Google launches offline maps - <AUTHOR> https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2015/11/navigate-and-search-real-world-online.html <comment><USER2> This is amazing. Now things like Garman have no real purpose (offline maps was their niche as Google Map's version of the same was terrible).

Now who do I need to bribe at Google to get Google Maps to support Mirrorlink so it works with a quarter of a million vehicles? And to give Google Now a fake telephone number?

Google would prefer vehicles implement Android Auto. I'd prefer that too. The reality on the ground is that about a dozen vehicles in the 2016 model year support Android Auto, while four times that support Mirrorlink (a Android Auto/Car Play competitor). That's a lot of vehicles who for their ten-twenty year lifespan won't have Google Maps without MirrorLink app support. So they're stuck using wonderful Android apps like "BringGo" and "Sygic" that are MirrorLink compatible.

As to the Google Now fake phone number issue. Microsoft's Cortana does this, it rocks. A lot of vehicles totally botch Bluetooth. On a $20 Bluetooth Headset you can push and hold the call button and it opens up a audio stream to your smartphone, you say "OK Google" and Google Now works. Unfortunately many vehicles lack this very simple functionality. They outright refuse to open up a blank audio stream over Bluetooth, instead they want a specific phone number to call (that is stored on the vehicle's contact list). With no telephone contact in the directory the vehicle won't even pretend to start a call. Once you ask your vehicle to call someone, it opens up the Android dialer app and "OK Google" does not function (since you're now in a voice call). Cortana's fake number solves this outright, you "call" Cortana, she answers and you conduct your query. Your vehicle cannot know it isn't a real voice call, it is amazing.

PS - No, Tasker does not solve the bluetooth thing. You can intercept the call and start Google Now, but as soon as it hangs up the call the bluetooth cuts out.

<comment><USER3> > Now things like Garman have no real purpose (offline maps > was their niche > as Google Map's version of the same was terrible).

I see you've never used a GPS in the back country for days at a time.

Things that are still wonderful about my eTrex 20 [0] is that it's cheap, it takes AA batteries, those AA's can last for 16+ hours continually, and it's not my phone. (phones are great, but I need it to operate as a phone, when I do need it).

And yes, I know your phone can do may wonderful things, and I am as grateful for that as you are, but of the few things they still are not getting right is: use in incremental weather. Like: winter outside, in a snowstorm, on a mountain. Or, being dropped onto things, like rocks. They seem to be allergic to those.

[0] [http://sites.garmin.com/en-US/etrex/](http://sites.garmin.com/en- US/etrex/)

<comment><USER4> The best thing about the eTrex is that it has a much more accurate GPS than in a phone, at least an iPhone.

The worst things about the eTrex are it's utter crap screen, how bulky it is, how expensive it is (they start at $250), the fact you have to spend a significant amount of additional money on maps and map updates, the added bulk due to the fact it uses AA batteries, and the poor battery life (I know this contradicts your experience, but that is MY experience using one 12 hours a day mapping plants).

I think for many people buying something like the Gaia GPS app and a waterproof case for their phone will be a much less expensive and more flexible option. If you are worried about running down the battery, buy a rechargeable lithium ion battery with a usb jack and take along your charging cable. If you need more accuracy, get a GPS puck for your phone. Garmin sells one.

<comment><USER5> I just sold my Garmin 62s. iPhone 6s in low power mode has a longer battery life, and Gaia has always been superior to Garmin software.

A better purchase today might just be a Delorme Inreach and their cheapest subscription. It gives 2-way communication and has an emergency beacon function.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's great they brought this back, but this is far from a new feature, just one that was gone for a few years. Previous to the redesign of the google maps app this feature did fully exist with navigation and all as I used it myself when visiting Canada. Anyway glad to see it back but how quick the Internet forgets.. this isn't new, they just fixed the broken feature, heh.

<comment><USER7> You are mistaken. What existed before (and the redesign did not remove) was the ability to view cached data offline. You could specify a region to cache, then zoom and pan around that area without a data connection. It would also automatically download your route when you started navigation, and if you subsequently lost your data connection there was a limited offline ability to give directions back to the cached route.

What is new, and never existed before in any version of the app, is the ability to search and start navigation completely offline.

<comment><USER8> Absolutely wrong. Back in version 6, there was a "My Maps" feature which allowed you to save a region and use that saved region to navigate.

<comment><USER7> "My Maps" was and still is the name of a feature which allows you to add your own places, lines, etc. on top of the base Google map. It has never allowed you to search the base map or start turn-by-turn navigation offline.

<comment><USER9> As long as you had internet connection at the start of your journey it worked for navigation, even if you dropped offline during your trip. Therefore downloading maps was useful at the time because if you didn't do this, you could be driving blind for a while in areas where there was no internet connection. You could only download small sections of the map at 1 time for offline use (e.g. an area just bigger than Manhattan). Still it was a total PITA given that most other navigation apps at the time allowed you to download maps and start navigation even if you were offline. Of course, if you did that all the time Google wouldn't be able to collect data on you to support its business model, which is probably why they've taken so many years to get around to implementing this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> HERE Maps - Has all of the Offline capabilities and is available Multi- Platform. In addition it has Speed limits and warnings, all for free on Android.

The one reason to use the Google Maps app is the updated Traffic info and slightly nicer turn-by-turn (mentions specific lanes, etc) and slightly more updated maps.

<comment><USER11> Let me know when it covers Japan.

<comment><USER12> *disclaimer: I used to work for HERE. I don't anymore. These opinions are my own.

They covered much more of the world than google maps. I always didn't understand why Japan didn't make the cut, I didn't have any insight into that.

fyi, HERE also has better indoor map coverage last time I checked, if you care for that sort of thing.

<comment><USER13> Usually I use HERE maps when traveling. I usually use CityMaps2Go as a backup. It was my primary offline map when in Japan earlier this year.

It was certainly odd that it was missing.

<comment><USER14> The HERE needs definitely backup. I have country maps downloaded there for travel, and phone is always offline, but often I see white map for the downloaded area. Initially it is always white. Sometimes it helps if you get online for a moment, but even then later on I have still got white map. Similar issues with both Android and iOS versions. Unreliable stuff

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've had good luck with OSM apps like MAPS.ME, and it lets you download entire states or countries if you wish: [http://maps.me/en/home](http://maps.me/en/home)

You're probably not going to get the same detailed place/business data, but there are some things where it is more useful (finding public restrooms in Europe, for instance)

<comment><USER16> MAPS.ME is the best free OpenStreetMaps apps I found this summer. One can download countries or even a few continents of map data and stay offline with GPS-only. Older OSM map apps got crippled or were not updated for recent OS versions The quality of the OSM map data varies more than Google Maps, but often OSM is more detailed.

<comment><USER17> OsmAnd has more features but the UX is still a bit complicated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Not sure if everyone on HN is aware of it, but HERE Maps has been supporting offline maps for a while, for Windows, Android and iOS devices. You just first download a package over WiFi to your phone / SD card (one package per country, or for big countries, one package per region) and you can access the maps offline.

That's super useful when traveling within Europe for instance.

The main reason I sometimes use Google Maps is that it has better traffic coverage (shows also minor roads while HERE only major ones).

<comment><USER19> The Navigon GPS app is also offline. It's really a key feature, not only for driving but also for any activity where you're in the woods. It saves me from getting completely lost several times a year.

<comment><USER8> Yep. Navigon and Co-Pilot are two offline maps I have used. Each has pros and cons, but they both work fine without a data connection.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Didn't this feature already exist and then disappear? I seem to remember being able to select a roughly 20 mile square area to download to my phone but the data and the feature disappeared after either an Android update or a Maps update.

<comment><USER21> That has existed for a while and never went away (you can access it by clicking on the search bar and scrolling down). What is being announced now is that offline maps can be used for routing/navigation and business info.

<comment><USER22> It always downloaded and cached the area around your location and route. What new here is that you can control it and it also sounds to be persistent, it also will probably download POI and local businesses info as you've mentioned and allow you to use navigation while offline.

This is quite good for my android phone because it seems to try to connect to every metro wifi out there and doesn't fall back gracefully and quickly enough for it to be seamless. The iPhone has a better UX when it comes to this but still would be quite good especially when I go to out of the city and get edge or poor 3G connection, it also will work great when roaming and I won't have to worry about closing the navigation app or pressing anything that will trigger a new search when I'm out of the hotel and don't have wifi.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm really curious why Google maps seems so .... neglected?

Maybe all these ideas have been considered but rejected for one reason or another.

* Why can I not annotate the map with my own comments? I can mark a place but I can't label it or put any notes. Seems like for google it could a great source for big data (opt in). Would also seem like a possible lock in feature as in an incentive not to switch to another map system since you probably couldn't easily import your notes)

* Why does search on maps suck so bad? I search for things and it gives me massively irrelevant answers halfway around the world even though it knows where I am. Why is actually searching so hard? Quite often I type something in, I want to "search" as in (show me markers on the map that match this query) but no search option appears, only a list of results which is not useful to me. I want to see them on the map. I don't know where 123 brown street is vs 567 red street but I would know if it would show me all of them on the map. That option is only available sometimes, not always. No idea why.

* Why haven't they started selling ads on the maps? Or at least letting businesses register more info. I'd personally like to see logos/signs (small) instead of just generic markers. I'd also like to be to search for items and have it tell me where I can get them. Not just generic items but specific items. eg. not where can I buy appliances but where I can I buy/see the LG LSXS26466S

* Why are the maps still so bad in so many parts of the world? Google maps does not know how to get from downtown Paris to Paris Disneyland by public transport. Google maps does not have public transportation info in Istanbul THE LARGEST CITY IN EUROPE!

