Stop Generalizing About Europe - <AUTHOR> http://jonasbentzen.com/stop-generalizing-about-europe/ <comment><USER3> This post feels awfully pedantic. While it may not be clear to non-Americans, when Americans talk about "Europe", they're generally talking about Western Europe, not Eastern, and are excluding the UK too. They almost certainly aren't including Russia.

(Just like when Americans talk about Asia, they aren't usually thinking of India.)

Of course, that's geographically inaccurate -- but it's what we usually mean. The Europe that Americans refer to _does_ mostly use the Euro, have better- distributed wealth, plenty of consumers, and ambivalent feelings toward entrepreneurs in most of its parts.

Just because Europe is made up of lots of countries, and there are lots of different ways to define it, doesn't mean you can't make statements about it. Perhaps the main point of the post was, be aware that Eastern Europe exists?

<comment><USER4> Sorry, but no.

I've been in discussions recently with a French company whose development team is based in Dublin (Ireland for the geo-illiterate). Most of the tech staff in Dublin were East European, and the company's HR department was in Romania - <USER2> non-EU country.

This EU centric perception is a media perception, and bears no relationship to the reality on the ground in Europe.

Company in question was owned by a a UK multi-national, and builds software for banks all over the world. The 'Western EU' leaning is pure fantasy. I understand why Americans like it - it's simple and straight forward, and appeals to people from what is basically a simply and straight forward country - but it's just not the reality on the ground.

!+": Romania: !+": Wasn't even aware of its EU status. Why? Because when you think EU, it simply doesn't pop up. Which points vividly to the diversity of the EU. Romania, even now, is no one's idea of a Western country. It simply ain't. It ain't western; it ain't even that European. Tarring all of Europe with some kind of EU white wash is simply foolish.

<comment><USER5> Romania is an EU country since 2007: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_state_of_the_European_Un...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_state_of_the_European_Union)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hmm. Perhaps you could stop generalizing about people generalizing about Europe. Varsavsky has lived and built businesses in Madrid since 1995, so I think that his _contrasts_ between the European market and the American market from the entrepreneur's point of view are really pretty trustworthy.

Your points about European diversity are quite valid, although I think they're beside the point. But your ad hominem "Oh my, another American is butting his nose into Europe" framing is less than persuasive.

<comment><USER7> > his contrasts between the European market and the American market from the > entrepreneur's point of view are really pretty trustworthy.

They're not. And I've run businesses in lots of different countries as well. Martin is on the ball when it comes to comparing Spain the US, but his contrasts between the European and the American market from the entrepreneurs point of view are way off the mark.

He should have simply titled his post: "what it's like to be an entrepreneur in Spain" and there would have been no issue at all.

Btw, Varsavsky isn't an American, he's had quite a few business dealings in the UK and in Spain but as far as I know doesn't hold a stake in a company in any of the other EU countries that he's writing about and I really don't understand what it was that he was trying to achieve with his post.

If you don't believe me go visit Berlin, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Tampere, Paris, Stockholm, Bucharest, Warsaw or a hundred other places and compare those contrasts for yourself.

On the whole there are very few of Varsavsky's points that hold water, a summary between the US business climate and the EU one from an entrepreneurs pint of view could be made much shorter:

\- in the EU it is a lot harder to be a dick to your employees

\- in America you will (due to the larger and more homogeneous home market) likely have a much better chance grow fast

\- in Europe you will have to think internationally from day 1

\- in Europe it is less dog-eat-dog and more cooperative

Those are from my own personal experience.

<comment><USER8> "- in the EU it is a lot harder to be a dick to your employees"

Yes, but you can be a dick to the employees of your US subsidiaries. (Personal experience with a few German corporations led to this observation...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's amazing how many from the USA insist that the inner diversity in the USA is comparable to the one in Europe. I've heard this many times, namely here in HN. It is not comparable. PERIOD.

Even if the poster goes a bit to the extreme of bringing Russia in to the conversation, even inside the EU, there is still no comparison on how how diverse Europe is (e.g. Portugal to Norway, Greece to France, Spain to Germany) compared to the USA. Some countries, like Austria and Germany do have some similarities, but - to the untrained eye - Canada and the USA will seem relatively similar also, when compared to Mexico!

<comment><USER10> Perhaps the diversity of the USA is not the extreme of Europe, but I would be quick to point out that the regional differences in the US are quite notable even to an outside observer.

There are 5 major regions of the US: Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, Southwest, and West. Each of these regions has noted differences in: dialect, culture, food, general behavior, economy, and quality of life.

Now regardless of US or Europe we have to factor in the population density of a location. It's no secret that urban culture is very different from rural culture be it in Oregon or in France.

Granted: we mostly speak the same language, we all share a common currency, and we all answer to the same federal body which represents us.

There is more diversity in Europe, that much I am sure of. But there is no problem with a comparison of the two.

<comment><USER11> If you focus on 'diversity', you miss the bigger picture, because of course every place is unique. The US has for example far more pronounced extremes of urban vs rural (which many too forget). The real issue is distance, and how Europeans and Americans in general have vastly different concepts of what's far.

If you're in the US or Canada, driving for 10 hours means you're going to visit your aunt. Doing the same anywhere in Europe means you're likely 2 countries over, and it becomes a 'huge trip' in people's heads. Heck, I know several people who have driven more than halfway across Canada, in Europe no- one who drove e.g. from Paris to Istanbul.

And while the European market is supposedly unified, in practice there are significant variations in pricing and availability as soon as you cross a border, simply because that's something few people do. And of course the language difference means most local media is opaque to outsiders.

So I would say that the US is definitely diverse, but it's a gradual diversity, that transitions smoothly from ultra-urban to no-one-for-miles rural. It works on very large distances, and is mediated by a shared media, politics and language. European countries meanwhile are much more homogenous on the inside, but there are a lot of forces keeping each one unique.

<comment><USER12> _Heck, I know several people who have driven more than halfway across Canada, in Europe no-one who drove e.g. from Paris to Istanbul._

Abstract away the vast distances of road and think of it as nodes on a directed graph. How many nodes (ie: _inhabited locations of distinct identity_ ) did you pass through from source to destination? That's a kind sociocultural or even ecological distance you traveled, and it can actually be larger on a Paris-Istanbul trip than on a cross-Canadian trip.

<comment><USER11> Uh, how did you get "Paris-Instanbul is less diverse than cross-Canada" from my comment? I think I said the exact opposite.

<comment><USER12> I was actually saying "Paris-Istanbul is _more_ diverse than cross-Canada". North America has large distances between "significant nodes" on the map, Europe/Asia has smaller distances.

<comment><USER11> So you replied in agreement with a tortured graph theory analogy devoid of concrete ties to reality? I'm confused. Usually when people say "actually" they are correcting someone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think a lot of us need to admit that the author is right. I, for one, do generalize about Europe. I think of social democracies with high taxes. I think of arcane rules and regulations to start and run a business. And most of all, I limit the term "Europe" to include about 20 of the 50 European countries. I will never think of Russia as a European country. If I entered a contest and won a vacation to "Europe" - and the destination turned out to be Albania - I'd be thinking "Wat?!? That's not Europe."

From the outside, the term "Europe" is a confusing morass of distinctions. There's Europe, the Eurozone, the EU. The UN also has a geoscheme that is different than all three of those. Hell, half of Americans probably don't know the difference between England, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom.

<comment><USER14> Most British people would struggle to tell you the difference between Great Britain and the UK.

<comment><USER15> > Most English people would struggle to tell you the difference between Great > Britain and the UK.

FTFY

<comment><USER16> As most British people are English, if the percentage of unaware English people is high enough, then most British people would be unaware :-D

<comment><USER15> Drat, once again foiled by logic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I am an African currently living in Europe. When you think that my home country ( just 1 out of 54 in Africa ) is made up of over 500 tribes which were really separate and distinct nations pre-colonializiation by the British, you come to realize that any generalization made of a continent is rarely (if ever) a representation of the observed set.

</comment><comment><USER18> There is a small town very near to where I grew up where everybody speaks Portuguese. The mayor and his councilmen speak Portuguese in their chambers. There are Festas and bullfights, of which I have attended many, and even played Baritone in an Azorian-tradition marching band. The local grocery stores have food with labels in Portuguese (occasionally Spanish as a second language). The most popular sports team in the entire city is Benfica, and the most popular TV channel is RTP.

