Ask HN: Do you invest in the stock market? - <AUTHOR> Im curious to know: Which companies are HN users invested in?<p>And if not: Which companies WOULD you invest in? <comment><USER2> I invest in 75% index funds, because of Random Walk Down Wall Street and all the related writing on the subject, and 25% individual stocks, largely for entertainment value. It's like WoW but much more time efficient.

Approximately 50% of my liquid net worth is Chipotle. I bought back in 2006/2007 and just held.

My other individual picks include Bank of America (yeah, ouch), Microsoft, and Nintendo. Chipotle more than pays for the shellacking I took on all the rest. It is ultimately irrelevant though as I still have 25 ~ 30 years before I'll start selling anything.

<comment><USER3> In addition to Random Walk Down Wall Street, Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast & Slow has a great section about this topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The thing about investing in individual companies is that you're _not_ betting on whether that company will grow or not. You're betting on whether the company will grow more than investment professionals expect it to.

I have, consistently (over 10 years) invested in individual companies and beat the market, but I found that it just wasn't worth the time. So now I put my money in index funds.

By the way: the biggest predictor of your returns is not which individual stocks you invest in, but your asset allocation-i.e., the percent of your money that's in stocks, bonds, etc. If you want to invest I would first learn about asset allocation before trying to pick individual companies.

<comment><USER5> I think you're right, but only to an extent.

I'd say the advantage the individual investor has over the investment professional, is that the professional has a time-frame of 1-3 years. So a lot of a stock's price reflects how the company is expected to grow/pay out over that period.

If you are willing to take a longer term view, asking what's this company going to be doing in 10-20 years, and how is it priced relative to that, then I think you've got a much better chance to beat the market (see Buffet for example)

<comment><USER4> You certainly have advantages and disadvantages. I could say a lot about the different situations professionals and individuals are in, and I'd be happy to share any thoughts if you're interested. That said, I'd like to point out two things:

1\. Most individuals do consistently worse than the market (so do most mutual funds, actually)

2\. Most of Buffett's major successes, especially the early ones, have had nothing to do with his predictions of how a company would perform in the future. They were based on the difference between a company's current assets vs. its current stock price. Eg one of his major successes was in buying shares of Sanborn Map company when Sanborn had assets of $65 per share, but shares only cost $45 each [1].

It's still possible to invest using this method-known as value investing-but it's much harder today. The reason is that information is much more freely available. Eg in the Sanborn example above, it took Buffett a significant amount of research to find Sanborn and to realize that they were undervalued. Today all of that information is available to anyone online.

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Buffett#Business_career>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Index funds. You can't beat the market consistently. Maybe you can get lucky for awhile, but if you're relying on that, might as well go to Vegas and have more fun at it.

<comment><USER5> Tell that to Warren Buffet!

Seriously though, of course the average investor cannot beat the market, it doesn't mean it isn't possible for an individual to do so, or that it is all down to chance.

One approach is to focus on small companies.

Most active funds will not invest here (it is not worth the time when they would only be able to invest a tiny fraction of their funds).

As such these companies tend to be under-researched (not necessarily the same as under-valued though), so if you're willing to put in some leg-work and a lot of patience, there can be some good opportunities.

<comment><USER7> > _or that it is all down to chance._

No, it is all down to chance.

<comment><USER8> or cheating--the oracle knows all about that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I trade Forex as a hobby. I find it fascinating to learn about an entirely different industry, yet in many ways see similarities with software development.

I've started a blog where I'm going to detail more of my trades and thoughts. To start with, I'm doing a short interview series with established financial traders about their day-to-day work, if anyone is interested: <http://trading.martinrue.com>

<comment><USER10> I trade Forex as well, and after a couple of years of unsuccessful manual discretionary trading I've moved into automated trading. Unfortunately the tools available for building a trading robot are ridiculously primitive when compared to what I've access to in my day job, but I do hope someday of making enough money to live from my trading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Yep, it's been a bit of a hobby of mine for the last year or so. I wish I'd started 10 years ago - compound interest is great, and the sooner you get into it, the greater your time multiple.

Index funds are an easy, conservative, way to get it. They also require the least time. Vanguard seems to make the best products here - money in VTI, VWO and BND will give you a nice balanced portfolio.

But you can beat the market - the key is that you must be patient, not swayed by opinion, or market trends, and spend a lot of time looking into business fundamentals.

I'd advise staying pretty liquid in the short term. It looks likely that there'll be another large correction in the short term as we see another wave of potential sovereign defaults. When everyone is panicking is the best time to buy.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've been sticking money into the market for the better part of 20 years now.

Initially it was how you got incredibly rich incredibly fast (my YHOO, for instance, went up 70% during the first _three days_ that I held it). Then for a short period it transformed into a source of immense sorrow and despair. Then for several years it was just a convenient way to dispose of any excess salary that was left lying around at the end of the month.

Now it's back to being the way you turn the $XX,000 you put in today into the $YYY,000 you'll get back out in twenty years. Index funds (as discussed everywhere else in this thread) will pretty much do that for you without you ever having to think about it.

</comment><comment><USER13> Wouldn't ever do it. Stock market is for suckers.

(Based on reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb and conversations with people that worked on trading floors.)

<comment><USER14> Taleb is not a source of investing advice - unless you were interested in trading, in which case he has a few points.

<comment><USER13> Taleb is not a source of investing advice at all - he merely illustrates his philosophy with examples from finance as it's something he's more than familiar with.

Stock market is a fool's game by its nature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Not directly; only through index mutual funds.

Anything else is illegal, as my wife works in finance (HFT). Unlike congress, employees of trading firms and their families are forbidden from trading any instrument related to what their firm does.

</comment><comment><USER16> I have invested in the stock market for about 1 year. Initially, I used options to leverage what little money I had and blew up my account. I learned three important lessons, of which I had read more than once prior to, but they are as follows: 1\. Do not try to predict the market. Follow it. To be more specific, and less "duh", invest in securities that show (from a speculative standpoint) the potential to continue to move in a direction, but with "smart" money behind it. This brings me to 2. 2\. It takes money to make money. This is not to say that it is impossible to turn $1,000 into $1M, just a lot less probable. When you are following the "smart" money, you are playing the game and the game is based on probability. The more money you have to invest, the more potential candidates you can hold. By cutting losses short and riding out the winners, you can make a considerable amount of money. Discipline and money management are the key here. Being right or wrong is not the way to look at investing; I tend to say, "I held the stocks that made me a profit, and sold the ones that didn't." 3\. You will lose money, you will be in the wrong security and the worst time, and you will 2nd guess a great investment. It will happen over and over. You have to be mentally prepared to look past this. You have to be objective and you have to discipline your mind to treat loses as a necessary part of the game.

Well, to actually answer the question, I am invested in BAC, PFE, GE, and VZ. All of which are for testing purposes for a new strategy that makes us of technical analysis over a long(er) term.

I realize my knowledge is minimal, but I hope it helps.

</comment><comment><USER17> I have never been a fan of buying stock given the 1/3 probability of making money (you only make money when your stock goes up and lose money when the particular stock has no movement or declines in value). In my opinion derivatives present a better alternative and I am particularly fond of stock options, which can be used for either speculation (bet on the performance of a company) or as a safety net on your long positions (like an insurance policy). With options you can make money when the market goes up, down or sideways based on your position. Something to consider, is that your exposure with stock options tends to be a fraction of what it would be if buying the underlying stock. Your exposure is limited (you can only lose as much money as you paid for the contracts) and your upside is "theoretically" unlimited. If you are interested in learning about it. make sure to grab McMillan's "Option as an Strategic Investment" [http://www.amazon.com/Options-Strategic- Investment-Lawrence-...](http://www.amazon.com/Options-Strategic-Investment- Lawrence-McMillan/dp/0735201978/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1333026894&sr=8-3)

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm a Couch Potato investor as advised by Scott Burns. 50% Whole Market Index, 50% Inflation Protected Bonds Index. Rinse and repeat every year.

[http://assetbuilder.com/blogs/scott_burns/archive/1991/10/01...](http://assetbuilder.com/blogs/scott_burns/archive/1991/10/01/Exactly- How-To-Be-A-Couch-Potato-Portfolio-Manager.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER19> I invest and do well with it. However, that came with a high price of "learning". I do not recommend that the average joe just buy into random stocks hoping for the best. Yes, people have made a lot of money doing that - however, far more people have lost a lot of money doing it. Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a great read. If you want entertainment value to invest in something like activision blizzard with disposable income, go for it. All in all, I'd invest in bond-funds in about 1 year from now for the long haul. FTBAX, for example, has a tax-free annualized yield of about 7%. If you are really looking for aggressive growth, go jump into an equity position in a promising startup that doesn't know their value. Watching companies like Microsoft and Amazon IPO and grow 100x just doesn't happen as VCs are getting all their returns from that actual IPO and not the growth post-IPO.

</comment><comment><USER20> Do yourself a favour; invest in an index. Don't play the stock picking game. The human mind works against you; everyone is convinced that they can beat the market. If it's even a skill (and it doesn't seem to be) it's a vanishingly rare one _even among investment professionals_. It's very tempting to think that you could be the next Warren Buffet, but honestly, you're about as likely to get a gold medal in the next Olympics...without training. Resist that rabbit hole!

Having said that, here's some tips if you're going to try and pick stocks anyhow:

0) Don't listen to any tips you see on the internet, including these. If they're actually any good (and not just part of a pump n' dump scam), they'll already have been taken by everyone else. (Honestly you're probably better off _shorting_ anything you see recommended in a public forum.)

