Ask HN: Unrecognized Google Cloud charge – scared to chargeback - <AUTHOR> Hi all, updated with the same question.
ORIGINAL: I recently found a charge from Google Cloud on my credit card statement (small charge ~$20) that I didn't recognize. Asked friends + family, no one has used my card. Checked GCP and firebase, no usage or charges. I filed a report here (https://payments.google.com/payments/u/0/unauthorizedtransactions#)
And they closed my case stating that it was not an unauthorized charge without stating what the charge was for. Since the case is closed, I have no way to contact them. At this point, I would usually just chargeback the company, but it's Google. I've heard of Amazon shutting off access to their entire platform and products over disputes/chargebacks and I can't afford to do with Google since I have emails and such going back ~15 years.
What would you do in this situation?
UPDATE: I submitted the form again (shortly after my post here) with the same CC charge ID asking for more info, and they closed my case again. I checked my CC statement today and found a new ~$30 charge. But again, I literally checked all my GCP accounts and I can't find any usage anywhere. At this point, should I just cancel my card and chargeback? I'm still scared of retaliation by Google, but I'm also now fearing the possibility that my card's been compromised and I should act instead of counting on receiving a response from Google. <comment><USER2> It is mind blowing that a company as big as google can be that bad at dealing with customers.

Not only that but people are building business on top of a company that can wipe out your digital presence (gmail) because you try to charge back an erroneous charge. Seems to me like living under a constant threat..?

<comment><USER3> They are bad at dealing with customers mostly because they can afford to. What is losing one customer when they have 100,000...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> * Definitely do a Google Takeout now so that you don't need to worry about your data.

* What does the Cost Breakdown section of Billing in the Google Cloud Console show?

* Have you gotten a PDF invoice emailed to you? This is done for G Suite but not some other charges.

* Is there any activity on pay.google.com?

* Has there been a login to your account that you don't recognize? You might want to change your password just in case.

* EDIT: Is it possible that someone else is using your card with Google as well? Has your card been compromised?

* What are the total number of subscriptions here: [https://pay.google.com/gp/w/u/0/home/subscriptionsandservice...](https://pay.google.com/gp/w/u/0/home/subscriptionsandservices)

* Do any of those have extremely low charge thresholds? GCP is usually minimum $100.

* If you're absolutely certain that this is not your fault, you probably want to make this an "issue" on your blog or Twitter to try to get an employee to pull some strings. Don't file a chargeback until then.

</comment><comment><USER5> Report the card as stolen right away so the card can't be charged.

I expect someone else is using your card for their Google account.

Then see if any of your google services report a billing issue asking you to update your card.

Contact the card issuer and see how long you have to file a charge back.

You could file charge back nears the end of that period once you're sure it's not attached to any of your google services.

It's always a good idea to back up your data do a Google Takeout.

But if someone else is using your card and you initiate a charge back it's most likely only going to cause issues for them.

I might even just let those charges go, it is scary dealing with amazon and google with things like this in fear of having your accounts closed.

Safest route would probably be to try to get in contact with google again, put in your message it looks like someone is using my card for their account without my authorization, I don't want to have to request a chargeback, but I would like those charges refunded.

<comment><USER6> Generally one has ~90 days to file a chargeback. Should be enough time to cancel it and wait and see which Google service complains.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Be careful with a chargeback \-- Google can challenge the chargeback and will probably win. \-- If the chargeback holds, google will consider your account in default. They might sell the debt to a collection agency. [a chargeback does not settle the dispute, it only reverses the payment and the credit card company is no longer involved.]

Has anyone ever cancelled a google cloud account? do they attempt to convince you to stay? If so, there is a slight chance that google might be somewhat helpful to convince you to stay. Some companies have a "Retention Department" that tries to retain customers. [In a different situation, I once had a company refuse to reverse a disputed fee, but the Retention Department offered me a credit if I would keep the account open (the credit was twice the fee!)]

<comment><USER8> > Google can challenge the chargeback and will probably win

Challenging the dispute would at the very least involve contacting the customer and letting them know what the charge is for, at which point it can be determined whether it's legitimate or not.

> They might sell the debt to a collection agency.

So what? The debt has yet to be determined as legitimate. So far all the information suggests it's fraud and his card has been compromised.

A lot of people seem to be afraid of collection agencies but I've dealt with them multiple times in the UK (thanks to terrible telecom companies) and in both cases they've quickly dropped the case. The interaction with the debt collection agency was actually more pleasant than with the company hiring them.

<comment><USER7> ... >Challenging the dispute would at the very least involve contacting the customer and letting them know what the charge is for, at which point it can be determined whether it's legitimate or not.

It isn't that easy - The credit card company does not spend much time on the case and will not get involved in examining complicated evidence. Also, the company does not have to contact the customer, the company just submits a statement and possibly a supporting document with a list of charges. I've done two (won one and lost one) The one I lost was based on an illegible receipt.

The writer didn't mention if this was a business or personal credit card. In the US, chargebacks for a business credit card have different rules - If there is an ongoing business relationship, there are no chargebacks, only third party fraud reversals. [I have read the Credit Card Act - many consumer protections are excluded from businesses.]

>So what? The debt has yet to be determined as legitimate....

This depends on the type of collection agency. [I've dealt with two types for my old business and for some friends who needed advice.]

A collection agency that collects on BEHALF of a company will often act as a mediator to figure out what is going on. I dealt with two of these for disputes over debt amounts and both were reasonable. [One was initially very aggressive and started the conversation by filing a lawsuit to "get my attention," but we discussed the situation and worked it out.]

A collection agency that BUYS the debt doesn't care about fairness. They paid a fraction of the debt amount and they want to make money. In one case, I was getting double billed under two account numbers. The collection agent repeatedly lied, harassed and threatened me (carefully scripted to just barely stay legal). I sent copies of the duplicate bills and they didn't care. [I finally got them to back off due to some regulations specific to the type of bill - They knew debt collection law, but the regulations I threw back at them would require them to do a lot of research]

Another problem with a debt that is sold to a collection agency is that when they give up, they often make back some on the money they paid by selling the debt to another agency. Then you start again..... [I was getting collection calls to my new phone number for the previous owner of that number. I would tell them the situation and they would accuse me of lying. When they finally gave up, a few weeks later another collection agency would start calling. This lasted over a year.]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Really sorry to hear this, but you're screwed. I had a similar situation and was totally ignored like you are.

My only way out was to let the card expire (thankfully, in my case, it was just about to) by totally ignoring the flood of 'renew now or we stop the paid services' emails.

Letting the card expire stopped the charges but also shut down my GC services. I had used the time to migrate things off and abandoned anything that was left (like maps API).

A chargeback will end up with the vicious blocking and deleting of your gmail and everything else you have with Google. If you're going to do that, backup/offload everything you can first as it's all going to be crispy fried by Google the moment you do the chargeback.

Never use Google for anything important that you cannot afford to lose at a moments notice.

</comment><comment><USER10> Perhaps your card info has been stolen and someone is using it for their Google Cloud account.

As a sanity check, do you use other Google services (Drive, Photos)?

I think cancelling your card is the safest bet; I highly doubt GC will immediately terminate your account just because of a failed transaction. After all, failed txs happen all the time. You will probably receive an email to update your card info.

EDIT: I guess the worry is in doing the chargeback - might be best to cancel first, add a new card to your account and then chargeback? Not sure...

</comment><comment><USER11> I would create a separate Google account for any paid Google service you plan on using. Also, I would use a disposable payment method, such as a preloaded debit card, that can't be charged what's on the card. Load up the card with $20-30, pay for the service and use it. Fragment your Google identity as much as possible.

</comment><comment><USER12> If you do a chargeback, I would definitely download all Google data you care about first. Is it just your emails, or is your business inextricably tied to Google in some way (an Android app perhaps)? If you can migrate away, I would just do that. Google has a terrible track record in this department.

</comment><comment><USER13> I work on GCP, but not anything related to billing.

You might have more luck opening a GCP support case, or using the chat support. They may have the ability to help you figure out what's going on, especially if the affected credit card is the one linked to your GCP billing account.</comment>


Clickpass in more places - <AUTHOR> http://blog.clickpass.com/2008/05/04/clickpass-in-more-places/ <comment><USER2> Cool to see it more. I'll add mine to the list once I launch. I really like the Clickpass service

<comment><AUTHOR> It is a great service, especially if you integrate with other services that also use it. For example OurDoings users who share publicly can use Disqus to let people comment on their news and photos. Clickpass smooths out what might otherwise be a an awkward combination of disparate services.</comment></comment>


HTML5 webcam2gif - <AUTHOR> http://hdragomir.github.io/facetogif/

<comment><USER2> Thank you for making /r/gonewild a better place!