This town is called Gustine, and it is located in California.

If you are going to throw a fit about generalizations of Europe, at least have the courtesy to do the same with your generalizations of the US. After having lived in multiple corners of this country, I can honestly tell you that our majority language and our TV stations are the lowest common denominators of our culture...not defining aspects of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I addressed all that in my post. I never claimed that Americans were one homogenous group (and by the way, I've lived in California, too). I claimed that US, despite being a melting pot, is an actual nation (which is not the case with the EU) and that there are a least some common denominators - one of them being the language which is spoken natively by more than 80% of the population.

<comment><USER18> So how exactly is it imprudent or offensive for Americans to point out some of the common denominators of Europe?

<comment><USER19> Not at all - as long as you're at least generally right. If you're grossly misrepresenting things that apply to one country as "common denominator of Europe" it's offensive. It's offensive to pretend all germans wear lederhosen or probably a couple of americans were annoyed if I'd say that all americans wear cowboy boots and hats, have a winchester on their back and a colt on their belt and speak the worst texan dialect ever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I am from Africa - a continent of more than a billion people speaking around two thousand languages. In Africa, you find one of the first Christian nations in the word as well as communities practicing ancient forms of traditional belief systems. Climate ranges from scorching heat and arid desert to tropical rain forests. You find the very wealthy elite monopolizing all the resources as well as mass poverty. I could go on.

To make matters worse, borders between countries are artificially drawn by colonialists. That results in frequent conflicts and makes effective governance or business extremely difficult. Yet, almost everyone refers to Africa as one homogeneous (dark) unit.

Schadenfreude from your African fellow.

<comment><USER21> Well, it's not uncommon to hear the expression "Sub-saharan Africa". That's better than nothing.

At least in Europe, we usually differentiate between Mediterranean/Maghreb/Islamic Africa and "everything below".

Actually, I believe most southern Europeans refer to "Africa" in the loosest sense of the word as being the sub-Saharan part, since the northern countries are seen as Mediterranean and are just too close to home to be thought of as in another continent. Likewise, no-one will refer to the Near East as being "Asia".

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I could make an almost identical argument about the usage of terms like "Americans". The states and even cities themselves are all very different.

<comment><USER19> Yes, indeed they are. But they all share a common language. It's a bit like Germany, Switzerland and Austria or even the german states themselves. We all share a common language so it we've seen the same movies, read the same media, etc. Certainly it's on a larger scale than the german states, but it's on a smaller scale than europe. If I travel 200 km to the east I'm in Poland. My GF comes from a village close to the belarussian border. I can pick the car, drive there in 6 hours or so and while it's Europe and even still EU, I can't even begin to talk to her parents or pretty much any other person in the village. I don't understand a single word they say, I have very little clue about how their life was and still is. If I drive 1000 km to the south I crossed at least 4 borders and heard at least as many languages on the way. So the proper comparison would be to compare texas to mexico or any middle american state.

<comment><USER23> "But they all share a common language"

Ha! You haven't been to Watsonville, California or just about anywhere along the border with Mexico, have you?

<comment><USER24> Right, so that's 2 languages (English & Spanish). There are currently 23 offical working languages in the EU.

And I'm sure if you live in Watsonville, California, you can get your tax forms in English, right? This is definitly not the case within the whole of the EU and the EU offical languages. (e.g. someone in Ireland could not get their tax forms in Swedish).

<comment><USER8> There's way more than two languages: <http://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/language/>

If you live in a larger urban area in the US, odds are that you can encounter several dozen languages in a day.

<comment><USER24> Yes, clearly there are many different languages spoken in a large, populous country like the USA.

However that's not at all like the European Union which has to publish all EU Directives in 23 languages, and each country has 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 official languages for their region. In the USA, English is the lingua franca, and official stuff can be done in English. There is no language that you can use all over the EU that will work in all (or sometimes any) official capacity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I was curious so here are some population figures (from wikipedia)

        Eurozone: 332,839,084

        EU: 503,492,041

        Europe: 739,165,030

So 45% of Europeans (66% of EU citizens) are in the Eurozone.

<comment><USER26> Here's a great lil' venn diagram of all the European bodies

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/Supranati...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/Supranational_European_Bodies.png)

<comment><USER27> One of my bugbears, but to be completely accurate this is an Euler Diagram, not a Venn Diagram. Technically, a Venn Diagram has to have all possible intersections represented.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler_diagram>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venn_diagram>

<http://blog.stevemould.com/venn-vs-euler-diagrams/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> As a brazilian, I completely understand this feeling. A lot of people think Buenos Aires is Brazil's capital, when it's actually Argentina's capital. And small parts of our culture are taken as national main interest, as carnival.

But it's ok to me. In the end, there's no much to do besides correcting people. It's not worth to be upset with this behaviour. People will always generalize and will always state things about places they don't even know with total confidence.

<comment><AUTHOR> What worries me is that some American entrepreneurs may be deterred from starting businesses in Europe based on untrue generalizations, whether positive or negative. There are huge possibilities in Europe, but in order to plan your business strategy you need facts.

<comment><USER28> I agree. What I was trying to say is that it doesn't worth to be upset with any misunderstanding about the place you born, wherever it is. Instead, you can correct people, so they have a more realistic view of your country.

But I also believe that any entrepreneur considering to start a company in Europe must research deeply, in a way that he find facts, and not only opinions from people from Internet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> True, you're generalizing when you say "Europeans are...", but you would also be generalizing if you said "Americans are...", "San Franciscans are...", "Rich people are...", "Programmers are...", and so on and so forth for any group of people you can think of. Talking about a group of people is generalizing, and generalizing is a necessary part of life, because despite the fact that doing so may cause untrue things to be said about certain people, it is also true that generalizations are true about more people than they are untrue about. That's why they're called generalizations.

People say "vc's in the bay area understand startups." Is this universally true? Of course not. But am I ignorant for saying so? Not in the slightest, because in more cases than not, it is true.

So yeah, the guy's statements might not be holistically accurate, but who's are? He's offering guidlines, and I believe that's fair.

Disclosure: I have not yet had the pleasure of visiting Europe. It is possible that my opinions might change after experiencing life there firsthand.

</comment><comment><USER30> Reverse "Europeans" with "Americans" and this post is equally good advice for Europeans who say "Oh Americans are...".

Stereotypes aren't just an American thing. They exist worldwide.

</comment><comment><USER31> I would love to write a similar post titled "Americans and Europeans, stop generalizing about India". As much as I cringe every time I hear someone do an "Indian accent" (it differs _vastly_ from state to state), drawing simple boundaries is the way we make sense of the world around us. As experience grows, we learn to make finer distinctions and the texture of life around us grows from monochrome to technicolour.

Please feel free to draw these simple boundaries around anything of importance to you as long as those generalizations are adequate for your life and those around you. Don't however think that your generalizations are absolutely real. They're real for you and may not be for others. This is what is ultimately so beautiful about the world.

</comment><comment><USER32> If you think of it, pop culture shared amongst Europeans have a greater chance to be American than European.

<comment><USER33> As a French dude, I've always dreamt of a more unified European culture. As in producing movies, TV shows with European money, catering to a European audience. England already produces some more-than-decent TV shows as it is.

We should also make English the official language, that would help us all move forward.

<comment><USER34> > We should also make English the official language, that would help us all > move forward.

We should better create an entirely new artificial official language so that nobody feels discriminated.

<comment><USER33> Nah. English is an easy language, taught in a vast majority of high schools in Europe, the Northerners already all speak it perfectly, it has Latin roots and Germanic roots, it's fairly neutral, used by the US and Canada and is so far the de facto language of business. We should invest in English.

I've wanted English to be a mandatory second language after your native one in all of Europe for a while.

Also creating languages never works, see Esperanto and all those ridiculous lab-synthetized languages that pretend to solve all the problems and all end up showing the very same bias it was trying to avoid in the first place (Esperanto for example is WAY easier for a romance-family speaker than for say a dude from Poland).

<comment><USER12> Please no. The world's languages are already being killed-off by English a little too quickly.

