The rise and rise of JSON (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://twobithistory.org/2017/09/21/the-rise-and-rise-of-json.html <comment><USER2> I write a lot of smaller service agents, connecting legacy systems or feeding them with data in the public sector of Denmark. Most of those are done with XML and it's often quite terrible.

We write a lot of C# but one of our tools is an old adobe lifecycle server, and .Net XML isn't the same as Adobe XML. I mean, technically it's just XML, but the two techs expect your XML elements to be build a certain way and break when they aren't. So in order to make the two techs talk with each other through SOAP, we had to write a custom library to translate the .Net xml before we send it. And that's just one in a long line of similar stories.

Hell, SOAP calls en general take longer time to get running than any JSON rest service call I've ever set up. Even when the XML interprets the same on both ends, though I'm not sure why that is exactly.

So it's fair to say that I love JSON. The article outlines it as being easier to read, and there is certainly that, but for me it's the efficiency.

Working with JSON never takes longer than it should.

<comment><USER3> You're comparing SOAP, a message protocol, with JSON, a data format. SOAP is so much more, it specifies how objects are defined, how they should be serialized and delivered to a server (WSDL). Note that JSON doesn't have anything like this that has seriously taken off. There's a few attempts, but they aren't in great use or have tooling support. So as a result everyone working with JSON implements their own de-/serializer, resulting in all sorts of errors.

SOAP on the other hand takes care of this and even has a formalized date type and various number types.

Your complaint is about two vendors creating incompatible inplementations/extensions. I've run into this as well and causes a lot of issues with compliant implementations that cannot work together. I think this has been a big reason why eventually SOAP will die.

<comment><USER4> I think parent's point was that with JSON you are, in most langages, a JSON.parse(payload) away from a message protocol.

I am interfacing our startup's services with legacy (insurers) systems. We don't use the same programming langage. The docs are missing. Yet, we somehow manage to set up a functional API with minimal pain using JSON.

When I compare that, to the amount of documentation a SOAP service requires (for another partner), I find JSON much more usable

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If we ignore syntactic aspects then the success of JSON is due to one fundamental reason. JSON relies on two structural elements [] and {}, which have very clear semantics of _sets_ (collections) and _tuples_ (combinations), respectively. It is simple, general, natural and consistent.

In comparison, XML also provides two structural elements but they do not have such a nice duality and clarity of interpretation. Here is a very typical example which is more than an anti-pattern:

        <books>
            <book id="1"><title>XML is evil</title></book>
            <book id="2"><title>XML considered harmful</title></book>
        </books>

Here we see that semantically <books> is a collection while <book> is a tuple (where <title> is an attribute). Yet, they use one and the same structural construct. XML does not enforce the dual semantics of sets and tuples, and therefore XML files are frequently a conceptual mess. The above example is essentially _wrong_ but XML does not care.

<comment><USER6> XML without schema are a mess.

XML with schema and validtion can be a joy to use compared to the untyped JSON world, but it's the lack of having to specify type which helps JSON remain popular.

Given a choice between strong or weak typing and weakly typed or un-typed systems will prevail in popularity.

Looking at javascript itself and the type coercion rules it is easy to dismiss it as unworkable mess which leads to expensive bugs in production, but in the real world the ability to mostly ignore types lets people get things done in a more hackish / amatuer way which eases the learning curve and helps popularity.

<comment><USER5> Typing (enforcing constraints) is an important aspect. But even without typing XML has one fundamental flaw. You are not able to (correctly) represent tuples with attributes which are sets. In XML, tuple attributes are properties, for example:

        <book id="1" title="XML"> -- object or object

Now let us assume that I want to have a list of authors as a property:

        <book id="1" title="XML" authors=["Me", "My Friend"]> -- NOT SUPPORTED

Therefore, we use a _workaround_ (a crime actually):

        <book id="1" title="XML">
            <author>Me</author>
            <author>My friend</author>
        </book>

Now a book is a collection where authors are members (IS-IN relationship). This is not what we wanted. Our goal was to have an attribute "authors" which is a collection.

<comment><USER7> Pretty much any time I've seen something like this, relevant inner element of the book is:

      <authors>
        <author>...
        <author>...
      </authors>

<comment><USER5> It is again a workaround because <authors> is a member of a collection - it is not a tuple attribute. Which suggests that we cannot enforce this separation and an application has to understand itself which element is an object property and which element is a member of a collection.

<comment><USER8> You're trying to impose an arbitrary model on XML.

XML grew from markup languages. It's as if we took some text, parsed it, and then store the resulting syntax tree along with the text. Here elements are non-terminals of the grammar and element attributes are additional augmenting properties of those non-terminals.

The _text_ , of course, does not have to human-readable, it can very well be a sequence of anything, for example, of bits, bytes, words, etc. In XML we'd have to represent these with special elements, something like <byte value="00" /> or <int32 value="12345" />, but once we do this, we can use XML to enclose them into additional non-terminals that tell us what these bytes mean and let us use automated tools to manipulate them.

XML can represent objects, but in its own way: we have to first sort of _serialize_ our object into a sequence and once we have this sequence, we can use XML. The model you seem to be talking about an abstract model of abstract objects _in memory_. Although memory is technically sequential, we normally ignore this and treat objects as nodes in some graph. This is not the domain of XML; it has to be a sequence to begin with. XML has a concept of IDs and references to IDs and thus can represent graphs reasonably well, but it must be a _serialized_ graph.

So XML is basically a language to express the underlying grammatical structure of an arbitrary sequence. That structure is a tree, but it is based on a sequence nonetheless. It's not quite what abstract objects are in programming; but if you think of files, for example, files are sequences and thus are totally the domain of XML.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> JSON maps well and intuitively to common datatypes: with a list and a hashmap, you can model a lot. Conversely, structs needing to be passed around in application code will probably be made up of stuff that maps well to JSON. XML's greater-than-blindingly-obvious impedance mismatch is a barrier to entry when an alternative, dead simple format exists.

The XML ecosystem nonetheless has parts that are desirable for certain use- cases, as the reinvention of schema validation for JSON, awkward namespacing, and efforts to dabble in hypermedia linking show. The XML ecosystem didn't require these enhancements and extensions to be used, but implementations in the wild often did, which was further off-putting to newcomers. This helped JSON gain ground back when it (and the ecosystem around it) was truly minimal and simple.

It also embodied the hacker, kludgey ethos and mythos, because without elaborate schemas and code generators, you'd pluck out only the fields you cared about and disregard the rest.

These factors led to JSON's rise at an opportune time, giving it credence and exposure, and within a few years every hip cool API was emitting JSON and using cool methods like PUT and DELETE and throwing around terms like REST despite serving linkless structs as 'application/json'.

The prevalence and staying power of CRUD HTTP APIs exchanging loosely typed JSON payloads shows that there's real benefits to semi-human-readable, self- documenting payloads that can be parsed into either rigid native datatypes, or loose collection types with ease. JSON fits into a world where stuff can be deliberately or inadvertently half-assed and still work.

</comment><comment><USER10> This article had a footnote linking to a snide Douglas Crockford retort to a blog post that was dismissive of JSON. The other discussion comments on that page are a fascinating history of the arguments for and against, through the lens of 2006.

[https://scripting.wordpress.com/2006/12/20/scripting-news- fo...](https://scripting.wordpress.com/2006/12/20/scripting-news- for-12202006/#comment-26383)

<comment> joatmon-snoo Whoa, thanks for linking that. It's really interesting seeing all this talk about sandbox escapes.

This is a particularly interesting quote:

> One huge practical advantage to JSON over XML in the web browser is that you > can load JavaScript from any site, while you're restricted in which sites > you can load XML from. I have no idea why browsers insist on limiting where > you can load non-executable XML from, when they don't bother to limit where > you can load executable JavaScript from, but there you go: that's how it is, > and there's nothing anybody can do about it. JSON nicely works around that > limitation, instead of holding its breath and waiting until the world comes > around to being fair. Surely you can appreciate that practical advantage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> >Though one might think that a contest between data interchange formats would be unlikely to engender death threats, Winer wrote:

>"No doubt I can write a routine to parse [JSON], but look at how deep they went to re-invent, XML itself wasn't good enough for them, for some reason (I'd love to hear the reason). Who did this travesty? Let's find a tree and string them up. Now."

In retrospect, he should have said: "Let's find a tree and stringify it."

</comment><comment><USER12> The success of JSON is due to one thing: Browser support. As soon as it's use on a server, or a mobile device, or practically anywhere else almost all the benefits of JSON go away.

Can you inspect the payload easily? Well, yeah, if you unwrap the bytes into a string or open up Wireshark. But on any moderately optimized system, the JSON is going to be gzip encoded and whitespace compressed, making in quite unpleasant to look through. By that point a pretty printer is needed, and you might as well have picked any format that has a pretty printer.

Can you add new fields easily? Yeah, but try changing a field name, or its type, or remove a field. This is guaranteed to break some client or server somewhere eventually. I've seen code that uses at least 5 permutations of "Zipcode", "zipcode", "zip_code", etc. I also wouldn't dare try to change it for fear of accidentally breaking our payments processing system.

JSON trades ease of starting up, for suffering when the code base gets big. It's an incredibly alluring trap, as TFA's graph shows.

