In a photo of a black hole, a possible key to mysteries - <AUTHOR> https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/04/black-hole-imaging/ <comment><USER2> If anyone is not a physicist but wants to dive a bit deeper into cosmology and quantum theory without insurmountable math - I can recommend PBS Spacetime[1] YouTube channel and their Discord community. I was pleasantly surprised to see the most updated information about the current knowledge, including the results from 2019.

[1] [https://m.youtube.com/channel/UC7_gcs09iThXybpVgjHZ_7g](https://m.youtube.com/channel/UC7_gcs09iThXybpVgjHZ_7g)

<comment><USER3> What's the Discord community link? Not seeing it on their website or YT channel.

<comment><USER2> It requires Patreon $2 sponsorship at least [1].

[1] [https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime](https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Alright, what the bloody hell is this text, and Peter Galison, attempting to say?

> A black hole hoards images of the past. Light is composed of photons, and > each one carries a bit of the image of whatever it hits. So when you see a > tree the light hits the tree, bounces to your eye, and your brain eventually > pulls it all together like a mosaic. Light stuck in a black hole's > gravitational pull can loop once, twice, or an infinite number of times, > depending on its angle of approach, Lupsasca said. Those[sic] that finally > escape in the direction of Earth carry a reflection of what the universe > looked like when they entered the black hole's pull. The longer light was > held captive, the earlier in the past their image shows.

> "As we peer into these rings, first, second, third, etc., we are looking at > light from all over the visible universe; we are seeing farther and farther > into the past, a movie, so to speak, of the history of the visible > universe," said Peter Galison, the Joseph Pellegrino University Professor of > the History of Science and of Physics...

Does anyone assert that any photon carries information about what it interacted with in the past? Does a photon have any information content other than its energy/wavelength? So "each one carries a bit of the image of whatever it hits" is total (ok, be nice now) poetic blarney.

So then, you observe some photons coming away from a black hole, how the AF are you supposed to be able to know which ones circled it once, twice, 42 times, whatever? And in what possible sense, Prof. Galison, is any of that like a "movie of the history of the universe"?

<comment><USER5> _> Does anyone assert that any photon carries information about what it interacted with in the past?_

Yes. Each photon carries one bit of information. (I don't know if Galison intended "a bit" to mean literally a bit of information, but it's true.)

 _> Does a photon have any information content other than its energy/wavelength?_

Yes, its polarization. In laboratory experiments in quantum information, photon polarization is what encodes the information.

 _> how the AF are you supposed to be able to know which ones circled it once, twice, 42 times, whatever?_

By putting together the images conveyed by very large numbers of photons and looking for patterns in them. Yes, the information can be hard to decode, but it's there.

<comment><USER6> > Each photon carries one bit of information.

More than a bit. Between its wavelength, its presence (or absence), polarization, and timing, a photon can carry a great deal more than one bit.

<comment><USER5> You can't measure all of these things simultaneously (the operators don't commute), so even if all these observables exist for a photon, they don't all carry independent information. You can only "read out" what you can get from one observable.

In most quantum information experiments, that observable is polarization (more precisely, polarization in some particular direction), which is an exact one- bit measurement result.

In radio telescope observations, it's typically amplitude and wavelength that are measured. I don't know that "the information content of a single photon" is really meaningful for such observations since they don't observe single photons, they observe the overall intensity at different wavelengths.

<comment><USER7> Even accounting for the uncertainty principle, the amount of information you can transfer in principle with a single photon is far more than one bit. For example, you can distinguish the single photon hitting a screen at more than two different times, or at more than two different places, or at more than two different energies.

<comment><USER5> _> you can distinguish the single photon hitting a screen at more than two different times, or at more than two different places, or at more than two different energies._

You can't transfer information by any of these means because you can't control the time or the location or the energy of the photon hitting the screen.

The reason polarization is used to carry information in quantum computers is that you _can_ control it, so you _can_ use it to transfer information. But, as I said, a single photon can only be used to read out one bit in this way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So, maybe someone can explain in more concrete terms. The distance from us to the supermassive black hole in the center of the galaxy is 25k years. A photon traveling from us to the black hole, that happens to go around the black hole and come back would reach us in 50k years, or in 50k years plus a few million years due to the local time-space distortion around the black hole? If the photon goes around the black hole once and escapes and comes back, will it be back in 50k years, or in 1 billion years?

<comment><USER9> I would gladly answer but I'm not a theoretical physicist. Here's a video explaining it better: [https://youtu.be/UjgGdGzDFiM](https://youtu.be/UjgGdGzDFiM)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can VLBI be done with a single moving telescope, with a very precise clock?

I'm thinking of a single frequency point source in space. The received signal will be periodic. Thus we can move the receiver to a new point in space and still know what the received waveform would be at old position based on its periodicity (if we have an accurate clock). From there we can do interferometry?

A Fourier transform allows the same reasoning to be extended to a multi- frequency source. We can also extend the source spatially, in the same way an arbitrary hologram can be considered to be a collection of "zone plates" due to a set of point sources?

If the above is true, can we use a single Earth based telescope (with clock) to form a telescope with a diameter of the Earth's orbit over the course of a year?

Maybe the flaw is that it assumes that the scene being observed is static over the period of observation? How much change can be tolerated before a scene is no longer static?

</comment><comment><USER11> Do black holes appear the same no matter what direction you see them from? Every one of the theoretical views (and indeed the "real" one) are the same. I get the layman's description of why and how spacetime curvature causes it, but do they look the same if you view them from the plane of the accretion disk vs through the "poles" because of this?</comment>


How I got massively faster DB with in-process replication - <AUTHOR> http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/19346002203/how-i-got-massively-faster-db-with-in-process

<comment><AUTHOR> @willvarfar: Why did this appear on your stream (per HackerFollow) and now its not? :)</comment>


Bumblebees confused by iridescent colors - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2018-05-bumblebees-iridescent.html <comment><USER2> Honey bees seem to be misled by fluorescent colours, presumably as a result of the effect on UV wavelengths. Fluorescent materials shift UV light into the visible range so perhaps my jacket looks like a big hole in the vegetation, perhaps they think it is clear air and are then surprised to find something solid.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ah, clever! I suppose it must not be too difficult to throw a wrench in the workings of those highly optimized/specialized little insect brains.

</comment><comment><USER4> That is awesome</comment>


She does what she hates - <AUTHOR> http://jessicamah.com/blog/?p=1123

<comment><USER2> I liked the "fix someone's pain" message in this. It's easy to write software with more and more features (or spiffy never-heard-of-before features), but in the end it really should be about solving a problem for somebody. Well, assuming that you'd like to make some money doing it.</comment>


Never Mix Promises and Callbacks in NodeJS - <AUTHOR> https://spin.atomicobject.com/2017/04/06/nodejs-promises-callbacks/#.WOeUlCGS_0c.hackernews <comment><USER2> The problem isn't mixins Promises and callbacks, in fact mixing the two is often completely necessary and people need to learn to do it correctly exactly to avoid problems like these.

