Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most_of_what_you_read_on_the_internet_is_written/ <comment><USER2> Most of the comments here are either elaborating on the OP, or justify lurking. I am a mostly-lurker myself, but I felt the need to comment here, since I was hoping to see the discussion go into a different direction.

The OP uses the word "insane", not outlier. It's clickbaity, and used in jest, but I think it better captures a subtlety of this phenomenon: The prolific commenters are molding every discussion in their image. They might have an interesting angle on the story, or they might just be saying trivial things with beautiful prose. In any case, there is a lack of diversity in general -- discussions are driven by the worldview of a few.

That would be an argument for lurkers to make an effort, even if, like this comment, it's just a barely-formed idea.

Edit: "molding the discussion" -> "molding every discussion"

<comment><USER3> A related phenomenon I've been thinking about is the impact of traditional entertainment media (TV, Movies and Music) and the inherent bias in the sample of worldviews that the people who work in those businesses espouse.

In other words, we only hear and watch stories from those people who chose storytelling as their career, and if you assume we are inevitably influenced by their views then we're effectively taking advice from them. This means entertainment shapes the viewer-listener's interpretation of reality to better fit the model of reality to which storytellers subscribe, but I'm pretty sure that's not a desirable outcome in the long run.

In a recent interview, Michelle Obama said we only ever tell young people about the good parts of marriage. We hardly ever explain to them that it has its ups and downs, that it isn't "broken" if suddenly the lust isn't there like it was in the beginning. She presented the argument in a much more cogent manner, but in any case, if you believe her to be right, then this seems like a specific (important!) example of this broader trend.

There are countless others out there who go on to live perfectly happy lives with perhaps much more useful advice to us, and who would arguably be a better influence overall – you just don't hear about them.

<comment><USER4> It certainly feels plausible and yet we have that issue. All our media tells us we should all carry guns and shoot people and yet gun violence is down.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/03/weve-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/03/weve- had-a-massive-decline-in-gun-violence-in-the-united-states-heres-why)

We have some of the sexyist media around telling us we should all be sleeping around and yet apparently sex is down too.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/the- sex...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/the-sex- recession/573949/)

Are we sure it's any different for other topics?

Also, as for media and marriage I feel like more media is about bad marriages than good ones. A common theme might be falling in love and getting married but a movie about people already married seems rarely about things going well. Or maybe I just have a selective memory.

<comment><USER5> Media is dominated by news, and news is unavoidably carrying a bias. The things that matter are long term and commonplace, the news is novel and unusual. Major long term trends are not something that gets reported on because they're not news. What gets reported are outliers and contrarian views.

That's why if you want to be informed about the world you shouldn't watch the news and just read books.

<comment><USER6> > _That's why if you want to be informed about the world you shouldn't watch > the news and just read books..._

???

This is the thing though, books are media too.

Also published for clickbait-y reasons.

It sounds like everyone's out suggesting methods for people to avoid using their critical thinking skills. There's no way around it, if you consume media, _ANY_ media, you have to consume it with an almost deeply skeptical eye nowadays. It's just the world we live in, everything from music to books, and from video games to news paper articles, is riddled with bias. Using your head in such an environment is unavoidable, assuming you wish to take wise and measured actions based on the state of the world around you. If wisdom is the goal, reading books, or watching Al Jazeera is just no substitute for exercising your brain cells.

<comment><USER7> The suggestion to read books doesn't sound to me like suggesting people avoid critical thinking; quite the opposite.

"Riddled with bias" doesn't make sense to me. Any book - one about maths, as much as one about the world - is written _from a point of view_. This is the "bias" that phrases like "riddled with bias" seem to suggest can - and should be - completely eradicated. But the decision what to include in a book, what to exclude, for example, is a personal one. (It's why committees have a bad name.) All we know of the world is how it appears to 'biased' individuals. There's no eliminating the human factor, and the desire to do so seems to me futile and misconceived.

"...every mind has a new compass, a new north, a new direction of its own, differencing its genius and aim from every other mind; as every man, with whatever family resemblances, has a new countenance, new manner, new voice, new thoughts, and new character. Whilst he shares with all mankind the gift of reason, and the moral sentiment, there is a teaching for him from within, which is leading him in a new path, and, the more it is trusted, separates and signalizes him, while it makes him more important and necessary to society. We call this specialty the bias of each individual. And none of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone. ...A point of education that I can never too much insist upon is this tenet, that every individual man has a bias which he must obey, and that it is only as he feels and obeys this that he rightly develops and attains his legitimate power in the world. It is his magnetic needle, which points always in one direction to his proper path, with more or less variation from any other man's. He is never happy nor strong until he finds it, keeps it; learns to be at home with himself; learns to watch the delicate hints and insights that come to him, and to have the entire assurance of his own mind. And in this self-respect, or hearkening to the privatest oracle, he consults his ease, I may say, or need never be at a loss. In morals this is conscience; in intellect, genius; in practice, talent; not to imitate or surpass a particular man in his way, but to bring out your own new way; to each his own method, style, wit, eloquence." \- Emerson, _Greatness_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yes. Most of the content you watch on TV was written and acted by outliers. The products you use and consume were crafted, marketed and even distributed by outliers.

First, when zoomed out, outliers in _all possible tasks_ become more common — internet commenting is just a subset for silly folks like me.

Secondly, the emergent human social fabric is built to recognize and amplify outspoken and / or talented outliers, via mechanisms whereby others who {agree, can find utility, can profit} are incentivized to act as amplifiers. The cost function to repeat a message drops precipitously every time it's repeated (influences status quo). I'm not sure it's particularly surprising that internet social forums behave by the same rules — and are even optimized to replicate them mechanistically (upvotes).

I mean... not be dismissive, I guess it does strike me as particularly neat that the internet provides a medium for these people to productively share insight and identify new niches where they can potentially add value to the rest of the world. Where would we on HN be without, say, patio11? :)

<comment><USER9> I still think it's surprising that there are so many lurkers who literally never engage in the discussion, considering the barriers to do so are so low.

<comment><USER10> Anecdata, but I'm a typical lurker. If I don't have something to contribute to a discussion, I stay silent. I think that goes for a lot of people. There's also the commitment angle - if you engage in a discussion, you're typically committed to follow up on the responses you get. That can be more of a time/attention commitment than people are interested in, and with the growing toxicity of online discourse a lot of people don't want to put themselves out there to begin with.

<comment><USER11> There's also your attention surface. I typically read threads/posts from a variety of communities, but might prefer to reply only on some, and lurk on the others. I'm sure this is true for a lot of people, from anecdotes I've heard.

<comment><USER12> Yep. If it's about programming, game design, board games, video games, writing, I'll feel confident I have something to say and/or want to contribute. But I also read discussion about music composition, hiking, art, diy, history, philosophy, etc, and I would almost never post in those subjects (at least not at this point in time), as those aren't my focus, just other subjects I'm curious about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> People come to Wikipedia to get an answer. Many users of Wikipedia are kids, or non-native English speakers for whom contributing is a challenge. Or laymen that don't know about the subject and naturally don't feel like they could contribute anything. Or people who simply don't know how to contribute. Or people visiting via mobiles where it's really difficult to research and contribute. If you adjust for all those users that could not reasonably contribute, the percentage of contributors is much higher.

There are other factors at play at Wikipedia too. In my native language, Danish, Wikipedia is all but dead. Years ago, I tried contributing within my own field. I researched and spent hours adding relevant information to different topics, only to find out a few days after that all my contributions had been deleted by the administrators.

Here is the Danish site for one of the most beloved Danes: [https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Laudrup](https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Laudrup)

Here is the English: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Laudrup](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Laudrup)

It's just one example, but it is true for culture, history and many other areas. If you want to know anything on Danish matters, the English Wikipedia is usually a much better option than the Danish.

<comment><USER14> Wikipedia does a lot to prevent new users participating. The mediawiki software is very confusing and has a lot of different functionality crammed in to the same page edit tool that doesn't even make sense.

I attemped to create a page about a slightly obscure file format with all the information I had found while developing with it. I linked to all the sources I found that helped me understand it and my submission was rejected because my sources were not academic enough so I removed those sources and added the only official source in existence which is a zip file containing code examples and example files. My second edit was rejected for not sourcing all of my info.

Literally the only info available is the zip and forum posts. I mainly used the forum posts while learning and verified it against the data I was seeing in the file. How am I meant to share this info for others to benefit from? If I make it in to a blog post it's not an acceptable source but if I post it as a PDF and pretend its some wanky research paper then it probably would get accepted.

<comment><USER15> The file format you tried to write about isn't notable enough to have its own article in Wikipedia. The notability guidelines are there to prevent people from writing about things that can't be verified by reliable sources, and it's a mechanism to help ensure that articles are accurate.

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

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

While not every topic belongs on Wikipedia, there are a number of other places where your article would be appreciated:

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

<comment><USER16> I think the notability guidelines are wrong headed.

There doesn't seem to be rhyme or reason to whether something is deemed to be 'notable'.

Worse, you put off people like the grandparent who actually attempt to contribute.

We all want accurate and reliable sources, but why not work with people, rather than just deleting? Or why not a 2 stage process. Have a staging area for pages that aren't good enough. Then promoted to wikipedia proper when good enough?

