Django-inplaceedit: Edit on the fly - <AUTHOR> https://pypi.python.org/pypi/django-inplaceedit <comment><USER2> The Django ecosystem is almost entirely made up of BSD/MIT licensed software. My guess is that licensing this as LGPL is going to hurt its adoption.

Jacob Kaplan-Moss has a good talk on licensing here, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhuF0oalOi8>

<comment><USER3> TL;DR "The GPL is not appropriate for Django Apps. ...our community doesn't use it. If your code isn't 'bsd mit lgpl apache mpl' I can't use it."

That's a statement with considerable consequences. I wish he'd spent more than 1.5 seconds on the explanation. I tend to like both the gpl and django.

<comment><USER4> I am not a lawyer.

IIUC GPL is fine unless you want to make something that 'links to' the GPL licensed code, then the code you made has to be GPL as well.

The way I understand that is if, in your python app, you 'import gpl_licensed_lib' ... then you are boud by GPL to redistribute your source under GPL.

That would be OK, if you were permitted to sell GPL based software without giving away the source under GPL, which you are not.

TLDR: GPL is infectious, which is great for protecting GNU software like Linux, but it also makes it complicated for people to build and sell commercial software on Linux.

I build Django apps for clients, and I avoid any python library that's GPL only.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've implemented this kind of thing in Django before, and I found that the problem I have with inline editing in general is one of affordance. Like the example in the video, if there are no controls, you have to be already familiar with the site to know that text is editable. 'Hover-over' affordance isn't really acceptable, because you won't move your mouse there unless you already have a reason to, and a user shouldn't be required to 'scan' the page with the mouse to find out which bits are reactive.

On the other hand, having "edit" links or buttons next to every field really litters up the page.

Has anybody written about good solutions to this?

<comment><USER6> We gone even further.

By pressing <C-q>, click events are disabled (all except for clicking on translatable string) and all places, that are editable, are highlighted. By clicking on them, a popup opens. Then you can edit and press save. It's saved in the database. You can edit anything that uses `inline_trans` template tag. If text is translated, the newest version is shown instead from database. Sadly, it doesn't support variables yet. There is a page that shows all translations that can't be translated like that. For example, string that contain variables or strings that aren't in templates. It get those strings by using `polib`. Then there is a script that parses templates and gets all strings that are marked as "inline translatable". The same way `maketrans` does it. Then there is a script that merges results from database with existing PO file. It's done because taking strings from database is kinda slow and it's done using GNU's `gettext`. Yes, you need Linux server to use it. :)

After having to maintain it for a few months, I can surely say that it was a terrible idea. We aren't a CMS too and it wasn't a must-have feature! It was done only for making life of business a little easier. Saying that, it would be a lot easier to teach business to use something like Django Rosetta.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Neat! It might be interesting to have a tag for 'replace-with-edited-text-if- available'. (This falls somewhere between the editable-model-fields and alternate-translations cases.) For example:

      {% replaceable %}

Hello

This text might not appear, if it
      is ever edited-in-place.

      {% endreplaceable %}

When edited, the module would derive a deterministic unique key for the modified HTML and store in the database. Future redisplays would use the edited text. (Optional parameters might help control how the unique key is derived, from either actual access URI or template name, to affect the range of pages over which one edited-replacement-text appears.)

</comment><comment><USER8> This might be an interesting backend for <http://createjs.org/>

</comment><comment><USER9> Hi all,

I am the main developer to django-inplaceedit.

I encourage you to collaborate with this egg, the last releases have been thanks to the community, and for me this is very nice:

[https://github.com/Yaco-Sistemas/django- inplaceedit/blob/mas...](https://github.com/Yaco-Sistemas/django- inplaceedit/blob/master/CHANGES.rst)

Best regards,

</comment><comment><USER10> Nice for those who like it, but I never liked "edit on the fly" on a CMS.

Except if it was an additional method, for quick edits, corrections etc. Else, it artificially restricts tons of stuff that could be done in a proper admin interface.

</comment><comment><USER11> So good, exactly what I need for my little hobby project. Thanks for sharing!

<comment><USER12> Me too, but I'm a bit confused by:

      authenticated with a superuser

So is this primarily for editing your own site? I'm looking for something where users can edit their own data.

<comment><USER13> Permissions are apparently customizable [https://github.com/Yaco- Sistemas/django-inplaceedit#overwrit...](https://github.com/Yaco- Sistemas/django-inplaceedit#overwriting-the-default-permission-adaptor)

<comment><USER11> That's true. Super!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> this looks sweet. gonna try it out.</comment>


With Move to Limit Gun Sales, Facebook Is Caught in Debate - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/05/facebook-to-crack-down-on-illegal-gun-sales/

<comment><USER2> A lot better than the Bloomberg article: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7350528](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7350528), acknowledges at least implicitly that private instate sales don't necessarily require background checks (rarely, in fact), and that the new Facebook policies are very close to being a nothingburger, as I detail here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7349822](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7349822)

As a side note, that eBay forbids gun sales is just fine, e.g. GunBroker.com was launched shortly after that and is a _fantastically_ better auction site, whereas eBay has become notoriously awful after the initial management team was replaced by Bain people who don't understand or want its original clientele, and are futilely trying to turn it into another Amazon. Which anyone who's been screwed by a dishonest merchant can tell you they aren't even close to being.</comment>


Using Deep Learning and Google Street View to Estimate Demographic Makeup of US - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.06683 <comment> d--b Dammit AI people, wake up! This is SO backwards!

AI-based profiling of anything is bound to filter off outliers. Censuses are made in the field for a reason. The goal is to _gather_ data so that you can make statistical reasoning on it. Not the opposite!!!!

Here, they just gather some car data, and _infer_ demographic data from it. And then what? We've just created a population which matches the car sample. We can't draw ANY conclusion from that data, beyond the type of cars that are found in such and such neighborhoods.

<comment><USER2> In my parts of the world (Eastern Europe) you can infer a lot more about the people inhabiting a certain area by looking at the cars they drive, I mean, compared to census and income/tax data. That's because there are lots of way of not telling the authorities how much you earn, but once it comes to purchasing a car you leave aside such niceties and you get the car that best fits your real economic status (with few exceptions).

<comment> d--b Yes, of course there is obviously some correlation between demographics and car ownership. But this paper makes it seem that their method is good to replace a in-the-field census.

Basically, replacing all demographic data that the census brings with the single factor of car ownership. In the region where the actual correlation is less than 90%, the data generated is completely useless.

<comment><USER2> > But this paper makes it seem that their method is good to replace a in-the- > field census.

Ah, I missed that, sorry! To be honest I only skimped through the description, for other lazy people like me here's the relevant line:

> Our results suggest that automated systems for monitoring demographic trends > may effectively complement labor-intensive approaches, with the potential to > detect trends with fine spatial resolution, in close to real time.

which I also find as a little bit crazy.

Otherwise I find the project quite interesting. I quite like to lose (too much time) on GStreetView, and at the same time I developed an interest in 20-30-40-year old cars, so I wrote a small Chrome extension that allows me to locally save images of old cars that I find on my country's roads while "taking a walk" on GStreetView, along with the relevant info (lat-lng, address, and the make and model of the cars which I input by hand using said extension). I had also noticed that there's a distinct correlation between a city's economic status and the cars you can find on its streets, and I was wondering how hard would it be to do the car "recognition" using some AI-thing and try to draw some conclusions from that. Glad that someone actually did it.

<comment><USER3> > Ah, I missed that, sorry!

I don't think you missed it. If so, I've missed it after reading the paper twice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Everyone jumps to the dystopian scifi implication. But how about lets try thinking like real technologists?

Example use: I know of three small but vibrant towns in Massachusetts where my wife and I would like to open a Bed 'n Breakfast. The problem is they're too expensive. So I feed the street views of these downtowns into the AI, and filter by <$250K home price. And it returns 20 beautifully "quaint" towns that I never could have found just by traditional census / business database searching.

<comment><USER5> A major example: data in emerging markets.

For most emerging markets, there's nothing comparable to the per-track census data in the US (and other developed countries). Some fixed-line ISPs do market assessments by driving through neighborhoods and counting the number of cars and AC units in each house, as a proxy for income, and it is unlikely that better data will be available by traditional means any time soon.

I once had to compile a lot of per-city info on Indonesia, it involved a friend actually going into the national statistics office, spending several hours drinking tea with them, getting the actual raw survey data recorded into a CD (this was a couple years ago, not a couple decades) so I could eventually process it and get some results (despite the abundance of gaps and errors in the data).

In other words, Street View data is more pervasive, updated and readily available than data from the national statistics office.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a great piece of work.

I wonder if it would be possible to use a similar approach but on shop signs. Intuitively there should be some kind of relationship between the type of shops in different areas, but I guess it would be much less dense data than car type.

I guess the next step is to make a completely end-to-end version without the manual feature engineering.

<comment><USER7> There was a similar discussion[1] here about that a while back using data about different business types to assert gentrification levels.

1\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10391753](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10391753)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Or you could just order that data from Experian Automotive, which has vehicle registration data from all US states.

<comment><USER9> But I need to get a job at one of the big tech companies, and so I need to show them I can do deep learning.

<comment><USER10> Doesn't matter! You'll still be asked to write perfect code, with awesome variable names, on a whiteboard, with eyes closed.

