The looming crisis in human genetics - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14742737

<comment><USER4> I work in this field. The reasons for these problems are probably relatively simple.

1) Current GWASs focus on common variants, but the population explosion over the last few thousand years means it's likely that most human genetic diversity is rare.

2) Current GWASs focus on the marginal effects of variation at single- nucleotide sites, but it's likely that there are complex interactions between different variations.

These misplaced foci of current GWASs have more to do with what we _could_ do with current technology than with what we _ought_ to do, given these biological realities: sequencing was so expensive that it was hard to determine the rare variants; sample sizes were so small that we had to use simplifying statistical assumptions like independent phenotypic effects from each nucleotide variation. Those technological limitations are changing, now.

The "thoughtful geneticists" the article refers to aren't just wringing their hands about this. They are working on both of these issues. (I'm one of them.)

<comment><USER5> I'm very confused by the article. Not sure if it's because the language or because it's not very clear. On the one hand it says that there are too little evidence of "hereditability" to be useful to cure diseases. On the other hand it says that there is a lot of evidence, to the point of being "disturbing", of racial traits. What am I reading wrong?

<comment><USER6> Regarding the missing heritability, they are claiming that this is a deficiency of GWAS. It then goes on to talk about sequencing, which it says _will_ find lots of evidence for miscegenation, etc. (To which I say, sure, but what of it?)

In case you are not familiar with the methods, the difference between GWAS/SNP analysis and sequencing is this: GWAS relies on surveying ~500,000 (up to 6 million now, but it doesn't really matter) known single nucleotide polymorphisms. So you might ask, "which nucleotides of this subset of the human genome differ in a systematic way between cases and controls."

With sequencing, you are surveying all nucleotides, not just a subset of 500,000. So you instead ask "which nucleotides out of the 3 billion (haploid) differ between cases and controls?"

<comment><USER5> _...will find lots of evidence for miscegenation, etc. (To which I say, sure, but what of it?)_

Thank you for the explanation. I'd love to know more about my DNA, specially if it says that I have a lot of far relatives around the world, I can't understand that's a problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The central problem is that people don't understand what "heritable" or "genetic" really means. Every trait you can possibly think of has a genetic basis. I.e. having green hair is heritable, because people who dye their hair funny colors are more likely to be risk takers, and those personality traits are more likely in people with a higher fraction with such-and-such neurotransmitter receptors, and the number of those receptors is influenced by some gene by a few percentage points.

Just because it's genetic doesn't mean it's meaningful, anymore than it's really meaningful to say that this mutation which means you have 1% more of x receptor makes you go out and dye your hair green. It's ridiculous, and that's the kind of relationship that all these genes have with pretty much all phenotypes. The reason the effects are so small is because what the gene does is so far removed and from whatever phenotype you're studying. (usually)

<comment><USER8> 'The central problem is that people don't understand what "heritable" or "genetic" really means.'

Apparently so. Heritability does not mean genetic causation. Language is _extremely_ heritable (that is, children almost always speak the same language as their parents), and not because there's a long just-so chain of genetic and hormone events that ends in an innate facility for Cantonese.

<comment><USER9> "Heritability" means something like "how much of the variation in a population is due to genetic differences". This leads to some odd results, e.g. number of arms has low heritability (almost all variation is due to environment).

Anyway, language is not heritable. The variation in the languages people speak in a population is not due to genes but rather to environmental effects.

<comment><USER8> This is right. Readers, please mod down my comment above for being simultaneously snarky and dead wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The author's thesis statement is the following:

 _"The new genetics will reveal much less than hoped about how to cure disease, and much more than feared about human evolution and inequality, including genetic differences between classes, ethnicities and races."_

This thesis is revisited in the section on whole genome sequencing:

 _"The trouble is, the resequencing data will reveal much more about human evolutionary history and ethnic differences than they will about disease genes."_

However, it's never explained why next-generation whole genome sequencing will lead to success for one endeavor but not for the other. He only says that today's DNA chips (which don't reveal the whole genome) have failed to uncover the genetic basis for disease.

</comment><comment><USER11> ___No, Lewontin's fallacy is the belief that if this is true for every trait, the populations are indistinguishable._ __

Physics Prof Steve Hsu explains the Lewtontin fallacy here:

Further technical comment: you may have read the misleading statistic, spread by the intellectually dishonest Lewontin, that 85% percent of all human genetic variation occurs within groups and only 15% between groups. The statistic is true, but what is often falsely claimed is that this breakup of variances (larger within group than between group) prevents any meaningful genetic classification of populations. This false conclusion neglects the correlations in the genetic data that are revealed in a cluster analysis. See here for a simple example which shows that there can be dramatic group differences in phenotypes even if every version of every gene is found in two groups -- as long as the frequency or probability distributions are distinct. Sadly, understanding this point requires just enough mathematical ability that it has eluded all but a small number of experts.) Update: see here for an explanation in pictures of Lewontin's fallacy. I also edited the paragraph above for clarity.

On the other hand, for most phenotypes (examples: height or IQ, which are both fairly heritable, except in cases of extreme environmental deprivation), there is significant overlap between different population distributions. That is, Swedes might be taller than Vietnamese on average, but the range of heights within each group is larger than the difference in the averages. Nevertheless, at the tails of the distribution one would find very large discrepancies: for example the percentage of the Swedish population that is over 2 meters tall (6"7) might be 5 or 10 times as large as the percentage of the Vietnamese population. If two groups differed by, say, 10 points in average IQ (2/3 of a standard deviation), the respective distributions would overlap quite a bit (more in-group than between-group variation), but the fraction of people with IQ above some threshold (e.g., >140) would be radically different. It has been claimed that 20% of all Americans with IQ > 140 are Jewish, even though Jews comprise only 3% of the total population.

        ...The imbalance continues to increase for still higher IQ's. New York City's public-school system used to administer a pencil-and-paper IQ test to its entire school population. In 1954, a psychologist used those test results to identify all 28 children in the New York public-school system with measured IQ's of 170 or higher. Of those 28, 24 were Jews.

There is no strong evidence yet for specific gene variants (alleles) that lead to group differences (differences between clusters) in behavior or intelligence, but progress on the genomic side of this question will be rapid in coming years, as the price to sequence a genome is dropping at an exponential rate.

What seems to be true (from preliminary studies) is that the gene variants that were under strong selection (reached fixation) over the last 10k years are different in different clusters. That is, the way that modern people in each cluster differ, due to natural selection, from their own ancestors 10k years ago is not the same in each cluster -- we have been, at least at the genetic level, experiencing divergent evolution.

In fact, recent research suggests that 7% or more of all our genes are mutant versions that replaced earlier variants through natural selection over the last tens of thousands of years. There was little gene flow between continental clusters ("races") during that period, so there is circumstantial evidence for group differences beyond the already established ones (superficial appearance, disease resistance).

[http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2008/01/no-scientific-basis- for...](http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2008/01/no-scientific-basis-for- race.html)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The comments on Reddit tear this apart but I don't think it's that bad. [http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/abjrm/human_genet...](http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/abjrm/human_geneticists_have_reached_a_private_crisis/)

The two main points: genomic data is not as medically useful as family history. What will be discovered is going to do very weird things to political correctness.

Steve Murphy has loudly been expounding about the family history meme for years now. <http://thegenesherpa.blogspot.com/>

<comment><USER12> I found the article to be unnecessarily patronizing. The idea that the general public can't handle the truth on any number of subjects is simple arrogance. Wasn't it revealed that McCain and Obama shared common ancestry way back? How is it possibly even shocking that yes, there is "mis-attributed paternity and covert mating between classes, castes, regions and ethnicities"?

Take this, one of the final and most bizarre statements: "If the shift from GWAS to sequencing studies finds evidence of such politically awkward and morally perplexing facts, we can expect the usual range of ideological reactions, including nationalistic retro-racism from conservatives and outraged denial from blank-slate liberals."

I agree with you - it'll be a blow to political correctness, but I'm guessing there won't be the "nationalistic retro-racism" the author seems to hype - <USER2> least no more so than exists now. But even for political correctness, there will always be those who will deny that differences exist in the face of evidence (just as in the case of "nationalistic retro-racism") as the recent gender studies skirmishes show.