What happens in X years time, when that file format is 'notable'? You've lost the person most inclined to write the document, and lost historical context from a living document.

The BBC had a habit in its early days of reusing 'old' film. What could have been a treasure trove is now lost. I cant help feeling wikipedia is being similarly short sighted.

/rant (not aimed at you btw)

<comment><USER15> That staging area exists, and it's called "Articles for creation" (AfC). The website directs new editors to the staging area for their first article.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_creatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_creation)

Drafts in AfC will not be deleted for being non-notable, but they will also not be indexed by search engines.

When a draft is ready to be published, a reviewer looks over it and ensures that it is properly cited, before moving it to the encyclopedia proper.

<comment><USER16> That's getting closer to what I was thinking, but that's for new editors, not new articles.

"Only experienced editors should ever create an article from scratch. Others should first create a draft page and build the article there."

And as you say they aren't indexed.

<comment><USER15> Experienced editors usually create a "userspace draft", which is in a different staging area:

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

Userspace drafts also won't be deleted for non-notability, and they can be published whenever the editor feels that they're ready.

Neither of the draft spaces on Wikipedia are indexed by search engines, because these staging areas generally aren't proofread by other editors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17>
      One of Wikipedia's power users, [...] Assuming he
      doesn't sleep or eat or anything else [...]
      that's still one edit every four minutes.

When your hobby is replacing hyphens with en dashes [1] and removing errant newlines [2] I doubt it takes 4 minutes per page.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Plymouth_Brethren...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Plymouth_Brethren&diff=prev&oldid=876923774)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Raymond_Ramazani_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Raymond_Ramazani_Baya&diff=prev&oldid=876384642)

<comment><USER18> probably uses a bot

<comment><USER19> As the original Reddit thread pointed out, a fully-automatic edit system is required to use a separate bot account. Edits like this, is called a semi- automatic edit, or "cleanup tasks", or "maintenance". It includes adding proper categories, fixing links and typos, correcting some deprecated Mediawiki syntax and templates to standard code, etc. Editors can use mulitple tools to do this job, with a mouse click and proper regular expressions, you can edit a dozen of pages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> While there is an interesting and relevant point in this article, I feel compelled to point out another possibility: you only comment if you have a POV or opinion not yet represented. If I'm seeing somebody else make the point I thought of making, I upvote it and move on, only spending the time to comment when I don't see it already there.

It would be odd if, after viewing/reading the exact same content, we all had unique opinions of what we just saw or read. It would be pretty bizarre, and probably imply that our communication system wasn't working. It's good to see more than one POV, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't ever have agreement either, and if I see someone has already made the same point, why should I type it in?

Admission: I didn't read absolutely every comment here before typing this; just the top dozen or so. :)

<comment><USER21> I came here to express the same sentiment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> One interesting thing regarding this was when Reddit added a "chat with a random user" -feature a few years back. I was so used to the high quality submissions and comment threads that when I was paired to chat with random lurkers it was kind of eye opening how they were just... really plain and hard to hold a interesting conversation with.

And this is exactly why communism will NEVER work: 90% of the population just won't be able to produce anything of value by themselves. They just lack the "business instinct" or "drive to hustle" or whatever you want to call it. Is it environmental? genetic? cultural? I don't know, but if you forcefully stop the "creator class" in favor of the 90%, what you will see happening is exactly what happened to the Soviet economy after WW2.

<comment><USER23> I've got to agree with this statement. In my opinion, it's an absolute blessing (and an unavoidable evolutionary outcome) that there is still varying degrees of friction inherent to the process of commenting on many websites. Imagine if every person could throw their uninformed opinions about every topic into the common space with no hassle whatsoever, the signal to noise ratio would be positively devastated. In fact, the coupling of frictionless 1->N communication capacity with continual reinforcement of poisonous ego- centrism in advertising appears to be the precise recipe for the construction of FaceBook-style intellectual wastelands. The blunt fact of the matter is that the vast majority of people appear to have very little of value to contribute to the vast majority of discussions or processes, except perhaps in a passive role. This is not a judgement of value, merely a fact that should be considered from a societal vantage when the design of large information systems is undertaken so that ethical and socially-beneficial decisions can be made.

The concept of preventing a dilution of discourse and output quality by intentionally maintaining a degree of friction in the participation process is well-embodied by, e.g., the effort required to start contributing to certain critical open-source projects like the Linux kernel (think email-based communications, packaging processes, etc.). The notion of friction extends directly to aesthetics as well - consider the difference in discourse level that exists between HN, Reddit, FaceBook, and so on. There are many factors involved in the gradient, but it is worth noting that the aesthetic model employed by a system or product is perhaps the clearest external signal of that system's intended purpose. To that end, the dramatic "gameification" of relatively frictionless communication protocols appears to be incompatible with the idea of truth on a fundamental level. This also applies to the modern incarnation of popular US "news" organizations - think Fox's dramatic music and hyper-augmented hollywood-style visuals, or my personal favorite, CNN's "situation room".

<comment><USER24> 4chan is the place where everyone can comment with very little effort.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Am here for over 2 years now, rarely upvote something, haven't submitted anything and this is just my 2nd comment... Pretty sure this rule holds for close to all kind of forums.

<comment><USER26> I don't know if you're willing to make a 3rd comment, but I'm trying to understand the lurker mindset from the perspective of someone who posts quite actively.

Is is just that you don't care enough to reply, feel like your opinions are unpopular, don't feel like you have anything to say, or something else?

<comment><USER27> I realise the irony of claiming I only lurk by writing this, but I'm fighting my habits to help illuminate those interested.

For me personally, I just don't care and don't get any reward in the idea of conversing with some random person on the internet. The chances are, I'll never see you again on here or irl, remember your online name (I remember faces, not names), or you will have any real impact in my day to day life. This is how I feel about every commenter online. I don't talk to random people on the street, so why would I talk to random people on the internet? To me, there is little difference.

I value face to face communication much higher than text chat. I really enjoy reading peoples faces and expressions when chatting, to the point where I find talking to others online is the equivalent of having a conversation where everyone has a paper bag on their head when.

If I think someone is wrong on the internet, I just don't care. I read their comment, think to myself "They are wrong/an idiot" and get on with my day. I see no value in correcting a stranger on the internet.

I much rather have conversations irl, and I do, so I have no time/energy left for an online conversation. I'd much rather spend my time with my girlfriend, programming or anything else.

Everything feels so permanent online. I know I'm going to regret things I've said in this post in the future, my mind will change, maybe I won't lurk anymore after writing this!? The permanent nature of online communication goes the against how I should be as person, my opinions shifting and changing as I experience more of life, not held back by some random thing I said on a forum 5 years ago.

When I post, I open myself up to being attacked by people online. I can avoid this simply by never saying anything online.

To illustrate a point, I finally got round to creating an account on stackoverflow about half a year ago, and I still have only one point. I just wanted to vote on questions, but I can only do that if I have at least 15 points on my account, and that requires writing comments/questions (I think). For me, that means contriving 15 comments that succeed at playing some social game, that I simply don't have the time or energy for, so I've given up on ever voting on stackoverflow.

<comment><USER28> The privacy issue is real. I am not a lurker here, but every time I comment anywhere online a voice in my head says "it is not rational to do this. This mostly works against your self-interest." However, I am not someone who is primarily driven by self-interest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Looking at it from a different perspective: creating content requires lot of work, while consuming content requires little to no effort. Hence, looking from this perspective, it's natural that the majority of us are content consumers and not content producers.

<comment><USER30> It's timing too. I would've commented something along the same lines as you but of course by the time I got to reading the comments on this post it already had 148 comments, at least one of which covered what I would've contributed. The same goes for Wikipedia - everything I would be confident enough to write about is pretty well covered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> To look at this a different way, a far _larger_ percentage of people are generating content now than at any other time in the history of modern media. As others have pointed out, anyone creating content is an "outlier" in a sense, since the vast majority of people don't create content ever. But more do today than ever before, and when I think back to the 80's and 90's when content creation had such powerful gatekeepers, I'm think the trajectory we're on is a massive improvement.

</comment><comment> gurpreet- I suppose a related question is if every single person were to comment, would that be beneficial in any way?

I personally think we'd get a lot of duplicate comments stating the same thing which would reduce the overall quality of the topic at hand. An example that proves this is Ebay's user reviews. You have a lot of people participating in reviews because it's a review system that works both ways, so it's in the both user's best interest to review and rate. But most reviews are duplicates.

YouTube's comment system, which has a younger audience mainly, is rife with spam, trolling and comments that add nothing to the discussion. Is this what we want everywhere? Are those people outliers too? Or people with more spare time than people who purely browse?

I wouldn't use the term "outliers" then to describe these people. I would simply call them "people with initiative"... And in some cases "people with initiative who also want to help".

<comment><USER32> There's no need to guess what it would look like―just go to /r/all posts on popular subreddits. 200 top-level comments, and people still add new ones with zero useful info and zero chance of being seen by more that a dozen others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Shouldn't we thank these people for creating the content for in most cases is free? It makes the interest way more interesting. Like the OP is saying it is something we should keep in mind. However, the word insane has a negative connotation even though its usage in the OP's title might intend it.