1) Pick investments that are likely to go up and down at different times. If you want to invest in an oil company, also invest in an airline; they often go up and down opposite each other. (Note: Again, any obvious tip like this has been exploited to the point that it's no longer helpful. See para 1, above.)

2) Your career is also an investment. Don't, for the love of god, invest in the company you work for. In fact, don't invest in any company that is likely to go under around the time you get fired. Work for Amazon? Invest in Barnes & Noble. Or anyone else you can think of that might do well if Amazon does poorly, and visa versa. And make sure to toss some money at foreign investments; if your country does poorly, maybe some other country will do well.

3) Spread investments out as broadly as possibly. Don't be stupid and say "hey, the whole market can't go down at once!". It can! But it's less likely than a single stock going down, and this is a numbers game. There's never _ever_ a sure thing, but if you can just be a tiny bit smarter than everyone else, it'll pay off in the very long term. (The easiest way to spread investments out is an index. See para 1, above.)

4) And don't just spread your investments across an industry, or a stock market. Try and split investments across multiple asset classes. Stocks, bonds, commodities, foreign stocks, etc. (Via multiple indexes. See para 1, above.)

5) Fees will kill you. Anything with active management is more expensive than its worth. Yes, all active management, no matter how good their track record. At a micro level, past performance is no predictor of future results, and at a macro level past performance is actually negatively correlated. A very common pattern is to do better and better until you do _so badly_ that it wipes out every gain you've ever made (e.g., the entire hedge fund sector when the financial crisis hit). (In other words, see para 1, above.)

6) On a similar note, don't be too active in managing your investments yourself. Reacting to every little dip and spike will waste your time and attention, rack up huge fees, and guarantee bad results. Once you've figured out your strategy (hopefully involving index funds), figure out how much you can save per paycheck, and just do that, with as much automation as possible. Maybe your strategy is "save 20% of every paycheck, with 2/3 going into an S&P 500 index, 1/6 into foreign stocks, and 1/6 in commodities". That may be a terrible strategy, but it doesn't matter if you can just stick to it, and (this is important) don't check to see if it's working for at least a decade.

7) Individual investors persistently WAY underperform benchmarks, because of timing issues. They will hear some hype about a stock, or an asset class, or the idea of investing, and they'll enter the market at or near the peak. Then when things go pear shaped they'll panic and exit, locking in their losses. It's routine for "the market" to have a higher return than the _average_ investor gets; often _much_ higher. Unless you want to lose all your money, don't follow the herd. Your best bet is to just leave your investmens alone (in an index fund) and don't even look at them. If you can't bring yourself to do that, then be as contrarian as possible. If everyone is talking about how awesome gold ETFs are, or the growth potential of tech stocks, get OUT. On the other hand, if a sector crashes, buy!

8) Finally, one more bonus tip: Go for passively managed index funds. (But if you really want to pick stocks, go for ones with low volatility.)

<comment><USER21> Let me summarize: diversify, hedge, minimize expenses. All good advise but this isn't so much about making money as avoiding losses.

You've done a good job at highlighting that investing isn't as simple as picking stocks and buying them. That's a fool's errand. Instead, it's understanding the risks you're undertaking (and mitigating them), eliminating emotion from your decisions (but understanding how emotion affects the market), knowing when to exit a trade, and most importantly, having a plan and sticking to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> A low expense ratio S&P 500 index is the way to go. Put enough in, and it's even better.

</comment><comment><USER23> Currently: MU (+35%), GLW (-10%), NFLX (+30%)

Previously: HP (+50%), BBEP (+180%)

Prospects: HPQ, MSFT, MKC, DSX

I'm 30 years old, so still chasing growth a bit. I've also got a bunch of money in a 403b account that's invested mostly in an S&P500 index fund.

<comment><USER8> You've made five total trades?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I do not.

I believe wholeheartedly in Mark Cuban's advice here:

"The first step to getting rich is having cash available. You arent saving for retirement. You are saving for the moment you need cash. _Buy and hold is a sucker's game for you._ This market is a perfect example. Right at the very moment when cash creates unbelievable opportunity, those who followed the buy and hold strategy have no cash."

Emphasis mine.

Full article: <http://blogmaverick.com/2008/10/04/how-to-get-rich/>

<comment> UK-AL I think most stocks and bonds are classed as Cash equivalents due to how fast you can turn them it to cash.

Actually. No I'm wrong stocks are not classed as equivalents due to risk. But the point is there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Yes, I dipped my toe in recently. Because the market has been a bull over the last few months, I have made money. Yet, I worry that my success gives me false confidence in I know what I'm doing. I also devote time to just watching the numbers. And, like watching twitter, I recognize it's not very healthy or constructive.

My approach is closest to technical analysis, swing trading, and the CANSLIM method: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANSLIM>

</comment><comment><USER5> Yes. I split my investment between low risk, good dividend blue chip stocks (National Grid, Tesco, BP), fixed income preference shares (NWBD, SAN) and smaller, high risk companies.

Current favourite that might interest the HN crowd is:

Monitise (MONI.L): Run backend systems on which on a lot of mobile banking and payment systems operate. Growing really quickly, and recently bought Clairmail, a US based company doing much the same. Wouldn't be surprised to see a NASDAQ listing in the next couple of years.

(None of the above is advice!)

</comment><comment><USER26> <http://www.betterment.com>

\- easily invest in the whole market through index ETFs

\- no need to do the research and choose which stocks or funds to buy

\- automatic deposit set up to seamlessly transfer money every month from my checking into my betterment account and have every dollar invested (no need to worry about shares)

\- automatic rebalancing

\- no minimum balances/deposits, no holding periods, money is easily accessible and can be withdrawn at any time without penalties

(Disclosure: I work here)

</comment><comment><USER27> No. In my opinion its just betting and that too in place which is controlled by few. Unless I have a lot of money I wont invest in stock markets.

</comment><comment><USER28> Yes. Dividend reinvestment is a powerful thing over 10+ year periods.

</comment><comment><USER29> Read "The Intelligent Investor" by Benjamin Graham.

<comment><USER30> Also, John Kay's "The Long and the Short of It: finance and investment for normally intelligent people who are not in the industry".

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> ARM Holdings

</comment><comment><USER32> AAPL

<comment><USER33> I worry about Apple. They've had a great run, but where can their next $billion market come from?

To an extent, the current share price will be factoring in future growth on the same trajectory as we've observed over the last few years.

<comment><USER34> The question with AAPL is really do you think smartphones and tablets, as product segments unto themselves, have reached market saturation? I think we'll still see massive increases in the sheer number of smartphones and tablets sold, and I think AAPL will manage to retain a significant (not necessarily a majority) market share.

<comment><USER35> You also have to consider if you think apple could continue to keep their margins in an established tablet market, and a smartphone market approaching 'good enough' like that of PCs today, and whether consumers will continue to accept a 'walled garden' as tablets become primary computing devices.

E: I'd like to clarify I'm including stuff like no USB ports in walled garden.

<comment><USER14> This next statement is probably going to get me nuked, but:

I think people have accepted the walled garden model and they like it.

In a perverse way, their success is partly because of the PC era itself. The lowered expectations people have of computational devices from windows makes. Having something that "Just works" such a blessing, for such a ridiculous portion of all consumers, that their "walled garden" translates into "sanctuary" for most human beings.

IF in the future mature market, other tablets have also reached a stage where "it just works", then its an even playing field.

At that point,the walled garden will be just another field to walk between.

Edited for clarity</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


U.S. to Assist Immigrant Job Creators - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904292504576482573203358158.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

<comment><USER2> "Job Creators" is an interesting term. Apparently recently adopted by the political language surgeons. This is a fantastic example of how language can be used to change the intent of a phrase.

Here's John Stewart's light hearted take on the term 'Job Creator'

[http://www.businessinsider.com/jon-stewart-daily-show- republ...](http://www.businessinsider.com/jon-stewart-daily-show-republicans- wealthy-jobs-video-2011-7)

But there are a number of other interesting examples: "Undocumented Worker" vs. "Illegal Alien" - both refer tot he same person, but give wildly different "gut reactions"

[http://patriotstatesman.com/2011/03/decoding-political- langu...](http://patriotstatesman.com/2011/03/decoding-political-language/)

What's so powerful about this sort of language use is that when you get boiled down in today's media to the "soundbyte" or "headline only" (as we see here), the emotional impact of your political goal is achieved.

"Job Creators" are benevolent gift givers to the common man. Whereas "CEO salaries soar while worker salaries stagnate" has a different impact [http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/story/CEO...](http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/story/CEO- pay-2010/45634384/1)

Politically, shouldn't you be thanking the Job creator? Rather than wondering why they are earning closer to 100 time what you're making? (Not to mention the high end tax loopholes that they can afford to find).

I was a bit surprised to find that Orwell wrote an essay about this in 1946 <http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm> although come to think of it, it is definitely reminiscent of the Newspeak from 1984.

Anyways, it's interesting. As far as I can tell "Job Creators" is a relatively new term that's been cooked up for some political purpose. I'd be really interested to see a graph the occurrence of that specific phrase over time.

Where is it appearing? What papers, Websites, what level of penetration does it have? What "path to entry" does this term take? Can we trace it back to its source? (Like the amazon!)

How effective is it in changing opinion? In "Manufacturing Consent" (Right? anyone remember Chompsky?)

