Airbnb's Battle to Stay Private - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-06/inside-airbnb-s-battle-to-stay-private <comment><USER2> AirBnB is such a great business. No significant competition for now among startups. Primary (initial) market is different from the incumbents (hotels) and it can gradually chip away from their market share too.

It also has better network-effect than say Uber (which has per-city network effect but no significant global network-effect) and less competition than latter. The "moat" is super strong and the leadership (Brian, Joe et al.) seem to be really good.

I'm so in awe of their prospect. My only misgiving is that they rejected my application (which proves no one's perfect after all - as they seem to also make hiring mistakes:P)

<comment><USER3> Is VRBO/HomeAway not a significant competitor? It's owned by Expedia, so it has a pretty huge backing.

I usually check both AirBnB and HomeAway when I'm looking for a rental and don't see any reason to be loyal to one over the other. (AirBnB has a better website/app, but the whole experience is pretty similar.)

<comment><USER4> This is the first time I've heard of either VRBO or HomeAway. I assume they have a much smaller presence.

<comment><USER5> VRBO has been around since 1995. My parents had their vacation condo listed on there for a long time. The reason you don't hear about them is that they weren't controversial with sharing out rooms and didn't invest in pretty design.

I really think they dropped the ball when Airbnb moved into the space

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting bit about what Airbnb has been doing with all their raised VC...

> The addition of Tosi in 2015 was a signal for Wall Street to pay attention > to the company. He was eager to create new, cash-generating ventures at > Airbnb, people familiar with his work said. He quietly built a hedge fund > within the company's finance department. He used a portion of capital from > the balance sheet to buy stocks, currencies and fixed-income securities, > mimicking the treasury fund he ran at Blackstone. The side project > represented 30 percent of the company's cash flow last year and made about > $5 million a month for Airbnb, the people said.

<comment><USER7> What? That's absolutely wild. Is this typical? How does it compare to what, say, Alphabet's treasury does?

<comment><USER8> Yes. This is very typical. What do you think Apple does with the hundreds of billions on its balance sheet? It's not sitting in a savings account earning interest.

Sure Apple uses some cash to build factories and technology but has an internal hedge fund invest the majority of it.

Same goes for Google, Microsoft, etc.

<comment><USER9> So in the end companies use their cash to invest in each other? I have a hard time wrapping my head around the economic impact but it doesn't look very healthy to me (or is it?)

<comment><USER10> It kind of makes sense from the investor's perspective.

Let's say that I've invested 100m in Apple, and that's the amount I wish to have invested. Apple does not need cash at the moment and is currently reinvesting it in other companies. The alternative would be for them to redistribute money to shareholders - say, I'd get 20m back, and could reinvest it in other companies myself. But there's a big difference - if _I_ 'd do it, the 20m would get taxed; if Apple does it directly, then it's not.

<comment><USER11> Stock buybacks are a much better approach than simple dividends from a tax standpoint.

I invest in Apple get say 1%. Over next 20 years Apple buys back 50% of it's stock. I now own 2% of Apple without paying any taxes.

<comment><USER12> Hm.. You still own 1% of Apple right? Otherwise, what happens at the end of 20 years when a 100 investors each buy 1%?

<comment><USER11> Apple can only buy stock when someone sells it.

Consider there are 100 shares and you own 1 of them. Now Apple buys 1 share from someone that sold it, that means there are 99 shares and you own 1 of them. Repeat until Apple buys 50 shares, there are 50 outstanding and you own 1 share. Now, apple does a 1:2 split so there are 100 outstanding shares and you own 2 of them post split.

It's true that the people selling stocks have to pay capital gains. However, they always need to do that when selling shares to anyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Before I say what I'm about to say: I know nothing about Airbnb's finances (aside from what's mentioned in the article) and I have no idea if it actually does or does not make sense for them to go public this year from the standpoint of the success of their business.

However, in a general sense, I believe that any company that provides their employees equity as a part of compensation has a moral obligation to get to a point where they can provide liquidity to those employees. It seems the founders and some early employees of Airbnb were able to cash out some of their shares in previous VC rounds, but that likely leaves the bulk of employees holding options or stock in a position of hanging onto something they aren't sure they'll ever be able to cash out.

Obviously there needs to be a balance of priorities: going public in a situation where the stock price will likely tank or the business will fail before employees can sell will of course not help anyone. But ignoring the fact that you have a ton of employees depending on some sort of liquidity event (even if it's just a company-initiated stock buyback) is IMO unethical.

Not saying that's definitely what's happening here at Airbnb, but the article sure makes it smell that way.

<comment><USER14> If these companies were profitable from the beginning, some sort of profit sharing mechanism could compensate for providing a financial reward. The challenge is that these businesses are setup to lose money until they get to some "scale" not profit margin. The scale goal leads founders to raise tons of Venture Capital and even VC's like Bill Gurley says that the constraint of profitability has been relaxed across the industry[1].

Bill says it's 10 or 100 times easier to lose 40 million to make 100 million than it is to run a profitable company to 100 million. If you extrapolate that out, there is no incentive from the majority stake holders (VC's) to IPO until they are ready.

[1] - [https://youtu.be/-cxK1YQfMXA?t=1165](https://youtu.be/-cxK1YQfMXA?t=1165)

<comment><USER13> Sure, but I expect not all companies can be run profitably from day one, or even close. Some markets also benefit from network effects, so prioritizing profit over growth can lead to your eventual failure.

Arguably the excessive availability of venture capital makes it a lot easier to go the growth/scale route, and to do so on someone else's dime, and this _encourages_ people to ignore the idea of building a profitable business from the beginning. And that sucks, but if you're trying to enter a market where the norm is to run at a loss in order to gain scale, you probably aren't going to be successful avoiding VC money and charging higher prices, unless you can differentiate yourself as a premium product, or something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The linchpin for a lot of technology companies staying private has been Softbank. As they highlight in this article:

> The Japanese firm _dumped billions of dollars_ into Uber, WeWork Cos. and > other highly valued tech startups in the last year.

I wonder where are these guys getting so much money to "dump". And once all of this is over what will they really be remembered for?

<comment><USER16> > I wonder where are these guys getting so much money to "dump"

They invested in Alibaba early. One of the best VC investments of all time. $58 billion return.

<comment><USER17> 30% of alibaba stock right? That is much more than 58 billions now...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The interesting thing I read from reddit was that 30% of Airbnb's cash flow last year came from an internal hedge fund holding currencies, equities, fixed income. This hedge fund was set up by their ex-CFO, so it's an interesting model for generating income. They take money from guests immediately, but do not pay out to hosts until the guests check in, this delay can be up to many months in advance. This gives them time to invest those assets how they see fit.

The danger here is that 30% of their cash flow is the result of an incredible bull market, so what happens to Airbnb when we hit a recession?

<comment><USER19> > so what happens to Airbnb when we hit a recession

Probably the same thing that happened to GE Capital, which almost managed to capsize GE itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> So as per article, Tosi's internal hedge fund contributed to $60m ($5m per month) of Airbnb's $93m annual profit?

<comment><USER21> Well, $60M of revenue to Airbnb's $2.1B revenue, and of that revenue, $93M was profit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Why would VC's give Airbnb such much idle cash. 5.3 Billion in cash reserves is ~56 years of their current earnings.

Couldn't VC's take some of that money and invest elsewhere and get better returns on the cash than it sitting unused in a company?

<comment><USER23> i think youre under estimating the battles Airbnb is fighting in most of its largest markets

<comment><USER22> Sure, and if they need more money they can go to VCs. However Im suprised VCs will give them all the cash up front. Figured it'd be something like, "Hey I'll commit 1Billion in cash to your needs, however I'm currently holding it in a mutal fund myself. Let me know when you need it"</comment></comment></comment>


2017 TESLA MODEL S P100D FIRST TEST: A NEW RECORD – 0-60 MPH IN 2.28 SECONDS - <AUTHOR> http://www.motortrend.com/cars/tesla/model-s/2017/2017-tesla-model-s-p100d-first-test-review <comment><USER2> Can someone please fix the shouty caps?

</comment><comment><USER3> Is "Ludicrous" mode street legal? I can't imagine any situation where it would be safe to accelerate that fast on a public road.

<comment><USER4> An example: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRR31NaXoVw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRR31NaXoVw)

I'm not sure if it was set up or not, but acceleration can help a lot in many situations. Probably more common case than starting from 0mph is to escape from dangerous situation while moving (i.e. on a highway, already moving with high speed, and still having the ability to be dynamic)</comment></comment>


Why Java Will Always Be Slower Than C++ (2001) - <AUTHOR> http://www.jelovic.com/articles/why_java_is_slow.htm <comment><USER2> This article is from August 2001 and a lot has changed since then. Yet I agree that C++ is unbeatable in terms of speed and memory usage.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh thanks, I'll add the year to the title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think this illustrates the problems with the lack of stack allocation:

[http://www.java-gaming.org/topics/jstackalloc-stack- allocati...](http://www.java-gaming.org/topics/jstackalloc-stack-allocation- of-quot-value-quot-objects-in-java/18843/view.html)</comment>


Comparing HTTP/3 vs. HTTP/2 Performance - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cloudflare.com/http-3-vs-http-2/ <comment><USER3> So, as far as the results: In their synthetic benchmarks, they find negligible to no improvement:

> For a small test page of 15KB, HTTP/3 takes an average of 443ms to load > compared to 458ms for HTTP/2\. However, once we increase the page size to > 1MB that advantage disappears: HTTP/3 is just slightly slower than HTTP/2 on > our network today, taking 2.33s to load versus 2.30s

And in their closer to real world benchmarks, they find no improvement, instead some negligible degradation.

