Go: 90% perfect, 100% of the time - <AUTHOR> http://talks.golang.org/2014/gocon-tokyo.slide <comment><USER2> I've created a couple of projects in Go so far (a map server, similar to TileStache etc.) - Sure, the lack of generics is annoying, but I think the real elephant in the room is dependency and package management. The way Go expects you to organize your source code (the workspace concept, GOPATH, go get and github-repos as import paths) is a huge road block here. To this day the Go community hasn't settled on any kind of solution. If you bring any of this up on the mailing list you'll be crucified by the Go zealots who think Go's way of doing things is a thing of immaculate perfection.

If you want to be safe you will have to version your dependencies with your project. So one way to achieve this is to put your entire GOPATH src folder into your project repository. Of course this defeats the purpose of resolving "github.com/myname/myproject" with "go get". Or, more annoying still, you'll put them into a /vendor/ folder inside your package folder and rewrite all the import paths. So "github.com/myname/myproject/vendor/somepackage".

Of course, if you simply rely on "go get" then dependency hell is just around the corner when it comes to transient dependencies. A -> C-v1 and A -> B -> C-v1.1. In fact if the entire Go eco-system relied on "go get" there would be no guarantee that a library worked - upstream dependencies could change at any moment.

<comment><USER3> A -> C-v1 and A -> B -> C-v1.1 is a problem in any language.

As for the rest, you can have your cake and eat it too. Go get is useful for getting trunk, so let it get trunk. You can use Keith Rarick's godeps to pin branch revisions on release branches to have repeatable builds there. Then go get can still get trunk, which is what most devs will want to do to start hacking on it (and honestly, no one but devs are going to use go get, right?)

Yes, this means that if one of the repos you depend on goes offline, you have a problem.... but this is DVCS, you almost certainly have N backups of that repo, where N equals the number of developers on your team. So it's not like you're hosed for forever.

If you want to be really paranoid you can use godeps or third_party, or one of the many other vendoring tools to keep all the code in your repo. This is a lot like keeping libraries in your repo in other languages.

It's not really a problem, in fact, you have many different ways to solve dependency management in Go. That's not a bad thing. You just need to choose one, (or not, and choose your upstreams wisely).

<comment><USER4> > _A - > C-v1 and A -> B -> C-v1.1 is a problem in any language._

That is inaccurate in two ways. First, it isn't a problem in node.js. Second, it isn't a language problem, it is an algorithm problem. dpkg has the same issue, but nix is immune to it.

I'd also like to point out how bad those things were in C (and C-style languages). Go is definitely an improvement, but it isn't the end of the road.

<comment><USER3> How is this not a problem in node.js? Keep in mind, I don't know node.

However, in general, there's going to be several common problems in any language:

Values from v1 and v1.1 won't interoperate perfectly. If you get a v1 object and pass it to B which uses v1.1 to operate on it, stuff may blow up / not work correctly, which may only be obvious in rare runtime situations.

Any external resources used by both v1 and v1.1 will now be in contention. If both of them try to open port 12345, or write to the same config file, for example.

And that assumes that there's no ambiguity based on just importing almost the same code twice, like if you say C.Foo... which C? Can be gotten around by always namespacing the code via the version number, I suppose.

There's no magic fix for these problems. Some human has to go through all the dependencies and make sure that there won't be conflicts. Maybe v1 and v1.1 can coincide just fine, maybe they'll instantly explode. Computers can't figure that stuff out.

<comment><USER4> > _How is this not a problem in node.js? Keep in mind, I don 't know node._

The automated tool npm relies on a local nested tree. The A -> C-v1 and A -> B -> C-v1.1 problem would look like this:

        (your code)
        node_modules/
          A/
            (code for A)
            node_modules/
              C/
                (code for C at v1)
              B/
                (code for B)
                node_modules/
                  C/
                    (code for C at v1.1)

The whole tree is created painlessly when you enter `npm install A`. The program figures out the dependencies through JSON files bundled with each module. They include version requirements; npm simply chooses the highest version that respects those requirements. Within each directory, `require('C')` looks for `./node_modules/C/` and finds the module it actually needs. All versions of all modules are kept at all times on a central public server at [http://npmjs.org/](http://npmjs.org/).

This design is only possible in some languages. Dart, for instance, cannot apply that to its libraries because its types are globally defined and would therefore clash.

In Go, types are not global, which means this design can apply in principle, according to the Go Spec. However, the implemented import syntax does not act in a way that would make this possible. Oddly enough, that syntax is not specified in the Go Spec:

> _The interpretation of the ImportPath is implementation-dependent but it is > typically a substring of the full file name of the compiled package and may > be relative to a repository of installed packages._

<comment><USER3> Getting the modules and making the tree is easy. Making the code work is hard.

Yes, sometimes this will work... but if A passes an object from v1 into B and B passes that object into v1.1... that can blow up. If v1 and v1.1 both use any global resources, that can blow up.

It doesn't sound like node addresses those problems at all, which are the only ones that are actually difficult.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yet another piece of Go advocacy from someone who seems to have never heard of any modern functional languages. If the only alternatives were perl/python/ruby/javascript/java/C then Go would probably be a good choice for some problems. But what about OCaml, F#, Haskell or Scala?

<comment><USER6> He mentions both Haskell and C#, but I agree with your overall point. Nimrod, Rust, D, C++11 and Julia are also missing from the comparison. (and more)

<comment><USER7> Well, I understand your point, but there's a limit to how much namedropping you can do in one article. There are hundreds of programming languages, each with their own little niche of enthusiasts ready to get outraged that their raison de vivre language hasn't been mentioned. The fact that Nimrod, D or Julia weren't mentioned isn't necessarily relevant in the overall estimation of the quality of the contents of the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> An alternative opinion: [http://www.quora.com/Go-programming-language/Do-you- feel-tha...](http://www.quora.com/Go-programming-language/Do-you-feel-that- golang-is-ugly?share=1)

Go's lack of generics kills it for me, as I've learned trying to implement a persistent collection type recently. Without any concept of parameterised types (Foo<A>), programmer defined container types are second class citizens. Casting things to (interface{}) and back everywhere gets old quickly, and you get no static type safety. So in that domain it's essentially back to the C way of doing things, with (void*) everywhere.

<comment><USER3> Sorry, I won't click on Quora links... post to a non-terrible Q&A site that doesn't hide stuff behind registration pages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What Go really lacks right now for oldtimers like me: NOT generics, but a good single-step debugger. We've had these almost 30 years ago built into our awesome Assembler (Devpac ST anyone?), C, Pascal etc. IDEs. Go is still lacking even proper gdb support and IDEs build on this shaky foundation. Why?

<comment><USER10> Because the people who need it most don't actually need it that much, otherwise they would have written it. When I debug most Go programs, I'm doing high-level debugging. A debugger is a sharp tool. For 90% of my debugging task I don't need scalpels, I need tools that can provide a holistic view of a system from above. I use DTrace for that.

When I actually use a debugger, it's low-level work; I either debug the runtime or the compiler and I use assembly. Mdb/gdb/acid is perfectly adequate for that. A debugger with special Go support is of no use to me.

That being said, a Go debugger is on the table.

Yes, on the Internet everyone wants everything, generics, IDE, higher order metaprogramming, etc. In the end, people who actually implement any tool, feature, or process are doing it only because it helps their concrete work in a very practical way. Yes, a debugger would be useful, but almost anything is useful in isolation. So far, the people who do the work didn't write a debugger, because even if it might have been useful to some, it would have been a net loss for their particular problem they were solving at that particular time, because of the additional effort.

I'm writing the arm64 compiler. I wrote a CPU simulator and a debugger. It's a very low-level tool and very useful to me at this particular stage in the port. Even though it took time to write it, it saves time overall. It's useless for 99.99% of other Go programmers.

<comment><USER11> Please could you elaborate on the arm64 compiler. Is there a repo somewhere, etc?

<comment><USER10> No sorry, the work is relatively too early for that yet. Significant progress has been made, but a lot is still to be done. The Plan 9 C compiler included with Go works well but the Go compiler not yet. I'm pushing for inclusion in 1.4.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Still no talk about Go for Android, then.

</comment><comment><USER13> In slide #28 it is claimed that Go is as fast as Java. I don't use Java extensively but I always had the impression that was quite performant with the highly tuned HotSpot and all even more so than Go. Are there any comparative benchmarks between Go and Java for similar-ish tasks? I get it that Go probably handles concurrency in a more elegant way but I have some doubts regarding raw performance. I am talking about the standard compiler implementation, not gccgo.

<comment><USER3> [http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/benchmark.php?t...](http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=go&lang2=java&data=u64q)

Go is pretty close to java's speed. Generally slower, but not by a lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > pure Go AES => slower, but safer

Just curious, why Go AES is safer than OpenSSL or GnuTLS, anyone? Or safer here means something other than secure?

<comment><USER15> Several classes of security problem, including the Heartbleed bug, are impossible or very unlikely in a language that doesn't have manual memory management.

His assertion is theoretical...he assumes a Go implementation will be superior based on this removal of a huge class of potential problems. But, it is difficult to be certain without an audit and a lot of real world testing and experience with the library. It is not unreasonable, however, to assume that security libraries in a language like Go could be safer than similar libraries in a language with manual memory management like C/C++.

Purely functional programming and programming without side effects (as in Haskell) can also reduce some types of error and make for more provably correct software, but Go is not particularly pure in this regard...but, as I understand it, can be used in a manner that is similar in many ways. Again, this could prevent entire classes of common security problem.