The problem here is that chained Promise reactions, like .then(A).catch(B) can indeed call both A and B if A throws, which in this case is very bad if you can only call one of them.

The correct solution is to use an error handler in .then():

        function fetchFirstUser(iswhatIwant, callback) {
          knex.first().from("users").then((user) => {
            callback(user);
          }, (e) => {
            callback(null);
          });
        }

But anytime you're invoking callbacks you also have to consider the case where the callback throws - which is one reason returning Promises is generally easier to get correct than invoking callbacks - so you _also_ need a .catch():

        function fetchFirstUser(iswhatIwant, callback) {
          knex.first().from("users").then((user) => {
            callback(user);
          }, (e) => {
            callback(null);
          }).catch((e) => {
            // oh no, callback() threw! bad callback!
            console.error(e);
          });
        }

This might seem like a lot, but I blame callbacks in general for the extra work that needs to be done. If you can avoid callbacks, do, because Promises all the way through would be so much simpler:

        function fetchFirstUser(iswhatIwant, callback) {
          return knex.first().from("users");
        }

And push error handling out to the initiator.

<comment><USER3> If you must call the callback, you could simplify this pattern as such:

      function fetchFirstUser(isWhatIWant, callback) {
          knex.first().from('users')
              .then(user => ({ user }))
              .catch(e => ({ e }))
              .then(({ user, e }) => {
                  if (user) {
                      callback(user);
                  } else {
                      callback(e);
                  }
              });
      }

By only calling your callback function after a catch statement, you guarantee that (a) an exception generated by the callback will not be swallowed by the catch statement and that (b) the callback is called exactly once in the promise chain.

<comment><USER2> I like this!

For golfing purposes, you can remove a branch too:

        function fetchFirstUser(isWhatIWant, callback) {
          knex.first().from('users')
            .then((user) => ({ user }), (e) => ({ e }))
            .then(({ user, e }) => callback(e, user))
            .catch((e) => console.error(e));
        }

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why was the solution to fallback to callbacks instead of just using promises all the way through? (Edit, removed mention of bluebird that would not have helped)

The problem here isn't that they are being swallowed, it is that the tests have a constraint that the callback be called only once, which is conveniently the behavior of a then applied to the promise you would return.

<comment><USER5> I'm the author of that post. I could have certainly used promises all the way through, and in some cases that might be the better option.

My example is contrived, but in the larger project that I was working in, almost all of the existing code used callbacks. Refactoring all that code to use promises, just to accommodate the two or three places that actually needed them, probably would not have been worth it.

<comment><USER2> It is worth it though because of the much better error handling in Promises and the ability to use async/await which makes error handling even more easy to get correct.

I'd suggest making all functions that take callbacks also return Promises to make the transition easier:

        async function fetchFirstUser(iswhatIwant, callback) {
          const safeCallback = (user) => {
            try {
              callback(user);
            } catch (e) {
              console.error(e);
            }
          };

          try {
            const user = await knex.first().from("users");
            safeCallback(user);
            return user;
          } catch (e) {
            safeCallback(null);
            throw e;
          }
        }

You can put this in a utility (and I'd recommend standardizing on Node's callback style):

        async doWithCallback(promise, callback) {
          const safeCallback = (error, result) => {
            if (callback == null) {
              return;
            }
            try {
              callback(null, result);
            } catch (e) {
              console.error(e);
            }
          };
          try {
            const result = await promise;
            safeCallback(null, result);
            return result;
          } catch (e) {
            safeCallback(e);
            throw e;
          }
        }

        async function fetchFirstUser(iswhatIwant, callback) {
          return doWithCallback(knex.first().from("users"), callback);
        }

At some point you can start warning when callbacks are passed in, then throwing, then remove the argument.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I just wrote a reply on Medium to this article: [https://medium.com/@fpresencia/please-mix-promises-and- callb...](https://medium.com/@fpresencia/please-mix-promises-and- callbacks-b2d15da6166c)

Takeaways:

\- It has the _wrong_ signature! The callback is the second parameter but is being passed as the first, so it will never be called.

\- Even if that's a typo, don't catch what you intend to throw as an exception. Use the callback as the second parameter of the `then` and let it fail. The error will stil l be _swallowed_ , but in a more predictable way.

\- Better yet, use async/await if possible! It makes promises a joy to work with.

<comment><USER7> "It has the wrong signature!" \- This x1000.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's also an anti-pattern to not have an err as the first argument in an async callback.

<comment><USER9> Agreed! There is a handy package called `denodeify` which converts the callback pattern (with err) to promises.

It works for every async function in node, except for `fs.exists` which inexplicably does not provide an error in the callback.

Speaking of which, when is node going to actually start supporting promises natively? I've been using this denodeify hack for years!

<comment><USER6> I would say there are _dozens_ of projects that do this from a search I did a while back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is a point nobody here is making, which is that all the examples use the wrong signature for callbacks, which is function(err, result). The problem is not interop between the two, which is fairly easy - the problem arises when not using standard signatures. Seems like all the fuss could be avoided too because Mocha supports both promises and callbacks.

      function asCallback(promise, callback) {
        return Promise.resolve(promise)
          .then(result => callback(null, result))
          .catch(callback)
      }

      // returns a new fn that takes same args which returns promise instead
      function asPromise(fn) {
        return (...args) => new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
          fn(...args, (err, result) => {
            if (err) return reject(err);
            resolve(result)
          })
        })
      }

</comment><comment><USER10> Mocha has support for returning promises in it() tests, so there's really no need to use callbacks.

<comment><USER11> Well... mocha has support for callback since the beginning, callback is the simplest way to go, callback will never become obsolete, so there's really no need to use promises. :)

<comment><USER12> People should avoid using callbacks as they invert the chain of handling function calls. Rather than getting a result that you can work with, you move the logic into another function. Promises compose much more cleanly than callbacks do resulting in generally easier to follow code.

If you call function x with a callback you either handle it immediately via your callback or you have to use some other paradigm to make it compose with other async code. You get no return value allowing you to write code that looks synchronous and forget about the beauty of async/await you've completed abandoned it with callbacks. If you use Promises you can do as you wish and combine them as you wish as they hold values and you can use them multiple times trivially with other Promises,

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Or ... return the promise in `fetchFirstUser`?

</comment><comment><USER14> or just use async which fixes both of these arguably broken solutions for callback hell.

<comment><USER15> Most 'callback hell' situations are really just poor code structure. Easily solved with separated named functions.

<comment><USER14> This is easy to say but hard to do in practice. Every JS application I've seen in production is littered with callback nightmares. It might be possible to avoid but in practice it's too difficult.

async makes it easy and I don't see a downside to using it everywhere possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wouldn't using the second parameter of .then() to catch exceptions work instead of .catch()?

