Why are CEOs failing software engineers? - <AUTHOR> https://iism.org/article/why-are-ceos-failing-software-engineers-56 <comment><USER2> I'm surprised they didn't look at Walt Disney for how to run a successful creative company. His ideas apply equally well to software as they do to the arts.

I've been watching the documentaries on Disney+, particularly The Imagineering Story (great doc BTW). They talk about the history of the creative side of Disneyland.

What you learn is that when they are simply given a budget and told "build" they thrive. When a CFO type gets involved with Disney, suddenly their output drops, because that CEO is asking what the ROI is for everything they do. A lot of what they do fails and has no ROI, and the people that work there start to worry about what their ROI will be before they start working.

When the CEO just says "We're going to spend X% on research, here is the budget" then they thrive again.

I think this is applicable to software. When an engineer isn't asked to think about the ROI ahead of time, they are left free to come up with novel innovations. But if they know they will be judged on ROI, they will take fewer risks.

This of course is all predicated on being a profitable company. You have to already have a good cashflow to have the freedom to say "just go create".

<comment><USER3> Within the last 5-10 years, Disney outsourced entire technology divisions using the H1-B visa program and forced employees to train their replacements for their last 90 days or forgo severance.

A former Disney IT employee testified before Congress, at times crying while he recounted the experience of being let go and having to personally train his replacement.[0]

Whatever Walt Disney was doing back in the day doesn't seem to apply anymore, at least based on your description of what a successful creative company looks like. To me, this looks ruthless and manipulative.

0: [https://www.computerworld.com/article/3038292/former- disney-...](https://www.computerworld.com/article/3038292/former-disney-it- worker-to-congress-how-can-you-allow-this.html)

<comment><USER4> Throwaway because I wouldn't be surprised if Disney retaliated because of this post.

As a person who recently joined the Disney org not by choice, I wouldn't wish Disney on my worst enemies. Seems like OP bought into Disney's propaganda hook, line, and sinker.

Take the CFO types example and dial that to 19. You can't even buy a sandwich without Disney corporate asking for the ROI of it. Want to use a different programming language? An OSS library? A SASS vendor? Please get approvals from legal and finance with ROI estimates. Nevermind the yearly dance to justify why engineers you already have should still stay on payroll. Contracts and employment are cancelled by default at the end of the year unless management makes a case on ROI for every head. Software projects to them are like movies, once it's "done", the people involved can kindly fuck right off.

This isn't just limited to the technology side, I have friends throughout the creative side in both film and parks divisions. Every hour of their time has to be accounted for and approved up the management chain, every project must be forecast with sufficient ROI before start, and will be cancelled without notice the moment it there's a hint of missing expectations.

Even getting a H1-B replacement is luxury that you have to fight for. H1-B is still more expensive than a contractor in a developing country under one of Disney's international divisions.

The magic of Disney is the boatloads of people who continue to _want_ to work for Disney despite all this.

<comment><USER5> > Want to use a different programming language? An OSS library? A SASS vendor? > Please get approvals from legal and finance with ROI estimates.

This is true of all of enterprise IT though. It's not due to "CFO types" getting involved, it's just part of operating at scale in a public company where your tool choices have an impact on long-term support and governance/controls. I don't begrudge technologists who are chafed by this, but it's inherent to the category and not particular to a single corporate entity.

<comment><USER6> Found this comment really strange, I work at a far smaller company and not only would they ask that they'd be laughing at me the whole time while doing it. These aren't the sort of things even nimble companies take lightly and without a lot of discussion and review.

<comment><USER4> These would be things that would have to be escalated to an SVP or above to be brought to an equivalent on the business side. In just about every company I've had experience with, these type of decisions stay within engineering and rarely need to involve lower executives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting but weird.

CEO's aren't failing software engineers, no more than software engineers are failing the cafeteria crew by using too much ketchup.

If they are failing, they are failing the business. There's evidence of significant problems in business/management philosophy, as the consensus is that you need to optimize for now, and later is somebody else's problem. That has nothing to do with software engineers.

Technology people sometimes get this worldview that they are the sun, and the universe revolves around them. Hate to break the news, but no.

<comment><USER8> _There 's evidence of significant problems in business/management philosophy, as the consensus is that you need to optimize for now, and later is somebody else's problem._

Dead on. I've seen boards of directors ask for fried ice:

Management: We haven't put adequate time into building a sales training program.

Board: Focus only on revenue this quarter. It's the only thing that matters!

Then next quarter:

Board: Why aren't your new sales guys producing?! They need to drive revenue!

Management: Uh... you told us not to spend time on training.

<comment><USER9> Indeed. Ultimately it's the (specific incarnation of the) shareholder model of capitalism that's at fault. Shareholders have ultimate control of companies, and their incentives are aligned all wrong (to the short term).

<comment><USER10> Ultimately, "long-sighted" shareholders should be able to outperform the short-sited ones, as long as they can retain control of the company. I wonder if there's any way to form a sort of shareholders union to maintain the control of an organization by shareholders who plain to keep stock for a long time.

<comment><USER11> The two-class stock structure (ala Facebook and Google) is one experiment in this, but being able to establish such a structure depends on investors' appetite for it during IPO-time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't know solution for the entire IT industry but can suggest something for Corporate IT:

New IT staff should be given grounding in Business Curriculum relevant to the Corporate's business / Team's mandate - this ought to organized by upper level of IT management.

Software Developers / Engineers working in Corporate IT tend to stagnate in terms of their careers once they hit the wall (wall = business knowledge).

E.g., take an investment firm and within it, say IT Department XYZ Supports the firm's Private Equity investment team. It is easy for Software Engineers in the team to code up and provide Tech. solutions however for complex business cases where advanced Private Equity knowledge is required, the Software Engineers have to rely on the Business Analysts or the clients themselves to do hand-holding.

I have only seen something like 1 in 10 Software Developers in Corporate IT willing to pick up Business knowledge beyond the basic business terminology. And this is why I believe the value of Software Engineers at Corporate IT takes a serious hit - from CEO / Board / Upper layers of Finance, it looks like the drivers of revenue are basically their finance folks (CFAs, CPAs, Investors) whereas IT are just a cost center to enable the finance folks to do their work (which is a very bad vision but that is how it looks like from their POV). In these cases, the only group from IT that benefits somewhat are the top IT management who act as the guardians of the IT division.

Another thing that works against IT folks in Corporate IT is self-criticism (critical of current IT culture, constant itch to reinvent self), constant need to associate with low-paid/ low-educated professions (factory line worker analogy, plumber mentality) and appearing far too casual. Sure, jeans and T-shirts and having eccentric/artistic personality is the culture spawned from Tech stalwarts based in Silicon Valley, but that mentality does not translate into rest of the World. Even if the Corporate's HR policies allows for dress- down environment, guess what - the HR and Finance People typically appear well polished in their appearance - they rather have nice office lunch rather than pizza and pop chow-downs and you can't deny that as humans (especially if the CEO and top Execs are non-IT), it doesn't leave a very favorable opinion about the IT staff.

<comment><USER13> It's not just software, it's like that for every industry. There are some, usually large, group of people whether in sales/marketing/operations/etc who aren't particularly interested in the industry of their business but prefer to focus on the details of their task.

It's not wrong or bad at all, but it does tend to be compensated less.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't really like the idea that Need, Belief, Opportunity, and Anticipation are the drivers of engineering as opposed to money and personal growth. I'm not surprised though because these guys appear to be Scrum Consultants who want to tell software orgs they can improve productivity by paying them for "training" rather than paying employees more for work.

Ultimately what I want as a software engineer employee is my own personal success. I actually identify a lot more with their "Business Management" step: I want incentives to be aligned and I will be motivated to do great work if I feel like I can share in that success. Yes it's easier to get up in the morning if I'm working on something that's overall successful, but that would be negated if I couldn't get a piece of that.

This seems to fit into the more common trope that engineers are easily fooled into working for less pay than they should be getting through bullshit like "vision". Even if I'm working on something cool I'm not going to be happy to just make someone else rich. If I only cared about solving a problem I would just write OSS.

<comment><USER15> Your personal motivation appears to be entirely extrinsic. For a lot of people, the motivation is intrinsic.

After a certain amount of money, more money wouldn't bring me joy. Money is a floor, not a ceiling.