Anyways - I'm obviously starting to ramble a bit. Nothing to do with the article. Sorry for the tangent.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is potentially very, very good but given the previous US immigration mess (you can come there fast, easily and cheaply but only illegally) and the current state of Washingtons politics I, for one, am not holding my breath. At. All.

Meanwhile Chile is busy importing its own start-up culture and it is looking very, very tempting.

<comment><USER4> What Chile is doing makes way more sense.

<comment><USER5> I think a middle ground might simply "primum non nocere" - first do no harm. Rather than dishing out cash, make sure the process is quicker and less bureaucratic, and if possible, let people in who are willing to work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is a mention of a "National Interest" clause with EB2. If this is truly the national interest waiver which is an existing mechanism to accelerate residency permits, it means approved entrepreneurs will be able to become legal residents in under a year, versus 7+ years that it often takes for most visas. This would be phenomenal!

Looks like finally, the government is doing something right on immigration!

</comment><comment><USER7> (Talking specifically the high-tech sector) The US should be making it easier for skilled workers to get jobs in the US generally because some of them will go on to start their own businesses anyway. Why wait until they decide to become "entrepreneurs" - why not bag them sooner?

<comment><USER8> Basically, because that would immediately result in the Indian outsourcing companies importing half a million "consultants" at $20k a year each. Not even joking.

There exist people who think that a nation's immigration laws should not be used to price that nation's citizens out of the market for jobs in their neighborhood. Reasonable people could disagree on that, but suffice it to say that it commands a supermajority in the US.

<comment><USER9> Would it be so bad if US setup a quota? Or is political and racial correctness so encroached that US would rather deprive itself of European workforce (which is probably more "compatible") than to stop the hypocrisy that is going on now. Since the system is currently setup the way it is to keep Mexicans and Asians out of the US?

<comment><USER10> The US already has a country quota for greencards which is idiotic (thus India with 1 billion population get the same number of greencards as tiny Monaco with 35,00 people)

What US needs is a point based workpermit visa like that in Canada or Australia. Instead of a company sponsored 'h1b' (which sometime results in modern day slaves) the immigrant should be able sponsor himself (based on education, skill, expirence etc).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Official announcement from the USCIS [http://www.dhs.gov/ynews/releases/20110802-napolitano- startu...](http://www.dhs.gov/ynews/releases/20110802-napolitano-startup-job- creation-initiatives.shtm)

</comment><comment><USER12> Can someone post the text of this article please? Can't access from India.

<comment><USER6> U.S. to Assist Immigrant Job Creators

By MIRIAM JORDAN

In its quest to spur job growth and jump-start the economy, Washington is reaching out to foreign entrepreneurs.

Alejandro Mayorkas, chief of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a unit of the Department of Homeland Security, on Tuesday will unveil several initiatives designed to attract and retain foreign entrepreneurs, particularly in the high-tech sector, who wish to launch start-up companies in the U.S.

Among the initiatives is a plan to make it easier for some foreigners to qualify for legal permanent residence, or green cards, if they can demonstrate their work will be in the U.S. national interest. The changes will also include a way for entrepreneurs to obtain work visas without a job offer from an established company.

Mr. Mayorkas also plans to announce that his agency will be training its examiners on how visa-eligibility requirements apply to entrepreneurs.

"In this economy, it certainly is in the interest of this nation to welcome foreign talent," Mr. Mayorkas said in an interview.

The changes come as increasing numbers of software entrepreneurs have been taking their start-ups to other countries, often after completing advanced degrees in the U.S., because of the difficulty in securing temporary work visas and permanent residency here.

Vivek Wadhwa, a visiting scholar at the University at California, Berkeley, who studies immigrant entrepreneurs, estimates the new measures could yield "tens of thousands of start-ups and hundreds of thousands of jobs."

The measures won't require congressional approval because they don't constitute changes in current immigration law. Instead, clarifications will be issued for existing visa categories with the objective of enabling more entrepreneurs to gain entry into the U.S. and of bringing more speed and efficiency to the visa-application process.

"The Obama administration is getting the immigration system engaged in creating jobs," said Steve Yale-Loehr, a professor of immigration law at Cornell University Law School. "They are trying to facilitate the ability of entrepreneurs to get temporary work visas and green cards when the economy is in the doldrums."

Generally, immigrant entrepreneurs must have a specific job offer to qualify for an employment-based immigrant visa or green card, such as in the category for individuals with exceptional ability in the arts, sciences and business.

As part of the new initiatives, foreign entrepreneurs will be eligible for a so-called EB-2 immigrant visa without a specific job offer, as long as they demonstrate that their business endeavors will be in the U.S. national interest.

The government is also seeking to bolster use by foreign entrepreneurs of H-1Bs, which are temporary work visas for foreign workers in a specialty occupation.

The H-1B program has been a mainstay of software companies and other businesses that seek foreign nationals to fill certain jobs, and an employer- employee relationship has generally been a prerequisite for qualifying.

As part of the new measures, a sole entrepreneur can qualify for an H-1B if the individual's employment is decided by a corporate board or shareholders of the start-up company.

Mr. Mayorkas will also unveil enhancements to the EB-5 investor program, which enables foreign investors and their families to qualify for green cards if they invest at least $500,000 in a U.S. project that generates at least 10 jobs.

His agency is also seeking to speed up the approval process by hiring additional adjudicators to evaluate applications and enabling petitioners to make their case before an expert panel should their application require further evidence or be denied.

The moves come as demand for H-1B visas has fallen. As of July 22, USCIS had received approximately 21,600 H-1B petitions out of 65,000 available for the 2012 fiscal year. The agency had received approximately 26,000 such applications for the same period last year.

Several factors are at play, including higher fees for the visas and increasingly better opportunities in countries such as India that entice their skilled workers to return home rather than stay in the U.S.

While completing his Master's degree in computer science at the University of Southern California in 2008, Anuj Agarwal launched a company called Nachofoto.com, a start-up that makes a product used by search engines and digital-media companies. Unable to get a U.S. visa for himself and expecting his workers would have the same trouble, Mr. Agarwal moved the company to India.

"After realizing we had visa barriers to the U.S., we opened another company here," Mr. Agarwal said in an interview from Mumbai.

Norberto Guimaraes of Portugal said he had to leave the U.S. in May 2010 after his student visa expired and his H-1B petition was denied because he lacked an employer to sponsor him, even though he was the founder and chief executive of his start-up.

"I had to sell the start-up that I had created while doing my M.B.A. at U.C. Berkeley together with another M.B.A. colleague," he said.

Mr. Guimaraes was able to return to the U.S. this year, sponsored for a work visa by another company.

<comment><USER12> thanks and this is awesome news. It doesnt matter to me now but god would I have killed for this 5 years ago.

The fact that the number of applications for H1B is less than the number available shows how much better the quality of life in India has gotten.

<comment><USER6> It does seem like great news. Quality of life in India has definitely gotten better. Actually the growing economy has made entrepreneurship more lucrative, allowing folks to make enough money to be in the upper middle class with a startup.

The actual mechanics of a startup still seem to be harder than in the U.S. from what my friends who have gone back tell me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This makes me so happy! As a Canadian, the current polices are incredibly frustrating.

</comment><comment><USER14> Is this the startup visa?

<comment><USER15> No:

 _"The measures won't require congressional approval because they don't constitute changes in current immigration law. Instead, clarifications will be issued for existing visa categories with the objective of enabling more entrepreneurs to gain entry into the U.S. and of bringing more speed and efficiency to the visa-application process."_

<comment><USER12> Good catch. I can't access this article for some reason. I hope it's a rewording of the H1 to allow working on your own on the side. That was a big ass loss of life for me - wrt entrepreneurship anyways

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have my very own company in Mexico with existing clients.and ready to grow with more workers (we are 3 engineers now).

We have applied to Chile, sounds like a smart move from goverment.

will be cool to have a green card (i have a visa and family in usa, border its 20 mins from my home)... BUT im denitly not interested in having USA like headquarter, my TAXES must be not used to screw other countrys.

</comment><comment><USER4> Another attack on america.

<comment><USER17> What were you trying to imply here? It isn't contextually valid or clear.

<comment> johnx123-up OT: Unless you're losing your job in your own country, you cannot understand the pain</comment></comment></comment>


The Golden State's War on Itself - <AUTHOR> http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_3_california-economy.html

<comment><USER2> Interesting.

Not too long ago I found out that not only does California have incredibly high state income taxes, but it also has really high state capital gains taxes. It actually amazes me that silicon valley has thrived under those burdens which leads me to ask two very important questions:

1\. Why hasn't the high taxes driven people out of Silicon Valley (and will it?)

2\. How is California broke?

I come from Florida and in Florida, there are barely no state taxes at all because it's all on tourism. Somehow California has these insanely high taxes and still can't pay any bills. Other than blaming illegal immigrants (a dubious politically motivated response), I've never really gotten a straight up answer on what makes California and Florida so different.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure about Florida, but some points about California:

1) Extremely generous social services

2) A bizarre (and arguably unfair) property tax regime. Property taxes on owned property only rise 2% a year. (very low, consider that my parent's Bay Area home has risen by about 5.7% yearly since the 1980s) What that leaves you with is entrenched residential and commercial property owners paying relatively very little in taxes. If you are a new resident though, you get no immediate benefit - your taxes are assessed at the purchased value.

According to supporters, the law that set this up (Proposition 13) has saved taxpayers $528 billion (<http://www.hjta.org/about-hjta/history-hjta>); that's $17.6 billion a year - pretty much the budget deficit of the state.

