How to recognise a good programmer (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://www.inter-sections.net/2007/11/13/how-to-recognise-a-good-programmer/

<comment><USER2> I subscribe to the Build Stuff school of programmer evaluation. Why do you hire a programmer? So you can have him build stuff. Has he built stuff? Then he can probably build stuff. If he hasn't build stuff, he might be able to build stuff, but it is a better idea to have somebody else pay to figure out whether he can build stuff or not.

<comment><USER3> So, if everyone follows your philosophy, how do people get started building stuff?

<comment><USER4> Hint: You do not have to be employed by a company in order to build stuff.

<comment><USER3> When I say "if everyone follows this philosophy," I include both VCs and college acceptance boards in that antecedent. Then, presuming you don't have a trust fund, the only way to get your start building stuff is to do it on the side while being underemployed; this is a net efficiency loss for the economy.

<comment><USER4> Firstly, colleges are not in the business of making admittance decisions based on whether you are a good programmer or not; secondly, 40 hours a week is the standard for being reasonably well-employed, which leaves a whole lot of hours for doing your own thing in life (not to mention the years you're in primary and secondary school, during which many programmers build a pretty passable CV of personal work.)

I feel guilty even typing this much, because I don't think you're being intellectually honest at all. The vast array of open-source and free projects in the world speaks plainly about the ability of people to build useful things outside of work.

<comment><USER3> Okay, let me now be completely clear on how I interpreted your original statement:

Let "an institution" be "a place where one may work on projects safe in the knowledge that one's base needs for food and shelter will be met."

        I(x) := x is an institution

        S(x) := x seeks to join an institution

        A(x,y) := x will accept y

        P(x) := x has completed a project

        1. ∀xy( (S(x) ∧ I(y) ∧ A(y,x)) → P(x) )

        2. ∀xy∃z( (S(x) ∧ I(y) ∧ P(x)) → (I(z) ∧ y≠z ∧ A(z,x))) )

        ∴ ∀xy∃z( (S(x) ∧ I(y) ∧ A(y,x)) → (I(z) ∧ y≠z ∧ A(z,x))) )

Or more prosaically, "every institution that will accept a person (and thereby let them create a project) requires that there exists a project they have already completed (and thereby another institution willing to accept that person.)" Obviously there's a problem with that statement :)

That being said, I agree completely with your first paragraph. I was being half-satirical—not intending to find a _flaw_ in your argument, so much as desiring to provoke you into strengthening your point by clarifying it (and trying to go one step beyond the common-sense assumption of "our current society" to see where this philosophy would take you.)

Do you think the world would be better if programmers could not transition into the workforce until they had created something that no one had _asked_ them to create? The idea behind a company hiring you is that they need what you have, and so they pay you for it. If you're creating something and no one's paying you for it, then, presumably, either you aren't marketing it well enough, or it's something nobody needs (or you've made it as an act of goodwill, but the likelihood of Joe the Programmer writing FOSS as anything other than a prerequisite to a job—which, therefore, means that he really would rather have been paid, but just couldn't find a taker, again implying that he was underemployed—is slim to nil.)

<comment><USER4> I admit that I smiled when I saw a big response to me with chunks of predicate logic in it.

 _Do you think the world would be better if programmers could not transition into the workforce until they had created something that no one had asked them to create?_

I'm not sure if the world would be better. There's an overwhelming demand for competent programmers, and not anywhere close to enough supply to fill it. Is it better to lower our standards, resulting in shoddy and sometimes dangerously bad work, or to leave things undone?

However, for any given single institution, I am very confident that that institution would be better off hiring only people who had created things which nobody asked them to create. I agree that these are usually things which either nobody needs, or which are marketed poorly; but I don't see why that would indicate anything negative about the person in question (as far as the company is concerned.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In practice, how much of this article is about informing business folk and how much is about patting ourselves on the back?

<comment><USER6> I'm generally interested in other people's criteria for hiring people as it makes me think about what I'm not doing (and whether that's a concious decision or I've just got distracted / out of the habit), and what I could be doing better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> A "good programmer" hasn't been defined, has it? Does it mean an architect, designer, tester, integrator, debugger, coder? Each of these requires a different skill set. Very few have all of these skills. Some are nearly mutually exclusive. I know for instance that a good tester (worth their weight in gold) has almost completely orthogonal skills to a good developer. The tester focuses on regression, corner cases, code coverage, etc. The developer is sprinting toward a goal. I've had some limited experience hiring - 15-member teams for startups. My approach is to fill out the skill set, put them in a snug environment to promote communication and collaboration, and then monitor the heck out of the progress. My job then is to keep them on track, make sure all the holes and cracks are addressed, and mediate disagreement. I've repeatedly hired (different startups) a plodding, methodical, university-educated, by-the-book programmer to crank out database schema with its 200-plus-dialog query frontends. And an inspired, chaotic, brilliant, chronically sleep-deprived developer to write the 100,000+ lines of code a year we needed to get to the next funding stage. In the same team. In the right environment these guys even learned to respect and admire each other.

</comment><comment><USER8> quality is still hard to measure.

speaking from experience, i've always had passion and personal projects, etc, but i used to be a sucky programmer. now i feel like i've mastered certain things, but i'm still developing and getting better.

for one thing, quality comes from sustained effort and committment. i've been working full time on startups for a while. that's a hell of a lot different than someone doing a different weekend toy project every month.

i'm friends with some pretty passionate "hackers," and i'm definitely not knocking that kind of activity---heck, i have side projects sometimes, too. but there's a big difference between hacking and building something serious. toying with tons of APIs and langauges doesn't make someone a good programmer.

finding a good programmer is still hard. even if programmers were completely honest, and the metrics all objective, would they even have the language to explain to business guys that they were good programmers, both in technical proficiency and quality? it's not impossible, but it's quite difficult.

<comment><USER9> I find that for me, side projects are very beneficial because they give me absolute freedom to try new things without stepping on co-workers toes.

I have to agree that metrics don't tell the whole story. It really depends on what the programmer is looking for. Some people may be attracted to new features & complexity in their projects, while others look to design a small simple project.

<comment><USER8> trying new things is great. it's also extremely different, or rather limited, than what is needed for a start up. that is, you need A LOT more than the desire and experience of toying with new things.

toying is part of the inventor spirit and different projects need different things. one project might be ok with one of the mockups architects make. another project might need the life sized building. and so on in between, changing as the project grows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If loads of false negatives are okay, here's a simple heuristic: I don't think I've ever seen a Haskeller who wasn't plenty smart.

<comment><USER11> I've seen a lot of smart people who weren't good programmers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Just something I noticed:

"If your potential programmer didn't do any programming before university, and all his experience starts when she got her first job, she's probably not a good programmer."

This is the only time he uses the female pronoun anywhere in his post, and he uses it to describe a programmer that started in college and isn't any good.

Conscious or not, it's somewhat accurate; female cs majors are less likely to have prior experience with programming going into college.

<comment><USER13> Maybe it shows he actually knows what he's talking about! ;) Not that I agree with the article entirely...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> TL;DR - they're smart and their whole world outside of work revolves around their profession and they've been doing it their whole lives.

You could write a "How to recognize a good [X]" article about almost any profession if that's your thesis.