[http://stackoverflow.com/a/33278420](http://stackoverflow.com/a/33278420)

<comment><USER17> It doesn't matter. The problem is that `callback(null)` throws, and in the `Promise` land this will _never_ result in an uncaught exception. An exception directly inside any `Promise` callback produces another `Promise` in the chain instead.

You could at best use `setTimeout` or `nextTick` to escape from `Promise`'s call stack and throw there.

<comment><USER16> Good point! I thought of solving the callback getting called twice problem and didn't think of the bigger picture that mocha needs to catch the assertion error. I like the setTimeout/nextTick trick (well, ideally use Promises and async/await instead).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Weird things can happen with event emitters mixed up with promises too. I wrote a short piece with an example:

[https://qubyte.codes/blog/promises-and-nodejs-event- emitters...](https://qubyte.codes/blog/promises-and-nodejs-event-emitters- dont-mix)

(The title is a bit overstated, since it's really about the specific example of unhandled error emissions in a promise chain.)

Regardless of the merits or problems of either post, a lesson is to be careful around promises when errors are involved.

</comment><comment><USER15> Callbacks are simpler, easier to understand and explain. 'callback hell' is usually the result of 'poor code structure' that get's fixed with separated named functions.

<comment><USER19> Writing in continuation passing style manually isn't great. It really does become confusing and hard to debug very quickly. That said, promises also aren't the solution, because you still have to contort your code to be compatible with promises. Further more, async/await is yet another non- solution because now you have to differentiate between synchronous and asynchronous functions. Still, both of these are improvements upon simple callbacks. What JavaScript is lacking is a real implementation of "communicating sequential processes" a la Go, ConcurrentML, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is there any typechecking library for JS that can warn of potentially "swallowed" promises? Does Flow do this?

<comment><USER21> For debugging in Node I use:

        process.on("unhandledRejection", err => {
            console.error("Uncaught Promise Error: \n" + err.stack);
            console.error(err);
        });

<comment><USER22> That's better than letting it get swallowed, but in my experience is pretty terrible still, as it often just results in a stack trace where your code literally doesn't exist at all. In a somewhat big project, just having a vague error message without as much as a line number is hell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Better never use Promises at all, it is no solution for a problem, instead it makes code only more ambiguous IMHO. And indeed mixing it with callbacks or async libraries makes it even worse..

I've once had a very nasty bug keeping me busy for days, where somewhere in a complex structure of multiple promises I somehow forgot to return a call to a resolve. With all these new Promise(), .then(), .catch(), resolve's and reject's nested it's very easy to miss one, and very hard to read where the bug sits.

Maybe it's just me, but I never had such a severe bug with the simplicity of the standard async callback pattern. I Never used promises again, still enjoying that decision.

<comment><USER24> My experience has been exactly the reverse. Promises have made async code much easier to read and understand. There is a little learning curve, but it's not so bad.

<comment><USER25> Totally agree. There's a sense of satisfaction when refactoring legacy callback code to a simple promise chain. It's even better when the functions called in succession have names that read out concisely and clearly the behavior of the Promise chain as a whole

<comment><USER23> haha, totally happy for you guys enjoying Promises, it apparently works for you and that's what counts.

I also enjoy refactoring callback code, only without the use of Promises, because I don't prefer them to compose and create a nice readable flow. There is a little learning curve though, but it's not so bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > Knex queries return Bluebird promises by default

I haven't kept up with JS trends recently. Are these promise wrapper libraries like Bluebird still relevant now that ES6 is out?

<comment><USER27> Bluebird is more than just a promise implementation. It is also a general purpose promise utility library.

E.g., providing `promisify` wrappers for callback driven code and functional collection methods like `map` / `filter` / `reduce`.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is another great reason never to use promises.

"Callback Hell" is FUD spread by people who somehow missed the memo about the fact that you can add functions to your code. [http://callbackhell.com](http://callbackhell.com) explains it quite well.

In running away from "Callback Hell" the JavaScript community ran straight into "Control Structure Hell" which is far, far worse.</comment>


The path toward mastery: How to become an expert in a field - <AUTHOR> https://iuliangulea.com/blog/the-path-toward-mastery-how-to-become-an-expert/ <comment><USER2> It seems to me the pyramid needs to be flipped upside down. The amount of knowledge needed at mastery is much higher than at the base level when you are learning the elements. It is oversimplified to say the least. Seems like an average post that appeals to a layman who is searching the Internet for an short guided answer to mastery. I didn't buy it.reads like any other self help book or guide. Sorry. Lastly the 10000 hour thing is far deeper than that. Please read the context behind it. Overall decent for a first post on a hobby blog.

<comment><USER3> > Lastly the 10000 hour thing is far deeper than that. Please read the context > behind it.

[https://www.6seconds.org/2018/02/09/the-great-practice- myth-...](https://www.6seconds.org/2018/02/09/the-great-practice-myth- debunking-the-10000-hour-rule-and-what-you-actually-need-to-know-about- practice/) \- Perhaps this is can help shine some light on the author's original comments regarding the 10,000 hour rule?

> It seems to me the pyramid needs to be flipped upside down. The amount of > knowledge needed at mastery is much higher than at the base level when you > are learning the elements.

You're confusing knowledge with experience. At the top end of a career you need a lot of experience to build solutions, but that experience is built up (slowly) by understanding first the fundamentals, followed by how-to build tools and solutions, finally abstracting them behind frameworks or SaaS products.

You have to understand TCP/IP before you can fit out an office with a network. You have to understand Python before you can use Django. And you have to understand Django before you can build a SaaS product. And you need experience before you can build anything good.

> Overall decent for a first post on a hobby blog.

I might come across as a bit condescending calling it a "hobby blog". It's sort of putting down the OP's efforts, I feel.

EDIT: Apologies for being so crude in my original wording. I'm updating the comment to reflect a more professional, civil tone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The medieval explanation was far more revealing than the pyramid that came after.

I highly recommend "everydays" as a way to mastery. I've done in arts and music and I'm still mind blown at how fast and proficient I got.

The rules are simple: do one thing every day, that you can be held accountable (aka. in public). Such as a daily jam on twitch or soundcloud, a piece on IG. Keep it up, after 2-3 days you get much faster, after 10 days you do it flyingly, after 30 days I find the curve flattens a bit as you're pretty much as proficient as could be. Time to then start another goal as "everyday". If you miss one day, don't sweat it. Pretend that day didn't happen.

<comment><USER5> I agree with your first sentiment especially.

I'm fascinated by the master apprentice relationship in craftsmanship and other things like meditation practice (zen). It is a really powerful and - excuse this wishy washy term - natural principle.

But I think it is not as prevalent as it should be when it comes to programming and software development, which is a beautiful mix of problem solving, craft/skill, and the arts of communication and organization. It is driven by experience/practice and pragmatism but also creativity and synthesis. This paradox yearns for mentorship.