<comment><USER24> 1) You can, it's called My Maps: [http://mymaps.google.com](http://mymaps.google.com)

2) Search is hard, let's go shopping!

3) They have: [https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/3246303?hl=en- AU](https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/3246303?hl=en-AU)

4) Public transport info generally relies on there being a competent transit authority that can provide a solid GTFS feed. You'd be surprised how hard even big, 1st-world cities can find this (here's looking at you, Melbourne).

<comment><USER25> > _4) Public transport info generally relies on there being a competent > transit authority that can provide a solid GTFS feed. You 'd be surprised > how hard even big, 1st-world cities can find this (here's looking at you, > Melbourne)._

Sometimes the authorities get into exclusive deals with other companies. Which is infuriating, because while I understand competition, et al., it's _Google Maps_ (and by extension Google Now) we're talking about! I don't want to use that stupid startup that provides public transit navigation in my city. I want Google Now which is properly integrated with everything else on my phone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm particularly eager to see offline hi-res satellite imagery become available on a mobile device. I lead extended off-road desert driving trips [1] as a hobby and navigation is the biggest challenge. I strive to avoid commonly used roads and trails and seek out old, disused mining roads and cattle paths whenever possible. I currently use offline USGS topo maps [2] which is a big help but satellite imagery is far better for evaluating the potential driveability of a route.

Please, Google--anybody--let us use or buy offline satellite imagery!

[1] [https://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/sets/72157654387670...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/sets/72157654387670633)

[2] [http://topomapsapp.com/](http://topomapsapp.com/)

<comment><USER27> You can DIY it. There is an ecosystem of tools that can handle map tiles shoved into a sqlite database:

[http://mobac.sourceforge.net/](http://mobac.sourceforge.net/)

So you just need to pick some of them and mess around getting it working. In the US, you can get reasonable imagery from the USGS:

[http://raster.nationalmap.gov/arcgis/rest/services/Orthoimag...](http://raster.nationalmap.gov/arcgis/rest/services/Orthoimagery/USGS_EROS_Ortho/ImageServer)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I traveled full-time in a motorhome for about four years, and I literally can't count the number of times I have furiously shouted "Goddammit, Google, cache your shit!" at my phone. I don't frequently get angry at inanimate objects (or faceless corporations), but this is a uniquely infuriating problem.

I had other map and navigation apps, including quite pricey ones. And, I had a dedicated Garmin GPS. All could navigat and provide maps without a network connections. But, they all suck in other ways. Google Maps is clearly superior in every regard _except_ that it will leave you on your own when you get off the grid, which is a pretty big deal...made more frustrating because it's difficult to guess _when_ it's going to fail completely and make driving really stressful for a little while.

They allegedly added caching of routes a few years back, but it never worked very well. Any change, addition of another destination along the route, changing zoom level, searching for gas and then trying to go back to your original route, would all cause it to lose the cached information. It was pretty much worthless because it would invalidate the cache at the drop of a hat.

I'm hitting the road again, in a travel trailer, and I gave away my GPS because I have less space for extraneous things. I also assumed that things are better on the Android app GPS front (when I started traveling back then, I was using a Google dev phone, the first one based on the G1...so, all things Android have improved a little bit).

</comment><comment><USER8> Gee, now Google Maps is almost as good as it was at version 6, two or three years ago.

If they only add "Save as a contact", as version 6 does, I could get rid of my never-to-be-upgraded original Nexus.

This is on of the few changes to Maps that seem to be an improvement over the previous version.

</comment><comment><USER29> > You can download an area by searching for a city, county or country

I'm curious what states or countries actually work with this feature. The first thing I did was type in "United States." Too big. Eventually I had to zoom into an area half the size of the SF peninsula before I could download anything. It's better than nothing, but still not as good offline as the Garmin I had a decade ago. I guess this data has lots of stuff that my Garmin didn't, like business hours, but I care a lot more about navigation than about the rich maps data Google wants to deliver me.

</comment><comment><USER30> Is the offline functionality exposed in the Android Google Maps APIs yet, for 3rd party apps?

<comment><USER31> I was wondering the same. This could potentially allow for circumvention of their usage limits though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Tried downloading LA -- "Area too large, zoom in"

You can download the whole USA map with the "HERE" app...

<comment><USER33> Google can direct me to the front door of an apartment in a dense city. As well as provide me with opening hours of businesses and detailed transit information. How big is the download, to grab "The whole USA"?

<comment><USER34> HERE has that, too. Except that business hours aren't offline available. That's why even the small German states are about a Gigabyte.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This implementation is rather lacking. Its only offline when a data connection isn't present. When data returns it automatically goes back online.

There's a very small limit to what one can download as well.

<comment><USER36> It's calculating navigation routes, right? Wouldn't you want to use the most recent data for that?

<comment><USER8> No. map data does not change much. Traffic does, but not the map data.

<comment><USER36> Right but they've always cached map data. The offline mode also does navigation now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Can I thread hijack and ask what in the world happened to plain old satellite view in google maps ?

As in, go to the maps.google.com website, and the little icon in the corner to see things in a satellite view doesn't exist anymore ... there is only a choice for google earth and streetviews and blah blah blah things I never used.

Although on an old mac running snow leopard, satellite view option _is_ still there.

What is going on ? Why would I not want the option of satellite view ? It seems like I would...

<comment><USER38> I believe the earth view is suppose to be the what was the old satellite view, just now by default having 3D rendering. Some people like it, some people don't If you're annoyed by the 3D rendering you can turn it off. Go to the same menu after selecting the Earth view and you should now see a '3D on' label. Click it and the 3D stuff will turn off and you'll get normal looking satellite images again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I was hoping that the headline meant you could order prints.

<comment><USER40> Doesn't look like it, but you can build and export your own prints at high resolution through Mapbox Studio Classic [1], and you can order nice prints for the U.S. from the USGS [2].

[1]: [https://www.mapbox.com/mapbox-studio- classic/](https://www.mapbox.com/mapbox-studio-classic/)

[2]: [http://store.usgs.gov/b2c_usgs/b2c/display/(xcm=r3standardpi...](http://store.usgs.gov/b2c_usgs/b2c/display/\(xcm=r3standardpitrex_prd&layout=6_1_61_50_2&uiarea=2&ctype=catalogEntry&carea=0000000009\)/.do)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'm surprised Nokia Here Maps [1] hasnt got a mention here. I did a multiple day roadtrip covering yosemite and death valley and Nokia Here Maps was the only thing that worked and it worked brilliantly.

[1] [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.here.app.m...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.here.app.maps&hl=en)

</comment><comment><USER42> This has been around for a couple of years unofficially. If you typed "ok maps" into the search bar in maps, it would offline the area currently onscreen.

[http://www.wired.com/2014/02/offline-google- maps/](http://www.wired.com/2014/02/offline-google-maps/)

<comment><USER43> This just let you view the map. The change is that you can now search and navigate offline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> >we're gradually rolling out the first set of these improvements with the latest version of Google Maps on Android //

Wouldn't it be nice if there was a version number so one could tell if it was worth updating yet. This is a big plus for me, the old option to cache a region of maps was very useful and this seems the moreso.

<comment><USER45> The version that has the new offline functionality is 9.17

<comment><USER44> Thanks - for anyone else looking your current version is in the Help > "..." menu (amongst other places).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Interesting to watch tech innovation be stifled by telecom inefficiencies. Great move by Google to adapt to that reality.

<comment><USER47> It's really something all businesses building apps (native or otherwise) should be concerned with. Until we have one global network provider (haha), I don't see them cooperating with each other any time soon in any way that doesn't line their pockets. There are some EU roaming laws progressing in that direction, but I don't expect that for North Americans in the near future.

Latest example I had while I was travelling - the AirBnb "app" couldn't show me my accommodation details without internet access. Really, what's the point of the app then if you can't cache the data locally?

Browser caches should also be less aggressive about getting fresh data too. Caching is hard, but not everybody stays in one place with access to the internet until later. Do I have to continue printing on paper? Most web apps and pages don't pay enough attention to those cache headers.

I used Maps.me while in Europe and it worked well except for the occasional crash, and the offline routing was very welcome for navigating the cities.

<comment><USER48> Another one that barely works offline, incredibly: TripIt. WTF? Theoretically TripIt would be the bee's knees, and then you stand in line at the checkin desk and you want to show them the pdf eticket they emailed you - 'oops just hold on while this app starts - uhoh can't connect - uh it was here just a while ago - just wait a bit - yeah I'll be back later'.

A travel app that doesn't work off line? Never doing that again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Better late than never. I stopped using Google maps for anything serious. Was driving to Point Reyes lighthouse once and lost the connectivity, and spent the next half hour aimlessly driving and came back. Felt like an idiot.

<comment><USER50> I've been in the same boat. Just think, 30 years ago we would have stopped to ask for directions!

<comment><USER51> Or just looked at a map. :)

I still like to keep some AAA maps in my car as a backup in case my phone dies or gets lost.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I love to have this and long for this for a long time. Downloading Data while on the go is very battery consuming, in places where you are not familiar running out of battery tends to bother me a lot.

</comment><comment><USER53> Downloading has been working for quite a while. But usually most interesting areas are blocked and can't be used in offline mode.