Don't forget to do handstands to stand out from the crowd.

<comment><USER11> Don't forget to practice doing math like 36^5 in your head. No pencil or paper allowed!

<comment><USER12> Well, let's see, 36 is 00100100 in binary. Binomial coefficients are 1 5 10 10 5 1. 2^25 + 5 * 2^22 + 10 * 2^19 + 10 * 2^16 + 5 * 2^13 + 2^10. 10 is 5 * 2, so bit shift those middle two. 5 is binary 0101, so add copies bit shifted by 2. 2^25 + 2^24 + 2^22 + 2^22 + 2^20 + 2^19 + 2^17 + 2^15 + 2^13 + 2^10. Comes out to

      0011 1001 1010 1010 0100 0000 0000
      0x039AA400

Which is a perfectly cromulent numeric response. If the interviewer asks what that is in decimal, they ought to be glad I don't have a pencil, because it would end up in someone's eye on my way out the door.

<comment><USER13> Me as interviewer: have you heard of the XOR operator?

<comment><USER12> Yeah, it looks like a plus sign with a circle around it. It's not in the ASCII character set.

Sometimes, programming languages will use the caret character to represent XOR for boolean types and bitwise XOR for integral types, perhaps using two asterisks for exponentiation, or leaving it as a named function call, like Math.Exp or Math.Pow. But you have to be careful there, because sometimes Math.Exp is actually the inverse of the natural log function, rather than exponentiation.

If caret means XOR, then 36 ^ 5 is 0010 0001, or 33.

And that is the point where the interviewer marks me as "do not hire", because they can't stand it when they can't show off how smart they are to the candidate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Let's ignore building racist AI for a sec. This is hugely flawed because most street view data is NOT updated on a yearly bases. Many images are years old. Doing yearly door to door will get fresher data.

</comment><comment><USER15> > We focus on the motor vehicles encountered during this journey because over > 90% of American households own a motor vehicle

This is a clever hack, but I sorely hope no actual policy decisions are made on the basis of a methodology that wilfully ignores the 10% who choose not to own, or can't afford, a car.

<comment><USER16> Can there possibly be a methodology that is 100% correct?

If you try to interview 100% of people, then the results will be out of date by the time you've reached everybody. (Plus the Hawthorne effect suggests people will start changing their answers as people comment on the questions they are asked.)

So you create samples, and necessarily some of those samples will be unrepresentative because they will miss some nuance. Catch 22 - unless you interview 100% of the people, you can't know what all the nuances are.

I guess the best we can hope for is a result that merges lots of different results using lots of different methodologies, and base decisions on that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> From the paper on collecting Street View images: "This was done via browser emulation and requires only the latitude and longitude of each point"

My question is does the TOS for Google Maps or Street View allow for this?

I'm not trying to diminish the research - it is SUPER cool. I'm just thinking it would be good to have access to the dataset they captured if publicly available.

<comment><USER18> At least parts of it will be publicly available. Our goal is to make the entire code/data publicly available. We might have to provide URLs and bounding boxes/other meta data for each image. But we're trying to figure out how to do this properly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I want people to use technology to find what those people who drive a car into pedestrians have in common. There must be something unique about them, the media says they all have mental health issues. Suddenly since 2016 people with metal issues got access to cars and trucks.

</comment><comment><USER20> Extracting life quality related data from streetview does not seem to be a new thing: [https://hackernoon.com/machine-learning-our- cities-617ce005b...](https://hackernoon.com/machine-learning-our- cities-617ce005ba27#.eg22ymq75)

</comment><comment><USER21> does anyone know how they download this data ?

</comment><comment><USER22> Weev is working on a similar project: [https://youtu.be/ZMptVkyZWE4](https://youtu.be/ZMptVkyZWE4)</comment>


Another successful DAO attack recursive split - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/ethtrader/comments/4ot3vi/warning_another_successful_attack_recursive_split/ <comment><USER2> Well, this is a mess. Remember, there's a clock ticking - there are, what, 25 more days before the funds from the first exploit become liquid. With more exploits being found, the original proposed patch, which just blocks a specific destination address, won't work.

The price of Etherium has fallen about 35% since this started. The Etherium market cap has dropped from $1.5bn to under $1bn. Volume hit an all time high, and the price is still in a screaming dive as people try to get out.[1]

I wouldn't be surprised if the person behind the exploit turns out to be an insider. That would be in keeping with cryptocurrency tradition. In the Bitcoin world, most of the major "hacks" turned out to be insider theft.

[1] [http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/](http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/)

<comment><USER3> I am not convinced that this is actually theft. The "exploit" was simply code. And code rules, in the "The DAO"/ethereum world.

Indeed, isn't it arguable that said insider(s) (and I agree it's probably an inseder) should identify themselves and challenge the leadership who are damaging their own credibility and that of ethereum generally? All these rollbacks -> they are the ones which are arguably illegal as they override the code. In my view, the so-called thieves have a legitimate claim on the ETH they have made and the investors in the DAO should respect the old caveat- emptor idea which is axiomatic to _all_ investments, both inside and outside the blockchain world. They invested in a dog, and they should lose all their money. This is efficient markets at work.

<comment><USER4> It's more like they invested in a VC firm which then siphoned off all the money into a Swiss account. You'd have recourse through the court system.

<comment><USER3> no, because the VC is ruled by law, and The DAO was ruled only by code, even if it contained exploits. As such the rules of the code - the law of The DAO - were followed.

The correct analogy is that the exploiters shorted the investment after performing thorough due diligence, and made a profit doing so, at the expense of more ignorant investors. That those more ignorant investors included the founders of ethereum and the authors of the code, is deliciously ironic especially considering (perhaps even because of) their own self-importance[1], but it is ultimately immaterial.

[1] [https://daohub.org/curator.html](https://daohub.org/curator.html)

<comment><USER5> The DAO, ultimately, is a human construct and subject to human laws. Just because you write a something in code and do a bit of hand waving, it doesn't mean that contract law, etc, magically ceases to exist.

<comment><USER3> it is ironic that The DAO will then rely on something which they were trying to supplant.

<comment><USER6> Yes, an irony most likely lost on the libertarian populace.

<comment><USER7> Think you might have Libertarian and Anarchist conflated there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The major problem of Solidity (Ethereum's language) is the Turning completeness. This makes it incredibly hard to reason about any property of the contracts (since everything is undecidable due to Rice's theorem).

I don't know why they didn't reduce the computing power, so it becomes much easier to reason and automate the reasoning about contracts.

Do they really need Turing completeness?

This could be one of the better things about Bitcoin's blockchain: it's simpler and easier to reason about.

<comment><USER9> It was very ambitious. I guess they could have just hard coded some simple contracts mimicking existing financial instruments: an equity that pays out variable profits from a certain address to owners, a credit that periodically pays out a fixed amount, options, packages such as convertibles, indices, and so forth.

About the Turing completeness, is there any limit to what you can calculate? What's to stop me from doing a contract that eats up an unreasonable number of calculations? That could easily be something that works fine when n is small but explodes when a bunch of different people are involved. Something that might be hard to check beforehand.

<comment><USER10> Ethereum uses "gas" to quantify the computational resources a contract consumes. There is a slowly growing limit to the amount of gas a contract is allowed to consume in order to execute.

As for being hard to check beforehand, you're absolutely right. You can read about the consequence of this in one case on this reddit thread: [https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4ghzhv/government...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4ghzhv/governmentals_1100_eth_jackpot_payout_is_stuck/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There is an incentive to exploit contracts. Contracts that stand unexploited mean that they probably cannot be exploited. More complex contracts should re- use smaller, proven contracts.

This model should work in the long term. Just make sure not to invest too much on too complicated contracts that do not re-use smaller proven contracts.

<comment><USER12> > More complex contracts should re-use smaller, proven contracts.

This assumes that compositions of unexploitable contracts are themselves not exploitable, which isn't true in general.

<comment><USER11> Only composed contracts which stood unexploited for longer amounts of time should have a lot of money involved.

I'm not saying that there will not be flaws, but this dynamic where there is an incentive to exploit the contracts (be it composed or not) makes contracts which stood longer more interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Not sure if this is exploiting the same bug as the first split. But commenters on yesterday's thread have noted [1] that the DAO code currently executing seems to be several days older, and out of sync with the newer github repo [2][3].

This is one way to get a free code review /s

There was an issue raised on their repo to make exploitable bugs private [4]. So far it doesn't appear to have gained traction but I wonder, what will it say about decentralized communities, and the focus on the sanctity of their code as a contract, if it's accepted.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11928936](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11928936)

[2] [https://github.com/slockit/DAO](https://github.com/slockit/DAO)

[3] [https://github.com/TheDAO/DAO-1.0](https://github.com/TheDAO/DAO-1.0)

[4] [https://github.com/slockit/DAO/issues/264](https://github.com/slockit/DAO/issues/264)

<comment><USER14> Are you saying the running code is not open, or even available? How does that work in a decentralized system?

<comment><USER13> No, I'm saying the running code is older. The repo has been updated since, so there are updates/fixes/pull requests in the repo that haven't been deployed to the running code yet.

The most recent bugs that appear to have been fixed are still present in the running instance of the DAO.

(Prompted by your post, I have since edited my previous post to clarify the intended wording.)

<comment><USER15> How do you deploy new code in a decentralized system?

Could such a possibility not be used to change smart contracts post-facto?