<comment><USER13> It was Obama and Dick Cheney.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This article completely side stepped issues of how important everything else is to our lives. We won't solve disease by genetic knowledge. What food we eat, the happiness in our lives, our exercise...these are so important. Genetic knowledge won't teach us how to be healthy, just and peaceful.

As for the differences between the races, as much as they might exist, I can't believe how people can be blind to how culture is extremely influencial.

Take your so-called smarter race (e.g. asian), take them to a "dumber" place like America, and in a few generations they'll be just as dumb.

And the asians aren't smarter. I live in China now, teaching English. Their education system, and the Asian education system in general (i.e. China/Japan/Korea) strongly develops certain skills. Mostly, these involve analysis, logic, and memorization.

However, while this form of education is outstanding for producing people that can do very well at coursework and following directions (as well as become excellent engineers/doctors/research assistants/accountants), it is very poor at producing people who can think for themselves and be creative thinkers. It certainly does not develop critical thinking.

As for the African stereotype...have you looked at what's going on over there? Damn if I could study or learn shit if I'm a starving refugee.

Oh, and I can't believe nobody's seen the film "Gattaca."

<comment><USER15> > Damn if I could study or learn shit if I'm a starving refugee.

You know that most (90%+) Africans are not starving? Africa isn't filled by starving refugees as CNN would like you to believe.

I think the most common comparison with Africans is in the USA.

> Oh, and I can't believe nobody's seen the film "Gattaca."

This is an excellent (and was my favorite) movie and I identify strongly with the main character.

While the movie sends a powerful image, now matter how hard you try, you will not change a person's general intelligence (which is innate).

<comment><USER16> _While the movie sends a powerful image, now matter how hard you try, you will not change a person's general intelligence (which is innate)._

What is the evidence for this? Most human behavorial genetics researchers talk about a "reaction surface" set for each individual by that individual's genes, but I'm not aware of any researcher who claims to have a proof for an upper limit in how much "general intelligence" (that would be IQ) can change in the case of individuals or in the case of populations. In fact, the existing OBSERVED degree of IQ increases all around the world

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

has been described by N. J. Mackintosh in these terms: "the data are surprising, demolish some long-cherished beliefs, and raise a number of other interesting issues along the way." (Mackintosh 1998, p. 104). You write, "no matter how hard you try," but it's not clear anyone is trying very hard or very systematically to raise anyone's general intellilgence, but it is happening anyway.

I meet weekly with human behavioral genetics researchers

[http://www.psych.umn.edu/courses/fall09/mcguem/psy8935/defau...](http://www.psych.umn.edu/courses/fall09/mcguem/psy8935/default.htm)

and have learned from them that the whole field of human behavorial genetics is becoming much more conservative and cautious in its claims about genetic limits on human potential than it was ten years ago. That's what is said explicitly by Tom Bouchard, one of the most cited researchers in the field.

REFERENCE

Mackintosh, N. J. (1998). IQ and Human Intelligence. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

P.S. Other good, recent reading on this subject is

Neisser, Ulric (Ed.) (1998). The Rising Curve: Long-Term Gains in IQ and Related Measures. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Flynn, James R. (2009). What Is Intelligence: Beyond the Flynn Effect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

<comment><USER15> > claims to have a proof for an upper limit in how much "general intelligence" > (that would be IQ) can change in the case of individuals or in the case of > populations. In fact, the existing OBSERVED degree of IQ increases all > around the world

I did not mention the Intelligence Quotient (which is subject to boosting). I mentioned the general intelligence factor (which is mostly innate). Using google scholar you can find many interesting articles about the general intelligence factor and its neurological basis.

Using google scholar with "general intelligence factor" I found this article that is cited 417 (it just struck my eye since the citations is extremely high for such a recent paper):

A Neural Basis for General Intelligence Science 21 July 2000: Vol. 289. no. 5478, pp. 457 - 460 DOI: 10.1126/science.289.5478.457

This one just struck my eye, but there are many more. In my opinion general intelligence factor has become beyond doubt – the question is now what the neurological basis for intelligence is.

I also think that we will not do this complex and interesting topic justice if we discuss it here.

<comment><USER16> The cited article (thanks for the citation to that year 2000 article, which I wouldn't call "recent" on this subject) doesn't address the point I asked you about. There isn't any proof whatsoever that current human beings are fixed in "general intelligence" as soon as their genome is fixed. Rather, there is entire agreement among all researchers that each human being's neurological characteristics are shaped both by genome and by experience--on this point no informed person has any doubt.

 _I also think that we will not do this complex and interesting topic justice if we discuss it here._

You are welcome to speak for yourself on that issue, of course. But on my part, I have observed that there are some HN readers who do their homework on genetic and environmental influences on human intelligence before expressing opinions on those issues, and I have learned from some of those participants and so could anyone else who cares to read their comments.

 _I did not mention the Intelligence Quotient (which is subject to boosting). I mentioned the general intelligence factor (which is mostly innate)._

It is for you to show that there is any practical way to make this distinction, because general intelligence is investigated in human subjects with IQ tests as the main instrument. See any of Ian Deary's extensive writings on this subject for how difficult it is to identify "general intelligence" without looking at IQ.

<comment><USER15> > The cited article (thanks for the citation to that year 2000 article, which > I wouldn't call "recent" on this subject)

The two books you've cited are older than this. An article with such a high citation count is usually an old seminal work (citations increase with the age of an article). For an article to have such a high number of citations in only 8 years is somewhat unusual (even when it is a Science paper).

> You are welcome to speak for yourself on that issue, of course. But on my > part, I have observed that there are some HN readers who do their homework > on genetic and environmental influences on human intelligence before > expressing opinions on those issues, and I have learned

Again, I have pointed you to a treasure trove of information.

> because general intelligence is investigated in human subjects with IQ tests > as the main instrument.

Not really. Raven's progressive matrices (RPM) are popular. Another method is a barrage of different intelligence tests (the more the better).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> the points are moot in a meritocracy. the only reason this is an issue is because entitlements are at stake.

<comment><USER18> No, the reason its an issue is that people's emotions are tied up in their opinions of their own species. They _want_ to believe cetain things about humans, and when science shows them that reality is different from their beliefs, some people take it very badly and refuse to accept reality.

A good example of this is the "controversy" over evolution v. creationism; there's no real controversy, of course, but some people just refuse to accept the reality of evolution so they've created a whole ideology of evolution denial to boost their flagging self esteem. (I suspect that at some deep hidden level, evolution deniers do accept it).

<comment><USER17> good point. I harp about ideology being an inappropriate ego boundary extension all the time but failed to apply it in this case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Edit: Wow, this turned out to be long. Also, this is fairly politically and potentially "identity hot" and I didn't add in a lot of caveats and disclaimers. If I may humbly request, could you read at least halfway through the comment before voting, and please write in and let me know if it offends, or with any concerns or suggestions? Also, my email is in my profile if I seem off and you're lurking without an account or don't want to comment publicly. I imagine people could read a lot into what I'm saying that I'm not saying, so please feel very welcome to make yourself heard by me if you disagree or dislike anything I've put down. Also, I didn't mention any of the downward spiral thinking that knuckleheads could potentially get into - and yeah, I agree that stuff is ugly and we need to be careful, and no, I'm not a knucklehead. Anyway:

I can tell a lot about someone by asking them in private, when it's just me and them, "So... what do you think of genetic differences between races?" Almost everyone, in private, will agree that there's some - but some people are really, really uncomfortable saying it. Some people, especially very diplomatic people, hedge and qualify first. When I make it known that I'm not particularly judgmental, that I've had friends and lovers of all colors and from all over the place, but that I also have a healthy respect for science and reality - well, the diplomatic people tend to open up a lot more.

