Student Loan Debt Is Now as Big as the U.S. Junk Bond Market - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-05/student-loans-raise-other-risks-as-debt-equals-u-s-junk-market <comment><USER2> There is definitely an education bubble. It's way too easy to get money for college. You hear a lot of stories about the increasing costs of college and crushing debt on graduation, but you don't hear a lot of stories of "I wanted to go to college but couldn't get a loan". Almost everyone gets approved, regardless of their future ability to pay it back.

We need a fundamental shift in the way college is paid for. Some (many?) would like to see a government funded system, others would like to see the removal of subsidized loans to bring prices back down (and leaving many unable to afford college in its wake).

Another solution is to let you go to school for free and then pay a percent of all your future earnings back to your college, or at least into a pool that pays for the next generation's college. Of course with that system, colleges would bias towards people who are pursuing profitable majors, so you'd probably see a lot more STEM degrees and a lot fewer of everything else, until it got oversaturated, but there is a very long lead time between "too many degrees" and "no one studies this anymore".

In other words, the fundamental problem is that we tell kids that college is the only path, creating insanely high demand for the product, when in reality there would be plenty of people much better served learning a trade or skill instead of four years doing something hate for a useless degree they'll never use.

<comment><USER3> > for a useless degree they'll never use

I went to school for such a degree. While I don't use it in my day to day now, I still consider it priceless. There's some inherent value added to a person who pursues to study a bit of humanities, history, philosophy and art in college apart from their major. Scholarly work really helps shape the way you look at life for the better.

Part of this is that you really understand why you need to trust academic work for general human advancement. We have too many people thinking it's okay to discredit scientists and scholars because they don't understand how research works.

<comment><USER4> > We have too many people thinking it's okay to discredit scientists and > scholars because they don't understand how research works.

And a similar number of people who elevate science to the level of religion, marching in its name and developing a brand of hero worship for scientists when they too know nothing at all about the scientific process. Both are forms of anti-intellectualism that are growing in our polarized political environment.

<comment><USER5> I've seen this form of scientism playing out frequently on Reddit and other Internet forums lately. Discussion will be about some piece of controversial research, e.g. GMOs or vaccines. People who want to discuss the merits of the research are shouted down by what I can only describe as 'science fanbois' \-- anything that is 'against science' must be wrong.

They're missing the inherent tension in science between a received body of knowledge and the skepticism it takes to produce new knowledge.

<comment><USER6> > Some piece of controversial research, e.g. GMOs or vaccines

Who or what determines what is controversial?

To me, vaccines are not controversial at all. You can pick and choose specific ones to argue about, but the concept of vaccines is literally proven, beyond a doubt.

As for GMOs, there's a lot more room but even still, the fundamentals are nothing controversial. This is also proven in pretty much anything you can buy in a grocery store today.

<comment><USER7> Controversial literally just means that there's strong, polarizing disagreement. It's fairly well-defined, and vaccines definitely qualify. This doesn't mean that examining the actual positions of each side would lead you to conclude that they're of equal worth: it just describes the significant disagreement that exists. (As opposed to, say, the heliocentric model)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> To me, this is another implementation of the housing bubble:

\- People see college graduates making a lot of money

\- Politicians make it a priority to make it easier for people to get loans to go to college

\- More people take out loans to go to college

\- Colleges realize there is no downward pressure on price and raise tuition.

\- Politicians continue to make it easy for people to go to college

\- People take bigger loans to go to any school they wish

Until the music stops, things are sort of OK. People's kids can go to any school they can get into, regardless of cost. Colleges can raise their tuition with no consequences.

Politically it's a difficult problem, because the old solution of making more money available is getting out of hand, but what politician wants to stand up and tell people they can't go to the college of their dreams just because they can't afford it?

During the housing bubble, it was the cycle of "people want to own a home" => "politicians say everyone should be able to own a home and make loans available" => "companies make money packaging up these loans" => "prices go up" => "people can't afford homes" => "politicians make more money available". Until the music stops, everything is great -- everyone is making money, everyone is getting what they want. Then it unravels...

<comment><USER9> The thing I don't understand is, how does it unravel?

It feels like politically acceptable short-termism of shunting education costs onto future generations. No-one's going to 'lose' money over it. Who will suffer? It doesn't look like it will be corporations that will suffer, save some institutions will close when the endless supply of money suddenly dries up. It looks to me like it will be governments, a political ticking time-bomb much worse than the growth of numbers of pensioners vs number of workers. Is it a potential social disaster where a lot of people will end up sent to a new version of debtors prison for a bit? Or will it massively impact future GDP of developed countries, as people won't be able to spend, they'll be paying back this onerous loans. Having the exact opposite effect that it's supposed to, instead of growing GDP by growing skills, it'll be killing it by curtailing worker spending potential. Tax revenues might fall due to higher education instead of grow.

Governments seems to be making these student loans rock-solid backed by government assurances to the detriment of future generations.

I haven't looked into it enough to know and am lucky enough to have paid all mine off as it was much smaller than today's crazy amounts.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, as you say, it's not really a traditional "bubble".

From what I can tell, a few entities will suffer, but not in a spectacular fashion.

1\. The government may be forced to forgive a lot of debt, thus taxpayers will suffer.

2\. Those making whose student debt payments are not proportional to their income will be an economic drag on the US.

So there is no "bubble" to "pop". Rather, it looks like it's going to be a long-term economic drag on the country.

<comment><USER11> iirc 1 is already happening, as more loans "than expected" (roll eyes) are delinquent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Typical shitty reporting from Bloomberg. Other than the dollar amount outstanding, there's nothing else in the article that draws any similarities to the junk bond market. It's about as meaningful as saying "Apple's market cap approaches the size of the US junk bond market" or "Student Loan Debt surpasses Apple's market cap in size." In fact, there isn't really any interesting information in the article at all. There seems to be an insinuation that the size is a bad thing, but even then they don't come out and say why.

<comment> murph-almighty At a minimum, a comparison of the default rate between the two would be nice.

<comment><USER13> The article does compare them (albeit without much detail).

"Delinquency rates on student loans are much higher than those on auto loans or mortgages, due to loose student loan underwriting standards, the unsecured nature of student debt, and the inability to charge off non-performing student loans in bankruptcy," Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analysts Marty Young and Lotfi Karoui wrote in a note Tuesday. "The substantial majority of student loan default risk is borne by the U.S. Treasury."

<comment><USER14> If the default risk is borne by the US Treasury, then what risk do we have in general?

<comment><USER15> The risk that the increased supply of money lowers the value of that money. Not that this is the straw that's gonna break the camels back, but it's not like there aren't consequences to the taxpayer for allowing the government to allocate funds in a sub optimal manner.

<comment><USER16> This money isn't unbounded; it's confined by the budget allocated to the Department of Education and various government organizations (like Fannie Mae, et. al.).

Ultimately the Department of Education is responsible for this money. The last 30 years are remarkable in the amount of controversy surrounding student loans and the default of large education funds.

The following article describes this in greater detail: [https://tcf.org/content/report/student-loan-guaranty- agencie...](https://tcf.org/content/report/student-loan-guaranty-agencies- lost-way/).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Mark Cuban has been writing about this since at least 2012:

[http://blogmaverick.com/2012/05/13/the-coming-meltdown-in- co...](http://blogmaverick.com/2012/05/13/the-coming-meltdown-in-college- education-why-the-economy-wont-get-better-any-time-soon/)

[https://www.inc.com/mark-cuban/video-student-loans- bubble.ht...](https://www.inc.com/mark-cuban/video-student-loans-bubble.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> The bottom line is the college loan system needs an overhaul.

As just one example, the founders of Collegeloan.com made close to a billion dollars each prior to new laws passed in 2008. The founders have since left daily roles but themselves and current execs are still raking in money off student load debt.

This is just one of the founders houses that has been on market for 4+ years. This house was paid for off the false hopes and high interest payment loans the schlepped to kids who have long since graduated and still paying off debt.

[https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2013/feb/20/unreal- casa-...](https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2013/feb/20/unreal-casa-piena/#)

[https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/14385-Cypress-Pt-Poway- CA...](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/14385-Cypress-Pt-Poway- CA-92064/2112805772_zpid/?fullpage=true)

Another house he sold in Vegas.

[https://www.realtor.com/news/unique-homes/ceo-and-poker- pro-...](https://www.realtor.com/news/unique-homes/ceo-and-poker-pro-cary- katz-selling-las-vegas-mansion/)

He also likes million dollar buy in poker. How many interest payments did kids make for him to afford this?

[http://www.pokerlistings.com/cary-katz-wsop-big-one-for- one-...](http://www.pokerlistings.com/cary-katz-wsop-big-one-for-one-drop-q- and-a-91548)

Do some research... this is just one company that was in the upper top 10 prior to 2008 shake up. Many more made far more of the backs of kids in this country. After the shake up the companies adjusted and went back to lobbying to gain back the insane profits they once saw. Obviously by the headline we are back to all time highs.

</comment><comment><USER19> As a current student and one who will graduate with roughly $60k in student debt, after scholarships and grants - I often question the legitimacy of the driving factors in increased tuition.