Let's face it, the vast majority of work programming isn't that hard. A lot of programmers, perhaps especially the good and smart ones, might rationally realize that having a life outside of work--in other words, working a 9-5-- often makes more rational sense than putting all of one's considerable intellectual energy into writing yet another CRUD (or whatever application du jour one normally writes) remix.

<comment><USER15> I think there's a good point in your comment but I think you have buried it in unnecessary insults and mischaracterizations of the article.

For all of the great devs I know and have known programming is very much a passion for them, and they will engage that passion outside of work. But this doesn't mean their job is their life or that they don't maintain a healthy work/life balance. Indeed, working on projects they're passionate about outside of work can often provide a release from toiling with a brain-dead code base at work.

Also, the vast majority of software development may not be hard, but perhaps that's because the vast majority of developers aren't that good. The work being done by the best devs is orders of magnitude better (and more challenging) than the work being done by the daily-wtf generating paycheck programmers in the enterprise trenches.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> How much weight would anyone here give to the "Started programming at university" criterion? It's one that is bugging me slightly because 1) it applies to me and 2) it's not something I can go back and change.

<comment><USER16> Why did you wait until Uni to learn to program?

Is that the point when you finally realised you had the freedom to do what you wanted in life? - If so, perhaps you are alright.

Is that when someone told you that you needed a job, and programming looked well paid? - Perhaps not so good.

<comment><USER17> "Why did you wait until Uni to learn to program?"

Because at that time computers took entire floor of building and costs millions of dollars. By the time I got my hands on Apple II I was in graduate school...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I am going to extend the discussion by asking this, how do you recognize a _good_ programmer who wasn't born from the culture of academia?

The only reason I ask is that I consider myself a late-bloomer, and after reading _Coders at Work_ (which I highly recommend) I was kind of bummed out that I squandered my opportunity in college by not hanging out with CS crowd. It seemed like so many of Seibel's interview subjects accomplished so much in this period and were more or less born to be programmers. . .it sounds trite when I read it aloud but I can no longer ignore this unspoken caste system amongst programmers.

</comment><comment><USER19> I know OP means well, but this post provides far more data about his own experience than anything that can be reliably used by the reader.

What he calls "indicators", I call "co-factors". They may or may not accompany a given programmer, and they predict nothing.

Generally speaking, good programmers are intelligent and do care about their work, but his positive indicators are much more a matter of personal preference than the quality of their work.

For each good programmer OP can identify who programs as a hobby, will talk your ear off, started programming before university, or has knowledge of a lots of technologies, I can cite a counterexample.

Similarly, I can also identify many good programmers who possess some of OP's "negative indicators" like having a day job, enjoying a single technology, not wanting to talk shop, or enjoying other activities.

There is one sure-fire way to identify a good programmer: their work. In fact, it is by definition the way that we should evaluate programmers. It is the great equalizer, and with web technology, exposed for all to see.

It really is as simple as cause and effect: good programmers produce good work; bad programmers don't. Anything else, including OP's positive and negative indicators, is just a detail.

<comment><USER20> _There is one sure-fire way to identify a good programmer: their work. In fact, it is by definition the way that we should evaluate programmers. It is the great equalizer, and with web technology, exposed for all to see._

Unless you are presuming a team of only a couple of developers doing their own thing, there is a real challenge in determining the extent of the programmer's responsibility for something that is exposed for all to see.

There are a number of other causes that might make a site a developer helped work on look or run like complete garbage. Organizational inertia might have forced the site into sucking, regardless of how good the programmers developing it were. The organization may have one or more bad programmers who were assigned to work on some critical component, screwing the whole site and all the good programmers.

We can wax on eternally about how the good programmers in this situation should've seen the writing on the wall and gotten out as soon as possible, but that's very easy to say seated in armchairs gazing from afar. Maybe they thought things were going better than they really were; maybe they saw things going bad, and thought they could motivate others to turn things around before things become a disaster -- and maybe they failed trying to do that[1]; maybe they have been trying to get out, but they are already tainted by the bad work of the organization that has become part of their image as well.

They could do work outside of their employer, for instance on an open source project, but these can succumb to the same sort of pressures that push profit- seeking organizations toward mediocrity. A single developer, even a really willful one, will have a hard time overcoming this inertia.

[1] At one of my prior employers, I was in this boat; I both tried and failed to get things turned around. I did quit, but probably not soon enough to convince people that the site was not a reflection of me and my standards. The site was absolutely shameful, and I'm sure anyone who used that site to infer things about my skill level would've sworn I had no skill or experience outside of a weekend PHP crash course. Granted, it would vet one organization I would probably not want to work at; but it would represent wasted potential based on presumption, which is a shame.

I really think the details matter, because they are a chance to determine if the work you are using to assess the programmer is spurious input, and reflect an influence largely made up of things _other_ than that programmer.

<comment><USER15> Yes. This is a far more difficult problem than people seem to appreciate. Except for open, solo projects, finding out the work that people have done is challenging. Which goes a long way to explain the difficulties of the job- finding and interview process.

Consider the common case of the average developer (especially so for a non-web developer). They've worked on several closed source projects on which the extent of their participation is non-trivial to determine. Ultimately you have to talk with them and suss out what they actually know, which is at least a day long process in order to attain any degree of accuracy.

Even if they've worked on open source projects, it may take a lot of effort to grovel through their commits to find out whether or not they're telling the truth on the size of their contributions.

Incidentally, all of this is a good reason to have your own personal solo project and your own personal blog, though it can take a lot of effort to do so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I would say I fit all of his criteria, but I would define myself as a mediocre programmer at best.

</comment><comment><USER22> I fit some of those criteria! I don't feel it in my place to judge my programming skills in front of everyone here though. =p</comment>


Segment.io (YC S11) Lets Developers Integrate Multiple Analytics Services - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/25/yc-backed-segment-io-lets-developers-integrate-with-multiple-analytics-providers-in-hours-not-weeks/

<comment><USER2> Seems interesting, but I was tasked with integrating several analytics packages at my last startup and it certainly didn't take months to do. All I did was write a few javascript wrapper functions and stick the various mapping in there:

function track(event, category, options) {

      _kmq.push(...)

      _mxp.push(...)

      .

      .

      .

}

edit: Also, I'm interested to see how eager startups are to add yet another $150/mo to their analytics bill when nearly every service starts at that level... While it may not sound like a lot of money, a few analytics engines can add up really fast, especially for a bootstrapped company.

<comment><USER3> Google Tag Manager (<https://www.google.com/tagmanager/>) does this.

<comment><USER4> It's brutal and tedious to add non Google things to track to their Tag Manager. Feels like an engineering written tool, Segment.io's "flip the switches" is way better for the people that use these types of tools, ie marketers.

<comment><USER5> Hmmm...I'm not an engineer and I love Google Tag Manager. It's not the most intuitive interface, but after a few hours, I can't imagine ever managing scripts anyway else. No need to bug my CTO just to add a conversion pixel? Heck yeah.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The prospect of it taking _hours_ instead of _weeks_ is still too steep of an ask.

Basically, if it's going to be me just checking each analytics service in its own tab vs. needing to dedicate hours of development resources to pool everything together, I'd rather just stick with what I have.

</comment><comment><USER7> Am I missing why anybody would want to use multiple analytics services? Isn't this just creating a challenge for yourself to integrate the analytic data to understand end-to-end behavior?