Basically I'll put it like this - people of difference descendencies have been observed to have different average heights, weights, body fat percentages, average musculatures, bone densities. Different kinds of blood cells even - <USER3> you look at sickle cell anemia, blood cells shaped a little differently than normal make a person more resistant to malaria, but more prone to anemia. Malaria of course, being orders of magnitude more deadly and dangerous than anemia, which is a more long term unhealthiness thing. And sure enough, sickle cells are more present as an adaptation in people descending from formerly high malaria areas - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sickle- cell_disease#Genetics>

Moving on - there's clearly slight variances and differences between people of different descendants. The idea that there's no cognitive differences just seems incredibly unlikely. Now, I think "IQ" or "intelligence" is drastically oversimplified and bunk. But things like abstract recall - how fast can you remember something? Pattern recognition. Dexterity and coordination. And so on - why _wouldn't_ these things be adaptable and heritable? Wouldn't some parts of the world being able to remember a skill after not using it for a long period of time be more valuable than others? (places with harsh winters, for instance?) The ability to think quickly and adapt be better in different places? And if they were, wouldn't you expect natural and sexual selection to make the local population more like that?

This is almost all moot in many practical ways - the only thing that bothers me is that since people don't want to acknowledge that these differences exist, there's been very little work to learn teaching styles that would apply to different people, how different medicine and diet regimes would work better, and so on.

Different groups of people tend towards different lactose intolerance and alcohol intolerance levels - this is only recently being considered in nutrition and diet because the implications of it - different food good better for different races - is not a good political position these days. It would have been easy to test for lactose sensitivity among different groups of people and make recommendations 20-50 years ago, but no one wanted to touch it. Instead, "milk for everyone!" was the official position, which is nonsense. Dairy is terrible for the people it's bad for.

Finally - I'm very curious about what the effects of mixing blood in children would be, and there's been very little research that I know of. From my understanding of genetics, mixed blood children should be particularly strong. My background is mixed Western/Eastern European, and I'd prefer a wife of different bloodlines than my own, as I think it's a very positive thing to do for my children. Obviously you can't control who you fall in love and connect with completely, but if I choose to live in Ankara or Osaka instead of London, that greatly increases the chance my kids are half-Turkish or half-Japanese. I think that'd make them stronger, healthier, and less prone to some of the negative things in my bloodlines. But how much so? When parents have different cognitive backgrounds, which are dominant? For instance, if one parent has much higher natural testosterone levels, is that dominant? That means the children would have higher energy, be more resistant to some diseases, be more willing to act independently and defy consensus, but also have more proneness to violence, anger, and aggression. I generally have high testosterone throughout my family - we've made good soldiers but some of us have had pretty bad tempers. What happens if I marry a woman with a lower natural predisposition towards testosterone? How about different cognitive abilities? We've generally got bad eyesight and bad spatial relations in my family. You'd expect good eyesight should be a dominant characteristic, no? But how much so?

I'd love to see research on this, and I think we will, because you can only hold back science and knowledge through moral fashion for so long before it breaks through.

<comment><USER20> _The idea that there's no cognitive differences just seems incredibly unlikely._

As long as the difference between individuals in a single population is greater than the mean difference between populations themselves, I don't see much relevance.

Sure, Negroid races as a group don't have the IQ of Caucasians. But Caucasians who attach any importance to that had better look over their shoulder at the Asians, who in turn beat _them_ on the same tests. The Asians don't want to get too smug in a room full of Ashkenazi Jews. Meanwhile, there are plenty of individual Negroids and whitey-birds who outperform plenty of individual Asians and Ashkenazis.

If any lessons have emerged so far from the study of human genetics, it's that your genes are not your destiny. In any just society, an individual's success will always consist of 90% perspiration, 8% inspiration, and 2% DNA.

<comment><USER15> > As long as the difference between individuals in a single population is > greater than the mean difference between populations themselves, I don't see > much relevance.

This part is the Lewontin's fallacy (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewontin%27s_Fallacy>)

<comment><USER21> No, Lewontin's fallacy is the belief that if this is true for every trait, the populations are indistinguishable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Shooting down the notion that genetics are tied to race and thusly tied to positive or negative traits brings really brings out the anecdotal evidence logical fallacy in full force.

Just remember, anecdotal evidence is largely the same "logic" used by racists to justify broad stereotypes of people.

</comment><comment><USER23> > the genes typically do not replicate across studies. Even when they do > replicate, they never explain more than a tiny fraction of any interesting > trait.

Epigenetics. Diet and lifestyle have large effects on how a genome is expressed. And even on how the genome is expressed in future generations.

I thought this was well understood? Why no mention of it in the article?

</comment><comment><USER24> oh, no, if genetics reveal differences in humans, then that will make it harder for the rich people to combine many races into each workplace, each neighborhood, each city and each nation. Diversity is how the rich people divide the population, and if the population cannot be divided, then the population will unite against the rich.

Remember, Kids--Diversity is strength....(for the rich)</comment>


Soccer, a Beautiful Game of Chance - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/08/science/soccer-a-beautiful-game-of-chance.html?_r=0 <comment><AUTHOR> Quoting:

        ... luck matters less in English soccer's Premier
        League than in the NFL and in Major League Baseball,
        because the American leagues have evened the level
        of skill among teams by sharing revenue, imposing
        salary caps and giving better draft choices to the
        weaker teams.</comment>


Bill Gates' First Flopped Demo Had Him Crying For His Mommy. Literally. - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-first-flopped-demo-had-him-crying-for-his-mommy-literally-2009-4

<comment><USER2> > Turns out Bill and childhood buddy Paul Allen had startup ideas well before > Microsoft. The pair came up with something they called "Traf-O-Data."

I dislike the use of "turns out" here, as if new data is being revealed. I read a biography of Gates back when I was in college (maybe around 1990), and I know that Traf-O-Data was mentioned there.

</comment><comment><USER3> The bigger news to me in this story is that Bill Gates' nickname is "Trey".

<comment><USER4> Bill Gates' full name is William Henry Gates III (which sounds old-money and is). "Trey" is a common nickname for children who are III.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like how the related articles at the bottom all have pictures of Gateses with hands flung up in the air. (Granted, there are only two distinct pictures, but...)

</comment><comment><USER6> I wish they stop showing that photo for articles/news about Bill Gates. It's not very flattering :)

<comment><USER7> I think that's kinda the point. It's not supposed to be a flattering article about Bill.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> He seemed to treat the DOJ the same way, except in that case, his mommy was named "Ballmer."

People's personalities do change over the years more than science credits, I think. I know mine certainly did.

</comment><comment><USER9> Okay he cried. So what?

<comment><USER10> didn't even cry. RTFA, and you see its a useless exaggeration.

<comment><USER7> It should have said 'cried OUT' instead of cried.</comment></comment></comment>


Startup CEOs – The Panhandlers of the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.geekypeek.com/?p=707

<comment><USER2> The not being in debt is something I've worried about. I'm going to graduate college in a year and a half, and will have a monstrous pile of student loan debt. That would mean that I would need to be paid enough to subsistence-live _and_ pay at least something on my loans.

That probably makes me not the best choice to invest in :(

<comment><USER3> i'd point out the fact that you don't have to follow the "standard tech startup" checklist if you have a good idea.

get a real job to help pay down your bills, save up, and work on your company in your free time. or work on your startup most of the time and do consulting/freelance work to make ends meet.

<comment><USER2> That's pretty much what I'm planning on doing - I had an excellent internship this summer at a great web company, and I _am_ really looking forward to continue to work there.

That said, the romance and adventure of eating ramen and working morning, noon, and night to make something interesting and new is attractive. There's plenty of the rest of my life, too, though, I suppose :)

<comment><USER3> i really hate pointing it out, but working on a scrappy startup straight out of school is either for the exceptionally talented or for the people who have/had the financial support of their parents.

<comment><USER2> Indeed. And as much as I'd like to think that I'm talented and have good ideas, I'm not going to risk being financially screwed to try them out right away.

Looking at the founders who dropped out of school, or built an idea into an empire, a common thread does seem to be a measure of financial stability, if not complete freedom from debt.

Here's hoping that day comes someday.

<comment><USER3> i think that would be an interesting statistic to look into. how many YC founders come from well-off families? how many successful tech company founders come from well-off families?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Sample VC Legal Templates - <AUTHOR> http://www.nvca.org/model_documents/model_docs.html

<comment> daniel-cussen This sort of thing really helps reduce barriers to entry for startups.

