Ignore Sunk Costs (2009) - <AUTHOR> https://seths.blog/2009/05/ignore-sunk-costs/ <comment><USER2> The "argument from waste," as economists call it, makes sense from a business and investment standpoint, but I'm a staunch believer that in every-day decision making (barring Vegas trips) it isn't usually a _fallacy_ [1]. The paper cited is abstract (and borrows from Nozick, who also wrote a criticism of the sunken cost fallacy in the early 90s). But the conclusion is:

> Sometimes it is reasonable to honor sunk costs. Why? It's reasonable to want > to maintain plausible deniability about having suffered diachronic > misfortune. Sometimes, honoring sunk costs is the only way to do this. It's > reasonable to want to maintain plausible deniability because having this > desire is instrumental in successful cooperation, and successful cooperation > is essential to our success as social creatures.

In Seth's concert example, this is particularly relevant: your spouse might be a huge Springsteen fan, for instance. She might have dressed up, and made a whole night of the event. Your friends might have _also_ bought tickets and they are waiting for you. These are all technically "sunken costs" \-- but not honoring them might hinder current (or future) cooperation.

[1] [http://www.mit.edu/~rdoody/SunkCostFallacyIsNotaFallacy.pdf](http://www.mit.edu/~rdoody/SunkCostFallacyIsNotaFallacy.pdf)

<comment><USER3> You don't need to invoke social narratives and consistent behaviors to justify honoring sunk costs.

Sunk costs are often a predictor of a developed position.

For example, you spend 20 years in advancing in field and then worry that you might not like it that much anymore.

If you avoid leaving the field purely because of the sunk time, you are honoring a sunk cost.

If you avoid leaving the field because your 20 years have made you good enough at it that your pay is good and your job stability is assured... and meanwhile you would have a hard time getting hired in a new preferred field or keeping a job there because your expected pay would be unaligned with your experience there (see also: ageism)... then that is just playing the hand you are currently holding.

Usually your current position isn't completely clear. You don't know precisely to what degree 20 years experience have made you better suited to your past field than another.

Under the reasonable assumption that your past costs weren't entirely wasted and aren't perfectly fungible to different moves it is reasonable to use your past costs as a predictor of your current position. 20 year experience in a field is probably worth something, and probably worth a lot more than 5 years.

<comment><USER4> For sunk costs, you are supposed to consider your all options including the sunk cost project.

For your example your options might look like:

* Stick with industry, 0 year lead time, no cost, possible sadness, low risk

* Slight change, 2 year lead time, $20,000, moderate happiness, medium risk

* Vast change, 10 year lead time, $100,000, unknown happiness, high risk

The fallacy would be giving the first option some sort of financial value because you spend time and money on it in the past. You are just supposed to look at your options looking forward only.

<comment><USER3> > You are just supposed to look at your options looking forward only.

In most realistic scenarios your estimations of the payoff matrix has a significant uncertainty. It isn't just that there is risk, but your estimation of the risk is uncertain as well (as well as your estimation of your estimation, and so on).

When reasoning under uncertainty we can usually achieve significant benefits from regularizing the decision.

"Do what everyone else is doing", "Keep doing what I was already doing", and "Do what is most consistent with my past investments" are time tested highly effective regularizers. When we are trying to rationalize taking actions that defy billions of years of evolved heuristics for reasoning under uncertainty we call the first 'bandwagon fallacy', the second 'status quo bias', and the third 'sunk cost fallacy'.

There is often a fine line between rational decision making and rationalization. Awareness of the ways that people sometimes make errors in their decisions can be useful, but one should take care to avoid using a little bit of knowledge to come up with specious justifications for poor choices.

Much of the time I see the word 'fallacy' used it sure seems to be sophistry. When a reasoned position is better you can just state why its better outright and the justification will stand up on its own merit without any invocation of a named fallacy.

<comment><USER5> Man I cannot agree at all. I've personally seen some majorly bad decisions made on the backs of those fallacies.

<comment><USER3> I've seen some people get killed after leaving their homes. Better stay inside all the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Of course you should ignore "sunk costs" \- the problem is deciding what's a "sunk cost" and what's "an investment" with an associated probability on its return.

To riff on the example say you were prepared to pay $300, you paid $55 and you're being offered $500 on the door. Yes. You probably would sell the tickets, for $445 profit. However maybe you flew into the city for $200 and booked a hotel for $100. You've now sunk $55+$200+$100 and if you sell your ticket, that's all list. You walk away with $145 profit - but you'd originally been prepared to see Bruce for twice that.

Maybe if you wait 30 mins the tout will put his price up? Or maybe somebody else will sell, he can deliver on his commitment to a third party, and resale price will collapse.

Now if the price collapses, you can still see Bruce. If they price offered remains/rises you can re-consider selling.

Now maybe you do take the money and exit the market.... Except article mentions Bruce is playing the next day. You could sink $100 into another night in the hotel and $50 to change your flight (which roughly halves your return). This would let you see if you can get another cheap ticket on stub-hub, and the next day sell them to touts, go to the show, stand outside trying to tout them yourself. When you spend that $150 then of-course the cost has been sunk and you should ignore it from then on. Problem is deciding whether or not to make the sunk-cost/investment.

<comment><USER7> The Springsteen ticket example is a horrible one.

 _It turns out the amount of time you spent getting the tickets is irrelevant._

No its not my time is worth something.[1] If I spent 3 hours getting the tickets and I value my time at $150 an hour then the value of the tickets is now $505 and I'm only getting offered $500

Also the value of a ticket "To Me" may be worth more than $55 I spent. It might be worth $1000 in my mind for a chance to see Bruce regardless of what I spent.

