _Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went_ (1975), p. 5

</comment><comment><USER42> because it attempts to quantify and model the unpredictable and lot of people are paid very well to keep that image going for as long as they can.</comment>


Measles Outbreak Infects 695, Highest Number Since 2000 - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/24/health/measles-outbreaks-us.html <comment><USER2> For comparison, 1082 cases in Europe in February alone this year [1]. And more than 80000 cases in total in 2018 [2].

[1] [https://ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/infographic- meas...](https://ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/infographic-measles- europe-february-2019)

[2] [https://www.bmj.com/content/364/bmj.l634.full](https://www.bmj.com/content/364/bmj.l634.full)</comment>


Why we lie about being retired - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48882195 <comment><USER2> There is a huge difference between retiring and retiring healthy. Both of my parents retired due to medical reasons and are not as mobile as they once were, they have confided in me that retirement is extremely boring and if it wasnt for church and living so close to family (same apartment complex) they would have nothing to do.

I'd love to see more programs that pair retirees with young people to tackle local problems, there is a clear trend regarding increasing lonlieness among young adults and retirement age folks.

<comment><USER3> I can only assume the "nothing to do" retirement crowd didn't do much when they were working, and therefore have no idea how to fill the time. Personally:

1\. More volunteer time at the dog shelter.

2\. More reading.

3\. More music playing, and finally _really_ spend time on that violin that is currently a secondary instrument.

4\. More time at "church" (read: Zen practice), yes, just like other old people.

5\. Might finally have time to hike the Appalachian Trail, or at least large parts of it.

6\. Finally find the time to sit down and decide what I want to do when I retire, 'cuz there's no way this list is complete.

All but #5 should be able to be done by all but the most feeble. I hope I live so long as to get bored in retirement.

<comment><USER4> > I can only assume the "nothing to do" retirement crowd didn't do much when > they were working, and therefore have no idea how to fill the time. > Personally:

Loads of folks derive personal value and meaning out of their work, and I'm one of them. I've been out of work once for a few months, and that was with a job waiting for me at the end of the tunnel.

It was eye opening how depressive it was, to be robbed of your big "thing." I'm saying this as someone with a boat load of little "things," reading, outdoorsmanship, sports, etc. The second that surety of purpose is gone, so goes my wider motivation.

<comment><USER5> That's not the only way to "derive personal value and meaning" out of your life. I take year-long breaks after each major job switch. You do experience loss after leaving a job you enjoyed, but it passes after a few months (about 6 months for me). Then you kind of wonder why you didn't leave sooner.

This is all predicated on not needing money too much. I can see how someone who doesn't have a financial cushion would feel depressed about not only having to spend savings, but also not making money to cover the living expenses. That was the hardest part to come to terms with (at least for me), even though I'm not in any way struggling financially.

I'm kind of close to a point where I'd be fine to not ever even search for another job. I got plenty of other things (perhaps too many) to derive meaning from, and I don't need to get paid to properly derive it.

<comment><USER6> Your comment intrigues me. Care to elaborate on what kind of passive income structure you have established, to give you that "financial cushion"?

<comment><USER7> He didn't mention passive income at all, he's just comfortable with eating away at his savings until he's employed again.

<comment><USER5> Pretty much. You can't make all the money in the world. There's more to life than slaving away on someone else's bullshit for a buck. And make no mistake 99% of what we do at work is ultimately irrelevant bullshit that will be gone and forgotten 10 years from now. When I work, I charge pretty penny though, to sustain that kind lifestyle. I do consulting at the moment. Already made enough money this year to last me 3-4 years. Mortgage is paid off, and I have no debt at all.

US tech workplace is super unfriendly to part time work, unfortunately, so instead I just "part time" by not working for a while every 3-4 years. My wife does the same thing. She left her job over a year ago, so she's not working at the moment, though she's more of a social animal, so she'll start looking in September. Me? If the tech industry disappeared today, I'd breathe a sigh of relief, and switch to brewing beer (which is something I'm pretty good at as well). As things are right now, tech is the easiest possible way for me to make the most money per hour (and therefore maximize my downtime).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is mostly an artifact, I think, of the fact that people are obsessed with the question "what do you do?" within the narrow framing of a commercial job.