Gladly we have some excellent thinkers and communicators in our culture and history. And the internet. But I feel as an industry we don't do as much as we should to further our craftsmanship.

<comment><USER6> I agree. I have been unsuccessfully looking for a SWE/programming mentor for years. I am now back in school, working on a PhD at a CS department and I am still facing the same problem. Curiously, I have had no difficulty finding mentors in other areas, e.g., modeling, psychology. I often wonder if I am doing something wrong or is mentoring simply not a part of the SWE culture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> >>There is a widespread belief that putting in 10,000 hours will make you an expert, but that myth has been proved wrong many times).

No, that is a misinterpretation of what deliberate practice involves. Most shallow interpretations like this one just talk about the time involved, and not about the other important factors like continuous feedback and focused practice, and then call it a myth.

<comment><USER8> I'd say the 10000 hour thing is an oversimplification. There is no clear-cut definition for either "expert" or "deliberate" practice, so those statements can never be proven or disproven.

To me it is inevitable that some people embark on a journey of mastery only to discover that there is some kind of barrier that they can't overcome just by thinking or working their way out of it. Plenty of clear-cut examples, lot's of more murky ones. Some barriers are predictable, some aren't.

And mastery doesn't even equal success. Many master painters had no success in their life time. Many successful artists have questionably mastery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great post! Something I have found very valuable for myself is accumulating experience. Having gone through a process, task or problem even once brings a lot of knowledge and insights. If I had to put it in numbers, I'd say mastery as a whole is 50% knowledge about the layers on one side of the pyramid and 50% experience, at least for me.

</comment><comment><USER10> There's a certain truth to be considered that there are some things you will never be able to master, not even after 20000 hours. Usually people identify these things early on in life, but sometimes it takes a while.

For example, I realized early on that I would never be able to become a fighter pilot.

<comment><USER11> I found myself actually being able to do things I thought early on I could never become good at, and pretty well.

If anything, now I treat that unpleasant feeling of perceived impossibility of something as a strong indication that I should pursue it. It never let me down.

I think pretty much the only thing that disqualifies you from becoming a fighter jet pilot is an untreatable bodily impediment. Well, also pacifism, but that's chosen :)

<comment><USER10> It might become treatable soon, but I'll be too old anyway. Good thing being a pilot was never a dream of mine :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think the author confuses experts at performing particular tasks and experts for some field of knowledge.

And then goes on to reiterate the age old wisdom that you need to practice, and especially the fundamentals, to gain expert skills.

To become expert at either teaching a skill or a subject matter, or even advance the field, I think the most important activity is to find out and understand what and how they are doing and thinking.

Standing on the shoulders of Giants is a good first step even if just to survey where to leap next.

</comment><comment><USER12> That seems to misunderstand the path from apprentice to journeyman (singular) to master. Look to actual (not software) engineers for that. They still do it and they somehow managed it even with present day educational standards.

There is also a deep misunderstanding of what the Internet is. It's not a "third dimension" or a set of marketing hype. It is an engineering marvel. Which again drives home that the author has no grounding in engineering.

This "pyramid of mastery" is roughly as sensible as organizing your bookshelf by color. It might please the eye of a layman, but makes no sense to the knowledgeable. There is no sense of sweep and scope of concepts and instead everything is labelled by size of something a novice can easily identify. Never mind that this shape would be an inverted pyramid given the current taxonomy and concept of size, it just doesn't make sense as a path toward mastery.

Then there is cyclic learning, not drawn because apparently it would spoil the oversimplified diagrams.

I don't understand this piece. It's not trying to sell me anything. If it were, it would be better designed to a purpose. For charity's sake, I'll choose to believe it's an apprentice's draft, a first effort at prose.

<comment><USER13> > actual (not software) engineers

Why do people (many software engineers) insist on putting down software engineering like this? I see things like "bad" languages being popular and instances like leftpad cited, as if other disciplines never have clunky standards or silly incidents.

<comment><USER14> As a software engineer with an electrical engineering degree , I think there are other factors that make software engineering "less" engineering-y.

One of the biggest things that comes to mind for me is that in software engineering a junior engineer can legally build, deploy, and launch a critical project.

In other engineerings, projects require sign-off from a licensed (P.Eng in Canada) engineer. And the engineer that signs off on that project is the one held liable for its success or failure.

Personally, I've loved software engineering for the above as it's let me grow my career much more easily, but I do think of it as a stark difference in engineering and "software engineering".

<comment><USER3> > One of the biggest things that comes to mind for me is that in software > engineering a junior engineer can legally build, deploy, and launch a > critical project.

Except in my experience this rarely happens. Maybe your experiences are different?

You're also potentially forgetting something: if their software breaks down it's very, very unlikely to cause a death. There are far, far, far, far fewer cases in which software engineering failures have resulted in death versus, say, structural engineering.

Building a bridge that takes people over a river? Better get that right...

Building LinkedIn? Let's hope we get it right but if we don't, some people get mildly annoyed and the share holders lose their money. It's not quite the same impact, but still downtime isn't ideal.

EDIT: Apologies for being so crude in my original wording. I'm updating the comment to reflect a more professional, civil tone.

<comment><USER3> Love the down votes but not the rebuttals. Stay classy, Reddi-um Hacker News.

EDIT: Apologies to all. This isn't the right attitude for HN and I'll refrain from this kind of behavior in the future.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to get your resume noticed? - <AUTHOR> http://www.dg.ca/blog/how-to-get-your-resume-noticed-in-canada <comment><USER2> Move to the US and be judged by a computer playing psychological games on you: [https://www.inc.com/melanie-curtin/resumes-dont-help-you- hir...](https://www.inc.com/melanie-curtin/resumes-dont-help-you-hire- innovative-people-but-this-does-hint-teslas-doing-it.html)

<comment><USER3> I threw the article out the second story window here

>They're designed to elicit the answer to that critical question: How hungry are you?

>Hungry people are driven to succeed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One of the things I've done, added a skills list page with my resume. 3 columns, top down with expert, intermediate, novice sections. Then added a bunch of skills in each category.

Then it helps avoid the back and forth to ask if I have a skill set and my level. Also has a nice benefit of updating the automatic readers with a skillset list.

Worked for me.</comment>


Ask HN: YC rejected twice. Why? How can we improve without knowing the reason? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER5> 1\. I find your app's design distracting. It is outdated and it gives me waaay too much info. Both the colors and the blurred background bug my eyes.

2\. Your website shows testimonials first, then has a short banner, yadayada, then I have to watch a short video on how it works which is just a video of app in use. I'd love to know what it is first, then read testimonials, then see a demo.

3\. Looking at your instagram and you should definitely hire a designer. Instagram is where your audience is and where you should be targeting with ads and growing your userbase.