<comment><USER13> Why are you using wireshark to inspect json payloads?

Your other complaints stem from poor system design and lack of shared data contracts. They could be complaints about any data format.

<comment><USER14> I would argue that the fact that json doesn't have schema support built in makes it more difficult to handle those issues though.

<comment><USER13> Avro json schemas and jackson json annotation for POJOS makes json object schemas easy to implement. Versioned object repos make great shared schemas and are easier to manage than xsds. (imo)

<comment><USER15> Anything would be better than XSD (though I don't think JVM-only is a good idea), but with an object you still don't necessarily know what kind of changes are going to be forward compatible or not. The only thing I've had any success with is something like Thrift or Protocol Buffers, where the canonical definition of your objects is a terse, Algol-like syntax but one that's been designed explicitly with version compatibility in mind, and you know exactly what changes do or don't break compatibility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So, when do we get a typescript for JSON? You mean a schema like XML has?

It looks like typesafe programming languages are on the rise, yet, when it comes to the format used for data exchange we go from typesafe to unstructured. I find that odd.

<comment><USER17> The counterpoint here is that a lot of the success of JSON was in presenting an alternative to the then-state-of-the-art, which was basically "here's a small mountain of spec documents explaining how you need at least fifty megabytes of metadata spread out over forty-three separate namespaces' worth of elements to safely send a single string key to someone else with XML".

And at the time people insisted JSON could never replace that, because JSON was so underspecified and unsafe. You could _maybe_ get away with it for a couple requests to your puny baby child's "Fisher-Price My First Webservice" toy program, but JSON would instantly and completely fall over the instant any real-world problem presented itself.

Yet here we are all those years later, in a world which largely runs on JSON as a data interchange format.

Or, more concisely, as I wrote in 2006 in response to the Dave Winer piece someone else linked in another comment:

 _And now here are these kids with their startup companies and their weblogs who are getting data exchange and even things that kind of look like APIs out of… JavaScript arrays? The XML guys are sitting up on the mountaintop like the Grinch, with his pile of stolen presents, wondering how Christmas still managed to happen: it came without specs! It came without hype! It came without angle brackets, envelopes or types!_

<comment><USER4> Or, "worse is better"

<comment><USER18> Worse is highly subjective: the XML world spent millions of dollars layering on huge amounts of complexity but never made a corresponding investment in having common tools not suck. Things like validation and schemas still have a horrible user experience and then you have things like libxml2 meaning that most of the world can't use XSLT or XPath features added a decade ago. Similarly, it's been notoriously hard to find things in the XML world which have quality documentation, examples, or working validators — doubly unfortunate given the complexity of what they expect users to do.

If you have a job to do, JSON is just plain better on almost every count. I remember being excited by XML 1.0 back in the 90s but the fall in popularity is something lots of people worked hard to accomplish by building so many new, more complex things rather than fixing the foundation. The assumption that users will have to learn your standard is almost always wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I use XSD a lot for XML validation in .net world and better intellisense when writing XML by hand. I was exploring the json world but I could not find a json schema technology that would be as expressive and the tooling around it is much inferior IME.

I feel like the technology around schemas (json, xml or anything else) is underrated and not developed enough. And if I wanted to support both json and xml it would be such a pain to maintain, would be nice to have a tool that could translate xml schema to json schema and back.

<comment><USER20> > would be nice to have a tool that could translate xml schema to json schema > and back.

Hmm, after a quick search I found a bunch of json-to-xml and xml-to-json converters, including libraries. E.g. JSON-Java library [0]. May be same things exist for .Net. Is this what you meant?

[0] [https://github.com/stleary/JSON-java](https://github.com/stleary/JSON- java)

-ss

<comment><USER3> I think parent was talking about the document definition (schema) instead. So not to rely on the document instance for the translation definition.

<comment><USER20> Ah, got it. Thanks. I wasn't entirely sure, admittely not a very experienced json user. Does term "schema" apply to json in the same way it applies to XML?

/* Well... so... One can convert JSON to XML and apply XML schema verification. That's partly a joke :) */

-ss

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think the the only people who could be confused as to the reason for the rise of JSON are people who have never used XML

</comment><comment><USER22> > _By being at the intersection, [JSON] turns out to be the thing that > everybody can agree on, and so it 's really easy to pass data back and > forth. Prior data interchange formats tended to try to be the union of all > the languages, and that turns out to be horrendously complex and really > difficult to deal with. JSON by being so simple actually became really easy > to use._

\- Douglas Crockford ('discoverer' of JSON)

[https://youtu.be/-C-JoyNuQJs?t=730](https://youtu.be/-C-JoyNuQJs?t=730)

<comment><USER23> What amazes me is that I regularly train people in IT that have never used JSON themself and are not sure what's it good for.

So something that is quite everywhere now, is simple, easy, and has existed for a long time, is still far from being a given.

It definitely puts in perspective people that are telling me that my webpack configuration from last year is obsolete, that I should ditch everything and learn Elm, that nix is the future of package management or that webassembly is going to change everything next week.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Of course, JSON has its own share of issues too, largely as a result of it trying to be as simple as possible. Many JSON parsers support nonstandard features such as comments and trailing commas, and in the process, create mutually incompatible "dialects". XML might be verbose and complicated, but I think JSON unfortunately is a bit _too_ far in the other direction.

<comment><USER25> If a JSON parser ignores the JSON spec, is it the spec that went too far in the other direction? Or is that parser just badly-written? (Or misguidedly lenient?)

You could say the same for an XML parser that allows a naked '&' between tags, or continues parsing a document that omits a closing tag somewhere.

Your complaint is probably still valid, but I'd say it's better directed at the culture than the specs.

</comment></comment><comment> cool-RR " _JSON's dominance is surprising when you consider that as recently as 2005 the web world was salivating over the potential of "Asynchronous JavaScript and XML" and not "Asynchronous JavaScript and JSON." "_

"As recently as 2005," heh. In the frontend world, you might as well say "as recently as the Paleolithic age."

</comment><comment><USER26> It's a great thing that JSON adequate.

It's a great pity that JSON isn't much better.

It would be great if JSON had comments, more thorough typing and determinism so that data structures could be compared. Apart from that it's streets ahead of XML.

<comment><USER27> It's exactly as good as it needs to be. Trying to 'improve' JSON will turn it into xml again.

<comment><USER28> Surely it's a problem that in JSON, duplicate keys are allowed?

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21832701/does-json- synta...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21832701/does-json-syntax-allow- duplicate-keys-in-an-object)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> One aspect about JSON is the lack of comments. This makes it mostly unsuitable as a configuration language and in fact simple "JSON for humans" such as [https://hjson.org/](https://hjson.org/) and [https://json5.org/](https://json5.org/) exist. In my opinion, this is a design flaw and if JSON would be a bit more human-oriented, it could be much more widespread in non-web contexts.

<comment><USER30> I actually like that JSON has no comments.

With comments in a data transmission format you will end up with things like "conditional comments" in IE.

I agree there are certainly many better configuration languages.

<comment><USER29> I agree, but you can do context switchs also without having comments. For instance, the JSON Schema defines (Source: [https://json- schema.org/latest/json-schema-core.html#rfc.sec...](https://json- schema.org/latest/json-schema-core.html#rfc.section.9))

      {
         '$comment': "string that can hold whatever you want"
      }

and it is obvious that you can embed any other language in a string.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> It's funny how people often compare JSON and XML, but don't mention one huge difference: XML is "more powerful" because it supports attributes on nodes, while JSON doesn't. So if you want to encode data structure with metadata on nodes (like objects with a type), you'll have to introduce a non-standard workaround.

Of course that's often not an issue, but I've run into it in the past. :)

<comment><USER17> [http://www.flightlab.com/~joe/sgml/faq- not.txt](http://www.flightlab.com/~joe/sgml/faq-not.txt)

 _Q. I 'm designing my first DTD. Should I use elements or attributes to store data?_

 _A. Of course. What else would you use?_

 _Q. What is the usual way to choose between using attributes and children?_

 _[Update from David Carlisle:]_

 _In England, the normal method is to flip a coin in the air and call heads it 's attributes, tails it's children._

 _Unfortunately I 'm not sure what to suggest in other countries where you can't guarantee having the Queen's head on one side of every coin._

<comment><USER32> Hilarious, but the deeper rule is: when there isn't a concept of rendering a document to the user (where attributes hold rendering properties not directly presented to a user) the concept of a markup language doesn't make sense in the first place. So if you find yourself in a situation where you need to decide on encoding data as elements vs attributes, you probably shouldn't use SGML/XML at all.

But then there is the wealth of XML standard data representations for financial/fiscal/e-commerce, medical, etc. data. You're deciding to use them to have your interfaces being implemented once and for all, and be able to switch eg. payment providers by merely specifying new endpoints and credentials. JSON doesn't really compare to XML/XSD in this space.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> XHTML is still alive as the section 13 "The XML syntax" in the "HTML Living Standard" shows us. Moreover XML comes with a host of useful technologies : schemas, XSLT, XQuery and namespaces. It is quite complex compared to JSON but more powerful when you consider the whole ecosystem. In the end, it depends on the need we have. Quick, small, simple XML is possible and easy.