And everyone is expected to be working all the time otherwise they must be in trouble somehow, despite the fact that at least 50% of people in Western countries earn enough to not need to do that.

I've had periods, I suppose you would call them 'sabbatical', in which I've mostly just mucked around. Learned a new language. Fiddled around with IoT stuff. Done some travelling. Read a lot. Just enjoy life.

During that period, what am I? I'm just a guy. Historically I did software development for work. In the future I'll probably do the same. But that identity of full time employment just doesn't exist.

I generally joke and say I'm retired or that I'm an open source developer or whatever else. But of course that's different coming from someone who won't be hitting government retirement ages for a few decades.

<comment><USER9> I've hated that question since the 1st grade when it was 'what will you do (when you grow up)' No six year old knows the answer to that question and that's a lot of pressure.

Also, you're at a social event, where people are supposed to be pretending to be humans. Fuck you for making me think about work during my time off. With all sincerity.

If I ask people an ice-breaker about activities, I ask them what they do for fun.

<comment><USER10> "So what do you do" is one of those small-talky ice breaker questions that people tend to use as a polite way to figure out where to stick you on their social/class/importance totem pole. It's usually none of the asker's business, but they ask anyway. I sometimes respond with "exotic dancer" which (if you know what I look like) gets a laugh and allows the conversation to steer off into a different direction.

<comment><USER11> I ask people what they do so that I can understand how to talk to them. There's a huge difference between the jargon/diction I can use with someone else in biotech vs someone is a completely unrelated field, as well as even topics of conversation that we'd find interesting. I take a lot of pride in my work and enjoy talking about it, and I'd guess a lot of people do as well. If they don't we can always talk about something else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've recently switched from asking people, "where do you work" to "what do you fill your time with each day?"

Most people just tell me where they work and what they do. Some people tell me about other things, and if they are retired or unemployed they don't feel embarrassed.

Maybe if we all started doing this, people would feel less compelled to tie their job to their identity.

<comment><USER13> I've tried exactly that. Most of what I got back was questioned looks followed by something like, "you mean where do I work?" Maybe I'm around different people.

<comment><USER12> I mostly get the same response. It's a slow moving revolution. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've retired twice so far. Each time I loved it for a while and then eventually I miss the social contacts from a work environment and the stimulation. I LOVE making things happen. So I end up going back to work for a while. Also paying for healthcare on your own is challenging. It would be ideal for older folks to gracefully exit full time work by transitioning to part time but also have a means to keep health care.

<comment><USER15> This is one of the reasons I want universal health care in my country. I should be able to get the health care I need from my government for a reasonable cost regardless of my employment situation. I don't want to have to sacrifice my retirement plans because of my inability to pay for health care.

<comment><USER16> Would you be willing to pay 10% more of your taxes your whole career for this? I'm sure everything wants what you want, but I think the question is at what cost.

<comment><USER17> I'm sure this was asked in good faith. Increasingly, it seems like this question is not, however. It feels like this dead horse has been beaten into a pulp. Looking only at the government side of the ledger, and ignoring the private-sector savings at this point in time, when there's _so much_ talk about public healthcare, seems willfully obtuse.

The U.S. already spends more on healthcare (by pretty much every measure) than every other developed nation on the planet. Much of this goes to profits of insurance companies, the overhead of having so many parties involved, advertising budgets, etc. Raising taxes to pay for healthcare should result in a _net_ savings for virtually everyone, as these profit-seeking activities are eliminated. The only real debate taking place among economists w/r/t cost is _how much_ of a savings we'll get by moving to a single payer plan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm young and nowhere close to retiring, but I already have friends who have bought into the whole retire early train. Except, it's kinda like the recent SNL skit Romano Tours^[1]. If you're sad now, you're gonna be sad then. Retiring isn't gonna fix their problems. They're not going to be suddenly happy. And even if everything goes right (no kids, no health problems, high income, low cost of living) and they retire "early", that's still going to be in their late 30's, early 40's. And then what? My friends claim they'll figure something out, but if they've lived 40 years without any sense of self actualization, I'm skeptical that they'd suddenly find themselves.