4\. Your "Chat" tab has some nice view numbers! That's great - maybe organise it a bit more? This could be a potential goldmine. Here's an idea. Take quotes from those essays, put them on a blank colored canvas and post on IG. Example:

"NYU is fucking amazing when you get here because it's free, interesting, the teachers are hella cool" and hashtag it with proper tags. You'll probably get some attention and when user arrives to your profile he should see what you are and how you can help him.

Also, kifler asked legit questions.

<comment><AUTHOR> BTW - today I tried your idea of posting the text on IG. Thanks for the idea :-) I also changed the website based on your suggestions. Hopefully its better than before

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> With all due respect, someone who got accepted to Yale would not write:

"I was accepted at Yale. Julia of Mentr was amazingly helpful and guided me all along the way. I'm so thankful her who helped me with my essays and got me to this point."

Obviously fake testimonials and stock photos are major red flags. If you have to use fake testimonials, for the love of all that is holy, find a good writer.

<comment><USER7> How is that obviously fake? Are you saying every freshman at Yale, including international students, speaks and writes perfect English?

<comment><USER6> Maybe not perfect English, but I'd expect a significantly higher level of English than that quote demonstrates. Add in a stock photo and why would anyone think that that is real?

<comment><USER8> I volunteer with two organizations--one group serves mostly privileged high achievers (kids on track to be lawyers, architects, etc.) while the other is made up of kids who are probably only 50/50 to graduate high school. In both groups, most of the kids are TERRIBLE writers. Their vocabulary is usually fairly limited and their writing is stilted and repetitive.

Being a good writer generally doesn't matter in high school. Most classes don't require much writing and for those that do, they just require students to convey the right number of facts and avoid most grammar mistakes.

Kids also engage in far more code-switching than adults, I think. When asked for a recommendation, It's possible that this particular kid just dashed off a quick email rather than really sit down to write something engaging.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much for your comments. Coudnt agree with you more specially the last part :-))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Genuine question: What value proposition does your company offer? Can't I get these same questions answered from a variety of different sources?

Additionally, some of the mentor responses lack a certain level of professionalism to be called a mentor. Example: "Question: Hi I am applying to NYU this fall. I have never visited NYU before because I live all the way in California. I was wondering if you could share your experience starting at NYU? Also any background info like where you came from, how was the transition, did you have to move far, etc.? Any extra information you want to add would be rlly helpful. Thanks in advance!

Answer: Absolutely! I'm from Chicago, Originally. (not the actual city, the suburbs. Fucking Suburbia, man.) I hope it makes you feel better to know that I'd never visited NYU before actually ..."

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, I should have replied here-- @kifler - Mentr is a peer to peer mentoring platform for college and career advice. It lets high schoolers, who are unable to find any help related to college (except for factual info available on google), with real college students to get college advice. It fosters peer to peer communication, which is exactly whats happening right now. It does not mandate someone should have a degree in "mentorship" (if there is anything like that) but allows free information to be served. In the example below, the NYU student just felt like "fucking suburbia" and thats what she wrote. Moreover, as a company, we love when such "open" discussions happen and not afraid to hide it. Thats why you see this is as the top thread. If anyone feels all the communication between peers should be professional or highly intellectual, they need to hire professional college counselors. Was I able to answer your question satisfactorily?

<comment><USER9> So what's stopping me from checking into r/nyu and asking a multitude people to respond?

Where is the money to be made?

What makes a freshman mentor qualified to actually talk about the breadth of a program or a career when they have little to no exposure of a full 4 year program or job-track?

There are a number of questions that aren't answered succinctly on your site (at least that 'pop-out' at me) or within your post.

<comment><AUTHOR> These are good questions. Thanks for asking them. 1\. Why not go to r/nyu - <USER4> never said Mentr is the only place to get into but Mentr makes sure the students are real, and we verify their identities. Not sure if reddit does that? 2\. Money is made when mentor renders a service like reviewing someone's college essay, or hosting someone for a campus tour. They make 70% of the transaction 3\. They are qualified because they made it to their school. Also as I mentioned, the platform is for peer to peer communication. As long as the mentors have relevant experience to share, and are willing to help someone we will accept them as mentors. We also personally interview every mentor to make sure they are a good fit. 4\. Thanks for the input on the website. We are struggling for resources to make a top notch site and that's one of the reasons we really wanted to be in YC so we can fix these loose ends. Really appreciate you asking me these questions!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> FYI - I have redesigned the website based on all the great feedback received from everyone. [http://mentr.io](http://mentr.io)

</comment><comment><USER10> Edit: I was wrong. The testimonials are real. Only the first picture is a stock photo.

I just quickly checked out Mentr, the company listed on your profile.

The very first picture is obviously a stock photo[1], which I confirmed with a Google search.

Lying to customers and misrepresenting prior success might be a common tactic in Silicon Valley, but it also shows a lack of integrity (and lack of users) that would worry me as an investor.

If you can't find 5-10 real people to use your service and talk about it, you should move to the next idea.

1\. [https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-in-black-blazer-jacket- on...](https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-in-black-blazer-jacket-on-wooden- bench-206559/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thats not true. All the students are real, except the one who did not send her profile picture. I could have left it alone, but she is one of the best student success stories. I did not lie, I can share their emails. Also not sure if you ever ran a company, but many times in business you need to take these risks. You need to work with whatever you have.

<comment><USER11> It sounds like OP's feedback is not that you shouldn't take risks, but that they think the risks you took may backfire with investors. (Or rather would backfire with OP, an investor, or someone taking that perspective).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Your goal should be to build a sustainable business, ideally one that is cash- flow positive very early on. If you can't do that, a secondary goal _might_ be to try to prove your concept with some paying customers.

When you reach those goals, you'll get investors (if you need them). They may be YC or they may not. YC isn't the only source of money, and there's no evidence that it's the best one, either.

If you can't reach those goals, badgering investors into giving you some money isn't a solution. It'll just prolong the life of a business that's doomed to fail.

</comment><comment><USER12> > So why don't we tell people why we didn't invite them to interview? Because, > paradoxical as it sounds, there often is no reason. The median application > is usually pretty good. The reason it gets rejected is not that it seems > particularly bad, but that there are a sufficient number of others that seem > particularly good.

[1] [https://www.ycombinator.com/whynot/](https://www.ycombinator.com/whynot/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Well thats stock statement written by a lawyer. YC should spend time letting founders know where they failed, and what can they do to improve. We spent days to write the perfect application, why cant they spend few minutes for the feedback? StartX does it. They called me for a 15 min feedback and told me where I was wrong. I loved it because I came to know my blindspots.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > How can we improve without knowing the reason?