</comment><comment><USER54> All I use is an Android phone loaded with the OSMAND app and a small 1 sq. ft. flexible solar panel. I'm good.

</comment><comment><USER55> Google is feeling the heat from open maps

</comment><comment><USER56> seems like a catch-up game when maps.me has been doing that for free for a while, glad to see this to happen however.

</comment><comment><USER57> Now I can finally delete the other application and use the full power of Google Maps.

</comment><comment><USER58> Unbelievable ! google and offline product ? this is against whole company ideology.I think new CEO is changing culture a little bit.

<comment><USER59> They've had experiments offline for a long time...

Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Reader used to have offline mode through Google Gears - though a while ago they yanked it from all browsers apart from Chrome to foist the latter onto people. Of course there is also POP3 and IMAP for Gmail. Also, Google Maps used to have a prominent offline caching mode, but the hid it away more and more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> The time for offline was bazillion years ago. They just try to convince us they are innovating / incubating with their billion of dollars?

<comment><USER61> If you don't go outside of a major city perhaps, but I find myself outside of cell service very frequently (in the mountains, radios don't work too well and there aren't many people anyway).

<comment><USER62> I think he meant "they should have supported offline maps a long time ago"</comment></comment></comment>


Here's What iOS Would Have Looked Like In The 80′s - <AUTHOR> http://www.cultofmac.com/145990/heres-what-ios-would-have-looked-like-in-the-80s-gallery/ <comment><USER2> I think the simplified design shows that if you distill down what makes the iPhone UI great, it's not just about color and resolution. Great, simple layout with intuitive icons and an easy-to-use interface. Win.

</comment><comment><USER3> One screen depicted. Nice start, but should continue on thru what various apps would do given timely limits to bandwidth, clock rate, memory, etc. - to wit, write iOS for the Newton.

Compare the re-imaginings of "We Are Not Time Travelers" [http://www.behance.net/gallery/ALT1977-WE-ARE-NOT-TIME- TRAVE...](http://www.behance.net/gallery/ALT1977-WE-ARE-NOT-TIME- TRAVELERS/545221)

</comment><comment><USER4> System 6 inspired icons on an image of an iPhone. I fail to see what is interesting here.

Anyway, it would have looked like the Newton because it did.

</comment><comment><USER5> Reminds me of Palm OS. <http://imgur.com/M3EMG>

</comment><comment><USER6> such a waste of time</comment>


On a technical level how could Facebook use millions of Gmail passwords? - <AUTHOR> I don't get how Facebook was able to access millions of GMail accounts using their passwords. It's one thing if the users added some kind of browser app or something like Writely...but how can you access more than a handful of GMail accounts sequencially, from IP's that those users don't use? (Without setting off intrusion captcha's).
Was it done by impersonating the users from their Facebook apps on their phones? (I assume that apps can make HTTP requests).
I'm referring to this story:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19688460
I find it very hard to believe that Google just lets a single IP range sequentially access millions of GMail accounts in a way that doesn't match the users at all, and without getting any suspicious signin messages sent to the users.
What was Facebook's technical scraping means here? <comment><USER2> I think where you may be confused is the point that people installed the FB app, gave FB access to their contacts and then thus FB has everyone's contacts and uploaded that data. You can ignore or deny the access but most people dont. That's how I understood it.

Facebook has multiple IP ranges btw...

<comment><AUTHOR> Why would that require asking for the user's GMail password? (Which is what this outrage was over.) I thought Facebook used the passwords to access GMail?</comment></comment>


Scouting Startups Who Can Solve Corona Crisis - <AUTHOR> https://forms.gle/Bn3cQdV6UgpdBCiq6 <comment><AUTHOR> Startups who can offer Technology, Solution, Idea, Patents and even Mentorship support to solve the Corona Crisis problems under the following categories :

1.Remote Work & Remote Education 2.Stabilizing Affected Businesses 3.Generating Awareness & Behavioral Change 4.Protecting Most Vulnerable Groups 5.Personal Hygiene & Protection 6.Medical Systems & Support 7.Social Communities 8.Open Category</comment>


Ask HN: How to build confidence without being arrogant? - <AUTHOR> In meetings where we are discussing solutions, I often feel that 3-4 solutions are perfectly fine with their trade-offs. Most of my colleagues engage in heated exchanges, arguing about the "one true solution".
This makes them look "passionate" and management seems to like it. On the other hand, I've been told I should be more of that.
I do care about my work but I hate disagreements for less critical reasons. Can anyone relate? <comment><USER2> Your problem is not that you lack confidence. Your problem is that you aren't interested in B.S. contests.

Unfortunately these contests are often how managers discern the natural leaders of a team and you are probably feeling the urge to prove yourself in some way.

The good thing is that there are a million ways to earn some kind of distinction on a technical team. In an argument or competition, there can only be one winner. But engineering is a business and business is cooperative. If you show clear superiority in an area, then others on your team must follow your lead in that area.

</comment><comment><USER3> My boss did this great trick to assert his domination over all opinions. Basically every time someone tries to speak interrupt them just as they start to speak.</comment>


Stop producing shit - <AUTHOR> http://mariusandra.com/blog/2012/08/stop-producing-shit/ <comment><USER2> Actually the world probably does need "another way to connect with merchants." The way you can convince yourself of that is to ask: have all the ways of connecting with merchants been invented? "Connecting with merchants" is such a large category that the answer is surely no. In fact it takes some effort to find sentences of the form "All the ways of doing x have been invented" that one can feel certain are true.

It's certainly not true for photo-sharing applications, because that's not even a real category. Images are a fundamental medium, like text. We don't lump Twitter, email, and blogging together as "text-sharing applications." The only reason we do with photos is that it's only recently that smartphones have brought a lot of photos online. But a huge number of what we would now call "photo-sharing applications" remain to be invented. Ditto for text-sharing applications incidentally.

<comment><USER3> I think you miss the point.

I think the point is more that "finding another way to connect with merchants" really isn't that important or useful in the scale of things. The problem has been artificially created so that it can be solved for profit.

Solving problems that humanity _really_ faces with tangible innovations rather than inventing slightly different ways to top slice cash using virtual real estate is much more important.

A million shitty rails apps yet nothing which truly changes the human experience.

My father once said (whilst slaving over PDS7.1 writing yet another payroll system in the late 80s): "I feel guilty sitting here taking money from people for this. It genuinely doesn't improve their lives."

<comment><USER2> Believe me, I'm familiar with the idea that there are two kinds of ideas, big ones that change the world, and little ones that merely make money. But this distinction isn't borne out empirically. In fact the space of ideas is a very highly connected graph. You can get almost anywhere in a few hops. And that means it's almost impossible to tell at first where an idea could lead. Big things start as little things. And conversely starting with a "big idea" is often a mistake, because when people have such ideas they tend to be pretty blurry.

Empirically (unless you're a government) the way to do something big is to start with something small but definite, then keep pushing its scope.

If your goal is to get to big + definite, it's easier to start with definite and add big than to start with big and add definite.

<comment><USER4> I agree with this 100% but would add that once you understand this concept, it becomes possible to prune down the space of potential ideas to ones that you can most imagine _could_ lead to a larger scope. I realize this is often hard to see up front, but it seems more like a way to rule out short-sighted ideas completely than to decide which ones are most likely to turn into world- changing things.

<comment><USER5> It is with this lens that I was finally able to come up with an idea for a company that was actually interesting to me. Before, everything I came up with was pretty one-dimensional. I couldn't get excited about building them because I couldn't ever come up with a satisfactory answer to "What else could/should this company do?" I found it hard to find the motivation to work on something that I didn't see growth potential in. Once I landed on an idea that had room for expansion, the code, designs and ideas just started to come.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What a silly article.

I read and re-read this article but couldn't detect that it actually gave any insight at all. All the article distilled down to was "make a startup that is successful and not one that fails". This is not something that I believe is opaque to those involved.

The author finishes with the statement "The world doesn't need another way for consumers to connect with merchants" which I think sums up exactly why this article is reactive rant. Speak to any merchant and they will tell you that there is one thing they care above above all else and that is customers. Those customers are hard and expensive to find and merchants desperately require scalable and efficient ways to find them.

Eric Reis used to have a great piece in one of his talks in which he compared Ali G pitching his Ice Cream Glove (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48TR0vUPQCs>) to an advert for a blanket with sleeves. As Eric said, one of the two of those is a $50M/year company and the other is Ali G. Pitch them though and it's not immediately clear which would be which.

Discovery comes from exploration and most lucrative discoveries tend to come from the most risky experimentation.

<comment><USER7> Here's a link Eric's "Don't be the Ice Cream Glove" blog post: [http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2009/09/dont-be-ice- cre...](http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2009/09/dont-be-ice-cream- glove.html).

(I remember it well. It was one of the articles I used to test on of the iterations of our book generator when we were first producing <http://leanpub.com/startuplessonslearned>. I must have read this 100 times :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think it's useful to think of ideas you could pursue in kind of a 2x2 matrix. You have revolutionary ideas and evolutionary ideas. You have high- capital ideas and low-capital ideas.

If you're Elon Musk, have virtually unlimited resources, and an incredible creative passion, you can inspire a lot of people (me included) by pursuing revolutionary, high-capital ideas.

That's not to discredit, however, the many many successful businesses that are low-capital evolutions on existing ideas. For many entrepreneurs, especially early in their careers, it's vastly more rational to join an existing market, or resegment an existing market, rather than try to create something revolutionary. You can criticize them all you want, but many of those companies will have success, validate their markets early on, and have lots of potential acquirers in the existing market participants.