<comment><USER14> Thanks for nice explanation. My crypto class teacher on coursera (Dan Boneh of Stanford) used to repeat one thing again and again; "Don't design or implement crypto systems yourself". His argument was that crypto required the validation of time and a lot of experts (working as adversaries). From this point of view, a young language or implementation seems to be at a disadvantage compared to older ones. Of course fresh memories of Hearbleed seems to contradict what I say. But what doesn't kill OpenSSL makes it stronger or (get forked).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is this an old presentation? Doesn't Go now start with 8KB stacks per goroutine, which is the same as OS level threads (which physically allocate 8KB from a larger virtual mapping)?

I thought the benefits of goroutines were now about more efficient scheduling, not lower memory utilization?

<comment><USER17> it's latest. Go 1.3 will have a minimum stack size back down at 4 kB. I think they have plan to even trim it down to 1-2 KB in Go 1.4

<comment><USER10> Go 1.3 will ship with contiguous stacks that start at 8kB. The original plan was to cut them back at 4kB, but it was not feasible ritgh now (while maintaing performance). It will probably be reduced in the future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Probably worth knowing that the author 'Brad Fitzpatrick' is part of the Go language team [http://golang.org/CONTRIBUTORS](http://golang.org/CONTRIBUTORS)

<comment><USER9> He is also the author of memcached and Livejournal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> it is kind of interesting to see godrone.io being mentioned here, where the f/w for the parrot drone is in go. for comparison with erlang, here it is being demoed with in-flight hot-code-reload :) [http://www.erlang- embedded.com/2013/10/minimal-downtime-in-f...](http://www.erlang- embedded.com/2013/10/minimal-downtime-in-flight-drone-firmware-upgrade-in- erlang/)

</comment><comment><USER20> Does anyone have the numbers to go with the claim that Perl is faster than Python?

<comment><USER15> For fun, many years ago, I did a series of benchmarks of ack vs grin (both are programmers greps, one in Perl the other in Python, and both were written and maintained by excellent developers well-known in their respective languages). Because the tools do almost identical work, and can be configured to behave nearly identically, in terms of enabled features, types of searching to do, etc. I believe it's a useful real world performance test.

At the time, ack (in Perl) ran in roughly a tenth the time of grin (in Python) on most tests. Similarly, find+grep with the right options (and occasionally run through sed or awk to get further refined results) was approximately an order of magnitude faster than ack (but was much harder to use, and so ack or grin were still preferable tools).

It would likely be useful to repeat the experiment with modern Perl and Python versions. Both have improved and likely have better performance. It seems likely Python will have closed the performance gap some in the ensuing years.

It's also worth keeping in mind that this may be a sweet spot for Perl, given its genesis as a language processing language. And, it may be a tough one for Python given its historic aversion to regular expressions as a common solution to problems. So, saying Perl is (or was) ten times faster for this class of problem may simply mean this is a problem that Perl is particularly good at, and may not cover other classes of problem.

I'm suspicious of microbenchmarks, though enough microbenchmarks can give some sort of indication of what larger programs will do. But, they may also be indicative of the quality of the programmer contributing solutions...a better algorithm implementation can often erase language differences. Which is why I liked comparing two nearly identical programs, both by known excellent developers and not doing anything _particularly_ prone to algorithmic complexity, as a means of testing language performance.

I imagine one could find other examples that would be good to compare. scons and cons, perhaps, would be another decent choice, assuming cons is still actively maintained.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is there a way to disable slide transitions? It's very difficult to navigate with all that movement.

</comment><comment><USER22> Sell your soul to Google 100% of the time.

<comment><USER17> It's probably harder than just registering a new account and trolling here.</comment></comment>


Tagsistant: a reasoning semantic filesystem for Linux and BSD - <AUTHOR> http://www.tagsistant.net/component/content/article/10-what-is-tagsistant <comment><USER2> I wrote something like this using FUSE and Postgres a couple years ago. The major problem with this approach is scalability: on a large, multi-user FS, you can get TONS of tags to sift through in your root folder.

My solution, which I never got around to implementing, was to have "hierarchical" tags. e.g. "recipes:cookies:chocolatechip" is a single tag for all chocolate chip cookie recipes, all of which have the implied tags "recipes" and "recipes:cookies" (but not "cookies" or "chocolatechip"). The advantage is that your root directory will not be littered with the "cookies" and "chocolatechip" tags when these collections are fairly irrelevant.

This idea can be extended to solve multi-user conflicts (all tags are prefixed with the username) and to make sensible tags for dates -- it makes little sense to tag a file with "2011", "May", and "22", since no-one cares to find all files from the 22nd of every month; but the hierarchical tag "2011:May:22" is perfect for this situation since these files will also be present under "2011" and "2011:May".

<comment><USER3> Did you use an ontology or some kind of "manifest" to bootstrap hierarchical relations between tags?

I'm thinking about splitting Tagsistant into a client and a server to provide a multiuser environment, and probably some ontological foundations are required to coherently organize tagging coming from different users.

<comment><USER2> I never got around to implementing the hierarchy. My idea was to have a few basic entries, say, "users", "dates", "MIME-types", etc. which could be prepopulated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd like to see something similar:

Lately I have thought about a filestorage like this which consists of two parts: 1) some kind of database in which you can put binary files and attach tags to them 2) a FUSE (?) driver which let's create different 'views' on this database which then can be mounted as part of a normal filesystem.

For example this would be nice for music and pdf collections. You could create different 'views' and then go to one folder to see your music/pds sorted by year and then to another folder to see them sorted by author/artist and then to a third one which is sorted by type_of_music/artist/album.

this way you would get the best of both worlds: 1) a powerful database to store and organize binary data and 2) downward compatability since you can just use the command line / bash to 'export' files to mp3 players and so on.

<comment><USER5> Woah, this pretty much describes my "perfect" file organization tool which I've been thinking about in the last months. I was thinking of combining it with revision support (every version of your file stored) together with Dropbox-like synchronization.

<comment><USER6> I think every version would be a bit much, especially on smaller drives if it had logarithmic diffs i.e. every change today. Every hour for the past week. Before that every day for the past month. etc. It would probably be more disk efficient for people with smallish SSDs, but everybodies "perfect" is different.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a great idea. Early use would have to be limited, because the rest of the world assumes directories. It would be great if the world ran on tags though.

Bookmark tags is why I'm still using Firefox instead of Chrome. I recently tried Chrome for a week, I really wanted to like it, but bookmark tags is what brought me back to Firefox. I look at my browser as an information manager as much as a reader, and multiple tags per bookmark is my killer feature.

Gmail's imap folders as tags, multiple tags per message, and their exposure of imap to external clients like Thunderbird, is why I was finally able to convince myself to use gmail instead of my hosting provider's email. I confess that I don't use multiple tags as much as I thought I would. But I _could_!

<comment><AUTHOR> _"This is a great idea. Early use would have to be limited, because the rest of the world assumes directories."_

Tagsistant still uses directories. It's just that the directory names are automatically also usable as tags.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd consider doing something like dropping the AND by default.

      i.e. /photos/london/2011

while still having the OR and NOT and any other operations you need. the idea being that at least due to training from hierarchical filesystems the AND would seem rather implied. As far as considering the duplicate filenames i'd add a prefix to them based on the order they were added to the DB (e.g. first one gets no prefix, second one gets a 2_ or whatever you figure out) that way you won't has as many cases where a file's name changes the moment you add in a new one.

<comment><USER3> Tagsistant 0.4 doesn't use AND any longer, but that brought the need for a termination operator, which is '=' so far, but probably will be changed for shell comfort.

The 0.2 query mpoint/rock/AND/seattle/ becomes mpoint/tags/rock/seattle/=/ in 0.4

And about the prefix, Tagsistant 0.4 indeed uses a NNN_ prefix to filenames to allow for duplicated names to coexist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> One drawback I can think of is that you loose the "permanent paths" to files in some cases. If you start twiddling with relationships between tags, I can imagine how many paths previously stored in software will get broken.

I can also imagine 'identity problems'. Not counting symlinks and hardlinks, the full file path serves as its URI. How can I be sure if /photos/europe/DSCN0001.JPG and /photos/london/DSCN0001.JPG are the same files? What's the file URI here?

<comment><USER10> Another related ramification of doing away with heirarchy and unique identifiers (tree paths) is not being able to have files with the same filename.

Say you have: /photos/london/DSCN0001.JPG and /photos/berlin/DSCN0001.JPG And the relationships: europe contains london, europe contains berlin

Now what does the 'path' /photos/europe/DSCN0001.JPG resolve to?

<comment><USER3> Tagsistant 0.2 does not allow to store two files with the same name, exactly as you say. But Tagsistant 0.4 will! Well, at the little compromise of having a small unique number prepended to each filename.

Tagsistant 0.4 has a broader vision (tagging of entire directories) but is still under development. If you have suggestions or doubts, I'll be very happy to discuss it.

<comment><USER11> Can you provide meaningful prefixes for conflicting files? When you detect a file name conflict, construct a distinguishing prefix for each conflicting file from the difference in tags on the conflicting files. (If all the tags are the same, then fallback to a synthetic prefix or overwrite the file or error out or whatever.)

For example, let's say you have /photos/london/DSCN0001.JPG and /photos/vienna/DSCN0001.JPG, where "london" and "vienna" are both included in "europe". This could yield paths like /photos/europe/london:DSCN0001.JPG and /photos/europe/vienna:DSCN0001.JPG.

The big trouble here (and, if I understand, with what you're suggesting as well) is that changing the name or tags of one file can alter the path to another as a side effect. So if I started with just /photos/vienna/DSCN0001.JPG, I might reference it as /photos/europe/DSCN0001.JPG somewhere. But when I go back and add /photos/london/DSCN0001.JPG, my reference to the photo of Vienna breaks because its name is no longer unique. As TeMPOral points out, this is a general class of problems afflicting a system like this.