Most would say the volume of administrators has ballooned due to the increasing number of services universities now provide for the students. Better and more services offered to students _should_ benefit quality of life.

Does the economic impact of modern universities serve as a net positive for society? When we have more and more university staff using their salary to support their families they're contributing to the economy in a positive way. When we have students graduating with tens of thousands of dollars of debt, they're bound to repaying their loans. In order to do this, they must find a career and become "productive" members of society.

This of course ignores the ethical and societal implications of expensive tuition...

<comment><USER20> The article mentions "loose student loan underwriting standards." Here's what's going on:

The people originating the loans have no skin in the game. So, they don't call NYU or even Northern Essex Community College and say, "look, here's a student who wants to be a social worker, asking for 100K in loans to get the degree. We don't think they'll be able to repay that debt on a social worker's wages. So, no loan."

If the lenders WERE calling the colleges saying that, the colleges would not be escalating tuition as radically as they are.

It's not realistic to expect the kid who just got in to NYU or a community college to play that kind of hardball in negotiating tuition rates. But when the lenders don't play that hardball, it leaves higher-education executives trucking to the bank on the proceeds of those loans.

<comment><USER21> To my understanding, the problem is that when the lenders WERE calling colleges, it wasn't to say "this kid wants to borrow 100k in loans", it was to say "here's 50k in goodies, send your students to us for loans!". Hence the controversies over kickbacks and the like.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> duncan-donuts I wonder how educators are handling this. When I was set to graduate high school a decade ago we spent a portion of our home room hour planning our collegiate futures. I think I may have been the exception -- where my advisor stressed that we had to do something. Too often I hear that, "college is the only option." I personally never experienced that, but I wonder if educators are stressing that 4 year universities aren't the only option, just one of the many options. I think, with the lack of skilled workers, people can do really well with a vocational degree in a trade. Then again, that type of work is much more physically demanding than my job as a software engineer.

<comment><USER22> People neglect to realize that a master plumber can make just as much as a software engineer should they have the skillset to be on the right kind of projects.

<comment><USER23> FWIW: It's probably easier to become a software engineer than it is to become a master plumber.

<comment><USER24> For some people. Others just can't get their heads around programming

Though point taken about how hard it can be to get certified for some of those trades

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> One statistic that's commonly left out of these discussions & articles is how late parents save for college. According to Sallie Mae ([http://news.salliemae.com/publication/how-america-saves- coll...](http://news.salliemae.com/publication/how-america-saves- college-2016)), most families don't start saving before their oldest child reaches 7 years old. This effectively robs 1/3 of the investment period's growth potential.

Another one (as perhaps a consequence of the previous fact) is that the average family ends up saving up ~$16K, while the average grad leaves colleges with an average of ~37K in debt.

As most experts in the field agree, the key winning strategy is starting to save as early as childbirth, even if it's a small amount.

<comment><USER26> Your point is interesting. That being said, ughh anyone who pushes this smacks of neoliberalism. Wow now parents have to save from the birth of their child.

When will it start being considered "responsible" to save 10 years before a child is born and if you don't you're irresponsible cuz you missed 10 years of growth.

When will it start being considered "responsible" to save for your grandkids college?

<comment><USER27> I think the real point is how parents can help their children win the game according to its current rules, not what post-secondary education finance policy is or should be.

Personally, I think the economy would benefit from appropriate government- financed post-secondary education for those students that show an aptitude for it. However, I suspect that a test-based system similar to that employed in Europe or elsewhere is politically untenable here ("I should have the freedom to choose to go $336k* into debt at an elite photography school!")

(*NB: I wish I was making that number up but there was someone that actually made this choice a number of years back.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I highly recommend Matthew Crawford's _Shop Class as Soulcraft_ , which includes a discussion of how kids are railroaded into college even though it makes no sense for everyone to go. The destruction of vocational schools is a real problem here. And in a world where any work that doesn't require physical presence is ripe for offshoring, the loss of the vocations is problematic indeed.

You can read the essay that started the book here: [http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/shop-class-as- sou...](http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/shop-class-as-soulcraft)

<comment><USER29> Reminds me of this old SMBC Comic.[1] "The easier college gets, the dumber you look for not having a degree."

Having hoops for discriminating simplifies hiring and other decisions. Simple ones like these are going to stick around as long as people think degrees matter more than how a person produces.

[1] [https://www.smbc- comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2729#comi...](https://www.smbc- comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2729#comic)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The fundamental problem here is that student loans have been declared a _special_ debt not dischargeable through bankruptcy. At the same time, these loans can be Federally guaranteed through FFEL. This leads to $100K cooking schools promising to turn a recent dischargee from the Army into a pro-chef, sign here, here and here.

If student loans were subject to bankruptcy banks would be more careful. Instead we have a political system making bank from banks for ruining young people's lives.

Any libertarians care to wade in here and tell me this is a small price to pay for freedom?

<comment><USER20> Exactly. The lenders don't have enough skin in the game to make it worth negotiating with the colleges / universities to keep tuition down. The article mentions "loose student loan underwriting standards". That means the underwriters don't call the colleges on the carpet about grossly overpriced degree programs. So tuition spirals.

<comment><USER30> I blame the lenders as well but I get there differently.

With or without the threat of lendee bankruptcy, it isn't in the interests of lenders to negotiate lower tuition. This doesn't happen with houses. It'd never happen with tuition.

Instead this is just free money for the banks. Since it guaranteed they risk nothing.

Your _no skin in the game_ is their lack of risk. I blame the lenders because they lobbied for this gift.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Easy solution. _LET the students default._ Seriously, if students could default like they can buying a used car there would be lower tuition and better attention to whom you give a loan to.

<comment><USER32> No offense, but that's ridiculous. There's money owed here. The schools already got it, the banks are owed it. Someone needs to make that right, you can't just "forgive" debt without some party taking a huge hit. Which one?

I'm guessing the developed version of your proposal would be for the government to step in and make the payments to the banks. But.. that's ridiculous. If you want to throw around government money to reduce education burden, what you do is pay the schools directly by offering grants. You don't prop up the imbalanced loan system by making loan payments with tax dollars.

<comment><USER33> I think you misunderstood. He/she said "default", not "forgive". As in, the people with the loans walk away from them and take the massive credit hit that comes with that, likely by filing for bankruptcy. The issue is that student loans are uniquely sticky, so a person with student loans today basically can't get out of them.

If it were possible, many people would choose to file for bankruptcy to release the loans, take the temporary hit, and start again. This would burn the treasury and banks who hold the loans, just like they get burned when they loan mortgage money to people who can't afford one and later default on it.

<comment><USER32> Bankruptcy is yet another thing though. And I agree, by the way, the laws as written are unfair and don't help anyone.

But bankruptcy isn't the ability to "walk away" from a loan. You literally need to be bankrupt: you can't hold any other assets beyond the statutory minums. Most people suffering with student debt aren't literally destitute (obviously some are), they just have a cash flow problem. Bankruptcy won't help them.

<comment><USER34> I doubt that Drumpf was ever destitute when declaring bankruptcy.

Students get off easy as far as assets go. they don't have any yet, so there's nothing to get rid of.

<comment><USER16> You probably get this a lot, but here is one more data point.

Almost nobody who uses the term "Drumpf" is taken seriously. It's the 2017 equivalent of using M$ to refer to Microsoft. It's a way to immediately get your opinion written off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> These should be low yield non junk but for some reason they're high risk/high yield in spite of the principle being backed by the full faith and credit of the US Govt. and bankruptcy non-dischargability. There's a strange disconnect between the risk and the yield.

<comment><USER36> This non-dischargeability of the student loan changes made by Congress baffles me and strikes me as terribly unfair, and I'll never be using a student loan.

I guess we should follow the money and ask whom does the bankruptcy non- dischargeability benefit?

<comment><USER37> It benefits people who can pay back students loans and people who need students loans to make extra money.

Before loans were non-dischargeable, you'd have students run up their debts and declare bankruptcy. This sort of fraudulent activity had no consequences since student loans are unsecured.

The result was that the private student loan market was small. Nobody was going to loan money they'd never get paid back.

<comment><USER36> Doesn't it also benefit universities who can then keep upping costs because the loans will rise to match the costs no matter what?

Prior to the change was there a shortage of student loans (with a lot less people choosing university) or did we just shift the loan balance from the government to private industry?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> A lot of that debt is funding bloated administrative costs and other overhead that doesn't directly make for a "better" education, just a "more expensive" education. Fixing this problem starts with getting costs at universities under control.

Taking on debt to fund education isn't inherently bad, but having that debt back a bloated higher education sector is terrible.

<comment><USER39> As I posted elsewhere in this thread...

The majority cost increase (65%)[1] of higher education in the US over the last couple decades is due to a systematic defunding of government support for schools. It would be nice if we started investing in our country's education again. [1]2015 Study by the New York Federal Reserve - [https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff...](https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff_reports/sr733.pdf)

<comment><USER40> Unfortunately this is only the start. It seems Republicans have started a war on education.

"a majority (58%) of Republicans say colleges and universities are having a negative effect on the way things are going in the country"

We should be continuing to encourage higher education in addition to trade schools. Bachelor Degree holders, on average, earn a million dollars more during their life time than those who only have a high school diploma. Even if you are accounting for lost earning potential, cost of tuition, supplies etc... your still talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars more earned than if you were to not achieve a degree.