<comment><USER35> Good thing. Inability to communicate in a common language is a huge barrier for development, peace and understanding global issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I was taught at my (European-based) business negotiation course that such generalizations as the ones mentioned in the article, are a basic American negotiation strategy to undermine European confidence. I was told that Americans are aware (most of the time) that their behaviour is received as ignorant and rude. After reading the article, I'm back to wondering whether my business negotiation professor was just prejudiced or is there a grain of truth in what he told me?

</comment><comment><USER37> The comedy to this is the extreme generalizing that goes on globally when talking about America / Americans.

We're all cowboy surfer rednecks that love our guns and religion, are all broke with maxed out credit cards and overweight with a nasty case of diabetes.

<comment><USER9> Yes, that's a silly generalization, but it's not comparable to the one mentioned in the OP. If you want to compare thinking of all Americans as rednecks, you can compare it to thinking of of all french as sweet talking wine lovers, spaniards as lazy and always sleeping the siesta, or germans as rigid uptight and rude; and so on an so forth.

<comment><USER19> We are rigid uptight and rude. Call me, I'll prove that to you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> A good and bad article all in one.

It's good, because it addresses some _common misconceptions_.

It's bad, because it implies that you can't generalize about anything nor anyone. Obviously, there are - broadly - common traits in Europe. The point is fine, to the extent that the broader generalizations you make, the more people will be described incorrectly - and you cite some great numbers to emphasize that.

The post makes it sound as if there is some scientific constant for maximum population size you can generalize about.

<comment><USER39> Broadly common traits such as breathing and eating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I think there's a lot of truth to this essay. As am American, I've certainly been guilty of these kinds of generalizations. To Americans (colloquially meaning U.S. citizens here), I think the phenomenon can be attributed mainly to two causes. The first is that Americans don't travel much, only a small minority hold passports. And who can travel with a meagre two contiguous weeks of holiday per year, and with real incomes of the 99% declining for the past 30 years? The second is that the political propaganda machine in the States explicitly lumps all the nations of Europe into the "un-American, thus wrong- thinking" category. You need look no further than our last presidential election for evidence of this: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16583813> . There's probably a third force at work that just occurred to me: I think that in American schools, kids are not taught anything meaningful about Europe other than perhaps a vague bit about the World Wars. Namely who was "good", and who was "evil", black & white just like modern American politics. My apartment here in Berlin has a Berlin-raised caretaker who I've had a few extended conversations with. I'm astounded by how much he knows about American history, to the point of even forming opinions (historical ones, not politico- propaganda-influenced ones as far as I can tell) on individual events such as the battle of Little Bighorn. He's in his late 40s, speaks English fluently, and knows more about American history than most Americans I've met. I'm not sure that I entirely know what to make of this, but it certainly leaves me with the impression that there's an element of learning and sheer curiosity about the world that's largely absent in the States.

<comment> mkr-hn This is a byproduct of the world being so far away for so long. The distance had an impact in both directions. I ran into people from other countries making ridiculous generalizations about the US when I first stepped on to the Internet in the '90s.

Now I know hundreds of people from other countries, and there's very little generalizing going on in either direction. But this is mostly people in their 20s and 30s, not people who grew up without a direct link to the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> From the outside, Europe may seem more united than it is. I think that the difference between two randomly selected European states is the same as the difference between a random European state and the US.

Also I disagree, that there is a need for a stronger union. Free trade union yes, but other than that, every state should be sovereign.

</comment><comment><USER42> I came to this party rather late, but here are my $0.02.

I don't pretend to be a super well-traveled individual, but I have traveled a bit.

I feel both Jonas Bentzen and the article he refutes are wrong to some degree, though Mr Bentzen seems to be making a less severe generalisation.

What I see occurring here is a classic example of metonymy and cosmopolitan and metropolitan cities vs. perceived 'real culture'.

Metonymy: A country seems to be defined by its major city or cities--to the outsider, the fewer cities represent it, the better.

Cosmopolitan cities: The problem is these major cities tend to be cosmopolitan cities. Think Alpha-, Alpha, Alpha+ and Alpha++. These types of cities tend to strive towards homogeneity. I had a history prof (who leaned towards socialism) lay out and explain how, historically, the bigger a city gets, the less unique and further away from its ancestors and traditions it culturally becomes. Cultural hegemony.

Metropolitan cities: Then there are 'medium-size' cities, or 'second major cities' that fight to keep some traditions and cultures from their respective countries. Some metropolitan cities strive to be more cosmopolitan, and have that sensation; I'm thinking of a few (very few) Beta-, Beta, and Beta+ cities here.

During the French Revolution, there were two major schools of thought in Spain. One went like this: Bonaparte wants to modernise countries and wage war on 'tradition'; let's join the French movement and abolish our backward traditions. These people, in Spain, were called 'afrancesados' ('Frenchifieds', pro-French), pejoratively. They were found in major Spanish cities.

Here is the really important part: people outside of major Spanish cities thought they were protecting the 'real' Spanish culture; they were often of humble birth, people that had given rise to what people outside of Spain thought was 'very Spanish' (flamenco, cante jondo, running of the bulls, gypsies, etc.) from a cultural perspective. They had traditions; old traditions. They were superstitious, street-smart, but they were also deceived by kings and, to use a modern term, their governments.

I don't see much has changed with regard to cultural representation.

The government projects/sells an image of their country to foreigners. Some people buy into it. The reality is that not only is each country vastly different, each region and city is.

We should be comparing cities with cities, not countries with countries.

</comment><comment><USER43> As a European myself, I think it is fine to generalize* about Europe. Many points in Varsavsky's blog post were correct and it raised awareness of some things to consider. Sure, it had its omissions and errors, but also remember it was a blog post, not an article in a peer reviewed journal. Reading the article + the ensuing hacker news discussion one is already much better informed.

What is naive is to expect some blog post to give you an overarching view of a very complex subject. Kind of like reading a wikipedia article something and expecting to be expert on the subject matter after that.

*Making generalizations is a wonderful property of the human brain. Without that we'd all be lost in the fractal complexity of everyday detail.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Making generalizations is a wonderful property of the human brain. Without > that we'd all be lost in the fractal complexity of everyday detail.

Sure - the problem is when the generalizations are so broad as to become complete falsehoods. If I went to Upper East Side in New York and concluded that Americans are extremely wealthy persons who live in townhouses, I would be incorrect.

<comment><USER43> In my opinion Varsavsky's blog post was ok. Sure it mostly covered Spain and France, but that's where he's worked at. It conveyed actual experience from one person's perspective.

Some responsibility always lies with the reader: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_reading>

<comment><AUTHOR> That's like saying that it's alright if I write a blog post about how all Americans drive Chevrolets, and then it's up to the reader to figure out the truth by applying critical reading.

While the reader should apply critical reading, the writer should certainly make sure his facts are straight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I agree with everything said here - maybe apart from the points about demographics. We know Varsavsky was referring to Western Europe. In any case, I don't think it's such a bad thing to ignore differences for a moment and do a bit of generalizing.

We end up making preconceptions and assumptions about what will and won't work in other countries. Cultural and linguistic barriers are almost being used as an excuse. This is a massive mistake we are making in Europe. There are plenty of products and/or ideas which all of Europe has had an appetite for.

Naturally, appetite for ideas/services may exist in one country more than the others. That's where you'll find your early adopters but it's not the bigger picture!

</comment><comment><USER45> Stereotypes and generalizations are so common because they are useful, not because Americans are ignorant. Not just because no one cannot remember every detail about everything - generalizations are models, simplifications of reality, which help you make an informant decision confidently. For example: are you willing to adhere to workplace regulations? If its a low priority maybe you should skip Europe.

I'm from an EU country that in my opinion was 150 degrees (180-30) from what Martin Varsavsky described, but I still appreciated his article. I know it meant Western Europe and I learned that US entrepreneurs are a lot different. Generally.

</comment><comment><USER46> What's a harder climb -- getting Americans to stop generalizing about Europe or Africa? Wait -- if they could get to the point of realizing that Africa is a continent and not a country, that in itself would be a giant leap forward.