<comment><USER16> That's a great question: how is new code deployed on a smart contract?

If this is even possible, what prevents the holders of The DAO's account keys from deploying a new "Send all outstanding balance to this wizard" version of the code?

If it's not possible to change the running version of a smart contract, how does the community plan to deal with these sorts of problems?

<comment><USER17> By voting to change the code.

<comment><USER13> Is voting an in-band activity (i.e. inside the Ethereum VM), or something out- of-band and external?

<comment><USER18> It could be either, depending on the way the contract was written.

Out-of-band would be something like m-of-n control of a secret 'update' key where any properly signed update-to-script-X message is accepted. You'd vote by providing your segment of the key, or not.

In-band would be something like the DAO but where there was a special "update self" proposal with some set of quorum and rules all enforced in-script.

Both have their place. In-band is more transparent, and can have a lot of complexity modeling the intended domain. (Classes of shares with more voting power, auditors with vetoes, etc.) Out-of-band is more likely to work in cases where the script has major bugs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Heh feels like we're living in the Eve:Online universe now

<comment><USER20> That's pretty much exactly what it is, just text-based not graphical.

<comment><USER21> I dunno, the trade part of Eve is fairly numbers and text heavy

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm struggling to understand how even the most optimistic cryptocurrency fan could think this is going to end well.

<comment><USER23> Libertalia's self destruction

<comment><USER24> [http://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d- libertaria...](http://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertarian- police-department)

<comment><USER23> lol we've come full circle, most of my hackernews karma is from posting that article

<comment><USER24> Yeah, I think I originally saw it when you posted it. I read it from time to time and it makes me laugh, especially the bit about the sidewalks and intentionally shooting the mailbox.

My libertarian-leaning friends were not so amused.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> We are watching the killer app for decentralization of governance getting centralized governance because the stakeholders made bad investments.

This is hard-tech sitcom.

<comment><USER26> I'm struggling to understand why anyone would want to bail the DAO investors out of their stupid investment by forking. They told everyone that the code is the final word, someone used the code to empty their bank accounts. Either you believe in what the ethereum block chain espouses or you don't.

<comment><USER27> Because almost everyone involved in Ethereum also invested in "the DAO", so they're taking a mulligan.

"oops, just a practice!"

<comment><USER28> It's really annoying to think that they are going to get this bailout now though, while in the future they are surely going to thumb their noses at anyone who makes similar contract mistakes. The ability to see a contract through to it's full intent should not depend on your social proximity to the Ethereum development team.

<comment><USER29> > _The ability to see a contract through to it 's full intent should not > depend on your social proximity to the Ethereum development team._

i don't think it's any coincidence that's how it works in the 'real world' either, with big banks and governments.

at the end of the day, it's about people. money isn't real.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Watching Ethereum discover why there are lawyers is similar to watching the Bitcoin community find out why there are (central) banks.

The bitcoin world now has "consensus" meetings which from an outsiders' perspective look a lot like the kind of meetings at Davos that bitcoin was supposed to be against, only without regulation, consumer protection and any recourse against bad actors within the upper spheres of influence.

In future of ethereum there'll have to be "arbitration committees" which will look a lot like courts. Self-appointed, unregulated courts of course.

<comment><USER26> I think ethereum will mostly be useful for people who don't have access to a real court system. Which is to say 'criminal enterprises'.

<comment><USER30> I think Bitcoin will mostly be useful for people who don't have access to a real banking system. Which is to say 'criminal enterprises'.

Basically what is the point you're trying to make?

<comment><USER31> That is actually relatively accurate.

<comment><USER30> Yes, accurate for __all __cryptocurrencies. Pointing to one and suggesting it 'll be used mainly by criminals is silly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Hopefully they take it all so we can stop hearing about it.

</comment><comment><USER33> It's incredibly satisfying to watch this unfold after getting downvoted to death and told "bitcoin is inherently flawed, BlockChain Technology is muh future" in other threads.

After spending 4 years in bitcoin and having watched all the copy+pastecoins fail similarly to alternative internets I can say that any new blockchain isn't revolutionary or innovative in the way most people shallowly believe in the hopes of finding "the next bitcoin". It's already here just accept it.

<comment><USER34> You could make the same claim about bitcoin not being needed, given that we have money and a working banking system. Your POV is just as invested in bitcoin as others are in Ethereum.

<comment><USER33> No. Bitcoin IS different. Its network is vastly larger. Newspapers became obsolete when the internet came to fruition. Bitcoin is doing the same to fiat currency. There are many intranets but we all know which one we are talking about when someone says "the internet".

<comment><USER35> >Bitcoin is doing the same to fiat currency

Oh really? Please do explain why a government would ever allow bitcoin to challenge its currency.

<comment><USER14> Governments don't need to allow anything; people are free transact and associate as they wish.

<comment><USER36> It's one thing to have a _tiny_ transaction-volume virtual currency like bitcoin circulating without any explicit government laws allowing it or not allowing it.

It's quite another thing for paavokoya to make the bold claim that bitcoin will _replace_ government fiat currencies. _That won 't happen._ Government currencies like USA dollars and Euros are backed by courts and police. Bitcoin doesn't have that. Bitcoin usage beyond the trivial can always be suppressed by the government. All it takes is for the government to pass a law that says, _" property purchased with bitcoin is null and void"._

Any non-government crypto-currency exists at the pleasure and amusement of the government.

Government has the ultimate power and infuses that power into the fiat currency. That power is spread across tax collectors, courts, and law enforcement. On the other hand, bitcoin can't create its own "Bitcoin Sovereign Island" with its own sympathetic government. Alt-coin enthusiasts overestimate the ability of bitcoin to overthrow government sponsored money.

<comment><USER14> Look, maybe in some places what you describe could happen. Not in the US.

USA dollars are not "backed by courts and police" (what does that even mean?).

Property cannot be null or void, so a government decree as such would be meaningless.

>Government has the ultimate power

Maybe under some theories, but again, not in the US. In the US, government power is derived exclusively from the people, by the people.

<comment><USER36> _> USA dollars are not "backed by courts and police" (what does that even mean?).

>Property cannot be null or void, so a government decree as such would be meaningless._

Sorry for writing in shorthand and not making the meaning clearer. It's not the _property_ that's nullified but the _transaction_ of that property.

Ok, you agree to buy a car or domain name from a seller for 100 bitcoins. After you pay the 100, the seller keeps the keys/title/domain. You go to court to help recover your "money" \-- aka bitcoins, because it was a fraudulent transaction. The court doesn't _recognize_ the transaction because it doesn't recognize bitcoin as legal consideration. Case closed. You then try to go to the police/sheriff to seize "your" property. The police ask for the court order. You don't have one.

If the government wants to pass a law stating that bitcoin transactions are not recognized, it can do so. It doesn't have to pass such a law at the moment, because bitcoin transaction volume is trivial.

 _> In the US, government power is derived exclusively from the people, by the people._

Did the "power of the people" stop FDR from confiscating gold?[1] Gold was even more entrenched than bitcoin is today. Did the "power of the people" direct the government to take their 1980 dollars and reduce its purchasing power to 1/3rd in 2016?[2]

There's a difference between repeating the ideals of _" government of the people, by the people, for the people"_ from Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and the reality of how _government actually exercises its power _against_ the people._

If Bitcoin activity got so large that it threatened the USA government's power to manipulate its Federal Reserve Notes to pay debt obligations (at least in nominal terms) or inflate the money supply to pay for Social Security & Medicare, it will make all bitcoin transactions null and void by decree.

Therefore, I disagree with paavokoya that Bitcoin will make fiat currencies like US Dollars and Euros "obsolete". Bitcoin doesn't have that power because Bitcoin doesn't come with its own courts, police, aircraft carriers, etc -- a.k.a. all the apparatus of government. It's the backing of government that enabled the US Dollar to become a global reserve currency.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102)

[2][http://data.bls.gov/cgi- bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=1000&year1=1980...](http://data.bls.gov/cgi- bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=1000&year1=1980&year2=2016)

<comment><USER12> > You go to court to help recover your "money" \-- aka bitcoins, because it > was a fraudulent transaction.

I don't understand what this means. Courts don't only consider cases where you pay ordinary money for an exhcange of goods. Contracts exist for purely material exchanges, so I don't see "give me bitcoin for X" wouldn't count.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> The "attacker" has been heard from.[1]

"I am disappointed by those who are characterizing the use of this intentional feature as "theft". I am making use of this explicitly coded feature as per the smart contract terms and my law firm has advised me that my action is fully compliant with United States criminal and tort law."

There's much argument over whether this is a hoax.

There's a good writeup in American Banker.[2] They question whether the rules should be changed.

Patrick Murck, a lawyer and researcher at Harvard University's Berkman Center:

"The contract is the code, it's unstoppable code, it's unbreakable, it's self- executing and autonomous — right up until everything goes wrong. And then, 'No no no no, that's theft!' Which is some social norm that we've attached to it that's not based in the code, and then we're going to stop the whole system and basically bail it out," he said. "Is this something we're going to do every time a smart contract fails? Or is this just because there are a lot of [Ethereum] insiders in the DAO?"