Pew Research Poll [http://www.people-press.org/2017/07/10/sharp-partisan- divisi...](http://www.people-press.org/2017/07/10/sharp-partisan-divisions-in- views-of-national-institutions/)

Figure 2A Lifetime Net Earnings by Education [https://trends.collegeboard.org/sites/default/files/educatio...](https://trends.collegeboard.org/sites/default/files/education- pays-2016-full-report.pdf)

Figure 1 Lifetime Earnings by Education [https://www2.ed.gov/policy/highered/reg/hearulemaking/2011/c...](https://www2.ed.gov/policy/highered/reg/hearulemaking/2011/collegepayoff.pdf)

<comment><USER41> > hundreds of thousands of dollars more earned than if you were to not achieve > a degree.

But will that still hold as the percentage of people getting degrees rises?

In the limit everyone gets a degree, and the average wage for a degree holder is the average wage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> What feels so deceptive about the panic around student debt is the devil is the details. I think if you drill in median student loan debt for an UNDERGRADUATE is like $12k. That's less than a car loan and we don't have a panic about that.

Most of the debt is for graduate, PHDs, law and MDs or undergrads who attend expensive private universities. These people should make more money from that investment.

My point is overall average student loan debt or the overall outstanding amount owed is horrible way to look at it and talk about it. It creates an unnecessary panic.

<comment><USER43> It's also deceptive to downplay the situation by only looking at the debt in students' names. Many parents take out loans on behalf of their children. E.g. Parent Plus Loans: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLUS_Loan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLUS_Loan)

<comment><USER44> Well over half of my student loan balance is in parent loans. I pay my parents monthly to pay for the loan payment. My younger two siblings are oblivious to what kind of debt they have. Now, my parents are a few years away from retirement--at least they hope--and they will be burdened with paying my siblings student loan debt on a fixed income.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> The current tax reform discussions look to make it even worse be removing some of the current breaks for students paying off debt [1]. There was some talk last summer about extending the current $5200 tuition exemption as an employer benefit to include tuition repayment [2]. I guess that's now off the table. I haven't seen the math anywhere, but it sure seems like it would be cheaper to give tax breaks for paying off loans then to allow them to be defaulted on on forgiven in the case of government workers.

[1] [http://money.cnn.com/2017/11/15/pf/college/tax-reform- paying...](http://money.cnn.com/2017/11/15/pf/college/tax-reform-paying-for- college/index.html) [2] [https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/17/student-loan-debt- why-employ...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/17/student-loan-debt-why- employers-may-want-to-help-pay-off-college-loans.html)

</comment><comment><USER46> We just hired a self made developer who doesn't have a college degree. Oh Boy, everybody think he is some sort of code clown. College is nothing, but humans like to judge based on vanity values.

</comment><comment><USER47> There are two relevant things to realize about this:

1) Student debt is _much_ different than normal consumer debt in that it is not dischargeable if the holder declares bankruptcy.

2) For years, many politicians have been calling for the massive increases in the issuance of student loans, presenting the issue as though the only hope for many people to obtain education is to take on massive amounts of debt.

If there weren't lots of bankers, politicians, and lobbyists getting rich off of this bubble, it might be possible to believe that they genuinely think that saddling teenagers with massive amounts of non-dischargeable debt was a good thing for society.

Student loans are the biggest handout to the financial services industry in decades, and both parties are reaping the spoils of these deals.

<comment><USER48> Only reason why I think there is much press about this is because it would make sense to me that increasing delinquency/amount of student loans will bleed into mortgage asset valuations and feed a long term bearish (inflation- adjusted) trend[0] (after all, these debts cannot be discharged[1] and negatively affect credit when not serviced, which factors into getting approved for mortgages, even after setting aside how stagnant wages have been for decades on avg), and I'm not too sure how banks would feel that if people are no longer opting to taking out 30year + mortgages that I'm sure compromise a significant part of their "assets".

[0] [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ASHMA](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ASHMA)

[1] Well outside of some political student loan debt jubilee that will probably leave a lot of universities holding the bag, not to mention other private entities that have attached themselves to the student loan system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I majored in PolySci, so definitely non-stem. It was tough at first to manage my student loans, but with experience and pay increase, it got better until it was paid off. I knew going into this field that it's not always lucrative, and I would have to follow specific pathways to make a good living. I worry that universities don't teach students the true value of their degrees, and emphasize enough the average and typical salary expectations. There are too many college graduates saddled with enormous debt, but lacking a degree that will allow them to earn enough to pay it back, let alone develop a successful, and rewarding career.

</comment><comment><USER50> Good thing Trump and the republicans are tackling the problem then by giving students a tax break, oh wait... they gave them a tax hike. I guess those poor rich people in the US who have gotten the bulk of wealth creation since the 80s, where in desperate need of some tax cuts.

Got to give it to the republicans. Get poor people focused on muslims, Mexicans, blacks, gays etc while they let the rich empty their pockets.

A winning formula. You would have thought people had caught on to it by now.

</comment><comment><USER51> How come no one is talking about the actual costs of schools? Why are they so expensive? Perhaps bloated budgets, systemic mismanagement across the country...?

<comment><USER52> The thing that everyone hates the most about schools is the administration. The most expensive part of schools is the administration.

Seems pretty obvious to me which part of schools needs slimming down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> With a little planing you can get a college education without putting yourself in debt. I did it. Sure you might have to go to community college for the first two years and eat a lot of ramen noddles but it's more than possible with all the grants, scholarships, and employer matching. Most people have no will power and just take the easy way out not thinking about the long term debt they will have.

</comment><comment><USER54> Is it just me or are Bloomberg and WashPo really over-represented on this site?

</comment><comment><USER55> The headline is sensational. The mere use of the word junk, although quite a few places apart, incures a mental relation of student loans to junk. The error here is that comparison between debt and market are a type mismatch and creativity is needed to resolve the actual meaning.

Just look at the top comment concuring, "There is definitely an education bubble".

</comment><comment><USER56> We need to cut student loans,and at the same time force tuition back down (probably by putting federal and state pressure on them by threatening to cut grants or taxing them higher).

Universities need to return to their core purpose teaching young minds, furthering science, or preparing them for jobs.

Instead of the corporate universities drowning students in debt.

<comment><USER49> The basketball coach at my alma matter is paid double what the university president makes. I think that's wrong. I am deeply in the minority, but I think universities should focus less money on athletics, and more on academics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> The root problem here isn't US college charged too much for tuition? Education is a basic human right, and everyone should have chance to be educated. So the government should subsidize the education, including the undergraduate education.

</comment><comment><USER58> That's at least one thing junk bonds and college degrees have in common.

</comment><comment><USER59> This fiasco is mostly on the government. The unlimited supply of student loan $ has enabled universities to not have to control costs like they would have had to if these $ were not as freely available.

</comment><comment> etr-strike When the next recession strikes, interest rates have no place to go but into negative territory. The rates will be either explicitly negative, or effectively negative (inflation higher than interest rates).

When that happens, bitcoin will be the only safe haven in the world to protect your wealth. The bubble people will be changing their tune very quick.

<comment><USER60> What a wonderful idea, putting your savings in an highly volatile currency! Have you ever heard about people buying gold to store value?

<comment> etr-strike The gold market can be manipulated as most people never take physical delivery of gold. There's no mechanism to audit everyone's holdings. Additionally, I'm of the opinion volatility will decrease as bitcoin matures. Do you really expect a currency bootstrapped from the ground up to not be volatile in its uptake?

We'll see if you're singing the same tune when you're finally confronted with the certain depreciation of your USD holdings. (Will you still reject bitcoin when USD is depreciating at a rate of 5% per year?)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Easy solution: Make college free and forgive the student loans.

<comment><USER62> So then who pays for the money that was already borrowed?

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> There is plenty of blame to go around here. However a major cause of this has been the push by the left that college is the only path to success. Trade and vocational schools as well as military service are all great options for young adults who may not know exactly what they want to do with their life right away. Spending 4 years of your life taking on debt, simply because society tells you college is the path to success is wrong. Also, colleges themselves need to be held accountable here. Most universities are sitting on billions in tax free endowments and not using that money in useful ways. How about use some of that money to help offset some of these debts?

<comment><USER64> >as well as military service are all great options for young adults

Getting shot at for an education doesn't seem that great. Better off just moving to a better country.

<comment><USER65> Anecdotal, but my mother was a mechanic, my uncle a cryptographer, another uncle was some type of police on base, my cousin is a drone pilot and just sits in an office like building despite technically being involved in combat I suppose. Several former colleagues mostly did admin-type work while enlisted. The last person I know to have actually seen combat was my grandfather in Korea--but he knew what he signed up for and it was fairly deliberate at the time, he had wanted to be like his cousin that had fought on Iwo Jima years prior who was also a volunteer. All used their GI bill to get an education.

My point being, there's tons of military jobs that don't involve violence. For each job that does require violence, dozens more auxiliary positions are required to support that job.