Hopefully, reducing legal costs will benefit the entrepreneur more than the VC. From what I've read, a VC is much better versed in the legal aspects of funding companies and has more money and time to spend on legalities. This makes it much easier for the VC to exert influence on the legal side of the financing equation. If legal proceedings become standardized, VCs will lose the legal bargaining chip.</comment>


Facebook was warned about app permissions in 2011 - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/24/facebook-was-warned-about-app-permissions-in-2011/ <comment><USER2> I built apps on FB back in 2011-2012 and was gobsmacked at how much data we got about the friends of our users. I also knew of several shady people building apps. Because I saw how much data we got without consent, I realized other shady people could get that data about _me_ via my friends.

Which is why I severely curtailed my FB use around that time.

<comment><USER3> Any chance you can expand on this? What data, in particular, did you obtain that would make people feel uneasy?

<comment><USER4> I also worked on a quasi-popular facebook app in a similar time period and you got a lot of data but the specifics would change from month to month so it was sometimes more and sometimes less.

The worst, for me, was posting on behalf of other people and getting replies to your app like "I'm so glad to hear from my favorite grandson after so long!".

<comment><USER5> Why would you post on behalf of other people?

<comment><USER6> Because it was allowed and it is an easy way to spread an app virally? "John Doe via ViralApp: [This app is great! Get your own Virus today by clicking here!]"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was also working on Facebook apps from 2011 to 2013 using Facebook APIs.

At this time whenever we have released any app, useres could login to it using OAuth which means they were presented with a list of privileges our app needs from them (eg. Friends list, photos, posts etc). Once user has authorised the app we could fetch all of this data.

This was how Facebook worked at this time, you can't say it is a leak of data because we explicitly ask user for permission. You basically say, I want to use your app, here is my profile if you need it. I don't really understand why people are so mad about their data privacy. If you publish your photos, list of friends, what you like, where you live and work, who are you merry to, then it shouldn't be a surprise this data can be viewed by not only your neighbour but also a dodgy automated scripts. Once the data is fetched then you can only imagine what people can do with it. It's not really Facebook fault. It's people who thinks when they publish things on the Internet, it's safe and can be only viewed by other people.

Maybe Facebook only role should be to make people more aware of all of this, but is it in their interest? I don't think so.

<comment><USER8> > I don't really understand why people are so mad about their data privacy. If > you publish your photos, list of friends, what you like, where you live and > work, who are you merry to, then it shouldn't be a surprise this data can be > viewed by not only your neighbour but also a dodgy automated scripts.

I don't understand why I keep reading comments like this. One of the main issues is that your data could be leaked to an app developer even if just ONE of your friends installed said app. So even if you diligently made sure only your friends, or even particular friends, could see your stuff, it'd still be accessible to the app developer.

That is absolutely not something even a privacy conscious person would've expected, and absolutely enough to get mad about.

<comment><USER7> As I said I was developing Facebook apps back in 2011 and at this time as far as I remember, your friends list was publicly available to any logged in user. API was only making this easier for apps to fetch the data about you. There was an explicit permission about accessing friends list and their data through the API so yes, any of your friend at that time could just give away your profile to a third party.

I stopped using Facebook back in 2011 (only used it to manage and test my apps) as I was really concerned how easy is to collect personal data.

But I guess for me, as a developer, it is easy to imagine how things works and when to get suspicious online.

On the other hand it makes me really happy, Facebook privacy issues like this one with CA, got much attention and finally more people, hopefully, will understand how things works.

<comment><USER8> It's not a matter of understanding. It's matter of, among other things, not allowing a friend to give away _your_ data without your permission. I really don't understand how you cannot see that this is not a matter of 'understanding how things work' and instead a matter we can and should be pretty mad about...

<comment><USER9> By being friend with someone on Facebook you already make your data available to this friend. Your friend can show this data to anyone curious about you by showing his screen or by talking about what he saw on your profile.

An app on Facebook is only an automated way to ask your friend to share data he/she has access to. You cannot both share data with your friend and expect him/her to not be able to share it with 3rd parties.

If you don't want your friends to be able to share your data you don't become friends with them on a social network and/or you don't share data with them.

You don't tell to your acquaintances things you don't trust them to keep secret. And you can't expect them to keep secret things you share with every acquaintance

<comment><USER10> What happens when it's your Mother or Father?

<comment><USER11> I tell my relatives repeatedly to not take pictures of me if they're going to share them on those platforms. This whole thing is a problem with people's complatiency with technology and especially the coorporations taking advantage of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> You know what? I, and I'm pretty sure a majority of people, would rather just regulate Facebook to death. You jump through hoops to maintain your privacy, I'll lobby for change to existing laws. Meanwhile you tell people how they're just not into computers enough, or not hard enough on friends and family.

Let's see which prevails.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I remember doing security work for a few companies at the time and discovered some standard SQL injection vectors in databases with upwards of 50k access tokens. It's unlikely, but entirely possible that someone could have stolen access tokens from apps, and subsequently stole user data from Facebook too.

At the time, signing into apps with Facebook meant you were not only giving the app access to your account, but also anyone clever enough to steal the token. In some cases, "clever" even meant anyone who had a basic understanding of sqlmap or other pentesting tools. In theory shady "analytics" firms could have hired a low level security researcher and had him use shodan and sqlmap all day to expand their databases.

Today it's pretty rare for apps to ask for intrusive permissions, and people tend to be a bit more wary of apps that do. Facebook has also made an effort to alert users when the permissions requested are more intrusive than the usual email address and profile picture - often requiring explicit agreement to these permissions.

Nonetheless, if Facebook's "audit" turns up apps that did a lot of suspicious queries, what stops them from saying "oh we were hacked someone took our tokens from our DB, we are conducting a full investigation". Sure it's still bad press, but it's probably better PR to look incompetent than creepy.

<comment><USER13> > Facebook has also made an effort to alert users when the permissions > requested are more intrusive than the usual email address and profile > picture - often requiring explicit agreement to these permissions.

Facebook were required to do this by the FTC in 2011.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think that the whole point about this Cambridge Analytica and Facebook scandal is _not_ that Facebook collects all sorts of data, but that Facebook shares that data to third party services via "Login With Facebook" without any previous consent of users. The privacy settings of your Facebook account lose their purpose when Facebook creates an advertising profile (which may or may not be very accurate) which all said third party services may use to fuel their own advertising strategies. The contents of said ad profiles include your interests which also may reflect your ethnic background, sexual preferences, political views, et cetera. All of which CA (mis)used for analytics. But, (I checked today) users are able to disconnect ad profile sharing or delete some data. So, there is no scandal here, yet I didn't know until today that such settings even existed. So, it is convenient for Facebook to say that users usually have full control over their data.

That Facebook now feels betrayed by CA because such data (generally available to service providers) has been used inappropriately shows either that they were complicit by enabling CA to do so and _knew_ about it all along, or they _didn 't know_ what they were doing at all. I'm not sure which is worse. If a third party says "trust me, I'll handle all the data responsibly" doesn't mean anything, because there is no oversight whatsoever. Additional clauses in contracts do not make Facebook a victim of contract breach. The product in itself is flawed, because it handles the data irresponsibly.

</comment><comment><USER15> _" [Facebook] systems were so laxly designed as to actively encourage vast amounts of data to be sucked out, via API, without the check and balance of those third parties having to gain individual level consent."_

That is a gross oversimplification of the issue. There were controls in place to stop excessive data collection. In fact, the only app in this situation that was allowed to "suck out" "vast amounts of data" was the Obama For America app. According to Carol Davidsen, Obama's Former Campaign Director _" We ingested the entire U.S. social graph"_ [1], despite the fact that less than 1 million people actively authorized the app to access their data. Approximately 99.5% of the hundreds of millions of people whose data Obama took, with Facebook's blessings (actively allowing it to bypass its data collection limits for apps), never knew about or authorized Obama to have or use their data.