<comment><USER3> It does not work exactly this way.

When you create a file "DSCN0001.JPG", it receive a prefix, even if it's not conflicting, becoming, lets say, "123_DSCN0001.JPG".

But both you and your software (say: a filemanager) are presuming the file is named "DSCN0001.JPG", not "123_DSCN0001.JPG". To solve that, Tagsistant 0.4 provides an aliasing layer that maps the original name to the prefixed one.

It's still something under development, so both the idea and the implementation can change. For example: how long should an alias exists? Just after the first access? Up to an extimated expiration time?

I'm oriented to the latter solution. Being aliases implemented as an SQL table, adding a expiration column and a garbage collecting thread should be all that is needed.

Of course, using expiring aliases is just like postponing the problem. But, in my opinion, Tagsistant is primary a personal tool, nothing that automated procedures or batches are supposed to rely on. I hope that, in this perspective, the alias workaround is an acceptable compromise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why couldn't this co-exist with a hirerarchical filesystem, maybe via a special subdirectory as procfs does? (With homonym files getting some distinguishing prefix, possibly based on their hierarchical paths.) It seems somewhat like a more sophisticated version of spotlight in that it can handle logical relationships between tags.

</comment><comment><USER13> I had exactly this idea last year but I never took the time to actually implement it. Nice to see someone did!

</comment><comment><USER10> I was excited about this at first, but I have come to think a filesystem that does away with the tree structure would be rather difficult to deal with or get used to. I will probably end up with loads of files under similar tags and it would make files rather difficult to locate due to the sheer number of them. Maybe the idea just needs a bit of refining?

<comment><USER14> This is actually something I've been wanting for a long, long time. Obviously I'm not planning on using this for / or anything system-related, but for my media archives &c it's perfect. Taking movies for example, I've found most people I know think an alphabetical approach is the way to go. This is useless, however, if I don't know what I want to watch. With the tags I can easily take tag in genres, directors, actors, etc and have my filesystem help me choose a film.

There is on major thing that I've considered would be an awesome addition to a system like this: automatic tagging from the metadata. It'd be awesome if my movies automatically got tagged by, say, resolution and length, so I wouldn't have to bother with such things.

<comment><USER10> Same here, I want something similar to manage my photo collection. The current implementation actually can have plugins that act on specific file types, so automatic tags are just a few lines of code away.

But then what advantage would this system have over a dedicated media manager or the several semantic desktop projects? The only advantage I see is allowing traditional tools (unix utilities, conventional file managers, even 'open file' popups) to take advantage of the system without any extra effort on their side. Though wouldn't dedicated tools, say a full blown semantic desktop, allow for much better integration and usability?

<comment><USER14> That really depends on the use case, I guess. For me, the use case is that I've got a media server in my living room and, in addition to being hooked up to my TV, it also has a Samba share set up so that anyone in my apartment can watch/listen/look at/read/view anything anywhere in the apartment. In this case, it certainly would be possible to have every computer set up with a semantic desktop setup, but I'm still trying to keep my Eee minimal and visitors wouldn't necessarily be set up with the semantic desktop tools.

Maybe this implies ground for a semantic server, but I'm inclined to think that Samba (or your favourite mostly-transparent sharing protocol) on top of a tag-based system is actually a good and way to accomplish this particular use case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Yay...semantic technologies. I hope they make a way of utilizing existing technologies from the semantic web. Like OWL :) [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Web_Ontology_...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Web_Ontology_Language)

<comment><USER16> If you read his notes, he finds that OWL as it currently exists is too cumbersome for his needs.

<comment><USER15> ahh...yes...[http://www.tagsistant.net/documents-about- tagsistant/semanti...](http://www.tagsistant.net/documents-about- tagsistant/semantic-reasoning/3-semantic-rules-inside-tagsistant)

I think OWL would fit the task quite well. Yes, right now it may seem like overkill and will probably we somewhat slow. RDFS is an alternative though. Or just using a subset of OWL, like OWL lite.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Tagsistant is not supposed to replace posix filesystems and can't be used in system directories like /bin or /etc.

Tagsistant is a personal tool to organize files (and directories, starting with version 0.4).

It provides a plugin architecture to allow autotagging.

</comment><comment><USER17> Well done with the "Europe" tag includes anything with the "London" tag idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> This idea is called "hierarchical tagging". Searching for that phrase in google should get you some links to other people who've discussed and implemented it.

<comment><USER18> I think that was a joke. Over in London, 'Europe' is across the channel, on the mainland.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Reminds me of WinFS (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS>)</comment>


Hey Sales Guy - Stop Pissing Off The Engineers - <AUTHOR> http://blog.aha.io/index.php?p=1000 <comment><USER3> This article seems to be one big exercise in "false dichotomy" \- the world is EITHER "sales guys are always right" or "engineers are always right"; the world is EITHER "engineers need sales guys more" or vice versa; the world is EITHER "the sales guy is right about feature x" or "the engineer is right about feature x".

Startups and customer development (a la Steve Blank or PG) is messy by nature. That's the whole art of a startup - balancing your own vision for the technology with the market demand and other forces. Both hands are needed to wash each other.

So even a small startup should have a robust Product Management function/group/team that has a leg both in the Customer's world and the Engineer's world.

What's odd about this post is that the company is apparently _targeted at_ Product Managers... but reads like its from a world in which the brilliant- and-precious engineers only ever deal directly with horrible sales ogres. If I was a product manager in the market for a tool like this, I would hope my software vendor had a more nuanced view of how customer/technology teams should interact.

My $0.02!

<comment><USER4> The article is also the first of it's kind I've seen that gives salespeople comprehensible and actionable advice on how to improve.

If they're salespeople worth their salt they'll be able to help leverage this newfound understanding to better sell their feature requests.

I do agree that ideally this nuggets of wisdom would not have been hidden in such a ranty article though.

P.S. Their equivalent post aimed at product managers is at [http://blog.aha.io/index.php/hey-product-managers-stop- pissi...](http://blog.aha.io/index.php/hey-product-managers-stop-pissing-off- the-engineers/)

<comment><USER5> If salespeople are worth their salt and working for a software company, this isn't "newfound understanding".

On the contrary, they've learned the hard way _never_ to count on a deal closing because of a particular feature and never to promise something will be coming in the next cycle if they've got to deal with that customer again. They're well aware prospective customers might have reasons for not buying other than feature requests because _their job performance is as dependent on being able to identify what customers actually mean as developers ' performance is dependent on ability to write code_.

If they're worth their salt they're not skewed by optimism around one deal (unless they're in _really_ high-ticket sales, in which case they've probably got dedicated engineers allocated to that deal anyway) and having talked to far more clients and prospective clients than all the engineers and product managers put together are probably actually in a far better position to prioritise features in terms of potential revenue to be earned/lost by the company. Needless to say, the engineers and PM have far more grasp of the difficulty of implementing the feature. That's why they need to compare notes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > However, the reality is that sales needs engineering more than engineering > needs sales. Sales people come and go but engineers build what matters.

and then sales people make it possible to make money off of that thing...? I'm not seeing how engineering doesn't need sales just as much. It's as if the author just said:

>~ However, the reality is that farmers need well diggers more than well diggers need farmers. Well diggers come and go but farmers grow what matters.

No farmers: everybody starves. No well diggers: everybody dies of thirst. Acting like one is 'more essential' is the wrong distinction to make. (How about: cost to replace, return on investment, comparative advantage?)

<comment><AUTHOR> We think that the traditional enterprise sales model is dead. And we don't necessarily think that your analogy is always true – see self-pick farms where end users come and choose the produce that they want. There are numerous examples of this as well now in the world of software — see Atlassian, 37signals, Palantir as good examples. Maybe it's just that we should not think about these disciplines so differently. We could probably all agree on that.

<comment><USER7> The whole Palantir no sales people mantra is kind of not true. You don't sell 7 or 8 figure deals without a sales cycle/process.

Also, yes, there are some businesses where aggressive sales aren't that important. But most companies want to move up into the larger deal size at some point...at which point you definitely need a sales person. So let's cut the BS about sales people being less or more important than any other function in the company. It's so tiring.

<comment><AUTHOR> What Palantir is doing (at least in the way they talk about it publicly) seems to be more about the mentality than anything else. If you consider that everyone in the company who touches the customer is responsible for selling then you can change the culture of how you sell.

For example, I see customer support as the most important aspect of sales now for SaaS companies. It is likely to be the first, and one of the most common, touch points for any customer. So getting the customer support team to realize they are selling too is crucial to success.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> to me the article is rather narrow-sighted rant of an engineer with _presumed_ inner-thoughts and inner-workings of a _typical sales guy._ Interestingly, the same argument could be said by a sales guy to an engineer that _even if you do your magic your work will be worthless if you don 't know how to sell_, which is one of the most repeated-to-the-point-of-truism at HN: let people know what you're doing and why it's important.

I agree with the first paragraph where a sales person needs to know more about engineering than he _presumably_ does. The other part which I would like to add is that an engineer (or a competent one, at least) needs to know how his product is sold, marketed, and presented as a sold commodity.

Am I the only one to read the typical stereotype of _arrogant prig engineer_ characteristic between the line? A kind which a sales person would think of.

<comment><USER9> I thought the same thing as I started reading through the article - <USER2> attitude is endemic to anyone who thinks that what they do is the most important function and that the business couldn't survive without them.

The truth is that you need _all_ parts of the business to succeed, working well together.