<comment><USER9> Further, I think typically there is a 'ramp up' over time from the low-capital evolution => high capital revolutionary ideas.

Elon's first major success Zip2 was a company that provided "Internet platform solutions for media companies and local e-commerce merchants"[1]

1 - [http://news.cnet.com/Compaq-buys- Zip2/2100-1023_3-221675.htm...](http://news.cnet.com/Compaq-buys- Zip2/2100-1023_3-221675.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love to rip on 'social startups' as much as any good hacker, and I basically start my day with a cup of coffee and the 'startup guys' video.

reading this article, though, something clicked for me. why does it matter that there are startups out there that are constantly pivoting or not producing real products? what is the loss?

one statement I've seen put forward is that the startup energy would capture smart people who could be our next Feynman or Shannon and instead of having them do real science, we figure out how to get them to click on ads. I can appreciate this fear, however, I've spent a lot of time on university campuses lately and I've met a very large number of very smart and very motivated young people who are getting educated in real science and have a passion to go into the world and change it. They won't go figure out how to get people to click ads.

is the fear that these little pivoting media startups will seriously suck all of the spare cash out of the economy and we will wind up doing nothing but producing Twitter clones? if you produce this analysis, in my opinion, you should step back and consider that maybe you're too close to the bubble.

so what's the harm with having the brogrammers produce products that no one wants to use? do you have a backlog of awesome work that you wish was being done, could be done by these constantly pivoting wunderkinds, but isn't? maybe you should start a company!

<comment><USER11> Well it depends a bit when you pivot. I'm guessing most people pivot before actually coming out with their product, simply because they don't know what they really want and they have no idea how to do it either.

Pivoting is good when you're already out there with your idea and then understand that you need to adjust to your customers needs. It is not when you don't really know what to do and just experiment with other peoples money to find out what YOU want.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> So, how do these two statements jibe and form part of an sort of coherent argument?

 _Some other guys had an idea, received validation from two potential clients, raised funding, hired a lot of people, built a product and discovered nobody really wants to pay for it._

 _Why does it feel like the lean startup movement has given a lot of people the license to produce crap?_

The lean startup principles are pretty much specifically _against_ going out, raising funding, hiring a lot of people, and then building something nobody wants. The whole point of Customer Development is to _not_ do all of that until you've validated the market for whatever it is you are proposing to build.

And then you have this statement:

 _On the other side you have teams producing amazing products. Take for example the Pebble smart watch, the DoubleRobotics telepresence robots, Appfog free PaaS hosting, SmugMug photo hosting, SixthSense or any random project on Kickstarter._

Where the author seems infatuated with a list of _products_ with no commentary whatsoever on whether or not they are successful in the market. You can produce a great product and still fail to have a successful business. So what point is this article really trying to make?

 _If you're in a startup looking forward to your next pivot, please just stop. The world doesn't need another way for consumers to connect with merchants or an app that adds double rainbows to blurry pictures._

And again, we have to sentences that have absolutely no connection to one another.

This article comes off as a mish-mash of interesting thoughts, jumbled together, when the author's point seems to reduce to "work on big, world changing ideas. Where's my flying car?" And that's not a bad sentiment, but this article just seems to ramble all over the place to get there.

<comment><USER13> It's also important to note that SpaceX was not Elon Musk's first venture. I'm sure success with PayPal gave him the confidence, clout, and partial financing to take on such an ambitious endeavor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Producing something meaningful or awesome doesn't solve any of the problems the author describes. Plenty of people build outstanding things that nobody will pay for or care about. Building something "great" doesn't guarantee anything.

Sounds like the author is advocating "if you build it they will come", which only works in Iowa if you are hallucinating about dead baseball players and abducting James Earl Jones.

</comment><comment><USER15> I think I'm going to write a counter-opinion post sometime called "Everyone poops" about how the advice given here scores an 11/10 on my trite-meter.

Readers have by now heard their start-up isn't solving an important problem by now - that doesn't help them start something that does. "Advice" of this nature is just the author procrastinating from solving the same ambitious problems he seems so enthusiastic about. If your going to change the world, you need to stop _giving a shit_ about the inevitable dogdating sites of others and just do it yourself.

</comment><comment><USER16> Start-ups are the new grad school, which was the new peace core. It's what you do when you don't know what else to do. That in between stage, where you don't have a next step planned but are anxious and need to do something. Back in the day, you'd join the peace core. It was something productive to do, noble and at least you weren't sitting on the couch collecting dust. Then when the peace core wasn't pleasing, people would go to grad school upon graduation from undergrad. You got your shiny new bachelors degree and no path, maybe no opportunities. So, you'd saddle up for grad school because it bought you more time.

Now, all those would be peace core grad students are starting start-ups because it buys you time. They disguise it as 'wanting to change the world' but it's really just buying time until you figure stuff out. This is why there is abundance of shit in the start up world. Too many folks just buying themselves time.

</comment><comment><USER17> It seems like a lot of people are building a product just because it's cool to build a product and they somehow forget to actually provide value. Then they're surprised when it fails. I don't get it.

</comment><comment><USER18> I think he's forgetting how Elon Musk got started.

<http://www.crunchbase.com/company/zip2>

<comment><USER19> I've gotten to the point that any article that decries people making startups because they don't copy Elon Musk is an instant bozo-bit flip for me. It is not possible for some guy on the street to start a rocketry startup. Only an idiot would hand some guy on the street the requisite billions. There's some bite in the "photo sharing" accusations, but that doesn't generalize to all low-capital network-based startups, and trying to imply otherwise is definitely weak thinking. You have to start somewhere if you want to accrue capital to take on those sorts of challenges.

<comment><USER20> But you need not start at photo sharing.

There's plenty of problems troubling humanity that need not rocket scientists to solve.

<comment><USER19> Sorry, that was my point, but upon re-reading I agree I was not clear. There are many little computer/network/internet startup niches where one can build good businesses still out there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is terrible advice. When you decide to create something, the first thing....it's probably going to be crap. It's only by creating, and shipping, over and over again that you begin to learn how to create products. Often times, in fact most of the time, people are going to create a bunch of crap before they finally make the gem that's going to be awesome.

</comment><comment><USER22> TL;DR: "The solution to having bad ideas is to have good ones instead."

What kind of advice is that? This is like telling kids to "be like Mike [Jordan]". Yeah, I guess it would be nice...but, that's not a strategy.

<comment><USER23> That's not the tldr I got from this at all. The solution to having bad ideas is to stop and ask yourself if an idea is bad before you pour months or years with of work into it. Everybody has bad ideas, and everybody has a few good ones. Filter your ideas, instead of jumping on the first idea you come up with just because you want to found a startup, any startup. Don't waste your time.

<comment><USER22> What? Implying people work on ideas they know are bad?

<comment><USER24> No. They work on ideas they never really tried to think through sufficiently to know if those ideas are good or not.

And this is very, very common, at least in people I happen to know. It's hard to look at yourself objectively, we all know that - do you think that looking at your ideas objectively is easier?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Everyone out there needs some kind of cult, with which they can associate. This happens in every sphere of life. After the information revolution, everyone is exposed to the major success stories in the current times. So it becomes really easy to fall in a cult associated with those success stories. This is not a weakness nor it is bad. It is just how we are.

When you add above phenomena with easy access to development tools and free tutorials that can teach you how to make a simplistic app in a matter of days, then what follows is adaptation/modulation of currently successful ideas on a grand scale. This is what we're a seeing right now. Everyone thinks they can make a social app and make it big, because since the success of Facebook, even when many startups have failed to get going on the social front, there a still a few who've made it big and that is just enough to strengthen the cult. So as long as we don't see a real disruption, kind of a wake up call from the sleep, the prevalent cult of the time would sustain and keep sucking in a fraction of the intellectual talent on Earth at any given time.

But we don't need to worry. As Scott Adams says, the advance of human civilization has always been due to a minority and not because of the majority.

The majority will keep going through the motions of our current times. While a select few would lead us to new directions.

</comment><comment><USER26>
      How to: Stop producing shit
        1. Produce 10 shit ideas each day
        2. Throw them away
        3. ???
        4. Profit!

TBH I actually agree with these 4 steps, but they're exactly the reason people should continue producing shit. It may not make you rich this time around (it could have the opposite effect) and may not have a huge impact, but there's a basis to the 10,000 hours rule, and you're working off some of those hours (or, in oldschool parlance: you're learning from your mistakes).

The value is in producing ordinary work, but being able to recognize why it's ordinary, and to improve upon your mistakes (in the idea, in the implementation and in the execution) the next time around. Usually, the first time painters pick up a brush, their work is shit; the first time musicians pick up an instrument, their work is shit; same goes for developers. It's not a reason to not pick up the brush - to tell someone to stop sucking and start being awesome isn't really advice. I think that this advice is better:

        Practice, practice, practice.

It's much better to be constantly producing shit (and learning) than just to sit around and consume it, and it's not a case of deciding "oh, hey, maybe this time I'll make something good, just for the sake of it".

</comment><comment><USER27> I appreciate the sentiment but I don't think it is quite as simple as imploring people to focus on solving actual problems. The creative spirit isn't quite as straightforward as that nor is everyone capable of that 'Eureka!' moment.

Also many people will focus on building clones of existing websites because it will help them to improve and develop their skills.

Also, on a related note, would you say that cherry.ee is solving a real problem?