So only one app was "actively encouraged" to suck out vast amounts of data in the history of the existence of the API. All the rest of them were subject to relatively strict controls, requiring months or years to collect even a small fraction of the data that the Obama app was allowed to collect. The API was not a data free-for-all, except in one unique case with the explicit authorization of Facebook.

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/facebooks- ru...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/facebooks-rules-for- accessing-user-data-lured-more-than-just-cambridge- analytica/2018/03/19/31f6979c-658e-43d6-a71f-afdd8bf1308b_story.html)

<comment><USER16> From the article you link:

"But thousands of other developers, including the makers of games such as FarmVille and the dating app Tinder, as well as political consultants from President Barack Obama's 2012 presidential campaign, also siphoned huge amounts of data about users and their friends, developing deep understandings of people's relationships and preferences."

Last I checked, Farmville was not associated with OFA. So you need to back up your assertion "All the rest of them were subject to relatively strict controls, requiring months or years to collect even a small fraction of the data that the Obama app was allowed to collect. " and explain why this also renders the entire dataset collected by CA to be completely harmless, in contrast to the current narrative. Because it's not that interesting if a relatively benign political organization got a little more data than another which used it to impose the will of a foreign enemy upon the US electorate.

<comment><USER15> There's a massive difference between Farmville et al and the OFA app. Facebook had limits in place that constrained the ratio between the number of friend profiles that were allowed to be accessed and the number of people that had explicitly authorized the app. They were a black box on this issue, but for example I had apps that were stopped from accessing deep profile information of friends (likes, occupation, etc.) when I reached 10:1. OFA's ratio was in the _200:1_ neighborhood.

It was somewhat possible to overcome this by spreading the collection out of a number of months or years, which is what I believe the Kogan app did. But even in that case, with the data collection spread out over a long period of time, they had nowhere near the data that the Obama campaign was allowed access to. Finally, the CA data was years old, while the Obama data was allowed to stay fresh right up to election day because they had no API limits.

So these apps with much larger install bases than Obama could have ever dreamed of had access to _less_ data than OFA did because their ratio was not allowed to be as ridiculously asymmetric as Obama's was. They still had access to large amounts of data, but only because of their massive _authorized_ install bases (which in all of the cases you mention were far larger than the OFA install base). But none had the _entire_ US social graph - with the exception of OFA.

<comment><USER17> Are you sure that Farmville didn't have a 200:1 ratio?

It certainly looks suspicious, but I don't think you can rule out the profit motive. Perhaps in 2012 Facebook's position was, "If you pay us enough money we'll remove the API limits"

<comment><USER15> Farmville had a massive install base. So they weren't accessing that much data relative to the number of people that had directly authorized their app. The difference between it and the Obama app was the leverage that was allowed: less than 1 million people gave them access to their data, and they were able to use that to get deep profile data on nearly _every_ US Facebook user - ~200 million accounts. Their attempts to do this set off all kinds of alarms, but Facebook went in and manually shut those alarms off and opened the floodgates to the data. _Our_ data.

Considering that at least half of them - ~100 million people - would have consciously objected to helping Obama do anything, much less get elected, that should have been earth shatteringly scandalous and probably should have buried Facebook right then and there. But instead, the press celebrated this technique, right up until it helped create a result other than the one it wanted.

<comment><USER17> There are two questions here:

(1) Was Facebook biased in favor of the Democratic party?

(2) Should the press have been more critical of the way personal data was used for political purposes?

My answer to (1) is 'probably', but maybe Facebook would have been willing to "manually shut those alarms off and open the floodgates to the data" for anyone who gave them a million dollars?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm just going to keep posting this.

I told Mark about this exact problem in ___2005_ __.

[https://twitter.com/AaronGreenspan/status/975957889767505920](https://twitter.com/AaronGreenspan/status/975957889767505920)

And I warned him about FTC liability if he ignored it.

[https://twitter.com/AaronGreenspan/status/976331044084264960](https://twitter.com/AaronGreenspan/status/976331044084264960)

After that, we stopped talking.

<comment><USER19> Where are those screenshots from?

Why is Zuckerberg's nick 02? Who is 01?

<comment><USER20> AOL Instant Messenger (which was super popular at the time) had this format. You could choose your own screen name, maybe he wanted 02 instead of 01 for whatever reason.

<comment><USER21> Presumably because he registered his nick in 2002 (which was a popular "naming scheme" at the time). thinkcomp should tweet someone like @pinboard, @nitashatiku, @karaswisher etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> People didn't seem to care back then, though. If you asked a random FB user about app permissions in 2011, I suspect that person wouldn't think it was a big deal.

Social mores are changing, becoming better developed.

The Internet, social networking, OAuth -- these are not exactly well-trodden subjects in humanity's past. It's not like we have decades or centuries of precedence to look back on.

The important thing is what FB does now.

<comment><USER23> Again with this "not caring" comment.

In at least 90% of the cases people _don 't understand_ what the privacy policies or permissions mean or what they could be used for. People trend to trust others, in general. And many developers abuse that trust, especially when they're allowed to do it _by design_ with the permissions they're given by the platforms.

When an app asks me for "Access to media" I only give that access expecting that maybe it needs that access for when I will open a media file with that app or to download or create a media file inside the media folder.

I _do not_ expect the app to analyze my media for the type of content I have in there, and I do not expect the app to upload those files to its servers, or any other uses that developers may come up with for that particular permission.

Yet, the permissions are set-up in such a way that they allow much more than people expect them to allow.

Saying "well you shouldn't have given them access to media" or "you shouldn't be using the Internet or a smartphone" is really a nonsense type of comment to make. If it's a video player, of course I have to give it access to the media. That's why I need a video player. But I didn't intend to give it access to upload my media to its servers. That's what the _platform developer_ allowed it to do, without me _knowing_ or _understanding_ that it can do that, not me "not caring."

This is just an example, but it can apply to phone permissions, contact permissions, and other types of permissions just as well.

<comment><USER22> Also, sorry for the double response, but I had one other thought.

I'm not sure that most people understand even now, after the CA story broke, what the specific issue was with CA, FB, and app permissions. CBS news characterized it just like any other data breach. Slate's Political gabfest did the same. Most news articles near the tip of Reddit's front page were also light on details. Channel Four's original report didn't even focus that heavily on the FB/App problem. Friends in my FB news feed similiarly sound confused about what specifically happened. Everyone is outraged, but few seem to understand, even now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I remember building very innocent Facebook Apps for Marketing purposes back in 2011-14 and being very annoyed at the privacy changes as they made our "cute" usecases basically impossible. At the time I always imagined Facebook would monitor their API usage to prevent aggressive mining as this would surely be against their own interests, but as it seems they didn't care.

If only someone would have used this hole to seed something like Diaspora to help break the critical mass problem for those kinds of projects.

<comment><USER25> Funnily enough, I vaguely remember there being articles on HN claiming that Facebook's lockdown of access to their social graph was an anti-competitive practice that needed to be stopped when it originally happened, though I can't seem to find them again so might be misremembering.

<comment><USER26> There are comments in this thread suggesting that FB made the OpenGraph changes to preserve their competitive advantage. If they lock down their APIs even more, I wouldn't be surprised to see more accusations of these.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> _" We also asked why Facebook users should trust Zuckerberg's claim, also made in the CNN interview, that it's now 'open to being regulated' — when its historical playbook is packed with examples of the polar opposite behavior, "_

It's like when Trump said he could shoot someone on the street and still win... It's when your supporters start to back off that you start giving in to demands, not before.

</comment><comment><USER28> The real problem with app permissions is that developers are allowed to even REQUEST permissions that are not necessary for the functioning of their app. This is not just an issue with apps on facebook. It's also an issue with Android apps (and, I presume, iOS apps).

The fact is that the majority of users can not be expected to look out for themselves. People hit install and then hit accept to whatever permissions request pops up. It is like agreeing to the TOS that no one reads.

I tried to download an alarm clock app on Android. It wanted access to virtually everything. Why do you need so much information for a fucking alarm clock? My analog alarm clock doesn't know my name but it still wakes me up each morning.

Platforms (Facebook, Mobile OS's, Desktop OS's) need to reject apps that request unnecessary permissions.