</comment><comment><USER3> I made a similar web app a few weeks ago: [http://gif.gg/](http://gif.gg/)

It allows to do stop motion animations: [http://gif.gg/0HV7by](http://gif.gg/0HV7by) [http://gif.gg/tp7j5Sq](http://gif.gg/tp7j5Sq)

<comment><USER4> repo?

<comment><USER3> Sure :-) [https://github.com/bpierre/gif.gg](https://github.com/bpierre/gif.gg)

<comment><USER4> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For anyone interested in the getUserMedia API, I recommend Photobooth.js [http://wolframhempel.github.io/photobooth- js/](http://wolframhempel.github.io/photobooth-js/)

Here's the bluescreen GIF-maker I made with it: [http://mapmeld.github.io/bluescreen- gif/](http://mapmeld.github.io/bluescreen-gif/)

</comment><comment><USER6> This is pretty awesome. Can't wait to show it to my daughter tomorrow. Will probably come home from work to a full disk on my laptop.

</comment><comment><USER7> Doesn't seem to work or ask me for webcam permissions on Chrome.

<comment><USER8> I've been hearing about this from one other person. I think it might have something to do with some settings, but it's hard to make sure.

<comment><USER9> I did use it on Chrome and it worked perfectly well after I allowed the browser to use my webcam. For what it's worth my webcam is Logitech C270.

This is a neat project by the way. Thank you for your work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> well done, great stuff

<comment><USER10> Is there a way to adjust the size/res of the final gif?

<comment><USER8> you can fork it on github. [https://github.com/hdragomir/facetogif](https://github.com/hdragomir/facetogif)

640x480 produces huge gifs (20+MB for 10s) since dithering is not yet implemented. You can use any online gif optimiser, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> this rules

</comment><comment><USER12> nice one!</comment>


Bluetooth hacking - <AUTHOR>

How is someone hacking into my netbook through a means other than wifi or the internet. I don"t even plug in a new netbook. Is the access through bluetooth? <comment><USER2> <http://tinyurl.com/3htodny>

</comment><comment><USER3> Ask on <http://superuser.com>.</comment>


How to find a great co-founder? - <AUTHOR> I'm struggling to find a great co-founder. I am a strong iOS developer at Brown University, so finding co-founders for ventures has rarely been hard. But, I have yet to work with someone who I consider to match me on my work ethic. Many friends put drinking and partying above work. I'm really just trying to find a co-founder, coder or not, who is willing to work and obsess 24/7 on a mission. I have many weaknesses beyond my strengths, so finding a co-founder is so important. But, I am not willing to compromise on others having a below-exemplary work ethic. Any tips on how to find a great co-founder? <comment><USER2> I can only give you advice I have experienced myself: take a piece of paper, divide it in 2. one the left side write down: we share: -vision(do we have the same goal, do we see the future in the same way...), -commitment (do we want to spend a good part of our life together, what come first? startup, life or family?)

one the right side write down: we differ in: -orientation(you need both; one who see the bigger picture and one who pay close attention to the smaller stuff) -expertise (complement each other) and always assume the best but plan for the worst ;) check your own network and think deeply who you can imagine working with. go to local(if possible) founders event(check on meetup) if you still don't find a co-founder, apply for a start-up weekend or hackathon (you can work on a project over the weekend, it give you a bit of an insight who you are dealing with. good luck & success messyjones

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the advice. I really appreciate it.</comment></comment>


The Box: A Replacement for Files (1999) - vezzy-fnord http://lsub.org/who/nemo/export/2kblocks/?hn <comment><AUTHOR> As this was written back in 1999, I did a quick search to see if there were any implementations by searching for cited papers and authors.

I found the following: [http://lsub.org/ls/projects.html](http://lsub.org/ls/projects.html)

</comment><comment><USER2> Wtf is this going on about? Can any one explain it in English?

<comment><USER3> A "box" serves both as a directory and a file, depending on what you "select" (the box itself or its sub-box).

* If you select a non-existent box, a new one is created.

* You can "copy" a box into another. If the target box is expected to be of a different type (unclear how this is known), the copying process may involve conversion.

* There is an "antibox" that you can copy to the target box, in order to remove the target box.</comment></comment>


Terabyte laptop hard drives? - <AUTHOR>

Been looking around Newegg and Tom's Hardware, but I can't seem to find any terabyte laptop hard drives. Any got some info? <comment><USER2> They don't exist yet. Wait a year or so.

There are some 500GB 2.5" disks out there, though.</comment>


Explaining Sex Rate Changes - <AUTHOR> http://www.overcomingbias.com/2019/03/explaining-sex-rate-changes.html <comment><USER3> As the article points out, fewer young men are having sex, but roughly the same number of young women are having sex.

I wonder if dating apps (Tinder, Bumble, etc.) are leading women to have sex with a smaller cohort of desirable men. Years ago, OkCupid noted that a small percentage of men get an overwhelming percentage of messages from women. With the rise of "swipe right, swipe left" mobile dating apps, where people choose partners based almost solely on looks and status indicators, I can imagine it's getting even more unbalanced.

<comment><USER4> I've noticed this disparity within my friend circles. The objectively attractive men match/sleep with multiple woman a month where almost all of the men with near average looks get approximately zero matches. Interesting indeed. My female friends match with almost every male regardless.

<comment><USER5> I think you're both onto something. There's even a likely network effect where those men who sleep around are even more attractive to potential mates. Not as a rule, of course, but as a contributing factor.

It's a very destabilizing trend. Not only are these same men being economically disadvantaged, but they're being socially isolated. Perfect way to increase violent tendencies, drug addition, and so on.

<comment><USER6> How would that change though. I agree its a problem, but I don't agree its not within the control of those who are not being matched to do something about it. Some arguments:

* dating apps aren't the only way to meet people; you can still meet potential partners at parks/bars/work (Americans love office romances apparantly)

* dating apps do favor the conventionally good looking folks but its also about presentation, which can be gamed and its not a secret how to.

I agree that its a little unfair that the men who are good looking get all the benefits without having to put in any effort. But hasn't that been the case with inherited wealth too?

<comment><USER7> As someone who is definitely on the "not ugly but also not attractive" demographic, I have ditched dating apps completely.

The focus on the visual to the exclusion of body language and personality chemistry just makes it a bad all around deal. From my experience, naturally meeting girls in the world is a much more pleasant experience.

<comment> saiya-jin Smart move in many ways. Think about it - what kind of person goes to quick hookup apps? The one that likes quick hookups. Which is great if you look exactly this and nothing more. Men and women (but frankly, women much more due to many reasons) who behave like this +-consistently, have practically always have some deep unresolved issues, usually from childhood they try (and fail) to compensate for with this behavior. Think about Barney Stinson from HIMYM and his famous focus on 'girls with daddy issues'.

If you look for anything else, like long term happiness, its a very hard find a partner on such platform. Maybe I am naive but I still think this is what most people want in their lives. But it ain't as easy as swiping around - <USER2> needs to go out there, make some effort to look attractive, expose oneself to as many potential partners as possible. And have patience, tons of patience.

<comment><USER8> For my dating age range (28-33) and location, it seems most women I meet through Tinder are after a connection. This is heavily filtered through my selections though. It might also be the case that's the front they show while having tons of hooks up behind the scenes. It's just a really convenient way to meet people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In a way, this mirrors how technological advances have created winner-take-all markets in other areas. Thanks to CDs (and then the internet), we can now all listen to the very best musicians in the world — where previously we just had to settle for whoever was the best in our town.

Similarly, technology may be shifting the dating/intimacy market toward a winners-take-most equilibrium, which favors the most attractive young men.

<comment><USER10> The internet and dating apps surely play a part. It's also become more acceptable to be non-monogamous. I lived in the bay area for a while and hung out among queer circles in San Francisco. It seemed like nearly everyone was polyamorous and uninterested in being in a monogamous relationship. So much that I felt kind of obligated to try the poly thing myself for a while if I was going to date.

I am a little worried about the medium/long-term impact on society. Not because I find non-monogamy morally objectionable or something, but because having a stable long-term partner seems like it can be beneficial in helping people through hard times. It also seems to me that if a sizeable chunk of young men end up feeling undesirable, unwanted, and frustrated, the consequences won't be pretty, we all lose.