<comment><USER28> While I understand the creative spirit isn't always normal, I'd guess the OP is saying if you can't think of a real problem to solve then don't put your (valuable) energy and time into crap.

<comment><USER27> True - although this does rather increase the irony of the OP being involved as co-founder of what appears on first glance to be a daily deals website. I'm not saying it's crap but I'm not sure it's solving a 'real problem' of the type alluded to in the OP's post.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> thank you, thank you, I've been wanting to write something similar for a while now, but have been advised not to, because of my tone.

I spent my last 6 months in london and the slogan of the Google campus there is "let's fill the city with startups". My immediate reaction was, let's not.

There is so much utter crap there. And even though being a complete techie, i've been wondering how these VC funds would throw their money at useless shit, with no value at all, when their ideas can be taken apart in three simple questions they all fail to answer:

1\. where is the value? 2\. what's your competitive advantage? 3\. who's your target and how are you planning to make money.

just as i was telling the friend of my last contractee: "I don't think this is useful, but he can probably make some money with it.either way I don't really care, as i just need to build up some funds."

let me give you an example, I was sitting in a demo room with someone pitching their kid mmo, teaching young kids to train their brain with math puzzles in a way that actually makes them want to do it, sorry keeping it vague. and at least two other startups that both had real world value and had the potential to make a shitload of money.

But the ones that won the demo day by majority vote were some idiots making a chrome plugin adding yet another sidebar to aggregate their shitty facebook and twitter timeline into gmail so that they can get more distractions. Not only did they win, but they were also way ahead of the really valuable ones.

But theres also another twist to the story. Most people aren't really capable of building a product. That's I guess what the constant pivot refers to. They have no idea how to push out a product and then adjust it to their customers needs. Heroku did pivot a few times, but they pivoted when they got the customer feedback after understanding who their target group was.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's kind of hard to cite Elon Musk in an argument against building ways for merchants to connect to customers. How do you think Elon got the capital to make SpaceX and Tesla possible? Those are his _second act_.

</comment><comment><USER29> Coming up with 10 ideas a day is simple. Knowing which one is good is hard.

<comment><USER30> Let's start together with obviously silly ones:

1\. Cat pic "aggregator" & search engine.

<comment><USER29> 2\. internet forum designed for convenient arguing. Looking different from traditional boards. There would be one huge (potentialy infinite) 2d plane, and people can place their opinions somewhere in a rectangle, others can place their counterarguments nearby and connect it with arrows, there are other kinds of relations like "supports", "contradicts", "example of", "counterexample", "implies", etc. People can only vote on arrows, not on nodes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I think there needs to be a differentiation between "stop producing sh _t and being happy with it as the final products" and "stop producing sh_ t in general."

The first is a cancer on all startups/businesses/etc.

The second is a necessary step in evolving as a business, company and person. If you don't create something you're embarrassed about first, you'll probably never start at all. Very few people hit a grand slam their first day in the majors.

</comment><comment><USER32> Says the guy making a Groupon clone...

</comment><comment><USER33> I agree with pg, all possible ways of "connecting with merchants" have not been invented and will forever be evolving. That said, what new kinds of e-commerce problems could be solved for merchants from photos uploaded with smartphones?

</comment><comment><USER34> Cool, but nothing new, people do what they can do best and if making a new rainbow fart app is what they can do best, that's it.

Also seeing such an article coming from some one who co-founded an "another/similar/clone of X" is a bit of a disappointment.

</comment><comment><USER35> "Now imagine a world where instead of starting Tesla Motors and SpaceX, Elon Musk would have built a social media news aggregator."

Good point

</comment><comment><USER36> Not actionable.

</comment><comment> momma-joe most accurate post i've read since 1999.

</comment><comment><USER37> Disappointed. I thought this was going to teach me how to avoid double-poop Mondays.

<comment><USER38> Not constructive, but I lolled.</comment></comment>


How to make money online while being a small business not based in the US - <AUTHOR> http://www.robertoalamos.com/how-to-make-money-online-while-being-a-small-business-not-based-in-the-us <comment><USER2> Hum, and for some unknown reasons Paypal do not allow accounts from Bulgaria (EU country)</comment>


Ask HN: What framework for a cross-platform menu-bar app? - <AUTHOR> Guys I want to create a menu-bar app, what framework does one use nowadays? It's pretty simple so I want it to run under Linux, Mac, and Windows. Any recommendations? I'm not a good coder of c++, something high-level would fit better, so I think QT is out of my scope right now... <comment><USER2> If the app is pretty simple, you could get away with writing it natively for each platform instead of worrying about making one version cross-platform. This way it will look native on every platform and it shouldn't be significantly more work, assuming your app is fairly simple.

<comment><USER3> I concur! Menu bar apps behave differently on macOS, Linux, and Windows. Trying to use a cross platform solution is just going to result in 3 crappy apps.

Building a simple menu bar app for the Mac in Swift can be accomplished in a weekend (if you have no prior experience). If you need help with that, email me and I can give you a few tips.

If your app does more complicated things, you might want to write some shared framework in C++ that does the heavy lifting, but even then the UI should be written using native libraries.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you guys, I think that's the way I'm going for that. A app per OS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> QT is more accessible than you might assume. The QT Designer comes with a number of templates to get you running quickly. Connecting UI elements to backend code is fairly straightforward as well, and you can do much of it using the designer UI itself. Documentation is also pretty great.

</comment><comment><USER5> Try my [https://build-system.fman.io](https://build-system.fman.io). Based on PyQt, so you can use Python not C++, and makes cross-platform deployment super easy.

</comment><comment><USER6> [https://github.com/status-im/react-native-desktop](https://github.com/status- im/react-native-desktop) perhaps?</comment>


The Lure of Luxury - <AUTHOR> https://bostonreview.net/forum/paul-bloom-lure-luxury <comment><USER2> > Why would anyone spend thousands of dollars on a Prada handbag, an Armani > suit, or a Rolex watch? If you really need to know the time, buy a cheap > Timex or just look at your phone and send the money you have saved to Oxfam.

One issue is there's a kind of missing middle in many goods markets. There's cheap shit, and overpriced "luxury" signaling goods that may or may not be much better. Personally I often find sorting the actually-good from the faux- good on the (lower end of the) luxury side, then catching it used or on sale, easier than trying to find then assess the quality of mid-level products (if they exist at all—often they do not) or suss out unusually good cheap products.

So far as signaling goes, until people stop being biased in favor of folks who look well-off (or at least "proper" for whatever setting), even when they think they're not, that won't stop being a thing worth considering.

EDIT: nb. there's a lot more to this article, for those who haven't read it yet, and I'm in no way intending to _dismiss_ it.

<comment><USER3> That's one of the great things about a good subreddit. A good subreddit, for me, often ends up helping me to know how to spend a reasonable amount of money in that area and come away with high-quality products.

I have been lurking on r/chainsaw, r/budgetaudiophile, and others for a while. I was quite comfortable buying a $400 chainsaw, knowing what I was getting that I wouldn't find in a $200 saw, and what I didn't need in a $600 saw. The same goes for the $130 pair of speakers I just bought. I had no idea what to get from looking at Amazon, but a little time reading r/budgetaudiophile led me to an affordable pair of speakers that gave me the best listening experience I've had in decades.

<comment><USER4> I'd be careful here, you have to _very_ carefully assess the domain of the subreddit visitors. My own anecdotes:

r/miata - Useless for the entire subgroup that takes their car to the track, and will very likely still give advice, it'll just be bad or outright dangerous.

r/cigars - Totally jump on bandwagons, and generally are "new" to the world of cigars.

To highlight another point, a lot of more niche subs largely cater to those new to the niche. Those are the same people commenting and giving others advice, whether they really have the knowledge to or not. This mechanism over a few months seems to turn everything into an echo chamber, and you end up with new people jumping onto a bandwagon without enough info.

Same goes for Amazon reviews, to a large degree - That $50 set of sockets might be great for someone who wants to change their oil filter, but will literally shatter for someone doing more involved work.

I think this is where the traditional forums are much better. I want my info from "serious" people who hang around the community for years, not from someone who came into it a few weeks ago, and really just want some upvotes/points/whatever.

<comment><USER5> I've found decent success with /r/MechanicalKeyboards/ and a good chunk of the "classy" liquor subreddits (i.e. /r/scotch et all) since you tend to have a number or regulars who you can pick up a fairly solid taste from (how close they are to your own tastes) and can pretty reliably make decisions off of that.

<comment><USER6> I wasn't going to say anything here, but MechanicalKeyboards is IME the absolute worst--it's an impenetrable echo chamber for keyboard OCDism, and I say that as someone who owns several mechanical keyboards and has nerded out in more than a few related categories.

<comment><USER5> I'm not going to deny that but if you just filter for content that your goal from the subreddit like I mentioned in my comment then you can pick up some meaningful information and have some good discussions. MK is such a wide field for discussion and of course there are going to be OCD elitists but there are also a lot of people who are just going for ergonomics or function. As long as you keep that in mind and just ignore the posts that don't serve your interest in the subreddit then you'll have a good time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Status signalling works.

I wish it didn't. Life would be much simpler. But it really does.

Wearing different clothes, driving a different car (or not driving a car, riding a bike) has an enormous impact on the impression that you leave on people.

It's not necessarily 'spend more win more'. A fancy car might not ingratiate you with the locals.

Beyond that - I think you have to unpick what is meant by "don't need". If I were restricted to buying things I need, I'd be donating something like 80% of my income to charity.