That said, I think there are stages in the progression. In the beginning, you can't sell anything if you don't have a product. But once you have a reasonably good product, you need good marketing and sales to have people become aware of it.

I worked closely with the marketing department in my last job and it definitely made me see how big an impact a good team can have. They did a lot of creative work to sell the product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I can pretty much guarantee the author doesn't know what sales people actually do. Assumptions lacking experience makes this article a waste of time. I'd suggest he tries to figure out how hard it is to get someone to actually talk on the phone, much less make a large purchase, and he would change his tone.

What engineers generally don't understand is how hard it is to get people interested, qualify out prospects who are a waste of time, make your stuff a top priority, and most importantly build trust. Engineers only see a very small part of sales. Unfortunately what they see is the gaps in the product, and the customer's requirements that may not match theirs. Most people hate sales, keep that in mind when you consider how hard of a job it is. With biases like this, it is a miracle a sales team can deliver.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha! the irony here is just too much. The author of the post is not an engineer, and just spent the last two months talking to more than a hundred customers during our private beta (and loved it).

I am not the author of the post, but I am an engineer, and I've worked with sales teams ranging from large enterprise sales, to SaaS inside sales, and I know just like you that it is hard, hard, hard. But I also know, just like the author of the post, that everyone trying to close a deal thinks that their deal is the only one the matters. Getting to club, or meeting your quota is a strong motivator - and one that many engineering teams are oblivious too. I would imagine that many line engineers don't even realize what a big part of a typical salesperson's compensation is performance based.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> My observation on sales in general, and this applies especially to software:

\- If you can only sell when your product has every feature, and the cheapest price, then you're not really selling. You're taking orders.

\- The sales job creates value by convincing customers to pay up for added value in the product, or accept less value (or benefits or features) if they want to pay less.

\- There are two types of salespeople who find a way to add a lot of value.

1 - Those who are in so deep with their customers that they are almost indistinguishable from their own employees. You know you have it when they're invited to join their customer's company softball team, or the customer's security guard waves them through with a smile. The insight they bring back is priceless, and they allow you to preempt most competition.

2 - Those who are fully knowledgable and networked within their company, and can efficiently bring the full power of the organization to bear on the customer problems, making credible promises to the client.

Either 1 or 2 can add a lot of value. It's 1 in 1000 that has both, so that's too much to ask for. The author of the article seems to be asking for #2. I'd suggest that #1 is incredibly valuable too.

<comment><USER12> this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I read this mostly as "sales guy, stop being like all the other sales guys, none of you ever get it! You lazy asses! Do your job, which, by the way, includes making our lives in product management and engineering easier".

Sales has (a lot) more than it's fair share of dominant, persistent and driven people. They ask for a lot. Not because they are lazy, but because they've found they often get it. If you can't deal with that, maybe you shouldn't be a product manager.

A good product manager understands sales is pushing a boulder up a mountain. They should be patient and supporting. Good ones will direct a sales guy to an existing road map, the feature request/voting process, the exceptions process (for huge deals) for getting features into the next release (which usually means "bring more money to the table"), pre-recorded sessions with other customers/prospects that explain what the product _can_ do in that area (often the sales guys didn't know). All product managers, good or bad, should be protecting the engineers from the worst offenders, and sharing the successes of all sales with their developers. We like to know when you win with our products.

</comment><comment><USER14> Meanwhile, the marketing person recognizes that his or her target market is engineers and writes a glib "rah-rah, engineers are better!" piece precisely formulated to get on Hacker News.

</comment><comment><USER15> Once upon a time I was a pretty hardcore salesperson. Now I just yell at people until they buy things, but I digress...

The key to being successful as a salesperson is the same as the keys to being successful in life:

* Be Humble

* Be Understanding

* Be Patient but with clear deadlines

I see salespeople brag, I see folks explaining why the client is wrong, and I see plenty of phony patience but what I rarely see is kindness. You know what always worked for me? "How was your weekend?"

Most salespeople want to rattle off a feature list until they're blue in the face, the best ones only ever say what matters. The best ones don't waste your time by making sure they don't waste their time. How do you wrap up a meeting? Is it 'call me when you're ready?' or is it 'This is what I can do for your business and I think it has real benefit. Would a week be alright for you to evaluate this technology?'. Is it rude to put a timelimit? Actually, it's quite the opposite. Open-ended sales cycles are terrible; endless calls and avoidance, it just isn't fun. The polite thing to do is to bring the relationship to a head; it's hard but it's the right thing to do. Even if you don't win the deal, you'll walk away with class, and in a year you just might come back and win (hardly a rare occurrence in sales).

Most people are bad at sales because they dislike confrontation, but sales is hardly a confrontation if you set expectations correctly. The problem arises when people conceal that they're in sales, or that they have timelines, or that they want to do business with you. Get all that crap out in the open immediately and you'll waste a lot less time.

Here are two pieces of advice I've learned over the years that I've found invaluable in technical sales:

* Don't ever talk about engineering timelines with customers. If it's not released it doesn't exist.

* The only features you need to build are the ones your customers are screaming for; never listen to a salesperson, listen to their customers. Make the salespeople bring you customer examples. Sell something people want.

Edit: I should note that setting expectations is also important for Engineers, but I tend to think of software development as being like a large cooperative painting. If you want it to be beautiful it's done when it's done. There's definitely some accountability on the development side and I don't mean to minimize it but it's important to understand mutual respect. If you have one takeaway from any of my posts on HN it's that you should treat everyone with respect whenever possible.</comment>


Project Board - <AUTHOR> http://crowdersoup.github.com/Project-Board/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a pretty simple web based Kanban board that I hacked out this week during down time at work. I've had several projects going at a time lately, but with down time between them while waiting for others to complete tasks...thats what gave me the idea for this.

Like I said, it's pretty simple, but it works well for me. I figured I'd submit it here and get some real world feedback on how I can improve it.

FYI, It's all HTML/CSS/JavaScript. I used localStorage to persist data between sessions.</comment>


Airbnb launches Verified Identification to help bring more accountability - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/04/30/airbnb-launches-verified-identification/

<comment><USER2> The service they use to do this is Jumio (<http://www.jumio.com/>) Looks like it might be useful to other web apps.

I was wondering the other day whether there's a viable SaaS business going the next step and verifying a person's real identity and address by actually visiting them in person. Like CAPTCHA to an extreme.

<comment><USER3> After visiting Jumio I started looking for alternatives and just found <http://www.miicard.com>

A couple of minutes later I was reading about how to validate drivers license or how startssl does verification.

The only thing left is real physical verification, which probably doesn't scale well and can be prohibitive.

What is out there to verify identity? Am I missing something?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> i think this is a wonderful addition to what airbnb offers!

i've used airbnb for a couple of years regularly and i know that if a host has verified identification it will help instill another layer of trust when booking a rental.

<comment><USER5> I wanted to book a holiday place with AirBnB this summer but decided against it. My worry is: what happens when host just disappears? For example, we rent nice house, arrive to the airport, try to call the host and he is not there. What next?

I'm aware that I will get my money back from AirBnB, but at that moment in the airport, what will you do?

<comment><USER4> I stay in contact regularly with the host (on the day of as well as leading up to my trip) because of some of those same concerns. to help alleviate any of those concerns in the first place, I don't book a host that :

      - has poor rating
      - has less than a certain number of reviews in the past 3 months
      - looks like they own a ton of properties as rentals, not their personal residence.
      - responds snarky or in a condescending way to reviewers who voice level headed concerns
      - have less than 3 photos
      - don't have photos of the actual bed/sleeping device
      - have more photos of the neighborhood and google street view photos of whole foods nearby than of the actual place that I would be staying
      - doesn't respond within 48 hours

all that said, to answer your question, I believe AirBNB has "emergency" services available at any time that you can call and they will put you in a place for your trip in the event that you're at the airport and they flake out on you.</comment></comment></comment>


Google buys Zagat - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/google-just-got-zagat-rated.html <comment><USER3> I like this move strategically.

Zagat has recently made moves to expand their ratings from food / travel into new verticals - eg rating doctors.

Have to assume that Google foresees expanding the Zagat ratings quickly to all things local.

The Zagat "brand" resonates huge as a trusted consumer brand and having that rating attached to listings (exclusively) makes Google's search results more meaningful than competitors (the perception anyways).

Smart.

Reference - [http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/wellpoint-taps- zagat...](http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/wellpoint-taps-zagat-survey- to-help-consumers-rate-experiences-with-their-doctors-58776642.html)

<comment><USER4> I am going to dissent on this one.

This buy is something Yahoo or AOL would do. Google didn't buy a technology or a business model. It bought content, an address book, and a logo. Very un- Google.

If Google's technology isn't good to compete with Yelp and Groupon, what makes it think it will be any better after buying up someone else's operation that can't compete either.

To quote Vic Gundotra, 'Two turkeys do not make an Eagle'

<comment><USER5> I have to disagree. Not everything is about technology - Zagat has something that is highly coveted and difficult to replicate: a good reputation and critical mass.

Google (or any of us, for that matter) can spend all day building the greatest, fairest, most accurate restaurant review system known to man - <USER2> it will still be of utterly no use unless there is a critical mass of restaurants and customers who are willing to trust it and, more importantly, _use_ it.

Bootstrapping a trusted content source is _really_ hard (hard in the "nobody knows how to do it reliably" way, not just hard in the "it takes a lot of work" way). If you want to break into this market, simply _buying_ said critical mass is much easier (and much less time-consuming). Whatever crazy technology you have can be layered on top.

<comment><USER6> Maybe it's my age (currently 23) But Zagat has a good reputation and critical mass?