<comment><USER66> >> my mother was a mechanic, my uncle a cryptographer, another uncle was some type of police on base, my cousin is a drone pilot

They have been fortunate. Obviously, in some conflicts, some people in all of those roles end up in postings where they are in hazardous areas. (Also: IIRC drone pilots stationed far from conflict still experience combat-induced PTSD.)

The other feature of the armed services is that in general, once you enlist you don't always get to choose your posting. It's great that some people get to choose plum jobs away from war zones, but (most?) others don't (and this can change for anyone in the military, at any time). A defining feature of a military is orders, and following them.

Military careers can be rewarding for some people. But just as it's wrong to say college is for everyone, it's not correct to suggest that one can embark on a military career without adding additional personal safety risk.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How The Copyright Industry Drives A Big Brother Dystopia - <AUTHOR> http://falkvinge.net/2012/11/12/how-the-copyright-industry-drives-a-big-brother-dystopia

<comment><USER2> _"Having this gatekeeper position - having had this gatekeeper position - teaches somebody what power is, in the worst sense of the word."_

This is a very key point. A lot of the big companies in the content industries (the author's "Copyright Industry") are accustomed to _owning and operating the channels_ through which they distribute their content. In fact, they started out as channels first, and content developers second. Their entire worldview is still centered on the idea that the content serves the channel, and the channel is where the power and money is made. (And many of these companies are accustomed a government-protected oligopoly over their channels).

The internet has, since its inception, been a big threat to these companies -- but not for the reasons everyone assumes. People think it's a war over "copyright," or over monetization of content. But in fact, that's sort of the side issue. It's actually a war over ownership of distribution channels. There's a bigger picture here, and copyright is only a piece of it.

</comment><comment><USER3> The coming war on general computation:

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg>

</comment><comment><USER4> Tech needs Senators - we should split CA.

<comment><USER5> Is that somehow a reference to Philip K Dick? My mind goes to 'the man in the high castle' where CA is actually separated in North California and South California.

<comment><USER4> As much as I enjoyed "The Man In The High Castle", I'd completely forgotten that tidbit. It was intended as a serious suggestion (albeit one that needs a good deal of thinking through).</comment></comment></comment>


Wells Fargo says customers gave up right to sue by having signatures forged - <AUTHOR> http://boingboing.net/2016/11/25/wells-fargo-says-that-its-cust.html <comment><USER2> In the Netherlands a bank got destroyed a few years ago by a single person starting a media campaign for a bank-run. This was done in response to "shady practices" on the mortgage side of the bank.

He got people to withdraw over 600 million from DSB Bank in a few days, which caused the bank to run out of liquidity and forced them to freeze accounts. This meant they lost all trust in the market and needed to ask other banks for emergency financing. All other banks declined (with good reasons, a bank falling apart combined with pending legal action on the mortgage side is a very high risk for them to take).

So within three weeks DSB was bankrupt. More here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSB_Bank](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSB_Bank)

I can imaging some disgruntled customers going after Wells Fargo in the same way. They have severe legal action pending (which makes them risky for others to save) and have destroyed their image by their reactions to this (which makes it easier to motivate customers to take action). All ingredients that killed DSB are there... The only difference is that DSB was one of the smaller banks and Wells Fargo is huge.

<comment><USER3> _In the Netherlands a bank got destroyed a few years ago by a single person starting a media campaign for a bank-run. This was done in response to "shady practices" on the mortgage side of the bank_

Happened here in the UK too. Northern Rock was in trouble but companies get in trouble all the time; what killed it and precipitated a full-blown financial crisis here was certain journalists revelling in the downfall of capitalism from the safety of their state-broadcaster sinecures...

<comment><USER4> Them going bust is actually a pillar of capitalism. This whole "too big to fail" bullshit coming from business-friendly politicians was just skewing the free market.

<comment><USER5> Weren't they actually too big to fail, though? I thought that multiple huge American banks failing would've made the recession a ton worse because banks would've failed and some large companies wouldn't have been able to make payroll and it all could've snowballed

<comment><USER6> The trick is to let them fail, then _rapidly_ sift through the pieces and sell anything off which still has value. Even failing banks have plenty of good loans.

Ordinary deposits with banks should be protected by the government because the general public cannot evaluate the risk of a bank collapsing. There's probably a case for some protection for companies that hold accounts -- although companies should really be aware that by depositing money in a bank, they become lenders to the bank, and they should have the skills to mitigate that risk. Perhaps smaller companies, and accounts specifically holding payroll, should receive greater deposit protection.

<comment><USER5> That makes sense. If the government were able to do all of that super fast it might be been fine. I just don't get all of the hate for the bailouts. I know it feel's like to many people the banks sort of "got away with it" but the bailout both stopped any bad effects from failed banks and the government made money off of it so it seems like a win-win for society in my perspective

<comment><USER7> If it's a win-win, then it should be okay - even good! - for the banks+government to do it again. After all, everyone made money and the economy only _almost_ collapsed, not actually.

Regardless of the actual dollar amounts changed hands, what the US Federal government demonstrated was that risky - even illegal - behavior will be covered and some losses will be covered. It means that next time (and there will be one), we should assume the risks and losses will be even bigger.

<comment><USER5> But the current system was insufficient to stop the previous failure, too. Wouldn't bailing them out short term and then adding some regulation long term be a sufficient solution?

<comment><USER8> If the global financial system was built on a blockchain, couldn't we just fork and rollback the bad transactions?

But more seriously, why did the resolution have to be a _bailout_. Could someone with the authority, and here I mean The Government, because they've got the guns, just tell the banks to rollback the wonky transactions?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The Boing Boing article basically quotes this Reuters article, so I think the Reuters one should be the one linked as it is the source and is more in-depth:

[http://www.reuters.com/article/us-wellsfargo-accounts- lawsui...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-wellsfargo-accounts-lawsuit- idUSKBN13J1WX)

</comment><comment><USER10> The article is wrong. Wells fargo says customers gave up their right to sue by signing up for an account, which is far more defendable from a legal point of view.

Unfortunately, this is common practice and it also shows one of the biggest problems of the western world. It is quite profitable for a company to screw over customers. Just discourage them as much as possible to go to court by letting them sign a large page of legal gibberish, and don't screw them over too much, and the company will probably be fine.

<comment><USER11> I think the article is opaque on the terms of that waiver. W-F seems to be taking the stance that the signature applies to the entirety of the customer's relationship with the bank - sign this once for any account, and it applies to actions across all your accounts.

BoingBoing and others are taking the position that the waiver only applies to actions relating to the specific account that was signed for, each account standing separately.

The latter approach seems more sensible to me, but really it all comes down to the language of the statement that they (really) signed, and how courts have chosen to interpret that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Despite the histrionics of this article, its actually an interesting question from a legal perspective. In the case of an account the customer never agreed to open - are they bound by the agreement which opened their primary account, or is there no legal agreement in place?

Assuming the original arbitration clause covered the entire business relationship - not just matters specific to the account opened at signing then it ultimately is a question of whether the fraudulent account is a new business "relationship".

<comment><USER13> How is it "histrionics"?

"are they bound by the agreement which opened their primary account, or is there no legal agreement in place?"

How can you be bound by things you never agreed to?

"We signed you up for more services, but because you said yes once that means you are always ours."

<comment><USER14> I _think_ the argument (speculating - the article isn't clear on this) is that the customers were bound to that agreement when they legitimately opened their first account.

I agree that the article sounds like histrionics because it doesn't explain the situation clearly. The article makes it sound like the customers are being bound somehow based on their forged signatures, which sounds like hogwash to me.

My suspicion is that the customers were bound to this term by opening their original account -- or at least, that's Wells Fargo's argument. The legal debate seems to be about whether the terms of service signed by the customer at that time would prevent them from suing over the additional fraudulent accounts. Basically, whether those terms of service apply to that situation or not.

<comment><USER15> I'm a bit of a numbskull when it comes to legal matters, but wouldn't any previous agreement between the bank and its customer become null and void when the bank willfully and egregiously commits criminal acts by forging signatures and signing them up for services they didn't agree to?

For me, this is one of the scariest issues USA faces, a de facto loss to right of trial via binding arbitation

<comment><USER16> First, no, contracts do not generally become void just because one party committed a crime.

Not that it really matters because, second:

>when the bank willfully and egregiously commits criminal acts

Wells Fargo has not been found guilty of committing criminals acts at all, much less willfully and egregiously. There are some ongoing criminal investigations, and they were hit by some civil penalties. But there have been no criminal convictions.

<comment><USER15> From above:

Consumer Financial Services Agreements: As of May 5th, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has proposed a rule that would prohibit mandatory arbitration clauses in financial services agreements that limit access to class action lawsuits. Once formalized, this rule would apply to all contracts, including those already signed. Although such a rule would not necessarily prohibit mandatory arbitration for single-plaintiff claims, arbitration clauses that do not specifically exclude class action lawsuits from their reach may be invalid regardless.[1]

Consumer Contracts: Although generally upheld, mandatory arbitration clauses in consumer contracts are non-binding when there is evidence of fraud. The Theranos lawsuits have recently brought this reality back to the attention of corporate lawyers. Because Theranos and Walgreens face accusations of widespread fraud, otherwise enforceable arbitration clauses are thrown out, allowing for class-action claims regardless. It's important to note that these cases demonstrate that the fraud must merely be investigated, not conclusively proven, for the courts to now invalidate arbitration clauses.[1]

I think it's safe to say the alleged fraud in this case is under investigation.