<comment><AUTHOR> I used to think this about myself (and I do still think money is a floor, not a ceiling). But I've come to realize that there are two monetary thresholds for me. A lower threshold after which more money doesn't bring me more joy, and a higher one (which is the real floor) which is compensation compared to others/the industry/the area. Although I try not to think this way, it's hard to feel recognized or appreciated when my compensation is much lower than others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Yes, CEOs are. That's why I wrote:

The Top 10 Things Executives Should Know About Software

[https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2019/7/237712-the- top-10-thin...](https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2019/7/237712-the- top-10-things-executives-should-know-about-software/fulltext)

<comment><USER17> Executives are shockingly idiotic about software development, and considering their business sinks or swims on the success of software in very very many cases, it is a major failing of MBA factories.

I actually consider software / IT management to be more important than accounting, and every MBA person takes finance/accounting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I enjoyed this article very much. I'd add that if you truly want the freedom to be creative, you may have to opt out of being an employee and choose the founder path instead. This nicely compliments pg's "You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss" essay: [http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html)

<comment><USER19> I opted out of being an employee and chose the founder path. I have very little time to be creative (the way I was, for example, when I was in graduate school or at Google).

For me, a large part of thinking creatively is about exposing myself to ideas outside of what I am actively supposed to be doing and then letting those ideas permeate through my thinking when I am working on what I am actively supposed to be doing.

Between talking to users, talking to customers, talking to investors, and perpetual catch-up on my product, I rarely find the space to think about things other than my business.

That said, we have definitely had dark moments that we came out of because of very creative ideas. It's just that creativity is nowhere near the top virtue required of a founder.

<comment><USER20> I know Bill Gates had his "think week", where he would block off an entire week every year to just read books and think.

Maybe you could do something similar? I'm sure you are very busy, but so was he.

<comment><USER19> Thanks for the suggestion, didn't know about think weeks. Love the idea, and reading is the thing that I miss most - used to read a LOT before moving to the Bay Area. These days, not so much.

At the very least, a think weekend. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> There is no reason to have a happy workforce when an unhappy workforce will do.

It's hard work keeping people engaged, everyone wants a different carrot. Everyone understands and fears the stick and it's easy to hire for - can you threaten people with a stick? Yes? Hired :)

We live in a wage slavery society with fewer jobs than there are people, _on purpose_.

It's not that CEOs are failing software engineers, it's that the current system of beliefs humans hold in sum, seems to be failing humanity as a whole (but then again, if we think this way, has it ever _not_ failed humanity?). Consider children digging through trash for food while billionaires fine dine discussing AI and space travel. I don't know what them rich folks believe, but it's inconsiderate of most of humanity's pain it seems.

</comment><comment><USER22> This post is atrociously bad. It seems like the author(s) are trying to come up with original ideas, but Steve Blank and Clayton Christensen have written much better works on this subject.

<comment><USER23> I agree it is poorly presented, which is why having others read and critique something is always helpful. That said, I don't believe it rises to the level of 'atrociously bad' :-).

The authors will come by and read this and dismiss it out of hand when you have a chance to help them get better at what they do (they recognize that failing to do something, in this case present their case clearly, can teach new skills)

So let's be a bit more proactive in the feedback okay?

The post bounces between background/foundation material and new material too rapidly. It can be over expository in background which may prevent the reader from connecting what background material/situation is being addressed by the new material. It fails to present a cogent summary of its thesis statement in the first paragraph, that comes in paragraph 3. Paragraphs 1 & 2 are nominally a problem statement in what reads as an obtuse jargon.

Now some of that is that the entire article feels like it is written for someone who has read all of their other articles and so there are many unexplained phrases which clearly have specific meanings. Statements like _" I promise you, in its entirety, the following is something you've never heard before, and the ramifications of ignoring the advice herein most assuredly leads to unhappy software engineers."_ exhibit a certain hubris that can be off putting to engineers and that isn't a great place to start.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Large corporations like Amazon offset tax liability with tax credits from huge R&D expenditures [1], and those can be "moonshots" or highly innovative products that change the world. The famous CEOs quoted in this article take full advantage of this and there is definitely room to get creative with how that money is spent.

A friend of mine working at <large tech megacorp> told me that it is not uncommon for them to assign product/eng teams to build novel, competing solutions to the same problem or product space, sometimes without even knowing about the existence of the other team(s).

Similarly, I've heard <other large tech megacorp> sends the green college new grads out to hack together products and innovate with new ideas as quickly as possible, and once they find product market fit, they hand over the project to the seasoned senior engineers to build it out at global scale.

These anecdotes might just be hearsay BS, but it does make me think: how creative can you get with R&D and who makes those decisions? In what ways do the CEO/CFOs play a constructive role in this process?

[1] [https://www.vox.com/2018/4/9/17204004/amazon-research- develo...](https://www.vox.com/2018/4/9/17204004/amazon-research-development- rd)

</comment><comment><USER25> This article focuses on work-processes and thought-processes that can be thought of as clear, explicit, rational, and goal-oriented. That's an important topic, and I found the article interesting, if a little long.

They define Creative Management like this:

" _Creative management is one of three dominant forms of value management. Its purpose is to establish a system of management that enables and motivates creative staff, such as software engineers, writers, designers and artists, to discover and realize new works of value._ "

It's an interesting thesis, but there a subtle nuance here, I think, which I would put like this:

For every clear, explicit, rational, and goal-oriented form of management, there are degenerate irrational forms, and Creative Management is more vulnerable to degenerate irrational forms than other forms of management.

Over the years, many of my blogs posts have gotten a lot of discussion on Hacker News, so some of you might remember my focus on irrational, destructive forms of management. In my book How To Destroy A Tech Startup ( [https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Three-Steps- eboo...](https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Three-Steps- ebook/dp/B0772FJQ1T/) ) I give details about two different startups that go off the rails because of the ego-driven nature of the decision making by top leaders.

But the point I'd like to make now is, compared to older management systems, which were somewhat more amenable to data modeling and feedback analysis, Creative Management opens the door to creativity, but also wish-fulfillment fantasy. (As a point of comparison, think about W. Edwards Deming and his very methodical statistical approach to reducing errors in a factory, and compare that to much more open ended process of inventing, say for instance, a sui generis interface.)

Please note, I'm not saying Creative Management is a bad concept, but I am saying it has large pitfalls for which we do not yet have standard answers.

Having said all that, there are some good books that have really looked at failures in the world of software, and ways the process can be improved. The books of Robert Glass are excellent, and I've posted a long excerpt of one of my favorite of his stories here:

[http://www.smashcompany.com/business/the-worst-software- proj...](http://www.smashcompany.com/business/the-worst-software-project- failure-ever)

<comment><USER26> As an aside, I read your book some time back and found it compelling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Interesting perspective.

Note to author: it might be worth moving the "How are CEOs failing software engineers?" section to the beginning of the article. With a title like "Why are CEOs failing software engineers?", the first thing i want to know is _how_ the CEOs are failing. Only afterwards do i care about the _why_. This felt a bit like i was thrown head-first into a new framework for classifying types of management before I could figure out whether or not I wanted to learn about it.

Aside from the structure, really interesting piece!

</comment><comment><USER28> Classically trained CEO's don't use the language of makers. They use language that describes cashflow, savings, and debt. They are accountants at heart (who are beholden to shareholders -- not their employees).

Just look at the language used to describe a successful CEO 'sprinter' by Harvard Business Review ([https://hbr.org/2018/01/the-fastest-path-to-the-ceo- job-acco...](https://hbr.org/2018/01/the-fastest-path-to-the-ceo-job- according-to-a-10-year-study)) :

"In his late twenties, "James" was hired in a strategy and business development role inside a multibillion-dollar marketing and communications business. Early in his career, he was offered the chance to build out one of the new businesses. It felt like a demotion, or at best a lateral move, to be handed a blank org chart and a highly uncertain future. "It was zero revenue when I stepped in, and we built that business to $250 million," he says. By building a new business from scratch, he picked up essential management skills, such as running a P&L, managing a budget, and setting a strategic vision — all critical prerequisites to becoming a CEO (over 90% of the CEOs we studied had general management experience). Thirteen years later, he found himself the CEO of a $1.5 billion education and training business."

<comment><USER29> >> _They use language that describes cashflow, savings, and debt._

Without such language and understanding, founders will have a harder time sustaining their endeavours. Such concepts apply whether you're bootstrapping, taking investor funds, or just an indie builder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> As someone with 3/4 of their foot in management and one foot in the hands-on world, I am often surprised at how my viewpoint changes when thinking about the bigger picture. As an example, one of the things I personally own still as an individual is essentially our kafka platform- that means our actual brokers operations, our automation, monitoring, client availability, etc.

We provided a really nice walkthrough to get you going as a quickstart. The whole point was originally to keep it simple so that you have to be thoughtful about the settings and tradeoffs you make in terms of reliability vs performance. I didn't want to be overly prescriptive in what and how teams use functionality like transactions and idempotence.