We should also note that the 1% rule also applies to traditional media be it news programs, tv shows, documentaries, or movies. They are many barriers entry and gate keepers to filter out content that may not have mass appeal.

Mainstream media's filtering enables them to be profitable and compensate the content creators unlike most of the people on the internet. People are spending their time creating stuff so the someone else can make money? Maybe that's the insane apart?

<comment><USER34> "However, the word insane has a negative connotation even though its usage in the OP's title might intend it."

I've noticed even people who, for instance, work for mental health advocacy organizations casually use figurative terms like "crazy" all the time. It makes me a little uncomfortable, but not enough to protest.

I'm half on the side of those who say "PC is just civility" and half sympathetic to those who see it as hypersensitive hypocrisy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Its called the 1% rule, 1% create content, 99% lurk.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_\(Internet_culture\))

</comment><comment><USER36> I think this behaviour is caused by the wrath of the hivemind. I imagine that it is common in reddit users to have a separate account for posting as an insurance against hivemind rage which can be invoked easily for unexpected reasons. And for others, it is easier to not get involved, get the value from the answers and comments you find. Avoid the abuse and emotional mud slinging. Life is too short. Same for Twitter.

</comment><comment><USER37> That doesn't mean the communities aren't functional. The lurkers are still voting on the commenters. There's various internet communities who've tried different ways to keep that judgement mechanic high quality, and with varying degrees of success. HN is maybe one of the best.

The ability to create and to judge might well be separate. How many food critics are good chefs, and vice versa? Perhaps it's due to not having a horse in the race.

What's fascinating is that we have these people who contribute huge amount of content, like the review guy that's mentioned.

Some of these guys are even interactive. I've had programming questions answered by Jon Skeet, and it just boggles the mind how he can be so productive.

There's probably some specific life circumstances that have to come together for us to benefit from a guy like that.

<comment><USER38> I disagree about HN being among the best for managing judgment. Down-voting requires X amount of karma but up-voting doesn't.

<comment><USER39> I think that's a key element to the success. It introduces an obvious upward bias in karma, but I don't see that as a problem.

For one, it prevents creating new accounts to downvote someone that pisses you off. For me personally, it means I downvote only for "adds absolutely nothing and is somehow harmful to HN community". I probably upvote : downvote at 20:1 or greater.

When deciding if a comment voting system is good or bad, I look heavily towards the outcome, and secondarily towards the mechanism. I think outcome on HN is second to none.

<comment><USER38> Fine. HN is the best among the contenders, but that's not something that one ought to hang one's hat on. Posts don't rise on their own merits here. If that is a goal, there is much room for improvement. There are a number of situational factors that influence whether any post will receive attention. These include, but are not limited to timing, competition, the new post reader archetype and his/her motivations to participate, etc.

<comment><USER39> I don't think that limiting downvotes to accounts with X karma is a significant contributor to the problem of getting attention to a new high- quality post on a fairly high-volume site.

<comment><USER38> I'm not suggesting changing the rules on downvoting as a solution. I've considered far more drastic measures!

<comment><USER40> some hacks I think could increase quality:

      - mandatory 60 second re-click to submit a comment, without edits
      - mandatory 60 second re-click on votes after a rate threshold is exceeded
      - multiple choice votes to express motivation, intention, feedback
      - do not publish karma numbers
      - publish "example threads" that show values being practiced, including dead links/comments examples
      - randomly assign usernames every 12 months
      - tags and tag feeds

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Missing in that writeup is that any group which spends more time online tends to be overrepresented in things like online comments. This includes the mentally handicapped and mentally ill.

If you don't have a job, limited money, and social life is difficult, the internet has obvious attraction.

<comment><USER34> You know the xkcd about "I can't come to bed, someone is wrong on the internet"? I think there is a widespread syndrome where people need social interaction that they aren't getting in real life, but then on the internet, they need to express dominance to counter feelings of inadequacy. And expressing that often leads to hostile responses, and feeling unjustly attacked provides a sense of release.

Once I was able to describe this pattern to myself and recognize it in myself, I started trying to reduce the amount of posting I did that expressed "I'm right and you're wrong". Because no matter how right a person is, it's generally more of a selfish activity to tell other people about our rightness than we want to admit. If positive interaction is a goal, being right does not excuse telling people they're wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Outliers write most of what we read, period. Our whole existence is outliers. Most people don't live in our town, don't do our job, don't live in our country, don't speak our language.

The problem is we think our life is normal and everyone is like us when that isn't true.

<comment><USER43> It's true that most people aren't like me in many ways. But that's not what's meant by "outliers". To have an outlier, you have to have some way in which most people _are_ alike.

Eg, most people don't have $1 million in the bank. If all the financial advice you can read on the internet were written by millionaires, it might (eg) encourage risk-taking that isn't wise for average people. But you could get the impression that such behavior is normal and expected, since "everybody" says they do that.

<comment><USER44> To be honest, it sometimes does feel like millionares are overrepresented online, and that social media sites have a higher percentage of wealthy contributors than the general population. You see quite a few business advice stories by people who 'just happened' to get loaned $XX,000 by relatives to start up their business and going on Twitter/Instagram/YouTube/whatever will show you plenty of people who seemingly don't have to work a day in their life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Reddit is an echo chamber. Almost nobody contributes to the conversation, but they sure are quick to exercise insecurity for very minor things. I deleted my account there last year and life has improved as a result.

<comment><USER46> I agree. It's my opinion its become toxic over the past few years. Generally speaking I prefer unmoderated discussion forums. I rather choose what to read instead of being "protected".

<comment><USER47> This is interesting because the least toxic places on Reddit are highly moderated (askscience, and askhistorians are the two biggest examples). Indeed, Hacker News is just essentially a highly moderated subreddit, which is its attraction.

<comment><USER48> HN it may have pretentious articles, the comments are the most substantial. Lately I've been lurking through HN Classics (1) (Many research papers and pdfs posted on HN that are old) and the comments are the best part of them.

(1) [http://jsomers.net/hn/](http://jsomers.net/hn/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> That's just the dimensionality curse. If you consider extreme 5% in each dimension as outliers when you add a couple dimensions you're soon over 50%

</comment><comment><USER50> Exactly - within 30 minutes 20 people have upvoted but no one has commented.

<comment><USER51> Hah, as a long-time lurker when I saw that title I thought it was interesting and made a mental note to come back when there were comments. It didn't even cross my mind to comment on it - I wonder what causes the different perspective of those who do.

<comment><USER52> Even as a kind of active commenter very rarely do I have anything worth saying about the post itself, usually I comment in response to other people's comments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> The picture presented in this article is incomplete. There is a constant stream of people attempting to become supporters or contributors and going back to their respective brackets when thry fail to do so.

Some are discouraged entirely and some try again later.

</comment><comment><USER54> Even on a social network such as Facebook, a minority creates content. By creating I mean taking their time to write something or post their own photos. Most just share links. For a website like reddit or any other kind of site relying on user content, you can see that as an opportunity. It's not that 97% are not posting. It's that your user base attracts 30 times more other users to consume the content and therefore giving you great traffic.

</comment><comment><USER55> This doesn't just apply to the what is written on the internet. It's a universtal trait of human participation if the group is large enough.

</comment><comment><USER56> The world of contributing, moderation, the fury of non-casual individuals (various sponsored trolls, agitators, marketing professionals, legal overzealots), and how the ownership of platforms is centralised (most platforms are owned by US based companies, and/or media broadcasting hegemons) are dark and full of terrors. No wonder people stay the heck away to preserve their sanity.

</comment><comment><USER57> One of the top scientists of 2018 compiled by Nature was Jess Wade[0]. Her achievement is contribution to wikipedia specifically highlighting contributions of women and POC. When 90% of Wikipedia editors are men their biases must reflect in the content of the website. Although this isn't necessarily insane, this goes along with the idea that most of the content that we derive from the internet comes with an implicit bias of the poster. Since we don't have an intuitive sense of who is posting what on the internet it's a lot more difficult to perceive, and identify those biases.

[https://www.nature.com/immersive/d41586-018-07683-5/index.ht...](https://www.nature.com/immersive/d41586-018-07683-5/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER58> Nice to see some numbers, but not in any ways surprising.

The phenomenon is not limited to the Internet. In any group of humans, you will always have a small subgroup of active members and a "silent majority". It doesn't matter whether you look at nation states, community churches or your local school's parent-teacher organisation. In general, the larger a group is, the smaller the percentage of active members will be.

Voluntary organisations often expend a lot of effort into getting their "inactives" more involved; some manage this better than others. But somehow, being a passive consumer is the default mode of most people in most circumstances. Human nature, I guess...

</comment><comment><USER59> "Insane": Thanks for throwing those of us with health issues under the bus.