</comment><comment><USER34> I feel like the best takeaway here is that XML is a document format, and JSON is for programmatic interchange, e.g. APIs. That's at least how I operate, and I use both XML and JSON for various things. My APIs are all JSON, but if I'm serialising some data to disk, or for export etc, it's usually XML.

</comment><comment><USER35> JSON is one of the best things to ever come out of the CS disciplines.

It is one of the most perfect technologies I deal with.

<comment><USER36> Well, unless you need to deal with datetimes or timestamps. And it suffers from the same repeated-metadata problem that XML does. It's easy for JavaScript users, that's it's main purpose. For serialised data either at rest or on the wire there are dozens of better formats e.g. HDF5. Or even ASN.1.

<comment><USER37> > It's easy for JavaScript users, that's it's main purpose.

I'm writing Go applications that talk to Python applications with (you guessed it) JSON-over-HTTP. Saying that JSON is only for JS users is like saying the iPhone is only for people that need to make calls.

> For serialised data either at rest or on the wire there are dozens of better > formats e.g. HDF5. Or even ASN.1.

A huge advantage of JSON is that it is human-readable and human-writable without extra tooling (although an indenter sure makes things easier on the eye). Also, I recall ASN.1 parsers being a rich well of RCE bugs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Not: as groundbreaking as Scribe (Brian Reid at CMU) was, I don't think SGML was inspired by it. They had parallel dev paths...

</comment><comment><USER39> A message format that requires parser to understand both UTF8 and UTF16, cool!

<comment><USER40> Unsurprisingly, one of the most common data types is text strings, so most serializations need that anyways.

</comment></comment><comment> another-cuppa > only one API exposes data in XML rather than JSON

They are not mutually exclusive. It should be trivial to offer the data as either JSON or XML at the user's request.</comment>


Rodney Mullen Interview, Slamtrick 2003 Italy - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekzjzFFE_pY <comment><USER2> This is such a great point. It can be applied to any job/career. I think that being humble like that gives you a certain ability to see the bigger picture in things. We always get caught up with too many materialistic details.

I've heard extremely passionate programmers say things like "I don't ever want to see a computer again" or "I wish I could do something else, this sucks". But on the other hand, when you work with them and they're actually 'in it' and they're not distracted by external stresses, you see that they actually love it, and they wouldn't trade it for nothing.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am not sure about the details but Rodney Mullen has some kind of math/engineering background. There were old videos of him with what looked like calculus problems and books spread out on his table. I think he may have worked as an engineer (not computer related) in the Los Angeles area before giving it up and focusing full time on skateboarding.

He has a very nerdy/technical style and invented much of modern street skating. There are still tricks that he is the only person to have been filmed doing.

</comment><comment><USER4> I saw this guy talk at TED. What a humble guy for all he has accomplished. Bottom line, it has to about the love of the game, because in the end, that's all you have. Not the glory, not the spotlight, just the passion.

<comment><USER2> Link for the lazy: [http://www.ted.com/talks/rodney_mullen_pop_an_ollie_and_inno...](http://www.ted.com/talks/rodney_mullen_pop_an_ollie_and_innovate.html)

<comment><USER5> My favorite quote from this talk is his comparison of the skate boarding community to the open source community (starts around 12:30)

"What is it to hack? It's knowing a technology so well that you can manipulate it and steer it to do things it was never intended to do.

And they're not all bad. You can be a Linux kernel hacker, make it more stable, more safe, more secure. You can be an iOS hacker, make your iPhone do stuff it wasn't supposed to. Not authorized, but no illegal.

Then you have some of these guys. What they do is very similar to our creative process. They connect disparate information and they bring it together in a way that a security analysis doesn't expect. It doesn't make them good people, but it's at the heart of engineering, the heart of a creative community, an innovative community.

The open source community, the basic ethos of it, is take what other people do, make it better, give it back so we all rise further. Very similar communities, very similar."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Massive thumbs down for product placements and branding. However, fair point.

I remember, before connectivity arrived, that sense of wonder: anything was possible with these machines. _Anything._

Hungering for knowledge, exhausting all of the libraries, finally a modem came. The BBS. Knowledge! Software! Vast capabilities for exploration. Exchanging ideas with other people. _My_ people.

And then, finally, the internet. A simple search prompt, Altavista. That pure rush of untapped potential! The realisation of _the immense scope and breadth of what was possible_! Search for anything, anywhere, anytime! Communicate freely! Never again be trapped by geography!

Experientially, I believe the main thrust of the experience was the fulfilment of the insatiable curiosity that I believe all children are born with but few manage to carry much of through to adulthood. However, secondly there was definitely an anti-authoritarian, egalitarian, individual empowerment (dare I say _left wing_?) side to it. In the angst of teenage years, perhaps at times not substantially differing from <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_Manifesto> (which many of us probably read).

Pragmatically, it was never a problem to resist other actors (parents, school teachers, etc.) who sought to dissuade research by disconnecting phone lines, setting arbitrary limits, imposing temporal wonts. Once it became clear that a starting salary was higher than that of many teachers, drudgery became optional and the first steps upon the path were set. What a strange and amazing journey it has been. I sincerely hope that it continues, and that through my own actions I can help others to discover and explore freely. For at no time have we as a group been more highly politicised, romanticised, or perhaps misunderstood. Many turn their backs on ethics and take the money. But we must not forget that we are the shepherds of network effects, and that our actions sometimes powerfully affect others, the environment, and the future. Instead of allowing ourselves to be motivated by greed and malice, let us work toward taking those feelings of awe, freedom and exploration that we held dear from youth and make them a reality for the many.

</comment><comment><USER7> I might not ever get a chance to work at Google, I probably won't ever get to go to the Institute for Advanced Study, I may never discover anything in science that makes me famous; but if I had those things, deep down I know they wouldn't truly make me happy.

Programming makes me happy because I love to create new things, hacking makes me happy because I love to figure out how things work, and holding on to that same feeling I had about it when I was a kid is what keeps me going everyday.

</comment><comment><USER8> True. I just want to do what I love and make a living from that, I love programming, freelancing is what I do.

I read new things, discover new things, use what I want. It's important to enjoy what you do, and just relax, and enjoy.</comment>


Enrico Fermi, father of the nuclear age – History of physics - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21733971-new-biography-italian-physicist-considered-last-man-know-everything-enrico?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/enricofermifatherofthenuclearagehistoryofphysics <comment><USER2> I toured the Enrico Fermi nuclear plant as a kid. Learned a lot about the man. They also tried very hard to sell us on a nuclear powered future.

They even talked about nuclear powered cars. When it came time for questions I said what would happen with a nuclear powered car in case of a traffic accident? The spokesman said that was a stupid question and refused to answer it.

On the ride back to school the teacher reassured me that it was a valid question and that he was wrong to refuse to answer it.

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

If nuclear powered cars seem like a fanciful idea they really were seriously considered in the fifties and sixties. Here's information about a Ford prototype.

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

<comment><USER3> The nuclear car idea reminds me of Edward Teller advocacy of using nuclear bombs to excavate a harbor in Alaska, "in the shape of a polar bear, if required".[1][2]

[1] - [http://arcticcircle.uconn.edu/VirtualClassroom/Chariot/vande...](http://arcticcircle.uconn.edu/VirtualClassroom/Chariot/vandegraft.html)

[2] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Chariot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Chariot)

<comment><USER2> Or Elon Musk's idea to use nuclear explosions over the poles to change the climate on Mars and make it more inhabitable.

[http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/11/us/elon-musk-mars-nuclear- bomb...](http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/11/us/elon-musk-mars-nuclear-bomb-colbert- feat/index.html)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How long should be a technical ebook? - <AUTHOR> And what should be the ratio price/length? <comment><USER2> Sell it for as much as it's worth to your target audience. Do A/B testing to determine selling price (and to improve conversions).

And +1 for the "as long as it takes, but no longer". Keep it concise, yet clear.

</comment><comment><USER3> As long as it takes, but no longer. And probably a little shorter.

There's no generic formula for length v. price.

</comment><comment><USER4> Curious what the book is about.</comment>


I Helped Create the Milo Trolling Playbook - <AUTHOR> http://observer.com/2017/02/i-helped-create-the-milo-trolling-playbook-you-should-stop-playing-right-into-it/ <comment><USER2> >There is absolutely nothing that Milo has said (and more importantly, done) that ought to revoke his First Amendment right to give a speech on a college campus.

Woah, slow down there. Neither Milo or anybody else has a first amendment right to give a speech on a college campus. The right to free speech does not equal a right to a podium, the university or their students telling Milo to go away is not a first amendment issue. Cancelling his speech does not give him any sort of moral high ground. (lighting things on fire, on the other hand...)

The only potential free speech argument here is if somebody were to tell Berkeley that they _had to_ allow certain speakers, then the university's free speech would be impinged. The right to tell somebody else to shut the hell up is an important part of free speech. The only entity that _doesn 't_ have that right under the first amendment is the government.

<comment><USER3> I really detest this straw person argument "First Amendment right doesn't equate to having to allow certain speakers".

No one is talking about taking Twitter or Berkeley etc to court, we get it, they would win (Assuming Berkeley doesn't get public funding though?)