I'm not saying one should work a meaningless job instead of retiring, but I don't get waiting for decades to find one's purpose in life. Might as well wait for Godot. And if retiring early doesn't work out, one can end up like the main character in Ikiru: 30 years of perfect attendance and absolutely nothing to show for it.

But hey, maybe that's just my anxiety about starting out adult life.

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbwlC2B-BIg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbwlC2B-BIg)

</comment><comment><USER19> One thing I think is notable is how the article that work is how people meet others and encounter new ideas.

As online interactions and news become more prevalent (I realize not everyone is equally online), does this change?

I myself have never shared my family's "I can't imagine life without work" \- I've been emotionally eager for retirement since I was 20 and the last 20 years have only sharpened my appetite. There is so much to learn and try that work just in the way of. Of course, much of what I want to do could be considered "work", but the freedom to do it to the degree I want at any moment, and on my own schedule is a big deal.

But this article made me think about how that is true for me BECAUSE I don't have to go to an office to be exposed to new ideas, to be aware of new developments.

Sadly, I've got at least 20 more years to go before I get to test the reality of my expectations.

</comment><comment><USER20> I have shifted to part-time, and found it a bit difficult at first. What helped me most was assigning priorities, refreshing my To Do list once a week or so.

Without it, I tended to spend most of the day doing who knows what, and realizing the day was pretty much over.

I was also the type who had a hard time relaxing when going on a week or two of vacation. Maybe 4-5 days before I had finally unwound, then champing at the bit 9-10 days in, having a hard time waiting to get back to "work."

So I am setting up passive income streams, expecting I will likely be a tinkerer, rather than a complete life of leisure, as I had first fantasized...

That also seems to sort my "identity" as well, as I, too, identified myself by my chosen profession...

</comment><comment><USER21> I have already retired from a City job, and am working still. I am reaping great income from doing this, but my time working will be ending soon. I plan on having a active retirement with my wife and staying healthy as a result. (Less than 1 year and counting @ 60 yrs old)...

</comment><comment><USER22> The thing about retirement for most HN readers is that you don't have to stop your "work". Programming, writing, these are activities you can continue to do, and make a difference. Unlike doctors, lawyers, hair stylists etc. that need another person to do their profession.

I retired at 55, and I'm learning data science and machine learning, doing some Salesforce work for a nonprofit, and I hope to contribute to the reboot of the HospitalRun project.

</comment><comment><USER23> That Arab Spring comparison is gross. Opressive governments are making political opponents disappear, use torture, etc. But sure tell me how hard it is to work two more years.

</comment><comment><USER24> Most people lead boring lives long before their retirement...

have friends who have no lives, dont take vacations. just going through the motions. Whats the point?

<comment><USER25> Their individual points and motivations? Their place in evolutionary time and motivation?

Not everyone is highly creative and a go-getting problem solver. Not everyone is a life long learner. If fact they're kinda rare.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Every phase of life can be a difficult transition, we should mentor retirees to help them find their purpose in their new situation. Capitalism tends to only recognize jobs on the basis of wealth, but what truly counts is being fulfilled by how we pass the hours, of being needed, and retirees have a great opportunity to find that in unexpected places. In German the word for career is Beruf, which means "calling" \- that is a great way of seeing it, and finding our calling, regardless of our phase in life. But we can't always get lucky and find our calling alone, and so we should always be on the lookout to help those around us find theirs.