<comment><USER11> >It also seems to me that if a sizeable chunk of young men end up feeling undesirable, unwanted, and frustrated, the consequences won't be pretty, we all lose.

Those young men need to stop basing their self image on their own ego and sense of sexual entitlement.

What we're seeing here, in my humble and uneducated opinion, is the end of a period in societal history where women served the role of sexual currency in a market of male status. The social and religious pressures on women to validate men through sex and marriage are no longer relevant, and women are now seeking sexual fulfillment and relationships on their own terms, rather than those dictated to them by patriarchal society.

However, many men are still wedded, as it were, to the old model whereby their social status is accounted for by the number of women they have had sex with, and whether or not they are in a sexual relationship at the moment. They feel cheated because society has told them they are entitled to sex, and that there is something wrong with them if they don't get as much of it as they want.

What bothers me about this conversation is that disastrous, society-shattering consequences are always mentioned if women keep choosing not to have sex with more men, but no one seems willing to suggest that men need to change the way they view sex, relationships and themselves.

<comment><USER12> > What bothers me about this conversation is that disastrous, society- > shattering consequences are always mentioned if women keep choosing not to > have sex with more men, but no one seems willing to suggest that men need to > change the way they view sex, relationships and themselves.

I may have missed part of this conversation but I don't think there's a suggestion that women are doing something /wrong/ or that they need to be the ones to "fix" this problem. Although admittedly the framing kind of makes it look like this because it appears to be women's behaviour and attitudes that have changed over recent decades, rather than men's.

I agree with you; Since this is the way things are going, men need to find a way to change their expectations and entitlement and adapt. Unfortunately discussions around this often get over-run with misogyny and bitterness (MGTOW/red-pill) and it's remarkably hard to find safe spaces for men to talk openly about their issues while keeping out that subset of men. (shout out to /r/menslib)

<comment><USER13> > discussions around this often get over-run with misogyny and bitterness

If the adaptation required is to become part of the 20% of men that 70% of women pursue, bitterness from the 80% of less-desirable men is inevitable since they can't compete, which inhibits their ability to obtain a mate and have a good life.

Sure, a mate isn't _technically_ required to live a good life, but in our intensely individualistic society where the number of friends men have is dropping precipitously, relationships form a core of socialization for many men.

<comment><USER12> > Sure, a mate isn't _technically_ required to live a good life, but in our > intensely individualistic society where the number of friends men have is > dropping precipitously, relationships form a core of socialization for many > men.

Perhaps this is the part where we need to change and improve? Rather than expecting the world or women to align to us.

<comment><USER14> This could be said to any gender issue. If money is required to live a good life, but in our intensely individualistic society where the money women have access to is dropping precipitously, work form a core of income for many women.

Perhaps this is the part where they need to change and improve? Rather than expecting the world or men to align to them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ask a heterosexual woman in that age range about how many awful conversations she's had with men in that age range via dating apps. She won't say "a few", she'll say "A LOT", and be able to show that the vast majority of messages she gets are either very dry or insanely forward (sexually).

If you're a great-looking guy and you can't start or hold a good conversation, you can still get laid on the basis of looks. But if you don't look good, you don't get those grace points. I've seen guys (who look much better than I do) fail at getting laid on dating apps after LOADS of attempts, and despite being their friend, I must say the messages they've shown me are AWFUL. Not just "this isn't that great", but "WHAT WERE YOU THINKING???". When I was single (despite my looks), I found it really easy to get dates and get laid using dating apps, because I could actually hold conversations. And I know others just like me, who've gotten similar results.

<comment><USER16> > or insanely forward (sexually)

If you're not after a relationship but to get laid, then that might be a good strategy. Yes you'll get much fewer positive responses but but the false positive rate should be way lower.

<comment><USER17> But you have to admit it's a lot more risky. Also, plenty of people are looking forward to a good laid but are turned off if you just spam innuendo or are too forward.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is not news to anyone who has been following the changes in gender dynamics in the past ~15 years.

Without giving an opinion on any side: there is (and will continue to be) growing instability when inequalities (relationship, wealth, or otherwise) result in a large portion of the population disaffected. Historically the solution to this particular problem has been enforced monogamy + the risk of pregnancy. Clearly that is no longer an option in the West, as sexual attitudes have become more open and birth control is widely available. It remains to be seen what the end result will be this time around.

Personally I think that technology will try (and largely fail) to address this imbalance. Think of K's "girlfriend" in Blade Runner 2049. This seems to be the route we as a society are heading toward. A civilization of hyper- individuals that attempt to fulfill all social and human needs through market- based product solutions.

<comment><USER19> Enforced monogamy + the risk of pregnancy is not a "solution".

The risk of pregnancy is a biological fact with far more severe penalties for women. Enforced monogamy in western societies is part of a broader history of social control that came to exist because it was good at perpetuating itself-- and which also unfairly disadvantaged women.

It's unfortunate that we evolved to be the way we are, but the "instability" we're seeing now is partly a result of fixing much deeper inequalities that've existed for most of human history.

The real source of the present instability is socialized (and partly biological) gender differences in how men and women approach courtship.

<comment><USER20> _Enforced monogamy in western societies is part of a broader history of social control that came to exist because it was good at perpetuating itself_

It's one interpretation, good for those who accepts the faith tenets of post- structuralism. The other is that it came to exist because of its viability in particular economic conditions.

Also, if acceptance of promiscuity as a social norm really benefits exactly women is a really big question.

<comment><USER19> I don't know what "post-structuralism" means and I don't know the supposed tenets you're referring to. But I agree you can also make an economic argument for why marriage has been an enduring institution in society throughout history.

"Acceptance of promiscuity" is a bit of a contradiction in terms since "promiscuous" is inherently pejorative. I will say this: "promiscuity" has always been far more socially acceptable for men than it has been for women. Despite "enforced monogamy" prostitution is called the "oldest profession" for a reason and extramarital affairs have been happening for a long, long time. If you want to get nuanced, "enforced monogamy" doesn't really mean "enforced monogamy" because affairs were accepted in certain sociocultral contexts in England and France far before the sexual revolution.

<comment><USER20> I'm not a native speaker, and may miss some nuances, but promiscuous is defined as "having multiple sexual partners" by my dictionary which I think is as neutral as possible.

Promiscuity is at first, and foremost was (and still is, in spite of contraception availability) _practically_ more acceptable for men. And monogomy among other things is a constraint on men's behavior - forcing to accept social, and economic responsibilities before fulfilling sexual urges. You are right noting that it rarely worked in any absolute way, but I don't think any law, whether written, or not can be 100% effectively implemented. People steal all the time, but I suppose you wouldn't say it's because related norms are not enforced, right? Monogomy's real application varied over times, cultures, and spaces, but it was certainly enforced by societal pressure, and legally too. Actually, in my father's youth years (and it's not that deep in history) it was hard to have sex before marriage. It was for sure possible, but dangerous for reputation of both participants (probably more damaging for a women, but damaging for both nevertheless). It wasn't US, and "sexual revolution" came to us much later, so that's probably why you may have no living witnesses for it.

Also, prostitution was until quite recent times seen as a moral compromise acceptable only because of long serving soldiers, and sailors. In most societies it wasn't ok for a family man to visit a house of prostitution, and in some cases it was even criminalized.

<comment><USER21> I am a native speaker, and "promiscuous" is definitely a negative, pejorative term. (Dictionary definitions are good at capturing the denotation of a word, but are sometimes less good at explaining its connotations. If your dictionary lists additional/alternate definitions of this one that apply in non-sexual contexts, look at those to see if they appear to carry positive or negative implications.)

<comment><USER22> It's clear what is being discussed here, because "promiscuity" has a simple understandable meaning. In certain contexts the word has a negative connotation, but only because those contexts morally disapprove of the condition the word describes. One would have hoped that "native speakers" could have offered a different, more suitable word to employ in this discussion, rather than just ruling the discussion out of bounds because they don't like this particular word.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> >It also won't do to point to changes over this time period that effected all ages and genders similarly, such as obesity, porn, video games, social media, dating apps, and wariness re harassment claims.

I think this is wrong. I don't believe these things effect all ages and genders similarly. For instance, I think we would find that the rate of young men playing video games and watching porn are much higher than for young women. I'm not saying that young women don't do these things, but I don't believe these things are engaged in at the same rates as young men.

Also, many older men are already married. Even if they do view porn at similar rates to young men, this might not affect the rate at which they are having sex with their wives. And, in my experience, older men and women are not playing video games at the same rates as young men.