<comment><USER4> Yeah but if it hadn't been for Prop 13, many people (quite possibly your parents) potentially could be driven out of their homes due to escalating property taxes had taxes scaled with the "market value" of their homes.

Actually the biggest expense for the state is K-12 education (over 43% of the budget).

<comment><USER3> K-12 education: For any state, this is among the highest expenses. Nonetheless, CA is actually below the US average. (<http://www.edsource.org/iss_fin_FAQ_cacompares.html>). It certainly doesn't explain why CA has one of the highest state deficits (even per capita) in the country.

As for Prop 13, I fully agree that many people (perhaps even my parents) may have had to move to smaller homes or even out of the Bay Area due to property taxes. So yes, my family has benefited. But that doesn't make the proposition "right". I find it much more unfair that new or non home owners are subsidizing the older ones though a highly regressive tax system. This only feels more absurd when you consider that part of the reason housing is so damn pricey in the bay area is because of zoning restrictions (both green lining and density restrictions) passed by the baby boomer generation.

<comment><USER5> The equities of where the burden should fall are debatable, but the fact that different people on the same street or city block end up paying vastly different amounts of tax for the local same services is not.

Something else to bear in mind is that when commercial property is owned by a corporation which is a wholly owned subsidiary of another (eg BigCorp owns Big Property LLC, whose sole asset is the Big Tower building), the corporation can be sold without triggering the tax reassessment (ie BiggerCorp buys Big Property LLC, which remains the titleholder of Big Tower). This hurts new companies just as much as new homebuyers; here's a 2003 press release from Shoerenstein co. grumbling about how they pay $16/sqft in downtown San Francisco while most of Disneyland is taxed at 5c/sqft although the land is worth about 7x more than that figure suggests.

Property taxes are reassessed periodically, but prop 13 limits increases in tax to 2%/year, so for those who hold real estate it takes 36 years for the tax to double in value even if the price of the land goes up much faster or inflation is high. Back in 79 stagflation was a pressing economic problem, so the net effect of Prop 13 was to reduce property taxes for existing homeowners - inflation was ~8% then, so a 2% tax increase cap meant your property tax was going down by 6% in real terms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My instinct is to say that this is another case of correlation not implying causation. On the surface, we have two facts:

* California has a huge budget deficit

* California is declining economically

I don't doubt that these two facts are true. Nor do I doubt that both facts affect each other. However, California is one of (if not _the_ ) largest economies in the US. I seriously doubt the situation is this simple. To place this solely at the feet of the state's progressive politics is a bit partisan. To me, this reads like a set of conservative talking points dressed up as an intellectual policy paper.

EDIT: Not coincidentally, City Journal is published by a conservative think- tank: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Institute>

</comment><comment><USER7> "Recently, though, the dream has been evaporating. Between 2003 and 2007, California state and local government spending grew 31 percent, even as the state's population grew just 5 percent."

This is the most shocking line from the article. How did they let costs balloon so badly?

<comment><USER4> Because the state was swimming in money from tax receipts because the economy was doing so well. It's easy for legislators to give out stuff when there's a surplus.

<comment><USER8> Or because they did not increase spending by this amount, 2003 might have been artificially low for accounting reasons:

Expenditures are estimated to drop from $78.1 billion in 2002-03 to $70.8 billion in 2003-04, a 10 percent decline. Most of this decline can be explained by four factors: the VLF rate increase (which reduces state subventions to backfill local governments), new federal funds, borrowing to cover the state's 2003-04 pension obligations, and the Medi-Cal accounting shift from an accrual to cash basis. Absent these factors, underlying spending would be roughly equal between the two years. The 2003-04 spending level is considerably less than what would be required to maintain baseline spending for the year.

[http://www.lao.ca.gov/2003/major_features_03-04/major_featur...](http://www.lao.ca.gov/2003/major_features_03-04/major_features_03-04.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This was submitted earlier today already wasn't it? <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1588934>

<comment><USER10> I think that this is another publication of the same article.

<comment><USER9> But still the same thing basically, isn't it?

<comment><USER11> more informative than multiple submitted posts about techcrunch's fascination with foursquare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I classify as right-wing biased propaganda any article dealing with California's economics and politics that doesn't mention Prop 13.

<comment><USER12> To the downvoters, why is it OK to ignore the law with by far the greatest impact on how California manages it's budget when explaining California's budget and political problems?

<comment><USER13> Probably they are reacting negatively because California wouldn't seem to have a revenue problem. It's number 6 in % of income taxed. [http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2010/01/10/visit-to- berke...](http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2010/01/10/visit-to-berkeley- california/)</comment></comment></comment>


Deep Learning for Forecasting Stock Returns in the Cross-Section [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1801/1801.01777.pdf <comment><USER2> Economist here.

No matter how fancy your pattern detection algorithm is, it can't find information that isn't there. If the patterns it's trying to detect are generated by strategic agents (traders) who learn, the algorithm's predictions aren't likely to be reliable for very long.

<comment><USER3> you're an economist and you don't understand that macroscopically phenomena can be much different than in aggregate microscopically?</comment></comment>


Inside Beijing's airpocalypse – a city made 'almost uninhabitable' by pollution - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/dec/16/beijing-airpocalypse-city-almost-uninhabitable-pollution-china

<comment><USER2> I wonder how Beijing compares to 18th and 19th century England or the United States. Seems almost like they are going through their own capitalist industrial revolution, judging by these pictures and accounts.

<comment><USER3> chockablock investigated that here on HN, at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6864088](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6864088) :

> So according to these rough calculations the great smog of 1952 probably had > a PM2.5 of about 700 ug/m^3, quite similar to the current Shanghai smog, and > lower than levels regularly reported in other Chinese cities.

The current PM2.5 for Beijing, at [http://aqicn.org/city/beijing/](http://aqicn.org/city/beijing/) , is 162 - "unhealthy".</comment></comment>


Death on foot: America's love of SUVs is killing pedestrians - <AUTHOR> https://eu.freep.com/story/money/cars/2018/06/28/suvs-killing-americas-pedestrians/646139002/ <comment><USER2> Oh boy, I will not lie, I have not yet read the article, but the headline is just asking for controversy.</comment>


Show HN: What Madam C. J. Walker can teach to founders nowadays - <AUTHOR> https://before90s.substack.com/p/madam-c-j-walker <comment><AUTHOR> I've been writing how pre-internet era companies started their businesses, got their first clients, competition, etc

I'm primarily doing it because I like to read more how companies behave before the Internet. It also helps improving my English writing skills.

What do you think?</comment>


Nix the Tricks: Math tricks defeat understanding - <AUTHOR> http://www.nixthetricks.com/#hn-repost <comment><USER2> I had (have?) a problem where I needed to deeply understand a topic to be happy with it. I'd do every question in the back of the textbook. Build little excel models. Ask the profs weird/"obvious" questions.

It takes too goddam long though. At university, there's often not enough time to deeply understand something before the exam. And your competition is just learning the tricks. And it's ego crushing to do poorly on an exam.

I did okay though, despite. I ended up teaching at a good school and being published, but my grades would have been 5-10% higher had I just learned the tricks.

Teaching is frustrating too. Watching the kids that only care about the tricks ace the exam, and the ones with curious minds screw up a few mechanical things.

<comment><USER3> That's because these tricks is how you perform the operation quickly and efficiently. I'm not sure if you can even meaningfully derive the algebraic process and meaning from first principles. You should nix the cute mnemonic stories, since those probably serve to confuse people, but the methods themselves are absolutely solid. And the one shown right on the front page (for me) cross multiply is how you divide by fractions. a/b / c/d = a/b * d/c. The fact that 1/a is the reciprocal of a, whatever a is and that 1/(a/b) = b/a should be the first thing you tell people after you tell them about fractions. Then you show why cross multiply works. That shouldn't take more than one lesson.

<comment><USER3> P.S. On a tangential note, it would help if the names for mathematical terms were in English, rather than some weird amalgamation of Greek, Latin, French and German. In my language, all n-gons are called n-anguloids. So you have threeanguloid, fouranguloid, fiveanguloid, "a proper N-anguloid", etc... And we use the normal names for numbers, rather than Greek ones. And a rectangle is "right-angle-oid" (granted, that's the name in English too, if you squint a bit and know what phonetic shifts to look for and your German is good). Square is quadrat, though. Then again, it's still an everyday word, even if we borrowed it from Greek millennia ago. And the word for "perimeter" also means "a walk around" and "a lap". You literally tell people "the length of the lap of a rightanguloid is the sum of the four sides", which is kind of obvious if you imagine walking the perimeter. And the word for "angle" is the same as "corner". Sadly, that ship has sailed long ago.

<comment><USER4> I am 99% sure you're talking about Dutch, and in that case: we owe a lot of those non-borrowed terms, including the very term 'wiskunde' (mathematics) to Simon Stevin[1].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Stevin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Stevin)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks to all of you for the interesting comments on this online book, which came to this thread overnight in my time zone. I am a mathematics teacher, and this link was recommended to me by a parent just more than a day ago.

To answer one frequently asked question in the previous comments, no, I don't think any school anywhere includes teachers who use _all_ these tricks in their teaching, and, yes, I think most of these classroom teacher tricks are specific to the United States. In the United States, the great majority of elementary school teachers are generalists, teaching all school subjects to their pupils, and their higher education does not prepare them well for teaching mathematics.[1] By contrast, elementary teachers in many countries where students learn more mathematics more thoroughly are subject-matter specialists, with mathematics teachers teaching only elementary mathematics, and other teachers teaching elementary pupils other subjects.