I know Zagat as that magazine that fast food places brag about getting high ratings from (KFC ran commercials for a while claiming a #1 rating from them).

<comment><USER7> I am with you, I am 27 and really had no clue what the heck Zagat is. I knew they reviewed food places, but why they are trusted or why I should care? I am more interested in my co-workers opinion.

I don't see this as a great purchase for Google either. They already put business reviews from other websites on their listing pages. I have seen Zagat ratings on various pages. Why couldn't they just pull it in also instead of buying the company?

<comment><USER8> 28..always been aware of Zagat. Who knows, travels, what you read, etc. Zagat rated over the last few years has definitely seemed to not be as indicative, as before, of the highest quality of restaurant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The most troubling aspect of Google these days is the shift from passively indexing the work of others (Google crawler) to deliver relevant ads and search results, to owning the data itself and granting access (G+, Zagat, ITA).

<comment><AUTHOR> Doesn't strike me as an apples-apples comparison. Some data is not free. The web is decentralized and anyone can request a URL and maybe get a response. Not all data sources are like this. ITA doesn't own the airline data -- it receives feeds of it from the airlines. That data costs a lot of money. I would also imagine that Zagat reviews cost money to create and aggregate.

Let's think about it. Instead of buying Zagat, Google could propose a distributed protocol (or microformat/schema for HTML) to publish a review and then they could just wait for it to catch on and then crawl that. But that is not going to help users _today_. Plus they've already scraped reviews from other sites and that just caused those sites (Yelp) to become very upset that their reviews are being shown on Google place pages (despite the fact they could always robot-out Places specifically).

Encouraging high-quality content on the web is not out of vogue at Google -- this would be silly because the #1 reason people still use Google is to find content on the web. However, it's not surprising to me that given the option to improve Google local quality _today_ they would make an acquisition like this. If you were in Marrisa Mayer's position, what decision would you make?

<comment><USER10> The problem is Google is now too big and too much of a lawsuit target to get away with aggregating other people's data any more. Web Search is the ultimate aggregation of other people's content, and it's a good thing it's already invented because it would never get off the ground today. Crawling other people's content? Lawsuit. Linking? Lawsuit. Cache? Lawsuit. Allowing searches on trademarked terms? Lawsuit. Snippets in the result page? So many lawsuits! Using user click/query data for Suggest and/or ranking? Outcry in the EU. FTC launches investigations; DOJ sues. Congress steps in; Google forced to back down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Good to see. Zagat's had problems finding a great business model in the digital world. They've gone through ads, memberships and endless partnerships. Zagat is still the prestige name in local reviews though. This is a great resource for Google's efforts in the local business market.

I love Zagat's core business idea — they were a significant inspiration for our LA Life neighborhood ratings. In fact, I've been looking at opportunities to do similar capsule reviews but creating them using existing reviews from other sites instead of survey data. I have to think this is where they're moving now as a part of Google, but it's not like I'm a Google VP.

This all seems to make sense. The Thomas Bros. map books were ubiquitous in California when I was growing up but have basically been replaced with Google Maps. Now the old burgundy Zagat guidebook is going this way. Glad to see Tim and Nina and their team will have a guiding hand in its replacement.

</comment><comment><USER12> Google could out-Yelp Yelp with this move. Zagat is certainly a more trusted brand than Yelp; and has none of Yelp's unsavory reputation. (All those "don't buy an ad and get bad reviews" stories.)

</comment><comment><USER13> Keep digging that moat, Google. As has been the case throughout history, the guy with the biggest moat wins, right? Oh wait, nope, that's not it. It's the guy who figures out how to bypass the moat who wins.

Google, please go back to innovating. People like you because you do new and exciting things, not because you have your hand in every business sector. Giant acquisitions like this and MoMo help nobody.

Edit: I'm not trying to say Google shouldn't protect their business, but I, at least, would prefer them to do it through innovation rather than buying giant companies.

<comment><USER14> Nonsense. This will help Google users find _more_ information _faster_...in an easier and more searchable way. This is _exactly_ what Google is about.

<comment><USER15> > _This is exactly what Google is about._ //

I thought Google was about finding more people and opportunities to advertise to.

<comment><USER16> ...which is exactly what they're doing, right? By having let's say a Yelp competitor, they have an entire market that can be described as "anyone who eats" out at their fingertips...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I hope Google can maintain the quality of the Zagat ratings while simultaneously making them freely available – presumably this will be used to compete with Yelp, and I'm hopeful that it'll be useful.

<comment><USER18> Agreed. The best part of Zagat reviews (at least the core reviews in their guides) and what makes users like me rely on them is that they're curated -- the editors collect survey results from a wide variety of (relatively) trusted diners and summarize them.

The problem with "mass" review sites like Google Places or Yelp is that they're reactive -- they don't solicit reviews (and in fact discourage that in some cases). So people generally review only when motivated to do so (either positively or negatively), giving a relatively unbalanced result.

Hope Google can keep the Zagat spirit alive and well...!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> So was it a good idea for Yelp to walk away from Google's 700 million dollar offer?

<comment><USER20> Only Yelp can say, but I think that Google's acquisition strategy seems to pretty clear: "If we can't buy you, we are going to buy one of your competitors." The questions you'll need to ask yourself when Google comes knocking are:

1\. How much do I respect my competitors? 2\. If Google does get them, will they do better or worse?

It's not a matter of hoping Google will go away. Once they've signaled intent to be a part of your business, you can be sure they will, one way or another.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't really understand why they dropped Google Hotpot. I mean, it's still there, but there doesn't seem to be much movement or promotion there.

Zagat employs people to actively review restaurants. That's fine for people who have the same taste as Zagat, but it's only one filter and arguably not very scalable.

Hotpot otoh is more like Pandora for restaurants. I rate restaurants and it gives me recommendations for stuff that aligns to my taste as calculated from others who share my taste. It provides a much better filter and actually gets better as more people use it, which is the best kind of scalable. This also seems like a more innovative and Googly way to do this.

<comment><USER22> > Zagat employs people to actively review restaurants. That's fine for people > who have the same taste as Zagat, but it's only one filter and arguably not > very scalable.

It's not like there's one person per city, Zagat uses input from tons of people. It's also consistent, you don't have to wonder if the glowing review was written by the owner like you do on Yelp. Zagat gets people to pay for access to their reviews, that in itself should tell you something. Even better, Google will surely make them free, likely with some innovative tie-ins with Maps and Places.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's always been confusing to me why Google couldn't come up with a better ratings and review system for local businesses. Google Maps is great on the web and mobile, and they've got millions of users. But still Yelp beats them with reviews, and Yelp isn't that great anyway. But Google buying Zagat means that they're getting more serious about the space.

<comment><USER11> Yelp's unique value and innovation has been in finding ways to psychologically reward users for submitting reviews.

They work hard to make the user feel like they kick ass at reviewing places. More recently, they also work hard at crooked schemes to blackmail hard- working business owners if you believe those reports, which I certainly don't. But they started with finding every way to make their review writers feel valued.

These days, people who seek to engage users like Yelp has done for years do it in the name of "gamification". It should be done just to give people proper feedback for having written a 500-word review for no money.

<comment><USER24> I absolutely believe the reports of yelps blackmailing actions. I've personally met 2 business owners that have been contacted by yelp. Both accounts were very similar. They threaten to remove the businesses current exposure level if some arbitrary fee isn't paid monthly and they offer to remove any negative reviews for an additional fee.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I like this move for Google, but I'm concerned it will just become a me-too move.

When I want to find something to eat close-by, Yelp is perfect. Yes, Zagat integration takes away the need to switch from Yelp to Google Maps to get directions, but that's not a big pain point for me.

It's definitely something cool to add, but I'm not sure it will be as effective as they think it will.

</comment><comment><USER26> Bad news for some restaurants? If you are not Zagat material, Google has a new reason to lower your place in search results.

<comment><USER27> Couldn't they have easily done this before? Couldn't they lower sites for not using all of Google's colors in their color scheme? Couldn't they do pretty much anything with their search results that they want to? Why does buying a company make this more or less relevant?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Applying Zagat's methodology, HNers generally "like this move strategically", and think it's "good from the PR perspective" to buy "the prestige name in local reviews". Some think it's a "me-too" "un-Google" buy of a company with a "not very scalable" model. HN Rating: 23/30

</comment><comment><USER29> Looks like they are pushing into Yelp territory.

</comment><comment><USER30> My question is why is Opentable stock down so much on this news? How serious is Google about getting into reservations? If this is anything like what they did in NFC payments space with MasterCard, they'll likely just try and ride Opentable's rails instead of trying to build out their own. Maybe do some sort of data share agreement to better their idea of how successfully they are able to close the search/discovery to successful reservation loop.

I just cant imagine Google wanting to go out to each of these restaurants themselves...a very difficult proposition, even with Zagat's team.

</comment><comment><USER31> I think it's a good move. (And congrats to the Zagats for executing the sale they couldn't make happen a few years ago)

However, I think it'll bring up an interesting point that we'll begin to see more and more of as Google continues to acquire companies - will they leverage SEO to make their own constituencies appear higher in search results than their competitors (i.e. Zagat higher than Open Table, Yelp, etc.)? Where does that fall in the ethics/morals side of things?

Interesting that if you own the means to information, you can choose what information people find (and thus, the decisions they make).

</comment><comment><USER32> Kaygetsu is closing :(

</comment><comment><USER33> My 2-3 experiences with choosing "Zagat rated" places were not particularly good. Three years ago I chose a rated restaurant in Philly and took friends there only to find the place had shut down (the Zagat sticker was still on the front door). A couple of times in NYC, I found Zagat rated restaurants to be mediocre. In general, I'm not convinced about these rating organizations, including Yelp. Maybe Google can improve it.