<comment><USER24> >>For instance, I think we would find that the rate of young men playing video games and watching porn are much higher than for young women. I'm not saying that young women don't do these things, but I don't believe these things are engaged in at the same rates as young men.

I don't know about porn, but data strongly disagrees with this when it comes to gaming.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_and_video_games#Demograp...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_and_video_games#Demographics_of_female_players)

<comment><USER9> This source indicates that nearly 50% of people who play video games are women, but it does not indicate anything about the time spent gaming. It is quite possible that men are a bare majority of gamers but play a super- majority of the hours spent gaming.

<comment><USER24> That could be the case, but unless you have actual data supporting it, it's just speculation.

My point is: the perception that most gamers are men, who on average spend more of their time gaming than women, lacks supporting data. It is easily explained by psychological factors such as confirmation bias and stereotyping.

<comment><USER9> Men spend 25% more time gaming than women: [https://www.limelight.com/resources/white-paper/state-of- onl...](https://www.limelight.com/resources/white-paper/state-of-online- gaming-2019/#spend)

I think your comment on perceptions of gamers misses the point that "gamers" are people who spend lots of time playing video games. The research on the wikipedia page isn't about "gamers". It's about people who play video games at some level of frequency, which is a much broader category. This is why our intuitions about "gamers" turn out to be accurate, even though they are not consistent with the data about the much larger category of "people who play video games".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> My napkin paper theory is that for nonmarital* sex the internet has made it easier for people to find partners, with the overall effect that the bottom ~1/3 of men cannot find partners. Generally women are more selective than men when it comes to casual sex, and desirable men are usually willing to have sex with multiple partners. I recall studies that found that the top 20% of men on dating platforms account for 80% of the matches. I suspect that the drop in rates of no sex later in life is because that is the age when people start to get married (late 20s, 30s). Unlike the casual sex market, marriage is generally 1:1 so 80:20 dynamic flattens out.

\\* I'm using "nonmarital" here to refer to sex outside of a long-tern committed relationship. I originally referred to this as "casual sex" but I think that may be more loaded than what I'm looking for.

Edit: "extramarital" -> "nonmarital" as per respondent's suggestion

<comment><USER26> If men in the bottom 20% want sex they can take steps to increase their position including losing weight, hitting the gym, working on getting a better paid job.

Alternatively they can offer a greater degree of commitment to female bottom 20%ers who presumably ALSO aren't getting a lot of casual interaction.

<comment><USER8> I don't know why you're downvoted. When I was young (18-22) I had no luck with women. I think I literally went 3 years straight in that range without a sexual partner. I was on the verge of becoming an angry, resentful man. I discovered some precursor to The Red Pill and I took the self-improvement advice. I realised the fault wasn't with women, I was simply making life choices that made me unattractive. I lost weight, dressed better, etc.

I'm 33 now and in the last 2.5 years, I've slept with more women than I did from 16-30 despite the fact I work full time, study full time and am a single parent (i.e. I have very little time for dating). If I lost some more weight, spent more time dating and attempted to have casual sex I could probably sleep with 20+ women per year fairly easily. My facial features are at best average, likely below average but I am tall and muscular (10 years Army).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Discussions like this drive me crazy. It's not hard to see what it is about society that's making so many people not have sex, and it's not, like, some subtle market effect involving their attractiveness. No matter how much you want find a market effect, it's due to _human stuff_, like people's actual lives and problems, not their behavior in some sex economy. There is nothing even close to an economy around sex. There's just the real world.

(This kind of) economics is valuable when it can tease out and explain underlying trends that you can't figure out from just looking at the world. But in this case, the only thing you'll be missing if you proceed by intuition is, like, numbers on the size of the effect. If you want to solve the problems at a societal level, while numbers are useful for prioritization, maybe, you're going to be trying to solve the actual problems that you identify with your human analysis.

For instance living in this world provides me ample evidence to dismiss the line "It also won't do to point to changes over this time period that effected all ages and genders similarly, such as obesity, porn, video games..." as laughable and clueless with, say, 99.99% confidence.

<comment><USER28> >No matter how much you want find a market effect, it's due to _human stuff_, like people's actual lives and problems. There is nothing even close to an economy around sex

This kind of wishy washy thing I'm sure feels nice to say but doesn't seem to me to have any real explanatory power except at an individual level, which is not what this discussion is about.

I bet you anything that if I had access to tinder backend data and a couple of hours to mess around in Python, I could show you the similarity in the supposedly "non-existent" market forces there to well-studied phenomena in the world of economics and finance. Just imagine a lorenz curve describing the # of "swipes" a user gets!

<comment><USER29> Somebody did actually create a Lorenz curve based on Tinder data: [https://medium.com/@worstonlinedater/tinder-experiments- ii-g...](https://medium.com/@worstonlinedater/tinder-experiments-ii-guys- unless-you-are-really-hot-you-are-probably-better-off-not-wasting- your-2ddf370a6e9a)

I can't speak to the accuracy of the article though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> There is no longer an average, middle, median, etc. Hookup culture has consequences; before it was possible for an undesirable male to mate with a female, with the institution of marriage.

So you end up with a society where everyone is unhappy. The hookup culture devalues the woman, competing for a slice of a shrinking desirable pool of men, while the undesirable men become angry and frustrated. But desirability is more about status IMO. Status can be decoupled from wealth and the economy. If you're not playing the status game, even if you're wealthy, women will not find you attractive.

<comment><USER10> What's playing the status game? Expensive-looking clothes, being perceived as authoritative in some social circles?

<comment><USER30> All of that plus social media presence. A personal brand, if you will.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Burner account to describe my experience.

Late 30s male software developer - my long-term, live-in gf dumped me a few months ago and I got on the dating apps. Holy cow.

I get dozens of "matches" every single day on Bumble and Hinge, it's overwhelming. Don't even bother with Tindr or OKC (I tried OKC for a week and I had literally over 900+ "likes"). I'm not saying this rub it in anyone's face, just to confirm the hypothesis of many in this thread: the dating apps have redistributed matches to the top 20%.

I have friends and coworkers who are totally normal, regular-looking dudes and they barely get any matches -- my results piss them off so much they won't even talk to me about dating anymore.

I'm a decent-looking person but no male model and not rich, I can't even imagine how much more intense it is at that level.

That being said, I don't like the apps and wish there was a different way. Some kind of combination of internet matching and speed dating so you didn't have to waste days of your life endlessly texting or drop hundreds of dollars buying drinks (and/or dinner) for women who text you after the fact that they're not interested.

Not that anyone feels bad for me, but even getting a ton of responses it's not a process I enjoy either.

</comment><comment><USER32> I struggled with sexlessness as a young man, even before the rise of popular dating apps. I've a history of self esteem issues directly related to my own attractiveness. Most of this was from my religious upbringing, being sheltered from people my own age and knowledge of sex, and being punished for girls being attracted to me.

Now, as a young man who has gone through counseling, I have begun to have success in dating within the last two years. I've gone on about 25 dates last year, more than my entire life put together before. I even had sex twice last year, which I had never had before. One time was horrible, but the other time was genuinely wonderful. I loved cuddling in eachother's arms and talking about what was deep and meaningful and lovely within our own lives.

I remember the feelings of worthlessness, looking at statistics from online dating websites and population studies, remembering the hundreds of women who weren't interested, comparing myself with other men who were genuinely horrible, cowardly, and lazy people being very successful sexually from a young age, speaking with friends who were girls who complained that their lives were hard because they hadn't had sex in so long (2 months). Add onto this, there is a stigma of being extra-broken or unclean or an 'incel' if you have these problems.

The reality is this: most of the dating advice, from various sources, given to young men now doesn't work. Young men are given few other options other than rehashed 'self improvement' lectures, dating-game philosophies from pua, or arranged marriages. It's no wonder to me why young men my age are buying into some crazy nutcase ideas like government-given girlfriends. The reality is that no other genuinely dating-helpful options are being given to young men.

What helped me was slowly loving my life whether or not there was a lady present, not really caring about what people I don't know think about me, and most importantly getting out more and interacting with more people. I am not sure that this would work as well for everyone I know though.

Dating is still extremely hard for many young men. Counselors need to be ready to deal with this as an increasing issue. Solutions and answers need to be found and given to young men rather than casting them out or patronizing them.

<comment><USER33> I'm glad that you achieved a better life. I agree, one should love their life regardless of whether they have a girlfriend or not.

However, I don't believe you are the type of people we are talking about. You say "being punished for girls being attracted to me", which implies that you were already attractive.