Add a zero to your KPIs, then apply again. Repeat as necessary.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> @kifler - Mentr is a peer to peer mentoring platform for college and career advice. It lets high schoolers, who are unable to find any help related to college (except for factual info available on google), with real college students to get college advice. It fosters peer to peer communication, which is exactly whats happening right now. It does not mandate someone should have a degree in "mentorship" (if there is anything like that) but allows free information to be served. In the example below, the NYU student just felt like "fucking suburbia" and thats what she wrote. Moreover, as a company, we love when such "open" discussions happen and not afraid to hide it. Thats why you see this is as the top thread. If anyone feels all the communication between peers should be professional or highly intellectual, they need to hire professional college counselors. Was I able to answer your question satisfactorily?

</comment><comment><USER14> My feedback would be to work on making your business successful, regardless of getting into an accelerator program. If you can succeed, the act of doing that will resolve any concerns any accelerator program may have.

And if you're wondering why you'd need YC if you are succeeding on your own - sometimes you don't. But the benefit of an accelerator, or even investors, is that they can take your existing growth path and increase it's speed tremendously.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> @hluska if Y Combinator cannot deal with the speed that a startup needs to move, which means things cannot be perfect, then my startup is not a good fit for them really. But as far as I know YC, they love scrappy people who put together things people love. My company is already changing people's lives by helping them get to college and thats all what matters. Screw "good english"

</comment><comment><USER15> 1\. Even if your testimonials are not fake they do not come across as genuine but instead like the text from a 419 scam.

2\. What is w/ the text "Care your family" in the top carousel?

</comment><comment><USER16> This app just makes me keep thinking of the protege Seinfeld episode.

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

<comment><AUTHOR> Lol. So true. I might use it for my marketing purposes :-))

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> You can't improve your odds at a roulette wheel either.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks everyone. I love all the comments below, and let me explain them one by one.

</comment><comment><USER18> Ask them, not us.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> @everyone - If you cannot help, I dont need your sarcasm.

@smt88 - well said and every entrepreneur knows this goal. However in order to make a sustainable business, it needs initial capital and marketing investment to be able to reach a critical mass. Without that, the product will not have enough usage to go beyond its current state.

I did not apply to YC for investment, it was for the network they brought with them. They could connect me with growth hackers who can get the marketing done with smaller budget. Their mentorship would have been beneficial to take the business to next level.

I can get loan from the bank, but that does not mean its valuable.

<comment><USER12> > If you cannot help, I dont need your sarcasm.

This is not a productive way to talk to any community.

<comment><USER19> I feel this statement could carry a lot of meaning about the original question as well. It was obviously not the feedback they desired, but one needs to be able to accept opinion once they as for it. Hopefully, they will pick it up this time.

<comment><AUTHOR> I accept all opinions - but not the ones that are not useful. For example someone said something about roulette. How is that useful? Why did they even spend time to write that statement? I love critical comments, I really love them. I have replied to each comment above. What I can't take is sarcasm. That's it.

<comment><USER20> You quite frankly appear to have somewhat of an attitude. You come off as defensive and carrying a chip on your shoulder. Why on earth would you get yourself involved in a petty fight over people writing comments that aren't "useful" on your post? Have you never used this site before[1]?

People try to give you feedback that your site feels fake to them. You're not internalising it, you launch straight into a hurt defence. Someone quoted from YC policy, presumably to shed some light on the situation, and you dismiss it as a stock response written by a lawyer, lecture them on what they should be doing and start praising a competitor.

In short, if you already have all the answers, what do you need YC for?

1: Frankly, your apparent confusion as to how commenting works is a bit jarring - it befits someone asking for help to acquaint himself a bit with how things work, but that's the least of your problems.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok this I feel is super useful for me. You gave me actionable feedback and I am super thankful. I will definitely improve upon this. Yep I get defensive, thats something I am working on. I took all the feedback to heart. The person who commented on the "fake testimonial" did change his statement (check it out). I tried to find a real user image but I felt I cannot use any user's image without asking them. So I am trying to internalize all comments. I also replied to everyone who took time to help me. I have not used this site much. I have been active since the YC application days. > Why on earth would you get yourself involved in a petty fight over people writing comments that aren't "useful" on your post? - Yep I should not have. It was not worth. My bad.

> Have you never used this site before - Only sometime

> You're not internalising it, you launch straight into a hurt defence - <USER4> > will improve

> Someone quoted from YC policy, presumably to shed some light on the > situation, and you dismiss it as a stock response written by a lawyer - <USER4> > still think its a stock response. YC should do what it should. I don't > expect everyone to agree with me (hope this is not attitudish, i am simply > narrating my stand on it without being influenced by anyone)

>start praising a competitor - Whats wrong in praising a better service? Isnt that the freedom of such forums that people can express their opinions?

> if you already have all the answers, what do you need YC for? - I don't have > all the answers. I still need to find out the answer to my original question > - why did YC reject me twice. Some folks have helped me by telling me that > its combination of team/domain expertise and traction. But would have been > nice if YC could have told me that themselves. >1: Frankly, your apparent > confusion as to how commenting works is a bit jarring - it befits someone > asking for help to acquaint himself a bit with how things work, but that's > the least of your problems - I am not sure if I understand.

<comment><USER20> > The person who commented on the "fake testimonial" did change his statement > (check it out).

It doesn't matter. That person almost certainly isn't a potential customer. I'm not either. Changing our minds is a waste of your time. You won't get a chance to debate the people who come to your site and turn away because it looks fake.

> I still think its a stock response. YC should do what it should. I don't > expect everyone to agree with me (hope this is not attitudish, i am simply > narrating my stand on it without being influenced by anyone)

The attitude is that it seems like it's very important for you to be right about things that doesn't matter (or you have very poor judgment in seeing what matters). That's a very unpleasant trait, and if the YC interviewers caught even a little bit of that, I suspect they'd fail you flat out on that alone.

> Whats wrong in praising a better service? Isnt that the freedom of such > forums that people can express their opinions?

What's wrong is that it's off-topic (and also has a bit of the "important to be right" thing above). People came to _your_ thread to help _you_ find out why you didn't get accepted, not to debate whether YC is stupid.

> I don't have all the answers. I still need to find out the answer to my > original question - why did YC reject me twice. Some folks have helped me by > telling me that its combination of team/domain expertise and traction. But > would have been nice if YC could have told me that themselves

"Having all the answers" is a figure of speech. It means "not listening when people are trying to answer your questions". Nobody here can tell you why you were rejected, but they can offer ideas. And it looks a lot like you're not listening to any ideas that doesn't fit your preconceived notion of why you were rejected. How do you know that the people telling you it's because of "team/domain expertise and traction", are right and not the ones that think your website looks fake? Hence, having all the answers.

> I am not sure if I understand.