</comment><comment><USER34> When I first heard about Zagat I thought it had potential. However I've eaten at a lot of lousy restaurants which have had the Zagat logo proudly displayed in the doorway.

I associate Zagat with mediocre restaurants and a de-emphasis on food quality in favor of decor, etc. In other words, a Zagat sign on the door is a neutral or negative signal in most cases.

<comment><USER35> The problem is that the fact that a place is "Zagat rated" doesn't tell you a whole lot any more than "reviewed by The New York Times" tells you much. The Zagat rated logo doesn't tell you what the rating was. In any case, tastes differ and restaurants change--though overall I find Zagat to be pretty reliable subject to the limits of a few aggregated numbers and short quotes from reviewers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This makes sense to me. For a company that wants to "organize the world's information and make it accessible and useful", sometimes it's great to have the foremost team of experts on restaurants. Who knows what else they'll branch out to.

Plus the brand is trusted, so it's a good move from the PR perspective alsy.

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm expecting Zagat blurbs all over GMaps, and the emergence of black-hat 'ZEO'.

</comment><comment><USER38> In about 18 months the headline will be Google Kills Zagat.

</comment><comment><USER39> On a slightly unrelated note: I love reading something linked from HN and then far later receiving a NY Times email alert about the same story. HN FTW.

</comment><comment><USER40> I don't think this purchase is the primary 'Yelp-killer'. Yelp's product just isn't good enough, the iOS app for Google Places vs Yelp is a great example. Places gives me search and a set of location categories (like restaurants and gas stations) on its home screen, Yelp offers 'nearby' and a bunch of social features.

</comment><comment><USER41> FYI, I heard from someone years ago: it's pronounced Zagat like "Da Cat".

</comment><comment><USER42> Zagat still exists? Isn't it a bunch of old reviews written by a handful of writers?

<comment> eric-hu "Zagat Survey ... in 1979 as a way to collect and correlate the ratings of restaurants by diners."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zagat#Rating_system>

Admittedly I haven't tried as their site runs off a "pay to see the full content of this review" model.

The Michelin Guide is actually a 'bunch of reviews written by a handful of writers', which isn't a bad thing in my opinion. Every restaurant I've been to that's even been Michelin _rated_ has been superb.

<comment><USER43> It is interesting to note that the Michelin Guide itself orignated as a complementary marketing tool -- Michelin makes tires, and wanted people to use their cars more. So they compiled a list of places people might want to go, and added the reviews to make them even more attractive.</comment></comment></comment>


2016 Winners for IRTF Applied Networking Research Prize - <AUTHOR> https://irtf.org/anrp <comment><AUTHOR> Direct links to the winning papers:

      1. Samuel Jero et al., security analysis of the QUIC protocol
      https://www.sjero.net/pubs/2015_Oakland_QUIC.pdf

      2. Dario Rossi et al., characterizing anycast adoption and deployment in the IPv4 Internet
      http://conferences2.sigcomm.org/co-next/2015/img/papers/conext15-final100.pdf</comment>


Ask HN: Does it feel good to be smart? - <AUTHOR>

Does being smart comes with bigger responsibility and do you feel stressful of being really smart (as a developer maybe)?<p>I've never understand enough math to play with hardcore computer science (although I've love to and I tried) and I assume people feel very happier when they're good at what they want to do. <comment><USER2> > Does being smart comes with bigger responsibility and do you feel stressful > of being really smart (as a developer maybe)?

Views differ. There are as many views on this topic as there are smart people. John von Neumann took the position that being _in_ the world didn't necessarily mean being _of_ the world:

"You don't have to be responsible for the world that you're in." -- Advice given by von Neumann to Richard Feynman as quoted in "Los Alamos from Below" in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (1985)

I happen to agree with that sentiment.

Also, when smart people decide to engage with the world's problems, they often get it spectacularly wrong -- example Nobel Prizewinner Bill Shockley's brainless campaign to make people aware of the imagined inferiority of black people.

Albert Einstein famously turned down the presidency of Israel on the ground that he didn't feel that he had a head for the world's problems. In my book, that demonstrated his genius.

I think smart people don't necessarily know how to competently deal with everyday problems, and very high skill in one area doesn't necessarily translate to even average abilities in any other.

<comment><USER3> I totally agree with the last statement.And I (not so) often seen people that have nothing to do with a domain yet they excelled in it.I had one marketing guy who helped us with hardware design without having an engineering or any technical degree whatsoever.He just knew how-what-where to do by looking at it.Human mind is amazing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think that depends on your attitude toward it. People who are self- consciously smart and think it's worth something are irritating, like beautiful people who feel like they don't need to have a good personality. It can develop into a complex if you are not careful to balance it with real emotional intelligence, just like any unbalanced thing. (Unbalanced things are unstable. Consider how many lottery winners lose all of their money. The money is a new, unbalanced influence in their life. It hasn't always been there, so it's not a balanced part of that life, and may just evaporate as things _do_ come back into balance.)

It's best to just forget about being smart, and assume you're smart enough to do anything. The best way to be smart is just that it removes "I'm not smart enough to do X" from the way you think. If it does anything else, it's probably not good. It shouldn't make you think you don't have to try, it shouldn't raise your expectations, only just take "I'm not smart enough" off of the table. In fact, there's always someone smarter anyway. I find that, while keeping any sense of self-congratulation in check, without developing a superiority complex, I do need to keep in mind to a limited extent that I actually _am_ smarter than a lot of people, so I do need to sometimes review their decisions and that some of the rules really don't apply to me. It's a fine line between that and hubris or narcissism, and it did take me sometime to come to that balance, going through "I'm better" to "I'm no better" to simply "I'm different, not really better or worse, but uniquely capable and in a position where I'll have to keep in mind that sometimes I'm wrong, but sometimes, the world is wrong." In the judicial system, you're judged by a jury of your peers. But there is an added responsibility if you are without peer. No one really has the insight to act as a check on your thinking, so you can be alone the way a pilot can be in a cabin full of passengers. They're not any less valuable than you, but they're really not in any position to review your decisions.

It's hard to explain.

</comment><comment><USER5> Bit of an odd question this. First you ask (allegedly) smart people what it's like to be smart followed by a point which tells us you do not consider yourself smart enough to do something.

Looks to me like you have something on your mind, or that you are discovering the moral responsibility that having a deeper insight might bring. When you get to this level (not hard) it's an individual choice though. You can use it for good, evil, or plain vanilla self-preservation.

Apart from "meds", I am not aware of any other way to improve your intelligence in everyday life. Experience, learning and age support your knowledge base directly - which in turn has the effect of making others _think_ that you are intelligent - but those aspects don't necessarily mean you are "smart". In fact you'd be hard pressed to find two people that agree on what the definition of "being smart" is.

Smart can mean knowing when a fight is about to happen in a bar, and stepping back, making sure you still have your drinks. Smart can mean knowing what's wrong with a car motor just by listening to it. Smart can mean knowing when to pass, and when to score yourself.

Smart rarely means sitting on your arse all night debugging the same piece of code. That's when you start to imagine that a better person could have spotted the bug right away, or that there are coders who can write bugless code. And that's when the doubt creeps in.

</comment><comment><USER6> > Does being smart comes with bigger responsibility and do you feel stressful > of being really smart (as a developer maybe)?

Being smart increases others' expectations of you. They expect you to show miracles from time to time. Of course that cannot happen all the time. It is therefore necessary to develop an attitude such that others' perception does not affect you. It's what I call "I don't care what the world thinks of me". In my experience, in the absence of this attitude, smart guys can come under a lot of stress and make bad decisions at difficult times. (May be someone out here has a better way of dealing with it than mine??)

> I've never understand enough math to play with hardcore computer science > (although I've love to and I tried) and I assume people feel very happier > when they're good at what they want to do.

I believe two of your assumptions are wrong in the abvoe statement:

1\. You really don't need to know too much math to play around with computers. When you come across a something that you don't understand you can always look it up (all thanks to Wikipedia) and learn it.

2\. You become good at what you do by practicing repeatedly. Few are born with talented. Most of people become good at that they do by practicing it. There's nothing that can stop anyone becoming good at the skill they are interested in other than themselves.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm dumb as a bag of rocks. But I don't let that stop me from enjoying life. I guess it's the same for smart people without any ineriority complex.

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't know about being smart, because I can't compare myself to others. But it sure feels good to be ever curious, learning and experimenting.

</comment><comment><USER9> I never arrive to such conclusions: "Oh, I'm smart". I'm unaware of this, even I don't consider smart, I'm just consider curious enough.</comment>


The FBI Just Finished Its Insane New Facial Recognition System - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/the-fbi-just-finished-its-insane-new-facial-recognition-1634851705

<comment><USER2> Accurate and fast facial recognition (combined with cheap public cameras and abundant cheap storage) is one of the few technologies that makes me truly dread possibility. I don't want to live in a world where all travel outside of my house can be reconstructed and scrutinized at a later date, even if the only party with that ability is the government.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm curious if such a system will be limited only to USA people or will they use data collected outside of US?

Will citizens have access to their data?

It's very similar to what Stasi did in GDR (or SB in PRL, or check any other East Block countries from Cold War).</comment>


SOPA vote is now December 21 - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57344536-503544/sopa-bill-to-stop-online-piracy-hits-minor-snag-in-house/

<comment><USER2> There must be serious money to be made - or rather already made for the representatives plowing this through - there is simply no other explanation. Money is definitely deep in pockets.

Looking at the "donation" list it's to both sides of the aisle and HUGE amounts, these aren't little $10k donations but $100k and even $1M

I am starting to understand the fall of Rome a little better.