<comment><USER60> There are two types of people: Crazies who know and accept that they're nuts, and dangerous lunatics who think they're sane.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I find Grady Harp's Amazon profile [1] activity suspicious, to say the least. Here's one of his reviews from January 11, 2019:

"Australian author Phillip Strang has gained his platform as an adventure writer through his career installing telecommunications networks in many remote and exotic parts of the globe, including time spent in Afghanistan and Pakistan - an experience that allowed him to gain direct insights in to the ongoing conflicts there. He has also spent considerable time in Africa including Liberia, Nigeria, and Guinea. It is this direct contact with troubled countries that gives his books intense credibility: he has first hand contact with the events he shares in his books such as DCI Cook Thriller Series (MURDER IS A TRICKY BUSINESS, MURDER HOUSE, MURDER WITHOUT REASON, MURDER IS ONLY A NUMBER, MURDER IN LITTLE VENICE, MURDER IN NOTTING HILL, MURDER IN ROOM 346, MURDER OF A SILENT MAN, MURDER HAS NO GUILE and now MURDER IN HYDE PARK.

We know the main characters and the genteel writing style of Phillip Strang so all that is left is a brief summation of the plot and the story is distilled well in Phillip's synopsis: 'An early-morning jogger is murdered in Hyde Park. It's the centre of London, but no one saw him enter the park, no one saw him die. He carries no identification, only a waterlogged phone. As the pieces unravel, it's clear that the dead man had a history of deception. Is the murderer one of those that loved him? Or was it someone with a vengeance? It's proving difficult for DCI Isaac Cook and his team at Challis Street Homicide to find the guilty person - not that they'll cease to search for the truth, not even after one suspect confesses.

Elegant writing and a keen sense of suspense – this is another Phillip Strang winner! Grady Harp, January 19"

There's no personal opinion about the book except the "another winner" at the very end. The first paragraph is author's flattering autobiography, the second paragraph is literally copy/paste of the author's synopsis and perhaps the very last sentence is actually what Grady Harp wrote. Sorry to ruin the illusion but this is a promotional account that simply posts whatever message the authors send in. Also I noted Grady Harp consistently rates books with 5 stars, which is again a sign of promotional account, as anything below that might as well be 1 star.

[1] - [https://www.amazon.com/gp/profile/amzn1.account.AGZV527R2U6A...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/profile/amzn1.account.AGZV527R2U6APJG2FF4DP3AB5KBA/ref=cm_cr_tr_tbl_hof_name)

</comment><comment><USER62> I feel like this is a _division of labour_ argument. Sure, most of the people consume content in one way or the other, but they also produce things (tangible or intangible) if they are employed.

</comment><comment><USER63> These observations that <1% of the users of sharing sites contribute content begins to muddy the claim that these sites are aggregating user-generated content and have no editorial responsibility.

When Jason Knapp produces some very high percent of content on Wikipedia, at some point he's simply an unpaid contractor, and we've seen how that distinction has gotten other companies in trouble in the past.

</comment><comment> mark-r I used to contribute quite a bit on the MyFonts.com WhatTheFont forum. Then one day someone called Tecnotronic showed up and started dominating the board. He probably makes about 90% of the posts now.

Just another anecdote to support the premise of the article.

Edit: The link said "outliers" not "insane" when I first saw it. I did NOT mean to imply that my example was someone insane, far from it.

</comment><comment><USER64> I'm wondering how Jodel (or Yik Yak in the US) fits in. The only meaningful way to interact with it is by writing comments yourself. Only to read the comments gets boring very quickly.

I observe that the quality of the comments is worse compared to platforms with more lurkers but it's interesting to see, that a platform with, presumably, a higher participation ratio is working as well

</comment><comment><USER65> True. I write blog articles and when I talk to people they either don't do this or don't do this nearly as regular as me.

So it's not only that most people aren't creators, most creators aren't even creating much.

The probability that you read an article of someone is inversly related to "the author being regular".

Maybe that's also the reason why only a fraction of people are rich?

</comment><comment><USER66> Considering the idiocies of mainstream people I have to face everyday, I bet the content creators are insane. Insane geniuses that is.

</comment><comment><USER67> Really outliers have more need to communicate from an information theory standpoint alone. There is no need to preface every post with "I am posting from earth." If it is the norm there is less to say and it is less interesting. Upvotes can have a similar "collapsing" function - just upvoting instead of posting the exact same thing.

</comment><comment><USER68> Most of Titles We Read on the Internet are Clickbait Like This One. The title does caught my eyes, but I didn't see anything useful in the discussion. I'm actually training myself avoiding this kind of articles. Clearly, "most" and "insane" are two words that I want to avoid.

</comment><comment><USER69> Mental Illnesses are defined as behaviour that are out of the normal, which have negative effects on your ability to thrive in your environment.

I think it's fair to call abnormal behavior a form of insanity. But unless it is detrimental to their well being within their environment, it might not be an illness.

</comment><comment><USER70> I personally almost never comment unless I feel I have an original opinion, and one that isn't stupid so it'd get shot down. I guess I have a very strong filter. I wonder how many people voice things out that really shouldn't be a thing because they don't have a strong filter.

</comment><comment><USER18> Calling it "inequality" implies that equality would be normal or better. That's just wrong

</comment><comment><USER71> It's a question of motive. Once the immediate payment motive is removed, what other motives do people have for the content they create online?

When reading something online I always ask myself what motive the person had for writing it.

<comment><USER72> Some people are just bored..

But for many of the top creators mentioned in the article I strongly suspect that writing reviews, making comments or editing Wikipedia is a part of their identity. Something that gives their life meaning.

And to be fair, writing reviews or editing Wikipedia certainly is a meaningful thing to do.

These 1%'ers have a massive impact on the world. An impact they couldn't necessarily have if their motives were financial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> You can see that distribution on most popular YouTube videos: 0.1% will comment, 1% will like or dislike. The 99% will only watch. And then imagine what percentage is actually creating the content in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER74> Major (ie insignificant) lurker here. No chance there is a superfluous 's' in the People epithet? Naturally I expect to be down-voted. But if anyone gets a chuckle, I will be happy.

</comment><comment><USER75> So has been every single form of Art since the beginning of it.

</comment><comment><USER76> While I find the research interesting, I have to say that this is not what I read on the internet. Wikipedia has no use for the kind of work I do, and most books I am recommended by other people, so I don't need to sit and read a review. As for Reddit, I do use it but again, only in very niche forums where the discussion is never one-sided or made to look informative.

The same goes for my news sources and other content. Sure, I enjoy the occasional _mainstream_ YouTube video, but if I'm looking up something technical -- I prefer to read articles and blog posts from actual people with firsthand experience.

<comment><USER77> The thing is that among "actual people with firsthand experience" the ones who blog are probably outliers as well, so the original principle still holds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> At least in this community setting this number has been increased to 1% from around 0.001% in the traditional ways or content distribution like TV and magazines.

</comment><comment><USER79> Relevant: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_F9qwg8YJY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_F9qwg8YJY)

</comment><comment><USER38> Voting lurkers do so because they can. The main drivers of this dominant behavior are antiquated social media technologies supporting voting and sharing.

</comment><comment><USER80> Nowhere is this more apparent than the relationship subs. It's full blown Jerry Springer in there. The front page is pretty much trash TV.

</comment><comment><USER81> Fascinating reading the comments on Reddit and here. "Diff'rent strokes" = understatement of the century to date.

</comment><comment><USER74> Major (ie insignificant) lurker here. No chance there is a superfluous 's' in the people epithet?

</comment><comment><USER82> Both history and progress are driven by "insane" people.

</comment><comment><USER75> So has been every single form of art since the beginning of it.

</comment><comment><USER83> Using the same criteria all what we read, period, it is written by insane people.

Plato -> Insane Proust -> Insane Joyce, Wittgenstein, Shakespeare, the Torah writers... and so on and so forth.

</comment><comment><USER84> Had to comment on this because I'm insane.</comment>


Show HN: Sqlite-GUI – A simple winforms app to browse and edit SQLITE databases - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/prahladyeri/sqlite-gui <comment> mongo-db-hater Wow. Thanks for this tool.</comment>


Student Loan Debt Crisis Is Bankrupting Millennials - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/utopiapress/student-loan-debt-crisis-is-bankrupting-millennials-6d753c86305b <comment><USER2> My Dad was a janitor, my mom was a secretary, my sister dropped out of high school and had a baby at 14. Meanwhile I attended college (first person in the family), double majored in CS and physics, and graduated this past April. I got a job immediately out of school that paid very well (entry level programmer salary, which is rich as a sultan to a working class girl), and so I'm on course to pay back my 30k in student loans in 3 years (barring promotions / job hopping for more money).

I say all this to make the point that, even as someone who is a poster child for "college-enabled upward mobility", the article's dread warnings still ring true to me. I don't feel like I am any smarter or harder working than my classmates, I just got very, very lucky. I know far too many physics majors working in retail, many of whom consistently outscored me on tests, to believe I've somehow "earned" more than they had. The system right now is far too random, far too viscous. Kids need to understand that "I have a degree" is not a guarantee of employment, it just increases their chances by X%. It's still entirely possible they spend their life making <50k a year just by having bad luck.

This is all made worse by the student loan albatross around their necks, not only can they not find jobs that pay a comfortable wage - they're getting hundreds of dollars taken off every paycheck to pay off debt. This line from the author:

>I just turned 40, and I finally just paid my last student loan payment.

Ouch. I'm sorry. I'm just really sorry.