</comment><comment><USER47> Isn't it true that the Western European economies are high-tax, high- regulation economies with high degrees of risk-aversion (both public and private) compared to America? Where does that stereotype fail?

From what I know, it's hard to fire underperformers in most of Western Europe. Many traditional industries are protected (like French book stores). Taxes are high. Anti-market sentiment is strong. It's not a place where I would want to start a company to do what has never been done before.

I'd like to be wrong. I hear Europe is a nice place to live, otherwise. But it is called the "old world" for a reason.

<comment><USER48> In Monaco there's no income tax. And it's not the only country in Europe without income tax. In Estonia the marginal tax rate is 21%. In the US it's 35%+ ?

> From what I know, it's hard to fire underperformers in most of Western > Europe.

That's typical in places like France, Spain, Italy. But as my fellow Dane tries to say in his article: don't generalize and think it's the same everywhere :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> And for the similar reasons I think it would be in the interest of fruitful discussion to try and not generalize India and China into... well, India and China, respectively. Yes, they are both single countries, but every one of them has a population greater than America and Europe combined. At this scale I'd expect that those countries have cultural substructures corresponding to european nation-states in size and diversity.

</comment><comment><USER50> Ok. Then what? Try and imagine an article written for US based entrepreneurs that didn't generalize about Europe to some degree? It would be awfully confusing (if written at all) So better to gently chide some of the more extreme generalizations than worry about stopping the practise entirely.

<comment><USER51> what about calling countries by their name? let's say, when you're talking about Germany, you say "Germany" instead of "Europe"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I think you are pedantic about other people's semantics and not your own. E.G. when you say American, do you mean US citizens or people from the two continents of America? I think you mean the former. Just like they most likely mean Western Europe.

<comment><USER53> So when Americans say American do they mean US Citizen or someone from North/South America? ...

<comment><USER54> They mean residents of the USA. Note that there are two nations that are "United States of _____" in the western hemisphere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> A trifle off-topic but it's interesting to read that the author believes in a 'strong European union' with 27 unelected commissioners and an unelected president following a constitution that has never been put to the peoples of the EU countries.

</comment><comment><USER56> This guy seriously doesn't understand that "Europe" to most us westerners basically means "All European countries with a coastline, down to Italy."

</comment><comment><USER57> Martin is from Argentina, not American, and he has built and invested in businesses in both Europe and the US. He knows what he's talking about.

</comment><comment><USER58> I'm European and think this article is bunk. Hardly anyone (in western Europe at least) considers Russia to be a part of Europe.

<comment><USER59> I am Swedish and I believe most Swedes consider Russia to be part of Europe. Making generalizations about Europe or even Western Europe (something which did not exist before the cold war) is dangerous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Can we agree on the colloquial: "American"=USAian , "European"=EUian ? (And specify otherwise if otherwise?)

<comment><USER61> American is the proper demonym in the English language for a citizen of the United States of America.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> I'm going to take this a step further and just say "Stop Generalizing" (Wait... was that a generalization?)

</comment><comment><USER63> I'd wager $100 that 99% of HN readers can't even name the fastest growing economy in Europe...

<comment><USER64> I'd wager that they also can't name the fastest growing economy in the United States. What of it?

<comment><USER9> I can name the fastest growing national economy in the USA. It's easy...there is only one nation. In Europe, there are 50... how hard to get can this be?

<comment><USER64> That's trivial, and obviously not the point of this offshoot thread. While the federal government regulates interstate commerce, each state is free to set up its own tax structure, create different incentives for businesses to open up shop, etc. And each state has its own set of natural resources and hazards.

The question of which US state has the fastest growing economy is equally interesting as the GP's question about European economies.

<comment><USER63> I don't see how they are at all related. For one thing, I can pretty much guarantee you that the difference in GDP growth between the fastest growing European economy and the slowest is leaps and bounds larger than the same difference between states. For another thing, for many businesses in the US, it's fairly trivial to relocate should things go south. Not so for moving between countries in Europe.

<comment><USER65> I don't think you are correct. There are some deeply poor regions of the US that have been that way for 100 years.

[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_povert...](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_poverty_rate) [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081031102640.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081031102640.htm) Between states it ranges from 5% to 20%. Between countries in Europe it ranges from 10% to 20%. I'm sure the figures aren't directly comparable, but it at least suggests that there's a similar level of economic diversity.

<comment><USER63> Heh...wow! I think your statistics don't mean at all what you think they mean. When I mentioned growth, I was talking about year-over-year growth (or decline) in national GDP. According to that statistic, Europe contains some of the fastest growing (Turkey, Estonia, Lithuania) and slowest growing (Greece, Italy, Spain) countries in the world.

Your statistic shows poverty rate. The fact that there is greater variation between states in the US than between countries in Europe just shows what many of us have known for years: even if your economy sucks, the worst-off do better in Europe than in the US. In other words, the US is a great place to be if you are wealthy and successful. Europe is a _much_ better place to be if you are anyone else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> To sum up the comments: Stop generalizing about my generalizing.

</comment><comment><USER67> OP: Stop generalizing about Americans.

</comment><comment><USER68> Wow, there is so much euro-hurt over that Varsavsky post that people are resorting to random nit-picking on the definition of Europe.

</comment><comment><USER69> America is a continent. No matter how much the people from the US call themselves "Americans" You are generalizing when you say "Americans".

Thanks

<comment><USER54> America is NOT a continent. North America and South America are the two continents.

Further, there are more than one United States. Ever consider how the people of the United States of Mexico feel when you ignore them like that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Well, I'm a European myself, but the corrections sounds a little on the pedantic side:

> _"Most of Europe has the euro as a common currency" -- Only 17 of Europe's > 50 countries use the Euro._

Yes. Only some of the LARGEST countries, for a total of 332 million people. Not to mention that he did say "most".

> _"Europe is great for an American tech entrepreneur because wealth is better > distributed" The difference between the Scandinavian countries and, say, > Russia is enourmous when it comes to wealth distribution._

That's one of the reasons most people don't include Russia when they talk about Europe. Not to mention that it can even refer only to the EU countries.

> _"More consumers can buy your products and services" Certainly depends on > whether you're selling to Swiss or Romanians._

The same point keeps repeated.

It's as if someone talked about investing in the US, and someone felt obliged to blog about the differences between Illinois and New York and rural Idaho, Mississippi, Alabama and South Dakota.

Yes, we got it already. It's not like someone will go to invest blindly to the _geographic region_ that is Europe. He will most likely go to what is called Western Europe, or the EU.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Only some of the LARGEST countries, for a total of 332 million people. Not > to mention that he did say "most".

332 million is less than half of Europe's population. That's not "most of Europe" by any stretch.

> It's not like someone will go to invest blindly to the _geographic region_ > that is Europe. He will most likely go to what is called Western Europe, or > the EU.

Even Western Europe has huge differences in buying power (contrast Germany with Spain, e.g.). You mention the EU... The EU includes Eastern European countries such as Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, etc.

Point is, facts matter - especially if you're building a business.

<comment><USER33> If you're going to base all your thing on a totally unrealistic vision of Europe then yeah, your points stand.

But so we're clear, all the points the original article was making was about Europe as a an economic entity, most likely not including the likes of Ruasia and Kazakhstan (which you're obviously not afraid to do to reach that quite ludicrous and irrelevant figure of 750+ million people).

At this rate you might as well include all of Africa and Asia in Europe too.

<comment><USER71> Russia and Kazakhstan (and also Turkey) are transcontinental countries with parts in Europe:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_transcontinental_countr...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_transcontinental_countries)

The population of Europe is 739 million and going by the number of Russians I meet here in Scotland and on holiday in France and the Med they seem to be joining in pretty well with the European cultural milieu...

I suspect people from outside of Europe don't appreciate how much things have changed in the last 25 years - all for the better as far as I can see:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> Created an account just to state this: tech people please don't go into discussing politics / economics. Brits want to exit EU because of wars in the past? This is ridiculous!

What about the real reasons: 1\. Britain has 70% of its laws created by the EU by burocrats who were never voted into the office and can't be voted out of the office: Barroso (President of the European Commission) and Von Rumpoy (whatever his name - never elected President of the UE). 70% of British laws are created by unelected foreigners who definitely don't share their anglo- saxon heritage, focusing more on Germany-centered economic views.