</comment><comment><USER27> I finally realized what bothers me about this article. It assumes that when you retire you are no longer a practitioner of your life's work. Being employed is your only definition of self. I might be a retired but I am still an engineer. I still think and do as an engineer - just nobody is paying me.

All this reminds me of Ursula Le Guin's final book of essays before she passed away. Le Guin received a survey for 1951 graduates of Harvard or Radcliff. The survey assumed that employment is the only value to your life.

Here is a quote from the book:

"But it was Question 18 that really got me down. 'In your spare time, what do you do? (check all that apply).' And the list begins: 'Golf…'

...

"The key words are spare time. What do they mean?

"To a working person — supermarket checker, lawyer, highway crewman, housewife, cellist, computer repairer, teacher, waitress — spare time is the time not spent at your job or at otherwise keeping yourself alive, cooking, keeping clean, getting the car fixed, getting the kids to school. To people in the midst of life, spare time is free time, and valued as such.

"But to people in their eighties? What do retired people have but 'spare' time?

"I'm not exactly retired, because I never had a job to retire from. I still work, though not as hard as I did. I have always been and am proud to consider myself a working woman. But to the Questioners of Harvard my lifework has been a 'creative activity,' a hobby, something you do to fill up spare time. Perhaps if they knew I'd made a living out of it they'd move it to a more respectable category, but I rather doubt it.

"The question remains: When all the time you have is spare, is free, what to do you make of it?….

"The opposite of spare time is, I guess, occupied time. In my case I still don't know what spare time is because all my time is occupied. It always has been and it is now. It's occupied by living.

"An increasing part of living, at my age, is mere bodily maintenance, which is tiresome. But I cannot find anywhere in my life a time, or a kind of time, that is unoccupied.

"I am free, but my time is not.

"My time is fully and vitally occupied with sleep, with daydreaming, with doing business and writing friends and family on email, with reading, with writing poetry, with writing prose, with thinking, with forgetting, with embroidering, with cooking and eating a meal and cleaning up the kitchen, with consulting Virgil, with meeting friends, with talking with my husband, with going out to shop for groceries, with walking if I can walk and traveling if we are traveling, and sitting Vipassana sometimes, with watching a movie sometimes, with doing the Eight Precious Chinese exercises when I can, with lying down for an afternoon rest with a volume of Krazy Kat to read and my own slightly crazy cat occupying the region between my upper thighs and mid- calves, where he arranges himself and goes instantly and deeply to sleep.

"None of this is spare time. I can't spare it. What is Harvard thinking of? I am going to be eighty-one next week. I have no time to spare."</comment>


Measure everything - <AUTHOR> http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2009/05/the-end-of-overeating.html

<comment><USER2> "The decline of chewing" is the real title. Totally worthless.</comment>


On the Usefulness (Or Lack Thereof) of Foreign Keys - <AUTHOR> http://bigeng.io/on-the-usefulness-or-lack-thereof-of-foreign-keys/ <comment><USER2> Is this a troll to get mentioned in the "To Laugh Or To Cry" section of Database Debunkings?

Foreign key constraints, like all constraints are there to enforce integrity and to make relationships explicit (like a specification with teeth).

If every application accessing the database has to know about and enforce integrity constraints you are multiplying the work -- remember the DRY principle. Moving constraints out of the database seems like a good idea, if you have never worked with a system that has multiple applications accessing the database, written by different teams in different languages, over time. You are imagining a single application with a "database access layer," but even then you are duplicating functionality in application code that the RDBMS gives you.

If your production data is not important then go ahead and turn those constraints off. For real businesses the integrity and consistency of the business data is more important than application code.</comment>


Recycling clothing gathers steam - <AUTHOR> https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2019/0613/Why-this-company-wants-your-old-underwear <comment><USER2> My parents started a company 20 years ago that turns old clothing into cleaning rags sold to factories, workshops, printing presses, or for materials that are not great for cleaning with, they get shredded and used for filling in things like car seats etc. Good quality clothing gets sold in second-hand shops. And you know what's interesting to me? That in those 20 years my parents never once talked about it as "recycling" \- it's just good business even without looking at it from the environmental perspective.