My teaching is in two contexts: since 2007, I have taught voluntary- participation, extracurricular courses in prealgebra mathematics with additional advanced topics to middle-elementary age (mostly fourth grade) pupils in weekend supplementary classes. Many of those students are quite advanced intellectually for their age. They come to my classes (mostly through word-of-mouth recommendations from their parents' friends) from a ten-county expanse of Minnesota. Just this school year (that is, just since August) I am also on the faculty of an independent school, teaching all sixth grade pupils and "honors" seventh grade students mathematics at about the same level, although it is my intention this school year to move the seventh graders along into topics that can properly be called "beginning algebra" topics (to solving quadratic equations and graphing systems of two linear equations on the Cartesian plane).

The school where I teach is reforming its mathematics curriculum with advice from a nonprofit consulting organization.[2] The reform program at my school is informed by international best practice in primary and secondary education and by what mathematics background is necessary to succeed in higher education in universities like MIT. (The founder of the consulting organization is an MIT alumna.) As the submitted ebook says, the hardest thing for a teacher to do is to encourage students to _think_ rather than just rely on a mindless trick. This year I will have to set homework and tests that I write myself to probe for deep understanding of mathematical concepts and relentlessly try to find out how (and even whether) the learners in my care think about mathematics. Most of the rest of today on my weekend schedule is slated for writing a major unit test for my seventh graders, who use an excellent textbook[3] that is part of a textbook series that doesn't provide teachers with ready-made unit tests. The textbook is based on problem-solving and explaining mathematics from first principles (Chapter 1 takes the field properties of the real numbers as an axiom system to explain many principles of arithmetic) and is the best textbook for its topic available in English.

[1] [http://condor.depaul.edu/sepp/mat660/Askey.pdf](http://condor.depaul.edu/sepp/mat660/Askey.pdf)

[http://www.ams.org/notices/199908/rev- howe.pdf](http://www.ams.org/notices/199908/rev-howe.pdf)

[http://www.amazon.com/Knowing-Teaching-Elementary- Mathematic...](http://www.amazon.com/Knowing-Teaching-Elementary-Mathematics- Understanding/dp/0415873843)

[https://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/Stony_Brook_2014.pdf](https://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/Stony_Brook_2014.pdf)

[https://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/MSRI_2014_1.pdf](https://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/MSRI_2014_1.pdf)

[2] [http://www.mathwalk.org/](http://www.mathwalk.org/)

(I liked the old website of this organization better than the new website.)

[3] [http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/store/item/prealgebra](http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/store/item/prealgebra)

The Art of Problem Solving website is a treasure trove of interesting mathematics education resources for learners of all ages.

</comment><comment><USER5> I agree. My father was working in thermodynamics, and he quietly steered me from tricks to being able derive things myself. For example, in cross- multiplication, percents, unit conversion, long division.

I remember him saying: "Forget all rules about percentages. All you need to know it's like a number multiplied by 100."

He also wasn't fond of mole as unit, he felt that it obscures things especially for students.

Later I applied the same method myself on algebra (deriving binomial expressions), trigonometric functions (deriving constants from unit circle, other relations from the basic relations of sin(x+y)) and so on.

I guess this actually applies to any field. Do not start with tricks and shortcuts until you understand and can do the deed with basic methods.

<comment><USER6> > I remember him saying: "Forget all rules about percentages. All you need to > know it's like a number multiplied by 100."

I don't remember what rules or tricks I was taught about percentages, but I do remember realising that "%" meant "/ 100" and from there everything else followed.

<comment><USER7> But it doesn't mean / 100, it means "per 100"

as described here in "The history of the percent sign"

[http://www.shadycharacters.co.uk/2015/03/percent- sign/](http://www.shadycharacters.co.uk/2015/03/percent-sign/)

<comment><USER8> / means "per"

<comment><USER9> and × means "of"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ooh I'd be excited to read this. I recently found "Linear Algebra Done Right." How, you ask? They defer using determinants until the end of the book. Determinants are hard computationally, hard to define, and not obviously useful. Without them (and I haven't read the book but I will), one has to make more general, less computational proofs.

<comment><USER11> The determinant of a linear map is its volume scale factor: any shape of volume V in the input space gets transformed to a shape of volume det(L)V in the output space. This makes a bunch of things easy to understand:

\- Why you can calculate the volume of a slanted box with a determinant

\- Why a matrix is singular if its determinant is zero

\- Why the determinant is the product of the eigenvalues

\- Why det(I) = 1, why det(AB) = det(A)det(B), and why det(A^-1) = 1/det(A)

\- Why change of variables in integration gets a det(J) factor

Sadly, most linear algbra texts introduce the determinant as some random summation formula or with a series of unmotivated axioms. This is a general problem with mathematics: symbols over geometry, and formal proofs over intuitive understanding when it should have been the other way around.

<comment><USER12> At least in 3-space, they also have an interesting relationship with signed tetrahedral volumes, the scalar triple product, and Pluecker coordinates. I once got a published paper out of those connections ([http://www.cs.utah.edu/~aek/research/triangle.pdf](http://www.cs.utah.edu/~aek/research/triangle.pdf)).

<comment><USER11> Nice, and that generalizes neatly to n-space with exterior algebra / Grassmann coordinates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> For the opposing view see Street Fighting Mathematics which encourages not only using tricks but using them well and often.

The problem is if you only learn the trick without the reasoning behind it. The solution isn't to not learn the trick, it's to learn why it works.

I think it's a disservice to kids who will go into science and engineering if they've never been allowed to use heuristics before. Too often you learn a long-form solution method and then the "trick" to solve it quickly and you need to be able to do both.

[https://www.edx.org/course/street-fighting-math- mitx-6-sfmx](https://www.edx.org/course/street-fighting-math-mitx-6-sfmx)

<comment><USER14> The linked website seems to confuse mnemonics (like FOIL) with 'tricks' like cross-multiply (which I thought was for ratios: x/5 = 3/15- I learned 'invert and multiply' for dividing fractions).

I think that tricks that allow you to do things quickly in your head are great- they help build numeracy.

<comment><USER15> FOIL is the _worst_ offender in my experience tutoring people in math. I recall several instances of people being completely stumped when trying to multiply a trinomial and a binomial, because they couldn't figure out how to apply FOIL.

<comment><USER13> Then come up with a better mnemonic or trick that captures the essence of the general case.

Like _Fanana: First times all of them, next times all of them, next times all of them..._ it's not 100% clear but it took 10 seconds to come up with and it works with trinomials and beyond.

Or _FettuchENE: First times each of them, plus next times each of them...._ Ok, that's kind of bad, but you get the point. FOIL sticks around not becuase it's the best but because it's the most memorable, it's a meme. We should introduce better memes to compete with it.

<comment><USER15> Why do we need a mnemonic or a meme for this? Is understanding distribution really that much harder than memorizing FOIL?

At the same time, understanding distribution is so much more powerful because it generalizes to many other uses and later concepts.

I think FOIL sticks around primarily because it is what people are taught. Even when people actually do understand distribution, they may not realize that FOIL is just a special case of distributing.

<comment><USER13> Is it harder to understand distribution than memorize FOIL? Probably. It's memorizing a process vs. understanding a concept. FOILing won't help you master algebra but if you're in a science class and your teacher needs to get you up to speed on multiplying pairs of binomials then they'll likely just show you FOIL.

I agree with you that FOILing is stupid and might make the student worse off in the long run, but I think depriving them of getting practive with heuristics might be worse. Ideally a student would notice that FOIL isn't a good trick and stop using it, but there are other "tricks" that are extremely useful.

<comment><USER14> If you're using FOIL to _replace_ the distributive property then you're doing it wrong. It's simply a bookkeeping device, like the little ditties that people have to "memorize" the names of the planets or the Great Lakes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> That's horrifying. Not the book, but the "tricks". All of those are about memorizing the superficial (graphical things) without understanding what's happening, weakening the connection between graphical representation and performed operation. I'm glad I was never exposed to those "tricks" and I feel I'd have much trouble trying to remember them because I understand what's actually happening.

<comment><USER17> I have to ask, do those "tricks" represent the way math is usually taught in America? It looks like a bad joke to me.

<comment><USER18> _> do those "tricks" represent the way math is usually taught in America?_

Anecdotally, yes -- and damn proud of it! A lot of the backlash against Common Core Mathematics is from people who want Mathematics education to stay that way.

The reason is that a huge amount of mathematics educators in American secondary schools aren't properly trained in even elementary Mathematics.

At the lower grades (ages < 15 or 16) it's mostly because you can go through all of high school and university in America without understanding anything about Mathematics. For example, most people at the university I attended never took a Calculus course. Everyone was required to take a Mathematics course, but there are math courses that are essentially repeats of what you would expect a non-exceptional sixth grader to understand -- matching linear functions to their graphs and the like. These courses even get recommended by teaching colleges because even Calculus I was perceived as "hard" or "advanced" "math". And Calculus I itself was entirely superficial and mostly trick-based (because calculus isn't proof based except at a tiny handful of elite universities).

Result: most Mathematics educators a typical student encounters before the age of 15 have never written a proof (with practical consequences; e.g., they don't know what induction is). Even worse, these educators would probably have a hard time defining a function in terms that a working mathematician would find meaningful (educators now have their own cutesy but non-rigorous definitions for things like "number" and "function").