<comment><USER8> there's a surprising variety of tools available, and they each accomplish different things.

for example:

mixpanel and kissmetrics are great for tracking custom events and learning deeply about engagement and conversion inside your app.

but you're still going to want hittail or google analytics to analyze your referrers.

and you probably want customer.io, vero, mixpanel or klaviyo to do targeted email marketing, which is great for improving activation and retention.

so i'd say why _wouldn't_ you want to use multiple analytics services? maybe our definition of "analytics" is just broader :)

<comment><USER7> I already have too many places where analytic data lands up. I can see a business case in building tools to help me consolidate the data in my facebook engagement stats, my SEM referrals, my email clickthrough rates, my ad impressions, and my page level analytics.... but I don't see why I want to reflect single events into multiple analytic services. Maybe it's because I work with an analytic solution that just captures arbitrary events so I can just log everything in one place, so I'm missing the problem with working with services that are less flexible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This seems like it could be a great way to get their own analytics platform off the ground.

</comment><comment><USER10> We use Segment.io at GatherContent and it works really well.

Using it with

* Intercom * Mixpanel * Vero * Errorception

</comment><comment><USER11> With so many companies providing analytics services it's no wonder that a mother API would be very handy to make use of the distinctive features of each one. I was wondering which other verticals this model can be applied to? I know Zappier is integrating multiple APIs when there is an existing logical flow for example. And what happens if the third party services don't provide API access how would you approach that problem? Would you need to make a partnership with each one of them? I am assuming that all the analytics services Segment.io is using already provide API access.

<comment><USER12> I think anyone who doesn't provide programmatic access to their analytics app is going to fall by the way-side so quickly there wouldn't be much demand for them to be integrated into Segment.io. I'd be interested to see an example of an analytics service that doesn't offer API access.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why not push for an interoperable standard from analytics vendors?

<comment><USER14> Segment.io is, in a way, creating one. That said, an interoperable standard would not make it any easier to .push to all of your analytics vendors.

The (hosted) product seems especially useful to non-technical staff, who don't necessarily care about standards and protocols.

<comment><USER15> I'm reminded of the engineer that saw 20 standards that did almost the same thing, so he created one standard to unify them. And then there were 21 standards.

<comment><USER16> It's good to know <http://xkcd.com/927/> has reached parable status.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> These guys are onto something big with this, extremely excited to see how quickly they can move with it. Please keep sharing updates/integrations with us on hn!

<comment><USER18> Mind to share your mind about how "they are onto something big"? Unless there is a hidden feature somewhere, I really don't see how it's big or why YC invested in it. Sure, it's useful. Sure, it's cool. But I'm afraid that it doesn't solve a big enough problem. Obviously, I'm saying that based on my own experience and knowledge:

\- As a developer, integrating the various analytic libraries is trivial. Installing it? (npm install mixpanel) is mostly trivial too. Yes, it'll take a couple hours, but it will still take several hours to set up Segment too. (One might argue that's not true, but that's wrong. Even if you include the Segment.io code, you still need to provide a bunch of options and understand very well all the other analytic libraries.)

\- As a manager, I don't want yet another 30$ or 150$ / month when I'm already paying that for the other analytic services. Also, I know for a fact that I can easily find a dev to set up all the analytics for less than 200$.

\- As an investor, I ask myself: What's their unfair advantage? It seems like everyone could do such a service and even provide an open-source version of it.

So, yeah, I'm a bit lost. I feel it's a big like Grove.io. I really liked the idea and found it very useful. But I didn't see how it'd work as a business. But then, there are hundreds of huge companies that I don't even get their business model. (Twitter?) So, please don't take this comment as a rent, but more as an eye-opener for me to learn about where I'm thinking wrong : )

<comment><USER17> I think that's completely fair.

The main problem with analytics/metrics is that they're all useless - or very close to it. Each of them is horrible about getting data _out_ in order to correlate it with other services.

If segment.io can consolidate metrics data, provide uniform interfaces for getting data in/out, and can start partnering with other services that _should_ be using this data but _can't_ (there are several dozen), they can turn useless metrics data into immediately (possibly automatably) actionable data.

Just a personal vision, and I have no idea if that's where they're goin or not, I just know that needs to happen, and the team behind segment.io has the chops to pull it off.

<comment><USER19> You might want to check out our service, Klaviyo, and specifically <https://www.klaviyo.com/features/integrations>. We do exactly what you're describing around connecting your data with data from the all services you use. I definitely think it's the future and the future is coming sooner rather than later.

I also agree that metrics are not nearly as powerful if you can't tie them directly to action. Which is why we built our own, fully featured email solution so you can go from metrics, to important people to engagement automatically.

That's where we think things are headed and it's going to be incredibly empowering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Congrats on hitting TC.

If you guys haven't read Peter's piece on Thorium it's worth noting that these guys aren't just about analytics: <http://rein.pk/thorium-reactors/>

</comment><comment><USER21> Excellent, would use it (the backend stuff), would need to be in the EU though :-(

</comment><comment><USER22> Love what you guys are doing. Crazy quick turnaround on customer/developer support too. I found an issue in the python API and it was fixed and pushed within a couple hours.

</comment><comment><USER23> What is the correct way to instrument SCALABLE website analytics if you have a massively-trafficked (almost facebook-size) website?

Are there any resources on this topics?

<comment><USER24> You can sample, too. Cookie the user with a random number, like 0-1023. If you want a ~1% sample, wrap the analytics call in a Javascript if() statement where it's executed iff n < 10.

You can do this server-side, too. Record all of the data, but skim just a small percentage for a high level view of what's going on. You can always dig into the data later for a more in-depth question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Waiting for it to supports gaming analytics like flurry and Apsalar. Awesome support service, too!

</comment><comment><USER26> Seems amazing, but I'd not love to see some screenshots of the product.

</comment><comment><USER27> congrats on the launch!

i wonder if they will be able to fix the leakiness problem across all analytics platforms... somehow none of my analytics reports are ever accurate.

</comment><comment><USER28> This looks great - I'll be trying it out.

</comment><comment><USER29> Metalytics.

</comment><comment><USER30> would love to see it for enterprize-level tools, like webtrends and omniture.

<comment><USER31> Shoot us an email at firstname.lastname@example.com we've working on support for these types of big guys, and are looking for users to test them out for us.</comment></comment>


Caesar Undressing: Ancient Romans Wore Leather Panties and Loincloths - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/kristinakillgrove/2015/06/19/caesar-undressing-ancient-romans-wore-leather-panties-and-loincloths/

<comment><USER2> I felt that the wonderful title deserved a click. This is a happily frothy diversion for a few minutes with some excellent mosaics to look at.

</comment><comment><USER3> So hackerish</comment>


Show HN: Pixate - Themeable, scalable, beautiful buttons for Android - <AUTHOR> http://www.pixate.com/blog/2012/06/30/android/

<comment><USER2> To be honest, this looks a lot like an iPhone button which would look ugly in Android. Especially in combination with default textboxes, switches, etc.

Android apps should a) use the default style b) use default style mixed with moderately customized default elements (different color etc.) c) use custom elements for everything using a style that doesn't look ugly on Android (ie no iPhone-like shiny buttons).