Germany has always been goods producer. UK has always been a trading nation. You say forcing UK to obey Teutonian laws will prevent future wars and upheaval and I'm telling you it may as well cause them (look at another country not consistent with German economic policies: Greece)

Not to mention other things: UK is banned from entering into trade treaties with Canada, Australia, India, and the US - their historical partners - EU has to do it for them! They have to accept EU imposed anti-British customs with India, Australia and Canada because by the EU law they have to trade openly with EU and mustn't with Anglo-Saxon world. And economically - this is killing them. EU exports into UK much more than UK into EU. Why bother? It's not like they will loose business once outside of the block.

And other things - newly passed EU laws that will basically kill London's stock exchange and investment banks to keep German tax payers happy.

THIS and not history of wars is the cause of 2 in 3 Britons being in favor of EU exit. It's just bad business for them and their economy and nobody in the EU seem to care. As long as the Chancellor is happy.

<comment><USER73> > Germany has always been goods producer. UK has always been a trading nation

Yeah, why has the UK then stopped trading?

Btw., I live in a German Hansestadt, which for centuries has been trading with all the known world. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanseatic_League>

The UK can't trade with the US? Haha, what a joke.

Let's face it: the UK has focused on its financial 'industry' and has sold products of questionable quality.

<comment><USER74> The Hanseatic league stretched from England to Novgorod, and highlights the strong need for small independent sovereign city states, rather than top-heavy bureaucracies like the EU.

The EU is an attempt by the European political classes to copy all the worst parts of the US political system, while ignoring the traditions of political liberty that (used to) make the US actually work.

Having said that, I am hopeful that once the EU finally collapses, Europe will be blessed with a lot of small independent competing nation states, so there will be some hope for liberty if the US continues along the path of becoming a modern Byzantium.

<comment><USER73> > The Hanseatic league stretched from England to Novgorod

The Hansa Teutonica had its capital in Lübeck.

One possible future of the EU is a union of regions, not nations. The EU will take over much of what the current nations think they are.

> I am hopeful that once the EU finally collapses

Neither you nor I will see the EU collapse. Just the opposite. It might even expand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> Then stop comparing things like healthcare in a country of less than 10 million to one with 300 million+

</comment><comment><USER76> My 2c, is stop trying to be one nation then. The EU zone is something of a fiasco and its really killing the entire zone with countries like Turkey and Greece. Don't blame us .. blame your governing body for making it difficult to operate in Europe.

<comment><USER71> Turkey isn't in the EU.

<comment><USER38> They've been struggling to become a part of the EU, though. Could be what he meant.

<comment><USER9> Seemed more that he was giving an example of how Turkey was a country that was pulling the Eurozone down from within... illustrating the depth of his understanding of the geography and economy of the region...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you test your responsive design during development? - <AUTHOR>

Let's say you are building a PHP website in a local environment, what do you use to quickly test the responsiveness on different resolutions and maybe on real devices? <comment><USER2> You can use simulators. [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/responsive- web-des...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/responsive-web-design- tes/objclahbaimlfnbjdeobicmmlnbhamkg?hl=en)

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this question exclusively about web development or not?

I'm developing game UIs and usually trying to keep them responsive. The quickest way to test it is to resize the game window while it's running.</comment>


Marc Andreessen tweets about YO - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/479521450869551104

<comment><USER2> So you could use YO like you would a missed call, maybe to get around the charge of a text, but if you're on a smartphone, there's already plenty of free texting apps. WhatsApp, Line, Telegram… You can just send short messages though those instead. They aren't any more expensive…</comment>


New phone includes web, email, translator, coffee maker, and harmonica - <AUTHOR> http://www.pomegranatephone.com It's bold, it's funny, it's not real, but I want one anyway. <comment><USER2> It should probably be noted that this is not a real phone but rather some sort of abstract promotion for Nova Scotia, Canada.

<comment><USER3> More info:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomegranate_(phone)> <http://www.pomegranatephone.com/novascotia.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nova Scotia: Where you can purchase coffee makers, razors and harmonicas.

I guess you'd be proud of those things if you were next to New Brunswick too.

</comment><comment> Ye-Ha LOL - it's a cute commercial - probably meant to become viral.

<comment><USER5> It did, sort of, about a year ago

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it's an old link. I didn't see it then. Mea culpa!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like the harmonica feature! LOL!

</comment><comment><USER7> I was really excited for the coffee maker before I thought more about it. If i'm in a place where there is clean drinking water, chances are there's already a coffee maker there. None the less I would buy this phone if it was in the market, and I would pay great sums of money for it.</comment>


The physics of floating screwdrivers [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAYP6pWrdkc <comment><USER2> Whats super interesting to me is how this system becomes dynamically stable. In the pure thick shaft version, it looks like the jet is centered on about 1/4 of the way down the shaft - so it should be imparting torque on the whole thing, but the fluid dynamics are enough to keep it at what appears to be a pretty constant angle.

Also, as a note about the golf ball comment (this seems to happen quite a lot), nothing he said was wrong, but there's slightly a bit more nuance going on. For a sphere (since we're talking golf balls) in a given flow, there will be a point along the ball will the flow will detach and form eddies and the mentioned low pressure zone behind the ball causing additional drag. By adding dimples, you introduce turbulence into the boundary flow that basically gives it enough momentum to keep up with the ball for longer, letting it stick the ball and therefore separate later - therefore lesser losses through that pressure drag.

The reason why we don't dimple everything flying through the air is that adding turbulence to the boundary flow also increases the amount of drag on the object (so called skin friction drag). The act of adding dimples may either increase or decrease total net drag depending on the exact parameters of the object and the flow.

It just happens that for golf balls flying through atmosphere, typical drive velocities are right in the range where adding dimples causes noticeable net reduction in drag.

<comment><AUTHOR> It works for cars too:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR5SlwNf4K0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR5SlwNf4K0)

<comment><USER3> Then why the fuselage of an airplane is smooth?

<comment><USER4> [http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/109395/why- arent-...](http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/109395/why-arent- airplanes-like-golf-balls)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very interesting, consider how heavy that screwdriver is.

What would be a ratio of a cost of electricty (to blow an air) to the weight of an object it can raise?

Could this be used as initial propeler to raise a rocket high enough to use this technique as a "first stage engine" in flying object out into space?

<comment><USER6> > Could this be used as initial propeler to raise a rocket high enough to use > this technique as a "first stage engine" in flying object out into space?

I don't really see how. You'd need some kind of gigantic and fairly stable platform to shoot the jet from - if you have that, it would be easier to just launch the rocket from that.

And you're forgetting the fact that we seldom just launch stuff "into space" \- we want it in orbit. Only about 20% of the delta-v budget of a typical launch to orbit is the "vertical" component, the large majority is spent on attaining angular ("sideways") velocity. So you'd be doing an awful lot of work just to cut down that 20% by, say, a quarter - it's simply not worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> A question and a comment:

1\. How much of the lift is caused just by the air pushing up?

2\. The turbulence caused by a square back is (I think) why rear windows should be closed in a pickup - prevents the exhaust from coming in.

<comment><USER8> 1\. All of it. A difference in air pressure is just an abstraction for talking about forces on air particles. The description of what's going on with the screwdriver would be equivalent physically and much more intuitive if air pressure wasn't mentioned at all.

What's going on is the curved back pulls air around it, which deflects it downward, and that downward force on the air implies an upward force on the screwdriver. With the sharp edge back, this detaches the air flow instead, meaning there's much less deflection, and thus less force.

The air-deflection model is a much better intuition pump than the air pressure model. I think the historical dominance of the air pressure model is because it's easier to measure - just stick some air pressure gauges on surfaces, and you can calculate what that means for lift.

<comment><USER9> I guess it differs between people, what is easier to grasp :) . Pressure of air makes a real physical force (actually, pressure is defined as that total force divided by area). At the same time deflection downward, which implies an upward force, is correct but doesn't show the mechanism how actually that implied force is born. It is born out of the difference of pressure between top of the screwdriver and the bottom - at the bottom you have more or less undisturbed ambient pressure, at the top the flow reduces the pressure.