But we find, time and again, people get this wrong. They don't look at things like delivery reports, they don't set timeouts that make sense, they often don't even think about their replication factor. I pushed against full fledged client examples because there really isn't a one size fits all and I didn't want people to copy and paste without thinking about what they are doing.

The reality is, I am fighting a war on drugs. People want things to Just Work, and don't have the time to sit down for a day or two and read a book on kafka concepts (which we provide for free) and just want to get things done. We will repeatedly be involved in "outages" because clients could not tolerate a broker restarting and they did not configure their apps to be resilient.

On a more topical note, a guy on my team wanted to rewrite a python app we have in kotlin about 2 years ago, because it was the hot thing for about 5 minutes and our little POC python app was getting unwieldy for the scale it was growing into and its complexity. But we had no one in the firm who knew this, no support network for this, and I kind of saw that this was likely to be a flash in the pan kind of thing. I had to say no, and he was all pissy and was like but JVM! and arguments like that. I am really glad we didn't go that route, because kotlin is all but dead, and that guy left after about a year, and we would have been left high and dry.

My larger point is- what seems like such a cut and dried correct answer when its just from your viewpoint, can look very wrong when put in context of an organization, but unfortunately the end perception is often "my boss doesn't get it."

<comment><USER31> As a side topic, what leads you to say Kotlin is all but dead?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> CEOs can't really communicate with developers or designers if they have no practical experience with development or design. Lack of mutual respect can make it very hard to find a balance between giving enough creative freedom and setting deadlines. They may either give too much creative freedom to avoid problems (expensive in the short term), or don't give enough to play safe (toxic & expensive in the long term).

</comment><comment><USER33> Well, what else is a failing software engineer to do?

<comment><USER34> Pit them against each other to get raises?

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I think this goes two ways. Yes, management is failing to manage creative work. But in too many companies (and I'm not talking about startups full of youngsters straight out of college) staff has also lost the ability to be creative, take ownership, and push their own ideas. It is very easy to fall into a "I wasn't told to do so" routine. This is obviously a reinforcing circle

</comment><comment><USER36> After reading this, I wonder if it's possible to document in a searchable way all the broken solutions that we try before we find the one that works.

Subthread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23875261](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23875261)

</comment><comment><USER37> Does anyone know what this phenomenon is called:

"This phenomenon is due, in no small part, to how our brains, in response to the thrill of successfully completing a rewarded task, releases euphoric chemicals that strongly reinforce the behavior that led to success."

<comment><USER38> amygdala, dopamine reward.

it's a feedback loop of reinforcement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Bill Gates was actually quite a capable software engineer (I would argue he was a pretty rotten CEO though - successful but unethical).

And Steve Jobs too. He wrote games for Atari. Not a good CEO from the start but during Next and Pixar he really learned the job.

</comment><comment><USER40> I think it's the other way around. Software engineers rarely "get it" and are more concerned about the technical challenges

</comment><comment><USER41> Is this the dumbest question ever asked?

</comment><comment><USER42> To borrow a line from "Pulp Fiction" let's not start sucking each other's _?_?s just yet.

"How do you best motivate software engineers? You attract them to significant, life changing work by elevating the need, the thing that's missing from life or society, a problem that needs to be solved, and extending a personal, creative opportunity to solve that problem. Software Engineers are motivated to solve epic problems with solutions that people love."

Let's not try to manage better by making software engineers out to be poor, misunderstood Giants of Action who are just trying to fight the good fight if only the business people would pull their share of the load.

Doctors, lawyers (think family law), and plenty of others are well motivated too. I've done 30+ years of software dev. Software like any other industry attracts a diversity of people ... lots of exemplary but also good doses of risible dumb-asses that no management will ever fix.

OP continues:

"The best way to motivate creative staff is to attract them to meaningful work through the use of strong attractors."

This is where the article just goes stupid and never recovers. Only a moron believes that the employee is somehow unconsciously enabled for greatness but otherwise an empty vessel if ONLY management would fill our need for meaning and direction with something preferably a solid budget, a five year plan, and a goal of staggering goodness. So then what are software devs? The genius of Oppenheimer (smart and good manager?) Linus T? Dirac? Or in fact blank, useless slates that the mommy corporation needs to imprint to get anything out of?

Like 99.9% of all Sunday school lectures this article talks about what without how. So it's largely useless day to day. We're reminded ad nauseam about bad thoughts, bad actions and its consequences but not how --- how to do something better in the day to day.

Let's remind readers of few things:

\- Broadly speaking in his "Business Management" phase he forgot to mention that many companies lacked SPC i.e. how to do the day to day and to get away from articles like this that throw around another 10,000 maxims. These same companies weren't customer focused (be customer in not supplier out) ... on and on ... the managements phases he mention forget to mention that even the best corporations in their respective phases waste a ton of money, and a ton of talent not because of high flung issues like motivation and meaning but because of more basic issues like customer focus. Creative management by then is a distraction.

\- A major problem at large corporations is not that management fails to play the role of a fundamentalist Baptist selling the good news door to door tirelessly saving us programmer-sinners, it's lack of openness (corporate speak BS), and silos. Those two issues defeat a lot of great guys and gals who already come equipped with meaning, and direction, and a desire to change but who eventually learn the unwritten corporate culture: we aren't gonna change; and if you have a great idea X but aren't in the X department well then it's not for you. Creative management isn't going to fix this; it will make it worse. The whole arc of the OP's story just wholly misses vast swathes of what really goes on in corporations that lower productivity and potential. In particular, the creative management approach fails to admit control battles exist.

\- The creative culture sounds nice. Maybe. Or maybe it's a quite different thing. The perpetual ever always need for revolution is necessary to make and perpetuate frivolous consumerism. If there's always something new then there's always something new to buy. Related, there's a vaguely idealistic perhaps anachronistic impulse that any relation in society is a business target: bust it and make money "revolutionizing it".

\- Meaning and quality is everybody's problem. You can have superb management and bad engineers or vice versa but if you think engineers are gonna make management enlightened or vice versa you have a lot, lot more to learn. We're here to help each other but also pull our own weight and learn ourselves and not always with the immediate result of gratification, orgasmic release, or profit.

</comment><comment><USER43> that made me recall what I heard often: "mediocre engineers turn into managers" :)

</comment><comment><USER44> Heads I Win; Tails You Lose;</comment>


Muesli – An alternative approach to Soylent - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/l29ah/muesli <comment><USER2> One thing I don't understand about soylent is how it can be so expensive and yet still so flawed.

First, as a male I am concerned about isoflavones. I've read sources that go either way on how much it actually affects hormone levels, but since I suspect there is a lot more pressure from the agriculture / vegetarian community to make it seem safer than it is than from any other community to not, I lean towards it not being that good for you.

Second, the consistency is absolutely terrible. They don't need to make it too seedy, but leaving some of the nuts and seeds at least somewhat coarse would improve its texture beyond "slime that makes your teeth feel terrible and gross".

As is, it doesn't even make economic sense, because I can feed myself much tastier food than soylent for like $3-6 a day. Like, why would you choose soylent over food such as eggs, chicken, spinach, broccoli, oatmeal, etc?

What I really wish someone would do, is make a milk-based soylent with stuff that is actually good for you like sunflower seeds. That would actually taste good and probably be much better for you.

<comment><USER3> I think the selling point of soylent is how easy it is to consume. You just drink it and done. Cleaning is as easy as washing your cup. That's an attractive point if you don't enjoy the ritual of eating, or simply want to spend the time doing something else.

I agree it is too expensive for what it offers, though.

<comment><USER4> I've never tried Soylent, but I do have the UK equivalent - Huel [1]. This isn't as simple as drinking it, because you need to measure it out, add water and mix it for a minute or two. Then when it comes to cleaning, it isn't just a cup. There is also this grid like piece of plastic that helps to break up chunks of Huel but is hard to clean.

I like the idea; but in reality I'd rather jut have some toast if I want something quick. I know it's not as good for me but food is more than just getting calories and nutrients in. I get pleasure from eating a variety of textures and flavours.

1\. [https://huel.com/](https://huel.com/)

<comment><USER5> I have Huel for breakfast on work days only. I agree that the preparation and cleaning isn't that much different from say, having a bowl of cereal.

It works for me though, I wake up at 6:40, get a shower, iron some clothes, drink some Huel and am out the door at 7:20 to get the tube to go to work.

Other meals during the day are "normal", but it ticks the box for breakfast for me (quick to consume, fits in with my routine etc)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Soylent is so awful for you. They really capitalized on the ignorance of millenials with regard to proper nutrition.

edit: Shouldn't have trigger responded, but one of my biggest gripes with Soylent is their use of maltodextrin. It's not something you want to be consuming in mass every day. It is good for post-workout nutrition but as a meal you may as well be consuming sugar.