Your style of commenting is all over the place, and suggests that you have not spend some time acquainting yourself with the way comments are done here. That's a bit impolite, but obviously can't be the reason you were rejected. On the other hand, if it's indicative of poor communication skills, then that could be a big problem.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Enterprise -- What exactly is a "Solution?" - <AUTHOR>

We've all seen the word "solution" in enterprise marketing buzzspeak, usually in the form of a top-level navigation tab.
What exactly is a "solution" in Enterprise parlance? To me it seems to be a "use case." Since each use case represents a distinct market segment, each one has its own marketing materials. It's just another way to market the same product to different people.
What does enterprise HN think? <comment><USER2> "Use case" is an appropriate way to describe a solution. From the perspective of a Solution Architect, I'd say its mostly marketing fluff but the reason the term caught on is the distinction between delivering a system vs. delivering a system plus the guidance/procedures to successfully leverage it.

I rarely get to just code something; oftentimes I need to understand the goal, the entirety of the existing process (because most people only know their little piece) and then figure out what makes the most sense to solve for X. There's a lot of non-technical heavy lifting involved in successfully delivering something in the enterprise. That coupled with the obsession over buzz words is likely why "solution" has taken hold in the enterprise space and no where else.

<comment><USER3> That's it. You're not selling a product or a system, you're selling a solution to a problem. E.g:

Problem: Managing your customer's data, bills, etc on paper is tedious.

Solution: Deploy a product, adapt it to the company's processes (or create new ones), create documentation, train people.

Enterprises don't usually buy "off-the-shelf" products as they need heavy customization to be included in already existent processes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> When I see a "solutions" tab, all I think is "click here to learn what we do, without actually learning what we do, or what anything costs"

It's just a way to position your offering such that it would require the potential customer to engage further with you (in some hi-touch capacity) before they can convert.

It avoids the distasteful "add to cart" button for products/services that are priced so high that adding to cart would seem ridiculous.</comment>


BP Sets New Spill Target - July 27th - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704545004575353364174224780.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsTop <comment><USER2> It seems a bit ridiculous that they set the date for capping the well based on the date that they release their corporate earnings. I find it offensive that corporate earnings dates have any input whatsoever on the scheduling of remediating a disaster of this proportion.</comment>


How does Facebook know who I interact with offline? - <AUTHOR>

I got a friend recommendation from Facebook that has me worried about how intrusive it is.
This is a person with whom I have NO mutual friends. I only know him because our kids attend swim lessons at the same time (along with 30 other kids). Here is the kicker though, I have not communicated with him using any digital source. We only talk when we meet and have just exchanged phone numbers once but never called each other. I don't know his email/twitter/LinkedIn/Facebook details and he does not know mine.
So here is my question - how does Facebook figure out that I have interacted with him? Sure, we both pay for the swim lessons with a credit card so they can parse through that and figure out that we pay for the same activity. But then why is he the only one on the recommended friend list? Why isn't another parent (who I don't interact with that much) also on there?
Any thoughts? <comment><USER2> Geo-tagging.

If you both updated your status, or used facebook messenger from the same location multiple times. Facebook assumes you either met, or know each other. Since you attend the same place at the same time.

Stuff like this is why I deleted facebook. If I wanted to know these people I would add these people, I don't need suggests based on literally spying on my day to day activities.

<comment><AUTHOR> I replied earlier - but no, that's not a possible answer. There are close to 100 kids there at the same time. So about 100 parents checking Facebook at the same time. Why only him? Also, both of us are in the pool with our kids (parent-toddler sessions), so no Facebook for us

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> As Tomtoise said, they indeed read your address book. Even if you do not use the messenger app Whatsapp. You have given permission to let them read your whole phone (sms, address book and even to make changes in your calendar without your consent), by installing it. That is the main reason why many people do not install the Facebook app, but only use it via a browser.

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually just checked my address book and it seems I have never saved his phone number as a contact! The only other explanation could be that he saved my phone number as a contact and let Facebook have a field day with it

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Facebook app synchronizes with your address book. My best guess is that you've left facebook sync on and forgotten about it, added his number. Facebook has looked up that number, seen it belongs to this friend of yours and suggested a facebook friendship through that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is there a setting for that? I don't remember permitting Facebook to access my personal data. But then again, knowing their constantly changing privacy settings, who knows what they are upto

<comment><AUTHOR> I just checked that I had never saved his phone number as a contact - I just gave him a missed call probably so that he could have my number

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Have you both checked in on Facebook at the swimming pool? You might have also used Facebook multiple times at the pool, where they geolocate you, and then find people that have similar geolocation at same time, same place?

<comment><AUTHOR> Valid point. But then there are close to 100 kids there at the same time. So about 100 parents checking Facebook at the same time. Why only him?</comment></comment>


Google and Apple have different innovation signatures - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcodesign.com/3068474/the-real-difference-between-google-and-apple <comment><USER2> I'm not sure I buy the argument that Apple's inventors per patent means they're a more open or egalitarian companY. The hotspots seems to suggest that Apple just has a culture of giving management credit on the patents.

<comment><USER3> Apple has an "invent this for me" culture at the very top. That does not mean those are not real patents, but I doubt if someone travels back in time from 2040 and we posit they are now are at the top of Google today, you can speak three sentences and give the instruction "invent this for me" and have your name at the top of a patent filing that essentially just prettifies those three sentences, turns them into claims, and does the prior art research.

You _should_ be able to, because by 2040 there are lots of things that would be considered genuinely novel advancements to the state of the art today, but which can be described in three sentences.

It's a question about whether top executives can ask someone to invent something for them or not. At Google, no, at Apple, yes.

<comment><USER4> >> At Google, no, at Apple, yes.

Why ? Is this the cultural, or more related to the type and complexities of those inventions ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wonder if part of it has to do with incentive structures for patents? My understanding is that at Google, if you have <= K (2? 3?) inventors on a patent, they each get $X,000, and more than K, $X*2,000 is split N ways. (I have not received any patent bonuses personally, so this is all second- and third-hand.) This means that it pays to keep the number of inventors on a patent small.

If Apple has a different structure, this may account for the differences.

<comment><USER6> How interesting, that the company gives out bonuses for patents. I would not be surprised if Apple doesn't do this, much like how their retail staff don't get paid in commission.

<comment><USER7> I know at least two more companies that give bonuses for patents: IBM and Motorola (before being bought by Google).

<comment><USER8> My employer pays a decent bonus (> the $4000 cited for Google earlier) and we have a pretty small patent portfolio - I always imagined it was pretty typical for tech companies to but maybe that's not the case?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This entirely ignores the politics that lead to people listed on a patent that contributed nothing. It happens a lot, if not almost always, on patents filed by employees at a large company.

<comment><USER10> Although having an inventor that you can't attribute a contribution to invalidates the patent.

<comment><USER11> Sure, but say I come up with a novel idea. I run that idea past another lead as a sanity check, but I do most of the work myself. At one large company we were at the point where if the patent folk came around again it was our plan to milk the process. (Especially after we worked for three years on what was supposed to be a common data format for interchange between manufacturers, OEMs and customers and some halfwit thought it would be a great idea to patent the whole thing at the end. Asshole. We became highly motivated to publish our docs to start the patent clock ticking and eventually got the whole idea canned.)