There are interesting cases - like why someone who really can't afford a particular thing buys it anyway - but usually that sort of thing, in my experience, comes down to a type of stress that has them making suboptimal decisions all over (e.g. if you're poor, everything is harder, because everything is stressful, and...)

<comment><USER8> It's important to remember that EVERY group uses status signaling.

Those hoodies you wear? You are signaling which tribe you belong to and your status within it. (In particular, this one is called "aposematic signaling", or I-can-get-away-with-it signaling.)

You think you're beyond status by intellectualizing over status signaling? No, instead you're just signaling (via intellectual status) to ingratiate yourself within a tribe that values intellectualism.

I have a fairly intellectual group of friends, and it was a sobering realization for us when we all noticed that - at least in part - the degree to which we share our intellectual curiosities may simply reflect a way to stay "in-group." Should we fail to intellectualize, then we might no longer "fit in" and belong to a tribe.

People signal in different ways - some by bragging, others by refusing to brag, some by buying, some by refusing to buy - but in the end, it's mostly about pledging allegiance to one tribe and rejecting the other in opposition. It's really no different from politics.

Everyone belongs to a tribe, and every tribe has a status hierarchy.

<comment><USER9> That's only really true for homogeneous groups. When culturally diverse people get together they rarely agree on what the status symbols are. Think old vs new money at a party. For any given metric say highest status, smartest, strongest, or most attractive person it's hard to define an absolutely objective criteria.

<comment><USER8> Precisely! But I would argue that homogeneity (in beliefs, culture, SES) is what defines the tribe.

A heterogenous, divided group would not be a cohesive tribe, and therefore would not have a unifying status hierarchy. Old money and new money are separate tribes, and each status signals to ingroup members in profoundly different ways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Commenters here seem to be missing his real thesis: we buy these objects because humans believe there are "deeper" properties than just its sensory or signaling value.

One study Bloom performed: people were asked to value a dress shirt in a plastic wrapping that had merely been owned -- never touched -- by a celebrity. The self-assessed value on the mint condition shirt was higher than a regular mint condition shirt -- merely being _owned on paper_ by a celebrity gave it more value. I think about this experiment probably once a month.

If you enjoyed Professor Bloom's writing, check out his research on babies' sense of morality: [https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/magazine/09babies-t.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/magazine/09babies-t.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> I see this happening a lot amongst my friends in the bay area. Now 4-5 years removed from school, everyone paid off there debts and are setting up there adult life. One buys a home, another buys a home the same size or bigger. One buys a tesla, the other buys the one model up. One gets a drone, the other buys a drone the week after. It goes on and on. Most of the time now, meeting with them, discussions are about what they bought or what they plan on buying.

To me it feels like everyone uses the goods they buy to show how important they are. Expensive goods means you are valued in what you do, that's why you can afford it. I break the group mold, driving a corolla, living in a rental mostly because I want to save my money for other goals but sometimes I do feel the pang to buy one of the newly announced toys so I can go to a meet up and show it off.

<comment><USER12> Another way to look at it -- your friends are very close in age and class, exposed to the same things, and likely going through the same life stages together. We are all less different than we'd like to believe.

<comment><USER13> But I'm a unique, rugged individual whose whose deepest desires and life- perspective are my own! Don't spout your collectivist socialist propaganda in _my_ direction!

/s

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _It is hard for people to opt out._

Nah. It's not hard. Just don't buy stuff you don't need. Good ad blocking helps, too.

I know a couple who were way too much into bling. They blew through $15 million and ended up in crap jobs. The wife once told me I should get a Rolex. I said "Why?".

There are many people who have money but don't show it. Read "The Millionaire Next Door".

<comment><USER15> > There are many people who have money but don't show it.

You could attribute that to humility or good manners, but you could also attribute it to the fact that their persona is good enough of a signal that they don't need to add another signal.

This is especially true of traditional nobility and the super-rich. It doesn't matter whether Bill Gates wears a $40 watch or a $40K watch because everyone already knows that he's one of the richest guys in the world. Marie Antoinette wore diamonds not because she felt a need to demonstrate her status and power, but because she liked diamonds and happened to have the status and power to get them.

<comment><USER16> For the record, Gates's watch apparently cost $10.

[https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/sep/30/bill- gates-...](https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/sep/30/bill-gates-admits- i-wear-10-wrist-watch/)

However if you appreciate a fine watch that does more than tell the time (and who's to dissect the whys and wherefores?) buy it and support the families of the workers who are part of the company that produce it. Someone sweeps the floor in their workshops and needs the job. Ditto all the other luxury goods.

<comment><USER15> That was his previous watch. Gates apparently upgraded to a slightly more expensive watch last year.

Buying a $20 watch will support some Chinese workers. Buying a $2K watch will support Japanese or Swiss workers. But I don't think buying a $20K watch will support workers any more than a $2K watch does. It probably depends on the company and the watch, but I think it's a safe bet that most of the markup at the extreme high end of the spectrum goes to a small number of managers and dealers.

<comment><USER17> Ordering an expensive watch straight from a known master is one option, they usually don't spend a lot of money on managers, dealers or even advertising. For 20k you've got plenty options. The only downside is that selling your generic-but-good-quality rolex is easy and repairing/maintenance can be done everywhere while things with small brands can sometimes be more complicated.

Designing and making a mechanical watch with many complications takes a lot of time, so it's entirely possible to buy even a 200k watch where you are mostly paying for the actual labor (of a high-skilled professional/artist).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> One interesting nugget from the article: "Surfer dudes don't compete with Star Trek geeks for status". The point being that signaling is often very local, restricted to your social or interest group.

</comment><comment><USER19> I actually think its a great mechanism for wealth redistribution.

Imagine the following scenario:

Both Person A and Person B want a watch and will both consume one. Person A is very rich and Person B is lower or middle income. Assume Watch 1 and Watch 2 are made in the exact same factory. Watch 1 has artistic elements and is marked up 300% with 200% on making nicer packaging, manual, ad editorials, social media marketing, display case design, sales commissions with the profits left to the factory owner. Watch 2 is sold at a discount retailer. Person A buys Watch 1 and Person B buys Watch 2.

Person A has had generally the same level (maybe slightly higher) environmental impact. But in the process Person A has also enabled many knowledge/creative workers who might otherwise have been under employed to derive a source of revenue (and possibly a purpose). Basically its a pre- commissioned objet d'art that can be mass produced and can be purchased by the masses.

Where it somewhat falls apart is if the marketing is so good that Person B buys Watch 1 and goes into debt in the process.

<comment><USER13> More likely than not, though, Person A owns the watch company and puts the profits in an offshore tax Haven or uses them for stock buybacks, while keeping the R&D budget flatlined.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Honestly what choice do I have. I'm not particularly attractive. So I buy nice clothes to look the part. And take flak for it from family lol. They're not even that expensive. I'm talking 300 eur jackets. It doesn't matter much but I believe it does help. If it matters even once that I don't dress like a hobo it's a big win for me. But you know what baffles me out of prada bags, Rolex and Armani? Armani suits. To an outside observer they look like every other suit.

<comment><USER21> _To an outside observer they look like every other suit._

That depends on the observer, no? I certainly couldn't tell a Prada handbag from any other sort of handbags but I'm not the target audience, women buy expensive handbags and shoes to impress other women, in particular other women who are also into handbags and shoes. Similarly men who wear Armani suits are signalling to other suit-wearers, Rolex watches are a signal to watch fans, and so on.

<comment><USER20> Rolex ([https://m.rolex.com/watches.html](https://m.rolex.com/watches.html)) have a distinctive design, they print their logos on their product. It's quite visible. Prada usually print their logo on their bags as well ([https://www.prada.com/nl/en/men/bags.html](https://www.prada.com/nl/en/men/bags.html)). Giorgio Armani do not feature their logo on the outside of their suits ([https://www.armani.com/hk/armanicom/giorgio- armani/men/suits](https://www.armani.com/hk/armanicom/giorgio- armani/men/suits)). They don't have a distinctive design or a signature pattern like Burberry's either. You would really have to know your stuff to recognize one in the wild.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> In Geneva it is easy to walk down the street and see watches selling for prices that vary by over 4 orders of magnitude.

They all keep pretty good time. Some of the cheaper digital ones have much more functionality than the expensive mechanical ones. It's clear that keeping time is not the purpose of the watch.

<comment><USER12> Correct. If you're looking for the most accurate timekeeper, well, you already have it, it's your phone.

I got into watches because the engineering of the watch is amazing and beautiful. The fact that someone could design a series of gears and springs that correctly identifies not only the time but the day - including 31 day months and leap years - is astonishing to me.

<comment><USER23> There's an important factor here — Some of these things have intrinsic value to the owner, and the social signalling can actually be undesirable (in that you don't want to be associated with the group of people that ordinarily use that item as a status symbol)

I currently use a smartwatch, but before that I had a cheap Seiko automatic watch. The whole point of buying _that_ watch was precisely that having an automatic (self-winding) mechanic watch on my wrist makes me the geek inside me a tiny bit happier, because how freaking cool is an automatic watch?

I would've been willing to pay a fair bit more money for a fancier, more precise (i.e. MORE GEARS!!!) watch over what I got, but I specifically did _not_ want a showy "I'm a rich prick" watch, and there's just a vanishingly small number of watches in that segment.