</comment><comment><USER3> When I saw your iOS demo last week, I considered creating an Android port. Thankfully, I didn't have the time, and your implementation is fantastic for a 0.1.0. Great job!</comment>


Bad contract or stubborn developer - <AUTHOR>

Whilst travelling I agreed to do a contract for a company I worked for previously, they knew after a few months travelling that I decided to live in asia (trip to thailand = fall in love) and we agreed a fantastic flat rate per month (so I could continue) under the condition they dont muck about with invoices (they said fine), I charge GBP2.2k a month and they do at least 15 full working days per month. I've contributed to various open source projects and previously I was on 327-400 quid a day in london (means nothing if you see the numpties Ive worked with), I continously strive to better my understanding and program in clojure, python, c# and whatever else takes my fancy etc..<p>Now instead of the usual 7 day invoice turn around (condition of rate) its been 55day and now 30 minutes ago the website is down and Im going to bed.. Bad idea?
 Ive sent 5 automated reminder via invoice SAS and 3 emails, so I figure Id wait until I have 5 emails back? <comment><USER2> Did you take the website down or did it just crash? If it just crashed and they are past due on an invoice, then that is their issue and I agree it's not your worry if you are not getting paid. Payment is a huge issue in our industry and a lot of it is due to ignorance or inexperience on the clients part. That does not excuse the issue but it is a real issue. If you are inclined you can try to educate the client or you can look to broaden your client base so that you are not at the whims of political decision making on their part. Either way, if you did not take the site down, and you had an agreement as to the terms of payment and they are not meeting that agreement then you are under no obligation to support them. Doing so just deepens the hole you are in with them. Any client that cannot see this is being unreasonable and you should look to find new reasonable clients.</comment>


Bitcoin ATM Robocoin Makes Money Laundering Easy - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/networks/bitcoin-atm-robocoin-makes-money-laundering-easy?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+IeeeSpectrum+%28IEEE+Spectrum%29 <comment><USER2> Okay, I'm very confused. First, the brothers make this statement about the device:

""It's basically like a money laundering person's dream," says Russell. "That's why we're not operating it."

But the article follows up with:

"The brothers have chosen to sell them instead while providing full technical support. "

Doesn't their first statement (that this is a money laundering dream) - somewhat defeat the second (that they want to sell these. In the United States, no less?)

<comment><USER3> They don't want to bear the legal risk of operating these machines. Instead they are selling them as hardware. If these enable money laundering, the buyer incurs the direct risk as the operator.

<comment><USER2> That part I understood - the part that I didn't understand - why on earth would they go on record as saying that these would likely be used for money laundering?</comment></comment></comment>


Is there a Hacker News embedd-able Button? - <AUTHOR>

I have the Hacker News plugin for Firefox and love it. Is there an icon to include on websites? I can't find one. <comment><USER2> It looks like it isn't easy to hack one, either. When not logged in, the upvote link is a x?fnid=<random chars> link which times out. When logged in, the link is tied to your userid, and presumably checked against your login cookie.

<comment><USER2> Oh, I should mention the bookmarklet, though, which allows submission of sites: <http://ycombinator.com/bookmarklet.html>. I don't use it, so I'm not sure if it upvotes already submitted stores. But I guess you could use its infrastructure to make a button. Something like:

         (untested)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> <http://ycombinator.com/images/y18.gif>

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://ycombinator.com/favicon.ico> ?

</comment><comment><USER5> I think he means the equivalent of a "digg this" button."

</comment><comment><USER6> I hope not.</comment>


Pycel: Compiling Excel spreadsheets to Python and making pretty pictures (2011) - <AUTHOR> https://dirkgorissen.com/2011/10/19/pycel-compiling-excel-spreadsheets-to-python-and-making-pretty-pictures/ <comment> alok-g This looks nice. I was once considering developing something similar in 2013, and note that this is from 2011. :-)

It would be nice to run this on the following to see what comes out.

[https://github.com/amzn/computer-vision-basics-in- microsoft-...](https://github.com/amzn/computer-vision-basics-in-microsoft- excel)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22357374](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22357374)

</comment><comment><USER2> I wonder how the computation time compares (in the article, he only talks about optimisation time, and that's not really fair as Excel's optimiser is more of a toy, while the DAG computation engine is pretty good, I think).

I know an investment bank that had tools to transpile Excel sheets (with specified input/output named ranges) into a nice DAG in C, and expose it as a function, so they could run Excel models on a compute farm and prevent manipulation of the formulae. (Yes, that means they had to reimplement all Excel functions.)

That was more than a decade ago, wonder whether they still use it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I love how python enables these kinds of solutions so easily. Great read!

</comment><comment><USER4> Wow great read</comment>


Finding Great Developers (2006) - <AUTHOR> https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/09/06/finding-great-developers-2/ <comment><USER2> I am good at Programming and Development. But my pay is low. Hence I am constantly applying and looking out for jobs.

</comment><comment><USER3> 2006</comment>


Show HN: Monty Hall Problem Plugin - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/MichalPaszkiewicz/montyhallr <comment><USER2> The colours of the Ghosts are totally wrong...</comment>


Founder Institute Expands to South America, Should Your Country Be Next? - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/19/founders-institute-expands-to-south-america-should-your-country-be-next/

<comment><AUTHOR> Adeo Ressi's incubator the Founder Institute is expanding to its fourth continent, South America, with new local chapters opening in Bogata, Colombia in April and Santiago, Chile in September. Closer to home, the Founder Institute is also opening a new chapter in San Francisco, due to increasing Bay Area demand. This will allow the incubator to run four semesters a year in Silicon Valley, graduating more than 100 local companies...</comment>


Ask HN: Google is using our company's name, what can we do? - <AUTHOR> I run Stadia Maps (stadiamaps.com). Google just launched Google Stadia, their streaming service.
Obviously the products don't directly compete (video streaming vs online maps), but Google most certainly competes against us with Google Maps API. Additionally, this product launch will definitely affect things like SEO and name recognition.
Is there anything we can do? <comment><USER2> I'm pretty sure that Google have paid lawyer to check if the trademark was free before using it. If they are using it, they are confident about any attacks on their use. Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> That Google also does maps doesn't mean much, as long as they don't use that name for mapping products. Unless your trademark is registered to cover the gaming field too, probably little you can do. But for details, ask a lawyer.

</comment><comment><USER4> Do you own the trademark? I would recommend you talk to a trademark lawyer asap.

<comment><AUTHOR> We don't have the trademark, unfortunately, but we can demonstrate using the mark for months before Google did.

<comment><USER5> I haven't looked, but I am fairly certain that Google has trademarked "Stadia" for the gaming space. You could try trademarking "Stadia" for the mapping space, but that wouldn't prevent Google from using "Stadia" in gaming.

If you have several hundred dollars you're willing to place on a long shot bet, you could talk to a trademark lawyer.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Managed dedicated hosting recommendations - <AUTHOR>

I'm an avid user of linode-type virtual dedicated servers, but I have a client who wants a fully managed and supported option. Virtualization is fine, but it needs to be able to pass a basic PCI remote scan and questionnaire (not actually storing card data--that's outsourced to Braintree). App is PHP and MySQL based and currently could use some speed improvements. Business is good, so spending money for uptime and peace of mind is fine.<p>I'm usually more hands-on, so I don't know who to recommend for managed. Any experience?<p>(I prefer to work with Ubuntu systems, but I can live with alternatives. A distribution without recent PHP is not ok.) <comment><USER2> I once worked as the sysadmin for a blogging network. We used Logicworks.net for quite some time. They managed the servers and helped out when things were going bad, but would also stand back if we wanted to do anything ourselves.