At the upper ages (~15 until university), I'm convinced it's because teachers are not properly compensated and so teaching doesn't appeal to the best students. Many high school teachers that teach math at least complete an undergraduate degree in Mathematics, although even that is not actually required in many states. However, based upon my anecdotal experience tutoring and interacting with peers while in university, Education students are typically in the bottom half of Mathematics students and often rely on (and prefer :-( ) "trick"-based "mathematics", even in proof-based courses (memorizing formats of theorems and corresponding proofs, then figuring out what symbols/numbers to plug in. But with zero understanding of the underlying argument).

<comment><USER19> _A lot of the backlash against Common Core Mathematics is from people who want Mathematics education to stay that way._

You've got it backwards here; the Common Core curriculum is basically all "tricks" without understanding.

<comment><USER20> The explicit, stated strategy of Common Core Mathematics is to emphasize understanding and conceptual learning over rote execution. And it does this, in practice, by teaching multiple different strategies for solving the same problem, and teaching why they all work the same.

This, of course, leads to the hyperbolic frothing at the mouth on mommy-blogs and the like when a take-home sheet featuring just one of the many strategies taught is not the vaunted One True Trick that the parent in question learned as a child. Cue blogs titled "I'm a certified public accountant and even I can't do math this way!", which of course proves the very point Common Core is trying to make -- that older generations don't actually even know Math at all, but rather a bag full of tricks without a hint of understanding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> daniel-levin I agree with the premise that it is destructive for students to merely learn tricks in order to pass classes.

However, the existence of tricks is enormously useful once understanding the underlying mechanism of a particular tool is not the focus of a problem at hand. Abstraction is a fundamental human cognitive faculty. For instance, if a student understands why the cross-multiplication 'trick' works, then they should be free to use it as they please, provided they can actually explain why it works if prompted to do so. The notion that there was a 'right' way to do something (like use common denominators) was stifling and frustrating during my school years. If I can explain and justify the trick - then let me use it. On the other hand, being boxed into doing things the instructor- sanctioned way can lead to equally vacuous understanding: "Teacher says find a common denominator so that's what I'll do even though I don't know why".

Additionally, I will argue that _all_ methods for doing computations with fractions are 'tricks' at some level. After all, they are just theorems on the field of quotients of the integers embedded in the reals. One should not be precluded from using a 'trick' because one of these theorems ('common denominator method good - your trick bad') is more familiar to an instructor. Replacing one 'trick' with what is _actually just another_ does not facilitate understanding.

Of course, this is predicated on actually understanding the tool in the first place.

I take an opposite viewpoint from the author(s). Students should be encouraged to develop and use tools. The utility of hiding complexity [0] with tooling is part of the very essence of what it means to be a hacker. It is also very useful in other fields. For example, a physicist solving for the flow of some fluid does not need to think about why a particular fraction trick works. This would draw precious cognitive resources better served elsewhere.

Once a concept is understood, tricks become useful tools. In a field such as building construction, short-cuts are often expensive in the long run because the benefit of making some compromise (e.g. use cheap plaster) is outweighed by its consequences (e.g. need to re-plaster after short amount of time). This mode of thinking does not apply to mathematics.

Tricks are not 'bad' and should not be nixed. They should be embraced and presented as tools of great utility.

[0] Such as how fractions work

edit: spelling

<comment><USER18> Many of the "tricks" this book indicts aren't good hacks and aren't easily formulated as theorems. They are terrible hacks that are ridiculously inefficient, distracting, and only necessary if you fundamentally don't understand what's actually going on.

See "Butterfly Method, Jesus Fish" or "Backflip and Cartwheel":

[http://www.nixthetricks.com/NixTheTricks2.pdf](http://www.nixthetricks.com/NixTheTricks2.pdf)

They're both super inefficient tricks that are totally unnecessary if you know and understand the theorem they embody.

 _> If I can explain and justify the trick - then let me use it._

This book is a guide for teachers, not a rule book for students.

For the tricks that are arguably good hacks, the authors provide a simple argument: the time investing in _teaching_ the trick is not worth it, and is better spent somewhere else (see the Jim Doherty quote just before the TOC).

The argument isn't that _students_ should not be allowed to use certain theorems if they understand those theorems. Rather, the argument is that _teachers_ should invest their finite teaching resources explaining other theorems instead.

Often, the authors are arguing that there is an equivalent and equally useful formulation of the same theorem (or a similar one) that's easier to derive and understand. Which is the sort of justification any working mathematician should be on board with (they don't need to agree with the conclusion, but the form of the justification is at least reasonable).

 _> This mode of thinking does not apply to mathematics._

But this _does_ apply in education writ large. E.g. sacrificing understanding for good performance on a standardized test.

This is not a book telling you how you should do mathematics in your work day. It's a book advocating for certain ways of allocating classroom teaching time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I fully support the premise, but I started reading and have no idea what half of the tricks actually are. I think the book could benefit from explaining the tricks for those of us who have not had the misfortune to have been taught them.

<comment><USER22> Same here. I read through the first 10 or so and hadn't heard or been taught any of them. Is it a particular US thing? (British here for reference)

<comment><USER23> Mostly North American.

If you're interested, these videos explain and discuss each "trick" in more detail:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gxLwLBl4mM&index=4&list=PLA...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gxLwLBl4mM&index=4&list=PLAmlm9_MPQMSJ4kRHofj7xkJN1aqmGuQ8)

It's a work in progress...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Wrt the example of fraction division, isn't this the standard way? Was anyone here taught to cross-multiply for division?

<comment><USER25> Cross multiplication is a trick to multiply by the 'reciprocal' of the fraction.

The failing here is that you don't understand _why_ you get the right answer here.

Why is (1/2) / (1/4) = 2? It's because there are 2 quarters in every half, it's not _because_ (1/2) * (4/1) = 2 that's just a 'convenient trick' to get the answer quickly. This is a great idea if your goal is to pass some maths exams which have a fixed format in the near future. It's a terrible idea if you want to be able to apply mathematics to anything.

<comment><USER8> Whaaa? 1/(1/x))=x is absolutely true for all x!=0 in a field.

How does your method explain how to solve "1/2 / 3/4" ? How does talking about how many 4/3 are in 1/2 help?

<comment><USER26> How does it not? There's 2/3 of a 3/4 in a 1/2

(I'm assuming that last sentence was typoed and "talking about how many 3/4 in 1/2" was intended.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Though it is higher level than this book appears to target, i had a similar issue with the obfuscation of the trig functions. Year after year i would ask my math teachers how to calculate sin and cos, to no avail.

I remember sitting in a college math course as we deduced the geometric series that represents each positively giddy.

</comment><comment><USER28> I hadn't heard of the turtle head method before so I searched and found this video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hcKERTnNi0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hcKERTnNi0)

What an awful way to teach.

</comment><comment><USER29> The link to the table of contents is broken, here is the proper link: [http://www.nixthetricks.com/Contents.html](http://www.nixthetricks.com/Contents.html)

</comment><comment><USER30> Interesting. I have gotten very far in life just with many of the computational tricks mentioned in the book. If you do enough multiplication and addition you will think a lot more about what the tricks mean.

</comment><comment> a-nikolaev I think, I don't see there the "proving backwards" trick described. The technique goes as follows: a student starts with something (for example, an equation) they need to prove, and transforms it until they get some trivial identity like 1=1.

If they succeed in this procedure, they claim that the original equation they started with was correct too.

Everyone does it, and it takes ages to make them unlearn it.

If somebody is wondering why the technique is incorrect: starting from a false premise, any statement can be proven, including things like 1=1 or 1=0.

<comment><USER31> As long as your steps are implications in the reverse direction (from the later to the earlier statement) this is perfectly correct. In most cases I've seen people do that the transformations are actually equivalences, which muddies the waters somewhat.

What is a problem is when people do use reverse-implications that are not equivalences, arrive at something false, and claim that the original equation is false.

<comment> a-nikolaev Yes, I know ) But then this whole derivation now lives in a "special world", where you cannot do all math, but only certain subset.

Your example is cool. I have not seen many exmaples of such logic, but people probably do it too.. )

<comment><USER31> The most common example of such logic is multiplying by maybe-zero (transforming a=b into ac=bc) and factoring out a possibly-zero factor (transforming ac!=bc into a!=b).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I've responded to a few comments here already, but I'm a math/CS teacher who is a friend and research partner of the author, and I contributed a very small amount to Nix the Tricks. I'd be more than happy to take any questions and/or forward them on.

</comment><comment><USER33> A possible solution to fix this in schools may be to include questions that cannot be solved by applying tricks blindly. Adding these questions will allow teachers to identify which students are simply using tricks and which students deeply understand the material.

</comment><comment><USER34> This book was a horrifying read. I never came across any of the "tricks", besides cross-multiplication for dividing fractions.

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm a parent. I'm finding this a valuable read for checking in on my kids' common core math.

<comment><USER18> FYI, the common core mathematics standards are largely a _backlash_ to the sorts of tricks this book is complaining about. And a member of the group that coauthored the book (MTBoS) has also published a book that speak favorably about common core.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Does it explain why a _b = b_ a?

<comment><USER37> That can bring difficulties, as far as I know the commutative property is a fundamental property in many algebra systems. So it's one of the few assumptions from where everything else builds up, not sure how would you go about explaining that.

You can show a few pictures of examples of how it works in real life, but axioms are the basis from which you build everything else. You just accept them as being useful and prove the rest.

<comment><USER38> ab=ba is not an axiom for integers (where multiplication is defined as repeated addition), or rationals (where multiplication is defined in terms of integer multiplication). I suspect that it is similarly not an axiom in the real numbers (and, by extension, the complex numbers), but it has been a while since I looked of how the reals were defined.

