matnewton85 (u/matnewton85)

matnewton85 commented on 'Buy now, pay later' is sending the TikTok generation spiraling into debt sfgate.com/news/article/i... · Posted by u/jonchang

spoonjim · 4 years ago

Yes, a high functioning government would essentially wipe out 2/3 or more of consumer lending. As an example, Singapore literally forces some of your income into a savings fund that's just for housing, retirement, and healthcare. It's not something optional -- the nanny state literally taxes you into being a fucking adult. And it works.

matnewton85 · 4 years ago

The Australian government does the same thing; and also permits BNPL.

BNPL has been thoroughly, thoroughly investigated by the Australian government because people have the same conclusion as the HNers here - 'they must be doing something wrong'

But if anyone does what I do, which is to look more deeply into the topic, they'll discover that this is actually the least predatory form of consumer debt (if not the least, close to it), and for this reason governments are content to continue with it.

matnewton85 commented on 'Buy now, pay later' is sending the TikTok generation spiraling into debt sfgate.com/news/article/i... · Posted by u/jonchang

spoonjim · 4 years ago

It's things like this that make me believe that open democracies like the US are doomed to be outcompeted by countries run like China/Russia/Singapore (some work better than others). Buy Now Pay Later for consumer goods is obviously bad. An effective government should be able to just say "it's gone" because it's bad. But in the US there would have to be a law passed, which would be essentially impossible, and even if it was, it would be extremely hard to define the boundaries.

matnewton85 · 4 years ago

I'll quote my comment elsewhere:

"BNPL providers are held to far higher standards than Credit Card, Personal Loan, or Payday Loan companies. I'm not sure I understand the HN addiction to attacking them.

Unlike all the examples above, Afterpay doesn't charge interest, has capped late payment fees, and has a very low debt ceiling. It's the perfect way for younger people to learn how to manage debt."

I should have mentioned that their late payment fees are (very) low.

If you want to get rid of BNPL, you'd have to get rid of literally all forms of debt - BNPL is far and away the most consumer-friendly form of debt that I know of.

matnewton85 commented on 'Buy now, pay later' is sending the TikTok generation spiraling into debt sfgate.com/news/article/i... · Posted by u/jonchang

shakna · 4 years ago

This is specifically not the case - loan sharks are frequently punished for creating contracts that are not reasonable, and cannot be upheld by law as it violates consumer protections. One of which is that contracts are required to be reasonably understood by all participating parties.

matnewton85 · 4 years ago

BNPL providers are held to far higher standards than Credit Card, Personal Loan, or Payday Loan companies. I'm not sure I understand the HN addiction to attacking them.

Unlike all the examples above, Afterpay doesn't charge interest, has capped late payment fees, and has a very low debt ceiling. It's the perfect way for younger people to learn how to manage debt.

matnewton85 commented on Meal timing strategies appear to lower appetite, improve fat burning sciencedaily.com/releases... · Posted by u/lxm

noodle · 6 years ago

To add my strictly anecdotal experience:

I recently started to diet for the first time ever. Never really needed it, but getting older, I noticed my weight steadily increasing despite regular exercise and finally decided to change.

I always skipped breakfast, but I became a bit more strict about timing and snacking at night in order to align with IF. Switched my diet to a lazy keto (basically adkins) diet - still don't track calories, just intentionally reduced carb intake to below ~25g net per day and increased fat intake. Occasionally I have a cheat meal.

Down 35lbs in ~2.5 months.

Side effects: I feel like my energy levels are much more consistent throughout the day, but also very discernable. Which is to say, if I'm working out, I can really feel it when I run out of gas. Related, I can't lift as much weight as I could, but that is expected while I'm actively trying to lose weight. I feel like there's a bit more mental clarity, but that could be related to energy levels.

matnewton85 · 6 years ago

I’m down nearly 30lbs in 3 months through intermittent fasting.

Here’s my M-F routine :

7am: weigh myself, text results to my father

Breakfast: Nothing, but I drink a flat white just because I want to.