It might have helped you because you were already physically attractive. The problem is for those who aren't (and aren't able or willing to get surgery). If physical attractiveness is so important, many men, including myself, might not be able to do anything. Not get a girlfriend, nor get just sex, which is still important. Can you ask any trusted friend to tell you how attractive you are? I would love that you are average or below and still have success.

In any case, your solution seems to me to be a good idea even if you don't get laid. If I might ask, how did you do that? Changing my mentality and habits is something I've not had much success in doing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I think the trend is true but this study did not have a large sample size. It was 31 out of 105 men in this age range saying they did not have sex.

<comment><USER35> I didn't believe you and checked. The GSS interviews 1500 people for each study, which comes out to about the numbers you mention.

[http://gss.norc.org/faq](http://gss.norc.org/faq)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> If you accept the premises: free information leads to higher female promiscuity aimed at top % males

Lower % males will always be aware of this

At some point this leads to increased violence and conflict

There's no way to put any of this back into the bottle (how can you enforce cultural (or even enforced) monogamy given free information and anonymous encounters? It's harder than trying to prevent people doing drugs, incel fantasies aside.

The closest thing to a way out is to try and change the culture of sex as power and status and deconstruct the whole thing somehow? (As in all you change point 3, get low status guys to care less). It seems difficult though, it's beyond politically incorrect to say but I can't imagine guys ever being happy to know that they were a compromise choice by their girlfriend who had to really prove himself after 10 years of sleeping with men far more attractive than them that just had to swipe. Hard to see outside your own culture though, maybe that will just become accepted.

<comment><USER37> That last sentiment is very prominent in the incel/red pill "communities". They have some inside-baseball names for it, but essentially they do express their extreme disdain for women who have sex with lots of men then decide to "settle down" with a provider.

<comment><USER36> Yeah it's absolutely an incel meme but do no means do I think that they invented it or that it's unique to them. I think almost all men have this feeling to some extent, I think it's a rare guy who is happy to know that every good looking guy in his office slept with his girlfriend casually. Proximity (time, location, social circle) is definitely an aggravating factor but it's all just a sliding scale. I like to think that I mostly don't care about a girl's past but it's definitely annoying on some level of the sliding scale.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> > Explaining Sex Rate Changes

"An ironic side-effect of feminism is to free men from the burden of being the head of the house." [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPETpCVrH9Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPETpCVrH9Y)

"Why you can't find a man: Hypergamy Floats" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UWpmd1yjVc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UWpmd1yjVc)

<comment><USER38> Briffault's Law:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaFJ18aENkc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaFJ18aENkc) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9W6wvHSMmzY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9W6wvHSMmzY) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqSCRnrq5I0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqSCRnrq5I0)

Some more:

"More" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ud3PgQ_y170](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ud3PgQ_y170) "No Eligible Men" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTxP7fPMnK4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTxP7fPMnK4) "Seeing the hook" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nv4jnWYCuEs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nv4jnWYCuEs) "Remaining unplugged" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KfQIEAGqhg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KfQIEAGqhg) "Hiding in morals" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBslYOWiJlI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBslYOWiJlI)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnWV4Yy6dOs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnWV4Yy6dOs)

But hey, it may be just porn and videogames after all... who knows...

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Perhaps off-topic, but if someone here on HN is from Saudi-Arabia or a similar country:

How does this work in societies where rich/succesful males can have multiple women? Are there simply a bunch of leftover men? Or is the number of men who have multiple women today too small to make a dent?

Assuming there's 50/50 men/women there too...

<comment><USER40> I'm a muslim/arab.

You can have multiple wives even if you are not rich or just look average. I would say the majority of men stick to monogamy (90% probably). Having more than one wife comes with a lot of restrictions such as:

\- All your wives have an automatic stake in your inheretence. In islam you can't choose who inherits what, its already set in place for you.

\- All your wives need to be provided for by yourself. Even if they are rich. You as a male are required to provide for your wife and Children

\- Be just between you wives. You bought a house for one? buy the same for the others. You took your first wife on holidays? same for the others. The quran state that you need to be just, but argues that you might not be able to achieve justice all the time.

Most people I know who have a second wife have specific reasons for doing so. For example a guy in my family had his wife choose his second wife for him. She couldn't have any babies and he was adamant to have kids. She agreed to stay with him, but only if she was involved in choosing his second wife for him. They have two houses one next to the other, and the kids play more with his first wife than with their mum.

For monogamy in general, arab men have it really somehow easy to get married. You just need to have a job and look somehow acceptable. There is no dating culture as in the west. You wouldn't find a man and his girlfriend living together and trying things out for a few years before deciding to marry. You get to know your future wife and meet with her (between a few months to a year most likely) and then decide to get married.

Having sex before marriage is frowned upon, but doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. Most women in the muslim/arab world are actually looking to build a family and have kids. Not all of them agree to you having a second wife.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> My theory is that it could be related to the economy getting worse. My belief is that women are generally more likely to have sex with someone that they consider to be viable long-term reproductive partners or marriage material. Fewer men have the financial success and stability that many women are looking for in a serious relationship that would make them comfortable with routine sex.

<comment><USER25> I don't think the data supports this. The economy has gotten better since 2008 by a significant margin. The unemployment rate has dropped consistently since 2010. But that's when the rise of lack of sex seems to really kick off and it hasn't subsided as the economy improved.

<comment><USER35> A variation is that women demand a man who makes more money than _they_ do. In this model, increased female wages could be a factor.

<comment><USER42> Citation needed; demand?

<comment><USER35> Say "prefers" if you prefer. Doesn't change the argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Why is nobody mentioning the potential biological basis for this?

Men's sperm counts are going down 3% a year and have been consistently for over 30 years. Nobody knows exactly why, but environmental contamination through "xenoestrogens" (e.g. BPA in receipt paper) is a major theory.

This is no freak trend and has been researched by over a thousand papers with no good answer (so don't reply with a pet hypothesis like exercise-- it's not).

1\. [https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/10/sperm- cou...](https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/10/sperm-counts- continue-to-fall/572794/)

2\. [https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C33&q=spe...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C33&q=sperm+decline+men&btnG=)

<comment><USER44> Soy boy theory!

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Can we look to other cultures where widespread celibacy (especially extramarital) is already practiced for cues as to how this will affect the US?

<comment><USER46> I'm not aware of any culture that encourages "widespread celibacy"–which ones are you talking about?

<comment><USER45> I had no concrete examples, I'm not even sure it happens; I was casting around to my fellow readers in case any of them knew of cultures where it does occur.

<comment><USER47> Any such culture would be long gone or full of hypocrisy.

There are cultures where sex ratio has been manipulated, e.g. India and China, to favor males, but this is not the point of the research and I lack relevant data for these.

<comment><USER45> Isn't extramarital celibacy sustainable, given that you can have sex and children once you are married?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I'm often surprised that there is not more discussion about hacking the sexual market place on Hacker News.

We talk a lot about growth hacking and hacking technical systems. Hacking in the meaning of "Using intelligent, unusual approaches to gain an advantage over the typical approach". Yet for sexual market place it's completely silence here on HN.

<comment><USER49> Its something not done in polite circles. The whole of PUA culture is about hacking the sexual market. A bunch of it delves into things that are thought of as distasteful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> 1) Internet porn is training young men to have sex with fantasy images, making sex with a real partner an alien concept.

2) People are way more engaged with screens than in person

3) Masculinity is labeled 'toxic', etc. Young men are not getting the support/encouragement/mentoring they need.

<comment><USER51> Can you expand the third point a bit?

I hear people talk about this a lot, but don't understand what it actually means.

For example, what kind of support/encouragement/mentoring did men previously get that they no longer enjoy, and how would it have an effect on sex rates?

<comment><USER50> You can see this where it is acceptible to have all female organizations or institutions, but unacceptable to have similar organizations or institutions for males. Similarly, there are many programs specifically targeting women for certain careers, such as STEM. The result is that increasingly there is a "gender gap" favoring women at university.

[https://www.theguardian.com/education/datablog/2013/jan/29/h...](https://www.theguardian.com/education/datablog/2013/jan/29/how- many-men-and-women-are-studying-at-my-university)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Reading through the comments, there's a shared narrative that emerges:

Tinder, etc. leads to a skewed distribution of access to sexual partners based on attractiveness, which leads to unattractive men not having as many partners, which leads to pick-your-favorite-bad-consequence.