<comment><USER3> Made my last student loan payment at 40 as well. Got my computer engineering degree in 99 from UIUC and since my parents paid a substantial portion of my costs, I "only" had about $25,000 in student loans (equivalent to about $50,000 in today's dollars) with about $350/mo payment ($700/mo today).

Starting salary for an engineer was $60k, so there have been effectively no raises for the middle class for my generation or younger. Which means whoever reads this is going to be paying 2-4 times as much as I was, even with a degree from an affordable state school like I went to.

I also dorked around a lot and basically wasted my 20s on trying to win the internet lottery.

All that said, I strongly disagree with most assessments of why college is so expensive. I feel that the real reason is that it coincides with the decline of the US middle class, starting around 1980 and Reaganomics.

We don't make anything useful anymore. We don't automate the real burdens in people's lives, things like necessity or health. We just chase get rich schemes to do as little work as possible. So the rest of the world is eating our lunch now.

You want to fix the cost of college? Go back to pre-1980. Make it government funded, build more darn campuses so everyone can go (or at the very least get trained in a trade), and do a jubilee on all student loan debt effective immediately. It's how they do it on Star Trek. That's the future. Anything short of that is a bunch of unamerican hogwash to privatize everything we used to hold dear and make someone rich on your backs.

Disclaimer: this is one humble opinion from someone who paid his dues and is sick of the I've got mine mentality pushing the US to the brink of corporate fascism. I don't want anyone else to squander their potential making rent like I did.

<comment><USER4> > ... from someone who paid his dues and is sick of the I've got mine > mentality pushing the US to the brink...

I'm in agreement. My family, via a lot of hard work and sacrifice, was able to pay for college for my sibling's and myself. We all had no debt upon graduation. It was hard, but we managed to do it despite a lot of set-backs.

Though that sacrifice would be 'useless' with a jubilee on loans, I'm all for it. I've seen too many of my friends suffer under $800/mo debt loads for 12 years now. I'd much rather drink a beer with them on weekends than have them work their second jobs and drink a beer by myself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It boggles my mind that a rich and highly civilized country as the USA does not have free education and healthcare. I'm sure it's a great country but come on, you guys are really nuts sometimes.

<comment><USER6> Education is free. Credentials are not. We could spend the next two decades providing everyone with free credentials just in time to realize that the economy has moved on and they don't matter any more. This is a more complex problem than policy makers realize as it's connected deeply into the employment market.

<comment><USER5> > Education is free. Credentials are not.

So, the least expensive part of the process is the only one that you have to pay an exorbitantly ridiculous amount. I stand by my calling you nuts.

<comment><USER7> K-12 is the least expensive part? I'm willing to be convinced but I don't buy that. If you look at a State School tuition would have to be 3x more than what K-12 would cost for parents. I say state school because I feel that's the best comparison to HS on what it would cost, but again I might be wrong. I just haven't read anything saying that college is the most $$ part compared to K-12 before.

<comment><USER8> The "least expensive part" he was referring to is, I believe, the piece of paper.

You can get vast amounts of education for free nowadays, but if you didn't do it through the approved structure and pay the right people for it, to many people (particularly those hiring), you don't count as knowing any of it. You need the piece of paper, even though it's the actual _education_ that costs so much to create.

<comment><USER7> That would completely change my answer. Thank you for that perspective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Andrew Yang had a great reason for NOT signing the progressive pledge and why he didn't support free college for everyone.

His reasoning was 2 fold.

1) His UBI would help college students drastically and be a stimulus for college age kids.

2) His words, "Only 33% of people go to college" IIRC he also stated that this would only help 1/3 the population and that we need to promote alternatives to college instead.

I think there are two more issues with college. Some jobs require college degrees but really shouldn't (some not all). Some degrees offer little to no economic benefit to the student but are sold to the student at a premium.

There are some really great reasons why we need to resolve current student debt, but I think we need to overhaul how we view high school / college for everyone rather than for 1/3 of the population.

<comment><USER9> No jobs should require college. They should require skills. College is just an easy substitute for the recruitment process. (Unless the job requires an official training certificate that is)

<comment><USER10> For fields like tech, college/university might not be necessary but for anything in advanced research or medical fields, you absolutely need to go in uni and higher studies and be certified. Even in tech, you may not need a degree but still need to be certified for the field you are in (ccna, ccnp etc for network admin jobs for example).

<comment><USER9> You really don't need the network certificates for work. They're just a common retirement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Play dirty right back at them.

If you get a job at Corporation-X your wages can be garnished for failure to pay a debt. If you own your own business and a your corporation is employed by Corporation-X your business can't have it's income interfered with.

How you get paid by your corporation is not fit for discussion on this forum.

Note: This applies to Canadian tax/debt law. I don't know how well it works elsewhere.

If you know a doctor who owns their own practice ask them 'how they do it'.

<comment><USER12> In the US, I'm pretty sure you couldn't get away with this. Business expenses are held against income to determine how much tax you pay. There are strict guidelines on what counts as a business expense versus a personal expense. I suspect spending a ton on groceries and rent/mortgage for a residential address would raise some flags and get you audited.

<comment><USER13> There is always the classic income tax dodge.

Incorporate, then hire your wife, mistress, children, and random family members.

<comment><USER12> If you're employing people in lower tax brackets that might save a little bit of money if they funnel it back to you. But I don't generally hear about that tactic. It would be more relevant if you were wanting to bleed a not for profit entity where there are legal caps on the types of income executives can make.

The classic tax dodge is the $1 salary and getting taxed at capital gains rates instead

<comment><USER13> Back when top marginal rates were 70% And corporate/capital gains taxes were also high. It was a classic thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> swagasaurus-rex > Student loan debt is generally non-dischargeable in bankruptcy

This is the cause of the absurdly high prices for education. Lenders see a non-dischargeable loan as zero risk. Their debts will be paid no matter the circumstances, even when other debts are wiped out in bankruptcy, student loans will still be paid, or garnished from wages.

Lenders have no reason not to give out as many of these zero risk loans to as many unqualified and barely educated 18 year olds.

Educational institutions, seeing a surge of both demand and loaned money, raise their rates.

This process happens year after year, and the demand for colleges is only increasing, especially with a wealthy foreign population keen on sending their kids to prestigious American universities.

</comment><comment><USER14> "Student Loan Debt Crisis is Bankrupting Millenials"

Technically incorrect, since we legally can't file for bankruptcy on this debt except under very particular circumstances.

</comment><comment><USER15> I feel this is one of the biggest obstacles to the free college idea floating around.

While I hear some millennials say it's a good idea (and maybe it is in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't really matter for this point) I don't see how it would be in their best interest unless there was some very serious benefits/perks to millennials that are already in debt or those that spent the past 10+ years paying it off. They're so far behind now that many put off starting a family, buying a home, saving for retirement, and all the other things they should have been doing in their post college years. Now the'll need to face the next generation workforce of college educated debt free competition. I mean I absolutely hate to admit this but it's true, I'm going to be pretty sour if I can finally land a decent job and my soul goal is to save something up for retirement and everyone else doesn't have that huge debt monkey on their back to guide their decisions.

<comment><USER8> Disclaimer: I'm personally in the extremely lucky early cohort of millennials who got a decent job before everything went to shit.

Not a single one of the less lucky millennials I know, either online or in real life, has given the slightest inkling that they would rather see the people who come after them suffer as they have suffered, perpetuating the terrible system, just to make it that tiny bit easier for them to compete. They'd rather have the rest of their own debt forgiven and just start from there.

Obviously I can't speak for every debt-ridden millennial out there, but the overwhelming sentiment I encounter from them when this potential issue comes up is "Just do it. Make it right."

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I read some histories that just sound like someone that financed a big and very specific type of boat, that they couldn't afford to begin with, while living in a landlocked nation with no lakes and a few small rivers. But it is not entirely their fault, a lot of people cheered their young naive ass on to step in that trap.

The silver lining is that they might serve as a good cautionary tale for others.

</comment><comment><USER17> In a complex and intermixed system, things won't be limited to just bankrupting millenials. Are those loans being traded as securities or something like that? What about families, communities, job conditions and even laws? It will change society, and probably for the worse.

It will be a piece of a far bigger problem that will affect most of the system.

</comment><comment><USER18> So many people saying they have degrees and cannot pay the debt used to acquire it.

Making degrees cheaper to get will not be the answer. That'll just lead to even more degree holders looking for the elusive job.

Perhaps paying skilled labor / trades better is the right direction.

<comment><USER19> Skilled labor and the trades are paid very, very well. I could probably make more money busting ass as a plumber or electrician than I do slinging code.

You do have to actually work though if you want to make money in trades, and sweat and get dirty. Most college-educated people are alergic to working that hard, and are looking for white-collar BS jobs that they can push paper around, go to meetings, feel good about themselves, and never actually do anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The author of this article, Michael K. Spencer, is a prolific writer on Medium. Unfortunately I tend to dislike most of his articles, as they usually contain a lot of mistakes (technical or otherwise). It's a pity, because otherwise he would be a terrific author.

I wish there were an option on Medium to dislike or downvote an article or an author. I would certainly do that with him.

</comment><comment><USER21> [https://outline.com/c6c7dy](https://outline.com/c6c7dy)

</comment><comment><USER22> If only backrupsy would releave these people but somehow the whole chapter 11 thing has turned into some sick modern dept jail.