What we are taking about is big business who control speech effectively censoring the population.

This goes against the spirit of the First Amendment and the Left are the first to be outraged when right wing news media doesn't give them a voice.

They then use this legal loophole, businesses can do what they want, argument when it suits them.

<comment><USER4> It's not a loophole.

Freedom of speech and freedom of association are key rights in a democracy, and they apply everywhere. I get to talk, but you get to walk away. I get to say what I want, but you are not compelled to help circulate my views. I have the right to say what I think; you have right to say that makes me an asshole.

In this age, nobody in the US is "effectively" censored. At basically no cost, anybody can set up a web server and share their views across the globe. Today, everybody's a publisher, but nobody has to listen.

Nobody caring what I have to say isn't censorship for me; it's freedom for everybody else.

<comment><USER3> > I get to talk, but you get to walk away.

Except the argument here is person X doesn't get to talk.

The argument is Berkeley can stop people talking they politically don't like (Or any other reason) because as a business they have every right to discriminate on political views.

And sure that's legally true perhaps, we all understand that, but it's not right and against the idea of the first amendment.

To argue it's ok for universities to censor speakers is a very scary point of view, and this is what you are doing by bringing in the straw person 'it's legally allowed'

<comment><USER4> UC Berkeley is not a business. It's a public university. The "UC" being short for "University of California".

I was addressing your notion about businesses, "this legal loophole, businesses can do what they want". And I presumed you were actually talking about businesses, because a) you mentioned Twitter, a business, and b) UC Berkeley is not a business.

> sure that's legally true perhaps [...] it's not right and against the idea > of the first amendment

No. No, no, no. The idea of the First Amendment is not that you are owed a platform. It's just that the government cannot stop you from saying what you want in public or with your own platform. It starts out with "Congress shall make no law" for a reason.

That is not _the_ idea of the First Amendment. It is _your_ idea of the First Amendment. It's a common one, but that doesn't make it the right one, or the only one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The author of this article, Ryan Holiday, is the author of _Trust Me, I 'm Lying_[1], a fascinating book which goes into detail about the Tucker Max marketing campaign mentioned in the article, plus a lot of other scummy growth hacking stuff.

It's not something to admire, per se, but it's extremely interesting to see just how easy the average person (and the media, for that matter) is to manipulate when anger is the biggest tool at your disposal.

[1] [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13542853-trust-me-i-m- lyi...](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13542853-trust-me-i-m-lying)

<comment><USER6> It was a fascinating read, but if he is willing to mislead everyone, doesn't it make you wonder how much of the book is true?

<comment><USER7> His latest book, _Ego Is the Enemy_ , and his more recent blog posts and interviews, all indicate that he's of very sound character.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I read an interesting argument related to this recently, which is that people on the right are _aggressively_ self-policing; if someone tries looting or setting things on fire or attacking people at a right-leaning demonstration in the US, they will probably be shot. On the other hand, the US left has no such self-policing culture, and therefore more readily admits the kind of violence (both against people and property) that we've seen repeated multiple times in multiple locations for these Milo events. And let's not pretend it's some fringe group of subversives who sneak into these events and act violent; the majority of the politically active left-leaning people in my Facebook network explicitly discussed why they thought it was acceptable to "punch a nazi", as people are referring to the attack on Spencer. At some point over the last couple decades, the American left, to a large degree, gave up on the notion of peaceful politics, and it's reflected in the sort of stuff mentioned in the OP.

<comment><USER9> Is there any basis to this? Any data about violence at protests to back it up? It reads like it's a creation of someone's imagination about what the 'other' side must be like (not the commenter's imagination, but whomever they read) - people so dehumanized to the person imagining it that they lose sight of the fact that they are people, human beings, not objects of political opposition in someone's drama.

In particular, this sounds very unlikely:

> if someone tries looting or setting things on fire or attacking people at a > right-leaning demonstration in the US, they will probably be shot.

When has that happened?

I'm pretty doubtful of anything that paints the 'other' side as one big stereotype. Also, my personal experience and observations of such things don't match these claims.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Create"? From defected KGB general Oleg Kalugin's autobiography [1]:

> Our station also became deeply involved in what we called "active measures," > which essentially involved dirty tricks and disinformation campaigns. One of > the most aggressive campaigns was related to the emerging postcolonial > nations of Africa, where the United States and the Soviet Union were locked > in a struggle for influence. We in the KGB station in New York did > everything we could to stir up trouble for the American side.

> One of our dirty tricks involved a nasty letter-writing campaign against > African diplomats at the United Nations—an idea cooked up by KGB > headquarters in Moscow and approved by the Communist Party Central > Committee. Our KGB staff, using new typewriters and wearing gloves so as not > to leave fingerprints, typed up hundreds of anonymous hate letters and sent > them to dozens of African missions. The letters, purportedly from white > supremacists as well as average Americans, were filled with virulent racist > diatribes. The African diplomats publicized some of the letters as examples > of the racism still rampant in America, and members of the American and > foreign press corps quoted from them. I and other KGB officers working as > correspondents in the United States reported extensively on this rabidly > antiblack letter-writing campaign. I lost no sleep over such dirty tricks, > figuring they were just another weapon in the cold war.

> Our active measures campaign did not discriminate on the basis of race, > creed, or color: we went after everybody. Attempting to show that America > was inhospitable to Jews, we wrote anti-Semitic letters to American Jewish > leaders. My fellow officers paid American agents to paint swastikas on > synagogues in New York and Washington. Our New York station even hired > people to desecrate Jewish cemeteries. I, of course, beamed back reports of > these misdeeds to my listeners in Moscow, who—tuning in to my broadcasts—no > doubt thanked the Lord or Comrade Lenin that they had been born in a > socialist paradise, and not in a hotbed of racial tension like the United > States of America. [...] I knew our propaganda was exaggerating the extent > of racism in America, yet I also saw firsthand the blatant discrimination > against blacks. Again, I had no qualms about stirring up as much trouble as > possible for the U.S. government. It was all part of the job.

[1] "Spymaster: My Thirty-two Years in Intelligence and Espionage Against the West" \- Oleg Kalugin - [https://www.amazon.com/Spymaster-Thirty-two- Intelligence-Esp...](https://www.amazon.com/Spymaster-Thirty-two-Intelligence- Espionage-Against/dp/0465014453)

</comment><comment><USER11> Here's a much longer look at some of the same concepts [http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of- rage/](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/) Ideas which spread because of their divisiveness.

</comment><comment><USER12> Let me propose a technical solution for a social problem: use AdBlock, subscribe to your fave newspaper. The sooner the paid-by-ads clickbait model of the media dies, the less effective the trolling will be.

<comment><USER13> Speed, quality, cost. Choose any two.

Right now the favorite media, digitally crowd sourced, reports news quickly and is cheaper (free) than what you propose.

If someone demonstrates an ability to make use of this world-wide army of reporters and make quality news out of it, with links to actual sources including context, relevant sections of video on the same page, etc., I would pay for that.

Right now, online publishers are still caught up in earning money from advertising, so they won't link externally.

Getting back quality will require both substantial talent and investment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> i heard someone describe trolling as a last resort when your opponents refuse to debate you</comment>


Undiscriminating Skepticism - <AUTHOR> http://lesswrong.com/lw/1ww/undiscriminating_skepticism/

<comment><USER2> To some degree it sounds like the author is just describing another "tribe": the one that he is a part of.

The main argument of the piece is: don't trust that someone who calls themselves a skeptic is a "good" skeptic until they've expressed a skeptical opinion that cuts against the grain of mainstream belief. Otherwise, they may be just pretending to be a rationalist when they really just believe whatever the mainstream believes.

These are his main examples:

> Personally, I think that Michael Shermer blew it by mocking molecular > nanotechnology, and Penn and Teller blew it by mocking cryonics ... > Conversely, Richard Dawkins scooped up a huge truckload of actual- > discriminating-skeptic points, at least in my book, for not making fun of > the many-worlds interpretation when he was asked about in an interview;

The Dawkins example demonstrates his thesis very clearly. Dawkins is skeptical of a generally accepted theory (that the OP is also skeptical of) therefore the OP now considers him an "actual-disciminating-skeptic". However, his first two examples attempt to support the inverse of his thesis: if someone expresses a skeptical opinion that agrees with the mainstream, then they are not a "good" skeptic ("they blew it"). But that is a ridiculous claim that the OP himself dismisses in the first few paragraphs talking about how religion is no longer a good litmus test for skepticism. So, it seems like the OP is actually arguing that if a self professed skeptic expresses a mainstream skeptical opinion _that the OP disagrees with_ , then they are not a "good" skeptic. Which is a bad, close-minded argument. The OP places himself in a "rationalist" tribe where dissenting opinions are no more tolerated than they are in the mainstream tribe.

<comment><USER3> I think your characterization is very unfair to the article. Right after what you quoted, the following is stated explicitly:

" _Of course you may not trust me about any of [the examples you wrote about]. And so my purpose today is not to propose a new litmus test to replace atheism.