<comment><USER24> Seiko itself makes very high-end watches, especially under the 'Grand Seiko' moniker, some of which are as expensive as the well-known ones from the Swiss manufacturers, but at the same time incredibly understated unless you're really into the matter.

This can be a branding/marketing claim in itself, of course. There's an origin story around their Spring Drive mechanism that goes something like a lonely engineer-genius tinkering on it for 30 years until he had it perfected (don't quote me on that). In that way, Seiko appeals to the 'Japanese artisan/craftsmanship geek' who consciously chooses the non-mainstream brand. Not sure if that is intentional marketing or truly authentic company identity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Growing up in a working class family I never had access to luxury goods. In the last few years, thanks to a middle class job and a switch on my mindset, I had the privilege to be able to indulge in better quality goods than ever before.

After looking into high fashion brands and searching the internet I'm convinced of the following corollary: for almost any high street brand product, there is an equivalent or better quality one produced for a fraction of the price.

<comment><USER26> Absolutely. For instance kitchenware, you could go to the fancy high street shop and get the lifestyle brands.

Or you could go to a kitchen supply store and get the same quality items that the professionals use, which will be more expensive than the cheap department store items, but will last a lifetime or more in an ordinary person's kitchen.

Or whisky. I could spend big bucks on the big hyped brands, and get perfectly acceptable whisky, but probably sold at 40% ABV, chill filtered with caramel color added.

Or I could buy from independent bottlers and get cask strength, non-chill filtered whisky with no color added, usually at a lower price, for something so much more interesting.

No, I won't have fancy bottles of MacAllan or whatever sitting on my shelf for all to see, but I care a lot more about the whisky than the branded bottle it's in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> > As Will Wilkinson points out, the available data suggest that citizens of > countries with liberal free-market economies are among the most satisfied, > which explains why the United States, which exemplifies exactly the sort of > amok consumerism that Layard and others worry about, is one of the happiest > nations on Earth.

Pseudoscience.

<comment><USER26> There's a huge difference between superficial happiness and genuinely fulfilling contentment and happiness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> People like new stuff, old things bore them, a perfectly luxury 2 year old Benz car will Be replaced by a newer one. You know is a old model, so the newer model also works out for status. They need it to entertain themselves, directly and indirectly.

</comment><comment><USER29> > [T]here is nothing wrong with this. "Decoration and adornment are neither > higher nor lower than 'real' life," she writes. "They are part of it."

Couldn't you say this about anything? War is neither higher nor lower than 'real' life, it is a part of it. A true statement, but essentially nhilistic.

<comment><USER30> It's not nihilistic, it's relativistic. War is bad because I don't like it. Things I like aren't bad by some supposed objective standard. My aesthetic in jewelery isn't better or worse than your aesthetic in video games or books.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Has HN Entered Eternal September? What's Next? - <AUTHOR> So in my opinion hn has entered Eternal September and the dialog is largely not worth participating in any more. Anyone have recommendations on places to go next.<p>https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_SeptemberEternal_SeptemberEternal_SeptemberEternal_SeptemberEternal_SeptemberEternal_SeptemberEternal_SeptemberEternal_September <comment><USER2> I've been here since ~2011, and people have complained of a supposed "Eternal September" or a decline in culture for as long as I can remember. I think that's largely a matter of perception/shifting expectations and not an actual dillution in quality.

I think HN is both an amazing place to find content and also to meet the top experts on a variety of subjects (very often articles about a technology or research field will have the creator or most influent researcher in the comments answering questions and listening to feedback)

If you'd like a more curated feed, you can use: [https://news.ycombinator.com/best](https://news.ycombinator.com/best)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's tough to say. I've been here since April of 2008, and I've definitely seen a lot of change. Certainly the tone / prevailing sentiment in many areas has changed. But the quality? I'm not sure I even know how to measure that.

Subjectively, yeah, I think the quality of the discourse here has gone down, and I would say I feel like something of an "Eternal September" effect has had an influence. But I can't really prove that.

That said, while I get annoyed by some of the stuff I see here lately, this site is still more fulfilling that most similar sites, so I still spend more time here. I _have_ been gravitating back to Slashdot a little more lately though, just for a different take on things.

Next? Well, there's an invite only site called lobste.rs that is largely populated by ex-HN'ers. They keep it invite only to try and avoid that watering down / culture change effect. The flipside is that the amount of traffic there is much lower.

</comment><comment><USER4> I just discovered the beauty of HN. Its a great alternative to the noise of social media and cleaner (as in easier to use) than reddit.</comment>


Tumblr Backup That Works - <AUTHOR> http://tumblr.downstreamapp.com

<comment><USER2> Feature that would be useful: When tumblr goes down, redirect to the backup pages automatically. Sort of like a just in case for tumblr. Would be worth the money for most businesses, and would require very little investment in terms of hosting. Spin up a bunch of amazon servers or something and throw it all up on there. Spin down when things have settled down for an hour or two.

</comment><comment><USER3> I just run this one liner as an hourly cron job, Tumblr doesn't seem to mind. It gets all my images and other Tumblr hosted media, too.

      httrack "http://myhost.tumblr.com" -O "/path/to/tumblr_backup" "+*.media.tumblr.com/*" "+*.myhost.tumblr.com/*" -N100 -I0 -c2 -%c2 --update

(You'll end up with index-2.html as your top level index so you may want to make a symlink to index.html -- add this line to the above shell script:

      ln -s /path/to/tumblr_backup/index-2.html /path/to/tumblr_backup/index.html

...OR make an alias along the same lines in your webserver conf. This is an artifact of telling httrack to exactly mirror the tumblr paths and telling it not to build a generic httrack index file of its own.)

</comment><comment><USER4> Thanks for the comments on our Tumblr Backup. Right now we're focusing on one- time backup but will quickly be offering daily/weekly backups not much later.

Yes - we can do this yourself. There's people that feel comfortable doing that but there's many more that don't.

As for Tumblr providing a backup solution, yes they have but it (1) doesn't usually work, (2) only works on a Mac, and (3) still in beta, (4) hasn't been updated since 2009, etc...

@mootothemax - we'll work on providing more details on the site here soon. Thanks for asking for that.

@ZackOfAllTrades - like the idea of providing an automatic site up if/when Tumblr goes down.

</comment><comment><USER5> It would be nice to have some more details about precisely what this does; is the backup a zip archive, or something that can be directly imported into Wordpress but not Posterous... or something else entirely? And is this a one- time backup, or for the life of the blog? (I presume the latter from the pricing per blog).

Looks good and has me interested though, that's half the battle :)

<comment><USER6> If it's for the life of the blog, I don't think anyone would have a problem paying a one-time fee. I'd also be interested in hearing if you can import posts back into Tumblr as well. (This would be useful for people who want to clone a secondary blog into a primary)

EDIT: Based on the signup page[1], there are a handful of steps that likely represent what you'll do when you backup the blog. They seem to indicate more of a one-and-done process.

[1]<http://tumblr.downstreamapp.com/sign-up/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does the official Tumblr backup app not work? Why?

<comment><USER8> I have 2000 image posts on my Tumblr and the Tumblr Backup App gives the cryptic error: "Error during backup: API request failed. Please check your internet connection or try again". If I try to back-up a different tumblr with only 100 text-posts it continues without any problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is that 9.95 per backup or per account with unlimited backups?

<comment><USER4> @bennesvig - that price is for a one time backup of your blog. Daily/Weekly backups coming later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If that works with the high price I will be surprised.

<comment><USER5> Do you have a Tumblr blog? If so, what price would you pay to back it up?

If the answer is "No" to the first, or an equivalent of "free" to the second, why bother saying that the price is too high? Surely we should only advise on prices when it's for something that we would actually like to buy?

<comment><USER10> Yes and I back it up myself by simple wgetting it every now and then.

I was not saying it was too high, I simply consider it quite high. It would be too high for me, that is more than I pay for hosting (other site) monthly.</comment></comment></comment>


Are the Kids Al(t)right? - <AUTHOR> https://www.claremont.org/crb/article/are-the-kids-altright/ <comment><USER2> One definition for fascism that I heard long ago and always found useful is that it's a cult of strength. Fascism says: strength is virtue, and it's the weak who are -- who have always been -- holding back the strong. (It's always, obviously, the strong who fall for this line.)

In this context, these two documents -- the self-published e-book discussed, and Michael Anton's discussion of it -- are clarifying. If you were confused or unclear, here you go! This is fascism.

The fact that there are two layers feels important to me. First, there's the e-book and its gleeful, pitiless, ahistorical visions of cruelty. Second, and just as important, there's Michael Anton's sly willingness to entertain it.

This is bad shit, really bad -- reheated evil from the back of the fridge -- and look how it claws its way out of the darkness. An eager recitation; a tepid rejection; that familiar stance: Well, no, of course I don't agree with this -- but it's interesting to think about!</comment>


Ask HN: Why is math so obsessed with ancient syntax and frameworks? - <AUTHOR> In the world of programming, the syntax and forum of the language changes by the people who use it.  Everything about the language is redesigned so people can understand it better.
Math (well, math to undergraduate college level) doesn't.  To even have a chance of understanding a concept in math, you are forced to use an Ancient Greek symbol system.  Once your done with that, the formulas are written in a very specific forum and very specific pattern that your forced to learn in order to understand it at a higher level.
In a way, it's like learning the concepts of object oriented java by only having access to assembly language syntax.  Yes, it's possible to learn it that way but there are better ways to understand it.
Why is math so obsessed with ancient syntax and conceptual frameworks?  Why isn't there a Python for math?  Why isn't there new conceptual frameworks for math being used out there being created?   Why does math feel so obsolete?  Is the methods used for math today really the best way to present math to modern day people? <comment><USER2> [Mathematician here]

Greek leters: It's a feature not a bug! The advantage of Greek letters is that they don't collide with normal variables, you can use short (1 letter) names for symbols. That is also the advantage of using special characters for number (and not using something like a->1, b->2, ...).