Edit: Link fixed!

[1]: [https://www.priorilegal.com/blog/the-limits-of-mandatory- arb...](https://www.priorilegal.com/blog/the-limits-of-mandatory-arbitration- clauses)

<comment><USER16> Your link is broken for me, FYI. In any case:

> Judges in California and federal courts have ruled arbitration clauses > signed by customers when they opened legitimate accounts prevent them from > suing even over allegedly fraudulent accounts created without their > knowledge.

[http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-wells-fargo- arbitratio...](http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-wells-fargo- arbitration-20151205-story.html)

Laws have been proposed to change this. Of course, given the election results, I highly doubt the bills, or the proposed CFPB rule you mention are going anywhere.

<comment><USER15> Fixed the link above! Can I pester you with one more question? Is there anything in the law about good faith in contracts? Say, I sign a contract with a private school for my son's education. (Note, this is a ridiculous scenario) that includes binding arbitration. If I find that a teacher has been sexually abusing him and the administration tried to cover it up, would I be restricted from a lawsuit and only allowed binding arbitration?

<comment><USER16> Talk to a lawyer in your local jurisdiction. :) But offhand:

> Is there anything in the law about good faith in contracts?

Not in the sense you mean, no. Generally speaking, if they sign it in bad faith (that is, with no intent to comply), and they do not comply, that would be fraud (ie, a crime). If they sign it in good faith (that is, with an intent to comply) but later do not comply, that's breach of contract (ie, a tort) but not fraud. In both cases the contract is broken, but _only because they broke it_. The intent to break it isn't really relevant to that.

Generally speaking the solution for your question is "make sure the contract contains a clause that automatically terminate the contract on initiation of a criminal investigation for child abuse by the authorities" if you're worried about that.

Edit: It's not directly relevant to your question, but I feel like I should link this article which is hilarious and disturbing, and goes into some details on the fraud/breach of contract distinction. [https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-05-23/countrywi...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-05-23/countrywide- mortgage-hustle-turns-out-not-to-be-fraud)

<comment><USER15> But why?

If one can prove that a party premeditated and willfully went against the terms of the contract in order to deceive the other party and profited from this deceit while also breaking laws, what is the legal reasoning behind calling it a breach instead of fraud?

<comment><USER16> Fraud is a crime; a general definition might be "deliberate deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain", but in simple terms it's lying. If you lie to someone for financial gain, it's a crime. But violating the terms of a contract is _not_ a crime, at least in the general case.

> But why?

Because that's what the law says. :)

> If one can prove that a party premeditated and willfully went against the > terms of the contract in order to deceive the other party and profited from > this deceit while also breaking laws

Very, very simply: If you lied, it's fraud. If you didn't lie, then it's _not_ fraud. It might well be some other crime, but it's not fraud, because fraud is a word that means lying. So you say:

> went against the terms of the contract in order to deceive

But it depends what you mean by that. If I meant to follow the contract when I sign it, but later change my mind, and you just assume I'm following it, you are deceived, but I didn't lie, and it's not fraud. If I didn't mean to follow it when I signed it then I'm lying and it's fraud. Similarly if I mean to follow it when I sign, later change my mind, and you then ask me "hey, are you following the contract?", and I say "yes" even though I'm not, then I'm lying, and it's fraud. The key element isn't whether or not you were deceived, or whether or not I actually followed the contract, but whether I _lied_ , because _that 's what the crime is_.

<comment><USER15> Man, and I thought programming had difficult edge cases :)

From this post and the article you linked above, the takeaway I get is to ask everyday "Are you following the contract?" I understand the legal definition, but I gather that the layman will still think it's fraud.

I guess a simple solution in that scenario would be to have a checkbox asking are you following the contract every time they login to the server.

Thanks, I learned a lot from you! :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It would seem to me that since WD offers free arbitration the prudent thing in this case would be for every single person affected to file for it on the same day and simultaneously withdraw their money leaving only $1 in the account. A bank run and 100,000 filed cases would make for a fine mess.

</comment><comment><USER18> There is an obvious legal gap at work here and it isnt just wells fargo exploiting it.

Once a business has your info on file they can effectively open additional accounts or services for you at will. It can be difficult to seek any sort of remedy because it would be hard to prove damages except in extreme cases.

</comment><comment><USER19> Let's take a gander at the federal arbitration act: "A written provision in any maritime transaction or a contract evidencing a transaction involving commerce to settle by arbitration a controversy ... shall be valid, irrevocable, and enforceable, save upon such grounds as exist at law or in equity for the revocation of any contract."

Want to guess what grounds exist at law and equity for the revocation of a contract? :)

Note also the now-common practice of requiring individual arbitration is not well-tested in court either. The FAA pretty clearly preempts _court_ class actions when there are mandatory arbitration provisions. However, it is silent, and it's purpose unrelated, to whether that arbitration is individual or class arbitration. It seems likely to me that a state could reasonably say forcing _individual_ arbitration was against their public policy, and not have that pre-empted by the FAA.

</comment><comment><USER20> Outrageous! This is like a software company which pushes unwanted OS upgrades on its customers and then hides behind customers agreeing to a nag-screen exploding "offer" when the upgrade bricks some of the previously fine computers. Thankfully we in the software business don't have to worry about such things, because we are above such tactics.

All you little people, its really your fault for being such small fry...

<comment> bjelkeman-again I recognise that behaviour. Indeed I was exposed to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It is despicable to me that citizens can be denied their right to access legal remedy by companies that won't deliver services to individuals without them agreeing to binding arbitration. Access to courts seems like it should be the cornerstone of society and should not be allowed to be removed so easily.

The appeal of arbitration for a pair of similarly sophisticated entities that have the ability to vet the clauses of the contract is obvious. But the potential for abuse with one large organization picking the arbiter and a lot of unsophisticated individuals trying their luck against them is pretty obvious too.

</comment><comment><USER22> Abuse of arbitration is one of the several things that the Democrats (with one or two exceptions) have not made much of an issue over, and they wonder why they lose.

</comment><comment><USER23> perhaps due to the clickbaity title, it seems people are reading "agree to arbitration" as "agree that Well Fargo's internal decisions are final and waive their right to legal remedy."

let's firstly identify that yes, this is how people in the thread take "agree to arbitration."

Next let me ask: I did a quick Google search,

[https://www.google.com/search?q=does+arbitration+always+favo...](https://www.google.com/search?q=does+arbitration+always+favor+the+corporate+side)

expecting to see that, for example, perhaps arbitration always results in the larger player being awarded whatever they say. (Meaning that it is equal to saying "agree that its decisions are final and customers waive all recourse.")

But it seems the link isn't quite conclusive - it seems the results just show that the "Forced arbitration clauses almost always favor the company over the individual" \- which is very strong language, but is about "favor" and not outright as categorical.

So I'm curious if people have experience with arbitration -- is it fair to read the arbitration clause as being de facto tantamount to Wells Fargo's decisions being final? (With the arbitration itself being an afterthought, a mere formality.)

Or is it just a bit lopsided, but still not quite as final and definitive as that?

I ask because in theory, in an environment of frivolous lawsuits that can cost companies literally hundreds of thousands or millions of legal fees, it might certainly make sense for arbitration clauses to limit the extent to which they are embroiled in huge lawsuits.

This reason for arbitration would be a bit different from the reason that "it's really just an excuse to say whatever we say is final."

If I were a corporation, I wouldn't think that an arbitration clause is the same as saying "our company's policies are final and we decide what they mean: you waive all right to any recourse".

Is that what other people here think it means?

(Genuine, open question - as you can see I did a Google search more or less with this phrasing.) Curious what you think, or your experiences. Or whether you've used arbitration clauses in the past, either on the corporate side against a frivolous lawsuit, or as a consumer against a large corporation. (I don't expect corporate lawyers from large corporations to read this comment and respond honestly - but small startup CEO's and individuals, sure. Of course, if you're doing evil work for a large corporation as a corporate lawyer enforcing lopsided contracts, I guess you're welcome to come clean under a throwaway...)

<comment><USER24> This is worse than click bait; the headline is a falsehood designed to provoke outrage. WF is NOT arguing that customers are bound by forged signatures, despite what this headline implies. This is Fake News making the rounds. Good job HN.

<comment><USER23> you use really strong language (even in your username) and since it's just 27 days old, perhaps could make another one.

with that said, I think if you suggested an alternative title (under your handle or a different one) that better reflects the contents of the article, the mods would be inclined to change it. They often do - and clickbait titles are explicitly against HN policy :)

so go ahead and make a suggested title change, under your current or a different HN name. thanks.

<comment><USER25> Yet despite the user name, despite the strong language, _cnnsucks_ is right: it's a crap, click-bait headline. Don't believe me? Then _you_ go RTFA, and better yet go read the Reuters article from whence this sprang. Still convinced that the headline has _anything_ to do with the truth? (And to be clear, the headline implies that customers agreed via forged signatures. No, customers "agreed" with their real signature when they willfully opened their original account.)