[1] [http://pastebin.com/CcGUBgDG](http://pastebin.com/CcGUBgDG) [2] [http://www.americanbanker.com/news/bank-technology/what- the-...](http://www.americanbanker.com/news/bank-technology/what-the-attack- on-the-dao-means-for-banks-1081575-1.html?zkPrintable=1&nopagination=1)

<comment><USER37> The word from the attacker is absolutely a hoax [1]

[1]: [https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4oo1io/an_open_le...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4oo1io/an_open_letter_from_the_hacker/d4e7efq)</comment></comment>


Europe Shuts Out Visitors to Slow Coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/world/europe/EU-closes-borders-virus.html <comment><AUTHOR> BRUSSELS — European leaders agreed on Tuesday to close off their territory to almost all visitors, shutting the door to most travelers for at least 30 days as they struggled to arrest the rapid spread of the coronavirus on the continent.

The leaders, meeting by teleconference, agreed to close off a region encompassing at least 26 countries and more than 400 million people — setting out on a long stretch of isolation unlike almost anything seen in modern European history.

Exceptions will be made for European citizens and residents coming home, although some countries were asking them to self-isolate for two weeks, in some cases away from their families. Medical professionals and scientists will also be exempt.

<comment><AUTHOR> Edit: This was incorrect. I blame the second largest Swedish newspaper for the disinformation.

A least wrt Sweden: Apart from the exceptions (including transports), travellers from other European countries will also be blocked to enter starting March 19. (It's not just a block from the rest of the world to EU.)</comment></comment>


Facebook To Acquire Instagram For $1 Billion - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/09/facebook-to-acquire-instagram-for-1-billion/ <comment><USER2> I'm sorry but Instagram is not worth 1 billion dollars. Nevertheless, congrats to the founders!</comment>


Mutual Interest: The Courting of Marie Curie (1923) - <AUTHOR> https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/lines-work/mutual-interest <comment><USER2> It's an excerpt from what Marie Curie wrote in the book:

[https://www.amazon.com/Pierre-Curie-Autobiographical- Notes-M...](https://www.amazon.com/Pierre-Curie-Autobiographical-Notes- Marie/dp/0486201996)

"Pierre Curie: With Autobiographical Notes by Marie Curie"

It was published in 1923 by The Macmillan Company, and I've read somewhere that Marie Curie never allowed any new releases afterwards.

</comment><comment><USER3> Fantastic article. It's endearing to see the human side of the legendary researchers. I really like the end quote " it's been a long time since we accomplished something ". Every great achiever feels this inherent urge to do. Vacations become boring quickly. Elon Musk has mentioned he would rather be working on problems than sit on a beach.</comment>


A Statistical Analysis of the Apple App Store - <AUTHOR> http://www.scottlogic.com/blog/2014/03/20/app-store-analysis.html

<comment><USER2> It's interesting how Games have such an overall positive rating distribution, while Entertainment has the overall worst ratings distribution with a peak at 3. Not so entertaining then. It's not because games are cheaper and therefore better value either, as Entertainment apps are typically equally cheap.</comment>


Inkjet-Based Circuits at Fraction of Time and Cost - <AUTHOR> http://www.news.gatech.edu/2013/11/05/georgia-tech-develops-inkjet-based-circuits-fraction-time-and-cost <comment><USER2> This is handy for quick prototyping, but it seems that you can't solder on the parts and have to use "conductive double-sided tape or silver epoxy adhesive" instead.

To etch a PCB, the typical process is to (1) print a photo mask, (2) transfer it using photolithography or toner transfer, (3) dissolve away the exposed copper, and optionally drill holes. The coolest hack I've seen skips step (1) and (2) by directly "printing" onto the PCB using a UV laser, thus reducing the number of steps down to 2.

[http://hackaday.com/2012/08/09/exposing-pcbs-with-a-home- mad...](http://hackaday.com/2012/08/09/exposing-pcbs-with-a-home-made-laser- printer/)

<comment><USER3> There was some related method mentioned recently on hackaday too, reportedly somewhat easier, where a guy in steps 1-2 prints with inkjet, and then dusts some toner over the ink and bakes the result in an oven. Never really got into hardware yet, but might help someone:

[http://hackaday.com/2013/11/02/perfect-pcbs-with-an- inkjet-p...](http://hackaday.com/2013/11/02/perfect-pcbs-with-an-inkjet- printer/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As always, university press super hype press releases without any useful hyperlinks. This must be corrected:

Lit:

      http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2493486
      http://www.faqs.org/patents/app/20090233237

Interesting read, but then again I agree that this is a prototype only protocol with little use because of the fragile nature of the circuits. And as for prototyping, aren't there software suites around that bring sufficient capability in this regard?

</comment><comment><USER5> How conductive? Relatively high-resistance can be worked around for CMOS logic- and MCU-based circuits (mainly high RC constants), but analog that has to be built with high-decade resistances is likely to be noise-prone and flaky, and forget power sections, they'll have to be built on conventional glass-epoxy and hooked up with flex-edge headers.

The lack of a good gas-tight bond between component and conductor is also problematic: silver tarnishes. Silver-clad switch contacts can be made self- wiping, but not static contacts. Absent some kind of hot-weld method, I can just see SMD parts popping off of flex-circuits.

This is a promising start to a new base-level technology, but it's got a ways to go before it's ready for the R&D lab as a tool rather than a patient. I look forward to seeing these issues overcome.

</comment><comment><USER6> You guys should check out Voltera ([http://volterainc.com](http://volterainc.com)). We are working really hard to make this a reality. :)

<comment><USER7> Are there any details on that page or just a signup form?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> They say for $300.00 but neglect to say where to get the ink. Large amounts of appreciation to anyone who finds out.

<comment><USER9> in the paper they say they use an ink that costs ~$200 for 100mL.

Specifically, "Mitsubishi NBSIJ-MU01"

<comment><USER8> Thanks, I emailed the address on the G tech Press release, but that might be a journalism major.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The ability to print circuits seems even more exciting than 3D printing to me.

(now if you could combine the two...)

<comment><USER11> Well... [http://hackaday.com/2013/11/07/3d-printing-with-metal-at- hom...](http://hackaday.com/2013/11/07/3d-printing-with-metal-at-home/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Conductive ink is conductive, but not _very_ conductive: [http://c1qfxugcgy0.tumblr.com/post/58354457557/girlprince- ky...](http://c1qfxugcgy0.tumblr.com/post/58354457557/girlprince- kylogram-8bitfuture-bare)

<comment><USER9> that stuff is completely different (and far less conductive); it (afaict) uses graphite powder, this uses silver nanoparticles that fuse together.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This sounds very promising. If we add different inks that are semi conducting and resistive, we could actually print out whole circuits with components. Probably still a few years before this becomes reality.

</comment><comment><USER14> this is awesome - we'll soon be to a point where a person can prototype 100 units of a thing-of-the-internet in a weekend > circuit, mechanical and software.

</comment><comment><USER15> If a more sturdy method for securing the chips is devised, this technique would also be a huge boon for wearable/flexible electronics! Any ideas?

</comment><comment><USER16> Probably works much better with piezo printers than thermal inkjet printers. The article points that out but doesn't go into detail.

<comment><USER8> I am not even familiar with piezo printers,I guess I have even more fun stuff to look up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Instead of inject printers, is it possible to use a laser printer but use graphene / MoS2 nanotube in the cartridge?

</comment><comment><USER18> Been waiting for this, since the first articles like this appeared about 30 years ago.</comment>


German cars have the most to lose from a changing auto industry - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/news/business/21737534-coddled-successive-governments-industry-dogged-dieselgate-lagging-electric <comment><USER2> Embedded sw automotive engineer here. The article suggest that the german industry may not cope with more computer centric vehicles. I think thats just laughable, it is them who introduced computer controlled engine (motronic) or invented ABS and ESP which are computer controlled brakes. Don't underestimate them in this field just because they are not using Python to develop their car. Their suppliers are leading the automotive industry, providing the best electronic and SW money can buy in a lot of car components.

Ok they arrogantly ignored the hybrid and EVs and focused only on ICE, but I believe they will quickly catch up, just look at the bmw i3 for example.

It is however true that the end of ICE will be a huge blow to their industry, with millions of people poised to lose their jobs. But that is the same for every country having a lot of carmakers.

In my opinion the only field where they will not be able to catch up are autonomous vehicle, it is too abstract and revolutionary for them. It does not fit the german way of innovation based on small incremental innovative steps.

<comment><USER3> But doesn't Germany have a rather weak software industry?

If it comes to competing on software, I am not sure if they will be able to attract top talent.

<comment><USER4> Many people want to live in Germany, there's nothing wrong with Germany itself. If German companies were competitive in pay and culture, they could easily attract the best from around the world. It's my observation that many German companies are not interested in top talent, and see software developers as a cost center for which they need to get "value for money".

<comment><USER3> Right, the latter part of your comment describes exactly why Germany has been exporting its skilled Software Engineers for the past few decades.

The question is, when will the circumstances change and how long will it take to reverse the damage that has been done?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The German public and car industry is fighting tooth and nail against any change in drivetrain technology. The push to outlaw old diesel engines in city centers is met with cries about "deindustrialization".

We also mostly drive stick here.

I think the jury is still out if cleaner car technology will actually win or if we will keep living in poisoned cities.

Maybe German car makers will come out ahead by focusing on strong, loud and polluting cars.

I sure hope they won't.

<comment><USER6> > The German public and car industry is fighting tooth and nail against any > change in drivetrain technology.