<comment><USER3> I just don't understand how with this bill being so clearly bought by the rich media companies, why there isn't a counter from the rich internet companies. I mean if the RIAA can give $1 million to Senator X, then why can't Google give $2 million to Senator X to ignore the RIAA? Sure it's dirty politics, but at this point it's just semantics as to who is dirtier.

The media companies are throwing money at Washington to get their laws passed, and the best Google or MS or Yahoo can do is send some representatives and give those uncaring congressmen a stern talking-to? Obviously these companies realize that SOPA will crush an open internet, which is directly related to their bottom lines. Start lobbying already!

<comment><USER4> How to say this without trolling?

This isn't the RIAA's country, it's not Google's country, it's not Microsoft's country, and it's not Yahoo's country. It's our country. Until we, the people, accept our responsibilities and stop this from happening, it will continue to happen. More corruption is not the answer.

<comment><USER5> _How to say this without trolling?

This isn't the RIAA's country, it's not Google's country, it's not Microsoft's country, and it's not Yahoo's country. It's our country. Until we, the people, accept our responsibilities and stop this from happening, it will continue to happen. More corruption is not the answer._

Look at it from this perspective: as a practical matter, _today_ , corporations have significantly more power in politics than individuals, and media companies more than tech companies. If something isn't done _right freaking now_ , SOPA will pass from committee in _three days_.

There is _nothing_ you, as an individual, or we, as a collective, can do against the millions of dollars spent on lobbying and campaign contributions by the media companies in the _next three days_. Talk of what "ought" to be will not solve the immediate problem.

An analogy: suppose you are poor (or bootstrapping), and you are $150 short of making rent for the month. Rent is due in five days. You can talk on and on about how you should have got a better job, didn't iterate on customer development, etc., but if you don't come up with $150 _right now_ , you will "die." So, you might go to a payday loan shark, get a cash advance from your credit card, or sell something to make rent and live another day.

What's my point? When your very survival is on the line _right now_ , you have to do whatever you can to live to fight another day. That's where we are now with media companies and the Internet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So the delay is just to put it under the radar while everyone is off on Holiday break?

Devious.

<comment><USER7> This is a classic dirty trick in politics. Organize an unpopular vote when a lot of the voters have left for xmas holidays. Just make sure there's a majority left when the vote is on. As an example: the federal reserve act was established in the same way on the days before xmas when a lot of the opposition had already left for holidays.

Since it's holiday season, the news will be a lot quieter than usual and the public can be left in the dark.

<comment><USER8> In France, they do the same thing but in August, when pretty much everyone is away on their summer holidays. Democracy has become a funny thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Well, it's been nice having our US friends with us on the internet, and it's going to be quieter without them. So long and the best of luck with that government of yours.

</comment><comment><USER10> Ugh. One thing I oddly haven't seen mentioned at all: if it passes, will Obama sign it? I disagree with him on many things, but he's not stupid, and given his support base there have to be some geeks close to him that can explain how awful it is. Of course, his support base also includes Hollywood...

<comment><USER11> Obama doesn't give a flying fig about his support base. Sorry to be so blunt, but that bastard just threatened to veto the NDAA unless the provisions allowing indefinite dentition of Americans without charge or trial were put pack in. His base is screaming bloody murder, and the White House remains utterly unmoved.

Added irony: the Senate passed this abomination on Bill of Rights Day, _precisely_ 220 years after the (now gutted) Bill of Rights was ratified.

Separately, this same base has been howling about ACTA, which has been spearheaded by none other than Joe Biden. So no, he isn't going to veto the censorship bill either. But you better be careful about how you choose to protest. Obama has also out-Cheneyd Cheney in claiming that the President has the power to hunt and kill Americans without charge or trial if the Executive (not the Courts) determines that the 'target' is an 'enemy combatant'.

And what's the standard for making this determination? Top Secret, naturally. According to Obama, it's all about "remaining flexible". And that brings us to Christopher Hitchens, who observed that "The essence of tyranny is not iron law. It is capricious law."

The really scare thing about all this is the prospect of Democrats going into open revolt, ejecting Obama from the White House, and inadvertently handing this basket of unspeakable nasty to Newt Gingrich.

<comment><USER12> He's counting on the Republicans selecting someone crazy enough to bring out his disenfranchised base, and it might just happen. Still, Newt will quickly calm down after the primaries. He is many things, few of them good, but an idiot is not one of them. He won't say anything _too_ crazy and risk scaring up support for Obama.

This election could go either way, and quite frankly I don't give a damn. I tried the Hope thing with Obama, and I got burned. They can all die in a fire. The very best I can hope for government at this point is that they ignore the things I care about (fat bloody chance).

<comment> steve-howard I sincerely hope Newt doesn't come anywhere close to being our president. He's set a new bar for hypocrisy.

<comment><USER13> too late :-(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Someone in CBS News site's comments pointed out an interesting thing: there were already two bill like that.

"Communications Decency Act" and "Child Online Protection Act", which both were tossed out by Supreme Court.

<comment><USER15> Both of those bills attempted to create new restrictions on speech. SOPA simply creates new censorship measures against forms of speech that are already illegal.

<comment><USER16> New censorship measures which a lot of people believe violate due process.

I can't quite decide which option would be better in the long run:

(a) stop SOPA, only to have similar ideas come up every single year, or

(b) let SOPA pass, then build a case and take it all the way to the Supreme Court hoping that measures such as SOPA would be ruled unconstitutional once and for all. If this succeeds, it would set a precedent to seriously discourage similar ideas from coming up again. The anti-SOPA camp definitely possesses the financial and legal resources to mount such a challenge, too. But it would take years, and there's no guarantee that the Supreme Court will be any more reasonable than Mr. Lamar Smith.

<comment><USER17> The SOPA bill states that even if one provision is deemed unconstitutional, the rest of the bill remains intact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> German here, can somebody explain to me what it means when this passes?

As far as i understand it, the US controlled tld's like .com .net are done. Every time someone posts something on these sites they could be shut down, what is impossible to prevent by sites like Tumblr and Facebook. Probably for every domain when the company is US based.

So this will result in a more diverse domain landscape and a competitive advantage for non-US internet companies.

Or did i miss something?

<comment><USER19> Really depends on how it plays out. My guess is that there will be some favoratism and de-facto lenience towards large companies, because no agency will want to be the one who seized google.com and ruined everyone's day. The downside is that just opens up a large new avenue for corruption and, even when not outright corruption, selective enforcement of laws.

<comment><USER18> Sounds like a real threat to the valley, could this kill the internet startup culture?

I tinker with the idea to get there, but i am really concerned now with all these developments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > A controversial measure aimed at stopping online _privacy_...

Heh, I've made this mistake too when speaking, although privacy certainly could be affected by the SOPA.

<comment><USER21> I wrote my Congressman about my objections to this the bill, and his auto- responder gave me some bs about understanding my concerns about "Internet Privacy," not "Piracy." Our tax dollars at work!

<comment><USER22> That's why I've been calling mine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> What else can be expected from a bunch of old people who hardly understand the internet? When the internet to you is a search engine, Facebook and typing URLs into the IE6 address bar, I'm sure SOPA seems mostly harmless.

Let them plow it through committee and play their games. These are tumultuous times. People, globally, are unimpressed with leadership. This is being watched carefully by the public. Hopefully it will be a watershed event.

<comment> a-priori _When the internet to you is a search engine, Facebook and typing URLs into the IE6 address bar, I'm sure SOPA seems mostly harmless._

The problem is that describes a large segment of the general population as well.

<comment><USER24> Most of the people I see using the Web now type the title of the site they want to access into Google. Getting them to type an actual address into a Web browser address bar is hard work.

Good luck over there. In the UK most things are allowed until they aren't (see the Police and Criminal Evidence Act and its updates).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I know it's just a coincidence that they chose the darkest day of the year for this, but I still find it a little poignant.

</comment><comment><USER26> To me, the most shocking about SOPA has been the way it is portrayed in the media. Imagine reading this passage if you weren't "in-the-know" (as many of us would like to think we are):

"But most of the major players in the technology industry, including Google and Facebook, are strongly opposed to the legislation because they say they would be forced to police their websites for possibly illegal content. Google, which owns YouTube, says the language is so broad that videos of teenagers dancing would be banned because of the copyrighted music playing in the background. And that would stifle innovation, they say."

The media is minimizing the issue to corporate laziness, and thats really not okay. I sense snarkiness, especially in the last line, and I think an outlet like CBS has an obligation to do better than that.

<comment><USER27> >To me, the most shocking about SOPA has been the way it is portrayed in the media......The media is minimizing the issue to corporate laziness....I think an outlet like CBS has an obligation to do better than that.

The media are the ones that are lobbying for this bill, did you really expect them to cover it with anything approaching impartiality?

CBS is owned by Viacom. Getting the media to join the fight against SOPA is not very likely.

<comment><USER26> I absolutely agree with you. As crazy as it is, most people don't realize that news programs project the agenda of their corporate parents -- the media just "speaks the truth."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Here's an idea, might be ridiculous: Can you file court papers electronically in the US? What if say youtube, wikipedia, etc had a fully automated SOPA compliance system which automatically filed court papers to have the take down notice 'reviewed' however that works thereby overloading the system. There must be some way to reflect the work back at them and DoS a manual process somewhere in the legal machinery. 'OK we'll do it, but your not going to like it...' fight bureaucracy with more bureaucracy.

<comment><USER29> Court oversight? In SOPA? Not AFAIK and that's why everyone is so pissed about this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> It is ironic that the "creative" film and music industry has become a leading force in suppressing speech and innovation.