<comment><USER7> In what way? According to who?

<comment><USER8> The dozens of people on the Soylent subreddit who got weeks of diarrhea followed by jaundice? Though I think my favorite was the people who were arguing that some level of mold was acceptable if it meant they didn't have to deal with the inconvenience of foil seals.

<comment><USER9> Really? I don't want to laugh, but _snrk_

Both my current and previous company got in Soylent on occasion; the current one has gotten Coffiest a few times, which I haven't tried, while the earlier one got in the bottled Soylent and the short-lived Soylent Bar. I tried the bottled version once--maybe twice?--and had no ill effects, but didn't particularly like it, either. I had no ill effects from the bar, either, and I confess I actually rather liked it. I'd probably order it again, assuming it seemed safe.

But as someone who, well, actually _likes_ eating, I don't see the attraction of using this stuff as anything other than "I don't have enough time to cook or even go to a sit-down restaurant" type meals, the same way I would any other breakfast bar or meal drink. And looking at it that way makes their meal drinks much less appealing to me compared to, say, Ensure. Yes, Ensure has way more sugar, but it has a half-dozen fairly reasonable flavors, none of which are "dilute pancake batter."

<comment><USER10> I have pretty heavy scarring in my esophagus. This causes me to choke on numerous types of foods very frequently. Soylent is a solution to this problem. Also, it helps balance my diet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I guess that would integrate nicely with MyMuesli ([https://uk.mymuesli.com/](https://uk.mymuesli.com/)).

For those who don't know MyMuesli: It's a company which lets you mix your own muesli (from ~350 ingredients) and ship it to you. It's one of Germanys most successful non-VC-funded startups. They started in 2007 with just a website and nowadawys got shops in most major german cities where you can pick up your ordered muesli (useful for customers who avoid the delivery costs) or buy pre- mixed packs. Even though their muesli is anything but cheap they're hugely successful.

</comment><comment><USER12> I have no idea what this is, and the README isn't helping. Why is it a program?

<comment><AUTHOR> What else could it have been? I needed a way to do simple arithmetic and pretty-print my recipe and its nutrients as I (re-)adjust it at least.

<comment><USER13> > What else could it have been?

UGH. Sorry, but this came across kind of strong.

I think what OP is really asking is how is this suppose to be used? If this is a simple "let me show you", all right, but the README and the screenshot are confusing, but all right....

But I think people here generally expect a "so this is how you can actually use my program" when you do a shameless plug.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you; I've expanded it a bit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Ugh -- Soylent and now this seems to represent a branch of scientism at its worse.

Our bodies are complicated. Therefore, nutrition science is complicated, and very much a work in progress. Because people eat various things all their lives in an uncontrolled way, and because what you eat can have impacts on you 10, 20, or 50 years down the line, _getting reliable nutritional data is extremely expensive and difficult_.

There are many interactions that we still don't understand, unknown unknowns where we don't even know what the questions yet. For example, we know now that our gut microbiome has important influence on our metabolism, immune systems, and overall health. And yet little of this research existed 20 years ago because there was no cheap DNA sequencing, and we _still_ don't know today how what we eat influences our internal ecology. We certainly don't know what eating a bunch of Soylent for a couple decades would do to a person's microbiome, because nobody has ever tried it.

A dose of humility and common sense would suggest that radically transforming your diet based on our _current_ reductive knowledge of nutrition is an extremely risky bet.

The much safer bet is eating traditionally: eat foods in combinations and proportions that our ancestors and cultures have actually tried and tweaked over thousands of years of empirical experimentation and co-evolution.

<comment><USER15> I disagree with your assertion that it is "extremely risky" to apply current nutrition knowledge. Since we don't understand the effects of the "traditional" diet, it's not clear whether it is helping or hurting us. Yes, we have empirical evidence, but as you said it is poorly controlled. So all we can know is that if we eat a "traditional" diet, we will probably live close to the average lifespan and have average health issues as has been observed for traditional diets.

Additionally, there are a wide variety of traditional diets that cover very different foods. Since everything in the body interacts in complicated ways, we cannot even generalize specific foods as being "non-risky" to eat, since the empirical evidence we have only applies to the interactions of each food with the rest of the diet. So it's not clear what would actually constitute a definitive "traditional" diet; the best we could do would be to try and mimic a specific traditional diet as closely as possible, which still doesn't take into account the interactions caused by non-diet aspects of health like amount of exercise.

There is value in that kind of stability, but by incorporating mainstream nutrition research into your diet you can trade increased risk for what is likely to be a better average result. I say likely to be better than average because, as incomplete as nutrition data is, some data is still better than no data. It doesn't make sense to ignore what we know in the moment just because it might be wrong later. As long as you research carefully and stick to the most well studied aspects of nutrition, risk is minimal.

It's also worth pointing out that the normal person's diet today is already a large departure from traditional diets. So even if we assume a "traditional" diet is the goal, it does not follow that that Soylent would be better or worse than the normal person's diet today. It's likely that the human body is adaptable enough to handle whatever you eat.

<comment><USER14> Just to clarify, I 100% support judicious use of what we know about nutritional science today.

I also happen to think that Soylent is definitely _not_ a wise application of our current knowledge. The sophomoric notion that we already understand nutrition well enough to create a full fledged meal replacement with everything that the body requires is false, misleading, and highly irresponsible.

From their front page:

> Protein, carbohydrates, lipids, and micronutrients: each Soylent product > contains a complete blend of everything the body needs to thrive.

The micronutrients claim in particular invites scrutiny -- we definitely don't know yet whether we've succeeded in identifying every micronutrient that the body needs for survival, much less to 'thrive'.

I mean, they actually sickened a whole bunch of people with some algae powder ingredient, not realizing it would be problematic ahead of time. If they can't design a food product that avoids acute illness, why should you have confidence that they have something that is safe and healthy to use long term?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I appreciate the coincidental irony that I am eating a bowl of muesli while reading this article this morning (AM in Aus., that is).

* Whole rolled oats

* Pumpkin seeds

* LSA (powdered)

* Sunflower seeds

* Chopped green apple

* Coconut water and Orange Juice 50/50 mix (NOT Milk, Ugh!)

* Mango flavoured thick greek yoghurt

Mmm...

<comment><USER17> For other people who have no idea what LSA is...

 _LSA is a 3 in 1 solution [...] made of ground linseed, ground sunflower seeds and ground almonds_

Seems to be a thing in Australia and New Zealand.

<comment><USER18> And just because I didn't know this until yesterday, Linseed is Flax seed, just different names for the same stuff.

You can use your kitchen grade flaxseed oil for painting, putting your art supplies linseed oil on your quark is more questionable.

<comment><USER16> I used to use it on my cricket bats all the time, and nowadays on my Kendo Shinai.

I guess it is one of those oils like Coconut oil, where you can ingest it or use it for a myriad of lubricating and protective purposes.

<comment><USER17> Apparently the ground linseed/flax loses its goodness (major non-fish source of omegas) very quickly after grinding unless refrigerated. So the store bought LSA is no good. You need to grind it yourself and either eat it immediately or keep it in the fridge. Apparently it has a magical smell when ground.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The whole purpose of soylent is to allow me to spend 13 hours per day coding on adderall without leaving my room. Healthy or not, I think OP missed the point of ready made, no cleanup food.

</comment><comment><USER20> Cool!

See the sample here [https://dump.bitcheese.net/files/cacobil/muesli- example.html](https://dump.bitcheese.net/files/cacobil/muesli-example.html)

<comment><USER21> So about a half kilogram of oats and raisins with oil and various additives? I guess it's slightly more palatable than Soylent but eating it seems just incredibly grueling.

<comment><USER22> I think thats the point. He specifies that "excessive chewing activates digestion" or something on the github page. Its designed to be a real jaw grinder.

<comment><USER23> Excessive chewing also causes TMJ disorders or at the very least, a very sore jaw. Humans aren't cows chewing cud.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've been eating Soylent twice a day for more than a year as my primary food source. I'm always interested in new variants (especially ones that cut down on cost) - this one seems interesting. Any chance that there's an Amazon shopping cart that someone can add to get all this stuff easily?

Also, I noticed that the Readme links to Rob Rhinehart's page ([http://robrhinehart.com](http://robrhinehart.com)). Unfortunately, it looks like it's all been taken down. Anybody know why?

<comment><USER25> Honest question: Do you not enjoy food? What do you think the benefits are?