> As you can see, HTTP/3 performance still trails HTTP/2 performance, by about > 1-4% on average in North America and similar results are seen in Europe, > Asia and South America. We suspect this could be due to the difference in > congestion algorithms: HTTP/2 on BBR v1 vs. HTTP/3 on CUBIC. In the future, > we'll work to support the same congestion algorithm on both to get a more > accurate apples-to-apples comparison.

As a developer of web apps, I will personally continue to not think that much about HTTP/3\. Perhaps in the future network/systems engineers will have figured out how to make it bear fruit? I don't know, but it seems to me of unclear wisdom to count on it.

<comment><USER4> There's something else, performance aside, that's really exciting about HTTP/3: Fixing a decades old layering violation that has made truly mobile internet impossible.

In TCP, a connection is uniquely identified by the following tuple:

        (src ip, src port, dst ip, dst port)

The issue is that we depend not only on layer 4 details (port numbers) but also on layer 3 information (IP addresses). This means we can not ever keep a connection alive when moving from one network and hence IP address into another.

We can do some trickery to let people keep their addresses while inside of a network, but switch from mobile data to wifi and every TCP connection drops.

This is easy enough to solve, in theory. Give every connection an unique ID, and then remember the last address you received a packet for that connection from, ideally in the kernel. This makes IP addresses completely transparent to applications, just like MAC addresses are. However, the tuple is assumed almost everywhere and NAT makes new layer 4 protocols impossible. Unless you layer them over UDP. And this is exactly what Wireguard, QUIC, mosh and others do. Once it's ubiquitous, you'll be able to start an upload or download at home, hop on your bike, ride to the office, and finish it without the connection dropping once.

<comment><USER5> Part of me consider HTTP/3 as an application protocol and disagree with this. This is not a problem for HTTP to solve but a problem for the routing protocol to solve. Is it desirable to reinvent a routing protocol at the application layer, so that we can use it as another transport protocol and so on? Shouldn't we be using a single, unique 128bit address for every device regardless of which physical network it is attached to, by now? This is not a technological limitation: If the same operator would administer both local wifi and long distance GSM then of course you would not loose your IP, as you do not lose it when you hop from one GSM antenna to the next.

...and part of me think HTTP/3 could be that universal transport protocol that could eventually solve this problem, and then I agree.

<comment><USER4> Yes, this shouldn't be done at the application layer. This is why it's done in QUIC, which is layer 4.5-ish. HTTP/3 runs on top of that.

The "flat address space" idea however is completely ridiculous. That would mean every node on the internet keeping track of the path to every singe other node. This is what ethernet does and it barely scales to ten or so thousand nodes. Routers are already struggling hard with the 700k table entries we have for the IPv4 internet. To the point where providers actually wrap IP packets inside of simpler protocols once they enter the network.

We need some kind of hierarchical addressing that expresses the location of a node in the network. We know this works. We just need the layers above not to rely on those addresses staying constant.

<comment><USER6> > The "flat address space" idea however is completely ridiculous. That would > mean every node on the internet keeping track of the path to every singe > other node. This is what ethernet does and it barely scales to ten or so > thousand nodes. Routers are already struggling hard with the 700k table > entries we have for the IPv4 internet. To the point where providers actually > wrap IP packets inside of simpler protocols once they enter the network.

If anything, we need a _more_ hierarchical structure, with stricter separations by, e.g. Continent/Country/Province and possibly down to street or even house level, so routers can more easily just throw the data in the right general direction. Note the obvious privacy problem there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A major benefit of HTTP/3 is the ability to transparently switch from one network connection to another without restarting requests.

You could be midway through a gaming session over websocket, and walk away from your wifi, and you shouldn't notice a glitch.

Nearly nothing else offers that ability, and it's very annoying, especially in offices with hundreds of wifi access points - I should be able to walk down the corridor on a video call without glitchiness!

MPTCP (developed mostly by Apple) offers the same, but Google and Microsoft are holding it back, for some unknown reason.

<comment><USER8> This is called WiFi handoff and any enterprise AP deployment worth a damn should have this sorted out, albeit in a proprietary manner. The WiFi standard already has a client establishing a connection to a new AP before giving up the old one at the actual "physical" transport layer, these proprietary extensions exchange existing connection state information over the wired backbone between APs when a client is attempting to move from one to the other so that it can theoretically be a "seamless" experience. In theory, anyway.

<comment><USER9> Presumably HTTP/3 could do WiFi-> 4G -> WiFi -> 5G -> WiFi... hand-offs as you're moving around.

<comment><USER10> Genuinely asking, is it actually working or is that like the promises of multiplexing in HTTP/2 that don't really work IRL ?

<comment><USER11> Both share the same attributes: The spec allows them to work, but they require lots of effort on the implementation side to get it right. HTTP/2 require a library which does sane write scheduling and prioritization to make it work.

QUIC handoffs are a lot more complicated. They will require a library which supports all the necessary features. And it will require infrastructure which supports it. Without infrastructure support, packets from the client might get routed to the wrong host after a IP tuple change, and can from there on not associated with the QUIC connection.

My guess is some QUIC deployments will figure out how to make it work - <USER2> likely won't, since a lot of efforts is involved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This does not mention if the tests also simulated and measured packet loss.

With a good network connection with little packet loss, I wouldn't expect much benefit to /3\. Especially since all the server and client implementations are immature and in user space without kernel support.

The benefits should show up with (poor) mobile connections.

<comment><USER13> Thanks for pointing this out! I really wish the blog would explain that better. /3 will really shine where connection has degradation.

For me the most exciting part is the seamless network switching potential of /3 on mobile devices

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > With HTTP/2, any interruption (packet loss) in the TCP connection blocks all > streams (Head of line blocking).

This issue is really noticeable on my crappy home mobile internet when loading web pages, in combination with the timeout being absurdly long for reasons I don't understand.

<comment><USER15> This is a major set back introduced with HTTP/2 and I'm not sure why this is not mentioned often.

Under firefox you can set "network.http.sdpy.enable" to false to switch back to HTTP/1.

The improvement I have with HTTP2 is hardly noticeable, but HOL blocking is very tangible as soon as you have occasional random packet loss.

<comment><USER14> > Under firefox you can set "network.http.sdpy.enable" to false to switch back > to HTTP/1.

Thanks! I might have to try that out, currently relegated to tunneling everything over sshuttle which of course makes things slower but reliable since it decompiles the TCP packets making them appear to work flawlessly to HTTP... HTTP1 may be a faster solution.

[edit]

Trying this now. Correction on parent comment for Firefox:

      goto:
      about:config

      search:
      network.http.spdy.enabled.http2

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> In Node.js (curious to hear about other ecosystems), HTTP/2 hasn't even caught on yet. Sure, it's technically supported by Node core and various frameworks, but hardly anyone is really using it. Most of the benefits that HTTP/2 brings to the table require a new model that doesn't map cleanly to the traditional request/response lifecycle. It seems harder to program applications using HTTP/2 because of that. Perhaps some of it is what we are used to and the burden of learning something new, but I don't think that's the whole story. I wonder if future HTTP versions will address this in some way or if it is going to continue to be the new normal. It will be interesting to see what the adoption curve looks like for HTTP/3 and onward. I'm still building everything on HTTP/1.1 (RFC 7230) and have no plans to change that any time soon, even though I can appreciate the features that are available in the newer versions.

<comment><USER9> Turns out it's not really an issue in practice, since you rarely serve naked Node.js to the Internet. If you put something like a load balancer (ELB) or reverse proxy (Nginx) in front of your service which speaks HTTP/2, you already get 95% of the benefits. I expect HTTP/3 to likewise just be a toggle offered by AWS/GCP/Azure/NGinx etc. in the future, and your users will see an immediate benefit.

<comment><USER17> Cloudflare includes such a toggle for HTTP/3, though to be honest I forget if it's still in a closed beta or more generally available.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It is possible to compare HTTP/3 to HTTP/2 & HTTP/1 using Python, as Hypercorn (via aioquic for HTTP/3) supports all three.

When I compared late last year I found HTTP/3 to be noticeably slower, [https://pgjones.dev/blog/early-look-at- http3-2019/](https://pgjones.dev/blog/early-look-at-http3-2019/) however my test was much less comprehensive than the one here.

</comment><comment><USER19> So I can't find the reference but I believe there was a paper a few months back claiming that there were big issues with fairness (as I understand the word) with other protocols.

The gist of it was that Quic tends to just flat out choke out TCP running on the same network paths?

Anyone know about this?

There is some mention of BBRv2 improving fairness but not the outside academic paper I was looking for -

[https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/106/materials/slides-10...](https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/106/materials/slides-106-iccrg- update-on-bbrv2)

</comment><comment><USER20> When you're ready for an actual improvement check out [https://rsocket.io/](https://rsocket.io/)

</comment><comment><USER21> So in a former life I worked on Google Fiber and, among other things, wrote a pure JS Speedtest (before Ookla had one alhtough there's might've been in beta by then). It's still there ([http://speed.googlefiber.net](http://speed.googlefiber.net)). This was necessary because Google Fiber installers use Chromebooks to verify installations and Chromebooks don't support Flash.

This is a surprisingly difficult problem, especially given the constraints of using pure JS. Some issues that spring to mind included:

\- The User-Agent is meaningless on iPhones, basically because Steve Jobs got sick of leaking new models in Apache logs. There are other ways of figuring this out but it's a huge pain.

\- Send too much traffic and you can crash the browser, particularly on mobile devices;

\- To maximize throughput it became necessary to use a range of ports and simultaneously communicate on all of them. This in turn could be an issue with firewalls;

\- Run the test too long and performance in many cases would start to degrade;

\- Send too much traffic and you could understate the connection speed;

\- Sending larger blobs tended to be better for measuring throughput but too large could degrade performance or crash the browser. Of course, what "too large" was varied by device;

\- HTTPS was abysmal for raw throughput on all but the beefiest of computers;

\- To get the best results you needed to turn off a bunch of stuff like Nagel's algorithm and any implicit gzip compression;

\- You'd have to send random data to avoid caching even with careful HTTP headers that should've disabled caching.