Soon your dept will be forced to your descendants.

<comment><USER23> Nobody is going to jail over student debt, that's some nutty hyperbole.

If you could get out of student loans by simply declaring bankruptcy, no sane institution would give out student loans. A young graduate has little to lose by declaring bankruptcy.

What we really need to do is teach young people not to waste $100K+ on some ridiculous degree that will not get them hired.

<comment><USER24> > If you could get out of student loans by simply declaring bankruptcy, no > sane institution would give out student loans.

And yet, credit cards (unsecured lines of credit with no recourse in bankruptcy) are issued continuously to this cohort.

<comment><USER25> Yes, but at the credit level of a student getting $50,000 in loans, a credit card company would give a $1,000 limited cards

<comment><USER24> If you don't give students tens of thousands of dollars in credit, schools can't charge tens of thousands of dollars per year. Prices rise to capture available revenue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Nobody was forced into taking a large loan to get a worthless degree that is useless in the job market. Be glad for these people, may their mistakes and poor judgement serve as an example so that others and their kids do not make the same ill-informed decisions.

<comment><USER27> When I was 15/16 years old I was promised by adults I trusted (teachers, principal, parents, family members, speakers at my school) that if I got a college degree I would be guaranteed a good paying job when I got done. At 15/16/17 years old, you are a child and you follow the advice and leadership of adults. In my senior year of high school, my parents started taking out loans in my name (called a Parent Plus loan) to pay for my college. Could I have refused? Yes, but remember I had been promised by every adult that I needed this to get a job. "A bachelor's degree is the new high school diploma" I remember being told over and over [1] [2]. If you don't want to work at McDonalds, you have to get a degree.

So yeah, no one put a gun to my head and forced me to take on student loan debt. Instead they put poverty to my head and threatened that I would sleep in my car and work for minimum wage if I didn't.

When you are a _child_ and the adults tell you this is what you need to do for your future, you listen. What you're doing is blaming _children_ for the bad advice their parents and mentors gave them.

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/catherine-rampell- th...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/catherine-rampell-the-college- degree-has-become-the-new-high-school- degree/2014/09/08/e935b68c-378a-11e4-8601-97ba88884ffd_story.html)

[2] [http://www.msnbc.com/jansing-co/college-degrees-are- becoming...](http://www.msnbc.com/jansing-co/college-degrees-are-becoming-the- new-high-sch)

<comment><USER7> Your parents didn't give you bad advice at the time (that is without the hindsight of current knowledge). At that time it was GREAT advice. The problem with advice is it only works in hindsight.

I'd suggest anyone going into college right now get a CS degree, but in 20 years that may be automated away.

Who knows. People gave you advice in good faith, they weren't trying to steer you wrong. It's what they were told was the best thing for their kids. Blaming parents or kids or even mentors is the wrong thing. It's how everything entwined that created the situation. No one tried to create it and society couldn't see it coming.

<comment><USER28> I'd like to agree with you, but how could "society" not see what would happen if you increase the percent of college graduates from e.g. 5% to 35% in a matter of just several decades? And this started to happened about the same time that we nearly doubled the labor force by first "allowing" and gradually starting to effectively require that women also work.

Skills are valued for their rarity. Get rid of the rarity, get rid of the skill's value. The most realistic concern for the value of a CS degree is not automation, it's other humans. Add far more people pursuing CS degrees, without a proportional growth in the job market, and you'd see wages and demand for it plummet.

And there also factors like China in the future. Outsourcing only really stuttered because the quality of the outsourced products was consistently poor. But there's no inherent reason this must always be the case. If China can start being a source that companies can turn to for high quality software solutions at a low cost, run of the mill software development could go the way of industrial manufacturing.

<comment><USER7> I think the best way to see how society could not see what would happen is to watch any TV show that has ever tried to predict the future ever.

Smartphone? Rarely seen but critical to our society.

Twitter? Ha.

Facebook? People actually spoke to one another.

Global warming? Didn't see that coming...

Flying cars? Nope not yet.

Pervasive Nuclear? Nope not that either.

Humans suck at predicting the future. We're so terrible at it. Market crashes, war, etc. We just have no idea. While what you're saying make sense to an economist, that's not how society works. The best ideas don't always win out the most popular ones do. People WANTED their kids to be better off, so they sent them to success factories that told the parents they'd be better off because in the past people were better off.

Until they weren't.

EDIT: I'm not saying no one saw this coming. I'm just saying a most people (society) didn't.

<comment><USER28> I don't really think any of those were comparable. The situation with the devaluing of an education is an extremely simple case of supply + demand. When usable skills are rare, they have a high value - when they're not, they don't. Again the same thing that makes it easy to predict what the longterm outcome of 'get [everybody] in computer science' will be. It'd devalue the skill to the point that it'd be worthless, much the same way that when you 'get [everybody] a college degree' those degrees, in and of themselves, become worthless.

Put another way, I can't imagine how anybody could predict _anything_ else besides exactly what has happened.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Dead simple no storage password manager - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sepisoad/passmass <comment><USER2> This appears to be using the passphrase as an hmac key directly, with the URL.hostname as the value.

Unless the user memorizes a proper randomly generated key, this is going to be brute-forcable based on a single website's generated password, which would then allow all other websites to be accessed.

Also, if a website ever changes its domain name, you're going to have trouble.

This appears to be a weekend project, and I don't want to be overly negative, but do not use this as-is. This is more than dead-simple: this is deadly simple.</comment>


Plan To Create Another Copyright-Like Right For Hollywood - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130410/07011422657/broadcast-treaty-is-baaaaaack-plan-to-create-yet-another-copyright-like-right-hollywood.shtml

<comment><USER2> Without addressing the copyright issue--I think what we've been seeing out of WIPO recently, along with ACTA, etc, is really a vindication of conservative concerns decades ago about participating in these sorts of international frameworks. Congress may be a bunch of boobs, but at least they're our boobs, and a stupid law out of Congress is better than a stupid treaty out of some unelected international organization.

<comment><USER3> How is this a vindication of anything? Treaties don't get enforced in the US in a vacuum: they require a 2/3rds affirmative vote from the Senate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I actually wrote a recent blog post on this subject, wherein I make the case that copyright is dying, and try to come up with something better:

[http://thepenzone.com/content/copyright-dying-beware- accessr...](http://thepenzone.com/content/copyright-dying-beware-accessright)

I think it's definitely time we have a replacement for copyright, given the irrelevance of copying nowadays, though "Publish Right" is likely a better term than "Broadcast Right", since the main issue is the commercial distribution arrangements for protected works. If some agreement can be found, after a certain date, copyright should stop being issued and the new right issued instead. Now we just need to figure out what that will be.

</comment><comment><USER5> If true, this is concerning. The public domain is already under attack from increasingly aggressive copyright term extensions.

This does touch on a point I've been wondering about recently. Let's say I write an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet where the main characters are all robots and the setting is in space. From my understanding, I can claim copyright on my new work so long as it contains sufficient new creativity and transformation. My new work would be considered a derivative work from the public domain original, and I would hold the copyright for my work.

The question is, what happens when someone else creates an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet where the main characters are all pirates and the setting is the ocean?

If my work were an original, I could sue the creator of the pirate version because his version was a derivative work of mine and he didn't have my permission to create it. But obviously, he can say his is a derivative of the public domain version, not my version.

How do all these rights interact? My mind gets tied up in knots trying to work it out.

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure the parties pushing these ideas want you to be able to easily work it out. The goal almost seems to be that whenever there's a dispute, a long, expensive and unintelligible process delivers a result that seems random (for those without enough money to do it right).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I see no reason to limit this to broadcasting. If I put something in the public domain on my website, I should be given copyright control over it as well.

<comment><USER8> Hell, if I mention anything that is public domain, I should automatically get copyright over it. When I read my kids a bedtime story from Grimm or Aesop, I should start getting royalties from every other parent in the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The U.S. Constitution connects copyright to authorship. There is no enabling clause to connect it to broadcast.</comment>


A New Hope - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2020/04/05/ANewHope.html <comment><USER2> I never saw Uncle Bob Martin in such a poor light before this posting.

Yes, be thankful for developers, but generally the health of developers and developers' families aren't at risk from them doing their job.</comment>


Why Groupon hurts businesses and you should be careful - <AUTHOR> I know this post will be controversial, but I stand by it nonetheless.  I think that Groupon and its ilk hurt businesses more than it helps them by devaluing the product or service they are trying to sell.  It emphasizes price (aka huge savings) as the determining factor in choosing to make a purchase.  Rather than win over customers because you have a superior product or service that is worth the regular price, the Groupon coupon shows to customers how much margin you have to work with and will anchor their future purchases off that initial discounted price.
What this means is that customers, especially new customers, will forever know that the stated price is not the "real" price, but a much lower amount even if it is in reality a loss for your business.  For example, if a service is normally priced at $50, and you now offer it at $25, your customers, even the ones who don't go for the deal, will now think the "true" price is closer to the lower price than the previous price.
They will resist buying unless the price is adjusted downward even if in actually you never intended for the price to go that low.  Moreover, these deals bring out those customers who prefer deep discounts and have weak loyalties to any one business that isn't giving them bargains.
While Groupon is a startup success, its long-tern proposition is questionable because it may hurt businesses over the long term even if it provides some short term gains. <comment><USER2> This is not specifically an argument against Groupon, but with occasional discounting in general, such as seasonal sales. Economists, marketers, and business strategists have studied and argued about this for decades.