I'm asking because I think I would be severely depressed on such a monotone diet. I love cooking and it gives me great joy to eat good food, or new kinds of food, or even the boring lunch restaurant type food if it's done reasonably well.

Lunch is also a nice social event. I'm skipping lunch sometimes (when I'm not that hungry) but I feel like I missing the social aspect then.

<comment><USER26> The choice for me is pretty simple. No breakfast, or soylent. I'd rather be eating something than nothing.

If I have the chance to eat a real meal I take it, but there are also times where I literally can't.

Idk why it is suddenly in vogue to shit on people for being busy.

<comment><USER27> > Idk why it is suddenly in vogue to shit on people for being busy.

Maybe because the HN crowd is getting older or more burned out, and their values are changing?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Is there a recipe for this? Or even an ingredient list? This seems like a very weird way to present an idea for food

</comment><comment><USER29> I personally view Soylant in the same way I do infant formula. It has changed drastically since it was first introduced as we learn more and more about what is in actual breastmilk and why it matters for development. Similarly there are probably many other components in whole foods that are important that we may not even quantify yet. Not to mention the importance of actualy chewing food so that the enzymes from saliva accompany the meal and assist in breaking down various components.

Imagine what Soylant would have looked like 50 years ago and how much it would have been missing. Now imagine how in 50 years we will learn just as much if not more and look back at our crude attempts in the same vain.

</comment><comment><USER30> I enjoy MealSquares: [http://mealsquares.com](http://mealsquares.com) . A bit expensive, but fulfills many of the same objectives.

</comment><comment><USER31> Seems to be missing people from the ingredients.

<comment><USER32> I'm pretty sure this joke has been attempted every time anything is posted about soylent.

<comment><USER12> And it's not even Soylent Green, so the joke doesn't even work.</comment></comment></comment>


An introduction to Linux virtual interfaces: Tunnels - <AUTHOR> https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2019/03/27/an-introduction-to-linux-virtual-interfaces-tunnels/ <comment><USER2> As an addendum, should the article not have the link, a companion article on the same site:

[https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2018/10/22/introduction-t...](https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2018/10/22/introduction- to-linux-interfaces-for-virtual-networking/)</comment>


An American Intelligence Service Insider Leaked the Podesta Emails to Wikileaks - <AUTHOR> http://www.scrolib.com/2016/12/insider-american-intelligence-service-leaked-podesta-emails-wikileaks/ <comment><USER2> Not saying this is bs or not but the source of this article is Zero Hedge. [http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-15/revealed-who- gave-d...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-15/revealed-who-gave- democratic-emails- wikileaks?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zerohedge%2Ffeed+%28zero+hedge+-+on+a+long+enough+timeline%2C+the+survival+rate+for+everyone+drops+to+zero%29)

<comment><USER3> ZH is using [1] as it's source, which reprinted the article from [2]

[1] [http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/12/64139.html](http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/12/64139.html) [2] [https://consortiumnews.com/2016/12/12/us-intel-vets- dispute-...](https://consortiumnews.com/2016/12/12/us-intel-vets-dispute- russia-hacking-claims/)</comment></comment>


VIM and Python – A Match Made in Heaven - <AUTHOR> https://realpython.com/blog/python/vim-and-python-a-match-made-in-heaven/ <comment><USER2> Most of these seem to just be general Vim suggestions that work in any language, but they aren't bad.

The real lubricant for Python and Vim for me has been control over virtual environments. I've hacked on a popular plugin that allows Virtualenv inheritance from the terminal and relative Virtualenv directory support among other things.[1] The original author didn't incorporate all my changes, so I've sort of kept the fork lingering around. But try out the original as well.[2]

[1][https://github.com/brianclements/vim- virtualenv](https://github.com/brianclements/vim-virtualenv)

[2][https://github.com/jmcantrell/vim- virtualenv](https://github.com/jmcantrell/vim-virtualenv)</comment>


Skype Fail - <AUTHOR> http://www.skype.com/intl/en-us/get-skype/on-your-computer/macosx/ try to download the mac version of Skype <comment><USER2> To save anyone from having to sign in first: you'd see the download page for the Linux version.

</comment><comment><USER2> btw: skype completely failed anyway on OSX since versions after 2.8.

<comment><USER3> Totally agree. I am still using Skype 2.8 on OS X Lion at work and on Mountain Lion at home.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> try to download the OSX version of Skype</comment>


Madonna: Instagram designed to make people feel bad - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/jun/15/madonna-becomes-latest-artist-to-call-out-instagram <comment><USER2> indeed. we all live on yachts drinking champagne in bikinis while floating in the top-deck swimming pool on one of those flamingo floaty toys.

everyone is rich and it's like the entire 20th century of human liberation didn't happen. does sugar daddy approve of my makeup?</comment>


Ask HN: Rust, anyone? - <AUTHOR> Hi Guys,
Anyone using Rust in production supporting millions of users?
Also, have you found any blocker issues with the language? <comment><USER2> Firefox is written in rust, millions of users indeed. But to answer your question, no, I wish I could deploy something written in rust to production. I don't think there is a problem with the language, just a risk of not being able to find developers to support it. I think a lot of companies are on the sidelines about it still. Given that it's a difficult language to learn there may be some fear in that area about its future.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cloudflare uses it in prod: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17077358](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17077358)

Here's a list of companies: [https://www.rust- lang.org/friends.html](https://www.rust-lang.org/friends.html)</comment>


Tech companies giving away free face masks to combat coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://combatnerd.com/news/companies-giving-away-face-masks-free-charge/ <comment><USER2> The virus laughs at these masks. It won't stop any virus. It only helps for people who are already sick and sprinkling cough droplets full of virus to others, but it does nothing for protecting the wearer from infection.

<comment><USER3> I don't see where the article claims that wearing one will protect against infection. It does say that they can help prevent the spread of infection, which is accurate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wouldn't mind a mask with a company logo.</comment>


Former FB exec says Google, Facebook are surveillance states and risk regulation - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/14/chamath-palihapitiya-on-fang-stocks-amazon-winning-facebook-risk.html <comment><USER2> This is surprising. There is a lot of chatter on both american political sides for regulation on amazon, google, facebook, and apple. I guess this is going to be their big oil moment.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Too big to fail". _Whisky glasses clink_</comment>


Clay Shirky: Where the Semantic Web gets it wrong - <AUTHOR> http://www.shirky.com/writings/semantic_syllogism.html

<comment><USER2> An interesting, but frustrating read. Shirky makes statements that conflate what requires thought with what's hard and what's hard with what's impossible.

For example, he says:

 __*

Consider the following assertions:

        - Count Dracula is a Vampire
        - Count Dracula lives in Transylvania
        - Transylvania is a region of Romania
        - Vampires are not real

You can draw only one non-clashing conclusion from such a set of assertions -- Romania isn't real. That's wrong, of course, but the wrongness is nowhere reflected in these statements. There is simply no way to cleanly separate fact from fiction, and this matters in surprising and subtle ways that relate to matters far more weighty than vampiric identity.

 __*

Note the last part: _There is simply no way to cleanly separate fact from fiction._ Usually statements that start off as "there is simply no way" are wrong and this one is no exception. This and many of the other objections he raised can be addressed by using the right ontologies in combination with techniques like fuzzy logic and webs of trust.

Also, one of his big arguments is that the Semantic Web will never work because the data will always incomplete. He characterizes the Semantic Web as assuming a simple world in which all information is known. This is completely false though, as the Semantic Web standards have specifically been architected with the Open World Assumption in mind.

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

That's a pretty fundamental thing to get wrong if you're going to try to talk intelligently about these issues.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> And my response [http://semanticsearch.org/where-clay-shirky-misses- semantic-...](http://semanticsearch.org/where-clay-shirky-misses-semantic-web- syllogism-and-worldview)

In summary:

[The article] misses the true tact of the current semantic web - which is focused on three key areas:

       1. identity
       2. creating quality data (whether manually or using Natural Language processing)
       3. scaling to be a giant, online database</comment>


BlackBerry Z10 and iPhone 5 Comparison - <AUTHOR> http://www.ihelplounge.com/blackberry-z10-and-iphone-5-comparison/

<comment><USER2> This is a pretty poor article. A bunch of drawn-out hardware specs comparisons using images for some reason and then this jewel:

>But the Z10 comes with the Windows Phone, the choice of applications for which there is very limited

I had to go check if blackberry hadn't lost their minds and decided to drop their own OS but instead of using Android went for Windows Phone.

</comment><comment><USER3> I presume (hope!) the author of that article is not a native English speaker as some parts were quite hard to read or interpret correctly.

</comment><comment><USER4> I understand the need to monetize a site like this, but the key numbers in all the images get blocked by the ads. Extremely frustrating...