This is not true. The German car industry is heavily investing in electric cars.

Source: friend is engineering manager for a major supplier

<comment><USER7> Ten years too late?

<comment><USER8> Early enough to catch the transition to mainstream of the electric car and mass adoption. That is at least 10 years away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The article assumes the following as "truths":

* There is a real anti-diesel sentiment, and diesel phasing out will happen

* Electric vehicles are an upcoming reality

* Driverless vehicles are desirable and will dominate the market

And finally,

* The German auto industry is unprepared to deal with these facts

Honestly I completely disagree on all 4 points. Electric vehicles are and will remain very expensive and inconvenient for a while. Their post-subsidy prices make clear that they constitute tax-funded toys for the rich. Autonomous/Driverless vehicles are also a novelty that we'll pay with a lot of blood. It's clear that we'll need at least 1-2 decades to reach a point where you can place reasonable trust to such a system for your daily commute. As for the diesel problem, there is a chance that some environmentalist lobby will eventually cause diesel cars for personal use to be phased out, but right now it's more of a social media meme than anything. And just because German automakers cheat on their tests, it doesn't mean that everyone else does too.

And finally, be certain that those massive corporate giants take consumer trends very seriously, and they're already trailing just behind the bleeding edge on all those technologies. They just don't spend that much on PR because they don't need more capital.

</comment><comment><USER10> The article leads with "GERMAN carmakers have much in common with the self- confident roadhogs who favour their vehicles". That makes it hard to take seriously or treat as good journalism.

</comment><comment><USER11> I was impressed by the user interface of the Audi Q5, while at the same time horrified of the the attack surface that goes far beyond the Jeep hack.

Germans, especially Audi, need to hardware condom media system writes to the CAN bus and cordon off sides of the driver dash into separate screens the media system can't spoof writes onto.

</comment><comment><USER12> If anyone here is in Germany, I'd like to ask you: what will it take for you to stop driving?

Previously on hn: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16375534](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16375534)

<comment><USER6> I live in Germany, and I neither have a driver's license, nor do I own a car. Same for many of my friends and colleagues.

In cities, almost everything is faster by bike than by car. European cities are very dense, parking space is scarce and many inner cities are car-free.

Public transport infrastructure is great and while people like to complain about Deutsche Bahn (the railway company), it's still more predictable and comfortable than driving a car.

Oh, and did I mention how much money it saves not to own a car?

<comment><USER13> I think you meant that you are young and live in a big German city and benefit from the generous pubic subsidy.

re: the saving money buy not owning a car yes I am sure all the commuters to London would like to live in central London housing is still more expensive than a car

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> [https://outline.com/325zSr](https://outline.com/325zSr)</comment>


Ask HN:  What's the best email newsletter service? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking to send newsletters out to subscribers of my site - which service have worked best for you? <comment><USER2> Depends on prices

[https://markdownmail.io/](https://markdownmail.io/) \- much cheaper for large subscriber lists (I made this because mailchimp got too expensive once we hit 80k users)

[https://tinyletter.com/](https://tinyletter.com/) \- for an easy cut down feature set

[http://sendy.co/](http://sendy.co/) \- very cheap but self hosted and fairly unstable imo

</comment><comment><USER3> Mail chimp is really good for that.

Mailgun is pretty good too.</comment>


Single finger text input without a keyboard (using language models for efficiency) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/04/single-finger_text_input_1.html <comment><USER2> I definitely agree a language model is key to better input schemes beyond the current state of the art on mobiles .For instance RIM/TrueType, iPhone, T9 seem to only utilize a dictionary based solution as opposed to using a full fledged language model limiting their effectiveness.

That said, while I like the language model I just don't se this interface being extremely usable. I believe there is a new interface waiting to be invented that, with this language model technique, start to approach keyboard typing speeds. Swype seemed on the right track, especially by reducing the learning curve and leveraging a QWERTY model, but I hope that even better options develop. For now a slide-out keyboard on my iPhone would be good enough for me. The PalmPre may even convert me if it works as good as it looks.

<comment><USER3> what's the point of approaching keyboard typing speeds? i keyboard replacement needs to surpass keyboard typing speeds.

<comment><USER2> I think the purpose of Dasher and the other input techniques mentioned is to be able to quickly enter text in constrained situations, whether its due to size restrictions of the device or due to limitations on the input vehicle (e.g. single finger, one handed, thumbs only, etc). I think in any of these situations, I would be more then happy to be able to enter input as fast as I could type on a standard keyboard.

Now if someone could invent a faster then keyboard text entry system that had a decent learning curve, I would be all in. I tried Dvorak and never was able to type faster then on Qwerty, plus it took way too long to adapt too

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _It's just like driving a car_

It's _nothing_ like driving a car!

That aside, I've heard of dasher before and tried it out on a few occasions. I like the idea, but wasn't impressed enough to use it for more than a few trials. It might have been different if it was a fully integrated keyboard on the PDA rather than a separate app.

One thing about using it is that it's not fast. There is (was) no way to autocomplete a word as the iphone does - you're stuck either trundling or doing a speed-up-slow-down-whoa-whatnow dance which isn't helped by the lack of clarity of what's coming next. There are lots of letters flying about. You're faced with doors a-z and every time you go through there's another set of doors a-z, each one in a different position, size and colour to last time.

<comment><USER5> There actually is something like auto-complete. If something is a common word or syllable, it is possible to zoom through a series in rapid succession. The whole thing is like a huge auto-complete.

This would be awesome with a really well engineered device like the IBM pointerstick. With a mouse it's so-so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just downloaded it at: <http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/Download.html>

Got to say, this thing has potential. I was typing about 12 words a minute after tying it for a short while. Kinda torn about the predictive nature of it, though. On the one hand, it lets you type faster in the beginning, but on the other hand it makes it harder for you to really speed up, as it is akin to having the 'g' button go huge on your keyboard right after typing the letters 'havin' but still. I was typing at 5 wpm when I first got onto a computer (I was 4) and now I type at around 40 to 60, after thousands of hours of experience.

If you are going to give it a try, definitely ramp up the speed or you are going to judge it on false pretenses.

</comment><comment><USER7> Products like this make me wish the iPhone had an API for writing custom keyboards.

</comment><comment><USER8> As a free-association tool, this thing blows my mind when set on its highest speed. It's kind of like flying through a field of all possible texts.

</comment><comment><USER9> if you want to read a good mathematical exposition, check out chapter 6 in Mackay's (the guy giving the presentation) book "Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms". It covers stream codes and, specifically, arithmetic coding.

I've recommended this book in other threads... its an amazing read.

</comment><comment><USER10> What this is really for, I think, is retinal-tracking input for the disabled. If it's not there already.</comment>


8queens – x64 assembler solution to n-queens problem - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/davidad/8queens

<comment><USER2> I hate to be this guy, but - as neat as this solution is - can we please stop saying 'x64'? Intel 64, amd64 or x86_64 are fine, but x64 just sounds so wrong. It seems completely ignorant of why the architecture is called x86 to begin with.

<comment><USER3> It's short, and the "why" behind names doesn't matter.

<comment><USER4> Its also ambiguous there are about 5 different, relatively popular "x64" architectures.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> $ ./8queens Illegal instruction (core dumped)

Fun.</comment>


Ask HN: Is it better to be good at many things or great at one thing? - <AUTHOR> Talking about the digital world of course. Young man here, should I learn one thing really good (like back-end programming) or go all out and learn as many things(front-end, 3d, photoshop, back-end etc..) as possible and be okay in all of them. <comment><USER3> > "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher > a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, > build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, > cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, > program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. > Specialization is for insects."

        -- Robert Heinlein

I've certainly always found being a generalist more satisfying, even if it isn't always what gets rewarded.

I wouldn't necessarily restrict this to "the digital world."

<comment><USER4> > Specialization is for insects.

Yet the advancements in human civilization arose precisely from specialization. Nobody would have had time to build computers if they had to spend all day farming, building houses and writing sonnets.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps "overspecialisation" then. Plenty of people build early computers while having other interests on the side. And the microcomputer era was substantially driven by people doing it as a hobby.

<comment><USER5> Ah but that would be bad prose style.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> To quote from the Valve Handbook [1]:

> We value "T-shaped" people. That is, people who are both generalists (highly > skilled at a broad set of valuable things—the top of the T) and also experts > (among the best in their field within a narrow discipline—the vertical leg > of the T). This recipe is important for success at Valve. We often have to > pass on people who are very strong generalists without expertise, or vice > versa. An expert who is too narrow has difficulty collaborating. A > generalist who doesn't go deep enough in a single area ends up on the > margins, not really contributing as an individual.

Where you choose to be deep should be an area of interest to you and which the market values.

[1] [http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.p...](http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf)

<comment><USER7> To push the analogy even further: paint drip people.

[https://www.facebook.com/notes/kent-beck/paint-drip- people/1...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/kent-beck/paint-drip- people/1226700000696195)

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I guess he coined the name.

I used to call it "bicycle-wheel-shaped human" \- [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12226420](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12226420).

(Actually, I still call it that way. I like my analogy better - it highlights that at some point, skills tend to connect to each other, and you end up discovering a common base connecting separated disciplines of thought.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Honestly? Try to learn as much about everything as you can. I mean every subject, every subfield. What I've found is each effort I made in one subject improved my efforts in others by a significant order of magnitude. With more knowledge you gain more ways of looking at the problems you're faced with and therefore can find more paths to solutions.