And there are a lot of men in this thread feeling worried and depressed about this. While it's certainly true that you get more matches on Tinder if you're attractive, this overall narrative is vastly oversimplified, and the conclusions drawn from it are inaccurate. It's the result of men projecting male attitudes onto women's behavior. I understand that it's easy to feel resentful. I don't fault anyone inherently for this-- these are complex issues, there are exceptions to every generalization, and it's difficult to judge because it's hard to experience the dating "market" through different eyes.

But before you buy into that narrative, take a moment to think about what it's like for women. I'll indulge in some generalizations (yes there are exceptions) because brevity is of the essence. Compared to men:

\- Women care less about physical attractiveness \- Women are less interested in hookups and enjoy them less \- Women are more interested in romantic and emotional connections and long-term relationships

Do you really think the majority of women are happy with the recent societal changes in dating? It's not hard to find thinkpieces written by women lamenting these issues. I haven't met a single woman who was happy with it. And I've heard many bad date stories from my female friends and my own dates. One article described it as "searching for a diamond in a sea of dick pics". And you have to worry about physical violence or men who treat you like an object and try to run some PUA algorithm on you. Maybe you believe that some women are doing things you don't condone. But can you honestly blame them? No one's perfect, dating is a shitty and exhausting experience for everyone.

As a man it's easy to fixate on physical attractiveness because we notice and care about it more. But I assure you, once you meet your date in person your looks stop mattering (as long as you didn't lie) and at that point it's up to your personality. There are a lot of women who'd be excited to date a decent and kind man who's willing to explore some level of emotional commitment without trying to "keep it casual". Explaining these changes purely on the basis of an attractiveness/status market is a cop-out for men who are too insecure to confront whether they're actually enjoyable people to be around.

I see a lot of proto-incel thoughts in this thread. That shit is a downward spiral, you need to pull yourself together and get out of it before you internalize how physically "unattractive" you supposedly are. Once the incel ideology destroys your self-confidence and skews your outlook on the world you will actually become an unattractive _person_ even if you look fine physically.

<comment><USER52> _> an unattractive person even if you look fine physically._

There is so much emphasis on physical appearance and status in this thread.

If this is a common mindset among young men, it's no wonder they are lonely. Who wants to spend time with someone who reduces deeply human relationships to status and sex appeal?

Attractiveness is a complicated and extremely individual thing. Appearance and status are much less important than forming an intimate emotional connection through shared experiences and values.

<comment><USER53> That's easy to say, but physical appearance is the gateway to personality based relationships. You can have the greatest personality in the world, but be unlucky in the dating world because you don't fit the physical expectations. The choice given by dating websites amplifies that too. Why would a woman settle for a friendly 165 cm guy with a good job, if a 185 cm "lumberjack" is only few swipes away (in theory, because there are many more women competing for him)?

<comment><USER52> _> That's easy to say, but physical appearance is the gateway to personality based relationships._

This is really only true at the margins.

 _> Why would a woman settle for a friendly 165 cm guy with a good job, if a 185 cm "lumberjack" is only few swipes away (in theory, because there are many more women competing for him)?_

For the same reason most people choose friends based on who they get along with instead of who has the most money/status. After all, why spend time on a friendship that only gets you a beer now and then when you could spend your time befriending people with yachts and ski lodges?

People crave closeness and belonging. Being close with someone who you actually enjoy spending time with feels better than having sex with someone you don't care about.

Note: few people enjoy the company of another person merely because that other person "has a good job" or is merely "friendly". How many of your male friends do you enjoy spending time with because they make good money and aren't assholes? Probably very few. For the rest, you have something in common that drives the friendship. The same thing is true in romantic relationships.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Anecdote: Take it with a grain of salt as a mid 20's male in the dating scene

Maybe it's me, but I get the feeling that even if I improve myself (start hobbies, go to the gym more, etc) That will not be enough to secure a serious relationship because its so much easier for partners to 'upgrade' and find someoene else. There are fewer incentives to stick it out and build on a relationship, not unlike how the norm for getting a raise is to change jobs (instead of company loyalty)

</comment><comment><USER55> In my case, I've always found partners (including my wife with whom I've been in a strong relationship for 8 years) in gatherings with friends and friends of friends.

I would absolutely DREAD today's dating scene through a screen. Maybe older men do it the old way?

I don't know, this is one revolution I hope regresses.

If you're young and looking, I'd suggest you try to mix and match your circle with your friends' circles and hope for the best.

<comment><USER56> How many times have your circles imploded?

<comment><USER55> Not really imploded, but people change and stuff gets re-arranged. It's ok. Like forgetting peeps. Also ok. No need to keep friends around forever like Facebook and social media imply. I maybe have 5 friends that I've known for more than 15 years... those remain. The rest can flow.

<comment><USER56> Thanks for the response, sorry if I was being too nosy. The value of permanence, or the lack of it, seems worth consideration in this context.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Clearly caused by the same (unknown) thing that's been causing the double- digit decline in testosterone levels of Western men for the last few decades, regardless of job market or dating apps or whatever. So I'm leaning toward physiological explanation, not social.

<comment><USER58> I don't know either, but I would not make this guess, because cultural evolution tends to happen at a much faster pace than physiological (biological?) evolution. Physiology will not change much in 20 years, but culture could change drastically in the same timeframe.

<comment><USER57> Wasn't talking about evolution, was talking about stuff in the environment (food, plastics, etc) that affects physiology.

<comment><USER58> Replace "evolution" with "changes". I don't necessarily mean Darwinian evolution (if that's what you thought).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I'd guess HD porn + addictive video games + ubereats plays a nontrivial role in keeping young men from leaving the house, and also keeping them out of shape, making it more difficult to find a partner even if they wanted to.

<comment><USER53> What does leaving the house accomplish? It's not like you suddenly will interact with people. Most people organize through internet nowadays and stick to their cliques. Talk to someone on the public transport, you'd say. That also doesn't work, because most of these people are reading a book and have headphones on, which is a "don't touch me" signal to everyone around.

<comment><USER60>
      What does leaving the house accomplish? It's not
      like you suddenly will interact with people.

Not all things that involve leaving the house involve meeting new people in person - but almost all the things that involve meeting new people in person involve leaving the house.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> I would be interested in having some stats by education level and profession. From my current personal experience as a CS student, I would say it is easily above 50%.

<comment><USER25> Generally speaking, academic performance is inversely correlated with sex. In top universities the majority of students are virgins coming into university and a substantial percent (usually in the 25-50% range) are at graduation. Probably due to more time dedicated to study and career growth than relationships. Anecdotally, I've found that in tech and STEM more broadly rates of sex are lower - probably due to the overall gender imbalance means that the majority of people don't have potential partners in their primary social circles.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/09/harvard...](https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/09/harvards- class-2017-full-virgins-and-thats-okay/311342/)

[https://thetech.com/2009/10/30/survey-v129-n49](https://thetech.com/2009/10/30/survey-v129-n49)

Perhaps conforming to stereotype, apparently at MIT 42% of students overall are virgins while at fraternities this rate was 20%.

<comment><USER6> STEM is the worst social wise. You're correct that gender imbalances have a lot to do with this. There's also the fact that people who like STEM are generally social outcasts of some sort (nerds bullied in school, rarely the popular/cool kids).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Artificial AI-driven-wife (for example "Geminoid F") with artificial womb would solve the problem.

<comment><USER63> I'm genuinely concerned that people seriously think this is a _solution_.

Beyond sex, relationships with romantic partners are a complex, rewarding part of the human experience. How did that get lost to some?

<comment><USER42> You say rewarding, but for a lot of people it's an incomprehensible minefield. I mean where do you even start?

<comment><USER11> Humans have been working it out for a million years or so, it isn't that difficult.

If someone considers relationships with other people to be an "incomprehensible minefield," then the problem is with _them_ , not the nature of human relationships.

Too many people overthink things, seeing each potential relationship as a puzzle to be solved, or searching for some general purpose sexual algorithm for which they can provide the inputs and recieve sexual or emotional fulfillment, or they expect hostility and deception and treat dating like an interrogation.

And of course some people just don't have empathy for the opposite sex and don't understand social boundaries or cues.

<comment><USER64> > If someone considers relationships with other people to be an > "incomprehensible minefield," then the problem is with them, not the nature > of human relationships.

Is it a reasonable position to tell a disabled person who considers a society with no handicap accessibility that the problem is them, not with the nature of society?

<comment><USER11> Are we talking about disabled people?

I was under the impression we were talking about a general majority of sexually frustrated young men.

<comment><USER64> > Are we talking about disabled people?