</comment><comment><USER5> Will bb get as many apps like iOS has?</comment>


The future of web scraping is now. How to build an API for any webpage - <AUTHOR> https://blog.extracty.com/extracty-com-the-future-of-web-scraping-build-an-api-for-any-webpage/ <comment><USER2> I see no mention of pricing?</comment>


Show HN: Infinity – Flexible Work Management Software - <AUTHOR> https://startinfinity.com <comment><USER2> Looks really nice and it's definitely something I might consider using if needed. However I was going through the privacy policy and it's not clear how data is protected. I've only found this line:

> We implement appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect > the information we collect and store.

I have not found any relevant info on what actual measures are implemented. This is a big issue under the GDPR because without further info it's not possible to understand if sufficient measures are implemented. In short, the GDPR requires that all appropriate measures are adopted. Without knowing what measures this service implements, potential users cannot access if this app is sufficiently secure for their use cases. As a result, in case of breaches, they might be liable for wrongly selecting this as a service to manage their data (e.g. customers contact info). IMHO, given the above there's no excuse for not encrypting data (in a way that makes it accessible to law enforcement authorities where needed), so if that's not part of the security measures implemented by a service, for me it's a deal breaker.

<comment><USER3> It is basically the same phrase as the site you currently are on use in its Privacy Policy.

<comment><USER2> The difference being that on apps like Infinity I might be entering info on third parties, like contact details of our clients/customers. On websites like HN I'm concerned only about _my_ privacy as I'm only processing _my_ personal data. On an app like Infinity, I would be processing personal data of third parties. So if Infinity has a data breach and the personal data of such third parties is exposed, I might be liable if I picked a platform with weak security. Before granting them access to the personal data that I process, it is my duty (under the GDPR) to make sure that they are actually reliable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Curious how Infinity compares to AirTable or Monday.com?</comment>


Screenwriting Startup looking for Node.js Intern - <AUTHOR>

We are looking for an intern to help develop a Node.js server for our iPad app, working closely with an IOS developer to design and implement both the client and server sides. We are in California and prefer someone in the same or nearby time zone. <comment><USER2> How do I contact you?

<comment> mansoor-s Owl post <http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Owl_post></comment></comment>


Software Pipelining on the Mill CPU [video] - <AUTHOR> http://millcomputing.com/topic/pipelining/ <comment><USER2> Almost everything posted here about the Mill CPU has been in video form. I'm very interested in _reading_ more about it, but don't have the patience for videos. I like to be able to skim, and to choose my own pace. As a result of this personal preference/failing, I know very little about the CPU or the company.

Clearly the Mill team likes the video format, but are there written expositions for people like me? I have to think I'm not the only one who is video-averse. The very sparse FAQ on the website ([http://millcomputing.com/category/faq/general/](http://millcomputing.com/category/faq/general/)) says that there are a few white papers in process. Are any of these available yet?

<comment><USER3> We have an intro here:

[http://millcomputing.com/topic/introduction-to-the-mill- cpu-...](http://millcomputing.com/topic/introduction-to-the-mill-cpu- programming-model-2/)

(Although it doesn't cover things in as much depth as the talks)

We are working on a public facing wiki, and do actually have some white papers drafted.

But these talks are not your average talks, and well worth trying even if you don't normally ;)

<comment><USER4> _But these talks are not your average talks, and well worth trying even if you don 't normally ;)_

For me its not that I don't watch videos, its just that either I don't have time to watch a video (whereas reading I can do as fast or slow as I want and I can skim), or it happens that I'm unable to watch a video for whatever reason but would be ok with reading (this happens a lot while I'm travelling - also the most likely time where I would like to read something like this).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have yet to go through this talk but I have been waiting for this for a while. Mill is possibly the most interesting thing in all of computing right now.

<comment><USER6> I see this posted every time Mill gets linked. Could someone simply explain the significance of the Mill architecture?

<comment><USER3> (Mill team, so biased; thanks for the chance to pitch ;)

We are a DSP that can run general purpose code.

Traditionally, to run general purpose code fast you needed an out-of-order superscalar architecture, as all the x86 and RISC cores are these days.

DSPs have substantially better performance and substantially better efficiency, but have traditionally been ineffective executing general purpose code (such as the web browser you are using to read this).

The Mill is a synergy of lots of small breakthroughs that together deliver significant improvements to general purpose _single threaded_ code.

Its been held that cores have stopped getting faster. We're faster.

And we have similar as yet not filed improvements for multicore too.

<comment><USER7> Normally I am a cynically old bastard, but if that is true then you really are the most important thing happening in hardware right now (or possible HPs the Machine if it isn't vaporware).

One crucial question - are you compatible with X86?

<comment><USER8> The mill is not compatible with x86, but the goal is to not require more than a recompile.

<comment> alex-g The Mill certainly raises a lot of interesting code generation and optimization issues. I'm sure there's plenty of scope for figuring out good optimization strategies, as a lot seems to depend on the ability of the compiler to make good choices about instruction scheduling and belt slot allocation. Sure, that's the case for traditional architectures as well, but there's more prior art there too. There may also be ingenious algorithms which work better on the Mill architecture specifically. I'd love to know if there's any theory on the hardness of allocating positions on the belt, compared to traditional register allocation.

<comment><USER3> Actually, as its co-designed by a compiler writer (read the bio we paste with the talks:

> Ivan Godard has designed, implemented or led the teams for 11 compilers for > a variety of languages and targets, an operating system, an object-oriented > database, and four instruction set architectures. He participated in the > revision of Algol68 and is mentioned in its Report, was on the Green team > that won the Ada language competition, designed the Mary family of system > implementation languages, and was founding editor of the Machine Oriented > Languages Bulletin. He is a Member Emeritus of IFIPS Working Group 2.4 > (Implementation languages) and was a member of the committee that produced > the IEEE and ISO floating-point standard 754-2011.

), its actually designed to be _easy_ to write a compiler for. It's he polar opposite of the "sufficiently smart compiler syndrome" :)

I keep suggesting we do a "sufficiently dumb compiler syndrome" talk, but it'd contain nothing novel; the art is well established by all the VLIW machines that have come before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> /me has a deja vu.

Looks like this is Transmeta v2. :-)

<comment><USER8> Their risk profile is quite different from Transmeta. Transmeta was more of an all or nothing thing. Either they were better at running x86 in which case they easily could capture big segments of the market, or they were not in which case no segment of the market would be interested in them.

The Mill on the other hand can just start with the segment of the market that is the least inconvenienced by having to recompile their code and expand from there. So basically it's easier for the Mill to gain a foothold (build the best cpu for one segment) but harder to climb up from there.

<comment><USER10> Thanks for that differentiator, Transmeta kept popping into my thoughts every time I would read about Mill as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> the long hair and beard makes me think this is legit.

joking aside, seeing this talk makes me nostalgic for college and the long nights spent in the CprE labs. I ended up not in hardware/firmware because 4/5GL are so much more fun to work with and let me be so much more expressive. However, this shit is seriously cool. Can't wait to learn more.

edit: also wanted to say the presentation is a perfect example of awesome UX. The animations are not superfluous as in most presentations and are quite meaningful and help the audience better understand the material. It is also an example of something with great UX, but poor aesthetics. Green/yellow text on a blue background, eck. Could have been worse though :)

</comment><comment><USER12> Dude looks like Gandalf</comment>


No, Facebook, Your "Extraordinary Gift" Did Not Create The Personalized Web - <AUTHOR> http://daggle.com/facebook-personalized-web-1861

<comment><USER2> I just watched the video of the interview on the bottom of the page and to be honest I really dislike his tone. The extraordinary gift part just topped it all of. How do you expect a user of your service to respond to that? Should I say thank you Facebook and overlook all your other shortcomings?

In fact the way he answered those legitimate questions about Facebook policy is similar to the way Facebook treats its users.

</comment><comment><USER3> It would be laughable a few years ago that people would view the whole web through a php portal. Now it's just a little ridiculous, but not unimaginable. Can't the world do better than this buggy portal?

<comment> mike-cardwell Exactly. Even if there were no issues with privacy, Facebook would still be a piss poor implementation of a social networking site. The only thing it has going for it is the shear number of people who use it.

Every single one of its features is flawed in one way or another and it regularly breaks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >It has always been the case since the dawning of the World Wide Web that we would all go to the same site and get the same information.

What, what, what? That's the _exact opposite_ of what the web is supposed to be about. The web is supposed to be an _escape_ from the scarcity of broadcast media that require us all to go to the same source for the same information. It's _Facebook_ that wants to be the One True Portal, and superficial customization be damned.

What unbelievably vile sophistry!