I can't speak highly enough about the guys I dealt with there.

<comment><USER3> I'd also recommend Logicworks -- they helped us setup a distributed app across two different parts of the country, and it worked well. And it always helps to know a person there too. Give Steve Zeller a call, he'll take care of you and let him know Ivan sent you: firstname.lastname@example.com, <http://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenlzeller>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If security is a priority, I would recommend FireHost (<http://www.firehost.com>) without hesitation. They have been great for us to work with. I also recommend Wiredtree - which has been flawless for us over the past 2 years.

</comment><comment><USER5> Hostgator <http://www.hostgator.com/dedicated.shtml>

They are a bit on the expensive side, but they are fully managed and support is awesome. Besides thats the only managed dedicated service I had experience with.

True story (a bit off-topic). Couple of years ago when I had HG Dedicated Elite Account with them for about 1 year. I think they charged me for one month or so after that there was a bug on the system and they didn't auto charge me every month (and I didn't check, I assumed they charged). After about 1 year, they found out the problem and they contacted me and explained the situation (I checked my bank account and verified). They gave me an option and told me that I don't have to pay for their mistake (~3k I owed them), but if I continue to use their service I will have to pay. I decided to leave. I was particularly going through a hard time financially during that time and I thought it was unfair situation for me to be put in a place where I have to pay a lumpsum amount to keep using their service when it wasn't my fault. Anyways, I wasn't necessarily proud of myself for not paying them. However I would highly recommend them simply because of their excellent customer service and their reputation.

</comment><comment><USER6> Here are a few cloud providers I'm aware of that offer "fully managed" or advanced support options:

EC2 (with premium support - pricey)

Storm on Demand

SoftLayer

Storm on Demand is a new IaaS platform backed by Liquid Web. Pricing is reasonable, support is good, and they really know what they are doing. I've been using their service for about 3 months now with no issues or downtime.

<comment><USER7> +1 for SoftLayer. We've been using them for about 3 years now and we've been very happy with them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've been using WiredTree for CurrentHipHop for the past 2 months. They're cheap, managed and great support so far.

<comment><USER9> Another thumbs-up for WiredTree. Reasonably priced given the level of support you get (even low-priority tickets typically get responses within minutes). Nice control panel, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you want managed, I think Rackspace is still the best. They have gotten us out of plenty of jams. Fastest response times, great monitoring, phone support, etc.

<comment><USER11> Completely agree. The only issue I've run into with rackspace is that they are sometimes _too_ proactive - they locked a subcontractor out of one of our development boxes a couple weeks ago because they didn't recognize the user.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am the co-founder of a pro-active server management company, MNX Solutions (<http://www.mnxsolutions.com>). So I have a bit of a bias.

The best dedicated server provider that we have worked with to date, hands down, is Softlayer.com.

Couple the best server provider, with the best server administrators and you will be heading in the right direction.

<comment><USER13> Glad to see SoftLayer are still on top of things. I used them when they first launched and the guys from The Planet moved over as I used to run a shared web hosting business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Actually getting the basic PCI scan passed should be quite easy, especially if you do not store the card data.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it is pretty easy. Just a baseline requirement for the hosting.

<comment><USER15> this is relevant to my interests, well, sortof. do you have a link?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> You might check out a company that I used to own, BitPusher.com. They host and/or manage infrastructure for dozens of startups, including a few YC startups (Wufoo, Meteor solutions (I think), and am pretty sure they're working with Posterous now).

It's a cool setup, we built it with the idea of replacing systems administrators in a start-up, becoming part of their change management process, providing architectural guidance, and proactive management of customer infrastructure. They do dedicated servers in their own datacenter, as well as having great pricing with SoftLayer due to a pretty strong relationship there.

My old business partner, Daniel Lieberman, still runs BitPusher. Tell him Michael sent you.</comment>


Ask PG:  Could you please reduce multi-downvoting by same person? - <AUTHOR> Multi-downvoting here refers to downvoting a comment and then looking for other comments made by that person and downvoting those also.
Perhaps there could be a time limit for voting on a comment?
Another possibility is to show a record of recent voting so that this practice can be more easily identified and others could upvote to negate the downvotes. <comment><USER2> Would you stop to consider that a trend of people downvoting each of your comments in a thread is more reflective of your behavior than theirs? You have the lowest batting average by far of anyone on the leaderboard: 0.48! Your comments are downmodded more than they're ignored!

I can remember having downvoted you in this manner several times in the last few months, and I wasn't alone in doing so at the time.

You troll this site pretty frequently, usually in deep threads where you make a bunch of comments expounding upon differently disturbing facets of the same churlish idea. The way you go about doing this is naive enough on the surface that it's believably undeliberate -- you're either completely unsocialized or an expert troll.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's nothing wrong with you downvoting comments you disagree with.

However, there are people who will downvote a comment and then downvote comments that have nothing to do with the one they disagree with.

<comment><USER3> I would ask: do you have proof of this happening a lot? (or at all)

it could be that lots of people just disagree with your comments... I know I've read occasional threads in the past and down voted pretty much all of your comments _on their own merit_.

<comment><USER4> I think he's merely asking for access to data that might potentially either prove or disprove his hypothesis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I thought there already were controls on multi-downvoting. You can't downvote anything other than the most recent comment by looking at the user's Comments page. [Edit: it looks like it's time-based, probably 24 hours]. Moreover, if you follow the links from the comments page to the actual posts, you _still_ can't downvote them.

I believe there're also rules in the software against downvoting responses to your own farther down in a thread.

</comment><comment><USER6> There already is. If you go back and look at people's submissions you'll notice that you can't downvote them.

<comment><AUTHOR> What's the time limit?

Maybe it could be reduced to two hours say?

<comment><USER7> That seems a ludicrous suggestion. I for one don't read HN every hour, why should I be prevented from downvoting something just because I'm not an obsessive reader?

And any suggestions such as

        "You can only down-vote for up to two hours after
        your first activity that follows a pause in your
        activity of up to three hours, unless ..."

are too baroque to be worth considering.

So ask - why are people down-voting you? Are you saying bad things? Are you saying things of no value? Are you saying things of value and people don't appreciate how insightful you really are?

If you think it's the latter, perhaps you need to learn how to express yourself clearly _for your audience._ There was a discussion very like this elsewhere recently, and here's something I wrote:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1021504>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The system will never work perfectly for all people. Suggesting ways to improve it is fine, but in this case, I think your situation is too specific, and your suggestions would just complicate things.

Personally, I think complaining about karma is worse than the issue you're unhappy about. You often post questionable content, and I don't see people jumping all over you, so a few downvotes that you don't agree with doesn't seem to be a big issue in the grand scheme of things.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm happy to downvote every comment someone makes in an out-of-order thread exchange. I'm not going to look for your comments elsewhere, but if two people get in an argument 6 levels deep, that's going to be 6 downvotes.

</comment><comment><USER10> Why don't I even see an option to down vote?