[1] One of my great life hacks as I've gotten older is valuing my (particularly free) time at some amount - usually $150 per hour. Have a task I can pay someone to do and get the time back on a weekend? - $150 x Time of Task is the amount I'm willing to pay.

<comment><USER8> The value of the tickets doesn't increase with the effort you spent towards them.

<comment><USER9> It increases with the amount of effort you would spend. If you value your time at $150/hr and you _would_ spend 3 hours looking for them, the tickets are worth $505 to you, even if you spent 15 minutes looking for them. Then, if someone offers to buy them at $500 that's a bad deal because you value them more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I see code as a liability, and this is probably a very big part of it. So I regularly throw away large swats of code and whole projects when they are no longer useful and future prospects seem dire. I learned not to get attached to code.

But I've also seen other devs getting very attached to their code. So projects don't get closed, and instead they just fade in the background in a folder somewhere to avoid hurting anyone and keep the morale of the team up (which is very important of course). But this speaks a lot about technical debt and combinatory complexity of projects and companies, and I rarely see social discussed around technical debt.

I still don't know a good solution here. For my personal projects, I see things improving more and more and me being able to achieve results faster, so at least I'm very happy on that side.

Note: I'm not talking about my employer, just about companies in general.

</comment><comment><USER11> Hold'em poker is specifically good at teaching this viscerally. Nothing lets you feel the mistake of valuing sunk costs than holding onto a once-strong starting hand way too long.

<comment><USER12> mistake is not in holding strong hand way too long. mistake is in not playing it.

<comment><USER13> you get called and the flop is shit, what do you do?

<comment><USER12> going against another strong hand and loosing is one thing - slow rolling strong hand and being outplayed by weaker hand is another (and totally deserved IHMO).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Seth Godin's success is proof that mediocrity pays if you're early.

>Or say you make a mistake and go to the concert instead of selling (those seats are $500 seats now). But Bruce is sick and Manfred Mann is substituting for him. You don't like him so much. But you paid $500 for the seats! Should you stay?

Well then the concert would be cancelled and you would get a refund.

In regard to the sign, if it were accidentally misspelled the person who made it should fix it at no extra cost.

He cannot even give good examples to support his thesis.

<comment><USER15> According to this post, dated August 8, 2019 and titled "Streaks", Seth has been blogging for 11-years straight without missing a day.

His posts appear hours before I awake every day, despite us being in the same time zone.

So your comment, "Seth Godin's success is proof that mediocrity pays if you're early", should be retracted.

Edit: I forgot to include the link: [https://seths.blog/2019/08/streaks/](https://seths.blog/2019/08/streaks/)

<comment><USER16> "His posts appear hours before I awake every day, despite us being in the same time zone."

Real blog software* lets you schedule posts. It's eminently possible that he writes these in batches and has his blog post them at midnight local time. He seems to be using Wordpress, which has multiple plugins out there to make this even easier to do.

Regularly keeping this up for eleven years is nothing to sneeze at but I am pretty sure that the likelyhood of him getting up at 3AM every morning and writing a post is nil.

* yes this means your static site generator is not Real Blog Software

</comment></comment></comment><comment> GuB-42 I believe there is a reason the sunk cost fallacy exists, instinctive behavior patterns come from millions of years of evolution, and I believe that if they were totally wrong, they would have been selected out.

For example, imagine you are a predator, chasing some prey, on the way, you see a prey that looks easier to catch, the "no sunk cost" solution is to stop the chase and go after the new target. Then you see a new one, then a new one, then a new one, etc... In the end, you will probably be to busy changing targets to catch anything. That behavior is commonly exploited, just look at kids playing tag, taunting "it" by putting oneself in relative danger is a common strategy, and the counter is to ignore the taunt and focus on a target, even if it is not the easiest one, i.e. honoring sunk costs.

And the $500 proposal for the $55 ticket doesn't make it a $500 ticket. When you buy a ticket, you pay the price of the ticket, plus everything that goes with it: free time, getting there, uncertainty and risk, and all the emotional investment that is harder to quantify... Imagine you value that at $500, so including the $55 ticket, that's a $555 experience, the reason you wouldn't have bought a $500 ticket is that it would have made it a $1000+ experience.

And here you see why refusing the $500 proposal is not necessarily a mistake. The guy is offering you $500 for a $555 experience.

So yeah, good to know about the sunk costs fallacy, but I believe it is also important to understand why that "fallacy" exists, and how to properly evaluate costs, even those without a clear price tag attached to it.

<comment><USER17> Alternatively, the sunk cost fallacy is a heuristic that compensates for the fact that calculating marginal value (especially in high-pressure settings) is hard.

Evolution has also selected for more powerful brains that allow us to develop more sophisticated frameworks (e.g. law, science) for reasoning than pure emotion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Spend $250 on dinner and go buy better tickets for tomorrow night's show."

Which you would probably have to spend another four hours looking for, _if_ you could find any at all; Bruce is probably in town for a couple of days at most and tomorrow's show is most likely sold out. I guess your future time looking for those tickets is worth nothing too, despite the second paragraph urging you to only consider what may happen in the future when making a decision.

"Or say you make a mistake and go to the concert instead of selling (those seats are $500 seats now). But Bruce is sick and Manfred Mann is substituting for him. You don't like him so much. But you paid $500 for the seats! Should you stay?"

Has this man ever gone to a concert in his entire life? The show's gonna be _cancelled_ and you will be getting a refund.

</comment><comment><USER18> > The most important decision-making rule you learn in business school is > still largely misunderstood.

I wonder what he thinks is misunderstood. My experience is that people get it if taught it, and don't if they weren't.

> But Bruce is sick and Manfred Mann is substituting for him. You don't like > him so much. But you paid $500 for the seats! Should you stay?