Each _new_ piece of knowledge you learn will give you a better base from which to learn more, and slowly the amount you are able to learn will increase to help you cope with the load.

After a while you gain the ability to reduce a problem you're faced with down to other problems in other disciplines, then things start getting boring because you can already figure out a way to reduce this problem, etc. So at that point it's time to mix it up a little and refocus.

Another thing that should be noted is that you should always make sure that you are out of your depth with at least one thing you are studying. You can only really improve by pushing yourself. However remember that you cannot push yourself constantly, sometimes you need a break. So in doing this, you should be driven by your own interest.

What I have found is that I am not necessarily able to do everything at once, so I end up doing a rotation of things I find interesting at that moment. Eventually I'll either discard some topic or problem or such, because I don't find it interesting or I will find something new that I find more interesting. If things get stagnant, mix it up a little!

I've been doing this for approximately the last five years, and I think the payoffs have been great, and I have learned so much more than I think I would have otherwise. However I have nothing to compare to! So we cannot be sure =)

 _Do what interests you_.

<comment><USER10> What work do you do?

Everything interests me, superficially[1]. Most of it is useless except for playing trivia games.

If I were a FU-rich autodidact that wouldn't be a problem but I'm a poor schmuck with a family to support.

My brain is so full of interesting stuff and tangential thought that there no room for focused attention on anything mundane enough to count as useful work (though I'm sure with an equipped workshop/lab and a couple of years I can turn one of my book-of-ideas concepts to something useful for mankind).

Don't we \ _have\_ to do what gives us a living?

[1] superficially perhaps isn't the right word, the minutiae of everything is infinitely interesting too, more that things are only interesting temporarily, which leads to flitting about across diverse subjects.

<comment><USER11> One time some years ago I found myself with too little time to dedicate to all my interests. Every bit of time that I spent on, say, cinema, was biting into available time for say, electronics, or cooking improvement. I grew frustrated.

So I sat with a pencil and a sheet of paper and wrote throughout the paper things that interested me. Then I linked all the related things together with lines, and ended up with my graph of interests. Things that, on contrast with those already in the paper, were too supeficial, I didn't write; and I wrote about 30-40 of them.

It was more illuminating that I initially thought! As I now had a clear mental image of how all interacted, and where the center of my interests laid. So little by little I started seeing the more fringe interests as what they were, and even as a function of their "path from the center". I started dedicating more time to the central thesis, and the fringes helped me gain new perspectives on the main "leit motiv".

And eventually I had an idea that resulted from all of that. Now it is the basis of my main side project. I do play from time to time with the rest, and the center is moving around a little bit, but there is a strong focus on reaching the goals that most interest me.

(Sorry if this ended up a little bit too abstract and vague; I hope it helps!)

<comment><USER12> I just tried doing this, as it sounds interesting, but I don't think I did it quite right, or a lot of interests just didn't connect so well. I'm curious to see a visual depiction of the type of graph you made.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am the consummate jack-of-all-trades. It is a disorder. And it irks me EVERY day that I'm not amazing at one single thing. I am SO envious of people that possess a single-minded focus and the older I get the more I regret not finding that singular passion. The problem is...I get bored with one thing. Or at least, I'm never crossed that painful membrane of boredom to find bliss in single mastery.

<comment><USER14> Amen to this. I am 29 (I suppose that is still considered young) and I can relate. I feel like I may have a similar disorder. Luckily for me my hand is being forced by my work. I have to know C# and SQL Server for my work, and this forces me to specialize.

My side projects on the other hand consist of F#, Elixir, C#, Python, Java, Unreal Engine playing around with Azure and Firebase. Just a giant list of things I build to 10 - 25% completion. There is this unreasonable and insatiable hunger to understand how EVERYTHING technical works, but only 80 years to learn it all in. So I end up buying books on Kivy (Python), Fsharp, I have 2 books on Elixir, one which I never even started etc etc. Send Help!

P.S. I even have a book on Openstack cause I was like "Wow, that sounds awesome, I must learn all about it." I haven't opened it.

P.P.S This obsession with knowing how to do everything also manifests outside of the digital world. I have a fridge full of kimchi I will never eat, and a laundry full of Mead I will never drink.

<comment><USER15> I used to buy books to learn things back in the 90's, when docs were hard to find.

Now I find that the best docs are not written books, but online documentation. These days I'd say just play with it. Build an app. Start up the one box openstack devstack. People have gone through a lot of pains to make a simple dev environment work for a lot of different languages/platforms.

Once I get into it, it's less of an abstract idea, and more trying to do something. Having a toy project in mind also helps to build something useful. Over time, your knowledge will simply accrete.

<comment><USER14> I find I am also addicted to that "ball drop" moment or moment of clarity when you finally realise how something works. Those moments are also a lot more common in the early stages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I recommend reading 'The Wealth of Nations'. As an economics textbook, it is fairly dated, but it makes the point that ten people with a specific specialization can do more than ten people all doing the same work at once. Therefore the value you can provide increases with specialization as you can be part of a team than can provide more.

My salary increased once I marketed myself as having a specific specialization, but the difficulty of finding a job increased too.

It is a basic application of supply vs demand. As, say, a PHP developer, you're competing with millions of other PHP developers around the world. There are plenty of jobs, but there are also plenty of people who are competing with you, driving your price downwards.

If you narrow it down to knowing a lot about a very specific framework or PHP system - for example, you know a lot about Laravel or Drupal, then you're competing with fewer people, and people are willing to pay more for an expert, but there are also fewer potential jobs.

There's also an associated risk. If you specialize in Laravel and Laravel goes out of style, you will have to remarket yourself as a PHP dev again... Some people specialized intensely in Microsoft Silverlight, and they ended up like this - [http://www.commitstrip.com/en/2015/07/28/betting-on-the- righ...](http://www.commitstrip.com/en/2015/07/28/betting-on-the-right-horse/) (it's not a total loss, as some programming paradigms work across languages). With the risk comes increased reward.

<comment><USER17> > I recommend reading 'The Wealth of Nations'. As an economics textbook, it is > fairly dated, but it makes the point that ten people with a specific > specialization can do more than ten people all doing the same work at once. > Therefore the value you can provide increases with specialization as you can > be part of a team than can provide more.

I think it's improper to retrofit a dated analogy into something innately complex like software engineering. It ignores the communication overhead needed in creating software which was almost absent in low mentally-taxing work of 18th century.

Let's say a team wants to build a website. Are you sure you'll have better odds at making it in time with a specialist for HTML, CSS, and Javascript? Brook's Law is at play here — finely grained task spread across dozens of people who have a little idea about everyone else's work is bound to prove disastrous.

The role of specialist is crucial, but only when the her knowledge in a singular aspect can save a lot of time for the whole team.

<comment><USER16> > Let's say a team wants to build a website. Are you sure you'll have better > odds at making it in time with a specialist for HTML, CSS, and Javascript?

Yes, I'd prefer an expert in LESS and SASS and another expert in Angular or whatever javascript framework, rather than two jack of all trades. They're different skills. In fact, most software shops do specialise at least to the level of frontend and backend and usually further depending on their size and the size of the project.

There is still a role for a 'senior foreman' to oversee the process, but that was always the case, even in Smith's time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> An expert without basic generalist know-how is just ignorant. An expert in only a single field is single-minded (think "SAP expert":). A generalist without expertise is just average.

Do both, as people always have. But start out a generalist to get an understanding of what is good to specialize in. Then pick 2, 3, 4 diverse areas to home in on.

<comment><USER19> Exactly this.

I have a current specialism within a fairly specialised field, but this leaves me plenty of bandwidth to move within the field in the short term.

My background is loosely related but has given me a set of core skills which I can draw on where I see other people being employed as specialists. I try to maintain my core skills in other areas to the extent that I can commoditise them for my own purposes if needed, even though I have no interest in actually pursuing 'excellence' in them.

When I first started down my specialism a number of years ago my expectation was that my previous background would become irrelevant as it felt like quite a big pivot. I was (and remain) surprised at just how wrong I was - <USER2> additional background skills that aren't directly related makes me more valuable.

</comment></comment><comment> T-A Wouldn't you know it, it's best to be both: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-shaped_skills](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-shaped_skills)

<comment><USER20> There's also the concept of divers (specialist skills) vs scanners (interested in everything). Comes down to personality, but both have their strengths obviously.

[https://www.psychologies.co.uk/self/what-do-you-do-when- you-...](https://www.psychologies.co.uk/self/what-do-you-do-when-you-want-to- do-everything.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> To be an entrepreneur you need to know a little about a lot of things.

To be employed, you'll do better as a specialist. If you pick the right specialization.

<comment><USER22> This 100x. If you go down the route of a generalist (and not just "generalist engineer" but generalist in marketing, engineering, back office, etc.), then you will quickly find yourself unemployable in the traditional sense since you will no longer ft any job description.

Maybe you can still wing it if you have a strong network, but if you plan on being employed rather than running a business, err on the side of being a specialist but keep your eye open for shifts in trends and don't become complacent on your existing skill set.

<comment><USER21> I'm feeling it. I'm a generalist working as a specialist, saving money until I can take my two related side-projects full-time.