<comment><USER3> Exactly. I'm so sick of all these stories framed as how we should all be good sumaritans and recycle. That's not the way to do it!

This stuff has value. It's a business opportunity. If you're doing it to feel good, or to make people feel good, then what you're doing _will not scale_.

Different industry, but similar story: [https://discardstudies.com/2019/05/06/adam-minter-how- things...](https://discardstudies.com/2019/05/06/adam-minter-how-things-flow/) (covered here on HN recently)

<comment><USER4> H&M has been pushing this as "brand new" idea where if you return old clothing, you get a single-digit percent discount off your purchase. There's some perversion in this incentive in that you are "feeding the beast".

There could be some deliberate behavioural psychology at play as well to curb growing awareness around waste in fashion. A background feeling of guilt of buying new by the shopper is negated in the immediate act of returning old clothes or by a future consideration of the act.

<comment><USER5> H&M is not "the beast". Having kids, I am very thankful for their existence, otherwise merely buying new clothes every year would probably bankrupt us.

Before you say I should buy Second Hand: many kids clothes simply break by daily use. It is already common to give old children's clothes that are still OK to friends with smaller children, so it is not like the clothes are wasted by excessive consumerism.

<comment><USER6> In my neighbourhood, which hosts a critical mass of environmentally-conscious parents of young children, there is a children's clothing exchange run by a local church. It is a better version of the traditional hand-me-down culture, as it provides more of a desirable selection.

<comment><USER7> We have something like this in my neighborhood too. It's hosted in someone's basement and consists of dozens of bins labelled by age/size and clothing type. It operates pretty much like a library where people take some things they like and return them when their child outgrows them. Over time I've seen the same shirt/whatever on multiple different children in the community.

This mostly works for children's clothes because children tend to outgrow them well before they wear out. It might not work so well for adult garments. I tend to keep my clothes till the patches start overlapping, then I turn them into rags for the local maker space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Real sustainability might mean not buying at all in the first place or to buy within a community if it is available and especially with textiles, not from remote open markets - you don't know which levers are in place for a business to make its profits, which costs are dissipated to everybody but the profiteer. Policies and programmes help. But don't fool yourself to be relieved of your consumers responsibility by recycling. Somebody else will shoulder the external costs.

Recently a local social organisation offered numbers for textile donations: women make up 80% of their donations, 10 tons per week, men are mostly recipients. Less than 10% are reused or resold, the rest might become insulation. They lamented: we get too much. Access to cheap textiles is easy.

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure what you mean here with not buying. Do you mean not replacing clothes seasonally based on what's "en vogue"? If so, that may be why women make up most of the donations: they do tend to use clothes for a much shorter time.

I still remember being shocked when I spoke to a young lady who told me she wore a dress two times at most. I've never been much of an environmentalist, but I guess I can feel good about keeping clothes for years and not changing them with styles.

<comment><USER10> I used to dress relatively well.Lots of good quality clothes. Then I put on lots of weight and was like " fuck it,I look like shit anyway", so started buying the cheap stuff. A pair of jeans-£6, t-shirts-£3, etc.The only exception is footwear- I don't buy cheap shoes,as they are crap. £6 jeans last only a couple of months before they become unwearable,as the material is usually subpar. So I kept buying them every 2 month or so. However recently I stopped buying this cheap crap,and usually buy clothes that are high quality and they do last. That's how I'd describe less consumption.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is cool. The title had me thinking about just repairing old clothing. It generally takes $4-6 at a tailor to fix a pair of pants, etc. I've gotten years more out of my jeans just doing that.

<comment><USER12> Does the tailor make a decent wage?

I think just shortening a pair of pants is 30$ minimum.

Things that can't be done in a factory are increasingly expensive, especially if you don't have underpaid workers.