At the very least, link to the original Reuters article, and make a note to quit giving BoingBoing hits.

<comment><USER23> just to be clear I completely agree with that user.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Dropbox is talking to banks about an IPO later this year - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/54259/dropbox-is-talking-to-banks-about-an-ipo-later-this-year/ <comment><USER2> I'd love to see a Dropbox IPO just because I'd like to take a look at their numbers. They have built an amazing brand but I'd love to see their revenue justifying a $4b valuation especially with so much competition in the space.

Box seems to have a larger enterprise brand which is where I assume most of the money comes in, but I may be wrong.

<comment><USER3> I've always been puzzled as to where the margins were in this. Any indication now of whether they are profitable or just downing on customer acquisition?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If they go public a lot of people will jump ship. At that point I will no longer be their number one customer, their shareholders will be.</comment>


Chinese mobile phone app lets you hire thugs to carry out beatings - <AUTHOR> http://shanghaiist.com/2015/04/21/chinese-mobile-app-hire-thugs-beatings.php

<comment><AUTHOR> Technology is disrupting crime now.</comment>


Neurons lose information at one bit per second - <AUTHOR> http://www.kurzweilai.net/neurons-lose-information-at-one-bit-per-second

<comment><USER2> By analogy, dynamic ram loses it's contents much quicker than that, and the trick we employ to stop the dataloss is to refresh the contents of the ram by reading it out and writing back to it before it is too late.

Likely nature employs a similar mechanism because it turned out to be more efficient in terms of complexity of molecules and cell arrangements as compared with a more statically oriented configuration.

It's not 'deletion' per se, merely a lack of automatic saving.

As an aside have you ever noticed that if you don't think of something for a long time it can take considerable effort to recall something whereas if you re-remember something with regularity that does not happen and you can recall the memory almost instantaneously?</comment>


GDPR Data Export from Spotify - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/steipete/status/1025029133175336960 <comment><USER2> The most concerning part here isn't the data itself, it's that their default data export is explicitly designed to mislead users into believing they are collecting less data than they actually do. They are explicitly and willingly breaching the GDPR here.

<comment><USER3> Can you expand on that some? What about the format is misleading? Is it because they are providing the data in separate files?

<comment><USER4> Maybe it's because by default, you get like 6 JSON files with almost nothing even when they store 250MB worth of data you only get after many emails and complaining and a month of waiting.</comment></comment></comment>


Growth Hacking - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/mattangriffel/growth-hacking?from_search=1

<comment><USER2> Wow, this is actually one of the best set of slides I've seen in quite a while, as well as one of the best intro's to growth hacking I've seen. Well done!

<comment><AUTHOR> Great! Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> wow - this is actually amazing content. I think you should not have used such a link-bait title - I suspect people wont read because of it.

Seriously great content. Thank you!</comment>


A foundation for scikit-learn at Inria - <AUTHOR> http://gael-varoquaux.info/programming/a-foundation-for-scikit-learn-at-inria.html <comment><USER2> Scikit-learn is a very nicely written library and I can use plenty of superlatives to describe the wonderous API of scikit-learn.

One thing I can't recommend enough is to extend their Transfomers base class in such a way that you implement their fit and transform methods. A simple example can be viewed here: [https://gitlab.com/timelord/sklearn_transformers](https://gitlab.com/timelord/sklearn_transformers)

which allows you to put your transformers into the scikit-learn Pipelines and GridSearchCV (and more). The way scikit-learn leverages multiple cores is by using joblib and Dask extends this implementation to effortlessly scale the scikit-learn pipelines onto a cluster of servers. [https://distributed.readthedocs.io/en/latest/joblib.html](https://distributed.readthedocs.io/en/latest/joblib.html)

By writing your own data transformations in the transformer format you can, by extension, leverage this g great ecosystem.

I think it's a great time to be a data scientist / engineer now.

</comment><comment><USER3> Unfortunately scikit-learn is a mess without an alternative.

There is so much wrong with the api design of sklearn (how can one think "predict_proba" is a good function name?). I can understand this, since most of it was probably written by PhD students without the time and expertise to come up with a proper api; many of them without a CS background. Compare this to e.g. the API of google/guava.

For example [https://www.reddit.com/r/statistics/comments/8de54s/is_r_bet...](https://www.reddit.com/r/statistics/comments/8de54s/is_r_better_than_python_at_anything_i_started/dxmnaef/)

       Case in point, sklearn doesn't have a bootstrap crossvalidator despite the bootstrap being one of the most
       important statistical tools of the last two decades. In fact, they used to, but it was removed.
       Weird right?
       ...
       > We don't remove the sklearn.cross_validation.Bootstrap class because few people are using it,
       > but because too many people are using something that is non-standard (I made it up) and very very
       > likely not what they expect if they just read its name.
       > At best it is causing confusion when our users read the docstring and/or its source code.
       > At worse it causes silent modeling errors in our users code base.
       ...
       Oh man, I thought of another great example. I bet you had no idea that
       sklearn.linear_model.LogisticRegression is L2 penalized by default.
       "But if that's the case, why didn't they make this explicit by calling it RidgeClassifier instead?"
       Maybe because sklearn has a Ridge object already, but it exclusively performs regression?
       Who knows (also... why L2 instead of L1? Yeesh). Anyway, if you want to just do unpenalized
       logistic regression, you have to set the C argument to an arbitrarily high value,
       which can cause problems. Is this discussed in the documentation?
       Nope, not at all. Just on stackoverflow and github.
       Is this opaque and unnecessarily convoluted for such a basic and crucial technique? Yup.

Or the following: [https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/7brsuu/machine_lea...](https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/7brsuu/machine_learning_in_functional_programming/dppck1x/)

<comment><USER4> It's true that scikit-learn was started and originally written mostly by PhD students (most were in fact CS PhDs), and the API they designed is amazing! A lot of the python ML ecosystem has adopted it and uses it - fit, predict, transform. I don't think any language has something comparable.

4 years ago they removed a misleading class - and even at the time the documentation was clear about what it was doing. I'm not sure how this reveals some huge flaw about scikit-learn. At best it shows that the contributors can realize their mistakes and solve them, without even needing people to point it out? That's great!

Also pointing to a bad implementation 4 years ago, for a project which has since then had way more funding for engineering time, and who's use has exploded, seems a bit misleading.

<comment><USER3> See the second link I posted. Even the most basic 3 functionalities are bad designed. If X is your input space and Y your output space then fit should (after each call) return a function X->Y and not modify some internal state.

Have you ever tried looked at the pipeline cross validation, where you have to pass a dict of parameters to the function with underscore prefixes for each stage in the pipeline? Do this and you never call the API design amazing again.

There are examples for other bad design choices as well.

You are right, there is no alternative at the moment. Maybe julia lang will do better job, we will see.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I thought INRIA uses OCaml everywhere and would choose Owl[1] (OCaml library for numeric scientific computing and machine learning) as a project for this kind of foundation.

[1] [https://github.com/owlbarn/owl](https://github.com/owlbarn/owl)

<comment><USER6> Inria is a public institution dedicated to research. There are many labs and people with separate goals. They are no more dedicated to ocaml than MIT is dedicated to emacs.

<comment><USER7> An even better comparison would be with, say, the NSF. I am sure that this or that technology has been developed by NSF-funded researchers, but it would be absurd to assume that NSF-funded researchers in MIT use and promote the same things as NSF-funded researchers in Caltech because they're both affiliated with the NSF.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd love this same kind of library in nodejs</comment>


Do the police give more tickets at the end of the month to meet quotas? - <AUTHOR> http://robert.io/posts/4.html <comment><USER4> Now I'm just an uneducated bumpkin, but it seems like you've tried to answer two questions here but mistakenly labeled them as one (until you back off in the last paragraph of "Analysis"):

1\. Do police give more tickets at the end of the month? 2\. If they do, is it because of quotas?

The first is a statistical question, the second is much more complex. I can think of a few very good reasons why numbers would spike at the beginning of the month, plummet in the fat middle then spike at the end. None of them really have much to do with statistics directly.

I think this would be compelling if you'd compare stats for years in which "quotas" (whatever they decide to call them) were policy against the stats from years which they weren't.

<comment><USER5> Circa 1992 I read a book titled something like "How to Speed and Get Away With It". It was written by a retired state trooper. One of the many things he mentioned was that the middle of the month is the best time to speed because troopers tended to fill their quotas early and late.

The most useful piece of advice, though, was on how to pull over. Turns out that every time a cop pulls somebody over, he's worried about getting smooshed by traffic or shot by a loon. His advice, which I've followed faithfully, is to pull waaaay over, so the cop can park close to traffic and create a bubble of protected space. Then you turn on the interior lights, roll down the windows, turn off the car, throw the keys on the dash, and hold the steering wheel at the top with both hands.

Authority figures like respect, and this display of considerate compliance has worked wonders for me.

<comment><USER6> Scrum programming burndown charts corroborate this S-curve effect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't understand all the gymnastics to correct for the fact that months end on different days (30, 31, etc.) and all the effort put into dealing with days by number.

For a given month, you can determine the last day. You can also determine the last weekday.

So just do a series that for each month shows "average weekday citations, non automatic" and "final weekday citations, non automatic" (and maybe "first weekday citations, non automatic").