What was interesting to me is Ben's experiment with long enough cone which failed to get lift. Shouldn't be so, I think. The problem could be that his air jet is relatively narrow - so with a long cone, which makes an angle with the stream not the whole cone gets flown over, and not the whole area is under the reduced pressure. It would be very interesting to see if a wider air jet would still fail to lift the long tapered cone.</comment></comment></comment>


TechCrunch Rumor: Facebook First Big Site To Really Embrace OpenID - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/27/facebook-first-big-site-to-really-embrace-openid/

<comment><USER2> I'm not disputing the 'rumor' part, but what other "Big Sites" make use of OpenID?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, TechCrunch got the "big sites" wrong as well as the importance of being an issuing party. Being a relying party is useless to FB's 200+ million users.</comment></comment>


Dice Tech Salary Survey [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://marketing.dice.com/pdf/Dice_TechSalarySurvey_2015.pdf

<comment><USER2> Although it would have been tough to quantify, I would have loved to see some sort of analysis regarding culture in certain areas versus others, and maybe how that influences hours worked (overtime too), compensation, growth of companies, etc.

I only bring this up as I had the opportunity to visit with about a dozen businesses in Silicon Valley a few weeks back and one of the biggest things I noticed was the "all-inclusive" company culture.</comment>


Ask HN: Macbook Air for Development? - <AUTHOR> hello, I am thinking of replacing my dell xps 15 (9550) - 32gb/uhd touchscreen display.
I use vs code and sometimes visual studio or intellij (scala/java)
I don't think I have ever used more than about 12gb ram even when pushing the system with vm's and with docker nowadays i don't get anywhere near that.
Does anyone else use a macbook air (8gb) - at about £900 they seem much more reasonably priced than mac book pro's - if I ever did need to do any real heavy lifting I could use my old xps. <comment><USER2> I don't know how tied you are to macOS, but I had an Apple gift card and thought about the Air, instead tried an iPad Pro to see what it was about. Returned it and got a Surface Go. What's this got to do with your question? Well after getting the Go, I realized that the larger Surface tablet is actually much closer to the form factor I'm interested in. Light, runs an OS and apps. With WSL and soon WSL2 it will feel much more unixy.

</comment><comment><USER3> Every time I get an underpowered developer laptop in the interests of mobility I regret it. When you do hit the ceiling, you end up doing some wierd workaround e.g. 'I'll just run all my docker on a server'. The sacrifice for the workaround is not accetable long term.

If you need mobility, my suggestion is to get a powerful laptop without caring about mobility much, and a little netbook for road work.

</comment><comment><USER4> There's a significant (IMHO) difference in CPU between the Air (2 core i5-8210Y) and the 13" Pro (4 core i5-8279U).

</comment><comment><USER5> BestBuy is selling MBA 2018 16GB/512GB for $1,150 since yesterday... I bought one.

Performance wise, it is definitely not as good as MBP line, especially now with MBP base line quad-core CPUs.

I was using MBP 13 2015 with similar Geekbench score as this MBA, so I think it's going to be okay.

</comment><comment><USER6> The Air is a 7 watt dual-core CPU, your Dell is 45 watt quad core. The ram might be comparable but any compilation, build, vm startup etc will be significantly slower. You could still code on it but you're going to be much more constrained.</comment>


An Erlang WAT-story about guards and guards - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@elbrujohalcon/there-are-guards-and-guards-71e67d4975d7#.7yc664pkc <comment><USER2> In erlang 'and' has higher priority than comparisons. So 'is_integer(X) and X > 0' is interpreted as '(is_integer(X) and X) > 0'. 'andalso' has lower priority than comparisons so it is interpreted as we expect.

</comment><comment><USER3> I really don't understand the aversion?, lack of use? of parenthesis. Back in college (before C++ was released to give you time scale) some C class, spent a lot of time on operator precedence. I was like, why bother? Just use parens, be explicit, clear and never ever have to learn or be bit by any language's precedence ever!

Ever.

</comment><comment><USER4> Just FYI. Brujo is close to being expert in Erlang. This post is a more of a "warning for juniors" than "damn, today I've discovered something new".

And there is nothing really WAT about it. Just part of rather simple Erlang language grammar.

<comment><USER5> I would argue that the precedence priority is kinda a wat-moment. Most other languages[0][1] have the logical operators `and`, `or` and `not` in the lowest (or near) priority, which makes much more sense IMHO.

If you'd dismiss the above, then I guess one could also argue that JavaScript returning an empty string on `[] + []` is also not a wat moment, but just part of the JavaScript grammar.

[0] [http://kevincantu.org/code/operators.html](http://kevincantu.org/code/operators.html)

[1] [http://www.tutorialspoint.com/python/operators_precedence_ex...](http://www.tutorialspoint.com/python/operators_precedence_example.htm)

<comment><USER6> It is definitely an oddity that it's and/andalso instead of &&/and.

Similar to the fact that shell and perl swap == versus eq; that causes me no end of confusion switching between the two.

Though nothing will ever be as upsetting as the period when I used QBASIC at school and BBC BASIC at home. Number of times my attempts to use COLOUR compiled first time? Not even once.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I always use ',' and ';' in guards. Maybe I'm weird but it feels wrong using the short-circuit operators knowing that guards are always short-circuited anyway. Also they take up too much space :)

<comment><USER8> Erlang makes much more sense if you've had experience with Prolog.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Reminded me of `and`, `or`, etc. precedence in PHP, e.g. [http://php.net/manual/en/language.operators.precedence.php#1...](http://php.net/manual/en/language.operators.precedence.php#117390)</comment>


Ask HN: What would you do to 10x an existing business? - <AUTHOR> Imagine you have an existing business at your hands. You have one or more products, some cash in the bank and a customer base of a few hundred B2B customers.
If you had 12 months to 10x the revenue / profit - what would you do? What steps would you try?
If you had 3 years, would you do something different? <comment><USER2> Target about 5% week on week growth. If you have $1000 in sales this week, you'll want $1050 in sales next week, $1200 weekly sales in a month, , $12,600 weekly in a year.

This is actually a very conservative growth chart. Personally if I couldn't get 7% week on week growth, I'd worry about my business model.

If you can just hit this, you'll be fine.

If you don't, this is where all the startup frameworks kick in. You can set up a Business Model Canvas, look at whether your assumptions are correct. Attack either the low hanging fruit or the riskiest assumption. If you can fix the highest risk items, you can usually start generating good growth without any paid marketing.

Normally the problem is that the business hasn't hit product-market fit. Either the product isn't good enough, or it hasn't been able to expand or pitch itself into the market. When you hit product market fit, you'll be dealing with some crazy growth and struggle to keep up.

</comment><comment><USER3> answer would be it very much depends, some considerations that I would want to know:

\- big difference between 10x revenue vs profit, what's the current cost basis / margin in the product? \- evaluating current marketing efforts, how much demand is from inbound vs outbound, what's working and what's not \- pricing, is the product being priced correctly \- cost factors: support, infrastructure, salary, anything around cost of goods sold \- what's the current revenue base? I would argue going from 100k MRR -> 1m MRR is a lot easier than going from 1m -> 10MM, that requires a lot more coordination and most likely enterprise customers \- existing customer base, do I have success selling into some enterprise vs selling into longtail b2b segment

if I just had 1 year, I would be biased towards trying to focus on my core products and growing them, however if I don't have a large enough addressable market and I needed to 10x in 12 months, then I would focus much more on product development +R&D

if I had 3 years, I think the strategy would be similar, but with longer time spans to test different strategies

</comment><comment><USER4> Assuming it's a somewhat mature product, I'd suggest reading "It's not luck" by Eliyahu M. Goldratt. It's aimed at mature companies, but it has several ideas worth investigating such as segmenting the market

</comment><comment><USER5> It depends on how serious this question is.

If you're dead serious, I'll allocate a certain % of the current revenue to buy puts/calls on a public company, and hope I'm right.

Why? Because if I knew a way to 10X the profit, I'd already done so.

</comment><comment><USER6> It depends on what you are growing at right now. If you are doing 10x YOY, keep doing the same.

If you are doing 10% YOY then going to Vegas and betting it all on red would be a good choice.