But I do propose that before you give anyone credit for being a smart, rational skeptic, that you ask them to defend some non-mainstream belief...you ought to have to stick your neck out and say something a little less usual - say where you are not skeptical (and most of your tribemates are) or where you are skeptical (and most of the people in your tribe are not)."_

I don't see how it can be written any clearer than that. The point of picking those examples is not that they are the perfect tests of skepticism; it's that most of the Less Wrong readership has thought hard about cryonics, many- worlds, nanotech, and AI, and so they are some reasonable examples.

<comment><USER2> I stand by what I wrote. My main issue is with the Shermer, Penn, and Teller examples. The author uses those to attempt to prove a different point than the rest of the article discusses, and it is a bad point. There's a difference between saying "Someone is probably a 'good' skeptic if they have said something that the mainstream disagrees with" and saying "Someone is probably a 'bad' skeptic (charlatan?) if they have said something the mainstream agrees with that I disagree with." Even if that label is only personal (as you quote, he's not trying to make everyone apply the same labels to those people) it is a bad way to apply it.

However, I also find the whole idea of a "skeptic test" a bit disquieting. Paraphrasing what you quoted above: "Don't give someone credit for being a smart, rational skeptic until they have defended some non-mainstream belief, until they have stuck their neck out to say something a little less usual." That's a bit aggressive for my taste.

<comment><USER4> No, the Shermer example is right on. Shermer _knows_ he dishonestly argued against cryonics; he knows that his little frozen-strawberry example is factually incorrect (see his admission in [http://web.archive.org/web/20100306205336/http://leitl.org/d...](http://web.archive.org/web/20100306205336/http://leitl.org/docs/public_html/tt/msg11904.html)) but still published it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a solid article, because certainly some people do identify with the rationalist tribe despite being not very good at it (isn't it true of all tribes?). But there's something else that bothers me about the rationalist tribe.

Why do people join it? Why does someone self-identify as a rationalist?

For the most part people are rational within the framework they have that allows them to get by in the world. Sure it's important to question beliefs to further the state of science, etc, but why is is it critical that any idea one holds be proven to the best of our abilities? I don't understand why belief in god has to imply there is anything magic or supernatural; it just might be something we don't understand. Certainly it seems possible that the universe exists within frameworks whose workings can never be fully understood from our current physical position. The rationalist view seems to be to let the astrophysicists do their work, but don't you dare believe in something that is outside the realm of what they will eventually discover.

I understand religion has done a lot of awful things in the past, and so it deserves to be torn down as an institution, but most bad things are propagated by extremely rational actors out of greed and self-interest. I don't see the harm in people believing in astrology or not being atheists, I'd rather see the rationalists take their arguments against the people who are actually doing major harm in the world (eg. profiting from massive environmental destruction).

<comment><USER6> I think rationality is useful because it is the only reliable path to truth. And truth is required to accomplishing almost everything. Except happiness...which may have been your original point.

<comment><USER5> Or more generally, inner truth. This is why I am not a rationalist or an objectivist. Human experience itself is subjective, and even if through supreme rationality we are able to pry apart our psyches and lay it bare as a pile of neurons then what? Do we feel good about that?

I choose to believe in a higher consciousness because it makes my life richer, not because I am hiding from rational, physical, objective truth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think a wonderful example of the phenomenon of people expressing skepticism that goes against their tribe is the recent Carrier IQ senstation.

There is, as far as I know, no clear evidence of what exactly is being recorded, and what exactly is being sent. Several people on HN yesterday pointed this out, and then pointed out that it's possible what's being recorded and sent are benign stats that most of us agree to in other places, such as with a web browser. This skepticism was not met well by our tribe.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think a better subject would be a study of "scientism".

<http://mises.org/resources/4318/Scientism-and-Values>

Too often it's not "facts" and "science" that are being debated, but rather values, even though postmodern philosophers have doubted the distinction.

</comment><comment><USER9> A very solid article that addresses the "sins of the intellect".</comment>


The Hedonic Treadmill - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill <comment><USER2> Ha! I'm familiar with the phenomenon, but I hadn't heard it described as a "treadmill" before. Most metaphors out there (eg most computer science jargon) fit well on a superficial level, but the analogy breaks down when you go deeper. But sometimes, someone comes up with a metaphor for something that's _such_ a good fit that it just makes my day.

The Hedonic Treadmill is definitely one of those. It's not just the repetitiveness, but also the exhaustion, the endlessness, the pointlessness even to some extent. And, in some sense, maybe even the progress you can make over a long time when using a treadmill frequently. Like, you learn to embrace the pointlessness of being on a treadmill, running but going absolutely nowhere, and that insight in itself makes it so that you're not running nowhere at all. Kinda sorta.

<comment><USER3> A good story helps. Why does a millionaire athlete walk into a stadium day in day out to experience pain, emotional and physical, at a level most people cant take? Why don't single moms juggling multiple minimum wage jobs even bother? Why not just ditch the kids at an orphanage? There is always a story people tell themselves. Good stories can shift outcomes.

We are lucky to be alive at a time when information such as this is coming online and awareness is rising.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's the worst name for the simplest thing. I'd call it 'illusion of impact'. What happens to you seems like it's affecting you but really doesn't. After a while you feel no happier or sadder that you have always been. It's because your happiness is biological and you can improve it or harm it lastingly only by affecting your biology. Getting more money won't affect it. Sleeping longer, moving more, eating with more variety or leaving people and places that cause immense daily stress, properly diagnosing and treating that reflux, fixing your teeth just might.

People are so keen to jump at the fact that mind somewhat affects the body, but often miss the fact that mind is the part of the body.

<comment><USER5> Reducing volatility and increasing security of health, food, and shelter makes me happy, and more money certainly is a way to achieve that in the environment I live in. I'm sure it's biological as it's still chemicals in the brain.

I define happiness as meeting one's expectations, or maybe unhappiness as not meeting one's expectations.

<comment><USER4> Lack of money prevents you from getting things that help keep your body in good condition. So it this sense money can improve your happiness. Just not directly. Having money does nothing for you. Spending money to improve your health, diet and leave the place that harms you is what makes you happier.

I don't think you can define happiness. It's a primary emotion. How do you define pain?

<comment><USER5> It's definitely not a perfect definition, but I find it useful for myself most times. I would have to separate pain into two, one from injury or ailment, and mental pain from losing something such as a relationship or opportunity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The way this is phrased makes it seem like this "treadmill" is a bad thing. I acknowledge that this is bad for an individual, but I actually think this is overall good for humanity and is a major reason why we've developed so much so quickly.

We know plenty of animal species are really smart, but they've never figured out how to build skyscrapers or generate electricity. We chalk this up to the fact that "humans are just smarter", but even in humans brains alone don't bring accomplishments. There has to be associated action, and people need motivation to actually take that action.

Our ancestors didn't say "well I've figured out how to grow some wheat and live in a straw hut, so I'm good now". Sure, they probably did for a while, but soon they started looking for easier ways to grind their flour and tastier ways to cook it because they stopped being satisfied with the status quo. Extend this for ten millenia and now we have billions of people connected to a global network from devices in their pocket.

If humans were always perfectly happy all the time, I don't think we'd have come as far as we have. The "return to dissatisfied normalcy" that comes over time is part of our nature and it may be one of the most important parts for explaining why we got here.

<comment><USER5> >because they stopped being satisfied with the status quo.

There were tribes that were satisfied with the status quo (or were unable to advance out of bad luck or environment or whatever), and they got wrecked by tribes who kept advancing.

I don't thinks it's a property unique to humans, all species try to gain more and more power, humans just have far more capacity. More power means more reliable food, shelter, and mating opportunity, thus more likelihood of procreating.

This can be to a fault. Even today, if a tribe (e.g. country) were to stop consuming to protect future generations, stop unnecessary weapons development and testing, trade, etc, they would be at a disadvantage in the short term power wise versus another country that kept going full steam ahead.

What's good in short term might not be in the long term, and evolution doesn't optimize for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think most people referencing this term aren't really talking about a hedonic treadmill. There's a lot of talk about getting richer and not happier. But the key to me is adaptation. As we move from one situation to another we adapt to that situation, better or worse. We may think prison would be total hell, but then get there and find that it's tolerable. Similarly, we could get a windfall or major financial breakthrough and soon find that our state doesn't much change.

I find there's a certain texture to my day to day and it takes a lot to change that. There may seemingly be a lot of changes around me, but the texture of my day stays largely the same. A major increase of salary might open a world of options, but my time is my real bottleneck. I can make a list of things I would like to do and then come to the conclusion that it's best to do nothing. I imagine starting from a template for a painting session which is plain but not blank. I can paint all sort of wild possibilities but then realize that my reality is still that same plain template. I paint stories of dramas, ups, downs, victories, downfalls, etc and the realize that nothing has actually changed in the background. I just made all that other stuff up. Yes, the boss really did fly off the handle and I feared for my job, but I know that tomorrow will be business as usual.

Question for you guys. Do you feel that the hedonis treadmill is a thing which pushes us forward? I would argue that it does the opposite, it holds us back. I feel the greatest growth comes from the smallest period of being in adaptation. Just long enough to decide, act, observe and get back to orientation. It's just a long improv.

<comment><USER8> Sadly noone answered your question, but luckily I'm here a week later thanks to Kale's hacker newsletter.