I get the message but this illustrates the trickiness of sunk costs, they're not always so perfectly sunk. In this case most people would probably correctly stay - they're there, dressed, ready to have a good time, a lot of the costs are only partially sunk with lots of residual value.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, I'm not sure I agree with that scenario.

Leave aside any ticket refunds or rescheduling--and assume you got the tickets for free but were offered the $500 from a scalper. If you really don't have any interest in staying I think most people would shrug and think "easy come, easy go" whether or not they theoretically had an option to turn the tickets into cash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> > Spend $250 on dinner and go buy better tickets for tomorrow night's show.

Does he not understand how this works? Most touring musicians only play one night per city, e.g., [1]. It would cost me a lot more than $250 to follow Bruce from Seattle to NYC for his next show.

(He played every night On Broadway for a while but that was the exception.)

[1]: [https://brucespringsteen.net/shows/2016](https://brucespringsteen.net/shows/2016)

<comment><USER21> That one is the most idiotic advice I have seen. He said "seats" so he was clearly taking someone there - a friend or girl friend? I can only imagine driving back after selling the ticket would probably meant the dinner was alone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Fun fact: In Norway it is not legal to sell tickets on the "black market" for more than what you paid for them.

</comment><comment><USER23> In business I wonder how much reinvestment / continued investment is because someone doesn't understand sunk costs.....or they just don't want a mistake to be highly visible / rock the boat? So they just continue on.

I worked at a company where they outsourced some work. It became clear that the outsourcing was both more expensive than domestic work....and the domestic folks were using up time fixing outsourced work.

The outsourcing was the VPs first big initiative as a VP.

There was lots of talk about just moving on and not worrying about sunk costs, but they carrried on with the outsourcing...I don't think it was because he didn't understand sunk costs.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is how I was taught about sunk costs at business school. Which schools are largely misunderstanding it I wonder? Also, is this really the most important decision making rule? Even so - maybe it isn't so good, or practical, to ignore sunk costs. What if a business partner squandered your investment? Not to worry - just a sunk cost. Spent all those hours looking for the Springsteen tickets - maybe your time was more valuable than that $500 offer.

<comment><USER7> I came in to say that this was one of the tidbits of info I always held onto from business school. The whole point of understanding sunk costs is avoiding the Sunk Cost Fallacy.

Everytime I hear a sports talk radio guy talking about how much an overpaid and underperforming player is still going to play I pull my hair out.

[https://www.behavioraleconomics.com/resources/mini- encyclope...](https://www.behavioraleconomics.com/resources/mini-encyclopedia- of-be/sunk-cost-fallacy/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I keep a list of things I wish all people were taught in their education. From the business side the list is: sunk cost, opportunity cost, the iron triangle, and game theory. I try to preach them to everyone because they explain most business decisions. [https://www.iamtheworst.dev/2019-06-26-business- terms](https://www.iamtheworst.dev/2019-06-26-business-terms)

</comment><comment><USER26> > _It turns out the amount of time you spent getting the tickets is > irrelevant. If you wouldn't be willing to PAY $500 for these tickets (and > you weren't, or you would have) then you should be willing to sell them for > $500._

This example has nothing to do with sunk costs and everything to do with WTP vs. WTA. Some people -- like the author, apparently -- think they are the same. Those people are wrong.

Ask yourself - gun to your head, right now, how much money would you offer to pay the man threatening you right now for him to go away? And what is the minimum you would accept from him, if offered, to _let_ him blow your brains out? Chances are, the amount you would be willing to _accept_ for X is much _much_ higher than the amount you would be willing to _pay_ for ~X.

Or, from a different approach, if your willingness to pay to go to the event and your willingness to accept to not go to an event were identical, then going or not-going would have to be a wash. That's obviously not true, or you wouldn't have put so much effort into going.

<comment><USER27> The amount you are willing to pay is limited by what's available to you.

The amount you agree to accept (and likely pass down to your inheritors) is basically unlimited.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Don't know if this was linked, but the relevant podcast episode if anyone's interested [https://www.akimbo.link/blog/s-2-e-13-ignore-sunk- costs](https://www.akimbo.link/blog/s-2-e-13-ignore-sunk-costs)

</comment><comment><USER29> Nick Szabo comes to a similar conclusion: [http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2012/08/proxy-measures- sunk...](http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2012/08/proxy-measures-sunk-costs- and.html)

</comment><comment><USER30> The problem here is that sunk costs affect emotions, and humans are emotional beings. It's not all pure rationality.

It's all well and good to try and convince yourself that you made a rational decision against an emotional fallacy, but that doesn't always work.

</comment><comment><USER31> Similar to the Concorde fallacy: [https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/conco...](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/concorde- fallacy).

<comment><USER32> While the Concorde may have been uneconomic, the engineer in me weeps at the loss of a little bit of coolness in the world.

<comment><USER31> > the engineer in me weeps at the loss of a little bit of coolness

Me too!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Work sunk costs: I can drop it, no problem.

Personal sink costs: I can't do it. I know I should ignore it, but I cannot.

</comment><comment><USER34> This is an interesting perspective to look at Bezos' "It's always day one".

</comment><comment><USER35> What you call sunk cost I call "equity"\--whether that be tangible capital or human capital.

If you never believed in it, then you should drop it by all means. But if you take the sunk cost fallacy to heart, you will give up whenever the going gets tough, which statistically means you will give up everything you ever start.

</comment><comment><USER36> Probably do better reading these all in one place than trying to cobble them together from random blogs from 2009.

This one is the Irrational escalation or Escalation of commitment/Sunk Cost Fallacy.

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

<comment><USER37> I'm not sure it's fair to imply that the wikipedia article for a topic is equivalent in value to a blog post about that topic.