<comment><USER6> If quotas are monthly not daily,some gymnastics is required.

<comment><USER7> This is exactly my point - the quotas are monthly not daily, but he's doing the wrong kind of work. He's putting his data into a daily format and then trying to extrapolate monthly information.

The right way to solve this problem is to find the exact thing you want - <USER2> precise last weekday of the month, the precise first weekday, and a precise weekday average - which is trivial with any decent date/time library. These would be the RIGHT kind of gymnastics. Tallying information by day and then running some kind of regression to approximate last-day traffic is a waste when you can just GET the last-day traffic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Warning, bad science!

Looking at the last plot, you can't conclude that police give out more tickets at the end of the month, unless you also conclude that police like to give out tickets around the 8th, and don't like to give out tickets around the 11th of each month. Problem is, there are no error bars, if there were, it'd probably show that there is no significant evidence for the hypothesis. The error of the mean of the last plot is probably comparable to the signal itself.

<comment><AUTHOR> I appreciate your concern! I didn't really draw any conclusions from the data, as I mentioned in the "Conclusions" sections. This wasn't meant to be hard science, just some fun with data.

I did make an update with a few, more conventional statistics as well as an adjustment based on day of the week (see "Updates"): <http://robert.io/posts/4.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It would be interesting to adjust the data to compensate for day of the week, as well as for the dates that only happen in a few months out of the year. I wonder if the 31sts in that year were all in the middle of the week, or were all on weekends?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's an interesting thought. It looks like they were spread out pretty evenly throughout the week in 2011 and 2010, though.

> as well as for the dates that only happen in a few months out of the year

That actually was compensated for. That's what the "Correcting for more frequent dates" section was about.

<comment><USER10> I'd be interested to see this same graph run for each day of the week, again normalized.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I can't speak about all police but I've asked this question to my father who works with the RCMP. He has been in charge of traffic sections for years. They don't have a quota, not in the usual sense but they do keep track of data on tickets, this includes how many tickets each member is giving out. They don't require them to give out X tickets per month but what they do look for is members who are not giving out around the same amount of tickets as their peers. This usually indicates they are not patroling and doing their job.

Another thing they can look at with this data is where they are giving out tickets. If they notice one officer has all his tickets in one location which is known for high accident rates then they know that person is "fishing" rather than actually doing active patroling.

<comment><USER12> Isn't giving out tickets in a high accident area is exactly what should happen? Tickets in a low accident area must surely be less likely to change accident rates?

<comment><USER13> This is why the Roomba cleans the edges of the room. It's the dirty part.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Isn't the answer "statistically, we can't disprove the null hypothesis, because the variation near the end of the month wasn't bigger than the month- wide variation"? Getting some actual standard deviations might help.

But I think the data is a little more conclusively inconclusive than a mere "I'm not sure I can tell anything from the data".

</comment><comment><USER15> Well out of the 7 times a 31st appears, 2 of them are holidays, Halloween and New Year's Eve. I would have guessed that this might increase ticket issuance, but I suppose it's possible it could have a negative impact as well.

<comment><USER16> Do union-required holiday pay rates cause the PD to only staff for minimum requirements? Perhaps the PD simply staffs at minimum levels because most officers want those days off? Do holidays cause so many "real" crimes that the police don't have time to write tickets?

<comment><USER17> In Australia long weekends usually trigger double demerits and an increase in visible police, especially roadside breath testing. I don't know what it does to the ticket rates but the effect on every driver I know personally is to be extra cautious, which would reduce ticket rates.

<comment><USER18> "which would reduce ticket rates"

Maybe, there's a possibility of increased ticket rates too due to the extra driving km done by people "going away for the long weekend", and by drivers being less experienced on the routes they're driving (compared to regular commuter traffic who know exactly where the speed/redlight cameras are, and are usually in heavy enough traffic to not be able to exceed the speed limit).

I wonder if there's local (NSW, Australia - for me) tickets-by-day day available to analyse?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> A few comments on the stats themselves:

1\. It looks like the total number of tickets in 2009 and 2010 is about 10% that of 2011. I'm guessing that there weren't actually ten times as many tickets given in 2011, so either the data is incomplete (as the author suggested), or there was a typo. If the data is incomplete, I'd suggest normalizing to the 2011 totals; otherwise, the 3-year average doesn't make much sense.

2\. The scale of the "normalized" difference graphs (showing "Actual - Expected"). The formula given is

(actual - expected) / total * 1000 = normalized number

If this is the case, then since the scale goes to about +/- 5, the differences are very small (less than 1% away from what you'd expect!). But from eyeballing the data, that doesn't seem right.

In any case, a better scale might be to expect the data to be normally distributed, and scale the differences to # of standard deviations. (See, e.g., [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution#Standard_de...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution#Standard_deviation_and_tolerance_intervals))

<comment><AUTHOR> 1) Yes, there were far fewer tickets in the data for 2009 and 2010 than 2011.

2) The fact that the normalized numbers were so small was very unintuitive to me at first too, but the important thing to realize is that in that formula, you're dividing the _difference_ , not actual value for the given day, by the _total number for the year_. When I first ran those numbers I was so confused by the output. I was originally thinking that I'd normalize it by saying "X percent of the total for that year," but since I was working with the differences, and not the actual values, the numbers were too small a fraction.

Either that or I made some huge mistake in my logic...

WRT the use of standard deviations, like I said in the post, I'm not a statistician, so I wasn't really sure what the canonical way of normalizing data was. I pretty much just made one up. Thanks for pointing that out. I'll look into using standard deviation for the next one. :)

<comment><USER19> In that case, you should divide by "expected", so you get a percentage difference for each day. (Normalizing by total for the year doesn't make sense, since imagine that there were 300 days per month instead of 30 - <USER3> numbers would be divided by 10 again, but the data you want to visualize would stay the same.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Great point! Dividing by expected would have been a much nicer solution. I think the method I used still works though, just not as nicely. Am I wrong?

<comment><USER20> Z-Score is your friend for this kind of data normalization.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_score>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. It looks like I need to do a little self-study in statistics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It doesn't make sense to look at an averaged plot like this without error bars. Just comparing 2009 and 2010 there seems to be a huge amount of variation.

Even better than error bars would be box plots of the data corresponding to each day of the month. You can easily produce such plots with R.

<comment><USER22> It's also worth noting that the error bars on a given year won't be constant for the month, due to the differences in expected citations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> It bothers me that in some months, the 27th is 3 days from the end of the month, but in some months, the 27th is 4 days from the end. Could this mess up the graph?

The 27th appears in every month, but the time remaining to meet your (possible) quota would be different for different months.

<comment><USER24> I bet it would be interesting to have a graph of tickets over "number of days until the end of current month"

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree! That might be a good reason for an update.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Just wait until they have to pay for all the drones.

They'll just task one to follow you until you make a ticketable driving mistake.

<comment><USER26> The joke's on them. The ticket will go to the R&D department of the driverless cab company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The data should have been labelled from the end of each month rather than from the beginning - then there wouldn't be the anomaly on the 31st.

I.e. n[i] should be sum over all days d of tickets[d] where d is the i-th day from the end of the month that d occurs in.

</comment><comment><USER28> It would be interesting to see weekdays vs weekends. Houston works the freeways pretty hard during the week, and not so much on the weekend. Or, at least that's how it seems.

Also, re quotas, from my cop buddy (constable) "Of course there are no quotas, that's ridiculous. What they do, is tell you to attend the meeting of the commissioner's court; during which the commissioners bemoan the budget woes and discuss which county employees may have to be laid off if things don't improve, etc. etc." He said that usually inspires the troops, and nobody ever says the word "quota."

</comment><comment><USER29> From my memories of statistics class:

the way an actual statistician would try to answer this question would be to first describe a "null" hypothesis, called H0, then talk about the probability of seeing this set results, or an even more extreme set, if H0 were in fact the case.

H0: The police do not change their ticket collection strategies at the end of the month

H1: They try to collect more tickets at the end of the month than the other days of the month

H0 would describe some distribution for the numbers you are seeing. This is where you can put all of your assumptions about how things are - so that you ultimately end up with a model that generates a certain distribution.

Under this model, there's going to be a certain probability of seeing this result, or a more extreme result.

If that probability is less than, say, 5%, then this is saying that you'd only have a 5% chance of seeing these numbers given that there isn't in fact any conspiracy to collect more tickets.

In such a case, you might then "reject" the null hypothesis in favour of H1.

If the probability was higher than 5%, you might say that there is no "significant" evidence in favour of H1.

</comment><comment><USER30> Did anyone else notice the bumps on the 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th? I'd be curious to see the distribution of days of the week over those days.

</comment><comment><USER31> It could be that they have to get in the paperwork before the 31st so it can be manually processed. So the last day to them would be a day or two before. Also the beginning of the month makes sense because you'd want to dole out a bunch in the first week so you could coast a little in the middle.

<comment><AUTHOR> That was my first thought, but then I think we'd see a larger drop on the 30th as well, since that's the last day of the month sometimes too. Someone suggested doing a graph with "days until end of month" on the X-axis, which might be interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> You need to compare the variations compared to the expected variation for a Poisson distribution with the observed rate to judge whether or not they are significant or likely arise from noise. Just looking at the deviations in absolute number isn't telling you anything.