No, I don't think the hedonistic treadmill is what pushes us forward, I think "necessity is the mother of invention." And it goes both ways in my opinion; to use your example, a person in prison will adapt and find it's not so bad, but then a lot of prisoners resourcefully create contraband to fulfill their needs, which "pushes them forward." Likewise a rich person may "need" a faster yacht, so they fund technology to invent one, thereby "pushing us forward."

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> In the way that being content is an evolutionary disaster, it makes sense that we always have an itch to scratch.

<comment><USER10> The trouble is advertising and marketing have irritated it so much that we have gone past the point where scratching was good. That itch has turned into a gaping wound filled with puss and blood.

<comment><USER11> but, are we really so susceptible to advertising and marketing now? I know the baby boomers were with their enormous cars, boats and house purchases and their materialism stuff homes and maxed out credit cards. But, I see the millennial not taking part in that quite to the same extent - i think their percentage of spending on cars, for example, is much lower. We may be in a turning point here where advertising affects us less and less.

Edit: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielnewman/2015/04/28/researc...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielnewman/2015/04/28/research- shows-millennials-dont-respond-to-ads/#20105445dcb2)

<comment><USER10> The cynic in me thinks that's because they have less disposable income.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Last time this was submitted, it only got 2 upvotes. That just wasn't good enough.

<comment><USER13> probably next time it'll go even higher, it just needs more and more

<comment><USER14> The problem is that, even if it the score goes a bit higher each time, it will not satisfy us and we will be as frustrated with the new higher score than we were with the previous score.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm living non-monogamous and in the poly community we often talk about a similar phenomenon called "Relationship Escalator", which is less general than the "Hedonic Treadmill".

The idea is that most people see a relationship as an escalator where you move up somehow automatically. First you date, than you're going steady, then you move in together, marriage, kids etc. pp.

The hedonic treadmill is considered one of the reasons for this behavior. Many people are most happy at the beginning of a relationship, when they get less happy they try to do something to get back to the starting level.

Points here are:

1\. The space of new things you can do with your relationships isn't one dimensional, you don't have to move in one direction to get happier.

2\. Maybe you're just running in the hedonic treadmill and don't realize it, so take some time to evaluate your life before you do things that are hard to impossible to revert.

<comment><USER16> No offense, but aren't you guys the ones who keep on the hedonic treadmill by constantly changing partners and are never actually satisfied?

The ones actually chasing after that new relationship energy/dopamine rush?

Isn't it backwards to spin the normal progression of a romantic relationship as hedonic?

Are the people into poly some kind of saints/ascets and the people on the "relationship escalator" the hedonits? (this is not meant to be a straw man)

<comment><USER15> Just because you have multiple partners doesn't mean that you have to be "constantly changing partners".

You are totally right, there are many people who run after the "new relationship energy" as other people are ascending the "relationship escalator". I just wanted to point out that there isn't one right way to happiness in relationships :)

<comment><USER16> I think hedonism is a valid personal choice(if it's a culture-wide beneficial choice -- that's debatable), there's no need to paint other choices black(not saying you were doing directly).

Experiencing in myself and other what you call the "relationship escalator" \-- I can assure you it's not driven by hedonism, it's just a functional necessity, at least in the vast majority of cases and history(sure there can be people doing it to brag on social media).

To me it seems that the term "relationship escalator" is pejorative and that you were conflating it with the "hedonic treadmill" and somehow contrasting it with polyamory.

The "hedonic treadmill" effect as described in the wikipedia should apply just as much to monogamy and polyamory or celibacy -- after all, it suggests you will revert to mean happyness after a while.

<comment><USER15> I have the impression that is just what I said.

I didn't mean to talk monogamy down, I just said I heard about the concept of a relationship escalator in my poly community and it reminded me of the hedonic treadmill.

Doesn't mean that I don't met polys that had the hedonic treadmill problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Funny. In my college days, one evening after a one too many drinks, my pals and me formulated what we called "Theory of constant happiness", and its core postulate was that perceived happiness was not proportional to satiation of individual needs, but to the derivation of such satiation in time. It was of course promptly forgotten.

It is nice to see there was a grain of truth in our theory.

</comment><comment><USER18> Slightly OT, but does anyone have a digital copy of the original paper cited in the article? Would love to read it but I can't find a PDF or a doi to search for on Scihub.

 _Brickman; Campbell (1971). Hedonic relativism and planning the good society. New York: Academic Press. pp. 287–302. in M. H. Apley, ed., Adaptation Level Theory: A Symposium, New York: Academic Press_

<comment><USER19> Closest I can come is finding the print copy of Adaptation Level Theory: A Symposium on Amazon and eBay for a few bucks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is a great name for the phenomenon. While running the metaphorical treadmill, not only we don't get happier, we are also heating up the planet at an unprecedented rate. Slow down people.

</comment><comment><USER21> pieter levels wrote an article about it referencing to the bilzerian interview, you'll enjoy it [https://levels.io/hedonic- treadmill/](https://levels.io/hedonic-treadmill/)

<comment><USER22> Thanks for sharing this, interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I remember reading this a few years ago.

Feels good to have read this again :)

<comment><USER24> But despite any positive or negative events, it still feels about as good as it did then, right? ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Surprised to see Schopenhauer not mentioned at all.

</comment><comment><USER26> I just picked up a Sole treadmill. Gonna rig it up to my desk to see if I can work and walk.</comment>


Jessica Livingston with AirBnb live now. - <AUTHOR> http://www.justin.tv/jessicaycombinator#r=V1SGGdo~

<comment><USER2> Thanks for listening everyone! I'm planning to make a copy of this available on <http://ycombinator.posterous.com/>, but it might not be till tomorrow since I've never done it before. Also, I'll hopefully iron out the technical difficulty that caused some audio problems on my end.

<comment><USER3> Excellent interview Jessica, I hope you'll do many more of these!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I watched this, and there is a ton of goodies in it, I wish I could re-watch it again. Can this be replayed some how ?

<comment><USER5> part 1/4: <http://www.justin.tv/clip/c391df739e7bedf1>

links to the rest are on justin.

<comment><USER6> Part 4/4 ends before the interview is over. It looks like they were re- submitted as a 5-part, but there is no 5/5.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Good timing. I stayed in someone's apartment that was listed on AirBnb this past weekend. It worked out pretty well. :)

I missed the live interview. I'm looking forward to the catching the video after it shows up on the YC blog.

</comment><comment><USER5> A really entertaining and insightful chat... I'm looking forward to more.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> it's kinda weird, but throughout the interview, I got the feeling that Jessica was meeting these guys for the first time.(I know that they met before)

anyone else got that feeling?

<comment><USER8> She had audio troubles. She was having a hard time hearing them.</comment></comment>


CouchDB 1.1.0 - <AUTHOR> http://couchdb.apache.org/downloads.html

<comment><USER2> This is a huge release. Replicator was effectively re-written, much faster internals, HTTPS support is native. These features are warmly welcomed! Excited to see this now integrated into BigCouch!

<comment><USER3> The new replicator isnt in the 1.1 release, it is in trunk and likely to be in the next release

<comment><USER2> This is not true. read the release notes.

<comment><USER4> What Dale said is true. The replicator database and the replicator itself are 2 different entities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wish CouchDB would implement internal compaction. I'd love to use CouchDB and Elastic Search with the CouchDB River plugin. This would give me a nice REST infrastructure with a schemaless store (couchDB) and the ability to do complex queries in real time (elastic search).

Sadly my data is too write/update-heavy and just keeps on growing and growing. This means that I'll have to use compaction if I don't want to run out of space sooner or later. Starting compaction will kill performance over several hours and depending on the amount of written data might not even be able to finish :(

<comment><USER6> We are working on auto compaction. The Couchbase alpha already supports it. This should help, but it will help even more on a cluster as each shard can be compacted independently.

<comment><USER5> does "auto compaction" mean that the compaction process is just automatically triggered?

<comment><USER4> Yes, but only when certain configurable conditions are met (fragmentation level, time period). There's some user level documentation in the default.ini config file:

[https://github.com/couchbase/couchdb/blob/preview/etc/couchd...](https://github.com/couchbase/couchdb/blob/preview/etc/couchdb/default.ini.tpl.in#L190)

<comment><USER5> ok, that would still lead to a situation where my server crawls to a halt for hours and might never finish if I don't basically take it offline :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can someone explain what's so important about this release?

<comment><USER8> The biggies I've been personally waiting to see land in this release are:

* Added OS Process module to manage daemons outside of CouchDB.

* Added HTTP Proxy handler for more scalable externals.

What these effectively mean is that you can write CouchDB handlers in the language of your choice as long as they speak http. You can get the full details from the author of the above patches here:

<http://davispj.com/2010/09/26/new-couchdb-externals-api.html>

This makes possible things like LivelyCouch, integrating node.js with Couch:

<http://www.livelycouch.org/>

<comment><USER9> I didn't know about livelycouch. It seems to be a great idea. Thanks for mentioning it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The CouchBase version has been at 1.1.0 for a while (since March 24):

<http://www.couchbase.org/wiki/display/membase/Releases>

Does anyone know if theirs was an early release of 1.1? Or are their version numbers out of sync with the Apache versions?

