HN user
How did I know that there would be a comment like this at the top, someone criticizing the research for not being science?
What is wrong with making up and using a narcissism metric and seeing what it correlates with? It's how social science is done, and how you discover results that are worth exploring. Get off your high horse.
I like his disdain for targeted ads, in spite of the fact that this could probably be profitable for his company.
I don't agree with the idea that all a company has to do is tack on ads and they'll be wildly profitable. I think that ship has sailed; the more ads we're bombarded with, the less effect each individual ad has on us. There are diminishing returns to ad optimization. We can only buy so much stuff.
There will be some interesting times in the near future surrounding this ad-driven ecosystem.
At worst, they are the next-generation MTV
Completely delusional.
I don't know what SnapChat will end up "being", but the idea that the worst-case-scenario is, for all intents and purposes, "incredibly successful" is so far off the rails. How people can read things like this without at least contemplating a tech bubble is beyond me.
It's sad that 538 has turned into a pop-stats site that runs on volume and snappy headlines.
It's our fault, they're catering to our demands. You can't run a media company any other way. No one wants to read read (although I'd bet on average everyone spends far more time reading). So you get wham-bam, buzzfeed-esque content. Even on HN, long form articles will inevitably be met in the comment section with a "tl;dr?".
It's been running a massive surplus since the 80s.
When the boomers were in their prime earning years, supporting a smaller, aged cohort.
you realize that all those people suckered into ARM loans they couldn't afford during the housing crisis was precisely because they couldn't read between the lines?
Maybe, just maybe, there were a few who said, "I'm going to flip this house before the interest rates adjust, so who cares what it says between those lines?" or "I'll live in this house while I can afford it, and when I can't I'll mail in the keys and leave the bank hanging for a loan I agreed to pay back in good faith."
All the bad guys aren't on one side.
Do you think he is a liar and if so what do you think he is lying about and why?
I don't understand what you're trying to accomplish. While I don't agree with user=irrigation's comments, I think he's been pretty clear: the claims don't jibe with his experience as a consultant and he's skeptical about the self-promotional aspects. It's hardly ambiguous.
So why are you demanding he come out and call patio11 a liar? That would be an asshole move. Instead he's saying "I don't believe it", and there isn't anything inherently wrong with that. We're all just "some guy" on the internet, who cares?
because the country is seen as dysfunctional
All the more reason to study their literature.
It it weren't, the numbers would reflect the male/female employment percentages
So should this apply to every industry?
the couple uses Washington state (where Paul’s brother lives) as their address for U.S. residential purposes because there’s no state income tax.
Plus our benefits are grandfathered in if Congress screws around with Social Security.
"But at least now, when we go to the United States, we have coverage and if we get sick, we won’t be devastated financially.”
Not sure how I feel about people taking advantage of safety net, while doing whatever they can to avoid contributing.
disrupt these banks.
What makes you think that the people involved in the disruption of the banks won't partake in the same shenanigans? Do you think "bankers" are inherently evil, while their replacements will be inherently good? The Bitcoin world says otherwise. "Tech people" are stealing people's money left and right.
If the banks are "too big to jail/fail" then maybe we should make them smaller...
Sure, and then we'll let all the pseudo-government-controlled banks in say, China, or even Canada do all the large-scale banking business globally.
The business of banking is vastly larger than cheqing accounts and ridiculous ATM fees that people like us deal with day to day and complain about. That's why the industry is heavily regulated, and why the banks are so large, and why the local credit union in Podunk isn't underwriting the Facebook IPO. It's also why some SV startup isn't going to ride in and up-end the industry without itself becoming some financial behemoth that needs to be regulated.
But it has a garage, and in the Valley that's where dreams are born.
I found that odd as well. What exactly is a "technology company"?
I don't really think he burglarized MIT
I think Mr. Swartz's actions at MIT are admirable, but I don't know how you can deny that what he did was burglary.
artificially low interest rates
Interest rates are set in agreement between borrowers and lenders, and hence are always artificial.
As far as optimality, the "best" rate is one as low as possible without causing inflation.
I'm not going to deny that much of what you describe is occurring. America is a harsh, dog eat dog place. I'll only comment that it isn't unique to this point in time, and isn't a result of Fed actions regarding the Great Recession (post hoc, ergo propter hoc).
But what does irk me a bit is:
"My major point is so many of us are losing net value in this low interest rate economy."