At what point does lack of ability to engage socially become a disability? Your statement already acknowledged their difficulties.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> I ask some right-wing young men and they'll tell me, they believe in survival of the fittest and darwinian society.

The same young men then tell me, that I should be worried about race-mixing, and I should be worried that most men are not having sex.

This is, quite frankly, a fascinating duality of thought.

</comment><comment><USER66> or maybe respondents are just more honest nowadays

</comment><comment><USER67> It's genuinely depressing to think that a large number of guys now has no access to explore intimacy and partnership (or very little). No one's owed sex of course but it's like we're breaking aspects of society. And I think you'd naturally find women are less able to find meaning themselves here so it's not just a men's pity party.

I wonder, if this is a dating app phenomenon, if there's anything that can be done thats healthier for our society. Banning the apps isn't the right way, but is there some means of adding balance?

<comment><USER68> Enforced communal participation in events — similar to having to file your taxes , you just participate in X number of community events in a X km region from your residence — would help people get off the screens and get outside in a context other than work.

Similar to how In high school you need 40 hrs of community service to graduate

Edit: ok not 'enforced' but there should be some sort of government incentive

<comment><USER58> The irony is that if you do this for the purposes of finding a date, then the efficient stay-at-home solution is to essentially just use Tinder, which optimizes the process, so we're full circle.

Unless, of course, using Tinder unevenly weights physical attractiveness and going to community events more evenly weights other forms of attraction (which is probably the case), in which case going out more could be better than using Tinder for some people.

<comment><USER69> > using Tinder unevenly weights physical attractiveness and going to community > events more evenly weights other forms of attraction

I am very convinced this would be the case.

I remember reading about a study a while ago about relative attractiveness in heterosexual couples (i.e. how the attractiveness of the man compares to that of the woman). The finding was that there was a strong correlation in relative attractiveness in couples who started dating shortly after meeting, and less of a correlation in couples who knew each other for a long time before dating. Both groups of couples reported similar overall relationship satisfaction.

It makes sense if you think about it: if you get together right after meeting, you probably didn't have much to go on besides the superficial. Things like personality take longer to understand. Tinder is like a distillation of the superficial.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> Sex is not the be all and end all of living an awesome life. Just because blind nature created you rife with the instinctual passion of desire does not mean you have to live as a slave to it.

Channel that desire into hobbies that are actually interesting to you, and enjoy life.

Sex, intimacy, relationships, marriage and the like do not automatically guarantee you happiness, as perfectly illustrated by this masterpiece: [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0147612/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0147612/)

<comment><USER71> Sex, food and shelter are necessary conditions for an "awesome life" for most people. You could argue they aren't sufficient and you need more ( like spirituality, community, etc ), but it's disingenuous to dismiss it as an unnecessary condition that you could distract yourself with hobbies.

Response to (sridca):

Yes, I'm well aware of the difference between need and desire.

But you can't have an "awesome life" if your major desires ( food, shelter and sex ) aren't met.

Also, I said sex is a necessary condition for most people to live an "awesome life", not all people. You misread that part. And by most people, I mean everyone barring the exceptional minority with physical or genetic ailments.

Can you live without sex? Sure. Can you live an "awesome life" without sex. I highly doubt it. But people are willing to rationalize anything I guess.

Food, sex and shelter are pretty much our biological imperatives. Not sure how you can live an "awesome life" without your basic natural desires being met.

But if you are happy living a sexless life, then all the best to you. This is a difference of opinion that we are just going to live with.

<comment><USER72> > Also, I said sex is a necessary condition for most people to live an > "awesome life", not all people. You misread that part. And by most people, I > mean everyone barring the exceptional minority with physical or genetic > ailments.

Strong disagreement here.

Sex is not necessary. It's way overblown, and anyone that has regular sex (or the potential to get it) will concede that point. It's definitely not worth the drama that usually follows it.

Food is necessary, cause without it you will die.

Shelter is necessary, cause without it you will die as well (eventually, not immediately)

Sex it _not_ necessary. In fact, I was always confused and flabbergasted by the lengths people will go to to get it. It's remarkable - it's probably evolution at work, but still never ceases to amaze me. People will tolerate the most insane things I've ever witnessed just to put one reproductive organ into another. If an alien race was watching this, they'd die in laughter.

Also, the obsession with sex that modern cinema, newspapers (think scandals etc.), indirectly facebook/instagram, on every billboard hot naked women are selling you something (hot naked women cleaning service, hot naked women car wash/sales/etc.) cannot be healthy. Just cannot be! I don't understand this obsession at all. Don't people have literally anything better to do? Do people really have this much free time?

OT: I'm glad to see this topic on HN cause the human bonding in general is a very interesting topic. Wish we could discuss it more, cause it feels like we, as a society, just go with the momentum instead of sitting down and thinking long-term consequences of what we are doing. It's almost shameful and definitely looked down upon to suggest traditional values and roles, even though those traditional values were result of thousands of years of various attempts. Surely the previous generations weren't all imbeciles that couldn't conclude what works and what doesn't. I think it's safe to say that what we are doing now cannot work long-term.

<comment><USER73> It seems like it isn't necessary for you, but you can't project that lack of desire onto the majority. The reality is that if a large subset of people have a strong instinctual desire that goes continually unfulfilled, many will not have satisfying lives. That's not to deny that some won't move beyond it, through focus on other areas or deconstruction of their desire. However, that's unrealistic to expect for the majority.

<comment><USER70> Just because most people feel something does not make it a fact.

<comment><USER7> Saying that is just like telling a happy person that he is not really happy, that he only feels happy.

It's meaningless.

<comment><USER70> How exactly is saying it -- that just because most people feel something [desire to have sex] does not make it [that, quoting AQuantized's response to rofo1, sex is a necessity] a fact -- "just like" telling a happy person that he is not really happy and that he only feels happy?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> The reality is that about 50% or maybe as high as 80% of men are not attractive as sex partners to women who are able to have many choices. And young women are attractive to men of all ages...

That is, the top 20% of men are the ones that are most desirable(however defined) .

In the past the desire to have kids(and the result of needing the man to stick around), and the shame of being considered a slut if a woman's slept with many men, kept much of this in check.

</comment><comment><USER75> Why are articles like these yanked so quickly from the front page of HN?

<comment><USER76> Because people like me flag them.

If you want an actual explanation: I am a woman and this does not match with my lived experiences. In fact, the article seems to dehumanize women in a lot of places. I'm really tired of the incel narrative and the sorts of moral arguments that come along with articles of this type in the comment section. Seeing us represented this way really stresses me out. I'm just here to learn about tech stuff, geez.

<comment><USER58> I don't mean to belittle your decision to flag the article, but the flagging button is not a downvote button, and it is not there to hide things we personally disagree with. Flagging an article because it does not corroborate your personal experiences is somewhat irresponsible, especially for this community. There needs to be a better reason for flagging an article other than "my single data point says otherwise".

<comment><USER76> Hacker News Guidelines

What to Submit On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off- topic.

\</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

To me (and many others) this topic is political in nature and controversial. See for example the 2014 Isla Vista massacre. It does not gratify my intellectual curiosity. In fact, it only briefly pretends to be a data driven piece by including a graph at the beginning and citing an informal social media poll. It might be something interesting to discuss, but in my opinion this is not the forum for it.

<comment><USER77> _To me (and many others) this topic is political in nature and controversial._

How so? It's not about political decisions one way or another but observing a new phenomenon on the market for sex and relationships. There are tons of scientific angles available for approaching the issue. Why is this happening? What has changed? What factors can contribute?

Flagging comments such as "that's good, all sex should happen in a marriage anyway" would be contributing to the discussion, flagging the entire topic would not be.

<comment><USER76> >> To me (and many others) this topic is political in nature and controversial.

> How so?

It's in the very next sentence.

But oh by the way, the author doesn't have a great track record on this issue.

[https://slate.com/business/2018/05/robin-hanson-the-sex- redi...](https://slate.com/business/2018/05/robin-hanson-the-sex- redistribution-professor-interviewed.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> pretty tone deaf tbh

</comment><comment><USER79> Watch what comes next.

</comment><comment><USER80> First, I think it's interesting to put some error bars on the actual numbers. One, it's from the Post, so their pro "feminist" bias could skew toward narratives (Young men driving the decline in sex) that emphasize declining male potency. Two, this is "US people" so it's limited to one culture.

Second, to explain the effect, I offer the following two theories:

\- degraded sexual endocrinology. Hormones are very important in arousal and libido so this is likely the biggest effect.