</comment><comment><USER33> Good analysis. Let me comment that it would be improved by investigating quarterly or yearly quota, or controlling for budget deficits (e.g. if 2010 has a large expected budget deficit, likely in September 2009 tickets begin being written with greater frequency).

<comment><USER16> It would be interesting to ask the Baltimore PD what incentives are given to officers to write speeding tickets. [I bet they claim none] Then, ask some cops on the street what the real incentive system is like. From there, use the data to see how cops respond to both the real and official incentives.

I wonder if ticket writing happens when there's nothing better to do. It would be interesting to see the correlation between arrests for "real" stuff and traffic tickets. Are there differences in pay rates based on days/times worked? Do more tickets get written when rates are low vs. 2.5x pay on a holiday? Does the PD only staff for necessities when rates are higher or when officers most desire time off?

I'm surprised I haven't read something yet about Stephen Levitt looking at this data. This provides such incredible insight into the impact of incentives and lets us compare the probability that the official incentive policy is perceived as accurate by the officers vs. the likely real but unwritten incentives.

<comment><USER34> It'd probably be better to first ask cops, and then ask officials. If cops give examples, and officials say none, then you can ask officials about the examples cops have. But ask them plainly first. Give them a chance to be honest with you. Or hang themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'd be interested to see what the distribution of automated tickets is compared to police-issued tickets. The automated tickets provide a baseline of random lawlessness. Do police issue more tickets on the same days that more automated tickets are issued?

</comment><comment><USER36> There is a strong weekly cycle to human behavior. I would suggest starting by measuring that cycle, then subtracting it out of the data before computing your day of the month distribution.

</comment><comment><USER37> That was a very poor analysis. I am not a statistician either but I have experience in analysing large pools of data, and you would typically look at a number of other factors, such as day of the week, impact of weekends, impact of seasons, error range, standard deviation in order to get a hint of what is out of the average or not. Just plotting data and comparing bars does not quality, even remotely, as an analysis.

<comment><USER38> On the other hand when you apply any non mathematical (ie. not standard deviation, etc) segmentation on the dataset you are _artificially_ fitting the data.

The correct approach would be to search for patterns over time in the dataset (frequency analysis) and see what turns up.

 _not_ arbitrary segment the data into week sized blocks because you 'think' there might be a data pattern in there.

I see this sort of 'inspiration based' analysis in web analytics all the time, and it's complete nonsense.

Look for patterns in the data, don't look at the world and try to fit the data to it. You'll end up with stupid and statistically invalid results.

<comment><USER37> I see your point but I do not fully agree with your view. There are so many times where we see patterns, correlations emerging from the data, which make no sense whatsoever. Statistical correlations can happen by chance (by definition) and something sticking out does not mean that something is happening. You would need to repeat the analysis on different pools of data to prove that there is indeed something you are missing.

By looking at established segments, at least you know where to look for things that MAY make sense, and then derive hypothesis.

If not, you end with bullcrap analysis we see every single day in literature where researchers find a "link between vegetarians and personality disorder" or things like that, without even probing the fact such links may be coincidental at best.

<comment><USER38> The problem is that mathematically when you partition your data into sub-set and analyse those subsets you are no longer analysing the original data set.

Your data is now composed of the original set of data [n1, n2, n3... nn] + a _NEW DATA SET_ [s1, s2, s3 ... sn] which is your selection criteria.

This is often masked by the fact that your selection data set is a function f(x) ("we'll just split them up by week and partition by gender"), so it doesn't look like your actually combining two dataset, but _you are_.

This new set of data S, biases the result of the analysis, and the more complex it is, the closer you are to over-fitting to find the 'golden correlation' you're looking for in your data.

Humans are pattern matching machines. We see patterns in random noise, and hear voices in random tones. It's _easy_ for us to see patterns (or what we think are patterns) in data sets, but its _much harder_ to statistically substantiate those patterns as distinct from randomness.

It's provable, I imagine, that any data pattern can be found in a data set if we have sufficiently complex selection criteria for the samples, and sufficiently random raw data.

 _dont do this_

If you do, at the very least acknowledge that you have selectively modified the original dataset and specifically test your partitioning rules.

Its much, much better to search the dataset for a target pattern, and then investigate the partitioning rules that your search matches against (because you can examine the partitioning rules for complexity, and data-content and easily spot over-fitting).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Has there been any research on average miles driven vs. the day of the month? I would speculate that people who live paycheck to paycheck might drive more at the beginning of the month (after payday when they can afford to fill up on gas and run errands like buying groceries) than at the end of the month. I'm not sure if this would have a significant impact on the data.

<comment><USER40> You also need to consider that most wage earners have more discretionary money available at the end of the month. Some of this money will be spent on alcohol derived entertainment, and a consequent increase in the number of DUIs. I wonder if different types of violations are more common by time of month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I think the explanation that monthly tickets, arrests and convictions are easy numbers for managers to rate the 'productivity' of police is enough to explain such behavior. If your anywhere carrer minded as a police officer, or your getting shit from your manager, you'll probably initiate such behavior.

</comment><comment><USER42> This was an scandal in NYPD "pay the rent" they called it, related TAL story with audio evidence of the existent of a quota: [http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/414/r...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/414/right-to-remain-silent?act=2)

</comment><comment><USER43> I'd like to see some error bars or confidence intervals on these plots. If you just compare the data from two different years there seems to be a lot of variation. Some error bars would help you decide if the variation between days of the month is meaningful, or if it can be explained by noise.

</comment><comment><USER44> "It's also worth noting that a quota system wouldn't really explain the drop on the 31st...".

Maybe on the 28th or so they panic and start issuing tickets. And by the 31st they've made their quota and relax. They don't want to wait to the last day and risk it.

Or maybe these results mean nothing (more likely)!

</comment><comment><USER45> There's a question dedicated to this on Skeptics.SE:

[http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/9578/do- police-o...](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/9578/do-police- officers-have-monthly-quotas-of-traffic-tickets-to-write).

In some areas, this has been confirmed.

<comment><USER46> While it's interesting to read about the individual cases of unofficial quotas, it'd be much more interesting to see a larger study done on multiple police forces over a significant amount of time to see how widespread the practice is. I only say this as this thread is full of anecdotal evidence, and the skeptics question's responses seems to be much the same.

<comment><USER45> Well it's not necessarily anecdotal evidence. It's anecdotal in that it proves that only some forces in some countries have a quota system, but that is enough to answer the question: Some definitely do. It certainly doesn't answer the question for all known police forces in all countries, but I don't think that's a reasonable expectation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> An end of month bump doesn't really surprise me... for an ex-cop's viewpoint into how police officers operate, Dale Carson's book (Arrest-Proof Yourself) is an illustrative read.

</comment><comment><USER16> So, does anyone here know any Baltimore cops? Could someone who works downtown walk outside, find a cop, and ask? We're all speculating here.

</comment><comment><USER48> Also, the data could drop low on the 31st because not all months have 31 days so when tickets are distributed evenly over months, that day does not easily match up with 28 (being the definite last day of a month)...then 29, 30 and finally 31 being the least used.

Could this be true?

<comment><AUTHOR> That was actually compensated for in the "Correcting for more frequent dates" section. The first graph of that section shows what you would expect the distribution to look like, since not all months have the same number of days.

The following graphs are based on variation from that expectation.

<comment><USER49> But the analysis did not account for the variable number of weekend/weekday days on each day of the month. I don't know how meaningful this is, but it would be worth it to inspect this separately and then weigh it in if needed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just from a brief look at a calendar for 2011 and 2010, it seems like the days were pretty evenly spread out over the week.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Would like to see this for meeting yearly quotas, so month by month.</comment>


Why Users Dumped Your Open Source App for Proprietary Software - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/open-source/77409/why-users-dumped-your-open-source-app-proprietary-software <comment><USER2> Why users dumped your your itworld.com website for better news sources:

       * Microscopic text

       * Content squeezed in between walls of Ads

       * Content split over 5 pages to serve more ads

       * Average content-quality is so low (zero substance linkbait)
         that you could just as well serve headline + Lorem Ipsum along
         with your ads.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not a lot of content here but as someone who is in charge of a small Open Source project I feel the need to address her few points.

Her first two points go together which are: Dumped because it didn't have the right feature and Dumped because "setup and configuration is too fiddly". I have one basic response to both those: Open Source software still needs to be designed well. You still need to do Usability studies, you still need to test and you still need to worry about aesthetics. Do that and you'll have as good a chance as proprietary software does.

On "dumped because there was no support" I have roughly the same answer as above. If you want a business open source document to work you need to put some time into writing support docs. We actually wrote support docs and distributed them to several computer repair places in the area. We then passed their numbers on to the people using the software and it worked out for everyone (since the repair people were still cheaper than proprietary software support contracts).

So the bottom line here is common sense. Developing Open Source software is still developing software and all the rules still apply

<comment><USER4> Re your last sentance. Can somebody email the developers at Joomla about that please.

<comment><USER5> No, I rather see Joomla users suffer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Dupe?</comment>