This is a weak form of Bastiat's broken window fallacy in action. You see the money you are losing, but don't consider what higher rates mean for others, like less discretionary money in the economy because more income is going towards car loans, student loans, credit cards, mortgages. There could even be less entrepreneurship occurring due to the higher hurdle rate. Have you included this in your net value calculation?
You don't "deserve" to earn more interest on your CD any more than I "deserve" to pay less interest on my mortgage.
Those people are considered unemployed in the U6 measure.
If someone signs up for e.g. Taskrabbit and does a few hours a week, they're then "self-employed" and no longer count against the unemployment statistics
Are you implying that this is having a significant effect on the US unemployment statistics? And that, in the context of the article and discussion, there is no economic recovery?
Every time unemployment statistics are brought up, anywhere on the internet, these edge cases get presented. Read how the BLS measures are calculated. Yes, the unemployment rate is based off of surveys and statistical inference, so isn't a 100% accurate representation of the real world. Yes, the dynamics of the labor force change over time, and it isn't necessarily stable over decades or centuries.
But the U6 measure, which includes "discouraged workers" who are no longer looking for work, as well as those forced to work part-time for "economic reasons" has fallen from a peak of 16.7% in 2010 to 11.3% today. That sort of move just isn't explained by people signing up for TaskRabbit, or anything like it.
I think part of the reason people deny a recovery is occurring is that they conflate it with boom times. Recovery doesn't mean everything is running at capacity; it doesn't even mean we've recovered yet. It means the trend is up. Looking back to 2009, that's hard to deny.
It probably won't. But the list of countries that are "actually profitable" will.
You are a sophisticated investor, who has been very successful wth complex derivatives, predicted and profited from the housing bubble for 6 years...and you don't have $1MM in assets?
"Because winners of purely stochastic games believe they deserve the win does not imply that our real game of life is purely stochastic."
This is true, but misses the point. The point is that people believe they "deserve" things they've obtained through pure luck- that they've earned it- which has implications regardless of how much of the "game of life" is stochastic or random.
He's no different than anyone else playing the money game (just take a look at his accusations towards Mr. Andreesen, who, I think, is a nice guy). He's just better at it.
The scale on the first plot is a bit disingenuous
It isn't really disingenuous. It's become fashionable to claim that "all graphs should start at zero", but that's not necessarily how you display data. Here is Edward Tufte:
"In general, in a time-series, use a baseline that shows the data not the zero point. If the zero point reasonably occurs in plotting the data, fine. But don't spend a lot of empty vertical space trying to reach down to the zero point at the cost of hiding what is going on in the data line itself. (The book, How to Lie With Statistics, is wrong on this point.)"
He's talking about time-series in this case, but the point remains: you need to understand the data. Sometimes (as in this case, where the trend is important, not the magnitude of change) showing the "zero" point is irrelevant.
but I'm sick of humanities-bashing
Humanities (crap), finance (useless banksters), business (lol MBAs), economics (the an inevitable discussion every year here about how the Nobel Prize isn't a real Nobel). It's annoying, but I'm used to it.
This is a far smaller problem than differing instructors, content, materials or methods between identical courses. In fact, it's part of the solution: as cohort size increases, generally there are more sections of a course taught, and "curving" allows for easier comparison between those courses. You aren't "rewarded" for choosing the easiest grader; you are scored relative to your peers.
"Who cares? These are hypothetical problems."
It's called foresight. The problems aren't merely "hypothetical"; they're inevitibilities.
It only has paragraphs, but no sections, summary, or anything like that.
Almost like a book. I pity the "tl;dr"/buzzfeed generation.
I'm also sad that this amount of energy is not put into something more meaningful.
Why are you on HackerNews in the middle of the day, lecturing people, rather than feeding homeless people and building shelters?
Having "100+ million users" is a relatively new concept, period. It shouldn't be surprising that very few, if any, have failed. But that doesn't tell us anything about the future.
Before Enron, how many companies with $100+ billion in revenues went bankrupt?
I think this stereotype/assumption (east coast, FWIW) - is probably due to the radical uptake on the field"
Hmm, I like this, and I think you may be right.
Unless you worked in a pretty scientific field, just 25 years ago "computers" were associated with games, and were something that "kids used". Now they're ubiquitous. And this just happened in a generation or two. Over the next couple of decades, the workforce will be chock full of people who grew up programming, or at least tinkering.