And so on.

Perhaps the most vexing issue that I was never able to pin down was with Chrome on Linux. In certain circumstances (and I never figured out what exactly they were other than high throughput), Chrome on Linux would write the blobs it downloaded to /tmp (default behaviour) and never release them until you refreshed the Webpage. And no there were no dangling references. The only clue this was happening was that Chrome would start spitting weird error messages to the console and those errors couldn't be trapped.

So pure JS could actually do a lot and I actually spent a fair amount of effort to get this to accurately show speeds up to 10G (I got up to 8.5G down and ~7G up on Chrome on a MBP).

But getting back to the article at hand, what you tend to find is how terribly TCP does with latency. A small increase in latency would have a devastating effect on reported speeds.

Anyone from Australia should be intimately familiar with this as it's clear (at least to me) that many if not most services are never tested on or designed for high-latency networks. 300ms RTT vs <80ms can be the difference between a relatively snappy SPA and something that is utterly unusable due to serial loads and excessive round trips.

So looking at this article, the first thing I searched for was the word "latency" and I didn't find it. Now sure the idea of a CDN like Cloudfare is to have a POP close to most customers but that just isn't always possible. Plus you hit things not in the CDN. Even DNS latency matters here where pople have shown meaningful improvements in Web performance by just having a hot cache of likely DNS lookups.

The degradation in throughput in TCP that comes from latency is well-known academically. It just doesn't seem to be known about, given attention to or otherwise catered for in user-facing services. Will HTTP/3 help with this? I have no idea. But I'd like to know before someone dismisses it as having minimal improvements or, worse, as degrading performance.

<comment><USER22> They did mention multiple geographic locations as well as RTT (Round Trip Time) which is somewhat equivalent to latency, no?

<comment><USER23> The challenge to control for is that they used WebPageTest, which tends to have locations in data centers near where they do. Using the traffic shaping options can add latency but what you really want is random latency and packet loss to simulate real-world usage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm curious as to how good the bandwidth estimation is. That's something that can certainly be improved from TCP, but it's also something that has a lot of corner cases and is not usually done super well in UDP protocols (e.g. WebRTC)

</comment><comment><USER25> I wonder how many different artifacts Cloudflare is serving on this test page. Maybe a real test is the difference grouped by the number of files served on a single page load.

</comment><comment><USER26> So http3 will be using UDP? Makes sense.

Will we see more performance tuning when it comes to MTU sizes?

</comment><comment><USER27> The USP of h3 isn't peak performance, it's 95th percentile latencies.

</comment><comment><USER28> TLDR: still slightly slower, but "very excited"</comment>


This weekend project someone wants to buy at $10,000 bucks - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/facebook-album-downloader/jcheapnmfbmcccnbjhhkmleoiljgpmkl

<comment><USER2> I did an iOS app that does something similar [http://albumsyncer.jyothepro.com/](http://albumsyncer.jyothepro.com/) but not enough users :(

</comment><comment><USER3> Sell for $16.000. Go build something else. Repeat.

<comment><USER4> FYI that figure is $16 in most parts of the world. Use a comma ($16,000) for international audiences.

<comment><USER5> Actually, it's split pretty evenly. See this map.[1]

The main difference is that the English-speaking world mainly uses the comma, and HN is generally an English-language board.

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:20130228DecimalSeparator.s...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:20130228DecimalSeparator.svg)

<comment><USER6> That's not accurate. If you look at the article that image is used in[0], you'll see that while only 24% of the world's population uses a comma, 60% uses a full stop. So while yes, it's pretty much ubiquitous in Europe, worldwide 2.5x more people use the full stop.

Luckily, grouping by 3 digits and typically only displaying 2 decimal places makes it easy to determine the intended number based on context.

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

<comment><USER5> I would argue that percentage of population that uses one versus the other is not the best metric here to determine worldwide use, but rather geographic dispersion or likelihood of use in a random international communication. The parent comments were discussing the appropriateness of the comma/period as decimal on HN, as a forum of generally international interest. As such, sheer percentage of users is not as relevant as the accepted usage in an international or intercultural context. We end up being in agreement over the outcome, but disagree on the standard for measurement.

Example of why percentage population doesn't work: 14% of the world speaks Chinese natively by one estimate, the most of any language. [1] Does that mean that Chinese punctuation or syntactic standards are more likely to be used worldwide?

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers)

<comment><USER6> I like your Chinese example because it made me think about the root question, but I think there's an important distinction to be made in that while only a _plurality_ of people speak Chinese natively (and a small one at that, less that 1 of every 5 people), a _majority_ of people use the full stop decimal notation (and a decently large one at that, 3 of every 5).

If you pick a language at random, it is more likely to not be Chinese than it is to be Chinese, but it is more likely to be Chinese than any other single language. However, if you pick a notation at random it is both more likely to be full stop than any other notation as well as more likely to be full stop than any other specific notation (I believe the chart only showed three examples). I didn't take the time to look into it but it also appears that weighting each country equally (e.g. Luxembourg = China for probability's sake) would shift the balance in favor of comma notation, which may belie more cultural or regional significance than simply focusing on the population percentage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Could I please get some context?

<comment><USER8> I think the submission itself is an attempt to sell it for 10k.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Who wants to buy that?

<comment><USER9> Probably an adware company who wants a browser plugin that is appealing to "the masses."</comment></comment>


JUnit Test(expected = BadPracticeException.class) - <AUTHOR> http://artemzin.com/blog/test-expected-badpracticeexception/ <comment><USER2> still poor advice. should use [http://junit.org/apidocs/org/junit/rules/ExpectedException.h...](http://junit.org/apidocs/org/junit/rules/ExpectedException.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, ExpectedException rule is nice, added to the post. Thanks!</comment></comment>


Why the Web Won't Be Nirvana? (1995) - <AUTHOR> http://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirvana-185306 <comment><USER2> _Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we 'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Internet. Uh, sure._

Yeah, that'll never happen.

<comment><USER3> > How about electronic publishing? Try reading a book on disc. At best, it's > an unpleasant chore: the myopic glow of a clunky computer replaces the > friendly pages of a book.

In context, he's talking about reading books on a computer with it's CRT screen and he's correct. It wasn't the internet that made eBooks viable, it was computers coming in better form factors for reading. The internet was just the delivery mechanism.</comment></comment>


Going FLOSS-only on Android - <AUTHOR> https://codingquark.com/floss/2018/07/04/android-floss-life.html <comment><USER2> I would advice against using Chromium on Android. For one, it's still Google and to my knowledge still phones home to the mothership. For two, Chromium/Chrome is becoming the next IE and I sincerely believe that encouraging further ieficiation of the web towards Chrome is not desirable for anyone involved.

On the other side, I would amend AnySoft keyboard into that list, which is much more useful than Hacker's Keyboard (due to being less dense) and has a pretty okayish autocorrect (still better than the rest).

NewPipe is also a solid choice and I recommend it to everyone even if you don't want to FLOSS your phone since it's miles better than the youtube app (downloads, background play, doesn't require signup but still offers subscriptions and playlists, popup mode).

<comment><USER3> Chrome has been having a really negative effect on web standards recently. I don't want to derail anything going down that rabbit hole, but just to reitterate the point above: I wish more people would break away from Chrome.

They have a bad habit of trying to force standards through the W3C without thinking through what they're doing, they're really bad at responding to bug reports or engaging with devs, they regularly introduce breaking changes to existing web content without giving user overrides. The recent audio changes are a good example of just how broken their dev process is[0].

Firefox is still Firefox, they're fine. The Edge team honestly is pretty great too. Working with Chrome devs as a web developer kind of stinks, and I think it's partially because they're so dominant and they just don't have to care.

Especially on mobile, if you're even remotely a power user Firefox is just flat-out a better Android browser since it supports extensions.

[0]: [https://danshumway.com/blog/chrome- autoplay/](https://danshumway.com/blog/chrome-autoplay/)

<comment><USER2> I totally agree, the extensions in Firefox Mobile are simply a lifesaver and being able to seamlessly send links to the mothership computer at home is simply unbeatable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd love to do this to my phone (Moto G4). However I absolutely need my banking app, and I know it just wont work without Google Play running. Likewise as the article says, Google Maps is a _must_ even with location tracking off. I do switch off as much personal data leakage as I can, but I'm not naive enough to think that Google isn't still collecting data on me.

Unfortunately, I just don't think a free open source phone will full modern functionality is ever going to exist.

<comment><USER5> FOSS android user here (I'm on the HN Materialistic app now actually)!

I had the same issue with my bank, but I resolved it using the F-Droid app "Yalp Store", which wraps the playstore. Now I have my banking app on my phone!

It's not FOSS, but even on my Linux PC I have binary blobs for drivers and stuff. It's good enough for me, it might work for your app too

<comment><USER6> The problem is not obtaining the APK, that's the easy part. The hard part with a lot of online banking apps (as well as apps like Netflix) is that they use (and require) Google SafetyNet to ensure that your ROM is "safe" (i.e. hasn't been tampered with). The guys over at the MicroG project are trying to find ways around that but it's really a cat-and-mouse game. Last time I tried (which, admittedly, was quite a while ago), neither my online banking app nor Netflix worked for me on a custom ROM.

<comment><USER7> Hmm. I have MicroG since months and last i checked Netflix worked just fine.

<comment><USER6> That's good news! I assume you're using Magisk for root?

<comment><USER7> Actually no. I'm using Lineage su addon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It is worth noting that most ROMs are not FLOSS, and include binary blobs for GPU drivers, RIL services, and wireless drivers. The build process of lineageos involves copying select blobs from the factory firmware of a sample phone. The only true "FLOSS" ROM project is FSF's replicant, which is only available from phones that are old enough to have been reverse engineered.