<comment><USER7> Sounds good. It's what the FedEx founder did with the remaining company money. They had only one week left of runaway, he gambled it and it seems to have worked [http://for-starters.com/from-grade-c-to-the-skies-fedex- stor...](http://for-starters.com/from-grade-c-to-the-skies-fedex-story/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would look to improve the pricing strategy. You wouldn't believe how a few changes to a pricing page can improve a business' bottom line.

</comment><comment><USER9> Go get 20x the customers. Go and sell everyday.</comment>


The Unscalable, Deadlock-Prone, Thread Pool - <AUTHOR> https://pvk.ca/Blog/2019/02/25/the-unscalable-thread-pool/ <comment><USER2> I wrote a parallel image processing tool (in Swift) that essentially uses Grand Central Dispatch on macOS to process all files in a directory.

I hit the problem that GCD would happily let me enqueue tasks for processing, but each task would need quite an important amount of memory and GPU resources (because it would use CoreFilters that support GPU acceleration "when available"), which made the computer hit swap and slow to a crawl once the available RAM was exhausted.

I had to create an Admission Control component that would let me enqueue tasks only if there was enough memory left to process the image without risking swap, and that part isn't as trivial as it seems, as getting the amount of available memory for a process is a bit vague on UNIX/macOS/Linux since many OSes of this kind assume you can allocate an infinite amount of memory (see linux's overcommit system) and that the Virtual Memory system will do the right thing for you. Also nobody can guess if physical RAM is going to be allocated by some other process somewhere, so I used a fairly conservative heuristic that probably left some small amount of resources unused most of the time, but would almost never slow to a crawl. Not perfect, but "good enough".

<comment><USER3> Right - we need holistic scheduling systems that balance all resources and tasks. For example scheduling an IO heavy-task alongside a compute-heavy task and letting them both run well, rather than picking two compute-heavy tasks at the same time, and only scheduling as many tasks as there is RAM, IO, and other resource capacity for to use productively. Lots of people are trying because at data-centre scale and with serverless that lets you run code wherever they want this could be a huge advantage... not sure how much success yet.

<comment><USER4> I wonder if something as simple as tagging would give a huge benefit towards that. I should know if my job uses lots of memory(often I know exactly how much), or IO, or CPU.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Node suffers similar problems, although I would describe them differently to the author.

Essentially:

1\. All Node's async IO is lumped together into the same threadpool.

2\. There is no distinction between the nature of each async IO task.

3\. Async CPU tasks (fs.stat hitting the fs cache, async multi-core crypto, async native addons) complete orders of magnitude faster than async disk tasks (SSD or HDD), and these can be orders of magnitude faster than async network tasks (dns requests to a broken dns server).

4\. There are three basic async performance profiles, fast (CPU), slow (disk), very slow (dns), but Node has no concept of this.

5\. This leads to the Convoy effect. Imagine what happens when you race trucks, cars, and F1... all on the same race track.

6\. The threadpool has a default size of only 4 threads, on the assumption that this reflects the typical number of CPU cores (and reduces context switches).

7\. 4 threads is a bad default because it leads to surprising behavior (4 slow dns requests to untrusted servers are enough to DoS the process).

8\. 4 threads is a bad default because libuv's memory cost of 128 threads is cheap.

9\. 4 threads is a bad default because it prevents the CPU scheduler from running async CPU tasks while slow disk and slower DNS tasks are running. Concurrent CPU tasks should rather be limited to the number of cores available, while concurrent disk and DNS tasks should be given more than the number of cores available (context switches are better amortized for these).

10\. Because everything is conflated, hard concurrency limits can't be enforced on fast, slow or slower tasks. It's all or nothing.

There are efforts underway to support multiple threadpools in Node (a threadpool for fast tasks sized to the number of cores, a threadpool for slow tasks sized larger, and a threadpool for slower tasks also sized larger). The goal is to get to the point where we can have separate race tracks in Node, with F1, cars and trucks on separate race tracks, controlled and raced to their full potential:

[https://github.com/libuv/libuv/pull/1726](https://github.com/libuv/libuv/pull/1726)

<comment><USER6> This is a common misconception. Node (libuv) only uses the thread pool as a last resort. Many operations nowadays have a native async OS API, so they don't need to use (and therefor don't block/fill) the thread pool.

[https://medium.com/the-node-js-collection/what-you-should- kn...](https://medium.com/the-node-js-collection/what-you-should-know-to- really-understand-the-node-js-event-loop-and-its-metrics-c4907b19da4c#07f5)

[https://stackoverflow.com/a/22644735/4208018](https://stackoverflow.com/a/22644735/4208018)

<comment><USER5> "Node (libuv) only uses the thread pool as a last resort."

When did you last read deps/uv/src/win/fs.c or deps/uv/src/unix/fs.c?

If by "last resort" you mean 99.9% of all async fs tasks, then I would agree with you.

<comment><USER7> isn't that because OSes have broken async filesystem APIs that can't be trusted?

But network requests (like dns) have well defined APIs for async, and should never be required to block a thread, and therefore do not need a threadpool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Title is misleading. The author seems to mask what they're saying in a way that makes it really easy to conclude that their point is "Thread pools are bad, so I'll show you a better way." In fact, the proposed better way is ThreadPools(tm).

In fact, "The Unscalable, Deadlock-Prone, Thread Pool" is only referring to a badly used ThreadPool. Like, really badly: the strawman that forms the crux of the argument is that you are only using the same ThreadPool for all of your disparate forms of work.

> My favourite approach assigns one global thread pool (queue) to each > function or processing step.

Yes, creating different thread pools for different kinds of work is a much better way to use them...

<comment><USER9> The .NET libraries make it easy to use the default thread pool (a single pool). If other libraries are similar, then I wouldn't consider this a complete straw man.

<comment><USER10> Yes, but the .NET thread pool is auto-tuning, although very badly, with at least a second latency to increased workload. For bursty requests that could be done within a few hundred milliseconds it is a bad fit. But you can't DOS your batch processing server so easily.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This feels language specific. Java has excellent thread support for example, it's quite hard to build an application that deadlocks.

Thread-per-request is how everything used to be done. Most languages switched to pools because of huge fork/threading overhead.

Other languages have embraced async programming to deal with these issues, and use thread-per-core. But that introduces some fairly awkward coding constructions itself.

I believe the best approach is transparent fiber support. Java's Project Loom is a very ambitious attempt at this. And if you're okay with a "hacky" solution, you can already use fibers with Quasars code generation.

In java at least, the biggest barrier to fiber support is existing libraries not supporting it (looking at you JDBC/JPA). Hopefully project loom will make existing code work with little or no modifications

<comment><USER12> The issue the OP is addressing covers your comment quite well. Async continuations, coroutines, and fibers can all race ahead and exhaust memory/DB connections/network sockets, or just saturate the IO subsystem. In a multi- step process this can easily lead to starvation in downstream steps.

The point of structuring an application this way is to prevent any one stage of your pipeline from consuming too many resources or stalling other stages (or just hammering some other system with requests that will inevitably timeout).

I don't see how your comment about fiber support in Java applies.

<comment><USER13> I'd love to learn how to design this way, any reading ?

<comment><USER14> I wrote a full stack implementation for Ruby: [https://github.com/socketry/async](https://github.com/socketry/async)

Come and chat here: [https://gitter.im/socketry/async](https://gitter.im/socketry/async)

TruffleRuby folks are trying to support us using native fibers in the JVM, but I'm not sure when that will be working.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The author spends a lot of time describing the problem, and not a lot on the solution.

The solution proposed seems to be some variant on dataflow programming: <[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dataflow_programming>](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dataflow_programming>) Am I misunderstanding?

<comment><USER16> _Once the problem has been identified, the solution becomes obvious: make sure the work we push to thread pools describes the resources to acquire before running the code in a dedicated thread.

My favourite approach assigns one global thread pool (queue) to each function or processing step. The arguments to the functions will change, but the code is always the same, so the resource requirements are also well understood. _

I think I get what he's saying. To avoid one stage in the multi-step computation acquiring too many resources and starving other stages:

\- Cap the resources used by each stage.

\- Create one threadpool per stage.

\- Include sufficient information in pending jobs that the threadpool can calculate the resources needed to process each job.