</comment><comment><USER5> > Jeff Bezos and his team were never fully honored for helping the public in > this way

Seriously? Man of the year 1999 (the most awesome year ever) is not good enough? Should they give have given him a Nobel prize for economics?

</comment><comment><USER6> Have to agree with the author, anyone that has used the web in the last decade will know that there is nothing innovative about the functionalities offered by facebook. The average Joe will surely think differently. He can now share his updates/groups/fanpages/photos with supposed-to-be friends and play useless games directly from one single familiar site. Will they remain loyal to fb or jump somewhere else when shinier things will be offered?

(Note: Deliberately i'm not talking about architectural/implementation choices, considering the scale, i'm sure that from this point of view the fb engineers have found at least some clever solutions to complex problems, so, ok, they use php somewhere, but a technical discussion should not be based solely on that, let alone an evaluation...)

</comment><comment><USER7> Anyone else surprised that the "public policy director" for Facebook wears a suit and tie?

</comment><comment><USER8> company does some pr. blogger fakes outrage to draw visitors. bored bitter nerds read it and do nothing.</comment>


Datomic Cloud - <AUTHOR> http://blog.datomic.com/2018/01/datomic-cloud.html <comment><USER3> There's a few people asking about how to get something up quickly to play with - this was a problem for me, and it isn't really well explained, but for those interested, Alexander Kiel's datomic free docker image has worked well for me - [https://hub.docker.com/r/akiel/datomic- free/](https://hub.docker.com/r/akiel/datomic-free/) \- and an example of it being used with docker compose is here: [https://github.com/dazld/urlomic/blob/cc3d1218218b5f08751dfa...](https://github.com/dazld/urlomic/blob/cc3d1218218b5f08751dfad41eabe68ceabeed7d/docker- compose.yml) (on a wip branch for some playground thing). I'm far from a pro, but hope this helps someone interested in this tech.

<comment><USER4> Datomic Cloud makes it much easier to get started on AWS. It takes only a few minutes to sign up, see [https://www.datomic.com/videos.html](https://www.datomic.com/videos.html) for a walkthrough.

<comment><USER3> For sure! looking forward to becoming a customer. I guess the journey I went through was missing some intermediate step between playing at the repl with an in memory db (which I believe you've mentioned before as being a good way to get hands dirty from zero), to having something in dev which was backed by storage, to a toy service, to production.

Jumping into AWS, at least in my work environment, is a big jump requiring lots of supporting infrastructure etc. We'll get there if it works out, but the dockerized setup is really helping in learning and evaluation.

Officially supported ways of doing this is something i'm sure you've considered before, it would be nice if cognitect could reconsider this.

<comment><USER4> You don't have to be very far "in" AWS to try Cloud. The bastion server will let you connect from anywhere, so the idea is that the only infrastructure you need is a laptop and an internet connection.

That said, we understand the value of a local development mode and that is possible in the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a big change in pricing approach. Previously the licensing was $5k/year and still is for on-prem. Although you could run datomic for free for 1 year and longer as long as you never upgraded it. [https://www.datomic.com/get-datomic.html](https://www.datomic.com/get- datomic.html)

Now they are offering an approach where one can at least start at $1/day (Every time you scale out this goes up? What is the cost of support?).

The cheapest way to get started is probably still to run what is now called "on-prem AWS" (for up to 1 year), which there is already cloudformation for. [https://docs.datomic.com/on-prem/aws.html](https://docs.datomic.com/on- prem/aws.html)

<comment><USER4> Cloud is definitely the preferred way to get started if you are on AWS. When running the On-Prem version you also have to manage (and pay for) storage. Cloud also puts less load on DynamoDB, which can dominate your spend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure it's still true, but awhile ago their EULA banned the publication of performance statistics. Be very careful using this and do your own performance testing.

<comment><USER7> My experience with Datomic was that it is not appropriate for a system that has performance requirements. We developed a system using redis while the data team was developing the data service on Datomic. When we tried to integrate, the whole system slowed to a crawl and we needed to do a rewrite.

My advice is to develop with Datomic from the start and not separate it out into a service. Any other database will be so much faster that you won't know how bad your performance is until it's too late.

Another piece of advice would be to seriously consider if you need immutability in your database. If it's not a hard requirement, I would not use Datomic.

<comment><USER8> Having built a variety of products with Datomic and performance requirements I can only disagree. Especially queries are insanely fast compared to other databases.

I don't know what your data team was doing, but they must have done it wrong.

My advice is to develop without a data team from the start ;)

<comment><USER9> would you give an example?

<comment><USER8> The main advantage is that you can do time-consistent queries against any past database state across the entire database without any read locks. This frees resources and eliminates the necessity of timestamp tables.

Then there is Datomics caching model in combination with its local data based query engine. The vast majority of critical queries only read from memory. Data that is fetched doesn't block other consumers.

<comment><USER9> What RDBMS are you comparing to pretty much everything is MVCC so writers don't block readers and readers do not block writers mature RDBMS also are fairly highly optimized written in C with critical paths hand written in assembly so again would be interesting to learn for what workload Datomic is significantly faster. The biggest performance penalty in a modern RDBMS is GC of snapshots so if you need a design that is append only it will make modern RDBMS more performant.

<comment><USER8> I don't care so much about optimized tight loops written in assembly, rather about the ability to scale nowadays. Datomic uses databases like you describe e.g. Postgres as its storage. So it would be foolish to say that it beats their performance on a bare bones level. Instead, Datomics architecture and information model make it much easier and significantly reduce the overhead to design and implement applications that provide insane performance. I won't argue that you can hand rewrite every Datomic application in its underlying storage database and get more performance out of it if you do your caching and coordination right. It will take you much longer though (I'd guess a tenfold at least), likely have some very difficult to find bugs, and the result won't be as easy to extend. With Datomic, I get memory speed performance out of the box for the heavy hitters and so much more that it take would take some very uncommon requirements for me to choose something else nowadays.

<comment><USER9> Well I would buy the developer productivity argument but most applications have a mix of reporting requirements that are generally extremely hard to implement on anything "distributed". Also in a distributed system you are either running some consensus algorithm (paxos, RAFT etc) that will def. not be "insane performance" or you it will have issues with consistency.

<comment><USER8> Datomic uses distributed storage, writes are coordinated by a single instance (transactor). Reads don't block writers and immutability allows to query consistent snapshots. Does that address your concern?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love Datomic, it solves so many problems that I face daily and you end up building a sort-off datomic on top of your SQL DB anyway.

I would have prefered a Datomic for Kubernetes to get this cross-platform and allow it to be hosted on different and private clouds because of my job I can not use AWS. I can't use Kubernetes either but there is at future possiblity that it would be possible.

The downside would probebly be that it would offer less integration as the ecosystem is not so far along as AWS. Still an easly containerised version for devlopment would be really nice.

Thanks to the Datomic team.

</comment><comment><USER11> Great milestone, congratulations to the Datomic team!

Seems the developer forums ([https://forum.datomic.com/](https://forum.datomic.com/)) are a good place to visit for practicalities after the web site.

<comment><USER12> The forum is fairly recent and not everyone is checking it... You could get help on the clojurians slack in the #datomic channel

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Are there any open-source immutable databases yet? Or would the hegemony of SQL semantics (which seem quite tied to mutability) somehow disincentivize such an undertaking?

<comment><USER14> FSVO "database": datascript is in-memory, similar to a slimmed down version of datomic. I think it's fair to say that datascript:datomic :: sqlite:postgres or something. It's in-memory, but there are third-party extensions using hitchiker trees that make it persistent.

There's also Mozilla's mentat and its predecessor atomish which talk to SQLite on the backend.

So, sorta?

<comment><USER13> Did not know about Datascript and Mentat. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> For anyone interested in background on Datomic, these are fun and informative resources.

The talk where I realized Rich is a data head too. Introducing his design goals and life experiences with db(s). [https://www.infoq.com/presentations/The-Design-of- Datomic](https://www.infoq.com/presentations/The-Design-of-Datomic)

"Clojure for the Brave and True" author, Dan Higginbotham, on key themes and overview. [http://www.flyingmachinestudios.com/programming/datomic- for-...](http://www.flyingmachinestudios.com/programming/datomic-for-five- year-olds/)

Congrats to the Datomic team and Cognitect. I hope this move to cloud opens Datomic's design principals and ideas to a wider user base.

</comment><comment> dh-g This looks great, I really like datomic but its licensing is preventative for small projects. Hope this helps it get more love and community attention.

<comment><USER11> Can you expand on this, what do you find wanting with the various choices? "Small project" can mean very different things between 0 and 10M$ budgets, but there seem to be a lot of options reaching to the low end, even the free Starter edition sounds pretty capable.