An additional problem is that some letter has an expected behavior, for example \epsilon usually is small, and M (capital M) usually is a big number, p is a prime number and z is usually a complex number. The problem is not that they are Greek letters, the problem is that you have to learn the expected behavior. (It's like using i for a counter in a for loop. Obviously i is integer.)

The problem with the syntax is that mathematicians (and humans in general) are too good parsing DSL (domain specific languages). So each mathematical branch has its own DSL (we call it "notation"), and the DSL can barely be combined, but usually a calculation doesn't combine many areas of mathematics. (For example there is a special notation for "function integrals" and "modulo congruence" and "fields towers", but I hope I should never combine the three in the same calculation.) (A similar problem is why regular expressions are so popular, they can be implemented with normal constructions, but sometimes it's easier to use regular expressions. Or the special syntax for here strings.)

The problem is that you have to learn all the DSL, but usually the specific details of the DSL have some insight of the main ideas of the area. There is an (perhaps apocryphal) quote from Gauss: "A good notation is half of the solution.".

The problem is not that you must use Assembler to write Java classes. The problem is that you must use 50 almost incompatible Lisp packages, that define its own macros and syntax reader (that hides almost all the parenthesis) and define each one a very useful but limited DSL that compiles to the JVM.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know how to explain it but - thank you. You answered so many questions I had about math that I didn't know before until you said it this way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is programming really so much better off for having so many more languages and means of describing algorithms? At least the language of math that one writes today can be expected to be understandable and readable a hundred or more years from now. A program source code, on the hand, is unlikely to have that kind of long life unless you get lucky and write it in the right language.

Also, math is declarative and rigorously manipulable whereas programming is usually imperative and you're lucky if you get any kind of refactoring/manipulable tools.

I was introduced to programming before I really got a handle on math, and I definitely preferred programming initially. When I did learn math I thought about it imperatively. I saw summations as for loops that were just written strangely, but I now see math as being much more interesting than programming. And I can get a lot more work done by working with math's symbolic language, more quickly, and more rigorously than I can with a programming language.

<comment><USER4> I find this extremely interesting. I'm a programmer who has had some mental block when it comes to "real math" (whatever that means). I'm very eager to change how I think about math to try to break through the mental barrier. Do you have any books or blogs or anything to recommend that reflect your change in thinking?

The summations as for loops is what got my attention, as I am guilty of that. Also the idea of math as more manipulable than programming is intriguing.

<comment><USER5> Historically, my biggest obstacle to understanding pieces of "real math" was the intimidation factor of the very dense material and the fear that I wouldn't ever be able to understand it.

The best tip I have, one that helps me not be intimidated by "real math," is to find a method of forcing yourself to slow down while reading. I've found that I get intimidated and frustrated only when I'm trying to rush through something. The best method I have for slowing myself down is to keep a notebook open, and write down definitions as I go (and lemmas, and theorems, but from here on I'll just call them definitions). I try to write a definition that is more clear (likely only to myself) than how it was presented in the text I'm reading. I also try to write down important implications of the definitions.

I think the procedural way of thinking about mathematics is natural for someone without much exposure, and is indicative that you're still trying to work out minor details of each definition you encounter. That's fine. If you have to think about a summation as a for-loop to understand it, go for it. After seeing a bunch of summations, eventually they'll carve out their own mental space. I think that writing down definitions will also help to solidify the declarative nature of mathematics, and definitely helps me to move through math more fluidly.

When I'm learning new math, I find that I'm least frustrated when I plan on moving _very_ slowly. I feel that I'm making good time through a mathematics text if I read a page an hour. Next time you encounter some "real math", grab a pen and paper and really dig in to the text.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> We use Greek characters simply because it's convenient to have additional symbols at hand. The choice of Greek is historic, but one also sees a little bit of Cyrillic and Hebrew.

Notation has evolved since ancient Greece. Euclid, for example, is quite readable in translation, but he did not use modern shorthand. See for yourself:

<http://aleph0.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/elements.html>

<comment><USER7> That assumes single characters are the only appropriate variable names. There's no reason maths couldn't use a * symbol as multiplication instead of assuming multiplication for any string of characters.

People who enjoy the current state of mathematics will probably think the OP is trolling, but it's a reasonable question.

Perhaps it could be better put as 'Why doesn't maths concern itself with readability like programming does?'

<comment><USER6> It only assumes that single characters are desirable variable names. Especially if (as in Lisp) one does not draw a conceptual distinction between variables and functions, it is common to see multi-letter variable names.

Here is a typical example of a modern research paper:

<http://math.stanford.edu/~conrad/papers/locchar.pdf>

Most variables are one letter, but notice, e.g., GL in the fifth line (the General Linear group, not G times L), ker in the seventh, etc.

One reason for brevity is that we like to write on paper and/or the chalkboard.

And to answer your last question, I think math _does_ concern itself with readability. Many mathematicians are obsessive about making sure that their work is as readable as possible, although unfortunately this is not universal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Math is not obsessed with ancient syntax, but, being written by hand, it is obsessed by short and 2d syntax.

If you did math with a keyboard, you could use bigger identifiers, and you would use a. ore linear syntax.

See for example Gerald Sussman's works eg. in SICM [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_and_Interpretation_of...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_and_Interpretation_of_Classical_Mechanics)

Now this won't really happen because while theorems and algorithms are basically two faces of the same thing, programs are boring, while theorems are deep: in a program, there are a lot of small trivial theorems, that don't bring anything new to human knowledge in general (just some green printed paper to their "owners"), while in mathematicians' works, theorems are scarce, hard to demonstrate, and bring sometimes revolutionary new knowledge to humanity.

This means that apart from the still exceptionnal case of computer assisted theorem proofs, there is much more thinking time than typing/writing time in maths than in programming. Therefor mathematical writing is done by hand and short notations are not a problem.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm afraid you are overstating the importance of alphabets. For example, try this: [http://nedhardy.com/2012/04/25/learn-korean-in-15-minutes- ye...](http://nedhardy.com/2012/04/25/learn-korean-in-15-minutes-yep-its-that- easy/) It's not really hard to learn alphabets.

I feel the traditional notation achieves a good tradeoff between clarity and conciseness. I don't want to write the string "integral(sin(x),0,1,x)" on paper - 22 symbols - traditional notation is much more concise. I hate to write parens in (a+b)/c; traditional fractions are clearer. On the other extreme, think about programming in APL.

Also see [http://terrytao.wordpress.com/career- advice/there%E2%80%99s-...](http://terrytao.wordpress.com/career- advice/there%E2%80%99s-more-to-mathematics-than-rigour-and-proofs/)

</comment><comment><USER10> When mathematicians investigate new types of problems, they often develop new notation. Computer programming languages are an example of this in a very strong sense.

The proliferation of programming languages relative to other systems of mathematical notation may be due to programming being more frequently applied to new types of problems - including the problem of developing new types of notation using computers.

</comment><comment><USER11> there is a more general problem here. why does <insert specialty> insist on using domain specific language when ordinary words do fine?

derivative or gradient = slope

is a classic example. mention the word calculus and someone panics in a fit of imagined complexity. describe it in english, clearly, and its very easy...

however the classic counterargument is that it is easier to invent words with context specific meanings for clarity. this makes more sense if you try and describe a functional integral for instance... you need the concept of a function, and an integral which themselves rely on other concepts etc. and would require several sentences to explain well...

also, you have made a faulty assumption about programming - new syntax and language is invented, but the old syntax and language is not replaced - we are stuck with the old stuff too. there are still plenty of areas where C is the only choice - nobody has yet come up with an alternative which addresses the same problems - so 30 years on we still use C - and its use pollutes all of the terminology associated with programming.

(tangent: i still don't understand why we can't compile e.g. Python, C#, Ruby, JavaScript etc. to native code with the benefits of C [Haskell does this quite well for instance - but is held back by general quality of compiler vs. C compilers having billions of dollars and thousands of man years poured into them] - VM or JIT should be a choice if you like spunking away performance - it would be nice if C would die... as much as I enjoy it - GCC, LLVM etc. make the same code gen available for any language with a little work - this feels to me an infinitely better solution than any VM or JIT can hope to be...)

</comment><comment><USER12> I agree that this can be frustrating. One of the great benefits of programming languages is that, even though I don't know VisualBasic, for example, I can probably look at the code and know what values the variables represent.

It's very difficult to jump into a new mathematical structure, because very often you have to learn the lexicon from scratch.

<comment><USER13> I'd say that is because when you see a structure you already understand written in a new language (e.g. VB) yu can use your existing mental model.

But when you meet an entirely new structure, as you say, you are starting from scratch.

<comment><USER12> It's not about the structure. It's about the sigils. I have no idea what Xi means in the context that it's used, but if it's named in English it's very easy to understand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> well, there's mathematica/octave/matlab

using single letter variables is for convenience and done in another script to avoid confusion with the text and sometimes varies to encode information (real value vs vector vs matrix).

There's plenty of work to be done making math better but I don't think you'll get away from these conventions any time soon.</comment>