<comment> mkr-hn The artists being represented by these lobbying groups are probably just as ignorant of the consequences as the legislators.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> There is exactly one bit of news in this story.

"The panel later scheduled a vote for Wednesday, December 21."

<comment><USER32> Thursday and Friday morning, the sad, small opposition (Lofgren, Issa, Polis & Chaffetz) did a good job of slowing down the markup process. One frequently repeated suggestion was that since it was likely that the markup would continue past the holiday recess and need to be resumed in January anyways, that they may as well take the time to convene a hearing where actual tech experts could respond.

Does anyone know, procedurally will it be possible for Lofgren et al to prevent or delay an actual vote in the committee, or is Smith with his large support able to force the matter? I suppose, if worst comes to worst, the four opposing committee members could each agree to impugne the integrity of each of the others, obstinately refuse to revise their words in the record, take a break to consult with a parliamentarian, and then relent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I am concerned that a lot of the anti SOPA complaints I've read are fear mongering, and I want to be better informed. Is there a website to visit that debates specific line numbers of the bill?

</comment><comment><USER33> The data is freely available of the amount of money raised by different members of congress, right? I've got an idea for a little mashup to try to raise money against the backers of this bill.

<comment><USER34> Maplight.org has the data: [http://maplight.org/us- congress/bill/112-hr-3261/1019110/dow...](http://maplight.org/us- congress/bill/112-hr-3261/1019110/download.csv)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> What is going on in this country?

<comment><USER36> Money. Money buys legislators. Money buys institutionalized corruption. The Supreme court says that organizations can make unlimited campaign contributions, yet individuals are limited. Until we take money out of politics, it will only get worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Can someone copy/paste this article? The mobile version is just a big ad that I can't seem to dismiss.

P.S. Quick, before SOPA takes effect.

<comment><USER38> _Republican Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, decided against holding a committee vote that had been expected on Friday. The panel later scheduled a vote for Wednesday, December 21._

The rest is a description of SOPA.</comment></comment>


John Horton Conway: the world's most charismatic mathematician - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jul/23/john-horton-conway-the-most-charismatic-mathematician-in-the-world <comment><USER2> 2015 (but relevant, and accurately reflects the man I knew)</comment>


Prefer Scroll or Page for Wikipedia - <AUTHOR> http://buk.io/@en/Big_Bang

<comment><AUTHOR> This service preview lacks many desired functionalities but provides paged content navigation for Wikipedia. What would be the best content navigation UI for various screen sizes and devices with/without mouse, keyboard.

Any feedback is much appreciated.</comment>


Black Arrow - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Arrow <comment><USER2> Hmm, I never thought the close military relationship between the US and UK would be anything but beneficial for the UK, but this shows a pitfall of that kind of thinking...since its "cheaper" just to purchase from the US, the UK forfeits the development of its own MIC.

I think I remember reading somewhere that the continuous wars between the UK and the other European powers was one of the main reasons for the demand that led to the industrial revolution. If that's true, then what to make of this situation?

<comment><USER3> _Hmm, I never thought the close military relationship between the US and UK would be anything but beneficial for the UK_

It was actually extremely toxic for UK-based development of some items. For example, Robert McNamara in the mid-1960s was keen to sell the F-111 to Australia and the UK -- so keen that he leaned _hard_ on the Wilson government to cancel the competing TSR-2 low-level supersonic bomber:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAC_TSR-2](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAC_TSR-2)

Again, the USAF's cancellation of the GAM-87 Skybolt air-launched IRBM really screwed with the UK's nuclear delivery plans in the 1960s:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAM-87_Skybolt](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAM-87_Skybolt)

And for a modern reprise, look at the premature-ish retirement of the UK Harrier fleet and the ongoing headache over the QE class supercarriers and the F-35B the UK is planning to buy to fly off them. (Note that early iterations of the Eurofighter Typhoon design spec in the 1980s and early 1990s included strengthened landing gear and an arrester hook for carrier ops -- when France dropped out and went alone on the Dassault Rafale, that's what they were after).

Having a "close military relationship" with a larger power means that your own, smaller military ends up as the tail being wagged by the dog.

<comment><USER4> Also the Lockheed bribery:

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

Which damaged plenty of European aerospace companies like Sauders-Roe (who developed the Black Knight and other UK rockets).

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saunders- Roe_SR.177#Cancellatio...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saunders- Roe_SR.177#Cancellation)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> See also [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zircon_(satellite)](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zircon_\(satellite\))

There's a small satellite industry in the UK, which seems to be thriving despite official neglect.

UK procurement is just too small-minded and penny-pinching to do these kind of projects.

<comment><USER3> There is a _large, and rapidly growing_ satellite industry in the UK. No thanks to any British government prior to roughly 1997, which were all uniformly hostile to space research/development, seeing it as a profitless vacuum. Thatcher, in particular, thought it was pointless and cancelled virtually everything that crossed her desk except for military spy/comsat proposals -- like Zircon. (In the late 90s the civil space industry finally became marginally profitable and attitudes changed: today the UK even has a home-grown space industry.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It is amazing what ambition post WW2 Britain had for Cold War hardware. Despite the country having been bombed to bits (albeit not quite on Tokyo/Hiroshima/Dresden/etc. scale) there were many companies in the aerospace sector, plus a 'space program' of military ambitions only, that Concorde thing, not to mention various flavours of atom bomb. Incredible! Nowadays there is no huge fleet in the skies, at sea or on land. Right now there isn't even an aircraft carrier with actual planes. Despite that the cost of military hardware is forever going skyward with planes costing $100 million dollars a piece (you could buy and run an F1 team on less).

</comment><comment><USER7> Not very constructive but am I the only one who thinks that it looks like a giant lipstick?

</comment><comment><USER8> Hopefully this [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylon](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylon)

will put us back in the space race.</comment>


The Entrepreneur 'Ah Hah' Moment And How To Get It - <AUTHOR> http://untether.tv/2012/the-entrepreneur-ah-hah-moment-and-how-to-get-it// <comment><USER2> I don't think the concept of "don't force it" can be stressed enough. Something I've learned living in Austin where there is a thriving start up community (or at least many people who _want_ to do a start up), and from attending SXSW, there seem to be a lot of people who are trying to repeat the success of others by trying to figure out exactly what steps they took, and then attempting to repeat them "cargo cult" style.

Maybe there are a lot of successful start ups that were purposely built (i.e. "forced"), but it seems so many of them just kind of evolved, almost as a by- product. Maybe good start up ideas, and start ups in general, are like happiness; if you expressly seek to find it, it is elusive. However, if you merrily go about your way remaining curious, inquisitive and interested, it finds you.

When trying to repeat what other successful founders have done, it seems wise to keep the works of Matsuo Basho in mind: _"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought."_

Anyway, I had better get back to my idea brainstorming. I've found this great mind mapping tool! ;-)

</comment><comment><USER3> I think being cranky is only part of it. You have to be cranky out of love.

In the end, you're building a business for other people. If you love your customers and love the subject of the business, then your crankiness is in service to them. A friend who's a successful restaurateur loved cooking and loved her customers, so she busted her ass to make things awesome for them. That love was returned by a devoted customer base and great word-of-mouth marketing. And once you have employees, you have to love them too.

You can see this scaled up in the the world's largest car company, Toyota. They obsessively optimize for customer value (as distinct from business value). Respect for people is one of the fundamentals of business. They channel their crankiness into hating waste and relentlessly looking for ways to eliminate it, which allows them to deliver more customer value.

I think pure crankiness on its own doesn't take you anywhere; it burns you out and cuts down good ideas before they get anywhere. For me, my best ideas come from crankiness in the service of love.

</comment><comment><USER4> I didn't expect much from this article - but the tip about continually thinking "how could that be better" for everything around you is gold.

It might not lead to something most of the time, but when it does it could be a winner. Also its just a great way to train your brain into the right approach.

I'd add to the questions to ask yourself all the time: "How does that work?"

</comment><comment><USER5> This is a very interesting article - the "don't force it" point is particularly pertinent esp when one is stuck for ideas. When that Eureka moment does strike (it happens to all of us) we need to have a pencil and pad handy otherwise it disappears as fast as it arose!</comment>


Documentary looks back at origins of the computer-games industry - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/geeks-who-rocked-the-world-documentary-looks-back-at-origins-of-the-computergames-industry-9997037.html

<comment><USER2> I'm sure that none of the names will mean much to you if you were born after 1980 or so but when you read Jeff Minter, David Braben or any one of the other names references feel free to substitute 'Markus Persson' or 'John Carmack' and your feelings won't be too far off.

If you liked this article here is another one (more specifically about Elite):

[http://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/oct/18/features.weeken...](http://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/oct/18/features.weekend)

</comment><comment><USER3> i would love to see a modern day version of this list.

off the top of my head I think some of the names on it would include John Resig, David Heinemeier Hansson, Yehuda Katz</comment>


Ask HN: How could apply lean startup practices to religion? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Why would you want to? Startup is a process, religion isn't.

Now if you were to replace religion with _life_ , we might have something...

<comment><AUTHOR> Religions all start somewhere, usually someplace small with a handfull of people. We see storefront and basement churches all the time.

Most fail and fail quickly.

Often the failures come from the same things that kill startups. Focus on the wrong things. Not finding its market. Not serving its market. Burning through cash before reaching positive cash flow. Inability to adjust. Inability to scale. etc.

So religion is really another type of institution, like business or government. And, perhaps, more religions would be sustainable if they adopted lean startup practices.

<comment><USER3> "Lean startup" already is a religion to some people

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Minimum Viable Dogma?</comment>