<comment><USER9> Indeed. I believe the latest full-FLOSS device is Samsung Galaxy S3 with free WiFi driver, but it's not too bad since the latest laptop with no blobs using LibreBoot is 2008-era Thinkpad X200 isn't it? Similat generation of hardware, yet mobile telephony has come so far compared to laptops...

<comment><USER10> The latest FOSS device for workstations is the TALOS II [1]

[1] [https://www.raptorcs.com/TALOSII/](https://www.raptorcs.com/TALOSII/)

<comment><USER2> *latest FOSS device if you can fork over 5'000$

It's in no way comparable to a laptop or android phone that most people use and not practical as a FOSS device for the same group.

<comment><USER10> It is a workstation, not a desktop or laptop or smartphone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's not Android but HN readers might be interested in a FLOSS alternative; Ubuntu Touch. Despite being dropped by Canonical it's still going strong and is well worth a look.

[https://ubports.com/](https://ubports.com/)

<comment><USER12> Is it any good? I bought an Aquaris M10 with Ubuntu touch and, to be honest, I felt that the advertising was dishonest and left a bad taste in the mouth, especially as Ubuntu dropped it shortly after.

And it's not like I wanted the moon on a stick. I don't use 'apps'. Just capable web browser, reliable on-screen keyboard and a stable implementation of the promised 'convergence', would have done me fine.

My thoughts from two years ago: [https://blog.afandian.com/2016/04/i-got-a-bq- aquaris-m10-ubu...](https://blog.afandian.com/2016/04/i-got-a-bq- aquaris-m10-ubuntu-tablet/)

I still have it, and it's gathering dust. Would you recommend brushing it off and reinstalling?

<comment><USER11> I would say that it is absolutely worth brushing it off and reinstalling.

Looking at your laundry list I think a lot of your points are still valid. Importantly I don't think that it will ever be 'real' desktop Ubuntu. Like you I think that I was sold on that in the initial marketing and was disappointed by the tablet's reality.

That said if you approach it as a community project which is making real progress I think you'll enjoy it.

<comment><USER12> I suspected it would be at community-project stage, and I didn't really believe the Canonical hype. It's just it was plain unusable for anything I wanted to do (I hope that comes across as objective rather than unkind).

I'll have another look.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> >FLOSS-only

Lineage and Omni still isn't "going FLOSS-only." Drivers necessary for Android to run on one's device come in the form of binary blobs. LineageOS is ported by extracting those from the OEM firmware. A FLOSS-only ROM will be Replicant, which lags in releases and misses various things (3D graphics, GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth) but a valiant effort nevertheless.

<comment><USER14> Exactly. Due to the way that phone manufacturers support Android (which is shit), there are a lot of proprietary drivers/firmwares required that only work on an ancient kernel.

For a true FLOSS-friendly device, the Librem5 seems to be about as close as you can get (though some chips will still run proprietary firmware..)

<comment><USER9> This is going to be fixed in the future by Treble support, FWIW.

You'll still have blobs and proprietary drivers/firmwares but they'll be unlinked to Linux kernel versions/Android software versions

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wish that replacing the ROM was so easy. If you have a flagship device, it's achievable; but if you don't use flagship devices, it's frustratingly difficult and requires at the very least substantial technical chops and investigative skill. (And I have no interest in spending more money on flagship devices; I spend thousands of dollars on a laptop because I use it very heavily; but my requirements for a phone are very much more basic, so I am disinclined to spend much on one.)

I would _love_ to replace the ROM on my Samsung Galaxy J1 2016 or my Kogan Agora 6 to go with LineageOS with microG or similar, or even something more extreme; I'd even settle for just rooting the thing, for starters, so that I could use my own DNS server (which you can't do on a cell connection without using a VPN, which is annoying as it requires a passcode set on the device, but I don't want to do that). But no rooting tools succeed, and no alternative ROMs provide compatible builds.

Using LineageOS, as one example, seems to require me to craft a config file describing the device's capabilities and specifications (which I must find, _somehow_ ), then build LineageOS (thus I need to construct a suitable build environment), then get it onto the device in some way (admittedly the easiest part of the process).

I _want_ all of this, but I just don't have the energy to pursue this further to try to figure it out.

People keep on speaking of replacing the OS on your phone as straightforward, but it's _not_. Could someone please make this process easier for me?

<comment><USER16> Well, then you'll love Android's Project Treble, and its GSIs. GSI stands for Generic System Image, which means that they separated drivers from Android framework (it is a different partition, and they can communicate only through well-defined, stable IPC)

This works only on recent enough devices (devices launched with Oreo or better), but should apply to all of them, whatever their price range, and their popularity.

To clarify, there is a certification requirement when certifying for Google apps, that says that the device MUST boot and be functional on AOSP.

Many custom ROMs are available under this new GSI format: AOSP, Lineage, Resurrection Remix, Pixel Experience, OmniROM, CarbonROM, CrDroid, AOSP Extended, ... (see at [https://forum.xda-developers.com/project- treble/trebleenable...](https://forum.xda-developers.com/project- treble/trebleenabled-device-development/))

Also, it helps updating devices: Devices released with Android 8.0, with no update from the OEM, can be updated to Android 9.0

NB: I'm the maintainer of the "community AOSP GSI", which means that GSI doesn't exactly just work, but usually fixes are fairly easy

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just bought a Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 because of the flourishing custom ROM developer scene just to flash a Google-less AOSP Android P ROM in the next month.

Yes, there might be backdoors in the hardware itself, but at least I minimise any threat factor to myself in this regard, even if only through software.

Beside, minimalist functionalism is raison d'etre of the Unix Way, isn't it?

</comment><comment><USER17> It would be neat if one could have both worlds: have a phone which normally runs FLOSS, but if one needs Google things, it can spin up all the services required, and launch the app needed. And when one is finished with that app, press Quit to terminate all the Google services.

It seems phones are now powerful enough that even virtual machines should be possible...

<comment><USER3> What you're describing is a web browser. Spin up/connect to a service, in a sandbox, and then get rid of the app when you're done.

Of course, many of Google's own apps are not particularly web or mobile friendly. It annoys me to no end that for all that Chrome/Android is pushing the progressive web, basically zero of Google's own apps utilize it. The progressive web does have some pretty serious shortcomings and problems, but for the most part, pretty much every major Google app (Google Music, Youtube, Maps, GMail) could be thrown out of the app store and replaced with a progressive web app with offline access, and everything would work fine.

It's not even like the current offline support for their native stuff is any better than a progressive web app's would be; Google Music will often bug out and remove access to downloaded music if it can't find an Internet connection. Youtube Red loses and corrupts downloaded videos almost like it's on a schedule. A web cache would be just as reliable as whatever they're using now.

As far as I'm concerned, there's zero technical reason why we couldn't have this right now.

<comment><USER18> I like to think about it this way: web is for _documents_ , apps are for _tools_. If it can be linked to universally, it is a document. If it cannot, it is a tool. Would I install facebook.exe on my PC in order to browse it? No, it would feel like installing a virus. Then why would I do this on mobile?

<comment><USER3> I've had this conversation with people before on HN, but to take this philosophy even a step farther, I feel like I have an almost regressive view of most apps compared to a lot of people on here.

I honestly don't see the difference between an application like Google Maps and a document. Google Maps should be presentable in pure text without CSS, and the overlay is basically just styling on top of that. You have a list of points with information associated with them including Latitude and Longitude. XML is perfectly fine for that. Or you have a list of directions or reviews, which obviously should be presentable in pure text.

Same with Google Music. Google Music isn't an _application_. It's a search box that displays a list of links to audio files. It's fine that Google puts pretty interfaces on top of this stuff, and CSS is good for that, but I just still don't see what they're doing that requires native access.

Minus the absolutely horrible performance that would come out of using Electron and JS for everything, I really don't feel like it would be difficult to remake the majority of what people call native apps in HTML/CSS. A lot of the native apps on my computer are basically just fancy ways to present tree- like information.

Stuff like Gimp, or Blender, or a 3D game - okay, we can talk about applications. But Maps, or Youtube? I dunno, maybe I'm just old and cranky. Certainly Facebook and Reddit don't fit into those categories.

<comment><USER18> I find such things as email, maps and streaming services to be proper use cases for native applications, because they either require non-standard connectivity / caching implementations, or hardware features which are not equally available on all browser-connected devices. JavaScript and CSS should be used to enhance hypertext document browsing experience, not to replace OS- level applications where they are needed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I would love to go fully FLOSS on my phone. I would even love a dumbphone better. I just _need_ /love to use my smartphone for a few things:

\- Spotify

\- Google Maps

\- Sygic car navigation

\- WhatsApp/Telegram

There are just no viable fully FLOSS alternatives for all these services, AFAIK. Last time I had Lineage+MicroG these services kinda worked, but I didn't have the time to invest such that it would work as smooth as the closed source counterpart. Maybe I'll try again soon.

<comment><USER20> The task of FLOSS authors creating clients for walled gardens like Spotify always seems like a bit of own goal to me, tbh.

I think we all love our phones - it's this amazing silent revolution that's happened where ubiquitous computing has already happened (at least in the first world)

I understand you likely want specific features from the services you list but for others, if they were generics, this is the best either FLOSS or if not available, De-Googled list I could compile:

///Music

Mp3s

Spotify (closed source with a downloader on FDroid)

I'm not aware of any open source clients for the streaming services. Some friends use Youtube-dl on a pc and send then files across.

///Maps

OpenStreetMaps (edit: meant OSMAnd)

Maps

///Messaging

Signal

Silence (Secure SMS text messaging)

Telegram (On FDroid - again haven't checked with MicroG)

Whatsapp (Closed Source with a downloader on FDroid, although I haven't tested it with MicroG)

///Sygic car navigation

I don't think there's much hope for this one...