<comment><USER38> True, the blog post probably has less value.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Well-meaning parents saying "eat what's on your plate, kids are starving in Japan" really reinforce valuing sunk costs. They also ignore that there's a global obesity epidemic.

</comment><comment><USER12> i strongly disagree with the author. you cant ignore sunk costs.

For example, in the stock market the majority of active retail traders (>90%) get wiped out within 3 years. they continue to dump money into the market, ignoring losses (sunk costs), hoping that the next trade will help recover the losses, and then the next trade, the next ... etc. at some point one has to stop "bleeding" and re-evaluate the approach before blowing out trading account completely. this plays out in the stock market every day and will continue for as long as trading exists. one cant ignore sunk costs - we have to learn from it.

<comment><USER40> The decade long bull market has been really good to a lot of active retail traders.

<comment><USER12> in the long run >95% of active retail traders loose money - bull market or not.</comment></comment></comment>


Bank of America Does Not Support Firefox - <AUTHOR> https://www.bankofamerica.com/information/supported-browsers/?m=unsupportedBrowserType <comment><USER2> I'm confused. The page I landed on says that Bank of America supports Firefox "51 and higher". I have Firefox 70.0 on Linux and I have no problems with Bank of America's website.

<comment><USER3> They probably overlooked it, got excited, and posted here lol.</comment></comment>


Are the best entrepreneurs pertinacious* pigs or flexible fools? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.snagsta.com/2008/06/20/are-the-best-entrepreneurs-pertinacious-pigs-or-flexible-fools/ Very amusing take on the dilemma entrepreneurs face with the evolution of internet start-ups. Is dogged determination better than shifting focus if things don't work? <comment><USER2> From M-W:

 _Pertinacious: stubbornly unyielding or tenacious_</comment>


Freelance tax questions - <AUTHOR>

I've been doing freelance programming work for the last year, and have completely neglected to do anything about my taxes. Yes, I realize this is probably pretty stupid, but here I am.
That being said, I've lived very frugally, and have saved ~75% of what I've made. My expenses have been minimal, and I've kept records of all my purchases.
This will be the first year I haven't had a job which takes care of my taxes for me. Previously, I've just used TurboTax for them. Honestly, I find the US tax system to be very confusing, and I was just looking for some answers to some basic questions.
1. Would TurboTax still be acceptable to use?
2. I'm planning on writing off 80% of the rent for my home office (not the whole apartment) and internet connection. Any other write offs I may be forgetting?
3. I'm married, and my wife has a regular job. I'm not sure if this changes anything with our joint filing. To be honest, I haven't formed an LLC, sole proprietorship, have a business license or any of them (this part does worry me a bit).
Happily, I live in a state that has no income tax. So I'm assuming I won't have to worry about any state taxes.
I just feel really uncomfortable doing this without the typical employee provided W-2 and the like. Any advice and guides/resources would be very helpful. I've done a good amount of web searches, and there seems to be a lot of conflicting advice.
And lastly, is it really terrible that I've waited this long? I know I can file quarterly, but as I said, I've saved the majority of what I've made so far, so I wouldn't have a problem writing one big check to uncle Sam.
Thanks for reading, and I look forward to any answers and advice you all may have. <comment><USER2> _I'm planning on writing off 80% of the rent for my home office_

be careful with this, a room cannot be consider even if 1% of it is used for dual purposes. For example if you have an office but you use it as a child nursery too. 80% of your dwelling is going to raise a red flag.

Second, if you are going to be freelancing you need to file for an S-Corp it helps you to opt out of some taxes. It will lower your effective tax rate because it get's rid of some of the FICA tax and because it allows you to take some of the earned income and transfer it over to capital gains.

You also really need to go to a good CPA, they cost around $300 to $600 and they will save you far more than that. The first year I went to a CPA they saved me 10k from the best I could do on my own. Not getting a CPA while freelancing is throwing money away. It is the quickest thing you can do to improve your bottom line.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ahh.. I think you're right. My records are great. I'll just go to the CPA. Will also talk with them about the S-Corp.

Thanks for the reply!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you are thinking you can deduct 80% of you rent you really need to find an accountant.

You should make an estimated payment before the end of they year. It will cut down on your penalties. Find an accountant quickly.

<comment><AUTHOR> As I said, 80% of just the office, not the apartment. I heard this was safer than writing off the entirety of the home office.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You're going to have to pay a penalty because you did not pay your estimated taxes and probably owe a lot.

<comment><USER5> Talk to a CPA asap -- they can minimize it by looking at your total picture, what 'net' income is after expenses, etc, ... and penalty is from when due each quarter until the point you pay, so it is worthwhile to do NOW rather than waiting until April 15.</comment></comment>


Top 28 Startup Resources - <AUTHOR> http://ariejan.net/2007/03/25/speedlinking-top-28-startup-resources/ <comment><USER2> Thank you for sharing the list. I was surprised to see my co-founder's (python_kiss) article on the list!

<http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/6_startup_lessons_2007.php></comment>


Why The "Star Trek Computer" Will Be Open Source and ALv2 Licensed - <AUTHOR> http://fogbeam.blogspot.com/2013/05/why-star-trek-computer-will-be-open.html

<comment><USER2> I don't have any kind of knack for predicting things, but I'd argue that it's at least as likely for the "Star Trek computer" to be what things like Google Now turn into (which as far as I can tell, isn't open source at all).

I would be very surprised if the aggregation of technology required for this type of interface doesn't require a company with a lot of services know-how to champion (I could see Apple, for instance trying to go down that path, but I don't think they've ever shown any aptitude for online services).

Maybe after someone makes it, a shitty, open-source knockoff will show up; but I don't think what's laid out in this article is a foregone conclusion.