So, some businesses avoid discounts, and others embrace them. It probably depends a lot on the type of business whether they're a net positive or net negative; otherwise either the "sales are bad" or "sales are good" argument would have definitively won out by now as accepted wisdom.

Small businesses are often unsophisticated in their marketing, so Groupon probably benefits from some businesses not realizing discounts hurt their exact business, or overpaying for Groupon promotions. (Similarly, Google benefits from small businesses that sometimes overbid on AdWords/AdSense without rigorous ROI calculations, or fail to adjust their campaigns to eliminate negative-ROI outlets.)

But other businesses -- those that get a large benefit from awareness, and some number of new recurring full-price customers -- surely benefit. There will be some optimal frequency of promotions, to minimize their cannibalization of normal demand at full price. (Ideally, you'd want to offer the promotion only to new customers, but that would require some information- discrimination that's hard on the net, with promotions that are meant to spread like gossip.)

Groupon will be in a very interesting position, as they collect data on what works for different businesses and what customers respond to. They could tempt more businesses to overpromote, or help unsophisticated small businesses schedule optimal promotions. They could possibly deemphasize certain promotions to repeat customers, or emphasize them to proven customers of competitors.

</comment><comment><USER3> Your post proves too much. It proves all discounts are a bad idea, a concept I do not think I really need to sit here and disprove at length.

Also, Groupon does not create a "price emphasis". To a first approximation, all economic actors are _always_ price sensitive.

I could argue with you at length, but it would be of a length exceeding a friendly HN post. I suggest some time with a microeconomics textbook. There are free ones on google if you search for "microeconomics textbook". I'm not _trying_ to be snarky, it's just that the alternative of basically pasting an extemporaneous one in here is not really that friendly.

It may be true that Groupon hurts businesses, but this is not any of the reasons why. The reasons why would have something more to do with having costs that exceed benefits, not that the idea is intrinsically bad.

</comment><comment><USER4> The idea that providing a deal or deep discount will somehow reveal your price points, making people demand product at that price is ludicrous.

When a business structures a deal of this nature they are doing so with their bottom line in mind, and should know that whatever money they recoup from selling the deal will at least cover their costs.

The main idea behind running these deals is to get new business in your door while minimizing the cost of advertising and promotion. It is up to the business how they choose to retain this new growth, and most businesses employ great customer service and or a slew of other great products at full price.

As Fred2baro said, this the businesses chance to engage with a customer you would of otherwise had no access to. That in itself seems worth offering something at cost one time to that new customer.

In the case of a restaurant, this is no different then the traditional offering of a "2 for 1" or a "50% off" deal through traditional media. In both of those situations the restaurant is showing their "real" price, as you said, to the would be customer, but with no guarantee of use. This is where the daily deal truly shines, for in order to take advantage of the deal, the would be customer has to put up money, i.e. purchase the deal. Talk about a brilliant incentive to get someone into a business, they are paying the business for the chance to win them as a new customer. As a business owner, I don't understand how this could be a negative.

<comment><AUTHOR> Subsidies like these are inefficient for businesses because they don't discriminate between customers who are new to the business and regular patrons. It doesn't really increase demand so much as pull it forward a la "Cash for Clunkers" meaning you are subsidizing customers who would have bought anyways.

<comment><USER5> I think this is demonstrably false. The horror stories of businesses not being able to handle the huge flow of customers pretty much prove that many people would not "have bought anyways".

<comment><USER4> In the case of certain Deal Providers, the one's who do not give the business much control over the details of their deals, I agree. However, this is not the case with a site called adility.com. They allow the business to control their deals and cut them off when the business so chooses.

You are making the assumption that these businesses only have a set number of regular customers and no idea how to interact with any new customers. Trust that any successful business will know how to and want to grow their business. It is entirely up to them how they handle whatever influx of new business they receive as a result of running a deal.

Additionally, while I agree that there have been a few horror stories, in what way does this prove that the people purchasing these deals "would not have bought anyways"?

The fact of the matter is that the majority of businesses are happy with the end result of running these deals. Most gain a significant number of new customers which more than offset any possible losses they may have had in running the deal in the first place.

The businesses who haven't been happy were either exploited by their lack of research into this growth model, or didn't have control over their particular deal. The latter again being addressed by a few new deal sites out there, adility.com being the first.

<comment><USER5> Your response is all over the place and making a lot of assumptions about my beliefs that aren't true. I was only posting a one-off response to unfounded assertion that groupon buyers "would have bought anyway". Don't read too much into it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Groupon is laughing at this and similar posts all the way to the bank.

Businesses bend over backwards to be on Groupon and there are few faster and cheaper ways to get a flood of new customers to try your service. It may be great for some and not so for others, but if you can't do the back of the envelope math (Posie's cafe) and ignorant to the risk (or success) of potentially 3,000+ people buying your groupon, then you have bigger troubles ahead.

<comment><USER7> Posie's cafe - <http://posiescafe.com/wp/?p=316>.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Separately from my on-topic reply: you should consider choosing a login name different than a famous person -- even if 'Steve Jobs' is your real name.

<comment><USER8> Why? Perhaps his name _is_ Steve Jobs and he was born _before_ the "famous" Steve Jobs. I'm only slightly kidding here.

<comment><USER2> If his name really is Steve Jobs, it would be wise to adopt the use of a middle initial, or at least make a remark acknowledging the coincidence in his profile 'about' page.

Otherwise, even if no one believes it is "the" Steve Jobs, people will have the impression he's a prankster playing off the famous Steve for attention or laughs. (That's what you usually get when someone adopts a famous person's name in a pseudonymous web forum.)

<comment><USER8> Of course, we have an rms here, and the intelligent folk of HN know it's not the king of open source. I understand why it might be a prudent factor in making ones decision when registering, but I don't see why we should be tossing around advice to other people on choosing their HN handle.

<comment><USER2> Of course, 'stevejobs' can ignore this advice. I'm just letting him know some people will take him less seriously if the name collision isn't resolved or explained. Usually, such pseudonyms are from pranksters.

I think Kevin Fischer's choice of the handle 'rms' for HN was unwise, as well. That he clarifies that he's not RMS on his profile mitigates the faux pas a little. But why squat on such a famous handle? If someone without the initials P.G. could beat PG to registration of the handle 'pg' on some new hacker/startup website, and then use that handle as their own, would doing so be a good idea?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think you are mixing concepts.

 _First: new customers will forever know that the stated price is not the "real" price but a much lower amount_ I think the "real price you are referring to is the production cost, which generally (unless is subsidized) is lower than the sales price.

 _Second: if a service is normally priced at $50, and you now offer it at $25, your customers, even the ones who don't go for the deal, will now think the "true" price is closer to the lower price than the previous price_

What is exactly the "true" price? As far as I know an item is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it.

The only thing I can infer from your sentence is that a set of customers that won't even buy the product at discounted prices, have not yet obtained value from your product. Which can be in itself a great insight to work on the message of your product and hopefully be able to transmit value.

I think, that if anything, Groupon is a great way to flush out the low value customers from a CRM pyramid and focus on medium value customers and turning them into high value ones.

</comment><comment><USER10> Offering coupons of any kind (Groupon or not) is just another form of marketing. Whether or not it makes sense for a particular business is much more complex: different structures, margins, repeat customers, etc.

So a business "loses" a $1000 with their Groupon deal, they got people into their shop and at least it's a more measurable outcome than most print or radio ads.

<comment><USER11> The key absent of measurement is the effect on the business, there is no point to a more measurable loss, in comparison to a less measurable profit.

I don't care to chime in to the debate on whether radio/print/groupon is effective as I think that like most tools it can be used properly or improperly.

<comment><USER10> I'm in agreement with you that the success or failure of the marketing endeavor is execution dependent.

However, I do feel that there is a point to a measurable loss, namely that you know not to do it again. If you spend a $1000 on setting up a Groupon deal and don't make your money back then you very clearly know that it was bad marketing move. If you spend a $1000 on a radio ad it's much more difficult to know what impact it has on your business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Groupon can be beneficial for some businesses and not so much for others. When restaurants run on Groupon they hardly make money off it. The reason being they have to over staff for the 3000+ people that are going to show up the day after the deal ends. The cost of ingredients equals the value of merchants receivable from Groupon. There is no margin for profit. End of the day if the service is good, new customers will visit that are now willing to pay the whole price. It gets the word out for less known businesses. Takes time but the rewards are fruitful. For other businesses that don't have high costs definitely make good money. It helps people to try out new things. A good example is driving a nascar for an amazing deal.

</comment><comment><USER13> What makes sense for one company may not make sense for every other. Groupon is great at what it does, so I don't see a point of being critical of something that isn't an expense unless the company opts into it. From my experience, Groupon tries to help you understand full well what you are getting in to.