<comment><USER3> There is a karma threshold for downvotes which your currently below.</comment></comment>


When Elon Musk Tunnels Under Your Home - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/11/los-angeles-elon-musk-tunnels-under-neighborhood/575725/ <comment><USER2> THEAtlantic making a last-ditch attempt to get into this years player haters ball</comment>


Show HN: C++ Implementation of the Paper Median Filter in Constant Time - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Ldpe2G/ArmNeonOptimization/tree/master/ConstantTimeMedianFilter <comment><USER2> Very nice! Starred for further experimentation of my own when (if) I ever have time for this kind of thing again! (it's only a matter of time until one of the regulars on Observable does a fast canvas implementation so they'll probably beat me to it)

This reminds me a lot of Mario Klingeman's Stackblur[0] (and my "quadratic" stackblur variant), which also is O(1) by kernel radius (if I understand the metric of the paper correctly - if measured by total pixels it is O(n)). The techniques seems very similar.

The column histogram trick feels like taking what would be a two-pass and merge it into one more memory-intensive pass. Pretty simple and elegant! I think this could be applied to the stack blur approach too.

[0] [https://observablehq.com/@jobleonard/mario-klingemans- stackb...](https://observablehq.com/@jobleonard/mario-klingemans-stackblur)

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice. Is it amenable to a deep-learning gpu op ? There is a trivial channel- wise parallelization. There are also little more complicated image-size-wise parallelization with stitching. The real crux is computing the gradient op, I don't seem to figure a way to do the same histogram trick.

(Edit : after thinking a little more, in the edge case with an image of constant value, the adjoint of median must add the gradient contribution to every pixel in the radius, meaning the backward pass won't be constant time. Maybe with a softer definition of the median for which the adjoint is allowed to pick pseudo-randomly one the index among the indices of the median values, we can still salvage it.)

<comment><USER4> How does max pool deal with this? It seems similar where you rank all the pixel values and take the max (rather than median). The problem with ties still occurs there, no?

<comment><USER3> Good idea. I've looked at tensorflow approach for backward max pool [0]

They seem to be using a naive algorithm, scanning over the pool area and picking the first index whose value match the pooled max, so the bigger the kernel radius the slower it gets.

They deal with the tie problem by taking the index of first value that match the max value (with float32 that's an edge case that should almost never happen so it's a fine speedup).

My guess is it's probably possible to apply this constant time algorithm doing the same sort of approximation for the ties, but you also need to enrich the histograms so that in addition to the count it also store and update the last index associated with the count.

I also just noticed that the constant time algorithm hasn't been run for float values. It's not really a problem though because we can use some order preserving bit-tricks to convert float32 to UInt32 and then truncate to UInt16 [1].

[0] [https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/blob/master/tensorf...](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/blob/master/tensorflow/core/kernels/maxpooling_op_gpu.cu.cc#L337)

[1] [https://fgiesen.wordpress.com/2013/01/21/order-preserving- bi...](https://fgiesen.wordpress.com/2013/01/21/order-preserving-bijections/)</comment></comment></comment>


The Golden Ratio: Design's Biggest Myth - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcodesign.com/3044877/the-golden-ratio-designs-biggest-myth <comment><USER2> Claiming you can't have a perfect circle because pi is irrational makes no sense. The physical world isn't built on the decimal system. Similarly, the golden ratio being an irrational number has no bearing on the article's claims at all.

<comment><USER3> Yep. Pretty much any measurement you make in the real world is actually going to be irrational. We just round them to the closest significant figure we have. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Swm8tTLWirU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Swm8tTLWirU)

I'm also interested in subatomic particles like quarks. They're usually represented as spheres. Are they really spherical?

Similarly, the gravity of a neutron star probably compresses its own mass pretty damn closely to a perfect sphere. Though I suppose its rotation might deform it?

<comment><USER4> There's a huge amount of unproven (and possibly unprovable) assumption in that statement. There's no evidence the universe is actually continuous rather than discrete at Plank scales. No evidence in either direction, so far as I know. And given the nature of physics at Plank scales, it might be impossible to devise an experiment which could distinguish between them.

But if that's the case, it would mean it's not wrong (and not right, either) to declare that the universe is discrete, meaning all measure are in fact rational numbers.

<comment><USER5> As we're talking about design, therefore human perception, we just need to know how the resulting figure is sampled and interpreted by the human eye and mind. If you can't tell dots close together aren't continous, but discreet - then for the purpose of this discussion they are not discreet...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The golden ratio is easy to _demystify_ for journos or non-designers observing the continuos wave of photoshopped crap trying to _$ fit --force_ the spiral inside random images/works. But designers of school (industrial, architectural, engineering etc), know that it has been used for ages. It's there in the books, even in ancient books, period. And it is _just another tool_ for achieving pleasant proportion and cadence.

Design has been prostituted lately, specially with the boom in the software industry, and seems like fitting the spiral in works that weren't built using the _tool_ properly in the first place are destroying its real utility/credibility as design pattern. Fact is that fibonacci (as a mathematical pattern) is useful and can actually be found in several fields from the stock market [0] to physics [1][2]... so it's not just a "design thing".

Is it the "holy number" that many people praise in order to sell their designs? definitely not...

Is it useful as a design tool and could it be an unexplored and practical numerical constant? definitely yes...

[0] [http://www.investopedia.com/articles/technical/04/033104.asp](http://www.investopedia.com/articles/technical/04/033104.asp)

[1] [http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/6904/uses-of- the-...](http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/6904/uses-of-the-golden- ratio-in-physics)

[2] [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v464/n7287/full/464362a...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v464/n7287/full/464362a.html)

<comment><USER7> Interesting that you give the example of the stock market, since Technical Analysis (which fibs are a part of) is often criticised for confirmation bias and lack of scientific proves of it working.

Pretty much parallel to how the golden ratio is criticised in the OP.

<comment><USER6> "Fibonacci as a mathematical pattern is useful in several fields" != "Fibonacci is a scientifically proven method"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The writing style of this article is antagonistic, childish, and generally offputting.

The concept is interesting, and I would love to learn more about this topic, but the person who wrote this article should consider carefully the tone in which he/she continues to write in the future.

<comment><USER9> I agree with you - this turned me off as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Had the author bothered to read Livio's book, he might appreciate that the reason it is so easy to see the golden ratio in designs is not DNA, but math: anytime you divide a measurement into two parts, one larger than the other, the ratio of the larger part to the whole is _always_ closer to the golden ratio than the direct ratio of the smaller part to the larger part.

</comment><comment><USER11> Slightly OT, but do the words "Here's why." make anyone else cringe when reading a headline? I feel like it's everywhere now, like everywhere, as though it's the secret key to having your article go viral.

<comment><USER12> It's one of the 'curiosity gap' patterns. Hopefully we'll be immune to this sort of thing soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> So.. it's just four pictures? Am I missing something? I see some black rectangles between the pictures, are those supposed to be embedded videos that aren't loading or ads?

<comment><USER14> Can you scroll down? There's an article below the fold (which I didn't notice until investigating your comment).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It should be mentioned that in German usage the golden ration (Goldener Schnitt) refers more to the proportions of the spaces separated by the cutting line than to the proportions of the surrounding rectangle. Its common application is basically a finer form of the rule of thirds.