<comment> shady-lady Exactly this.

Part of the reason is pre-emptive cost cutting by these companies to remove human review from these apps.

Google also played a massive part in this with their strategy for growing the Android app store. (as did Facebook)

Favouring quantity over quality puts users at risk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I don't understand why Facebook ever shared friend data. It's one thing for a user to opt in to sharing things like their _likes_. But as soon as you share friend lists, you are sharing stuff about other people.

<comment><USER22> There are non-evil uses of that data, of course. A custom-built news feed for example. That would actually be pretty nice...

<comment><USER30> There are non-evil uses for anything. That doesn't mean we don't need security.

<comment><USER22> Never said that there wasn't. I was responding to someone who couldn't fathom a legitimate use of the friend data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I have to say, I have never seen so much bad press about facebook in such a short time frame.

Seems like this is picking up a lot of steam.

<comment><USER22> It's astounding. And much of the reporting is really, really terrible. Like just not describing things with any degree of accuracy at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> There is literally nothing new about facebooks invasive practices in all this news (except that CA took their lunch money).

I have a feeling all this coverage is driven by quite a bit of schadenfraude from the traditional media.

This coverage is well deserved, but I am sad that people are only taking notice now.

<comment><USER33> Coverage is well deserved but only focused on one single case: Trump's campaign.

Syrian Civil War began in social media first. The journalists criticising Facebook nowadays used to run campaign for how social media helps protesters organize. What if Arab spring wasn't an organic movement? Isn't it weird that some "experts" suddenly changed their mind about social media after Trump's election?

Also, why noone even talks about Google? It's much bigger weapon for manipulating facts if you consider millions of people trusting its results for their questions. People ask Google if Brexit is good, people ask Google if Trump is doing good. And we don't even know how Google picks the best results. What if there are some SEO tricks shared with only a few companies?

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Facebook always required the initial user to give permissions including access to friends. But for many years once that was granted all public/friend shared friend data was available that others shared with their friends by design. They closed that off with OpenGraph v2 where they even changed friend ids/invites to be unique to the app so that data was not able to be correlated easily across apps. They did it for privacy but mainly because other groups were pulling in the social graph and maybe it became a competitive threat.

People that weren't developers or in marketing probably had the expectation Facebook was a private walled garden where they were only sharing with their friends but once one friend gave those permissions, many bad apps started to see how they could pull down the entire social graph. This has since changed with OpenGraph v2 in 2013-14 but it was exploited by nefarious groups for a time.

I think most of the permissions model was fine before the bad apps and shady groups that are using your data for targeting purposes beyond games, apps and ads. Once it started to be used for aims beyond harmless fun like games that is where people got angry especially in targeted politics.

</comment><comment><USER35> 2011? I can't recall that far back with FB app perms, but I do remember working on a few projects in ... 2013 IIRC? And one of the pieces of feedback I got the most from people I'd asked to test was "why do you need all these permissions?" They weren't all an overly tech-geek crowd, but many seemed to question it.

"I can't _not_ ask for these permissions - even just for a basic login - facebook _forces_ this information to be available to my systems. I'm not using it for anything, and I don't _take_ much of the information I'm given, but to connect via Facebook, they require me to have access to this information". That became my standard-ish response, and it wasn't that surprising why many people got miffed, especially if I was just doing basic "login with facebook" stuff.

IIRC, FB has changed the minimum permissions a couple of times in the last several years (or, at least it's seemed like it - maybe names or presentation of the info has changed?)

</comment><comment><USER36> Any app developer will tell you that Android is much more invasive...you can suck so much location/device data with no (or very standard) permissions. Apple was bad too until a few years ago.

</comment><comment><USER37> Delete and forget it existed. Ignore and move on. Give up the benefits and pay the cost. Do you really want to live your days feeling dependent on this sort of "service"? Do you really want to say, "but I need Facebook!".

In today's age, you need a phone number and e-mail. It's ok - they are decentralized. Don't let a centralized platform of Facebook's evil nature become necessary for you to live your life.

</comment><comment><USER38> In the last couple of years the company I work for wanted to build social scoring methodologies. In 2013, Facebook revised their privacy rules and we were not allowed to collect the data we needed. However, there are paid partner programs with different rules. Same as LinkedIn, afaik.

</comment><comment><USER39> Did Facebook try to block this company from interacting with affected users after this happened? or did they just let them target anyone with any ad?

</comment><comment><USER40> The thing that never ceases to amaze me is just how easy it is to scrape Facebook profiles. Every other social network has strict usage quota but with FB you can scrape tens of thousands of profiles with a single ip. With a thousand proxies you could scrape all profile pages of any given country. I won't be surprised if there are companies out there doing exactly that as we speak. And FB allows it, probably because it enhances the ecosystem by providing useful insights to corporations.

</comment><comment><USER13> They weren't just warned by Ireland. They had to agree to oversight following an FTC decision in 2011.

</comment><comment><USER41> The article does not mention the issue FTC took with "Verified Apps" in 2011.1 This was before FBs IPO.

WSJ had reported several times about apps leaking FB IDs and about companies such as RapLeaf linking them to users.2 They were apparently combining Facebook data with some data from public sources to identify Facebook users, in 2011.

Zuckerberg in his statements so far has used the term "derivative" data a couple of times, as if the word derivative is significant. Does Facebook believe this somehow takes it outside the scope of what they are responsible for?

1\. [https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/SB1000142405270230477280457...](https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/SB10001424052702304772804575558484075236968?tesla=y)

2\. [https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/SB1000142405270230441050457...](https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/SB10001424052702304410504575560243259416072?tesla=y)

</comment><comment><USER42> This story seems to be very carefully planned attack to Mr. Zuckerberg to oust him from Facebook CEO. Recently they exposed some IM history from the past decade where he calls user "dumb" [http://www.businessinsider.com/exclusive- mark-zuckerbergs-se...](http://www.businessinsider.com/exclusive-mark- zuckerbergs-secret-ims-from-college-2012-5) everything that they know about me. Z to be revealed.</comment>


As German Bund Yields Head to Zero, They Still Beat U.S. Treasuries - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-02-08/as-german-bund-yields-head-to-zero-they-still-beat-treasuries <comment><USER2> What I didn't get from the article is a "so what". Why does this matter? Or maybe they did explain why it matters, and I just don't have enough knowledge to understand.

<comment><USER3> What makes this article a bit confusing is that they give an answer without making it clear what the question was.

Here's the missing question: Imagine you are a Eurozone pension fund or life insurer. You have to invest billions of euros very safely and eek out a return that is no less than inflation. How do you do that?

Inflation (HICP) was 1.73% in 2018. German Bunds, the safest euro denominated investment with sufficient volume, yield close to 0%. Now you look across the Atlantic and find that 10 year treasuries yield 2.63%.

The problem is that simply investing in treasuries wouldn't work because currency fluctuations would likely dominate any interest income. So you would need to hedge the currency.

The Bloomberg article is about why hedging the EUR/USD currency pair is currently too expensive for this idea to work.

It matters for European savers, including everyone who is paying into a defined contributions pension (e.g most workplace pensions). A significant chunk of those savings currently yields negative returns. The alternative is to take a lot more risk than you want to or are allowed to take.

<comment><USER4> Why bother investing it at the point? What's the advantage over holding cash?

<comment><USER5> > _What's the advantage over holding cash?_

Where do you hold the cash? Physically? As deposits in a bank? "Cash" is short hand. This article debates different forms of cash. (OTR sovereign bonds are usually considered cash.)

<comment><USER6> It's deposits in a bank, yes. Many banks charge large deposit holders a negative interest rate.

The alternative of holding it in actual cash, comes with security costs, storage costs,... The negative interest rate is still cheaper then the 1% annual cost of securing banknotes. It also puts an implicit floor on how low the central bank can lower the interest.

<comment><USER5> > _Many banks charge large deposit holders a negative interest rate_

Counterparty risk dominates, for most treasurers. You don't want your billions of corporate deposits in the bank that went bust. Treasuries—or their local equivalent—are a safe way to hold cash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Euro-hedged US treasuries

<comment><USER8> Vs unhedged bund. Pretty lame.