<comment><USER16> Suppose you have an open source or hobby project.

The Free Edition has limitations that impact how you would write code -- it supports only the "peer" API and not the "client" API, and is restricted in terms of backend storage choices and number of peers. So while it's very likely true there's perfect API compatibility when you want to step up to a paid edition, it makes you design to the artificial limitations they've used to set apart "free" from "paid".

Indeed, it's also not the recommended way to learn. The Datomic team says: "If you are trying Datomic for the first time, we recommend that you begin with a client library." In other words, the Free Edition doesn't include the client library that they recommend you try first.

If you step up to the Starter Edition you have full functionality and free updates __but only for the first year __. Beyond that, you start paying. Either you run in Cloud (as low as $1 /day) or you purchase the on-prem Pro Edition ($5000/year).

Don't get me wrong. Cognitect has the right to charge whatever they like, and bundle features however they like. It's their intellectual property and they made the investment to create it.

But if you're building a hobby project then even $1/day may be more than you want to spend, and/or more than you want to impose on outside contributors to your codebase.

<comment><USER11> Seems it's only the free updates that are limited to 1 year with Starter - <USER2> can keep using it forever. I wonder how/if they limit you getting a new Starter the next year? Anyone know the details?

Even if this drives you to the $1/day edition, that should cover a lot of small projects. Especially as you don't have to keep it running 24/7 during development.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've been in love with the idea of Datomic for a few years now but haven't had a project to really dig into it with. The AMI makes it irresistible to try... but I'm really not clear on how the client and peer libraries work outside of the JVM. Do they? It seems REST support exists with some client libs for js, Python, etc but they explicitly state in multiple places that it is defacto deprecated and won't receive further development. I highly doubt given many of Rich's statements that they would ever break the API, but I'm trying to push a new app towards serverless, and I'd rather not have to mess around JVM keep- warm hacks. A CLJS library that wasn't orphaned 4 years ago and not based on the REST api would be enough to push me over the edge.

</comment><comment><USER18> I really wish they'd open source Datomic and just make money on hosting. I can't bring myself to spend anymore of my life learning proprietary software in such a foundational domain.

<comment> dj-wonk I'd be interested to see if people would candidly unpack their rationale a bit more in this area.

Before I get into that part, forgive me, but I must admit that I've begun to tune out when I hear the "make Datomic open source" commentary. Still, this particular line of commentary returns from time to time, so I'll weigh in.

This reminds me of "meta stories" that take over the original story. On Hacker News, I'd much rather hear about technical commentary, lessons learned, or interesting domains and applications used in Datomic projects.

I tend to be less interested in hearing armchair quarterbacking around what business model would work better for Datomic, particularly when the arguments seem:

1\. largely motivated by self-interest. Open source is often perceived as "free" to software developers. It is relatively easy to say "I would rather not pay for this software, why isn't this open source?" Of course, open source is not necessarily really free, due to integration and maintenance costs. In the cases where open source projects are abandoned, projects face substantial risk and transition costs.

2\. not framed around the long-term interests of Datomic (at least the arguments rarely seem to make suggestions from the perspective of Cognitect, which invests in the product and makes income from sales)

It is easy to say "make it open source". It is harder for a company to find a business model that works. It seems that Datomic's business model is working. There is a free tier and paid tiers.

I know that I cannot properly summarize all perspectives with the ideal amount of nuance. Perhaps some people think it is really in Datomic's interest to be open source.

Nevertheless, it seems to me that many arguments people make are somewhat unexamined. Let's go a level deeper.

May I ask this: How many of Amazon Web Service's offerings are based on open source software?

I ask that question because there are four follow-up points I would like to make:

1\. People use AWS quite extensively.

2\. AWS is based on closed source software.

3\. I don't think it is a coincidence that AWS is so successful.

4\. It seems totally reasonable (and arguably the smartest thing to do) for Datomic to stay with a closed source model.

Also, I have no affiliation with Datomic, but I have used it on projects.

<comment><USER19> > 4\. It seems totally reasonable (and arguably the smartest thing to do) for > Datomic to stay with a closed source model.

It is 100% understandable / practical / reasonable, yes. It is the same to recognize using Datomic technology as a core part of a technology stack involves some degree of additional risk, which grows as dependencies increase on its unique capabilities.

<comment><USER20> All dependencies carry risk. Open source projects are abandoned all the time. What do you intend to take over maintenance of your database software if it is abandoned? Highly unlikely.

<comment><USER21> > What do you intend to take over maintenance of your database software if it > is abandoned?

Yeah. Unlikely I'd be adding any additional real features or anything but why not? It isn't magic. I'd also expect a lot of other people doing the same and we can share the maintenance load.

There is also a lot of functionality that is obviously backed by very nice code a lot of people would like to see and potentially use other places. But knowing you can do necessary maintenance and tweaks, even if it is while you rewrite your whole db layer to work with another product rather than a permanent thing, is a serious benefit.

<comment><USER22> Right, if open source is unmaintained you can still use it at the very least. And if you can't fix it yourself, you can pay someone else to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> How do things like cloud databases work with respect to the GDPR?

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks like that's addressed:

> _" The regulation applies if the data controller (an organization that > collects data from EU residents) or processor (an organization that > processes data on behalf of data controller e.g. cloud service providers) or > the data subject (person) is based in the EU."_

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regula...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation#Scope)

(However, this is off-topic for this submission specifically.)

<comment><USER23> > "Furthermore the regulation also applies to organizations based outside the > European Union if they collect or process personal data of EU residents."

It's really not clear to me how a company like datomic would cope with that in any practical way. Are they supposed to know what kind of data their clients store??

<comment><USER24> I attended a GDPR session at Re:Invent this year. Basically, there's two types of organizations: data controllers and processors. Datatomic, AWS, Azure, etc. would all fall into the processors category. Amazon.com, however, would fall into the data controller category.

From a processor perspective, they have their own requirements/regulations: [https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/aws-and-the-general- da...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/aws-and-the-general-data- protection-regulation/)

See also: [https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/eu-data- protection/](https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/eu-data-protection/)

AWS/Datomic doesn't need to know what kind of data their customers store - it's up to the customer to be compliant with their part of GDPR.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is there a way to play with this without using a credit card?

<comment><USER26> [https://www.datomic.com/get-datomic.html](https://www.datomic.com/get- datomic.html) starter version

[https://github.com/tonsky/datascript](https://github.com/tonsky/datascript) Datascript is also neat, it's an in-browser DB with datalog query syntax. There's some neat stuff possible with om.next + datascript: [https://github.com/omcljs/om/wiki/DataScript-Integration- Tut...](https://github.com/omcljs/om/wiki/DataScript-Integration-Tutorial)

<comment><USER25> Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is awesome! Whenever I'm working with MySQL I'm usually daydreaming about using Datomic instead. I'd love to see more adoption in the community.

</comment><comment><USER28> Is $1 a day a good price?

<comment><USER29> If you have a product which makes $2 a day using it then it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is the mobile link, better link is [http://blog.datomic.com/2018/01/datomic- cloud.html](http://blog.datomic.com/2018/01/datomic-cloud.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing that out. I can no longer edit the link, so I've emailed the mods to ask them to do so.

Edit to add: And they have!</comment></comment>


Show HN: Perssist – on-demand assistants to burn through your to-do list - <AUTHOR> http://www.perssist.com/?ref=HN

<comment><AUTHOR> One common question is, how is this different than any other virtual assistant business?

Firstly, one thing we're conscious of is avoiding being placed in the same bucket as the multitude of sites where you can hire an overseas VA. We want customers to see us as a service that solves their problems, rather than another option for a place to hire a virtual assistant. It shouldn't matter to a customer how we're solving their problems, as long as it's being done well and they're getting their requests completed in a way they're happy with. This may sound like a subtle difference so I'd be curious to hear other people's thoughts on this.

We did some surveys and found that around 50% of Americans over 18 would be willing to pay $10/hour or more to have someone take care of tasks on their to-do list. A very small portion of those people have actually gone out and found a service or even could name one. We're currently targeting those types of people, though we're still figuring out if that's the right approach.

But when it comes to actually comparing Perssist to other options out there: -Quality at this price point. We hire less than 3% of the VAs that we interview. We've already filtered through mountains of assistants for the customer. -Accessibility. 24/7 availability, no vacations, no sick days, no disappearing acts -Flexibility. Some services targeting customers charge by the task rather than by the amount of time it takes. This prevents them from accepting many types of requests (e.g. vacation research), and also encourages their assistants to rush work, leading to lower quality.</comment>