<comment><AUTHOR> _Maybe after someone makes it, a shitty, open-source knockoff will show up; but I don't think what's laid out in this article is a foregone conclusion._

Perhaps not. But nobody wants to read a headline like:

"Some reasons why I think that it's possible that maybe, just maybe, something like the Star Trek Computer might come along someday and it might, with some luck, be open source, and it could be Apache Licensed, but maybe not".

At some point, you have to say _something_ , and while I'm not big on headlines that are outright "linkbait" if you write stuff, you typically want people to read and comment on it, so the headline has to be somewhat catchy and maybe even a little controversial.

The key point here, isn't really the posit that the Star Trek computer _will_ be Open Source and ALv2 licensed, it's that a lot of awesome work is going on in various semi-related ASF projects right now, some or all of which could well become part of something like the Star Trek Computer. But, again, that's too long and wordy for a headline.

<comment><USER3> So you're suggesting that articles without compelling content should still have compelling titles?

The goal is certainly to gain readership, but adding controversy to a title on an article that doesn't contain any isn't a good idea. It's a misrepresentation of your article, and what extra traffic it does bring you isn't likely to result in happy new readers.

Some articles just don't appeal to a lot of people because of their content. That doesn't mean a title that reflects what's in the article is a bad idea; it just means the author should either have realistic expectations regarding the exposure their article can reasonably expect, they should be writing something that _is_ controversial, or they should be writing something else entirely.

If your goal is to communicate specific information and your title doesn't reflect it accurately, all you've done is fail at titling your work.

<comment><AUTHOR> _So you're suggesting that articles without compelling content should still have compelling titles?_

Not at all. Obviously this exists on a continuum and is somewhat subjective, however. I would never advocate posting low quality content with a flat-out link-baity title like "Learn About Bill Gates and Ada Lovelace's Secret Lovechild: Mark Zuckerberg" or something. But I think you have to create a title which is as compelling as you can, while being faithful to the content.

But, as in all cases, there will always be people who agree and some who disagree about whether you've accomplished that or not.

All I'm getting at is that a headline shouldn't dissemble and be wishy-washy and say nothing. It's an opinion, that I'm asserting (that the "Star Trek Computer Will Be..."), but even I won't go quite as far as saying it's "a foregone conclusion". There is evidence to suggest that such a thing may be the case, and that's what this post was about.

In this case, I'm perfectly happy with the congruence between the headline and the content. If others aren't, then I'll be curious to hear their POV on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> On a related note, there are two interesting (older) posts "out there" on "How to build your own Watson". And while you probably aren't going to win Jeopardy with your garage built supercomputer, a lot of the basic technologies are out there to enable you to do some pretty cool stuff.

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/21/ibm_watson_qa_system...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/21/ibm_watson_qa_system/)

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomgroenfeldt/2011/04/14/build-y...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomgroenfeldt/2011/04/14/build- your-own-watson-with-open-source-software/)

<comment><USER4> Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Star Trek computer is already here, and it's closed-source and owned by Google. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5750148>

<comment><AUTHOR> Funny you would mention that... I wrote down the title for this blog post last night or yesterday sometime, inspired by something (don't remember what, exactly) then sat down and wrote this piece this morning, without having seen that post. But it is funny how related they are. I guess it's just something that's "in the air" right now... some zeitgeist thing or whatever.

That said, this blog post is one of those where I had the seed of it in mind for at least a year, but "the moment" to actually pull the pieces together and write it didn't happen... until it did. Why now versus 6 months ago, or a year ago, or 3 days ago, I could not tell you.

Anyway, there will be - IMO - plenty of room for competition between the Open Source stuff and the closed-source stuff. I'm just really excited about this little ecosystem that has formed around the ASF, and some of the cool stuff that's being worked on.</comment></comment>


LGTM is a simple pull request approval system for GitHub - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/lgtmco/lgtm <comment><USER2> I first encountered LGTM on some of Airbnb's open source repos, here's an example of it at work on a closed [1] and open [2] Enzyme PR:

1: [https://github.com/airbnb/enzyme/pull/449](https://github.com/airbnb/enzyme/pull/449)

2: [https://github.com/airbnb/enzyme/pull/459](https://github.com/airbnb/enzyme/pull/459)

I love that this enforces a social practice a lot of teams use already, and I'm pushing to add it to my own team's workflow (both internal and for open source contributions).

Edit: another tool in the same vein people might be interested in is Facebook's mention-bot [3], which analyzes PR diffs and @-mentions people it thinks would be good reviewers based on git blame of lines touched.

3: [https://github.com/facebook/mention- bot](https://github.com/facebook/mention-bot)

</comment><comment><USER3> Another tool is [https://github.com/zalando/zappr](https://github.com/zalando/zappr) . We built this and we are currently quite happy with it and open to suggestions, issues, PRs.

<comment><USER4> Why is this being down voted?

<comment><USER5> Here's a blog post on Zappr explaining its origins and more about how it works: [https://tech.zalando.de/blog/zappr--enhancing-your-github- wo...](https://tech.zalando.de/blog/zappr--enhancing-your-github-workflow/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [http://homu.io](http://homu.io) goes a bit further (it actually triggers CI builds of the merge results to check they are okay), but it seems it is currently unmaintained.

BTW, I would gladly pay money for this! Even more in combination with features from Facebook's mention-bot/Rust's highfive.

<comment><USER7> [https://b.agilob.net/choose-gitlab-for-your-next- project](https://b.agilob.net/choose-gitlab-for-your-next-project) Point 5.

<comment><USER8> IIRC gitlab doesn't queue PRs (so you could potentially get a failing master branch), but yeah, that covers most use cases.