In a world where the company is going to patent my work no matter what my opinion is,, 'collaborating' with people I didn't really need to collaborate with is a net positive for me.

One, I can let them make or review draft documents so that I'm not the one doing all of the bullshit paperwork. If they participate in the vetting and documentation process (especially the 'arguing with the patent attorneys' over scope and wording), then they legitimately collaborated on the patent. We extract more dollars from the bounty system and we make frivolous patents slightly more expensive.

Then when one of those two people think up an idea on their own, why not put me on it, especially if I offer the same kind of help?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can we stop attributing "innovation" to the number of patents one company has? We know by now 80% are bullshit, especially if they are software patents.

</comment><comment><USER13> This seems to say more about the incentives around patents at Apple and Google than it says about innovation or anything else at those companies. In particular, it seems to say that patents are more highly encouraged at Apple and that there's more incentive to put them in your own name at Google.

</comment><comment><USER14> > "Over the past 10 years Apple has produced 10,975 patents with a team of > 5,232 inventors, and Google has produced 12,386 with a team of 8,888," > writes Wes Bernegger, data explorer at Periscopic. Those numbers are, > frankly, pretty similar in terms of proportion.

Ummm, Apple's 2.0977 patents per inventor and Google's 1.3936 patents per inventor are pretty _dissimilar_, I'd think, unless many companies have yet more or far fewer.

<comment><USER15> Close enough, no?

Or: if we've got data let's go with the data. If all we've got is opinions let's go with mine.

<comment><USER16> If you think 1.3 is close enough to 2, I have some investment options for you to consider.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Nice graphs, I wonder how Samsung graph of patents looks like.

      Apple: ISD/1/1/2016->12/31/2016 AND AN/Google - 3389 patents
      Google: ISD/1/1/2016->12/31/2016 AND AN/Apple - 2535 patents
      Samsung: ISD/1/1/2016->12/31/2016 AND AN/Apple - 10163 patents

USPTO search: [http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=H...](http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch- adv.htm&r=0&f=S&l=50&d=PTXT&RS=%28ISD%2F20160101-%3E20161231+AND+AN%2FSamsung%29&Refine=Refine+Search&Query=ISD%2F1%2F1%2F2016-%3E12%2F31%2F2016+AND+AN%2FApple)

Better yet, how does the Samsung crystal ball of patents looks like, if I filter the set for washer dryer, for example. Hairy perhaps?

</comment><comment><USER18> Related question: how many scientific papers does an Apple researcher get to publish, versus a Google one?

<comment><USER19> Agree. Publishing research is a more accurate way and removes the fact the two companies fundamentally view pattents differently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Think this article misses a fundamental difference between Google and Apple and that is fundamentally the two view patents differently.

</comment><comment><USER20> Seems to me, that apple bosses want to put their name on every patent created in their division.

</comment><comment><USER10> Is this linked communities in R ?

</comment><comment><USER21> It would be interesting to see Microsoft's pattern compared to the 2

</comment><comment><USER22> This article makes a deeply flawed assumption by including "outside" patents, that is to say, patents which were acquired (rather than developed/filed/patented by the company's own employees). Notice this tidbit disclaimer buried towards the end of the article:

 _" In Google's case, we get a clue. One of the company's largest super inventors lives out there, in the periphery, disconnected from other products. That inventor is Kia Silverbrook, who sold the company 269 granted patents on cameras and printers in 2013. Obviously patents that have been recently acquired, rather than developed in house, would lack the interconnections with other employees that centralize the largest bubbles."_

This is not a clue. This is a sign that you're biasing your sample. Compare this statement to the premise of the study:

 _" Over the past 10 years Apple has produced 10,975 patents with a team of 5,232 inventors, and Google has produced 12,386 with a team of 8,888."_

Wrong, not all of those people were even employees, see above. And what about the huge patent purchase Google made by buying Motorola and then selling it off (Arris, Lenovo) while keeping the vast majority of the patents. [0] Is it accurate to count Motorola's patents as Google-developed innovations? Is it accurate to group Motorola inventors along with Google inventors?

 _" This seems to indicate a top-down, more centrally controlled system in Apple vs. potentially more independence and empowerment in Google."_

I disagree, this really doesn't indicate anything and mis-characterizes the inventors. Google and Apple have purchased a sizable number of patents whose inventors are not employees and not involved in Google's or Apple's R&D. If anything, this may indicate that Google purchased more outside patents than Apple. Some examples of Google's purchases beyond Motorola are IBM [1], Silverbrook [2], IP3 [3]. One of Apple's biggest set of outside patents is Nortel [4].

 _" Google, on the other hand, has a relatively flat organizational structure of many small teams filled with empowered individuals."_

Not disputing this but the more obvious explanation is that Google has been working on a wider variety of products and services than Apple which would mean a greater variety of patentable subject matter by inventors working in different technologies. Don't use patents or that visualization as any indicator of R&D organizational structure.

 _" But that would take further sleuthing to confirm."_

In the patent search community, it's pretty easy and quick to filter a search to only include company-invented patents (it's as quick as filtering down to a specific company, just compare latest assignee to original assignee). So why not do that here? This is such a simple search that I'm surprised that the data provider _" Portland-based data visualization studio Periscopic"_ didn't team up with any of the dozens of patent analytics providers [5] who probably would have done the work for free for some publicity, not to mention address the glaring flaw of including outside patents (that is, non-employees as inventors).

 _" Our intention behind PatentsView was to create interfaces that could inspire the public to explore patent data," says Periscopic cofounder Dino Citraro. [...] Indeed, Apple and Google may only be a start. You could probably write a book on the corporate organizational structures revealed in PatentsView."_

I hope no one uses this tool to write a book. I think it's a noble goal to open up the data and visualization to the public, but users should be very wary of what they're really looking at.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Mobility](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Mobility) [1] [http://www.iam- media.com/blog/detail.aspx?g=54821371-e57d-47...](http://www.iam- media.com/blog/detail.aspx?g=54821371-e57d-4742-b10e-bcfe5c48f6c4) [2] [http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.seobythesea.com/2013...](http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.seobythesea.com/2013/01/google- printer-camera-patents/) [3] [http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/calling- all-patent-o...](http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/calling-all-patent- owners--google-ibm-ford-cisco-and-other-leading-global-companies-want-to-buy- your-patents--through-the-new-ip3-purchase-program-by-ast-300270804.html) [4] [http://www.reuters.com/article/rpx-rockstar-ip- idUSL1N0U713M...](http://www.reuters.com/article/rpx-rockstar-ip- idUSL1N0U713M20141223) [5] [https://www.piug.org/vendors](https://www.piug.org/vendors)</comment>


300loc Automated Affiliate Advertising Bot - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/aktuelleBlitzangebote/ <comment><AUTHOR> Techstack: node.js & mongoDB Supports Twitter and Facebook

Filters out bad deals, next feature will be category based filtering.</comment>