<comment><USER13> "Baumol's Cost Disease" is the missing discussion in these conversations [https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/05/th...](https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/05/the- baumol-effect.html)

<comment><USER14> Reminds me of Mark S. Miller's classic:

"A Computer's Perspective on Moore's Law: Humans are getting more expensive at an exponential rate."

[https://web.archive.org/web/20070203034530/http://www.caplet...](https://web.archive.org/web/20070203034530/http://www.caplet.com:80/adages.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have noticed that t-shirts that are made from recycled cotton are much more durable and doesn't shrink same way than normal.

</comment><comment><USER16> Recycle is the THIRD of the three Rs for a reason. Fast fashion is incredibly heavy in CO2 output, so recycling won't do much at all to hamper this UNLESS people shift their purchasing away from heavy consumption. The recycling process very likely has significant CO2 impact itself, so here's hoping it's at least heavily reduced from using raw materials.

That said, I'm very excited about this, and SF offers recycling that's very convenient. Much better than goodwill/thrift IMHO for more than lightly worn clothing—fast fashion doesn't make good second hand clothing as it's typically cheaply made and falls apart rapidly.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'd think the insulation would be heavy. I like the idea of keeping old clothes out of the landfill, though.

</comment><comment><USER17> Here in the UK, donating old/unwanted clothes to charity has been a thing for a long time, at least a decade.

Many supermarkets accept various kinds of recycling, and many have a large box for clothing, which goes to places like the Salvation Army. TBH, I've no idea what they do with it though.

There are also door-to-door collections, where a bag is put through your door, for collection a couple of days later - of course, anyone can do this, and there have been cases in the past of unscrupulous people claiming proceeds will go to charity, but instead pocketing all the money.

<comment><USER18> Most of that goes directly to landfill after these places extract 5% x10% thatcan be profitably resold.

<comment><USER19> Apparently some (most?) charity shops will accept unwearable clothes for rags, would be no point if it all went to landfill.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm surprised they didn't mention the R value of the insulation.</comment>


Show HN: Spark CMS – "The easiest CMS I've ever used" (alpha) - <AUTHOR> https://www.spark.app <comment><USER2> What does Spark's AI do?

<comment><AUTHOR> Right now, we're building automated multivariate testing on our structured section types for optimizing lead gen.</comment></comment>


Apple Fixes Bagel Emoji - <AUTHOR> https://blog.emojipedia.org/apple-fixes-bagel-emoji/ <comment><USER2> Speaking of fascinating emoji stories, I'd recommend this good old favorite: an entomologist rates ant emojis [http://curlicuecal.tumblr.com/post/175362924100/an- entomolog...](http://curlicuecal.tumblr.com/post/175362924100/an-entomologist- rates-ant-emojis)

<comment><USER3> I loved this and now I want more emoji reviews!

</comment></comment><comment> jf- This is the most important bagel-related news I've read all day.

</comment><comment><USER4> Cue the angry vegans: [https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and- drink/vega...](https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/vegan- emoji-salad-google-vegetarian-egg-inclusion-diversity-unicode- consortium-a8387596.html)

<comment><USER5> Or those too bigoted to tolerate lactose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> 99% Invisible did a great podcast episode about emojis a while back.

"Tech analysts estimate that over six billion emojis are sent each day. Emojis, which started off as a collection of low-resolution pixelated images from Japan, have become a well-established and graphically sophisticated part of everyday global communication.

But who decides what emojis are available to users, and who makes the actual designs? Independent radio and film producer Mark Bramhill took it upon himself to find out and, in the process, ended up developing and pitching his own idea for a new emoji."

[https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/person-lotus- position...](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/person-lotus-position/)

</comment><comment><USER7> This just in:

Apple has released a new version of its forthcoming bagel emoji. Now including cream-cheese, this aims to address concerns raised about the previous design.

</comment><comment><USER8> Apple emojis are too photorealistic--they really feel like they should be more cartoony. Right now they're solidly in the emoji uncanny valley.