If we consider fields, then the field operation commonanly referred to as multiplication, is defined to be commutative.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I was never even taught this "trick." The language used is shitty.

The way I was taught, dividing a fraction by a fraction is equivalent to multiplying the first fraction by the second fraction's reciprocal. It's easy to check this yourself. "Just cross multiply!" is ridiculous...

<comment><USER40> You are definitely judging the book by its cover. If you follow the link, the full book has a lot more "tricks" and "solutions". The cross-multiply one is just an example. Of course many of them are culture/location dependent, but I'm sure you will find ones that you are familiar with.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to get experience with scale as an engineer? - <AUTHOR> Hey everyone.
Feedback that I frequently receive from prospective employers is that I don't have experience dealing with scaling an app for many users, presumably concurrent users. This feedback comes from video streaming startups, primarily. I apply for full-stack positions, mostly.
How do I get this experience without being in a situation where I have many users at my disposal? <comment><USER2> Frankly, you can't get that specific experience without having a job doing it. Most everyone who has it today is because they grew with something from early on, or had a job interning or potentially did really well on the interview problems. I started on smaller systems that were distributed in the 90's then we went to large client/server then of course back to distributed solutions with the web. For me I scaled with a few different companies, the first problem I worked was initially small but went from 10's of thousands of users to millions of active users per week in like 6-9 months (dotcom days) so to me that was crazy stuff. Today what we did wouldn't be so remarkable but it was at the time and led me to keep solving problems like that.

I'll suggest a couple of things to try (not necessarily any order or preference). Do what most current people have done, get in on a small startup/company that hasn't yet scaled and scale up with the team. At the same time you should study up on scale problems so that you know the issues/answers even though you haven't dealt with them yet yourself. The study part will help with interviews until you have the experience to point at -- but even then you still need to understand the problems.

One other idea which is a little more involved, but pretty fun too. Create your own public experiment using one of the cloud providers where you build an endpoint/site that does some complex problem (pick something in the area you want to get a job) concurrently and then load test it and work through issues so that you can point someone to that repository as part of your learning experience. I have actually done this myself a number of times experimenting, not really for showing anyone but so I could understand issue(s) better. You might blow a few bucks (nothing crazy) on AWS or GCP/Azure to experiment but it will be invaluable for your knowledge.

As a hiring tech mgr when I am hiring for scale I look at people who have the experience first, those who have attempted and have the fundamentals second and lastly I'll consider someone smart who has the education (informal or formal) but lacks the experience if they have the enthusiasm and right attitude. I don't think I am unique in that thought process, maybe that helps you think through it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey davismwfl, thank you x1000 for such a considered reply. I'll see about doing one of those experiments, likely with video.</comment></comment>


NoCoffee - <AUTHOR> https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/nocoffee/ <comment><USER2> Cute. It's like the plugin that replaces all instances of the world "cloud" with "butt"

<comment><AUTHOR> Rather more useful than that. This shows you what the web looks like to people who need various accessibility affordances.</comment></comment>


How to create your own SMTP server in 20 minutes - <AUTHOR> https://sameercharles.com/how-to-create-your-own-smtp-sever/ <comment><USER2> Thought I would see some really cool and simple smtp implementation. All I found was

      npm install $stuff
      $stuff run

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, but thats a point of this blog. Finding things anyone can build.

But thanks for the comment, I will try to keep that in mind.

Cheers!

<comment><USER2> I don't have any problems with that.

But I don't think "create" is the right word to use here. Maybe set up? Configure?

<comment><AUTHOR> Agree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > Start Haraka (as root)

Yikes. If I did need to use Haraka for some reason (why is it better btw?), I'd run it on a high port using an MTA with a long security stability track record (like postfix) as a frontend queueing MX.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I wish this place was a little bit more constructive. As engineers we should try to solve a problem or invent something useful. It's a good feeling to find good in things, anything.

<comment><USER4> Just a friendly tip: consider posting it to dev.to[0] (no affiliation); the content seems more geared towards helping people starting out on their dev journey.

Without generalising, HN tends to be more frank in dissecting the novel aspects of a post.

0: [https://dev.to/](https://dev.to/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What are the advantages of haraka over mature MTA solutions? They also work out of the box when installed and yum install / apk add / apt install takes even less time...

<comment><AUTHOR> Not a comparison really.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a pretty worthless article. I can set up OpenSMTP in 10 minutes, and I bet it is more performant, stable, and well designed despite suffering from the lack of "coolness" that Node.js undoubtably excels at /s

Maybe there is some compelling reason to use Haraka, but I wouldn't know, because the author doesn't seem willing to bother actually writing a post that contains any non-trivial information.

Moreover, the title is misleading. I was hoping it would be about implementing a simple SMTP server (though 20 minutes is a little tight for that I suppose), which actually would have been interesting, unlike this article.

The last section is really precious: "What would you create with Haraka?"

Oh I dunno, a mail server? I wasn't aware that email was such a novel and innovative technology that I needed a prompt in order to even consider the infinite possibilities.

Looking at this guys other post, it almost seems like some blog spam MTurk job.. His articles are very short and very bad. One is a summary about graphene, with all the facts lifted off wikipedia, another is about how to use a geolocating service (lemme guess, you make a GET request to their api?), and one is basically about how to create a Digital Ocean droplet..

<comment><USER7> Could you please not be a jerk on HN? It's against both the letter and the spirit of the rules ([https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)). Maybe you know a lot, that's great—but being an asshole more than cancels it out.

If you know more, try sharing some of what you know, so we can all learn. If you don't want to do that or don't have time, it's fine to not post anything. If you think an article is bad, move on to something that you like better. Tearing other people and their work to shreds just poisons the commons.</comment></comment>


#kreyosfraud  please help us - <AUTHOR>

Hey, Hacker News!
If you haven't seen the link to the post about the $1.5M Kreyos fraud, please take a look: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8187544 ... we really need your help!
If you're on Twitter, please consider using this link to tweet: http://jonathan.sh/kreyosfraud ... thanks!
- Jonathan <comment><USER3> Posting once about this was ok, though the ring votes and (especially) the sockpuppet comments were not ok—we penalize and ban those, respectively.

Please don't post about it repeatedly though. Rallying support for a cause is mostly not on topic here.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, I wasn't aware that this was an issue. However, those comments were NOT "sockpuppet comments". All of us backers who've been ripped off have a Facebook group ( [https://facebook.com/groups/469833006482519](https://facebook.com/groups/469833006482519) ) and those comments were from folks on there. You guys really should not just make assumptions like this and delete comments. That isn't fair. - <USER2>

<comment><USER4> > _please go upvote. The more upvotes it gets, the faster it reaches the front > page of Hacker News (which has a HUGE HUGE audience). Thanks!_

You are quite literally asking for upvotes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Man you got took. It happens. My father once bought a TV on the street in the Bronx and the box just had a couple of bricks. He didn't go around asking strangers to help get his money back.

You gave money to a child for a watch you never saw. You got the watch and didn't like the long wait or the quality of the watch. I don't think that's fraud.</comment>


Yann LeCun responds to Michael Jordan's comments about deep learning - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/yann.lecun/posts/10152348155137143 <comment><USER2> Also of interest is Michael Jordan's response to the original article with him:

[https://amplab.cs.berkeley.edu/2014/10/22/big-data-hype- the-...](https://amplab.cs.berkeley.edu/2014/10/22/big-data-hype-the-media- and-other-provocative-words-to-put-in-a-title/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for linking this. I read Jordan's comments in IEEE Spectrum and was puzzled because it seemed like he was, in a veiled way, taking aim at deep learning. Then I re-read and saw that it could perhaps better be seen as an expression of annoyance about the media hype surrounding deep learning, but not an attack on deep learning _per se._

This post and commentary make it clear that it's the latter, that Jordan is bothered by the hype and imprecision in the word "neural".

And, going back to the IEEE interview, that he's concerned about the possible repercussions on funding and legitimacy when the bill for the hype comes due, as it will.

</comment><comment><USER4> God, first basketball, then baseball, and now he's gotta try his hands at AI too?

<comment><USER5> They should have precised "(not that Michael Jordan)" in the title. That's a click-trap! ^^

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I thought it was a terribly editorialised interview. Jordon was very measured in his statements, and clearly impressed with the progress made in the "AI" field in general.

The _interviewer_ on the other hand seemed to have very strong and cynical opinions about the field. The headline itself was a great example of this.

<comment><USER7> It was, but judging from Mike's comments [1], he was also being a bit naïf coming in expecting otherwise.

This kind of stuff happens often enough there are several common sense guides/books for "talking to the media" (see _eg_ [2]). If you are in academia, you might definitely want to familiarize yourself with this stuff at some point.

[1] [https://amplab.cs.berkeley.edu/2014/10/22/big-data-hype- the-...](https://amplab.cs.berkeley.edu/2014/10/22/big-data-hype-the-media- and-other-provocative-words-to-put-in-a-title/)

[2] [http://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/legacy/assets/docu...](http://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/legacy/assets/documents/global_warming/UCS_Desk_Reference_Scientists_Guide.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Also there is [http://www.whitehouse.gov/share/brain- initiative](http://www.whitehouse.gov/share/brain-initiative), which might add to all the neural net stuff.