<comment><USER9> agilob.net is down, probably this feature is referenced [https://about.gitlab.com/2015/07/29/feature-highlight- merge-...](https://about.gitlab.com/2015/07/29/feature-highlight-merge- request-approvals/)

Regarding PR queuing do you mean [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/issues/4176](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/4176) ?

<comment><USER8> Basically yes.

<comment><USER9> Cool, [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/issues/4176](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/4176) has our attention but it doesn't have a milestone yet. Feel free to leave a comment there with your use case and how you think it should look.

<comment><USER8> Commented, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I cannot find a way to "undo LGTM" if I was to quick to give approval. Working at a company where I have to LGTM commits literally every day, believe me that it is necessary every now and then.

<comment><USER3> In zappr ([https://github.com/zalando/zappr](https://github.com/zalando/zappr)) you can, check it out. An example: [https://github.com/zalando/zappr/blob/master/.zappr- example....](https://github.com/zalando/zappr/blob/master/.zappr-example.yaml) .

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Not talking about the project, but is the term 'LGTM' (looks good to me) used often in tech? I've heard it from Googlers but otherwise haven't really seen the term in tech.

<comment><USER12> I've always had it as "Looks Good To Merge" \-- we use it every day...

<comment><USER11> it's used more generally than in code. eg design doc review you'd say "LGTM" to say that there are no suggestions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Another option is to do away with blocking on pull requests altogether and review after the fact. It has some benefits (and some downsides).

I blogged about that here: [http://thepugautomatic.com/2014/02/code- review/](http://thepugautomatic.com/2014/02/code-review/)

We use a home-grown tool on top of GitHub to review commit-by-commit after the fact: [https://github.com/henrik/remit](https://github.com/henrik/remit)

</comment><comment><USER14> Is this type of functionality planned for an official GitHub feature? Gitlab and Bitbucket both incorporate some type of similar functionality already...

</comment><comment><USER15> We use github-review-helper instead [https://github.com/salemove/github- review-helper](https://github.com/salemove/github-review-helper) . It also has fixup commits support which is quite useful in our workflow.

</comment><comment><USER16> Since we're talking about GitHub pull requests, my favorite tool for this is [https://reviewable.io/](https://reviewable.io/). It fixes basically everything about GitHub pull requests.

<comment><USER17> And of relevance to the original article, in Reviewable you can customize your review completion condition with a snippet of code it will run on your behalf and post the result as a GitHub commit status, so you can have basically any approval system you want. One of the examples is a simple LGTM-based system like in OP.

(Disclaimer: I run reviewable.io.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I also recommend checking out PullApprove, we've had some success using it in some of our open source projects: [https://pullapprove.com/](https://pullapprove.com/)

</comment><comment><USER19> Do you know if there is the same thing in Gitlab?

<comment><AUTHOR> yes, I know, but my company is using Github for a long time and migrate is not planed.

<comment><USER7> You should compare annual costs of GitHub and GitLab CE or EE and start planning it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Hmm, I mostly work with Stash nowadays and they have the approve/disapprove buttons which I like better than LGTM comment.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm a bit late to the party here. I'm the author of the project and happy to answer any questions.

</comment><comment><USER22> The Kubernetes submit-queue munger is also worth a look: [https://github.com/kubernetes/contrib/tree/master/mungegithu...](https://github.com/kubernetes/contrib/tree/master/mungegithub)

</comment><comment><USER23> I really appreciate when project authors make it so simple for users to deploy. Thank you, folks!

</comment><comment><USER24> Does anyone have experience with [https://github.com/reviewninja/review.ninja](https://github.com/reviewninja/review.ninja)

</comment><comment><USER25> Why not make it distributed? Git is distributed

<comment><USER26> How would you make that distributed? You still need a unique repository that serves as a reference and on which pull-requests are made.

<comment><USER25> yes, or a unique branch

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It would be nice if instead of having to comment LGTM a thumbs up reaction on the FP of the PR would suffice

<comment><USER2> I believe the actual "LGTM" phrase is configurable via a .lgtm file in the root of the repo. Airbnb's Enzyme has it configured to work with a :+1:.

<comment><USER27> From reading the manual I saw it was configurable to change the regexp it matches, not property's of the OP

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Is it:

"Looks Good to Me"

or

"Let's Get this Moving"?

:-)

<comment><USER29> Let's Git This Merged? :D</comment></comment>


Fail Fast, Bake Bread - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@epxtn/fail-fast-bake-bread-ec929b46e888

<comment><USER2> Making bread is something for which cookbooks and recipes compilations are ill suited. Bread is invariably about ingredients and technique.The flour is different, the water is different, the yeast is different, the ovens produce different transfers of energy, etc etc.

So this is about corrections, adjustments, and tacit knowledge about what you can do to "push" (really 'nudge') the output in a calibrated way.

The author is correct that iteration is essential to learning in this contex. But iteration is not "failure", but simply "mediocrity" with adjustment.

Referring to mediocrity as 'failure' lacks requisite precision, although maybe it sounds cool.</comment>


London's Tech Boom Is More Than Just Hype, the Hard Numbers Say So - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/20/londons-tech-boom-is-more-than-just-hype-the-hard-numbers-say-so/ <comment><USER2> It's easy to forget how small the UK is, which leads to London centric commentary when people talk about the UK tech scene. In reality, a startup could be based comfortably outside of London where the cost of living and the cost of operating are a lot cheaper, creating not only a better deal for founders and employees, but investors money would be going where it's needed and not on rent or rates. I've recently had the opportunity to see what rents people are charging for office space at the moment and it's obscene.

The London investors will still be there. The talent in London is usually from somewhere else in the UK or Europe anyway. It's a cool city, but it's not as cool as having a successful startup of your very own.