<comment><USER9> It's the uncanny bagel hole.

I agree. Almost seems lazy to take a photo and call it an emoji. It might not actually be a photo, but the effect is the same. No style, no interpretation.

Imagine if the face emojis were just head shots of various stock photo models.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> People sure have strong opinions on pointless matters.

<comment><USER11> Bikesheding. Not many know of or understand the complicated politics of the Middle East and even many of those who do might not have strong oppinions.... but everyone understands bagels.

<comment><USER10> TIL. I always wondered if there was a name for this phenomenon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Really, shouldn't the base bagel emoji be a bare bagel, with combining modifiers for different fillings?

<comment><USER13> I would love for this to happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> How was anyone criticising the old Apple bagel when the Twitter and Microsoft ones exist?

<comment><USER15> I cannot believe that a Twitter designer was actually proud enough of that bagel emoji to claim credit for it and "walk them through" the design process.

<comment><USER14> Surely it's a Weeto?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> To the complainers about this story: It is interesting because a major tech company changed communication standards in response to public outcry.

How many stories are about tech companies pointlessly responding to outcry? Or making silly changes?

</comment><comment><USER7> On a serious note, here's a cool story about Apple's emoji:

[https://medium.com/@agzmn/the-making-of-apples-emoji-how- des...](https://medium.com/@agzmn/the-making-of-apples-emoji-how-designing- these-tiny-icons-changed-my-life-16317250a9ee)

</comment><comment><USER17> I predict at least one blog response to this claiming this emoji isn't fair to the lactose intolerant

</comment><comment><USER18> Gosh, there's more depth in that layer of cream cheese than in the entire iOS 7 interface remake.

</comment><comment><USER19> I put ham, salad, tomato, pickles, cheese (real one, I'm swiss) and a bit of ketchup and vegetable sauce.

This is not my emoji!!

Joke aside, this is interesting how much attention emojis get from people. This is the first time I see some UI/UX item concerning users that much.

</comment><comment><USER20> Yet another first world problem solved. Phew...

</comment><comment><USER21> Im getting old, cant wrap my head around this and its getting first page at HN.

<comment><USER22> What is there to wrap your head around?

You can send people a cute little bagel when you message them. It's funny. It's entertaining. Makes life a little more interesting.

Don't lose your sense of humor, or get too jaded as you age. The world has it's flaws but I hope we can all find some small joy in things like emoji.

<comment><USER23> It's not that. The question is who cares whether the cute little bagel has cream cheese or not?

<comment><USER24> It is a good thing I suppose, it means some of us don't have bigger worries than that.

<comment><USER25> Not all that good when there are quite the few bigger worries affecting all of us... but some would rather care about what's on a bagel emoji.

<comment><USER3> Just because people care about one thing, it doesn't mean that they don't care about other things, or even that they care less about other things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I don't consider myself a jaded individual; but that this is #3 right now on HN's front page bewilders and confuses me.

I feel like I could go into /new/ and find at least a couple articles more relevant and interesting than this.

The average HN'er may tolerate this post, and maybe 5-10% might actually care, but there's a huge amount of the developer community I've seen that mostly just looks down on emoji as a frankly immature way to communicate. Emoji- related news is often beleaguered with comments akin to this one, and this time it's my turn, I suppose.

This news may matter to my partner and I, to have another meme to screw with. It may matter to a perhaps younger or less tech-centric group.

But developers, hackers, and startup folks? Really?

How does the front page pick it's content? I assume algorithmically?

<comment><USER27> Why does HN have to be so serious all the time? I for one am totally OK with the occasional light-hearted piece.

> frankly immature way to communicate

And this is vaguely insulting to the vast majority of smartphone and/or internet users.

<comment><USER26> We can have light-hearted pieces that are actually relevant to tech or science in an interesting, or meaningful way.