</comment><comment><USER9> This makes much more sense now. The article was weird.</comment>


WeWork movie being made, from 'Get Out' producer and 'The Big Short' writer - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/producer-jason-blum-is-making-a-wework-movie-2019-12 <comment><USER2> Between the Snowden movie based on reports and articles written about his actions, the upcoming Amazon original starring Adam Driver on the Senate investigations into CIA torture programs (which if my timing is correct, the full report isn't even ten years old yet), and now this...does anyone else feel this strange surreal sense of...surrealness when Hollywood movies come out mere years after noteworthy news events?

Not to say "too soon" but, well I guess in a way I am?

Just curious.</comment>


Inkpad: Vector illustration app for the iPad, now open source - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sprang/Inkpad/blob/develop/README.md

<comment><USER2> To expand on my motivation for open-sourcing Inkpad and Brushes:

The biggest reason is the ideological element. For all the usual reasons, I've come to feel that software should be free/open-source. I feel really good now that these apps are free software. I can't remember the last time I felt this happy to be working on them. I'm fortunate enough to be in a position where I can pursue other values in life besides dollars. Turns out I really like GitHub stars.

In addition to that, I experienced serious burnout after we spent a year (2012) rewriting Brushes to be a more modern iOS app. This was in response to Procreate which, in my opinion, blew all the existing painting apps out of the water. (Now that Brushes is open-source, I can feel free to compliment a competitor.)

Despite our own impression that we had radically improved Brushes with minimal UI changes, the update was poorly received by many existing users. At that point I essentially lost all motivation to pursue it as a business.

Ultimately, I decided that rather than letting the apps rot on the store, or trying to sell them to another developer, releasing the source code was the right thing to do. I'm hoping to collaborate with other developers, and keep Inkpad and Brushes alive as open-source projects for as long as there is interest.

<comment><USER3> A grain of salt: "I'm fortunate enough to be in a position where I can pursue other values in life besides dollars" \- all your competitors will be much less fortunate now, going free is a kind of price dumping. I wish all the $.99 => 80/20 game/app damage was undone...

<comment><USER2> I really doubt this will have much effect on any of the competing apps. Brushes was already downloadable for free (with an optional in-app purchase). Many other painting apps of various capability are available for free too.

Perhaps more damage will be done in the vector space, where there's not a lot of money to be made in the first place... but I'd still be surprised if it puts anybody out of business.

At any rate, I don't believe anyone is entitled to any particular business model. More people are better off with open-source software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Brushes, a painting app for iOS, is now open-source too: [https://github.com/sprang/Brushes](https://github.com/sprang/Brushes)

I posted links to both of these in the past few weeks, but they didn't get any traction. I guess I have bad timing. I was surprised to see this on the front page!

<comment><USER4> After years of reading HN it's still fascinating how submissions reach the front page. I gave this the first upvote while it was still on the first page of 'new'. And i was certain that once it would go to the second page it would not get more upvotes in the weekend. To my surprise it is now on no. 1. A few crucial votes in a short time can make the difference. And i am certain that the person who submits it also plays a role. At least for me it was a reason to open the link because i recognized the name of the submitter.

<comment><USER2> Ah, the disadvantages of being a perpetual lurker...

<comment><AUTHOR> I have purchased every app you've made and am constantly recommending them. I was very pleased to see this hit the front page.

Keep up the outstanding work...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Taptrix (the developers behind Inkpad and Brushes) was YC S10, though if I remember correctly they joined YC after their Brushes app was already a smashing success on the iPad. Brushes was released the same day the iPad 1 came out and the two guys behind it were both Apple veterans. [1] [2]

Brushes — This startup created the Brushes application for painting on your iPhone or iPad. The app was used to create the well-known iPhone covers for the New Yorker. With 250,000 paying users and $60,000 in monthly revenue, Brushes apparently holds the YC record for most profitable startup on Demo Day. Its eventual goal is to become the "Adobe of touch devices" by building a suite of apps. [3]

If I had to guess, I'd say the devs probably have enough money to retire. Congrats! Thank you for contributing your code to the world.

[1] [http://appadvice.com/appnn/2010/03/brushes-ipad-launch- scree...](http://appadvice.com/appnn/2010/03/brushes-ipad-launch-screenshots)

[2] [http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/24/y-combinator-demo- day-2/](http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/24/y-combinator-demo-day-2/)

[3] [http://venturebeat.com/2010/08/24/five-new-y-combinator- star...](http://venturebeat.com/2010/08/24/five-new-y-combinator-startups-to- watch/)

<comment><USER6> 60k a month in revenue for a painting app and people act like I'm crazy when I say its time for Apple to create an iPad with a digitizer, as if no one wanted to paint on an iPad.

<comment><USER7> The lack of a digitizer hasn't stopped people from creating _amazing_ artwork on the iPad. Maybe the constraint forces a new approach.

<comment><USER6> Just because someone that's really determined can overcome the iPad's shortcomings and make something that looks professional, doesn't mean that drawing with a capacitive stylus isn't terrible.

Have you ever used a proper digitizer? If you did you should notice immediately how much better it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm not asking this to be a jerk or anything, I'm legitimately curious--what's the benefit of open-sourcing something like a mobile app? I would think that making an app private would be help you keep a level of proprietorship with your llc or whatever company you have producing the app. I know the benefits of open source projects in the developer-sphere but I would think a small-time developer would want their app to be generally private.

<comment><USER9> I want a specific arrowhead. Even if he doesn't make it, I can. Which is why I forked it yesterday.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > please do not submit unmodified (or trivially modified) versions of this > application to the App Store

I wonder how common this is for mobile applications.

Considering desktop applications, I've heard that many of the media conversion programs you find on sketchy websites are just reskins of Handbrake.

<comment><USER2> I've heard that some people are already re-signing and successfully submitting other developer's binaries.

So, I suspect there will be some submitted clones eventually. It's possible Apple would reject them for being "too similar" (if they're paying attention).

On the other hand, it would be cool if someone used these as a starting point and built something unique.

<comment><USER11> Clones always seem to get through. The open source Hacker News client news:yc[1] has had a lot of problems with this in the past. In chronological order:

[https://twitter.com/newsyc_/status/291380036269899776](https://twitter.com/newsyc_/status/291380036269899776)

[https://twitter.com/newsyc_/status/291385819799896064](https://twitter.com/newsyc_/status/291385819799896064)

[https://twitter.com/newsyc_/status/303371858340884480](https://twitter.com/newsyc_/status/303371858340884480)

[https://twitter.com/newsyc_/status/308312460551651328](https://twitter.com/newsyc_/status/308312460551651328)

[https://twitter.com/newsyc_/status/315522279519961089](https://twitter.com/newsyc_/status/315522279519961089)

[1] [http://newsyc.me](http://newsyc.me)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This must have taken a few years to create. Why free and open source!?

<comment><USER2> Why not? I feel the overall value of the app is increased this way. There are many other much bigger free software projects.

<comment><USER9> You are my new favorite HNer! As soon as I figure out how to make a flat, T-shaped, arrowhead, I will be sending you a pull request! This is easily the best SVG editor for iPad. Keep charging the hill, man. This is great stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is there a link to screenshots somewhere?

EDIT: To answer my own question: [https://github.com/sprang/Inkpad/tree/develop/Screenshots](https://github.com/sprang/Inkpad/tree/develop/Screenshots)

</comment><comment><USER14> I absolutely adore this app, I've used illustrator for +10 years and I honestly feel that manipulating beziers through direct input in Inkpad is not only a more pleasing, and intuitive, experience but in a lot of cases a more effective method of creating vector art. I frequently use it throughout my design process (and occasionally for the entirety of it).

You should be extremely proud of the powerful a tool you've created, and I hope that this transition to open source is positive for the app and for you and your team. I can't wait to contribute, even if it's only by way of design suggestions.

I'm pretty sure I've emailed you with glowing compliments before but I can't tell you enough how much I love using your app.

I'll post a few of my illustrations in the hope that other designers might see the potential of this tool and start using it too:

[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/24117106/yh/Ibis%20small...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/24117106/yh/Ibis%20small- compressed.png)

[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/24117106/yh/corin%20ston...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/24117106/yh/corin%20stone- compressed.png)

[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/24117106/yh/reclinging%2...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/24117106/yh/reclinging%20dancer- compressed.png)

[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/24117106/yh/Sweeno%20scr...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/24117106/yh/Sweeno%20scroll- compressed.png)

I assure you any perceived simplicity in my images are a product of my style rather than any limitations of the app :)

</comment><comment><USER15> The comments in this code are very sparse. It's easy to think "this code is obvious and needs no explanation" when it's your own code. But even if I can tell what the code is doing, a comment explaining why is a big help in understanding context.

I'm guilty of this in my projects, and one of the things that helps me understand better what and how to comment things is to run the code through something like Pycco or related side by side doc generator.

I use Pycco on my systemverilog code and it works nicely and has greatly improved my comments too.

</comment><comment><USER16> Just for a person who doesn't have an iPad. So, can one modify this app and then share it to others via internet? Or is it only possible to do via AppStore?

</comment><comment><USER17> Can this be ported to OS X? It could be the best UI design tool.

<comment><USER2> I had a very basic version of this running on the Mac a while ago. It could open Inkpad/SVG documents and all of the editing tools were usable, but I never got around to implementing the rest of the UI (inspectors, etc.) so it was pretty limited.

That's why a bunch of the code is organized in the Inkpad-Core directory, by the way. All of that stuff worked on the Mac too.

When I updated Inkpad for iOS 7, the Mac version stopped building and I haven't had a chance to investigate yet. Once I submit this version of Brushes, I'll take a look at it and if I can get it to build in a reasonable amount of time I'll put the code on GitHub.</comment></comment>