(edit: sorry for the horrible layout)

<comment><USER21>
        > ///Maps
        > OpenStreetMaps

Openstreetmap only supplies data - to use it one needs an application such as [https://osmand.net/](https://osmand.net/) or [https://maps.me/](https://maps.me/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> For all nutrition/food scanning purposes: Open Food Facts. Source code and data free as in speech. Think Wikipedia for food (and cosmetics)

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm not very familiar with TunnelBear but they appear to have instructions on how to connect from GNU/Linux with OpenVPN[0], so you might not even need their proprietary Android app to use their service.

[0] [https://www.tunnelbear.com/blog/linux_support/](https://www.tunnelbear.com/blog/linux_support/)

</comment><comment><USER24> HN-dotted. Archive link: [https://web.archive.org/web/20180818203109/https://codingqua...](https://web.archive.org/web/20180818203109/https://codingquark.com/floss/2018/07/04/android- floss-life.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> Instead of K-9 I recommend pEp which has a material UI.

Also, nearly everything mentioned has a web version. Which means the remote runs the proprietary software, and you can use an open source client to interact with it (Google in a nutshell).

If you have a NAS, consider running your own Nextcloud on it (do make offsite backups).

For camera app, I recommend Open Camera.

Many good suggestions in the thread and throughout this thread. I can recommend the Fairphone 2 as FOSS device. It isn't perfect (still has some binary blobs), but you can run an open source OS on it and repair it yourself cause it is modular.

</comment><comment><USER25> > At times I feel that some services are really convenient even though they're > evil. For example YouTube. They probably track every mouse movement, but > they give me pretty nice content.

On Android, Youtube + Firefox + Video Background Play Fix is a combination that I find more comfortable than NewPipe itself. No app needed!

[0] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/video- backgro...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/video-background- play-fix/)

</comment><comment><USER26> _> I have installed MicroG on OmniROM to get OsmAnd to work._

Why would they do that? I have run OsmAnd on a completely Google-less Android phone, and it worked fine. (Fairphone 1 with Fairphone OS, which is basically AOSP with a few tweaks.)

</comment><comment><USER27> You mentioned evil and put emphasis on _TunnelBear_ in your apps list (which I was shocked to see Chromium listed in). Could it be logless VPN services are actually more dangerous than those which log activity?

<comment><USER23> I believe TunnelBear is highlighted because it is proprietary, not because it is _evil_ (I'm not even sure if the author considers proprietary software in general to be evil; the author uses the word in reference to proprietary Google services).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> There is also MoKee Open Source Project[1] with OTA updates and monthly security patches.

[1] [https://www.mokeedev.com/](https://www.mokeedev.com/)

</comment><comment><USER28> I wonder if Stahlman would consider using a FLOSS-only smartphone. He could use wifi only so he doesn't have to give away his location to a cell provider.

<comment><USER29> Even a FLOSS-only smartphone cannot protect you from all the surveillance concerns, like remote location tracking using Silent SMS:

> In Germany in 2010 almost half a million "silent SMS" messages were sent by > the federal police, customs and the secret service "Verfassungsschutz" > (offices for protection of the constitution). These silent messages, also > known as "silent TMS", "stealth SMS", "stealth ping" or "Short Message Type > 0", are used to locate a person and thus to create a complete movement > profile. They do not show up on a display, nor trigger any acoustical signal > when received. Their primary purpose was to deliver special services of the > network operator to any cell phone. The mobile provider, often at the behest > of the police, will capture data such as subscriber identification IMSI.

Source: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS#Silent_SMS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS#Silent_SMS)

<comment><USER30> OP said "wifi-only"; that means no SMSs at all.</comment></comment></comment>


How ADSL works - <AUTHOR> http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/equip.htm <comment><AUTHOR> I found the discussion on DMT: [http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/adsl_technology.htm](http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/adsl_technology.htm) particularly enlightening.</comment>


Ask HN: What would you tell your 16-year-old self? - <AUTHOR> Hi. I turn 16 this month.
I'm not any kind of wünderkind, young entrepreneur, anything like that. I know a few programming languages (but I'm not sure if I know how to program yet, if you know what I mean). There are a lot of questions that one has to ask themselves when they're at this age about their future: where they're going to go for university/college, what to do after education, things like that. I'm currently uncertain of any of the answers. After reading HN for a while, I've become interested in startups and startup culture, though I'm unsure if I want to be an entrepreneur myself, or if I do, what kind.
Being uncertain, it helps if someone who's been through it all could offer even the fewest words of wisdom. Since I find some similarities between myself and the people in the community that I observe here, I figured that I could get something out of answers to the question: if you had a conversation with your 16-year-old self, what'd you say? <comment><USER2> Do not compare yourself to others. Life is not a race. Read as much as you can. Learn about finances. Find a mentor. Pick one or two hobbies and seriously pursue them. Your smarts will take you nowhere. Become disciplined. Stop drinking sugary sodas. Steal money from dad and invest in Apple.

<comment><USER3> Have fun building interesting, useful and problem solving things. Do not have an ego of any problem being too small to solve, you'll have lots of friends in your 20's one day who talk a lot and don't do much.

Ignore everyone, their standards, and set/pursue your own standards and curiosities.

You will meet many people older than you that are full of their own doubts, and think they can't beat their own doubts so they might get you doubting yourself. Run like hell whenever someone shows this.

Read PG's essay geared to students, it sums up a lot of the great mentoring advice I got when I was 16 and doing things I had no business doing at that age:

[http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html](http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html)

Ps., the above essay isn't just for any startup ideas, but anything you tinker around with and pursue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd say don't sweat it. Make sure to not focus too much on computers. Programming/entrepreneurship is great and interesting, but I know that I spent a lot of my early teens as a loner in front of my computer screen.

Also, I'd say finish. Whatever it is that you do, finish it. Don't let abandoning stuff become a habit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. This resonates with me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would be more concerned with my 16 year old self developing their technical skills and social network rather than thinking about doing a startup, so my advice reflects that.

-Stay away from python, dynamic typing is a sick joke for anything other than scripts. {controversial}

-Good development tools can increase your productivity by an order of magnitude. I'm looking at you, Resharper.

-You will get banned from world of warcraft for gaming the auction house. This is the best thing that will ever happen to you, so I suggest you expedite it.

-Read "The Mystery Method: How to Get Beautiful Women into Bed". I swear to god you won't figure this shit out in any other way.

-Try to get into a better uni. While the education quality will be identical, you want to get into a good uni because there's a lot of incompetent people who will judge your talent and skills based on the name of the university on your degree.

edit: If you plan on downmodding this post, be sure to reply as to how you think it isn't constructive.

<comment><USER2> PUA teaches you to treat women like games. Some will say it's all about giving you confidence, but it isn't. It's entire purpose is to use a handful of gambits to fool women for sex. I've read several of those books as I was briefly interested in that world in undergrad.

Keeping fit, having hobbies, being knowledgeable and aware, being part of an outgoing social circle, will give you the traits and skills you need to establish genuine relationships.

Wanting a physical relationship is fine, but wearing a pink fuzzy hat, telling a girl she's ugly, playing cat and mouse and bullshitting about your Chevy Camaro is dishonest.

<comment><USER5> I didn't suggest the book for PUA. When I was 16, I was a socially degenerate nerd who had no friends and zero romantic prospects. The interactions and steps that people go through when forming relationships was absolutely alien to me.

I suggested the mystery method because it answers each of those questions in extreme detail. It explains what women find attractive in men, it explains the stages of a relationship, and it explains all things you shouldn't do or say when you're courting a woman.

The "no friends" part of my social problem was fixed by getting banned from world of warcraft, which is why I didn't suggest other reading for how to make friends.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd tell myself to be a lot more aggressive and to tell anybody who says "good things come to those who wait" to go fuck themselves. I'd give my 16 year old self a copy of _The Game_ as well, along with a stack of Ross Jeffries and David DeAngelo material. I'd tell myself to take the entrepreneurial step a LOT sooner, and I'd hammer on myself to get serious about investing a lot sooner.

</comment><comment><USER7> Here's some meta-advice: most old people are filled with regret, and envy the young. They don't remember what it's really like to be a teenager. They probably don't even know what the real foundations of their successes and failures were. Be _very_ careful following advice.

Instead you should try to find someone worth emulating, in their general attitude towards life.

<comment><AUTHOR> I remember someone writing something along the lines of (I think I read this from an article I found on HN actually):

When people tell you advice, they tell you some useful bits, but they also include everything they wished they'd done, and everything that their friends told them.

Yeah, I'm pretty careful.

<comment><USER8> That's very true, you're well prepared. Much better than most teenagers I know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Learn about health and cooking, be skeptical of any products sold as 'healthy'. There's a lot of good and bad information out there. Learn as you go and make slow progress.

Eat real food and learn to cook from raw ingredients. It's the only way to eat healthy and cheap. Produce is much cheaper if you follow seasonal cycles. Comparison shop everything, explore your city. Think ramen is cheap? Find your local asian import store and buy those noodles in bulk; that's cheap.

Don't go on drastic diets or cleanses, you'll just stress your body out. Eating has a big effect on mood and energy level, pay attention to these things.

</comment><comment><USER10> Be careful with your eyes. If you spend a lot of time at your computer screen, really figure out good sitting posture, screen distance, screen brightness e.t.c. When you're young, that stuff doesn't really matter, but bit by bit over time it can really start to fuck you up and you won't even realise why.

Not the most profound thing I suppose, but your eyesight is really important so try not to put more strain on them then necessary.

<comment><USER11> Also, be careful with your ears!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> There will never be a Big Day when everything in your life will be aligned and when you'll have all you want and need.