\- Only start a job running when it can be run without exceeding resource cap for the stage.

Conceptually, you can think of it as pre-allocating a bundle of resources to each processing stage: threads, memory, etc. Each processing stage then runs as many jobs concurrently as it can with the allocated bundle of resources. That's the idea, but in reality each job allocates its own resources from a common pool that is shared among all the processing stages, so the processing stage has to calculate how much memory, etc. each job _will_ allocate before giving it a thread to run on.

<comment><USER17> So does it boil down to "grab all your locks upfront, if you can't then yield them all back"?

<comment><USER16> Pretty much, plus if you're even running, you have high confidence that lock acquisition will succeed, because the entity that gave you a thread to run on has checked that all the resources you need are available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> For some use cases, I like the approach of having a fixed number of main, long lived threads/processes at runtime (which matches the number of CPU cores on the machine to minimize context-switching). Where possible, the threads/processes are themseves responsible for picking up the work that must be done. Each thread/process can use hashing/sharding to figure out which portion of the state they are responsible for and only operate on those parts. These kinds of threads should be handling the vast majority of the work. But of course, for this to be possible, the work needs to be parallelizable (servers/sockets make a good use case).

If you have occasional I/O tasks which don't require much CPU (e.g. disk I/O), you can use a separate threadpool for those since the context switching penalty will be minimal. Context switching is mostly a problem when all the threads/processes are using a lot (and equal amount) of CPU. If a very heavy thread/process has to share CPU with a very lightweight thread/process, the context switching penalty is not significant.

<comment><USER19> My experience (on Linux) is that:

\- if you have lots of short-lived cpu-intensive tasks then a pool with one or two threads per cpu core (depending on how SMT works for you on your hardware) works well

\- if you have lots of long-lived cpu-intensive tasks then just give each task a thread and let the OS schedule them

\- if you have lots of io tasks, don't use threads; async io is a massive win

\- if you have lots of io tasks on aws then you have to have high core counts even if they all sit idle because of the way credits are divvied up; even with massive brought iops you don't get good io on aws compared to, say, the cheap laptop you do dev on ;)

I am so so so tempted to go into a particular mysql storage engine that my day job often relies upon and move it from one-thread-per-core to async io. Obviously that's a pipe-dream but the wins would be massive (on linux, on aws blah blah)

Having made this list I can see there are so many cravats that I'm not sure generalizations get anyone very far, sadly. Its like the same server software has really different performance characteristics on different cloud providers vs dedicated hardware etc etc.

<comment><USER18> The exact terminology probably depends on your programming environment as well. I'm using Node.js now and async IO (e.g. for disk access) uses a threadpool behind the scenes but these threads use very little CPU: they're mostly idle in fact; their only two responsibilities are to start the IO operation then send back the data to the parent process when the IO completes so these threads use almost no CPU so they're not a problem but I guess it depends on how heavily they are used. Node.js is not really designed to be a DB engine though so this design works well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > Once the problem has been identified, the solution becomes obvious: make > sure the work we push to thread pools describes the resources to acquire > before running the code in a dedicated thread. ... My favourite approach > assigns one global thread pool (queue) to each function or processing step.

The author seems to do a remarkable job of basically describing actors without mentioning the word "actor". I use GPars [1] with Groovy which explicitly supports exactly what they talk about in a very elegant manner. You create a variety of actors and allocate them to different parallel groups so they cannot starve each other of resources, and most of these issues become controllable.

Perhaps it is the Lisp context that resists lumping state into the equation, since Actors usually carry state?

[1] [http://www.gpars.org/](http://www.gpars.org/)

<comment><USER21> Well yeah, Go channels/goroutines too, et al.

The problem isn't just partition of opaque work on threads though, but how to schedule work so that resources other than threads are used efficiently.

GPars etc don't cover that.

</comment></comment><comment> Const-me > The moment we perform I/O… both the futures and the generic thread pool > models fall short.

On Windows they usually work fine. OS kernel support is the key. OS-provided thread pool scales really well. I'm talking about the modern one from threadpoolapiset.h, StartThreadpoolIo / SubmitThreadpoolWork API functions.

> we might want to limit network requests going to individual hosts, > independently from disk reads or writes, or from database transactions.

There're APIs like ReleaseSemaphoreWhenCallbackReturns and SetEventWhenCallbackReturns.

</comment><comment><USER22> This sounds an awful lot like SEDA, but my memory of it is too fuzzy to see whether the differences might be.

<comment><USER23> Author does reference SEDA is one of the footnotes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Does he even know Rx observables?</comment>


Will Programmers Become Obsolete Because of AI? - <AUTHOR> https://www.techslang.com/will-programmers-become-obsolete-because-of-ai/ <comment><USER2> Hope so, then I can find something else to do.</comment>


Say "experts" instead of "smart people" (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://composition.al/blog/2015/04/30/say-experts-instead-of-smart-people/ <comment><USER2> A worthwhile read: [https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-death-of- experti...](https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-death-of- expertise-9780190469412?cc=us&lang=en&). Available from Amazon: [https://www.amazon.com/Death-Expertise-Campaign- Established-...](https://www.amazon.com/Death-Expertise-Campaign-Established- Knowledge/dp/0190469412).

Of course, there is a difference between "expert" and "expertise". Still, Nichol's book makes an interesting read.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you keep up with new technologies? - <AUTHOR>

I'm just curious how people on HN keep up with new technology. There are a lot of new shiny things constantly so it is sometimes hard to filter through the noise. Do you read theses (?) or books, do you create small projects in the languages that you want to learn, or any other way? Do you just ignore new technologies and continue to write code as you've always done? <comment><USER2> I've been doing this a LONG time...

At first I used to read all the dev sites and attend conventions, but at some point you can only focus on so many things.

Now I only follow languages I can write in. I tried RoR a few years ago, when it was hot and found I could do everything I needed to do better, with Python, PHP and JS. So what do I need it for?

I read HN, Reddit, go to some meetups, wired and some blogs are good too. But I mostly just learn new stuff when I need to.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right. I haven't been doing this for too long so I'm worried that one day I'll only have skills that will no longer be in high demand, but I agree about the focus - it's better to focus on a few things and do them good instead of knowing little about a lot. It's easy to get distracted though..</comment></comment>


Java Without the Boilerplate – Project Lombok - <AUTHOR> http://canoo.com/blog/2010/07/26/java-without-the-boilerplate-project-lombok/ <comment><USER2> Lombok is awesome. However, it's probably impossible to introduce into an environment that's even remotely enterprisey. The main problem with Lombok is that its future is very uncertain: Lombok works by replacing parts of the Java AST with their own modified classes. They gain access to the AST by (ab)using the ability to hook up your own annotation preprocessor. However, the (API of the) AST is unstable and no guarantees about it are given whatsoever. That means Lombok may break with every minor release of the java compiler, which means it will be hard to justify introducing it. I certainly didn't dare introducing it with any of my clients, back when I was still writing Java. If someone else has to deal with the code later on, and perhaps a decade from now: forget about it, until this kind of AST access is standardized and supported by Oracle.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ctrl + Shift + /(on numpad) works enough for me to hide boilerplate code on Eclipse. We also lose ability to add annotations (say for validation on Struts action classes) to the getters/setters.</comment>


Seeed is a place to discuss the business of web applications - <AUTHOR> http://seeed.org/

<comment><USER2> Did anyone else look at these guys' app they link to (<http://litmusapp.com/>)? Talk about muck and brass! Definitely worth a look for anyone worried about cross-platform presentation.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like the idea of a digest. I was recently thinking about how smartly edited digests might be increasingly important.

On the landing page -- "focussed" should be "focused".

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just seemed like is has/will have some interesting content people might be interested in. I didn't mean it as a replacement.

</comment><comment><USER4> Can't we discuss that here?</comment>


Can We Find Better Software Development Metaphors? - <AUTHOR> http://richsunderland.wordpress.com/2014/12/16/can-we-find-better-software-development-metaphors/

<comment><USER2> Quote: "If no one cares when someone takes the trouble to do things right, nothing changes."

That's it. There are so many great development methods, best practices. But does someone care if I skip some integration tests? Or if I do lousy documentation / don't update comments when changing the code?</comment>