It shouldn't go unmentioned that William Hogarth already proposed a similar system, based on a serpentine line [0] (and, more important, in its three dimensional form, on a spiral) in his "The Analysis of Beauty. Written with a view of fixing the fluctating Ideas of Taste." [1] in 1753. Sidenote: While Hogarth observes this as an important regulating idea in the work of Michelangelo, he explicitly complains the lack of any notion thereof in Leonardo's contemporary "Trattato della Pittura".

[0] Hogarth, The Painter and his Pug (see bottom left) [http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hogarth-the-painter- and-...](http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hogarth-the-painter-and-his- pug-n00112)

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Analysis_of_Beauty](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Analysis_of_Beauty)

</comment><comment><USER16> I actually think that the article's example using Dali's The Sacrament of the Last Supper sort of disproves itself.

Part of why the painting is so elegant is because of its balanced composition: the arms along the top of the golden spiral, the table edge along the top of the inner spiral, etc.

<comment><USER17> That composition could just as easily (and probably more accurately) be explained by the rule of thirds than by the golden ratio.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The golden ratio is algebraic, and can be easily constructed with straightedge and compass. So the first point the author starts with is pure bullshit. That's like saying sqrt(2) is "impossible" despite it being the diagonal of a unit square.

<comment><USER19> Exactly. Too bad nobody else pointed that out. On the contrary, Pi is transcendental and therefore cannot be constructed. I hope it is the journalist and not the Stanford math teacher who got it wrong ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Fibonacci Flim-Flam [https://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/pseudo/fibonacc.htm](https://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/pseudo/fibonacc.htm)

</comment><comment><USER21> Think about the Golden Ratio more like you think about the binary or decimal system.

It's not a universal rule but it represents some type of pattern.

<comment><USER22> It's a useful pattern for anything recursive. I even came across it once when calculating asymptotics.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oyyXC5IzEE&index=8&list=FLH...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oyyXC5IzEE&index=8&list=FLHeakSjmiHCDIHY7O6R9Z_g) Video on Golden Ratio by Professor Keith Devlin

</comment><comment><USER23> The thoughtful and somewhat skeptical comments here on HN are so much better than the antagonistic and rude comments on the actual post.

</comment><comment><USER24> Everybody already knew about golden ratio myst. But leave us to believe in it, so beautiful, so magical, so majestical.</comment>


Color Picker 1.0 Released - <AUTHOR> https://sk1project.net/news/2019-12-31/color-picker-1.0-released/ <comment><AUTHOR> And here is online help with key shortcuts list.[0]

[0] [https://sk1project.net/color-picker/help/](https://sk1project.net/color- picker/help/)</comment>


Is Science Dangerous? (2002) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_organizations/nobelfoundation/symposia/interdisciplinary/ns120/lectures/wolpert.pdf

<comment><USER3> Of course science is dangerous. The study of atomic physics very nearly led to nuclear war.

> Dangers and ethical issues only arise when science is applied as technology.

I mostly disagree with this sentiment. If you're a nuclear physicist, and you publish a paper about the theoretical aspects of fission chain reactions, and realize that they may allow for good things, like nuclear power, and bad things, like nuclear weapons, you have an obligation to consider the consequences of how your research might be applied by others, do the cost- benefit calculation, and decide to publish, or keep your knowledge a secret[0].

Of course, in the vast majority of cases (GMOs, medical research, human intelligence, etc., knock yourself out) it's probably better to publish - <USER2> benefits far outweigh any costs. But I see no reason why this has to be universally, fundamentally true - maybe there are secrets of the universe too dangerous for publication - knowledge which, if made public, would predictably lead to great destruction.

[0]: [http://arxiv.org/html/physics/0207094](http://arxiv.org/html/physics/0207094) Leo Slizard is usually credited as the first to come up with the idea of weaponizing nuclear fission. Slizard was in favor of secrecy, Fermi was in favor of publication, and for a while, they kept some of their discoveries a secret. In the hindsight of history, this was probably not necessary, but at least they weighed the consequences and had the debate.

<comment><USER4> I feel this solves a very small part of the problem. This is only about the morality of the individual scientist, while the problem is at the level of the collective process of science. I mean, it is of course good if the individual scientist who discovers X way to kill off humanity keeps it secret, but eventually someone else will also discover X, and then someone else, and so on. Do we require of scientists that they all keep these things secret?

Of course, we may not want to have terrorists building atomic bombs, so some secrecy is prudent, but secrecy does not generally hinder: 1) Some bad people from accessing said information, now having monopoly, which may make matters even worse 2) Discovering the same thing independently - Yes, we may keep it secret, but that does not change the laws of physics, the exploitation potential is still there.

<comment><USER5> It is a complicated matter... as long a science advances and is accesible to all, we all gain more power. That enables everybody to be dangerous. I can go anywhere in the world, access a huge amount of information, purchase and have sent home lots of things very cheaply, etc.

We crave power, both in the sense of ability and energy, and it seems to grow monotonically (Freeman Dyson proposed searching for efficient star-energy- capturing devices as a way to find ET life: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere)).

But I agree, it seems that it is not very easy to prevent new science to be discovered. We are a curious species, and even if we go back to the dark ages, even if we move up or down the knowledge scale randomly, this brownian movement will end up jumping too high, and giving too much power to someone.

So at least we should incorporate an element of respect to such power in our education, our ethics, and try to prevent it from being lost. In my opinion, this kind of thing is most efficiently managed through religion, but current religions do not advance very quickly nor are amenable to "improvements", whereas the idea of scientific religion, to us, now, seems abhorrent and oxymoronic. I believe this might change in the future, though. If science "just works" (and it is indistinguishable from magic), I could picture someone stripping out the "scientific inquiry and skepticism" part, and building a religion on top of the huge building of true scientific facts that we faithfully take for granted.

So in my opinion we have to focus on education. Sorry for the rambling :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Articles like this one are coming up with similar questions from time to time. For better understanding of the origin of suspicious attitude to science in some social groups The Cultural Theory of Risk [1] is very helpful.

According to it "political conflict over environmental and technological risks to a struggle between adherents of competing ways of life associated with the group–grid scheme: an egalitarian, collectivist ("low grid", "high group") one, which gravitates toward fear of environmental disaster as a justification for restricting commercial behavior productive of inequality; and individualistic ("low group") and hierarchical ("high grid") ones, which resist claims of environmental risk in order to shield private orderings from interference, and to defend established commercial and governmental elites from subversive rebuke."

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Theory_of_risk](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Theory_of_risk)

</comment><comment><USER7> Super good piece. Science has a real PR problem though and that will be hard to fix, the public image of scientists is one that is mostly one of fear and distrust in spite of the visible good that science has done in almost every life.

The media really aren't helping here. If 40 years ago 'being a scientist' was a great thing to aspire to as a kid nowadays you're more likely to hear the same thing about kids wanting to become lawyers or politicians.

Never mind that the lawyers and the politicians are more often than not the anti-pode of constructive contributions to society.

<comment> one-more-minute As someone from the UK, I haven't really noticed this. Is it a US thing? (Possibly related to there being less religious thinking in Europe in general?)

I've always felt that as a culture we see STEM degrees as more "real" or valuable than more social subjects (for better or worse), in sharp contrast to historical thinking. On top of that, TV series about science and mathematics (astronomy in particular) only seem to be becoming more common and popular.