<comment><USER22> Yup- we'll see what's in store for me if I ever have to go through the bigco PM interview gauntlet again! Not even sure I'll pass the resume screen even if I'm friends with the hiring manager! ;)

<comment><USER21> Yeah. I'll also need to work on personal branding once I go fulltime because otherwise it will be difficult to get a job next time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Me: 30 years professional programming

Certified AutoCAD technician

Certified TIG Welder

Degree in Supply Chain Management

Certified Bicycle Wheel Builder

Potter

Wood Turner

Proficient in 3D Modelling

Launched an ISP in 1995 that is still going

Project leader for a charity market garden supplying produce to a food bank

Assistant director / Assistant Producer of a feature film released on DVD (you can buy it on Amazon)

Producer of 4 music videos that have appeared on MTV

Made most of my own furniture from scratch - bed, table, freestanding kitchen unit, chairs

Was resident VJ at a successful rave series for 5 years

Appeared in stage plays for paying public

Qualified scuba diver

Arrested twice on TV on environmental protests

Occasional data analyst for a Superbike racing team at the national level

This isn't even my final form & this list is incomplete

Live life, box sets are for the dead to get buried in.

<comment><USER3> Inspiring list!

One thing I notice is quite a few qualification. Obviously, some of them are more-or-less essential if you want to do, e.g., scuba diving -- but for the others, how valuable have you found them?

<comment><USER23> I got certified for AutoCAD because I was bored doing programming all day, I could already do 3D modelling but couldn't prove it to anyone because it was just a hobby thing.

From that I got jobs doing CAD, first at an electrical place and then acoustic insulation.

I qualified as a welder because I was doing CAD of metal enclosures and wanted to understand welding enough to talk to our proper welders.

Then because I was doing CAD, I designed and built my own furniture - I had used the Ana White website as a place to find practice things to build in Autodesk Inventor during my certification [1]

[1] [http://www.ana-white.com/](http://www.ana-white.com/)

I ride bicycles so wanted to be able to build my own wheels - so that was handy.

It really is just the choice between "I'll go home and watch tv until I go to bed" and "I'll go to my local technical college one night a week and do a course in something"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Well, I'm going to cheat.

Be somewhere between "mediocre and good" at many things, and be really good at one or two things. If you can be _great_ at one or two things, that is nice, but not strictly necessary.

There's a lot to be said for generalists, or "T-shaped" people. Every single project requires a large breadth of skills all up and down the stack... and a lot of moving pieces (client, server, markup, JS, CSS, blah blah blah) that work together.

There is a place for specialists, too. In fact, we need them to make the world go 'round. But... there aren't as many of those places.

Here's a real-world example. I literally just finished troubleshooting this issue. Finding the bug and developing a fix involved (1) our iOS client (2) our React web client (3) our server-side auth, implemented in Rails (4) a messaging library with both client and server components (5) some other bullshit I can't even remember at this point.

I'm not the best at any of those things. I'm barely even good at them. Honestly, I don't even fully understand the auth fix that our brilliant (and I don't mean that sarcastically) programmer implemented. But I understood enough of those moving pieces to isolate the problem and get things into his hands.

It'd be really fucking great if I was the world's leading iOS developer or whatever, but if that's all I knew, this issue wouldn't have been fixed.

<comment><USER25> > There's a lot to be said for generalists, or "T-shaped" people. Every single > project requires a large breadth of skills all up and down the stack... and > a lot of moving pieces (client, server, markup, JS, CSS, blah blah blah) > that work together.

That's not really the meaning of T shaped, as I understand it. The point of the T shape is that you have a lot of breadth (the top of the T) _as well as_ a deep depth in an area or two (the stem of the T).

<comment><USER24> Isn't that what I said? :)

> Be somewhere between "mediocre and good" at many things, and be really good > at one or two things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think having good grasp in different domains and tools can be good for you both career wise and for your own sake (entrepreneurship, creativity etc). But it can also be a disadvantage depending on where you work.

When I first graduated from the university (at 23), I got a job as an IT support guy in a growing company (80+ employees at the time). I was the only IT support and my job was to help people with their issues and maintain the IT infrastructure. I managed to solve all types of issues which I guess people started to recognise. This was fine. However, since I also knew programming, my managers wanted me to help out on development (PHP), to ease the load on the developers. As time went on I became better with our framework and started to get more more complex programming assignments, while still being IT- support. For me this became a real struggle, completing programming tasks on time, maintaining IT infrastructure (servers, network, buying hardware, phone calls) and helping people with their issues. Somehow I managed, which my managers recognised (I assume, and hope), so I got additional assignments regarding "Big Data", basically get information, store it, connect the data with other data sources and so on.

At the end I was doing everything with IT. Data science, development, IT support, system administration and more. The reason it become like this, at least what I think, is because I had a sufficient grasp on most domains and tools so I just continued to get more stuff to do. When I finally quit, I actually realised that I was not feeling that great. I could feel the stress inside me slowly diminish.

<comment><USER27> My story is very similar to yours. I have come to appreciate that those years formed a very strong foundation for me, and today I can be domain specific with a large blob of context.

Point is if you don't become a good generalist first, then you'll be a mediocre specialist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things.

[http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/care...](http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/career- advice.html)

<comment><USER29> I second this ... find the gap between 2 different skills is so valuable.

Think of it this way:

1\. skill to know the problem that needs to be solved.

2\. skill needed to solve the problem

Second skill isn't necessarily programming computers btw - could be leadership, persuasive writing, film making, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Both have their value. Personally I prefer broad over deep, but that's me. You need to figure out what works best for you.

Deep has the advantage that when specialists are in demand, you're _really_ in demand. It's good to have someone on the team who knows absolutely everything about the thing you do. The downside is that when technology or your career moves on, you know nothing. You're stuck doing that one thing, and may have a harder time getting into something else.

And broadness has a specialization of its own. Knowing multiple things is particularly valuable if you know how to connect those things. If you can develop front-end with an eye on what's easier for the back-end, if you can design the graphics that you will need, rather than having to wait for someone else to get around to it. Knowing different unconnected things is less valuable, but even there you may find unexpected connections. But for the deep technical stuff, you may find that you'll have to ask a real expert.

</comment><comment><USER31> This'll sound like a cop out but it really depends. Are you going into academia? If so it takes years of specialization to get good enough to make a meaningful contribution in the form of innovative and good quality research.

Are you planning on going into startups? In which case jack of all trades does very nicely!

The key is to be very good at some things but to also keep your eyes open and learn things outside your comfort zone - you never know where your new found knowledge can take you and often times it can make you better at whatever you chose to specialize in.

So senior architects who write APIs - for fucks sake (showing my background here!) - write the prototype client library - it will improve your API design skills.

Backend devs should write a front end or two or at least do some pair programming with the front end guys.

Bottom line - be very good at some things - but be open to learning new things and getting out of your comfort zone.

</comment><comment><USER32> For yourself: be good at many things. It will make you happy.

For your (potential) employer: be great at one thing, that they are willing to pay you a bundle for. Then use that money to buy all services you need to be happy.

</comment><comment><USER33> Everybody goes to the general doctor, but want treatment from the specialist one. Usually a balanced combination between some general knowledge of many things and specialist in one thing is the best. Beware some people can be specialist in more than one thing but they are not typical, not the best always: [https://www.ted.com/talks/emilie_wapnick_why_some_of_us_don_...](https://www.ted.com/talks/emilie_wapnick_why_some_of_us_don_t_have_one_true_calling)

</comment><comment><USER34> More food for thought:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=generalist&sort=byPopularity&p...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=generalist&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=rennaissance%20man&sort=byPopu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=rennaissance%20man&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=specialist%20vs%20generalist&s...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=specialist%20vs%20generalist&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

Personally, I like having a variety of skills. I want to be able to dip in anywhere on a project and be productive.

You'll naturally have focuses, or drips of paint, which I see is referenced in another post. Your focus really can only be on one thing at a time, and presumably you're not just learning for its own sake, you will be learning to accomplish some goal, which will drive the learning.

I'd rather work with a well-rounded engineer than one that is a poor communicator, tool user, etc but has very excellent skills in a very specific area.

YMMV. There is lots of value in having deep skill sets. There is also a difference between being a "dabbler"/"knowing enough to be dangerous" and being a competent engineer.

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm somewhat reminded of some Einstein quotes (probably dubious but whatever):

 _" You ask me if I keep a notebook to record my great ideas. I've only ever had one."_

and

 _" It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer."_

At the same time:

 _" The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing."_

and

 _" I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious."_

So I say follow your curiosity. If it wants to go deep go deep. If it wants to go broad go broad.

</comment><comment><USER36> Scott Adams (yes, the Dilbert guy) wrote an insightful piece on career advice in his blog a few years ago. In it he asserts that to have an extraordinary career you should become very good at two different things.

I believe this article popped up on HN a couple of years back:

[http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/care...](http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/career- advice.html)

</comment><comment><USER37> Find something that is a good fit for you and in demand (preferably rising), avoid niche and fads. Be good at that one thing and a handful of directly related tech. Keep yourself informed about other stuff to the degree where you can hold an intelligent informed conversation and contribute to decisions. Use your spare time to satisfy intellectual itches. Expect periods of boredom in any job. Look after your spine.

</comment><comment><USER38> I would recommend you start with something you're the most curious about and/or find the most useful in your day job. It's like this, you're hired to bring value to a company so it should make you productive if you know it better. Get to know that well, seek out edge cases and new techniques. If you put your time into it, you will gain that knowledge fast.