This is both depressing and liberating, but it doesn't mean you shouldn't work on your plans and have a greater purpose. It means you should enjoy the moment, and enjoy your current situation even while you work on things for your future.

</comment><comment><USER13> 1\. Read Books. Alot. On life, programming, startups, entrepreneurship, design, health and finance. 2\. Get a ton of deliberate exercise as much as you can 3\. Time infront of the computer should be for building or learning, not playing games or surfing 4\. Try a simple business. Any business 5\. Travel 6\. Learn a martial art 7\. Swim alot 8\. Watch the top 30 films in the AFI 100 9\. Go to bed on time every night. 10\. Do an extreme sport

<comment><USER14> Speed-reading (applicable to most non-fiction) helps with #1. Yes, it works. The brain can derive meaning faster than we can speak or mechanically move our eyes. Basic SR techniques can be picked up in a few days of practice and self- timing of reading speed. Given increasing advances in mobile sensors, we'll soon realize the value of optimizing how we use our biological sensors.

<comment><USER13> I tried it. I learned speed reading at a pretty young age, so I can do it, but for now I feel it's not right for me. I'm reading books to contend the points presented, really understand why the author is saying what they're saying and understand how that affects my life and what i need to do to change. While i might able to derive what is being said very quickly, i dont feel i can go through the whole thought process so fast. I need to take my time with each chapter and really absorb it before moving onto the next.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Take risks socially (approaching people). Get out from behind the screen as many here have already noted.

Your body is a temple. Try to work up a proper sweat (intense exercise) every day. Only eat food you cook yourself. Try to get proper sleep always.

Try selling something on the side to teach yourself about business (if that's what you're into). I'm only now investigating selling on Ebay and Amazon (weird to say for someone on HN). I'm only doing this now in my mid-20s, it would've been great discovering this in my mid teens. Dealing with Chinese suppliers & customers is a lot more pleasant than sitting in front of a screen 9-5 in a job you dislike. Plus you can be the best paid 16 year old you know if you're successful! Here's an inspirational post: [http://www.reddit.com/r/AMA/comments/1ib1uc/i_run_an_ebay_an...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AMA/comments/1ib1uc/i_run_an_ebay_and_amazon_business_that_will_do/)

Don't pay too much attention to the news, blogs, and general information chatter that can consume your day. Read timeless books, get out in the air, and spend time with friends.

</comment><comment><USER16> Personal connections matter oh, so much more, than you can conceive of at your age. Never permanently alienate anyone.

And do stuff. Otherwise, unless you are a publicist or salesperson, the knowing people thing creates opportunities but you have no way to capitalize on those opportunities or create your own identity.

Unusual successes is built on emphasizing strengths, not trying to eliminate weakness. People who achieve real success generally do so by being extremely good at at least one thing. If you are truly world class at something useful, you can achieve tremendous success.

The upper limit of a person's success, however, is almost always set by a weakness. This is inevitable, as it is extremely hard to see your true weaknesses, so don't obsess over your failings, therein lies the road to despair. But do keep an eye out for stuff you avoid or are afraid of, and if you get a chance, address it.

</comment><comment><USER17> I would tell him to take a close look at his friends and figure out which ones are not good influences. You don't want any "idiots in your boat". I once heard a guy say this and it's so true: "Show me your friends and I'll show you your future."

</comment><comment><USER18> "The game is rigged. Don't work till you drop, it doesn't matter. Enjoy your short and pitiful life while you can."

</comment><comment><USER19> You are a black box. Your brain and body take in the world as input and produce thoughts, feelings, and actions as output.

Some of the most valuable knowledge you'll ever acquire is knowledge of how that black box works.

Are you feeling distracted studying french? Is it because you hate french or because you skipped breakfast?

Once you're able to link up cause and effect, you can take action to minimize things you want less of, and maximize things your want more of.

How do you know what you want? It takes time, and you have to fumble around. I've found that a lot of people who take a super-narrow path in and after college tend to look up one day and find that they're in a place they never wanted to go.

BTW, I would personally suggest that you ignore anybody here who's giving you answers about investing or going to elite schools, etc. Those are means to an end. And it may not be the end you want.

The only important life goals for you are the ones you come up with. And you get to change your mind. :)

ps. Who am I? I'm in my mid 30's. Co-founder of a successful software business (not a funded startup). And I've fumbled around a lot. The one thing that's saved me time and time again has been a modicum of self-knowledge and a willingness to jump in and learn new things, many times outside my comfort zone.

pps. Don't forget to enjoy your life. Be kind to yourself.

<comment><USER20> Wow, that's exactly what I was about to say - are you my double from the future ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd tell my 16y old self to immediately change to a different school with elite courses and less fascism and mobbing. To inform myself more about Electrical Engineering and how it's not IT (a job agency I went to inform myself convinced me that it's including IT, but it didn't). Then either decide to start and finish it, or to do Computer Science from the beginning. I would also tell myself to not cheat doing the homework using UML reverse- engineering, but do the Java homework myself. The last thing is that I would tell myself is to not build the Chess MMOG my former Boss asked me to do, but convince him to build that Social Network I planned to do in 2004.

@ejsaz is there something you really like doing, or have already a talent for? It doesn't need to be related to programming, but if you do what you like and you're doing it with your heart, then you have much better chances to turn that into a successfull startup than with other ideas. Don't tell yourself that you'll do it tomorrow, always think about this habit as a sickness. Do things you want to do when earlier than you think it needs to be done and don't do a lot of stuff in parallel. Try reducing or stopping to watch TV and all the Media and focus on your own ideas and feelings.

</comment><comment><USER21> Let's list some practical things:

Eat more bacon. I was a skinny teenager. After I was 22 I gained a lot of weight. I'm 33 and finally discovered keto/low carb eating and it's working wonders. I recognize that I never really had the interest in doing sports growing up, so if 16 year old me kept to a low carb diet we'd have maintained a low weight through the years.

Finish college. It's a real popular idea to drop out and "do the startup". If you have a side project that gets traction AND MAKES MONEY then that's probably ok. In my case, I did a bit of school and have self-taught myself a lot. I'm really good at what I do (web development), but there are holes in my knowledge. More importantly, I'm regretting now not being exposed to other potential fields of interest like astronomy, solar power, etc. I'll never have that experience unless I show up on campus like those guys in the movie Interns. Kinda akward and I'm not that funny.

Last thing would be to seize opportunities when they come. Always say yes. I don't do that enough. Go to that party, attend that meetup. If you have an opportunity to travel, do it.

<comment><USER22> It's the increased protein and reduced kcal intake (greater satiety by protein + less choice by excluding vast amounts of food groups) that works. No need to go very low carb/keto.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Watch all episodes of the first three seasons of Fringe and La Femme Nikita (old version). Read Carroll Quigley, Olaf Stapledon and Jon Rappaport. Question all symbolic media including this message.

Know that time will only provide additional reasons why you must or cannot do XYZ. Thus your task is to safely and soon go beyond claimed boundaries, before you become convinced that they are non-negotiable.

Read "how to code a secure system": [http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/27.25.html#subj16](http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/27.25.html#subj16) . Life offers the challenge of coding a secure self-modifying mind. As the piece above quotes Seneca, "There is a great deal of difference between a person who chooses not to sin and one who doesn't know how".

One answer to your question is another question. What do you want to say now to your 15-year old self? What if all of your possible future selves were each trying to convince you to bring them into existence? How would you choose between their justifications for existence? Do you consider this to be a security, optimization or spiritual question?

As much historical "hardware" becomes software, historical constraints will disappear. What will be the basis of the new software constraints that we (you) will choose for our shared worlds? Should it be the future worlds/startups with the best team, best marketing or largest cluster of peers?

It is harder than it seems to identify when choices lead to divergent futures, or when all official choices lead to equally undesirable futures. Thus the obligation of every startup and teenager is use their imagination to grow the pool of possible choices, future selves and future worlds.

</comment><comment><USER23> Don't be afraid to make a decision on choosing a specific path in life. The sooner you make a decision, the sooner you start learning and finding out things about the path. If you find yourself having a life where you are not happy for a really long period of time, re-assess things and make another decision. You have the rest of your life to figure out what you want to do, many people who are much older than you are still trying to figure out what they want to be when they grow up and you know - that is totally ok. Grow your network of friends and mentors and never be afraid to ask for help - you are doing good so far :) Get involved in things that you wouldn't normally do, these opportunities lead to other opportunities and also help you grow your network - many organizations with great causes out there. Always have something that you care about and is personal to you on the side, no matter what happens in life, you always have that one thing that matters to you and no one can take away. Hope you have a fun and great 16th bday!

</comment><comment><USER24> Next weeks euromillions numbers. And don't go to uni unless you really really want to. Learn to fly , travel the world or something.

</comment><comment><USER25> You know about compound interest. Time works the same way. You don't have the time you think you do. Every year you screw around will penalize you heavily 10 years from now.

High school matters, to the extent that your performance determines which university you get slotted into. Develop an attitude (as I did) and that guarantees you won't go to MIT. Were I to do it over again, I'd swallow the BS they lavished on us in high school for a shot at Tech. So start working _now_. All-in. Don't get in the habit of coasting - that's a very hard habit to break.

You have the luxury now of being able to think high risk / high reward. The worst thing you can do is to start a family before you are ready. Security becomes Job One then, which means low risk / low reward.

Surround yourself with the smartest people you can find. Don't be an eagle in a cube farm of turkeys. That's the shortest route to stagnation I can think of (though you'll be well paid).

</comment><comment><USER26> People lie. People project onto others what they wish they had themselves. Advice not followed. Choices they wish they'd made. Past circumstances as opposed to current circumstances.

There's no getting around making _your own_ decisions. And _living with them._

TANSTAAFL. Google (Wikipedia) it. Maybe read some Heinlein. Realize that while Heinlein may have some interesting things to say, he too was writing _fiction._

Physical health is the foundation of everything else. Don't compromise it lightly.