\- society punishing male sexuality. The low evidence standard (in the court of public opinion) to female fake accusers, creates substantial risk for men. Under this theory, the age group effect can be explained as bigger on the young, who are still forming their attitudes about sex and observing society's discourse, than on older people who came of age in a less risky era.

It's unclear to me how "downregulating sex" by social / hormonal mechanisms is affected by the massive viewership of porn.

The other most interesting theories I think are the economic ones (changing income), because sexual biology is intimately wired with resources seeking in our brains, in ways more pronounced for women than for men.

</comment><comment><USER81> The ammount of borderline incel rethoric in this discussion thread is concerning.

</comment><comment><USER5> The most populous nation on the planet has a misbalance of men:women. That's all it really takes.

<comment><USER46> This article seems to focus on the United States, where there really isn't an imbalance.

<comment><USER5> Except that 20s-30s men are competing directly against other, college aged men. And maybe that's enough.

Edit-another pet theory is a changing climate. Cultures in drier climates tend to be more sexually conservative. A large portion of the US has been in drought conditions for decades

<comment><USER46> Colleges in the United States tend to have a female majority at the undergraduate level.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Leaving PHP, MySQL and Wordpress behind - <AUTHOR> http://www.srirangan.net/2012-10-leaving-php-mysql-wordpress-behind

<comment><USER2> saturdays on HN ~ no text is too empty to make it on the front page!</comment>


Ask HN: What are your predictions on the server CPU market for 2019? - <AUTHOR> Will EPYC be able to compete with Xeon in TCO? Will Intel need to crash their prices to fight off AMD?<p>What will happen when AMD hits 10nm in its servers, is it game over for Intel? <comment><USER2> Management of Intel is accustomed to have 60% profits and need a mind change and a price drop. I foresee that AMD will get a lot of market share: 30-50% and I use this wide range since besides price/performance there is also the factor of security. Looking at Spectre et al. AMD has a safer product. Last but not least, a single EPYC CPU is also an I/O monster: 128 PCI lanes for AMD vs 40 PCI lanes for Intel.

<comment><USER3> And the former CEO of Intel said their goal was to keep AMD to 15-20% of the server market. I agree. I think they will be able to capture more than 20%... 30-50% seems reasonable.

<comment><USER4> > keep AMD to 15-20% of the server market

For the position that Intel is in (x86 cpu dominance) this is awkward thing to say from a FTC point of view.

<comment><USER5> Its not like they require OEMs to bundle their Shopping Assistant with every CPU installation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yes, epyc will be competitive, but xeon will still dominate. Mild price drops, or Intel "discovers" (coffee lake/8086k) extra cores/ghz under a mattress. A lot of budget gets spent under the "nobody gets fired for buying xxxx" principal. 10nm changes none of this, sadly. Amd has had better hardware before.

<comment><USER3> They've also had close to 50% of the market before.

And the "No one gets fired for buying xxxx" works more with software than with hardware. x86 CPUs are essentially a commodity. The best price / performance + performance density + energy efficiency will probably win. Previously Intel had 2/3 (perf density and energy efficiency). With the new EPYC they will probably have 0/3.

<comment><USER4> Some shops will literally buy from the same vendor even if perf/$ is 3x higher going another route. The IT director at place years ago would only go with the most expensive HP stuff, we literally could have had 3x the compute and 4x the storage for going super micro. Even if if his ridiculous MTBF numbers for SM were true, we still would have had 1.5x compute and 3x storage after 3 years for the same price.

So yes, if EPYC isn't offered on the right vendor platforms, they will be shutout even if perf and density are better.

<comment><USER7> > Some shops will literally buy from the same vendor even if perf/$ is 3x > higher going another route.

How many is "some", though? More specifically, what portion of the market do they represent?

I'm actually genuinely curious as to whether anyone has a feel for this, as, if the proportion is particularly high, it would explain why even AWS's prices seem competitive to some managers who I would have otherwise thought would have an idea of how cheap commodity hardware is.

Previously, I thought only "enterprise" shops suffered from this, where the multiplier can easily be 10x for the most vendor-locked-in enterprisey hardware like storage, network, and support (where the multiplier can be infinity!) even if they pay no premium on the commodity compute.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm excited about ARM chips from Qualcomm and Cavium, hoping to see open source commits to projects to support the architecture.

<comment><USER9> I too, am interested in the acquired work of Cavium.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> There will be a lot of headlines about Intel being doomed. And they will continue to make money hand over fist, with very little loss of market share.

Contrast the times when everyone was certain Microsoft's days of reign are over. Linux was cheaper, OS C was better, and in the end, nothing really changed.

</comment><comment><USER11> Xeon is still better for complex workloads like databases since its inter-core latency is lower. Epyc is better when there is no shared data between cores. I'd say public cloud will pick up Epyc for such workloads. They may also use Epyc as a 4x8 core VMs with VM affinity locked to each die. Xeon will continue to be the standard for complex workloads.

<comment><USER7> > Xeon is still better for complex workloads like databases since its inter- > core latency is lower.

Has that been demonstrated to be true, though, especially in light of Epyc's much wider PCIe bandwidth?

For example, would a high-concurrency OLTP-type workload suffer as much from increased inter-core latency as a single-query OLAP workload?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This question would benefit from answers that reflect what the large public cloud providers, such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft choose for their server farms. I would hazard to guess that they would use AMD as a lever on Intel and vice versa.</comment>


How many lines of code does it take to create the Android OS - <AUTHOR> http://www.gubatron.com/blog/2010/05/23/how-many-lines-of-code-does-it-take-to-create-the-android-os/

<comment><USER2> Wait, what? 3 million lines of XML. Oh yuck yuck yuck.

Beyond that, I'm surprised there's more C than Java, and doubly surprised that C++ comes in behind all of the aforementioned languages.

<comment><USER3> Much of the XML may be generated stuff? Does this include the kernel, which would be C?

<comment><USER4> According to Wikipedia the full linux 2.6 kernel tree is now around 12 million LOC. So I'd be guessing a good chunk of the 2.8 million lines of C in Android is the kernel. It'd really depend on how many lines the "core" parts of the kernel take up (not that much, I bet) but also how much is left in the Android tree even if it's not really used or even compiled in.

I'm also interested to know what makes up all that XML, though.

<comment><USER5> You're right. XML is about 25% of the code (~3M of ~12M lines, ignoring blank lines). And overall, some 20% of the project is comments (~3M comments of ~15M lines code + comment, again ignoring blank lines). And in spite of that, they appear to have several small things with no comments whatsoever. Most of the other stuff is about what you'd expect, though: the header files and assembly have the most comments, while the one-off programs have very few.

Still, I wonder what they used Lisp for? Or why they used so many different tools? I mean, Perl was all but made to replace awk & sed. Did they have several people who did little one-off tasks in their favorite language when they were pressed for time?

Must be nice to get the tools you want, though, instead of being subject to absurd decisions by superiors (think "Daily WTF material").

<comment><USER6> The Android robot to McCarthy: You get 144 lines to write in lisp. What would you like to write?

McCarthy to the Android robot: Umm. Curse out the other languages for being cheap knockoffs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This looks like cumulative lines of code for all the projects that go into Android (across all the platforms that they are supported on.)

For instance C#, DOS Batch, IDL etc are listed. I don't believe that Android has a runtime for any of these.

</comment><comment><USER4> FWIW, I'd be really interested to see this reorganised as LOC per component.

</comment><comment><USER8> A project made up of 12 million lines of code, and Google can give it away for free. Mind boggling. There's not many can do that.

<comment><USER9> Well, Google can receive a huge chunk of that for free, add their contribution, and give that result away. It's still a great thing, but let's not forget credit for the shoulders they are standing on.

I'd be interested to know the numbers for the parts that are unique to Android, as well as how much has been added to parts that are not unique...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This really puts FONC in perspective.

</comment><comment><USER11> PHP is making a disappointing showing with a whopping 3 LOC!

<comment><USER12> i think it should be a phpinfo() <?php phpinfo(); ?>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> D?! Which D are we talking about here?

<comment><USER6> The one that comes after C.</comment></comment>


Astronomers discover diamond planet - <AUTHOR> http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/multimedia/pia15622.html

<comment><AUTHOR> "The surface of this planet is likely covered in graphite and diamond rather than water and granite," said Nikku Madhusudhan, the Yale researcher

</comment><comment><USER2> I was not able to find any reference to "diamonds" as the title here would have you believe. Perhaps you posted the wrong URL?</comment>