The important part is not to stop when you're finished. Pick up the next thing and do the same. After you go through a few phases you will have enough general knowledge to apply in many areas.

In this way you start a specialist and become a generalist. You'll know fully well what your tools and technologies will be capable of and you will be able to give reasonably accurate estimates.

As far as I can tell, unless you have an eye for design, it's generally easier to start on the back end and move to the front end. This way you can be productive and are able to move between companies. Front-end is still changing a lot. But there are a lot of promising releases/tools in the works that are making getting started a lot easier.

</comment><comment><USER39> Over a 25 year career I've worked on most key Microsoft technologies, but started out my work life as a Sys Admin for DEC VAXs using VMS. I'm also conversant with Linux, and can pretty much pick up anything IT orientated quite easily - I can design and build almost anything if I put my mind to it.

I see myself as an IT generalist, but in the workplace I have to specialize. Currently I focus on making Single Identities work across systems for large Corporates. It's quite niche, and at times monotonous work (the design is pretty much the same wherever you go), however in order to be GOOD at whichever specialism I'm pitching at the time I heavily draw on the cross knowledge I've gained over the years. This extra knowledge has ended up being invaluable in separating myself from the herd in the recruitment marketplace.

So in short. Early on you should generalize and learn as much about stuff that interests you; later on (10+ years) start to specialize based your preferences (or mortgage size, or whatever).

</comment><comment><USER40> The most successful people are often specialists, but that's because they took a high-risk bet and won. To maximize your average success (rather than chance of runaway success), it seems more efficient to be a generalist, due to diminishing returns from any single skill. Just take care to be actually good at many things, not average at many things.

</comment><comment><USER41> Be it web application development in specific, or software engineering in general, or even in life itself, I'd say its much better to be good at many things than great at one thing. For one, it makes a person self sufficient and independent. Assuming one is a curious autodidact, one can always improve or learn things that they aren't good at yet. Next, it sort of gives you a perspective from various points that makes you appreciate things better. Finally, it is a humbling experience (which is good in life) as it makes you realize how much there is to learn - the more you know things the more you know you know nothing effect. Of course, one must not get perturbed when derided as "jack of all master of none". On the flip side, one must also not go around town calling oneself a polymath or a renaissance man - those days are over, at least with established fields of knowledge - as it would be equally ridiculous.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wise words. I totally agree on this. The world is more than only one specialized field, their are too many possibilities in life to focus on one thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> If you want to build a reputation for yourself, it is much easier in a small niche. It's easier to be know as "the" guy who does awesome, interactive audio in D3.js (just sputtering stuff here) than to build a reputation as a "the" awesome frontend developer.

Once you have your small niche in a firm grip, you can expand outwards.

</comment><comment><USER43> In consulting/freelancing it is better to know many things, but market yourself as a specialist instead of a generalist.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good one!

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Professionally it's far better to be great at one thing (or a clump of related things). The market doesn't if your skills are kind of close to a professionally marketable level in many areas. On the other hand, it generously rewards those who are the best at any task people care to pay for. Find your strongest comparative advantage and milk it for everything you can. If you're good at and bad at writing, then be a musician, allow your writing to remain horrible and work with horrible musicians who can write.

In the personal domain, the situation is the opposite. It's just not possible to outsource being healthy, financially sensible, romantic or a good friend to someone else. If you're really struggling with one of those areas of life, it's worth it to work on fixing up your weaknesses rather than just further developing your strengths.

</comment><comment><USER45> It really depends on what you want to do (i.e., your personal definition of "better")

Last time I was looking for a job, the recruiter came back to me and said "I can find lots of jobs that need your skills, but none that will pay the salary you want."

So we discussed what my skills were. I was looking for a SW dev job, but I have degrees & experience in EE, SW, lots of time working with integrating SW, EE, and Mechanical motion control, more experience working with biochemistry and understanding how various physical movements can affect the way a reaction proceeds, and the repeatability, etc. of the output.

Finally she says, "hmmm, you're really a Systems engineer with a Software engineer title." Then a new set of job opportunities (that wanted to pay what I wanted to be paid) showed up.

And somehow I ended up taking a position as a software engineer/Manager... go figure.

</comment><comment><USER46> Depends on your wishes, I myself am a biochemist moved into molecular biology moved into biophysics moved into micro-fluidics moved into data-analysis.

Now I'm a person that talks to many specialists and brings ideas together to create new research paths to go into. I talk a lot, I write a lot and do some programming. According to tests I'm an extroverted person with a short attention span who is motivated by frequent changes. My current position requires this of me.

If you prefer to just focus on getting a single, (complex) job done, introverted, away from other people, you're better of specializing imho. Me, I get new ideas by talking with others and can enjoy meetings. Many of my colleagues can't, they just want to get their current task done ASAP.

</comment><comment><USER47> It doesn't matter if you have amazing depth in XYZ or you know about many things, no one cares and in one year all your knowledge will most likely be obsolete.

If you're going to "learn" something, make it universal. Learn to communicate (written and verbal), make friends, have experiences and learn to be empathetic and check your ego at the door.

The truth is, life is short and you will never master anything let alone become great in many things, so why try? What's so bad about being technically "decent" and exude the universal skills listed above? I'd hire that person any day.

</comment><comment><USER48> Focus on a few things early then narrow it down to the things you prefer (or make you more employable) as your career progresses. The concept of a T shaped developer seemed popular a couple of years back (in blog posts at least).

</comment><comment><USER49> "I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times." \--Bruce Lee

I am not sure if this submission is tongue in cheek or not.

</comment><comment><USER50> 2 complimentary skills give you the most bang for your buck. Front end + photoshop, or backend + systems design. (You could also find a complimentary skill that isn't technical.)

</comment><comment><USER51> When you truly master something, the understanding of mastery is a surprisingly portable skill.

It can make you seem like a generalist, when in fact you are just a transcendent specialist.

</comment><comment><USER52> I follow the principle of trying to be (and hire) T shaped people. Wide generalist knowledge (knows a little of everythin) but one topic where they go deep. You can be specializing in backend programming but I would expect you to be able to hack a quick front end fix. You can't get away without the minimum of basic HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SQL and Linux, you also must know basics of security (CSRF, XSS, SQLI etc). Then you can go deep on anything you want.

</comment><comment><USER53> Be good at what you do and know a little from everything = Good CEO Be good at what you do = Great Employee Know a little from everything = World wide Loser.

</comment><comment><USER54> My recommendation is personal only, and does not include any "business-wise" suggestions. I would say being good in different things is better. This brings a simple problem tho, you are going to forget what you are not using. But, "learning" is an experience and a good one. So I would say learning and knowing a good chunk of any/everything will help you even in specializing.

</comment><comment><USER55> There is going to be a comment on this that is really good from someone who has spent a lot of life thinking on this topic. You will also probably be able to aggregate a whole lot of opinions from people who may think about this every now and then. Which do you think will be more informative?

</comment><comment><USER56> "What's the secret to getting in? I can't tell you. You have to find out for yourself."

</comment><comment><USER57> I have noticed that the world doesn't work like this and talent is very unevenly distributed - those people great at one thing seem to be great at lots of other things.

Extreme specialisation seems to be correlated with unhappiness so it might be better to be good at many things if you want to have a happy life.

<comment><AUTHOR> Where did you find that specialisation seems to be correlated with unhappiness?

<comment><USER57> This is just my observation. Like anything involving people the best you can do is correlation (too many outliers), but the driving factor seems to be people get locked into a path early in their life and find it hard to walk away from all they have committed to their specialisation when they later find they don't actually like what they have spent their life becoming good at.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I think the key is to get past the "mediocre/o.k." skill level .

The problem with going deep is picking the right discipline. Since you may pick wrong initially, going broad first allows a chance to pivot to a different skill to go deep on.

The first skill is the ability to learn in a fast organized manner.

</comment><comment><USER58> That depends on what your goals are and what interests you.

There are things only specialists can do and things only generalists can do.

There are people who are equally interested in a lot of things and people who are particularly fascinated by a single topic.

Which are you?

</comment><comment><USER59> If you choose one thing, choose politics, because no matter what a genius you are, the HR department has the other kind of reason. Social Justice Warriors, you name it..

</comment><comment><USER60> Either/or. Just _care_ enough to be good at anything at all. Additionally, be good at something that doesn't involve work skills. Work isn't everything.

</comment><comment><USER61> Start with many things and keep on doing them honestly and humbly.. sooner or later you __will __become master in few ...

</comment><comment><USER62> It's even better to be able to become good at things as circumstances demand them.

</comment><comment><USER63> Most places calling me about jobs want a full stack developer.

</comment><comment><USER64> I've known successful people that have done both.

</comment><comment><USER65> Yes.

</comment><comment><USER66> Is the sum of small numbers greater than a large number?

</comment><comment><USER67> You can't be good at many things, mostly because people who spend all their time doing one thing will outdo you; so at best you'll be mediocre at many things. At worst, you'll think you're good at all those things.

Be mediocre at many things and specialize to some extent on few things.</comment>


Twitter added zero new users last quarter - <AUTHOR> https://www.recode.net/2017/7/27/16049084/twitter-jack-dorsey-q2-earnings-2017 <comment><USER2> How much of the actual users are just bots?</comment>


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