Also, again, my partner and I use emoji all the time, but I absolutely certainly do not when communicating with other developers, clients, or anything with an air of professionality.

Case in point: HN does not support emoji. Or, if it does, certainly nobody uses them. And it is certainly not a feature I've seen requested here.

<comment><USER9> I don't think you understand what "light-hearted" means...

The whole point is that it doesn't have to be relevant to tech or science in a meaningful way.

I also don't use emoji when communicating with clients or in anything that should carry a professional tone. But I'm also a person with a personal life and personal friends and so on.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How much 'slower' do ads make the internet? - ajc-sorin Is there a way to measure the speed loss when a website moves from having no ads to having ads? <comment><AUTHOR> Do you have a set of sites you frequent on your phone that have ads, but will otherwise function without Javascript? Try using those sites with and without Javascript disabled.

It's a bit depressing how much it drags some pages down.

<comment><USER2> Not all JS on the page are ads!

<comment><AUTHOR> That's what the "but will otherwise function without Javascript" bit was about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Opera actually has this ability built-in. It lets you A/B test websites (with/without ads) by going to the URL "speedtest".

</comment><comment><USER4> The loading speed? You can install an ad blocker and enable/disable it. Then force-reload the page. You can also use the developer tools (for example in Chrome) to see the precise timing waterfall.

</comment><comment><USER5> Could try using a browser add-on like noscript and then only whitelist the website's local scripts, to get an idea of how much faster it loads without the ad network tracking scripts.

</comment><comment><USER6> You'll also need to average out the speed of your website accessed from different geographical locations.

</comment><comment><USER7> You can try Pi-Hole which stops the ad and tracking DNS requests from getting through.</comment>


Show HN: Jitpack.io – GitHub to maven, one less step in software publication - zhong-j-yu http://jitpack.io/

<comment> zhong-j-yu I don't use maven, but people ask for maven POM for my open source project ([http://bayou.io](http://bayou.io)), which makes sense.

So I read about maven; I read, and I read, ... still poop. It seems like a chore to publish to maven central repository. I'm lazy, and not the good kind of lazy, the lazy kind of lazy.

Fortunately there is [https://jitpack.io/](https://jitpack.io/). Once you published your project on github, you've published it to maven world. That removes one step in the whole publication business which is already too messy.

It is great, I highly recommend it!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the submission and recommendation! Very happy you like it and find useful.

Sometimes its good to be lazy and it could mean that you were doing something that can be simplified or automated. Thats what we try to do.</comment></comment>


StarCraft Pros Are Ready to Battle AI - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/607888/starcraft-pros-are-ready-to-battle-ai/ <comment><USER2> Once upon a time, when I was young, and staying up all night for no reason, in the original StarCraft, multiplayer, someone created this map called "The 40 Islands". You could not do anything because you and everyone else were separated by water. You had to harvest your island, than move on to a new island, harvest more resources, and keep building. There were about 5 or 6 of us and 2 computers. We spent 8 hours playing this... a few people were quickly eliminated. We managed to eliminate a computer. Then another guy went down. It was me, another player, and the computer. By then, the computer had grown so massive, taken over at least 10 islands, while we both had about 5 to 7 islands. The last guy I was playing the game with lasted another hour before he said, "Good luck" and quit. It was me and this computer... battling it out for another 3 or 4 hours. Unfortunately, all 40 islands had been harvested, and we could no longer kill each other, because we had nothing left to attack each other with. That was a great game and probably the last time I ever played a major multiplayer campaign like that.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wonder if that is based on Knights of the Forty Islands, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_of_Forty_Islands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_of_Forty_Islands) ... sounds like a great map, there are some similar ones in 0AD (play0ad.com), it's quite a challenge when the resources are unbalanced on each island and you need to figure out which one is worth the gamble to explore/exploit.

<comment><USER2> That is interesting.. maybe someone did base it off that. I thought maybe they had just come up with this map and decided 40 islands was a good number.</comment></comment></comment>