<comment><USER3> _> In reality, a startup could be based comfortably outside of London where the cost of living and the cost of operating are a lot cheaper_

No. There are virtually no skilled people outside perhaps London, Cambridge and Oxford. I know, as I've had to try and recruit people outside those areas. It's virtually impossible to find anyone who is a) good and b) not self- employed and quite happy about staying that way. Even the M4 corridor is a hopless vacuum of talent these days.

Best place is suburban London or no office if you want to cut costs.

One of the cool things about the M25 area though is there are lots of skilled immigrants from South Africa, the Ukraine and India who are considerably better than us natives (I'm native to the UK).

As for the city, it's not somewhere I'd work again.

<comment><USER4> _There are virtually no skilled people outside perhaps London, Cambridge and Oxford._

That's total horseshit.

<comment><USER5> The comment that you are replying to did qualify the statement by saying that they were looking for employees not self-employed contractors.

<comment><USER4> Fair enough. The idea that all the people employable outside London, Cambridge or Oxford are all self-employed contractors who are not interested in salary positions is also total horseshit.

<comment><USER3> It's not hard finding people; it's hard finding _quality people_ because they've all moved to London for the salary or are self-employed.

When I say quality, I mean people who can pick up anything we throw at them and pick the right tech for the job rather than be tied to a tech platform, not Joe average ASP.Net webforms or Kate average Oracle monkey.

We need people who pick the tools for the job, not factory pressed programmers.

Also have you tried hiring anyone anywhere in the UK that can actually write C? Totally damn impossible even offering £120k.

<comment><USER6> Well if you need a C contractor and my general level of snark hasn't put you off, in this thread or others on HN, feel free to get in touch with email@example.com

I'm not saying I'm perfect, but I have been pretty shocked at the standards I've encountered since I left big blue and decided to go it alone a few years back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hopefully the elections next year will bring back the more sensible highly skilled migrant immigration policies from the past that will allow highly skilled foreigners to participate in and contribute to this boom.

Current policy introduced by the coalition government, as I understand it [1], is that a highly skilled migrant in the UK from outside the EU would simply not be allowed to build a revenue generating side project, either by themselves or in a partnership. The best they can legally do is find somebody to take their IP and hire them into a new business - an unlikely prospect, and a risky one - and even then they'd be limited to 20 hours of work per week unless the new business goes through a complicated legal process to become a visa sponsor. And after 5/6 years the foreigner may be declined leave to remain and forced to return to their home country, regardless of what they may have built up in the mean time.

[1] This is what my research shows. I'd love to learn that I'm wrong, being somebody who has to make a decision about whether to take this 5/6 year gamble while starting a family.

<comment> k-mcgrady Personally I'm for making immigration easier but how necessary is it for businesses considering that they can hire from anywhere in EU with very few hurdles? Are there really many people outside the EU that are so skilled that an alternative can't be found within the EU?

<comment><USER7> According to e.g. the CEO of Citibank [1] and the mayor of London [2], immigration reform would really benefit the UK. The OECD suggests that there's no reason not to [3].

However, it's more complicated than that. The current policy is actively deterring young, skilled people from developing their skills and connections in the UK, which is a great concern for the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee [4] - who clearly understands that immigration is a long- term process, and governments can't treat people like sheep if they hope to attract talent.

If you were 30, about to start a family, would you immigrate knowing that you're not allowed to make money from tinkering on a side project for the next 5/6 years? And that after that time you wouldn't even be sure if you and your family could remain in the UK? It's a tough decision. And yet the best of the best are exactly in that position -- the people who tinker on the side are exactly the people who become the best, not the ones doing a 9-5 day job.

The irritating thing is that the policies were great prior to 2010, until Cameron decided to make a policy of reducing immigration to levels that are simply impossible ("tens of thousands"). His only way to control immigration is non-EU immigration, which is a very small percentage of actual UK immigration. It turns out that just a few days ago the government has finally started to acknowledge the sham [5], after years of criticism. Unfortunately in the meantime, people have to make very difficult life changing decisions in the face of this political drama.

[1] [http://www.workpermit.com/news/2014-06-27/minister-uk- will-n...](http://www.workpermit.com/news/2014-06-27/minister-uk-will-not-bow- to-business-case-for-increased-immigration)

[2] [http://www.workpermit.com/news/2014-06-17/london-mayor- londo...](http://www.workpermit.com/news/2014-06-17/london-mayor-london-would- fall-like-sparta-without-immigration)

[3] [http://www.workpermit.com/news/2014-05-23/migration-is- econo...](http://www.workpermit.com/news/2014-05-23/migration-is-economically- neutral-says-oecd-report)

[4] [http://www.workpermit.com/news/2014-04-14/lords-denounce- uks...](http://www.workpermit.com/news/2014-04-14/lords-denounce-uks- overblown-rhetoric-on-immigration)

[5] [http://www.workpermit.com/news/2014-09-17/deputy-pm-uk- has-s...](http://www.workpermit.com/news/2014-09-17/deputy-pm-uk-has-scrapped- plans-to-reduce-immigration-to-tens%20of%20thousands)

<comment><USER6> The only way it would benefit the UK would be by maintaining or further lowering the already low tech wages.

This is not to be encouraged.

<comment><USER4> Hang on, you are working in Australia from the UK, you asshole. There are few things more absurdly hypocritical than emigrants who complain about immigration.

<comment><USER6> I was for a while yes. Difference being that in Australia businesses are crying out for employees and there's enough money to pay everyone properly. In the UK the only shortage is the shortage of people willing to work for peanuts. I'm not anti immigration. I'm against business opening it up further to suppress already low wages.