<comment><USER3> Couchbase releases are not in sync with CouchDB releases, the Couchbase server is based on CouchDB 1.0.1, the reason their versions arent aligned as Couchbase releases are not Apache CouchDB releases

<comment><USER10> Thanks Dale, this is good to know. Any plans to update Couchbase server to be based on CouchDB 1.1? I know the _replicator DB would be a particularly nice feature to have.

<comment><USER11> I've been using the Couchbase server alpha for a good while for a few reasons. _replicator DB has made a lot of things a lot easier for me. I get a pretty good reduction in file space as well (my wikipedia database is about 25% smaller, for example).

So far, there are only mac builds (because I'm building them and that's what I'm deploying on), but Linux should come shortly and we should stop calling it alpha.

If you've got a mac and want to try out some new stuff, do this and complain to me about anything you don't like: <https://gist.github.com/951106></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Smile for the Google 3D Mapping Truck - <AUTHOR> http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2005/06/scoop_stick_you.php <comment><USER2> =)

Wow. I remember hearing a while back that they were introducing 3D mapping contests on college campuses...guess this works, too.</comment>


One(actually a couple) thing I noticed in Chrome and felt ugly - <AUTHOR>

Mozilla Firefox loyalists(or fans or simply users) will have a small problem if they want to switch to Chrome. A very important option in Mozilla Firefox is inverted in Google Chrome. The "Open in new tab" option and "open in new window" options that appear during a right click on a link in Firefox have different order in chrome. In firefox the "open in new window" appears first and "open in new tab" appears second. And in Chrome its the other way. The Chrome way is right. Since users would open pages in new tabs often and its placed first. But I have got so used to Firefox that I just can't stop myself selecting the second option in Chrome and I endup seeing a lot of new windows :)
And there's no Google Toolbar to bookmark to my Google Bookmarks (which I would like to do if there are no plugins API for others to develop a Delicious Toolbar)
Google can include another option so that pages can be viewed from Google's cached versions when they aren't available.
So for now I would wait till Google releases a plugin API, so that others would start developing plugins and then switch to Chrome <comment><USER2> Agree completely on the first point. Chrome is right, my muscle memory is wrong.. On that note - any FF plugin developers that could create a reversal of those 2 items? If you want to run Chrome and FF - it'd be nice to train yourself in the one way of clicking..

</comment><comment><USER3> I just use ctrl+click on link OR click with middle/scroll mouse button on link.

Better one click than two.</comment>


Beyond Meat Files for IPO Under Symbol BYMD - <AUTHOR> https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1655210/000162828019004543/beyondmeats-1a5.htm <comment><AUTHOR> 10M shares under BYND at $19.00 and $21.00 per share.

\---

Financials

Revenue:

2016: $16.2M

2017: $32.6M

2018: $87.9M

Net Loss:

2016: ($25.1M)

2017: ($30.4M)

2018: ($29.9M)

I am particularly excited about this IPO. Burger King and now Taco bell have announced they will carry Beyond meat on their menu.</comment>


OpenBSD system-call-origin verification - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/Articles/806776/ <comment><USER2> I strongly support this policy not only for security, but also for general operating system robustness. Linux is pretty much the only system that places the ABI compatibility boundary and the machine privilege level boundary in the same place in the stack. I think that's the wrong place: it pushes a lot of complexity that could be in userspace into the kernel, because the kernel is the first place past the ABI break. Linux would be better if nobody except libc were allowed to make system calls and we just made libc (or a giant VDSO) the ABI support boundary.

We should at the very least have a VDSO for every system call. There should be _some_ opportunity to run code in userspace before a privilege transition. Doing so would give us a lot more flexibility than we have now.

For example, consider socketcall(2): for a long time, all Linux socket system calls (like recvmsg) were multiplexed through a single system call. A few years ago, the kernel community realized that this multiplexing was a bad idea and made individual system calls for all the traditional socket operations. But since we have to support old programs, we have socketcall(2) _and_ the new system calls in the kernel. Why should we?

If the ABI support level had been libc all along, we could have changed the system call strategy (from multiplexing to fine-grained calls) transparently without bloating the kernel with compatibility code.

<comment><USER3> > We should have a VDSO for every system call.

This doesn't really make sense; the vDSO only works for system calls that do nothing but read a value from the kernel and return it to userspace.

<comment><USER2> Not the case. Some VDSOs just forward to regular system calls. Try clock_gettime with CLOCK_BOOTTIME sometime. (I need to send a patch to fix this. Maybe over Christmas.)

Requiring that every system call go through a VDSO would be great because it would give us a "hook" for changing system behavior before entering the kernel, which is a good thing, because in the age of speculative execution mitigations, entering the kernel is expensive, just like in the days of yore.

<comment><USER3> On my computer I ended up going through a rdtsc instead of a syscall…

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a pretty weak security mitigation since any ROP attack will typically achieve return-to-libc anyway, but yelling at people who make syscalls directly is good.

<comment><USER5> > but yelling at people who make syscalls directly is good.

Why though? Doesn't this mean that all non-C based languages are going to be treated somewhat as second class citizens, having to link the standard C library (eg. as Go is doing on some platforms) in order to call into the kernel?

While languages such as Go and Rust are aiming to replace/displace C due to it being designed in an age where security was considered less of an issue, it seems counter-intuitive to me that we should insist that they should link in the apparent attack surface of the standard C library. The syscall boundary seems an ideal place to make the delineation between the kernel and userland via an established API, and I would have expected that languages that want to displace C be able to use that interface directly in order to bypass the standard C library. That would seem to allow userlands to be built that include no C code whatsoever. But I'm very obviously no expert.

<comment><USER4> It's totally acceptable to write to libc in something other than C, or in fact to write libc itself in something other than C.

<comment><USER6> Example, Microsoft has rewritten their C standard library in C++ with extern "C" entry points.

<comment><USER5> Yes. Microsoft have made a number of silly mistakes with respect to OS design, which has cost them the server space outside of authentication for your and my lifetime. Bloat is not the answer to either security or performance problems.

<comment><USER6> Quite the contrary, I admire Microsoft for being one of the first companies to start driving C away from our IT stacks.

Thankfully Apple, Google, IBM and Unisys seem to be on the same boat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Folks interested in this sort of news might also enjoy the OpenBSD Journal, which covered this recently, albeit more succinctly: [https://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article;sid=20191202105849](https://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article;sid=20191202105849)

<comment><USER8> Totally off-topic, but it's interesting how the URL uses ; as the GET parameter separator rather than &.

<comment><USER9> The internal syntax and semantics of the query part is not really defined by HTTP. ([https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3986#section-3.4](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3986#section-3.4))

Also:

"Historic RFC 1866 (obsoleted by RFC 2854) encourages CGI authors to support ';' in addition to '&'"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL#cite_note-23](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL#cite_note-23)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _> Since OpenBSD is largely in control of its user-space applications, it can enforce restrictions that would be difficult to enact in a more loosely coupled system like Linux, however._

In which ways is OpenBSD more in control of userspace applications, and in which ways is Linux more loosely coupled?

 _> Switching Go to use the libc wrappers (as is already done on Solaris and macOS)_

Did Solaris and macOS also do that for security reasons? (A linked article mentions ABI instability as the reason, but maybe there's more to it.)

<comment><USER11> > In which ways is OpenBSD more in control of userspace applications, and in > which ways is Linux more loosely coupled?

One of the major differences between Unix and Linux is which parts of the system are in the source tree.

Linux is technically just the kernel, and a Linux distribution will put together the base libraries and userland programs and kernel along with various tools for installing and managing.

Kernel space programs are generally the kernel itself and device drivers.

Base userland programs are things like `cat` and `ls` and more that allow for manipulating and inspecting parts of the system. User-space programs are any userland program which is not in kernel-space, including third party packages and custom software written by the user.

Userland programs need to be linked against libraries, which is where libc comes in.

In most BSD Unix systems, the source tree will include the kernel and the base userland programs together.

That means that OpenBSD's versions of `libc` and `ls` are maintained in the same source tree as the kernel, allowing for much tighter coupling and integration for changes.

By contrast, the Linux distributions are generally using some versions of GNU C and GNU Coreutils, perhaps with patches downstream.

So a core change to the Linux kernel must make its way upstream to the user space application and then downstream from that, the distribution must integrate both.

This is much more loosely coupled and should hopefully illustrate the difficulty in coordinating such a change in Linux.

<comment><USER3> The coupling here is specifically the lockstep of the kernel syscall ABI and libc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This effectively treats libc as a trusted interface. Checking should be at the protection boundary, the system call. This just makes attacks more complicated, not less successful.

<comment><USER13> In a long run the non-complicated solution is to get rid of anything that can compile to something with a buffer overflow.

Just half trolling.

<comment><USER14> There goes Rust I guess...

<comment><USER6> I doubt we will ever see a UNIX clone written in Rust.

An OS that happens to expose some support for POSIX, yeah (e.g. Redox), but anything else wouldn't be an UNIX clone per se.

<comment><USER15> And that's all good, we don't need more people cloning an OS that was good 50 years ago.

Modern software is sidestepping the UNIX way left and right. Rightly so, as anyone who's tried to write anything serious in shell would know. Or anyone who realizes that non-blocking I/O was an afterthought (look into the history of select(2) and why libraries like libev exist and what problems they run into on unix derivatives..) and that there's still nothing like a standard, robust, well designed async I/O API.