From Frank Herbert's "Dune": "I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."

My qualification: Fear is useful, in the short term. As are anger, and other "negative" emotions. Pay attention, and work to solve/resolve those situations. Left unresolved, they become poison.

There's a lot of good in the world, too. Nurture and trust your instincts. Don't put up with crap. Make it a priority to be in a position where you are not forced to do so.

Don't put other people in the position where they are forced to do so.

A good part of your strength and resilience come from your community (whatever that is -- not necessarily geographically defined). Take care of it, and it will take care of you.

People learn by example. Whether face to face, or in text -- the example has to ring true. Or rather, the example _will_ ring true, whether what that ends up being is what you intended to convey, or not.

This is some random guy's advice. TANSTAAFL.

</comment><comment><USER27> I haven't read the comments so there might be duplication.

1) Try out new things on a regular basis. I don't mean technology. Try out running, jogging, swimming, pottery, origami, kickboxing, anything new you haven't tried before (You can do most of this without spending any money). But do this on a regular basis. A new thing every month, and you must spend 2 hour per week.

2) If you want to get good in programming, code for an hour every day.

3) Maintain a journal/diary. It doesn't have to be extensive or good prose. Just a rough outline of your day and a couple of lines on how you feel. I assure you, it will be fun to read it years later.

4) Read books. Learn how to read books. I have a habit of reading fiction and forgetting all about them or starting technical books and never finishing them. I am trying out a new method in which I write a small summary of fiction and a plan to work out all exercises of technical books in second pass.

How I wish I could give this advice to my younger self!

</comment><comment><USER28> Do __NOT __do things because they may make you rich. When people say that kind of thing, I always imagined doing jobs I would hate, but that wasn 't the case. Building machine learning models to play poker, doing quant work for a hedge fund, and co-founding startups were all a ton of fun and really interesting. That allowed me to rationalize the decisions.

I'm just now coming out of that 10-year streak. I knew when I was 16 that I wanted to do AI for medicine. At 28, I'm finally doing it.

Also, start rock climbing. You'll be such a bad ass at 28 with 12 years of experience. :)

</comment><comment> lone-star You're gay, whether you want it or not, so stop shooting drugs up your brains, and stop flirting with girls... things will get better. Stop hanging out with the cool guys, they are full of shit, and you'll be gone in a year. You're living in china, so please make some efforts to learn more Chinese! Both your parents are software engineers, and you're not even taking advantage of them! Lazy piece of #$%^@! You won't regret what you did, however, you will regret a lot what you haven't done.

</comment><comment><USER29> Get away from the computer screen.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hah! I've certainly been doing that more often, particularly this summer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Expect to underestimate the amount of time you'll be working, so plan accordingly. If you build something that puts more zeroes in your bank account than you've ever seen before, that doesn't make you invincible. An overnight success can't be replicated 5x. Save a large portion of your earnings. When you're older, you'll thank your younger self for helping you bootstrap your newest venture.

</comment><comment><USER31> My advice to you is whoever you take advice from, make sure they share your values or have a personality similar to yours. I personally don't regret anything in my life (mostly) but I know many people who would probably be miserable in my position. Likewise, I would be miserable in the position of many people who consider themselves happy and successful.

</comment><comment><USER32> Please don't worry about whether or not you are going to go to college, or be an entrepreneur; don't waste time trying to optimize your technology chops; you are 16 and you have acres and acres of time. Be 16 -- do dumb stuff, have fun, learn how people work.

What I'd tell myself at 16: Self, when, in 1993 you get to 22, take that job in California.

</comment><comment><USER33> I'd be just as interested in what my 16-year-old self says to me now. It would be an interesting conversation.

<comment><USER34> Yes, I've often read through old notes not recognising who that person is. It would be great to see their point of view on many things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> You probably overestimate the things that don't matter and underestimate the things that do.

</comment><comment><USER36> When offered a chance to go to a school abroad don't be afraid and just go. You will end up at a university abroad anyway,but you will always regard those last three years at a shitty school to be lost because you were too afraid to go.

</comment><comment><USER37> Find out what you love to do. You can't do that just by reading, but only by doing.

Find your community.

Apprentice somewhere.

Take advantage of youth as a time to do and try a lot of things. Get outside your comfort zone.

What you know how to do is much more important than what degrees you have.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I just came back from a long walk, and wow! Didn't expect to get this many replies. Thanks a bunch to everyone.

Time to go rock climbing, try new stuff every day, and finally get around to finishing my project and starting a new one.

</comment><comment><USER38> Stop playing computer games, look to HS sports like bb/soccer/baseball/track as a way to learn social interactions instead of playing Diablo 2 and Starcraft.

</comment><comment><USER39> Get a good idea of the world of work before you pick a university degree. If university feels aimless and the other students are not interesting, drop the course.

</comment><comment><USER40> If you can't hold yourself to an extremely high standard and others to an even higher one than you'll only have moderate success as an entrepreneur.

</comment><comment><USER41> Have fun. It's easy to work constantly and lose sight of why you're doing it but remember why you're doing it and take time to enjoy it.

</comment><comment><USER42> Don't work so hard and burn yourself out so young.

</comment><comment><USER43> _Be yourself, everyone else is taken - Oscar Wilde_

IMO no truer words have been spoken. Much unpleasantness would have been avoided had I known . HTH.

</comment><comment><USER44> Don't listen to your parents. Get a job; the sooner you learn the value of a dollar, the better. Talk to girls. Go to paulgraham.com.

</comment><comment><USER45> Do not afraid to be failed. It is one of the ways to win by learning to your failure. One more thing.. make (appropriate) jokes.

</comment><comment><USER46> I would say: "Don't play world of warcraft and other MMORPGs, noobass, read books".

</comment><comment><USER47> Listen to music. Make it a habit. Go see live music especially. It's important.

</comment><comment><USER48> Seek out mentors ASAP. Don't be shy to ask the best & brightest you know.

</comment><comment><USER49> Think and decide. Look far. Overwrite instinctive programming. Have goals.

</comment><comment><USER50> Stop eating gluten. Go rock climbing. Find a summer job. Keep studying.

</comment><comment><USER51> Say yes to adventure, maybe to danger, no to complacency

</comment><comment><USER52> Do stuff you like. The rest works itself out.

</comment><comment><USER53> It's different for everybody.

</comment><comment><USER54> don't spend your money on anything except apple stock for the next 4 years.

</comment><comment><USER55> Study harder.</comment>


Trump Nears Victory - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/08/us/politics/election-live.html?pagewanted=all <comment><USER2> It is possible to view this as an isolated event or a trend. Coming on the heels of BREXIT this is a trend.

The attempts at building an interconnected globalised world are beginning to fail. A bunch of elites decided to create their own trans-national utopia unchecked by borders and dismissed all criticism as racist or bigoted. The globalisation project has been rejected by a majority of the population. Whether it is for economic reasons or just plain bigotry is something for the sociologists to study and not something I can pontificate on.

Also people seem to care a LOT about immigration and preserving their culture. Instead of patronising these people it's time we tried to understand their concerns and try to assuage them.

There is no genuine leftist alternative. It's a choice between center-right "left" that's sold out to the establishment and the far right.Economists need to stop acting like priests in the medieval ages who justified the existing order . The rural voter who lost his job doesn't care about the theory of comparitive advantage.

If this trend holds this will soon take hold in France and other European nations. This is a return to the world of the 1920s. Not gloom and doom but a much more unstable global order with every country for itself. Not what we need when we face planet scale threats like global warming.

Get out of your bubble. Hang out more on subreddits you don't agree with.

The divide is bridged one person at a time.

Life goes on.

EDIT: Its a shame they killed this thread.

<comment><USER3> > A bunch of elites decided to create their own trans-national utopia > unchecked by borders and dismissed all criticism as racist or bigoted. The > globalisation project has been rejected by a majority of the population.

The globalisation project is a consequence of:

1\. People move: they have legs.

2\. Technology has made moving easier and faster.

3\. Technology has made keeping in touch in a decentralized network easier.

So it is not the elites, it is technology. You can try to stop it, by force, but you will not succeed and you will create lots of suffering.

<comment><USER4> Which of the free trade agreements and IP and copyright rulings have hurt the masses, and which have helped? Which economic policies of globalization are helping Ireland, Portugal, Italy, and Greece?

The folks passing those agreements are the "elites" by any stretch of the term.

<comment><USER3> The trade agreements are not to blame: they have increased trade, which should be good for everybody.

The opposing force, making globalization unfair for the masses, is unchecked capitalism, which has increased inequality by allowing financial elites to concentrate capital.

Trump, May et al are not goint to put any fight against inequality, so you will be surprised how little borders are going to help the poor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'll echo a comment I made on Facebook:

        I think Mark Zuckerberg's comments show both ways we can react to this election. You've got to decide:
        will you be constructive or destructive?

        "We can't create a culture that says it cares about diversity and then excludes almost half the country
        because they back a political candidate ... There are many reasons a person might support Trump that do not
        involve racism, sexism, xenophobia ..."

I didn't vote for either candidate. So I'm not advocating either way. But I think America really, really needs to decide how it wants to take this and how it wants to move forward. _We_ , by our actions and state of mind, choose whether this is a good or bad thing. Take control. Be constructive. Do good.

<comment><USER6> America decided it wants to move forward with the candidate it just elected for President. I may not agree with the candidate, but that's the decision that was made. That's how America decided to move forward.

Perhaps you meant that the left needs to decide how it will move forward given this result.

<comment><USER5> The right too. I have many friends who've taken to gloating over this. That won't help this divide, only widen it.