The truth of the matter is that many business owners don't make the right decision 100% of the time, especially when it comes to new marketing opportunities and trends. Every brand is different, and it's every brand's responsibility to represent itself how it wants to be seen. Blaming Groupon for lowering the value of your brand is projecting your failure to maintain that on a company who offers a great service.

</comment><comment><USER14> I guess I really don't understand this part of what you wrote:

 _it may hurt businesses over the long term even if it provides some short term gains._

On their website for businesses, Groupon markets themselves as a sort of loss leader, hurting businesses in the short term, to help them in the long run. Are you thinking that businesses have such huge markups that they make a profit on 1/4 of their usual asking price, and this is letting people in on that secret?

Also, I'd like to know if you've worked with Groupon, if you own a business, or if this is conjecture on your part. I don't have a business, but from what I've read, I don't understand where you're coming from.

</comment><comment><USER15> You got a point, but a Brand is a bunch of products. You can bring the buyer in the store because of a coupon, if he comes back, it's for the service that you showed him in that store.

So the coupon is good to bring the customer closer to the place where he can listen to the message of the Brand. So you're right about the price, but the income are always coming from the relationship, in any case, you won't have a chance to build that relationship if the customer prejudges you as an expensive brand.

</comment><comment><USER16> At Starbucks, it is more expensive to hire people to stand around making coffee all day than it is to purchase and roast the coffee beans. This is easily recognizable by anyone who knows how to make coffee themselves. The majority of the money you spend when buying a drink goes into that service aspect of the business. Somehow Starbucks has managed to stay in business despite the fact that what they charge is not the "real" cost of a cup of coffee.

</comment><comment><USER17> I disagree. On that same reasoning, giving a free 30-day trial of a service would be detrimental to a business by anchoring the customer to a 'free' price point.

On the contrary, giving the customer a taste makes them come back for more. As long as your product is actually beneficial.

</comment><comment><USER18> There's a reason the deals on Groupon last only a day.

Your argument applies equally to Gilt, but I don't think people are going to start paying less for Diesel jeans.

<comment><AUTHOR> Gilt and its clones don't sell regular merchandise, but almost always out of season, overstock, and seconds merchandise that the firm would have to dispose of regardless. Businesses that use Groupon deep discount their normal stuff.

<comment><USER18> Yes, but the reason these brands weren't doing this before Gilt was because they were afraid selling excess inventory at a discount would associate their goods with that lower price-point.

Gilt gets around this by maintaining a semi-private space and having one-day sales.

Groupon isn't private, but it's time-constrained in the same way and for the same reason.

If I know a sale is on for one day only, I'm going to understand that the deal doesn't represent the every-day price.

Besides, we're in the middle of a huge recession. Damn straight people are price sensitive!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is a plausible theory. However, there are equally plausible theories that have a Groupon promotion functioning as a loss-leader and reaching a much broader customer base than a company's traditional marketing otherwise would, with some Groupon purchasers becoming loyal customers.

Either of those are possible (and I'd say it's highly likely that examples of both exist amongst the group of companies which have offered Groupons). The telling thing would be the data, which would resolve it pretty definitively for any giving promotion.</comment>


NimES: NES emulator in Nim - def- https://github.com/def-/nimes

<comment><AUTHOR> Ubercool.

Question about nim: from looking at [https://github.com/def-/nimes/blob/master/src/nes/cpu.nim](https://github.com/def-/nimes/blob/master/src/nes/cpu.nim) , I wonder: is there way to give the no. of cycles and instruction encoding with the "op" template, so those 256 byte arrays get built automatically?</comment>


Tutorial: Highly Available WordPress in AWS leveraging GlusterFS S3FS - <AUTHOR> http://blog.celingest.com/en/2013/09/10/highly-available-wordpress-1/utm=hn1609

<comment><USER2> Link failed to load for me; removing the paramaters on the end works:

[http://blog.celingest.com/en/2013/09/10/highly-available- wor...](http://blog.celingest.com/en/2013/09/10/highly-available-wordpress-1/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, re-posted!</comment></comment>


Tesla lost top engineer just before hitting Elon Musk's Model 3 goal - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/2/17528484/tesla-doug-field-model-3-production-elon-musk <comment><USER2> he has been in VP roles for decades, wouldn't call him an "engineer".</comment>


The P2P Texting Service Undocumented Immigrants Are Using to Avoid Police - <AUTHOR> http://www.buzzfeed.com/davidnoriega/the-texting-service-undocumented-immigrants-are-using-to-avo#.as4r12YLW3

<comment><USER2> Thanks for submitting. I run PaseLaVoz if anyone wants to reach out.

</comment><comment><USER3> That is dangerous. With a successful hack or a simple phonecall to NSA you have a motherlode of undocumented migrants numbers and locations.

<comment><USER2> Most users are not undocumented.</comment></comment>


Create a Forum - Ribbot - <AUTHOR> http://ribbot.com/

<comment><USER2> Seems more like a comments thread than a forum.

</comment><comment><USER3> An easy to see demo would be great.

<comment><USER4> It looks like their Support section an example. <http://support.ribbot.com/>

<comment><USER5> Yep that is both the support forum for the site, and a demo of the product itself. This should be more clear on the homepage. Thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


Top Gear's worst cars in the world - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/autos/story/20130819-worlds-worst-cars

<comment><USER2> An admirable start, but really where is the Leyland P50 (among many many others)</comment>


Documentary on Steve Jobs and NeXT - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toVTP-vcsk8 <comment><USER2> I liked how he got smarter from his failed products at Apple. Decided instead of starting from scratch just use Unix instead and build the GUI on top of that.

</comment><comment><USER3> The 90's… really strange times when there was a split between "desktops" and "workstations", with different OS's, CPU's and what not!

<comment><USER4> Well... not really. Basically the PC OSes died and what we are left with is the OSes that were then considered workstation-class, namely derivatives of UNIX (Linux, macOS) and Windows NT.

Similarly now we have a split between "PCs" and mobile OSes (which are arguably far more 'personal' than PCs ever were).</comment></comment>


0 gravity OK GO – Upside down and music video - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6fyWs8KSdE <comment><USER2> video pulled for copyright violation.</comment>


Ikea hackthon cheat the participators - <AUTHOR> "IKEA has lost trust for most of the participators, since the sponsor cheat participators and the competition is just like a shell game. The sponsor just kick participators out only 3 days before the compassion. You should show basic respect for us. And now, thousands(14000+) of people have noticed the shameful behavior of IKEA on zhihu. https://www.zhihu.com/question/272685517/answer/367680819 " <comment><USER2> Sorry, some of the nuance is lost in google translation. It seems that the hackathon drastically reduced the amount of seats a few days before, is that the issue here?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, and they keep avoiding the reason. Some of them prepared for weeks, and they bought plane tickets and book the hotels, they just sent an email to say regret two days before the event.</comment></comment>


The Clever Bootstrapping Guide - <AUTHOR> http://www.julianshapiro.com/bootstrap

<comment><USER2> Great list of bootstrapping advice. You haven't included a section on pricing, though, and I'm curious what quirks, problems and insights you've encountered. It seems as though the domain name business might have some unique challenges for a start-up...

<comment><AUTHOR> Much appreciated. Good idea re. pricing. It's actually in my to-do list to talk about that, as well as SEO/SEM (and what I've learned by plowing through nearly $1,000 on Facebook/Microsoft/Google Ads).

<comment><USER2> Cool. I'd guess that SEO/SEM for a domain name business would be incredibly important, but I could be wrong, and your real-life experience would be interesting.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: BookmarchBot – simple bookmarking, right in Telegram - <AUTHOR> http://bookmarchbot.com <comment><USER2> This is fantastic, can't wait for the web interface.

My only note is that the visual demonstration could be slowed down, or perhaps even static screenshots? For me the fading is slightly distracting, especially in the beginning.

Otherwise, great bot!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I'll fix that.

Someone should have told me the bot was unresponsive to new users!!! Tested everything except that. It works now.</comment></comment>


The Myth of the Myth of 10x Developers - <AUTHOR> http://angryweasel.com/blog/?p=726

<comment><USER2> Trouble is no one is 10x all the time - a few years ago I Was one of two developers who did a RAD/DSDM project and implemented in a month what another part of the company had quoted 2 years for.

For that month we where both 10x programmers and for that one month I did more useful work than in the preceding decade I had worked for that company.</comment>


Windows 3.1 beta crashed on 3rd-party DOS - bro-stick https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code <comment><AUTHOR> Win3.1 didn't crash, what it did do was throw up a fake error msg if you tried to install it on DR-DOS.

"drdos has problems running windows today. And I assume will have more problems in the future"

"You should make sure it has problems in the future :)"

[http://edge-op.org/iowa/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/0000...](http://edge- op.org/iowa/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/0000/PX00978.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER2> Although Win10 is smiling and waving hello, It's things like the "smile while pulling the trigger" citation that makes me never trust Microsoft.

</comment><comment> bro-stick TL;DR: DR-DOS routed around it and it cost MS .28 gigabucks after lawsuits.

</comment><comment><USER3> Didn't Windows 95 have something similar to only load on DOS 7 ?</comment>


SF NewTech Turns 5 - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/16/sf_new_tech_turns_five/

<comment><USER2> Congratulations to Myles

Alain's photo is incorrect</comment>