<comment><USER6> UNIX was good, for an OS given away with source code and an almost free license (versus what other mainframe OS were asking for).

History would be quite different if AT&T was allowed to sell it from day one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So what's stopping the attacker from searching the libc export table for the right syscall wrapper?

<comment><USER3> ASLR, for one.

<comment><USER16> Can't they use dlopen to find libc?

<comment><USER17> dlopen is a dynamically linked function, so they would have to find that too. Its location will also be randomized.

Note we are talking about exploit code here, i.e. you have just exploited a buffer overflow, not ELF code loaded in a well behaved fashion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> And then WebAssembly will ruin all these efforts.

<comment><USER3> WebAssembly should not be making direct system calls anyways.</comment></comment>


Show HN: A basic generic multi layer perceptron - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pvinay/ml/blob/master/python/vinayml/mlperceptron.py

<comment><AUTHOR> You can configure the number of hidden layers as well as their sizes.

<comment><USER3> What exactly is this script training? I don't understand what the input and output arrays are supposed to represent. It looks almost like an XOR search but the last output target isn't correct for that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right. I should've used a threshold. Fixed now.

print where(outputs > .5, 1, 0)

The example is for OR. In general, inputs is mxn matrix. m - <USER2> instances and n features. targets is training output matrix. In this case its 4x1 for 4. I see sometimes, it doesn't converge after those iterations perhaps because of initial weights. There are other techniques I have to use like momentum.

<comment><USER3> Got it. Thanks for replying.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to find companies hiring in London - <AUTHOR>

How to find a position in companies like Dropbox, Airbnb etc. that are hiring in London.<p>I can filter startup jobs with HN's Who Is Hiring or Angel List. careers.stackoverflow.com has a pretty good filter, but not many companies are there. Any other option? <comment><USER2> Its not a startup, but Lab49 is hiring devs in London.</comment>


Secrets put on internet in Whitehall blunders (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/8457506/Secrets-put-on-internet-in-Whitehall-blunders.html <comment><USER2> _> Some officials use a software programme such as Photoshop to paste a black patch over secret text, obscuring it but not removing it. When documents are edited in this way, normal home or office software can disclose the obscured text._

Ahha! Yet another unquantifiable-but-potentially-very-expensive mistake caused by users assuming their tool was WYSIWYG when really it did more than that.

A similar thing happened last year, when someone "leaked" documents regarding Macron in the French election. Opening said documents in any professional PDF viewer showed the layers on top of the original photo, exposing it as a fake.

[https://mobile.twitter.com/Numerama/status/86047888323742105...](https://mobile.twitter.com/Numerama/status/860478883237421056)

</comment><comment><USER3>
        Secrets put on internet in Whitehall blunders (telegraph.co.uk)
        11 points by nthcolumn 1 hour ago

Please put (2011) in the title. The article was published _10:00PM BST 17 Apr 2011_.

<comment><USER4> Thanks, belatedly added.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I know someone who tried to forge a material inspection certificate using MS Paint to edit some numbers. Unfortunately the color depth on her monitor was lower than the customer's and he could clearly see the scribbling out of the old numbers. However, this was in an industry with fairly low trust and people still need to get their work done so he just point out her mistake and asked for a real one rather than firing her.

</comment><comment><USER6> Makes print-it-and-scan-it policies seem less insane! Is that still what we've got in the USA? It was last I heard.

<comment><USER7> That's not insane but actually quite sensible: it guarantees that lack of IT related skills does not compromise security. If I had to guess, that policy is the result of a risk assessment that did exactly what it was supposed to do.

The bit where it might be seen to have gone wrong is that you personally have not formally been made aware _why_ it is a policy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm trying to figure out what actually happened, technically:

> Some officials use a software programme such as Photoshop to paste a black > patch over secret text, obscuring it but not removing it. When documents are > edited in this way, normal home or office software can disclose the obscured > text

They probably mean Adobe Acrobat, to modify pdf documents.

> The names of officials and outside experts involved had simply been blacked > out with a marker pen, and could be read by printing the document and > holding the paper up to the light.

Not sure, here - a /software/ "marking pen" that obscured the text, but the underlying text, presumably in a different shade, would be printed by a printer?

Interesting.

<comment><USER9> Probably editing the pdf in photoshop or illustrator, but not flattening the layers back down before exporting the document, causing the underlying information to be retained. The PDF format doesn't just function as a container for an image, it supports all kinds of layers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Makes you wonder what kinds of juicy stuff could be found by a web crawler that specifically looks for inadequately redacted PDFs.</comment>


Show HN: ExtractorApp Convert Excel / CSV to API, SQL and Other Formats - <AUTHOR> https://extractorapp.com/ <comment><USER2> Nice! You might also be interested in our [https://sqlizer.io/](https://sqlizer.io/) which specialises in one thing - converting flat files to SQL insert scripts.

<comment><AUTHOR> That looks very good, ExtractorApp doesn't create the SQL table, it allows you to map to a table structure,</comment></comment>


With a single vote, England just screwed us all - <AUTHOR> http://fusion.net/story/318538/england-brexit-screwed-us-all/ <comment><USER2> I don't know about Spain, but why would France want a referendum of its own? France is going to be a big beneficiary of UK leaving the EU. It would make zero sense for France to want to leave the EU, unless the EU members are moronic and give the UK a sweet deal for _leaving_...then sure, then I could see it. But that would be a really, really stupid thing of EU to do.

Also, Scotland may want a referendum so it can _stay_ in the EU, so win for EU here.

<comment><USER3> France doesn't need yet another referendum, we already voted NO in 2005! We just need honest politicians to frexit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So your respect for democracy is ...well zero !

<comment><USER5> Democracy gives the same right for far left/right as for the middle. If people vote for isolation and nationalism and you have your concerns, that doesn't mean you hate democracy, it means you fear the way it's being used.

Democracy is a double edged sword. It can cut your enemy, or it can cut you.

If you look back on history, dictators piggybacked democracy loads of times to get in to power. I'm not saying UKIP is the Nazi party, but you can see where this thing is heading or can head now.

Democracy gives a voice to the well educated and to the dumb. Depends which side has more people.

Democracy is it's on worst enemy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> s/screwed/saved/</comment>


Every entrepreneur should start blogging - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@shlominissan/5-reasons-every-entrepreneur-should-start-blogging-eeeb64bfa06 <comment><USER2> I'm of the mind that everyone period should start blogging. Whether they should continue... Remains to be seen.</comment>


Pictures of downed power lines from plane crash in Palo Alto - <AUTHOR> http://blog.olark.com/power-outage-in-palo-alto This is shaping up to be a really sad story... <comment><USER2> Very sad about the death of Tesla employees. At the same time, it is very scary that large sections of a city could be rendered powerless because of one downed power line.

<comment><USER3> > it is very scary that large sections of a city could be rendered powerless > because of one downed power line.

Yeah, we need a much smarter AND more robust power grid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Lots of startup employees sent home today (myself included) because most of downtown PA is without power.

<comment><USER5> The Caltrain station was insane. I got off one train and then just turned around and got on another.

Red Rock in Mountain View is the most crowded I've ever seen it. Employee had to tell us to get off the floor of the hallway due to fire hazard.</comment></comment>


Too Many Gas Stations (A parable for startups) - <AUTHOR> http://www.sanjayparekh.com/too-many-gas-stations/ <comment><USER2> Selling gas by itself isn't profitable (10 cents or less profit per gallon). Hence most gas stations are either glued to carwashes, or have convience stores as a side, with a few outliers that dabble in car repair.

<comment><USER3> Absolutely correct. Part of the reason for the post was to show how obvious it is (during our current gas shortage situation) that there are more gas stations than consumers really need. If there weren't, there would be lines and shortages until all the gas stations opened back up (or perhaps we were at 90%). In fact, things went back to "normal" when there were about half of all stations back open.

This is the same thing you see with Internet (and other) businesses. As entrepreneurs we should all try to be a little more intelligent about what arenas we're entering so that we don't waste our time and lose (admittedly lemming like) investor money.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Don't forget that sometimes a startup can take a bite out of the existing market by taking the current status quo and twisting it.

To continue the gas analogy, perhaps you believe that there's a better, more convenient way to sell gas, and you're willing to bet that others will agree with you and be willing to pay you for it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Micah - definitely agree which is why I said:

Are you entering an already crowded field with the hopes of doing what everyone else is doing and then try to sell some lottery tickets and candy bars along with it?

For gas stations, maybe it would be interesting to have paid memberships to a gas station franchise (would have made a killing in the last few weeks in Atlanta). But doing the same thing as everyone else plus selling candy bars isn't the way to make a killing. At least I can't think of an example where that was done to huge success.

<comment><USER4> CostCo does actually have paid memberships to their discount gas. They do an amazing volume of business.

<comment><USER3> I was actually thinking memberships only to a gas station. I'm a Costco member but they make their money (or at least more money) on the stuff inside, instead of at the pump. With our gas delivery problems in the last few weeks a gas station that catered only to members (and had gas) would have made a killing from membership signups. Come to think of it, Costco probably would have too if they weren't subject to the same issues as everyone else.</comment></comment></comment>