<comment><USER4> But you are complaining about a suggestion to change the migration rules to make it easier for migrants to start businesses while here, which would increase the competition for employees and raise wages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have been very impressed with the London HN meetup:

[http://www.meetup.com/HNLondon/](http://www.meetup.com/HNLondon/)

~250 attendees, pizza, beer, comedians and great talks from people like Stripe, Facebook & CityMapper. Well worth travelling to from outside London.

</comment><comment><USER9> London is the place to be in Europe. I only wish there were proper large tech companies head-quartered here and capable of competing with financial sector in salaries.

<comment><USER6> There are offices of a few large tech companies around but it makes sense for them only to have a sales presence in London because it's so incredibly expensive.

And for workers the UK is not great. Salaries are very low (when compared to other english-speaking nations) and so are expectations in many companies.

<comment><USER10> Google has a non sales presence in the UK, has done for a long time (indeed they claim not to have sales people in UK for tax reasons!). Amazon has just announced it is moving from Slough to Shoreditch. I am fairly sure Facebook has engineers here. The older tech companies were based in the traditional M4 corridor (Microsoft, Oracle, etc) but many companies there are moving to London, as it is easier to hire people.

Salaries are lower than the US, maybe, or parts of it, but lower than other English speaking countries?

<comment><USER6> I based that on my experience of the USA and Australia. I got a 60% raise to do the same job for the same company when I moved from London to Perth a few years ago.

Tech salaries outside of finance in the UK in general are pretty depressed IMHO. As far as I can tell this is for a complex of reasons - engineers not expecting very much cash, the good ones all either go abroad or into finance, companies are used to mediocre engineers therefore are not willing to pay well etc etc.

Me, I'm a high priced contractor because it's the only way I've found to replicate a US/AU salary. And I'm worth it. On my last project I committed twice as much code as the three permanent engineers combined.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> London's coming along although we're a bit lacking in big hits compared to the US with Google, MSFT, Facebook et al worth ~$406bn, 391bn and $202bn respectively. The London areas biggest hit (if you include Cambridge as it's an hour away) is ARM worth about $22bn. Things are definitely on the up here but with some catching up to do.

<comment><USER12> I have to agree. I have seen the Shoreditch triangle come a long way and having taken my skill set around Europe, there really is no place like home but we aren't exactly silicone valley.

I look forward to some home grown giants over the next few decades.

<comment><USER13> silicone valley in London would be Soho _nudge_ _nudge_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've been working in tech in London for just over a year, and even in that short time I feel the spirit has evolved. People are thinking bigger and smarter.

There is also a rudely healthy crypto currency scene in London, which I suspect will explode once they find a way through the banking/regulation maze.

<comment><USER15> As a Brit who lived in America and Asia for a long time, the change in the entrepreneurial culture in London/UK is amazing and it really has all happened in the last year or so according to the people I speak to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Neat, I happen to be in London (Shoreditch) reading this. Just in town for the day (Sunday). Any HN peeps up for meeting up? @euwyn on Twitter or email in profile.</comment>


Why I was fired at Twitter. - <AUTHOR>

My manager hated me, end of story, period! I can go into all the juicy details if you like, but I thought that alone was worth sharing.<p>I worked there for nearly 2 years as a Software Engineer. <comment><USER2> Without details of some kind, juicy or otherwise, this will get flagged.</comment>


How I got my web page redesigned at no cost and made a friend in the process - <AUTHOR> http://joshuaspodek.com/web-page-professionally-redesigned

<comment><USER2> That's cool. I guess.

I know it's barely been upvoted but I really can't understand how blogspam like this hits the front page of HN everyday.

</comment><comment><USER3> TLDR: Some guy discovers bartering.</comment>


Show HN: FUSE for WSL1 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/billziss-gh/winfuse/releases <comment><AUTHOR> I am the author. Please let me know if you have any questions.</comment>


The End of iTunes - <AUTHOR> https://500ish.com/the-end-of-itunes-2b69d812d861 <comment><USER2> That's a little far reaching I think.

A TV's primary purpose is to consume video content. It "can" play music, podcasts, streaming audio, but a TV is better suited to movies, tv shows, etc...

To say the iTunes brand or iTunes Music is dead because it wasn't given a spot on a TV as an app is a bit crazy.

Now if the next iOS / iPhone didn't come with iTunes Music pre-installed; ok - there's a pivot happening here and a bigger story.</comment>


Against Little Free Libraries - <AUTHOR> https://www.citylab.com/navigator/2017/05/the-case-against-little-free-libraries/523533/ <comment><USER2> Oh, for the love of FSM. This has to be the biggest load of bullocks I've heard recently. Of course LFL's are free - _to the end user_. And that's what matters. If I choose to donate surplus books from my personal collection to the nearby LFL and somebody comes and takes it, that's absolutely a free transaction for them. And, no, "real" libraries are most certainly _not_ free. They're generally tax funded, which is the opposite of free in that you pay for it even if you don't use it!

OK, yeah, the $40 fee to "license" the LFL brand rubs up against some of my ideological biases a bit, but here's the rub... nothing mandates that you call your "yard front library" a "Little Free Library (tm)". You can set one up and call it whatever you want, if you're willing to forego being listed on their website. Big whooping deal. There are plenty of ways to publicize the presence of your own library.</comment>


Tell HN: Moniker/snapnames admits security flaws, emails password in cleartext - <AUTHOR>

So I get this email from Moniker / snapnames:
http://imgur.com/fcf2TGT
OK so I reset my password and then I get an email with the new password in the email:
http://imgur.com/6RIdVuG
They seem to think their systems are being breached by heartbleed bug or by bruteforce attacks.  Seems to me sending plain text passwords via email might help prevent unauthorised domain transfers. <comment><USER2> Got those too. I've been transferring my portfolio out of there slowly for the last few weeks, but that was the final straw.</comment>