<comment><USER9> Yeah I'm not sure they are really comparable. Most foreign governments buying T-notes are not fully hedging their currency exposure. As the Bloomberg article demonstrates, doing so heavily eats into your returns. You are paying an expensive premium, it would probably just be a better idea to buy USD denominated T-notes and deal with the currency exposure down the line.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can someone with a finance background explain why this is happening?

Is the issue that there is loads of money in the system with not enough productive and/or low risk opportunities to invest it, so people are basically wiling to accept close to a zero return?

</comment><comment><USER11> I own German Bundesanleihe and I wonder what stops anyone buying units that were released 20 years ago. Some of them yield around 4%. Of course they expire within the next 4-8 years which is still enough time to profit. Maybe I'm missing something...

<comment><USER9> What you're talking about is the coupon, not the yield. Say you have Bunde that was sold at 100 EUR. The coupon is 4 EUR. So the coupon is 4%. The yield however depends on the current market price. To calculate the yield you take the coupon and divide it by the current market price. Because bonds mature into each other, that is a 5-year issued 4 years ago should be the same as a 1-year issued today, both bonds will have the exact same yield.

So effectively all the old bonds turn into new bonds, all linked to the same yield. This is why yields can be negative, it's not like a negative yield bonds means you are paying someone. It just means that the price is so high the effective return is negative (remember that you get the face value of bond back after it matures)

One exception to this rule is newly issued bonds. Because of regulations and rules, some institutional investors must buy bonds direct from the treasury. This means that they often trade a premium (they have a lower yield) compared to old bonds.

Bonds can be a little counterintuitive because when bond prices go up, yields go down. So negative yields actually mean that market is very bullish.

You might then ask, why would anyone purchase a negative yield bond? Well, there are a couple different reasons: a) they have to, due regulations or internal rules. b) they are speculating on interest rates or currency. Or c) they are speculating on the bond market (related to b).

Bonds can be complicated because they have exposure to a lot of factors: rates, inflation, equities, debt, etc. But they are useful instruments because they have intrinsic value: they simply pay a fixed coupon and then the principal after N-years.

<comment><USER12> Just to add on this... for most investors, they provide some backbone and counterweight to market cycles. In terms of safety, they are a safer investment choice because they represent debt, not equity.

This is a good example, graphed: [https://www.google.com/search?tbm=fin&q=MUTF:+VBMFX&stick=H4...](https://www.google.com/search?tbm=fin&q=MUTF:+VBMFX&stick=H4sIAAAAAAAAAONgecRozi3w8sc9YSm9SWtOXmPU4OIKzsgvd80rySypFJLiYoOyBKT4uHj00_UNK8uTCsvzilN4FrFy-4aGuFkphDn5ukUAAJdCiW1KAAAA&biw=1440&bih=711#scso=_SBtfXJqwEOm0ggeplaqoCg2:0,_eBtfXJfiK- Gm_QbPo6HQBg2:0&smids=/g/1ywbr166m&wptab=COMPARE)

Bonds Summarized:

a) are less volatile compared to equities

b) provide consistent and guaranteed returns, albeit at a lower rate compared to equities

c) often work counter to market cycles: when interest rates rise, bonds fall in value, and when interest rates are cut, bonds rise. Depending on the depth of the fund, you may not see any changes at all.

Generally speaking, stocks almost always perform significantly better than bonds over long periods. If you can handle the risk, in theory 100% stocks is a better investment. Bonds provide the "don't freak out and sell" part of your portfolio.

<comment><USER9> A couple on interesting points:

a) Bonds, as you said, were traditional seem as counter cyclical, when equities or rates went up, bonds went down, and vice-versa. Nowadays, it seems like this might not be true anymore. So much money is pouring into the US securities market that both often now move in tandem. In the past, in risk-off environments (when you want to lower your risk), investors would move out of equities and into bonds. But now, since so much money is foreign, you see outflows from both bonds and stocks is a risk-off environment. This makes bonds a worse hedge today against equities than in the past.

b) It's true that 100% stocks almost always outperforms 100% bonds. But things get really interesting when you consider a mix of equities and bonds. Take an 100% equities portfolio of say 10 stocks: do a simulation in which you vary the weights of each position (the percentage of each stock that makes up your portfolio). Now graph the historical returns on Y axis and the historical volatility of all these simulated portfolios. What you'll see is called the "Markowitz Bullet"[1] The efficient frontier (EF), is all the portfolios that have the best risk adjusted returns (also known as the Sharpe ratio). Basically what that means is that those portfolios on the EF (the top "edge" of the bullet) have better risk/reward characteristics than any of the portfolios below them. so with a 100% equities portfolio, the best you can do to maximize your Sharpe ratio will be on the top edge of the curve.

Now consider mixing in some bonds which are at the risk-free rate. 3 month US T-notes are traditionally considered to be _the_ risk-free rate. That is, they have no volatility and a fixed return (say 2%).

By adjusting your allocation of risk-free bonds and equities you can achieve a better Sharpe ratio than anything you could do with just equities alone. So now, with adding bonds, you can now _beat_ the EF. The EF is now the line drawn between the risk-free point (0 variance, 2% returns) and tangent portfolio (the highest point on the curve). Check out the picture below for an illustration.

But it gets even better! If you can _borrow_ at the risk free rate, you can now your leverage returns (but also volatility) into outer space!

Modern portfolio theory is based on this concept that adding the risk-free rate to your portfolio can actually make you achieve better risk-adjusted returns than you otherwise could with just equities alone. Seems pretty magical when you think about it (though it's predicated on the original sin of finance: that the risk-free rate actually exists)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_portfolio_theory#/media...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_portfolio_theory#/media/File:Markowitz_frontier.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Basically everyone is desperate to invest money somewhere.

Bonds are one of the safest instruments and often pension funds are legally obligated to invest at least a proportion of funds in safe, not risky instruments.

This will not end well IMO.

<comment><USER14> TIPS bonds are one of the safest instruments. A regular bond can be as risky as stocks, whether traded short term or held to maturity. What people get with bonds, depending on the rating, is something short of a guarantee they'll get principle back with the agreed upon interest - but can you really accurately assess risk over 10 years? 30 years? There's widespread agreement that corporate bonds aren't paying enough compared to the risk, and yet people continue to invest in it.

<comment><USER15> I would argue that a "regular" bond refers to government-backed securities, basically AA at a minimum. When people want to talk about corporate bonds they're careful to refer to them as junk bonds.

<comment><USER14> Literally none of this is correct. Bonds do not inherently or even typically refer to government securities. And not all government issued debt is AA, for example Mexico bonds are currently rated BBB+. Junk bonds are speculative rather than investment grade, quite a lot of corporate bonds are investment grade.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> German Bund is clearly something totally different than German Bonds.</comment>


How to Build a Profitable Startup by Knowing Your Users Better - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/profitable_startup_know_your_users.php <comment><USER2> This is something that I've been interested in for awhile. I tried to set up a system that would target ads to users based on the information that I had in my own database instead of what was on a specific page. If your pages require a user to be logged in then the google bot can't access that data, so you get poor ads. It would be great if I could scan the data internally, then send a keyword request to Google, or whomever, and get back ads based on the information I sent. That way I can keep my users data private while still providing them high quality targeted ads. Does anyone know of an ad company that allows that?

</comment><comment><USER3> Dunno but I think your on to something here. Only one way to find out if your idea works though...</comment>


Symbiosis.css: like Normalize.css made from scratch for desktop and mobile - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Pixelmouse/symbiosis-css <comment><USER2> From a quick glance this looks more like it just strips accessibility.</comment>


Myki Security Report – Weekly cyber-security news videos - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S20t97A1hwc <comment><USER2> Very interesting. I am going to subscribe as an experiment. When you become boring i will unsubscribe</comment>


Covid-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool - <AUTHOR> https://covid19risk.biosci.gatech.edu/ <comment><USER2> see also [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23871593](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23871593)</comment>


Uber looks like the rest of tech: White, Asian and male - hn-automaton http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2017/03/28/uber-diversity-reports-shows-familiar-tech-deficiencies/99726318/ <comment><AUTHOR> In my 20 years in tech, that hasn't been my experience.