Midday: large bowl of plain unsweetened Greek yoghurt (no additions, which is key - the addition of fruit or other things is what sets off my sugar-loving monkey brain to go seek more). This is low carb yet filling and satiating. I tried out every single one available in my area until I found the one I could settle with. Sometimes I eat a low carb chocolate, ive found a bunch in my local area which I like.

Afternoon: sometimes go for coffee again and add a snack to that

Dinner: whatever I want, which is nice, but generally it doesn’t involve anything deep-fried and is mostly home made. Sometimes it’s a rice dish, sometimes pasta, sometimes meat with veg.

After this meal I’m free to eat whatever I want. If I want to eat dessert, I can, but just need to remember ... I’m texting my weight to my dad tomorrow.

Weekends I can eat anything at any time but also need to remember that Monday is coming and I will be weighing myself. So, I indulge a bit but not TOO much.

There’s no real exercise component here, just the occasional run every week or two.

I’ve also learned not to self-shame. If you fall off the horse, don’t whip yourself into a lather. Just say ‘ok, it happened, tomorrow is another day. Let’s keep going.’

At first, I really struggled at around 3-4pm and was constantly snacking bad things. The thing that’s has helped has been to focus on redirecting my behaviour instead of stopping it. Which is why I now know every single place within a 5 mile radius that sells low carb snacks, the price of each one, and which is my favourite. I also started drinking kombucha for when I have that urge to drink something. One small snack (always less than 10g carbs) is generally enough.

The BEST thing about this above routine is how little mental energy it takes. I don’t track carbs besides paying attention to labels in the act of purchasing, I don’t have to think about lunch, don’t have to whip myself into exercising.

Each week has gradually become easier in terms of maintaining habits. I now know I’ll keep the no-breakfast plus plain yoghurt for lunch routine, but at some point I’ll need to stop losing weight .. so..

matnewton85 commented on Facebook and Google Algorithms Are Secret, but Australia Plans to Change That wsj.com/articles/facebook... · Posted by u/onetimemanytime

neetle · 6 years ago

Murdoch owns 2/3rd of all newspapers and their associated brands in Australia. Arguing that he's "not that powerful" is disingenuous.

IIRC, that raid was over an article that was a few years old at that point. If it was about national security, it wouldn't have been delayed that long. It was a political stunt and intimidation.

matnewton85 · 6 years ago

Less powerful than you’d think. If you’re familiar with the zones of popularity of his main newspapers, you’d see that they correlate very nicely with Labor-held electorates.

(Just think about your own personal experiences: in a typical Liberal electorate, which paper is the most read? In a typical Labor electorate, which paper is the most read?)

You might call it the Murdoch Paradox.

matnewton85 commented on Negative SEO Does Exist webmarketingschool.com/ne... · Posted by u/searchmartin

rwhitman · 12 years ago

Scolding pro blackhat SEO guys is an effort in futility. And the fact he confirmed using the technique also means that its no longer as effective

I'm sure most of his customers have no idea what he's doing either. With these guys its don't ask don't tell relationship. "I'll get your rank up for XYZ keywords for $70k a month but don't ask any questions on how". They do 15 minutes of work a day maintaining some link wheels, maybe some shady stuff like knocking sites out of the rankings, and collect twice the average american salary each month from the client. With that kind of income to work ratio moral obligations are easy to ignore

matnewton85 · 12 years ago

correction, I'm a whitehat SEO who fights blackhat SEOs.

matnewton85 commented on Negative SEO Does Exist webmarketingschool.com/ne... · Posted by u/searchmartin

gk1 · 12 years ago

You make a great point, but there's already a way to plant that "red flag": You can report websites for bad behavior to Google.[0]

It's a different thing entirely to take matters into your own hands and plant dynamite under the "bad signs."