If the right can't see past itself to be graceful in victory and try to understand the left's anxiety and worries it'll only make things worse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you are a blue collar worker in the rust belt who lost his or her job because your factory moved to Mexico or China, there was no way you were voting for Clinton. And here we are.

The echo chamber of CNN, MSNBC, NYT, et al., is deafening. If you've been watching these outlets you know that they have been calling the election for Clinton for more than six months. The arrogance is just stunning. And here we are.

Now let's talk about the DNC. These folks are so crooked they literally colluded to steal the nomination from Sanders. How can that possibly sit well with anyone? Frankly, Bernie would have won vs. Trump. And here we are.

And for these reasons and a host of others, here we are.

<comment><USER8> And now your blue collar can see his entire retirement check vanish in one day of market trading.

<comment><USER9> Doesn't matter to him because:

A. He probably has no retirement savings.

B. The fat-cat on Wall Street that cost him his job probably lost _a lot_ more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Really sad to see so many members of the technical community act like brats on social media over the result. Whatever happened to respecting the viewpoints of others? Whatever happened to being humble in victory and respectful in defeat?

Democracy means you don't always get what you want. Be excellent to each other, whether you voted for Trump, Clinton, a third party candidate, or nobody. It's tragic seeing people isolate themselves into echo chambers of ideological refuge.

<comment><USER11> What happened to Peter Thiel in the media and probably in more private circles was really shameful. Zuckerberg's counter-argument to that is probably the one time in the past few years when I agreed with him on something.

[https://s13.postimg.org/ohe1sci6f/mmexport1476831885441.jpg](https://s13.postimg.org/ohe1sci6f/mmexport1476831885441.jpg)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12739582](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12739582)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Honestly it's impressive -- how do you lose to Donald Trump? Failed businessman and mediocre reality TV star. You've gotta be pretty good at what you do to fail over this guy.

<comment><USER13> I understand that this place is 99% liberal and that you went as far as to petition to kick Peter Thiel out because of his trump support, but please realize most Americans agree with trump. That's how you lose to him. Make jokes all you want, we won.

<comment><USER14> > most Americans agree with trump

This is the problem, though - there's no data that agrees with you. Nor is there any that disagrees with you. Because we've seen today that all the polling data was a load of complete nonsense.

It _could_ be that Trump won because most Americans agree with him. The popular vote totals would suggest this is not the case. Rather, a majority of Americans in swing states either agree with Trump enough, or disagree with Clinton enough, to vote they way they did. It's going to take a long time to get to the bottom of which combination of those factors is what.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If Clinton would have been a little tougher on immigration it wouldn't have even been close. That was one issue Trump supporters cared about most. If she spoke a little tougher on that she would have won.

<comment><USER16> The sad thing for Trump supporters is Trump wants visa slaves and fruit pickers just as bad as liberal elites. I predict no changes on immigration policy over the next few years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> lol at all the people here pretending like they saw this coming. this is a surprise for everyone. the NYT and every other major news outlet had Clinton winning with a chance of over 80%. the silent majority won.

</comment><comment><USER18> One can understand distaste for washington, globalization, politicians and middle america wishing for manufacturing jobs to come back, but to think Trump will fix any of those things is beyond comprehension.

</comment><comment><USER19> Well well Trump! I am going to go a head and grab some popcorn.

<comment><USER7> This. Buckle up, it's gonna be interesting if nothing else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> flagged for what? this is the most f'ing important thing EVER.

SCREW THE TRUMP GOVERNMENT. I"M DOING EVERYTHING IN BITCOIN.

<comment><USER20> Political posts are usually flagged for the tendency to attract highly emotional, low-content comments.

<comment><USER8> ok buddy. flag on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Definitely encrypt all your communications. The Republicans are hardcore about violating any privacy rights (or any Bill of Rights) that they can, and will make sure to expand the NSA to spy on the US citizens communications. (it's currently illegal for the NSA to spy on US citizens comms..)

<comment><USER20> How's the Democrats' record in this area?

<comment><USER21> Under Obama, the Snowden leaks reveal that there are filters that remove communications from US citizens from NSA mass collection, to comply with law. Remember that this was a classified program that was leaked, so they were still being compliant when no one was looking.

Trump obviously would remove those filters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I guess all these medium posts from Silicon Valley techies didn't convince enough people...

<comment><USER11> People who voted for Trump saw right through them and through all the "we're just neutral and just trying to get people to vote" attempts.

I mean, obviously people should go to vote and should be encouraged to vote. It's just that it was pretty much an open secret that the reason all of these tech companies and Silicon Valley people were suddenly "so involved" in getting people to vote, is because they thought most of the people they'd reach would vote for Clinton. And it's another open secret that most of Silicon Valley companies wanted Clinton to win.

I, for one, would've welcomed attempts to fix the _real_ democracy issues in the U.S. (which are far bigger than just low voter turnouts), and attempts to fix the real problems that got half of the country to vote for Trump.

Hint: it's not just because of racism, but also because people are sick and tired of polished-up, corrupt politicians. Trump may be a very poor, or one of the worst possible alternatives to that, but at least he was an alternative.

These people really don't get it why Trump and Sanders saw such a rise in popularity. Tuesday's Reuters poll shows black and white why. I'll just copy the results here:

 _\- 75 percent agree that "America needs a strong leader to take the country back from the rich and powerful."

\- 72 percent agree "the American economy is rigged to advantage the rich and powerful."

\- 68 percent agree that "traditional parties and politicians don't care about people like me."

\- 76 percent believe "the mainstream media is more interested in making money than telling the truth."

\- 57 percent feel that "more and more, I don't identify with what America has become."

\- 54 percent feel "it is increasingly hard for someone like me to get ahead in America."_

[http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-poll-mood- idU...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-poll-mood- idUSKBN1332NC?il=0)

And if you're not convinced, or you still don't quite get it, listen to Michael Moore and Jimmy Dore explain it in more colorful terms:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOcstHhtL4Y&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOcstHhtL4Y&feature=youtu.be&t=1m38s)

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

<comment><USER9> This is exactly right. And to add, this is the result of pretending income inequality is not a big deal. It's a big deal because it results in a pissed- off population looking to change things up.

The rising tide better _actually_ lift all boats.

<comment><USER23> so they voted for a guy who's plan is to fuck over the middle class.

Genius.

<comment><USER9> They voted for a guy who scares the political class and Wall St.

I'm pretty sure the "rust-belt" middle class doesn't see how their situation could get any worse. They might be right.

<comment><USER23> Do they not remember 8 years ago?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> One upside: Peter Thiel on the Supreme Court is a sorely needed perspective on so many levels. Every current justice went to the same groupthink law schools and never worked outside the system.

<comment><USER23> Holy shit that sounds awful.

The man doesn't believe in democracy and thinks the country went wrong when women got the vote.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The people who were funding Trump/Hillary were funding them equally. Is doesn't matter who won, they banks, oil companies and large media conglomerates still control the country like they have for the past several decades.

I see in our future ... the exact same presidency. More US led wars. More predator drones. More CIA guns and money to fund revolutions that we then fight with out predator drones. Just remember the election is like Whose Line is it Anyway, the points are all made up and none of it matters.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig)

<comment><USER26> >The people who were funding Trump/Hillary were funding them equally. Is doesn't matter who won, they banks, oil companies and large media conglomerates still control the country like they have for the past several decades.

Yep. That's what makes it so hard for third party candidates. The donors fund both sides so they don't get left out in the cold if their guy loses. They have to believe you'll have a chance to win to fund you, and if they don't it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.

<comment><USER25> eh..that has less to do with funding and more to do with the First Past the Post system. Look at Australia's order of preference with instant run-off (you literally can't throw your vote away; plus voting is mandatory. There's a fine if you don't at least pretend to cast a valid ballot) or New Zealand's MMP. Both are a lot better at representing the public in parliament.

The US system was actively designed to not be democratic. That's why we have an electoral college; the vote was (and still is) the peasants suggestion box.

<comment><USER26> I agree instant runoff would be better.

But the idea the US system wasn't designed to be democratic is a pretty gross exaggeration. You can't win without votes from "the peasants" no matter how much you spend to convince them. Otherwise Jeb Bush would be president-elect today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Now the nightmare begins.

</comment><comment><USER28> enjoy your vote :-(

<comment><USER29> We lost months ago, when the DNC rammed Clinton through over Sanders.

EDIT: You simply cannot say it was the peoples' fault for not voting for her (pick someone electable next time); she had her choice between picking between what was best for her and what was best for the country, and we all lost because she was selfish.

I hope Sanders supporters step up and begin purging DNC incumbents in down ballot races. It is the only way forward.

EDIT 2: Sanders vs Trump polling: [http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/ge...](http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_sanders-5565.html)

[http://www.270towin.com/maps/sanders-trump-electoral- map](http://www.270towin.com/maps/sanders-trump-electoral-map)

[http://www.politifact.com/truth-o- meter/statements/2016/mar/...](http://www.politifact.com/truth-o- meter/statements/2016/mar/08/bernie-s/bernie-sanders-says-he-consistently- beats-donald-t/)

And regardless how useless polling appears to be, its _impossible_ to say that Sanders was a less liked candidate than either Clinton or Trump.

<comment><USER26> I'm not sure Sanders ever had a chance of winning the general election. He's pretty far to the left of the American center.

<comment><USER9> Counterpoint: Trump won the general election.

This was never about left vs. right but about overturning the status quo.

<comment><USER26> It would have been about left vs. right if Sanders had been the nominee, since neither of them was a status quo candidate. Sanders has ardent supporters, but not very many of them.

<comment><USER29> Both Wisconsin and Michigan went for Sanders in the primary, both very unexpectedly, and then went heavily towards Trump in the general. Sanders would've easily won.

<comment><USER26> In Wisconsin, maybe. Easily won the general? I'd bet money against that. I think he'd be crushed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Won my bet (it was not an endorsement).</comment>