<comment><USER2> People who don't get hired need an excuse for why they didn't, because they are unable to blame themselves. But most of the time it is solely because they were not fit for the job in the first place, whether it be knowledge, personality or experience. It also forwards the agenda of splitting and dividing the people, literally divide and conquer tactics.</comment></comment>


Spain to Roll Out Permanent Universal Basic Income 'Soon' - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/isabeltogoh/2020/04/06/spain-to-roll-out-permanent-universal-basic-income-soon <comment><USER2> Was just on the frontpage before it got flagged away, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22795358](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22795358)

Had the URL

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/isabeltogoh/2020/04/06/spain- to...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/isabeltogoh/2020/04/06/spain-to-roll-out- permanent-universal-basic-income-soon/#707afb2b316f)

This one has

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/isabeltogoh/2020/04/06/spain- to...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/isabeltogoh/2020/04/06/spain-to-roll-out- permanent-universal-basic-income-soon)

Maybe HN needs a better duplicate checker?</comment>


Cancer-eating Virus Could No Be Patented: No Pharmaceutical Company Will Invest - <AUTHOR> http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2012/09/02/Author-tries-raising-money-for-cancer-cure/UPI-44671346566618/?spt=hs&or=hn

<comment><USER2> Isn't this very well suited for something like kickstarter? I know I would "invest".</comment>


The private and public lives of Albert Einstein - <AUTHOR> https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/the-public-and-private-lives-of-albert-einstein-p-d-smith/ <comment><USER3> should private lives be made public post morteum?

<comment><USER4> How else we could shatter the illusion that heroes exist?

<comment><USER5> Why is shattering this illusion a good thing? Especially if a 'false', heroic impression of someone inspires you to achieve great things, or act more virtuously, that you otherwise wouldn't have done.

There's a difference between 'hero worship' and 'hero inspiration', IMO. The difficult part is getting rid of the former while not destroying the latter in the process.

<comment><USER6> I think the parent may have been sarcastic. I certainly hope so. Life was much better before my idols had entirely mundane Instagram feeds.

<comment><USER7> Imho it can be very misleading to think of Instagram feeds, or any social media for that matter, as "private life".

Many social media users are very self-conscious and calculating with the "image" they are building with particular accounts.

It's all feeding into this idea of perfect infallible human beings, as supposedly showcased on social media, but in reality, such humans simply don't exist.

Particularly in the context that often it's our flaws that define us as humans, not being able to admit to having any does not strike me as a healthy and rational attitude.

<comment><USER6> Ah, no, I have the _opposite_ problem!

For instance, musicians one really likes, one projects them into images of saints. Then they're out their putting selfies on, sharing insipid quotes or just generally seeking validation, and the mirage crumbles a bit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For what it's worth, I thought Andy Serkis really captured some of the complexity of Einstein's character in the movie "Einstein and Eddington" — contrasts with the typical characterization of Einstein as the cuddly goofball of pop culture, and paints him as a human with flaws.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm not sure why we should care. The private lives of Freud, Jung, and perhaps Russell may be of interest because their work was bound up in telling others how to live. Einstein did a certain amount of that--though I think more in the large than in the small--but he did not achieve fame for his thoughts on peace, socialism, etc. Rather his thoughts on matters of conduct became interesting because of the fame earned through physics.

</comment><comment><USER10> But...the real (big) Question was: "Why is there no spaceship with 'front- drive'?", and speaking in terms of "Reisegefühl" ( _um_ in other words, something like the feeling you have during traveling) _heck_ \- damned Einstein - Why does it need mass for acceleration #=!*%?? (-:

</comment><comment><USER11> i read these rules he had for this 1st wife years ago "A. You will make sure:

1\. that my clothes and laundry are kept in good order; 2\. that I will receive my three meals regularly in my room; 3\. that my bedroom and study are kept neat, and especially that my desk is left for my use only.

B. You will renounce all personal relations with me insofar as they are not completely necessary for social reasons. Specifically, You will forego:

1\. my sitting at home with you; 2\. my going out or travelling with you.

C. You will obey the following points in your relations with me:

1\. you will not expect any intimacy from me, nor will you reproach me in any way; 2\. you will stop talking to me if I request it; 3\. you will leave my bedroom or study immediately without protest if I request it.

D. You will undertake not to belittle me in front of our children, either through words or behavior."

[http://www.openculture.com/2013/12/albert-einstein- imposes-o...](http://www.openculture.com/2013/12/albert-einstein-imposes-on- his-first-wife-a-cruel-list-of-marital-demands.html) and I try and be nicer.

<comment><USER12> This is frankly one of the most absurd and saddest things I've read - and I'm surprised to see it attributed to Einstein.

<comment><USER13> Not only was he abusive to his first wife, he then got married to his cousin, and almost proposed to _her daughter_. Beyond that, he had a great deal of affairs.

Einstein may have been smart, but he was a _really_ awful person.

<comment><USER14> Being shitty about commitment and affection in your romantic life does not by default make you an awful person. It makes you bad at strong romantic relationships perhaps. There are however many other metrics of what makes someone good and bad in a moral and human sense. So please, lay off the "if you ever cheat on your wife you must be a piece of human garbage" nonsense.

<comment><USER15> Why is the relationship sphere separate from the moral sphere? How do you decide what belongs in the moral sphere? Does the relationship sphere overlap with the moral sphere in other areas just not in fidelity? Why doesn't it intersect there?

Saying someone is boolean "good" or "bad" is of course complex - <USER2> beyond utility. But to the extent a moral evaluation is being made of a person (unless your point is no such evaluation can or should ever be made?) I don't see how their conduct in their romantic relationships could be exempted?

<comment><USER14> I did not say it shouldnt be exempted, only that on the scale of moral judgments insofar as we are equipped to make them, cheating is and should be far down the list compared to many other acts that individually or in summary could and in many cases should make someone worse than a "good person" by the normal standards of moral judgement that most of us accept and live by.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Django Best Practices - <AUTHOR> http://lincolnloop.com/django-best-practices/ <comment><USER2> This would be more readable on a single page. I am very frusturated by the nested layout.

<comment><USER3> Since they call it a "living document" in the beginning, I assume this is a starting outline, and most of those one-line pages will become filled in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> He does give you the source ([http://github.com/lincolnloop/django-best- practices/tree/mas...](http://github.com/lincolnloop/django-best- practices/tree/master)), submit a patch.

</comment><comment><USER5> I was half expecting a single page site that said "Use Rails." or some other framework.

<comment><USER5> Yawn. The downmodding here just gets more and more crazy :) I only said that because I have seen multiple single pages like that hit the front page. Did not realize it was such a controversial thing to joke about.

<comment><USER6> It's not controversial, it was just a shit comment that added absolutely nothing to the conversation.

<comment><USER5> Those occur constantly on the site. And even hackers are allowed to make jokes.

<comment><USER7> They occur a lot more than they used to, and they don't get modded down as much as they should. The signal-to-noise ratio here is going down pretty quickly.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Tool to check what size your monitor truly is. - <AUTHOR> http://pective.com/help/what-is-my-monitor-size

<comment><USER2> The title is slightly misleading -- a better title would have been "tool allows you to see the actual size of products on your screen."

The link points to an application that allows you to measure your monitor's dimensions and then see the real-life size of various items on-screen.

E-commerce websites badly need this to display products at real-life scale...</comment>


Ask HN: How does services like Motley Fool's Stock advisor survives? - <AUTHOR> They solely based on information. What stops users from sharing that information for free of cost? Am I missing something completely here? <comment><USER2> This isn't a service that provides financial data. It's media providing entertainment.

There's a thin line between the two, but last year, this point has been discussed a lot. I can't point to a specific episode, but in the podcast Animal Spirits, it comes up every now and then.

[https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/animal-spirits- podcast...](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/animal-spirits- podcast/id1310192007)</comment>


Google offers virtual reality Street View - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-34515610 <comment><USER2> I like this.Google can sometimes do good than evil.</comment>