<comment><USER8> As someone from the US, I think the examples you gave (how degrees are perceived and TV series) also apply here. However, I feel like while STEM qualifications are well-regarded as challenging yet necessary, they have lost some of their glory from a few decades ago during the Cold War, etc. (as portrayed in history textbooks, anyway) when it was more of an immediate national security priority.</comment></comment></comment>


Tracked.com Comes Out of Stealth - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/10/trackedcom.html <comment><USER2> Here's my 'mini review':

I tried a whole pile of people, some famous, some very famous and some regular people. If 'tracked.com' stores massive amounts of information about people there was not much evidence for that. The only people that came up were those in the finance industry.

The site is terribly slow as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> This site actually is awesome. Personally I think it's very very ugly, but the information is excellent, and that's what it's all about.

It actually looks kind of like some of google's apps except without the attention to detail. Just not pleasing to look at. And the logo's really cheap.. come on guys, get a graphics designer.

</comment><comment><USER4> Looks alot like google finance at face level

<comment> brown9-2 The data seems to go deeper than Google Finance however.

At least looking at my own place of employment, Tracked shows you compensation, shares sold/bought by insiders (including direct links to the filed SEC forms), how compensation compares to other companies in the same industry, etc.

For the same info Google Finance seems to just link you to Reuters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Where's John Meriwether? Why is the Steve Jobs photo from like 1985?</comment>


Ask HN: Would you use an app to share and rent tools within your neighborood? - <AUTHOR> It seems like many people have a garage of rarely used tools, from lawnmowers to ladders. If there was an app that let you share or rent your tools to others within some specified geographic area (e.g., your neighborhood), would you use such a tool? Thanks! <comment><USER2> This kind of app existed before (keyword "sharing economy") and it never really took off. I don't know exactly why, but one obvious drawback is that I have to signup for a service (that none of my friends or neighbors use yet), post my list of 3-5 tools I'm willing to share and then never look in the app for 6 months, because I don't need anything. An all like that is basically the same as sending an email to my friends and putting a piece of paper on my door for my neighbors to let them know what stuff they can borrow from me. It's not exactly something you use everyday.

My guess is: yes, people would share their tools, but an app might not be the solution for this problem.

<comment><USER3> We've done it as a community for a while. The downside is sometimes someone borrows a ladder but doesn't return it. Apps would help.

I'm not sure if people would want to _rent_ their tools though. It seems like the benefit of being neighborly exceeds the $3 you'd get from renting out a ladder.

<comment><USER4>
      > Freuchen tells how one day, after coming home
      > hungry from an unsuccessful walrus-hunting
      > expedition, he found one of the successful
      > hunters dropping off several hundred pounds
      > of meat. He thanked him profusely. The man
      > objected indignantly:

        > "Up in our country we are human!" said the
        > hunter. "And since we are human we help
        > each other. We don't like to hear anybody
        > say thanks for that. What I get today you
        > may get tomorrow. Up here we say that by
        > gifts one makes slaves and by whips one
        > makes dogs.

      > The refusal to calculate credits and debits
      > can be found throughout the anthropological
      > literature on egalitarian hunting societies.
      > Rather than seeing himself as human because he
      > could make economic calculations, the hunter
      > insisted that being truly human meant refusing
      > to make such calculations, refusing to measure
      > or remember who had given what to whom

      -- Graeber , Debt: The First 5,000 Years

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Low end tools like screwdrivers and hammers, I don't see this being profitable enough to be worth the trouble.

For the high end tools like masterwork knives and chainsaws - they're too valuable to rent out. You don't want someone chipping an heirloom knife. Rating them 1 star or banning them from the system isn't worth the pain nor is it illegal enough to be a deterrent. On the other hand, sharing apps like Airbnb and Uber has worked fine, and you can also provide insurance.

Also with things like chainsaws and power tools, they'd also need safety gear and training. They might as well just hire someone to do it.

The sweet spot seems to be in the middle - crowbars, power drills, power screwdrivers, shovels, lawnmowers. But these are quite cheap. I have two shovels because we bought a new one and didn't realize we had an old one.

I guess the real litmus test is... would you? It's not a big problem IMO and I've lived fine without it. It seems like one of those things that sounds like a great idea but isn't something I'd lose sleep over.

</comment><comment><USER5> Honestly, depends on the tool.

This is my mental heuristic/the levels of tools I own/use when looking to do a job:

\- Rent/Borrow: it's a common job. I need it once. (Rule of three applies here[0]. If I'm not going use it 3 times, I don't need to own it.

\- Disposable Tool: Odd size wrench? No one I know has it? Time to by cheap shit from Harbor freight.

\- Best Value Tool: Am I new to the tool? Or is a professional quality very expensive? i.e. Buy the Toyota, but no need for a Porsche

\- Master Quality Tool: This is something I have a clear need for and owning a better quality tool will directly result in productivity games, when I buy at this level, I consider it an investment. And as long as see a noticeable return, I have no problem shelling out money for the best.

Would I rent out any of my tools? Maybe. I am very picky about the higher quality ones.

Would I rent my neighbor's cadillac of a log splitter that gets used once a year? Hell yes.

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_three_(computer_progra...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_three_\(computer_programming\))

</comment><comment><USER6> It's simpler to buy-and-sell the appliances on craigslist. That way you don't have to worry about the borrower depreciating the value of the appliance or not returning it in a timely fashion.

Also, maybe I'm not in love with the ladder I have. Selling it for $20 so I can justify buying a $2000 composite one that fits in your pocket is a pretty good use case.

If I lived in a dense metro area and couldn't afford to store a full complement of tools, I could afford to hire people to perform the labor associated with those tools, so urban isn't even a use case for a borrowing app.

Borrowing is like bartering: a coincidence of wants is much less likely than a want of coincidences.

</comment><comment><USER7> Personally I wouldn't but that's not indicative of whether the idea has merit or not. We live in a small neighborhood that roughly spans 3 streets where majority of the homeowners know each other. We've borrowed tools from various neighbors within our neighborhood over the past couple of years without issue and there were never really any rush to returning them.

Prior to living here, if we ever needed basic tools, we bought them ourselves or borrowed from family (which have a large array of heavy duty tools) so we are not the target demographic for this.

</comment><comment><USER8> Putting "tool borrowing" into Google comes back with multiple apps already.

The one that I hear about people using most often is [https://fatllama.com](https://fatllama.com)

The liability side of this will be interesting. I know with Fat Llama the reason I generally hear about them is due to items being damaged or stolen.

</comment><comment><USER9> I believe Home Depot and Lowe's and small non profit "tool banks" already do this, an app displaying inventory and manuals would maybe be helpful

</comment><comment><USER10> Nextdoor is probably best positioned to facilitate something like this.

It's really hard to get enough trust and liquidity otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER11> I have used the app Fat Llama to rent a dremel tool from someone about 20-minutes walk away.

I would do so in the future.

</comment><comment><USER12> Takoma Park, Maryland, has or had a "tool library" in the basement of the regular library, from which locals could borrow tools. I haven't lived in Takoma Park now for many years, and don't know whether the tool library still operates.

</comment><comment><USER13> No. I'll borrow stuff or lend stuff to people I know. Random neighbor, no thanks.

</comment><comment><USER14> Depends highly on the accountability chain, insurance, and ease of use.</comment>