[0] https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93713?hl=en

matnewton85 · 12 years ago

Ever tried it? Trust me, it doesn't work.

matnewton85 commented on Negative SEO Does Exist webmarketingschool.com/ne... · Posted by u/searchmartin

jacquesm · 12 years ago

> Negative SEO is part of the toolkit of any competent SEO professional nowadays.

The fact that you feel you represent the SEO professional community and that it is part of the standard toolkit to me is proof positive that the whole SEO community is a morally bankrupt bunch. It's just shades of gray all the way to 'black', parasitic rather than symbiotic and a net negative.

How you guys sleep at night is a mystery to me.

Who are you to determine what a low quality website is?

We should be happy you exist so you can correct Google? And the fact that your paying customers rise accordingly is nothing but an unhappy coincidence?

> I never target the actual competitors of my clients.

A so you're the kind of SEO that as some kind of public service improves the google index for his own gratification. Sorry, I don't but that for a second.

Absolutely incredible this comment, but thank you for owning up to it.

Feel free to list your customers here so I can make sure to never ever do business with any of them.

matnewton85 · 12 years ago

Hey Jacques

Sorry for the delay, I don't come to HN very often.

I sleep quite easily at night. Google is very bad at what they do when it comes to spam. They deliberately under-resource their spam team and have maintained a fairly incompetent hack managing said team for a long time now. Their motivations? Anyone's guess, but that's the fact of the matter.

Search for payday loans and this result comes up on page 2:

http://www.suryavanshi.org/disadvantages-of-payday-loans.php

This page is spam, pure and simple and falls foul of Google's own guidelines.

> Who are you to determine what a low quality website is?

Google puts out these guidelines so people can determine the quality of websites. Pure and simple.

Unfortunately, their own algorithm isn't good at recognising these bad actors.

This is where Negative SEO comes in. As stated elsewhere, nSEO is only genuinely possible where a site is sitting on the edge (as above) OR, unfortunately, to attack small businesses.

I'm NEVER going to attack a legitimate business. I AM going to attack spammers, and YES my clients do benefit.

I don't like spammers, you don't like spammers, and it just so turns out that Google is not so great at dealing with them, mostly because they don't care that much.

Quite frankly, I'm not going to sit around and wait for them to haul their asses into gear 18 months later to fix it.

I don't just do nSEO, I also report spam listings to TripAdvisor and any other site who listens to my spam notifications. Of course my competitors benefit when I remove spam to their advantage. Why shouldn't they?

matnewton85 commented on Negative SEO Does Exist webmarketingschool.com/ne... · Posted by u/searchmartin

3RqGFE22ZMuOXNU · 12 years ago

I completely agree, someone needs to drop these low quality sites out of the top 10 in Google.

Here is a typical example of a website that I think needs negative SEOing:

http://www.matthewnewton.net/

matnewton85 · 12 years ago

Go for it dude, not trying to rank it for anything.

matnewton85 commented on Negative SEO Does Exist webmarketingschool.com/ne... · Posted by u/searchmartin

andrenotgiant · 12 years ago

I think you need to break your argument into two parts.

1. People ARE creating spammy links that point to competitor sites in the hopes of damaging their search rankings. - You have proven this.

2. As a result of a competitor creating spammy links to your site, your rankings in Google have been permanently negatively effected. - I don't think the data you present is sufficient to prove this. Correlation does not equal causation. Lots of moving parts in Google's algorithm, the internet, your site...

Did the site get warnings in Webmaster Tools? Did you go through the disavow links process? How long ago?

matnewton85 · 12 years ago

Why are you even arguing with this? Do you have any experience with SEO?

I use negative SEO regularly to drop sites out of the top 10 in Google. I only target low quality sites that shouldn't be in there anyway, but Google in all their algorithmic wisdom has ranked them, so... I knock them out.

Low quality 5 page Adsense sites shouldn't outrank actual, legitimate businesses so it's just a case of click click, BOOM. I never target the actual competitors of my clients.

Negative SEO is part of the toolkit of any competent SEO professional nowadays. It just has to be.