Social Media: Making Us Dumber? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/opinion/social-media-dumber-steven-pinker.html <comment><USER3> This is great time to mention one of my favorite books on the media and public discourse: Amusing Ourselves to Death - Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, by Neil Postman. In the book, the two infamous dystopian novels of the 20th century (1984 and Brave New World) are compared to determine which one our world most closely resembles.

The two books differ in how they describe the source of the dystopia. It's been a while so please excuse any inaccuracies - in 1984 the world is controlled by authoritarian governments through fear, misinformation, and endless distractions, whereas in Brave New World the world is controlled by an authoritarian government through mind-numbing pleasure and shallow entertainment. The governments in these books both rely on citizens being reduced to their lowest common denominator. I think people during the cold war could most easily imagine, and thus be most afraid of, a world that resembled 1984. The book I mentioned in the beginning of this post argues the view that we should have actually been more worried about a world more closely resembling Brave New World.

Today we are constantly fed a mind-numbing amount (mis)information that we also simultaneously look for because it makes us feel better. Unfortunately, this media barrage also robs us of our attention and ability to critically think about important issues affecting our society. If anyone is interested in reading a book written before the age of social media (published 1985) and exploring these ideas, I highly recommend this one.

<comment><USER4> May want to check out "Technopoly" by Postman as well. It's got some of the same points but goes deeper into technology in general. It opens with a story from Phaedrus by Plato where a king is arguing with a god over the utility of writing. The god says it's amazing and allows all knowledge to be stored, etc. But the king says the god is too enamored with his invention and can't see downsides like knowledge being decoupled from instruction and loss of memory since everything is written down.

Lesson of course is all technologies have up sides and down sides, but we rarely ever discuss the down sides.

<comment><USER5> The problem is that the up sides of new technologies are typically immediately obvious, while the down sides are subtle and can take a very long time to make themselves evident.

Example: let's make watch faces that glow in the dark by painting them on with radium-based paint! (Which was a real thing: see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls))

 _Up side:_ everyone can now read their watches in the dark! Hooray! An instantly clear improvement.

 _Down side:_ radium is, well, _radioactive_ , so the workers painting the watch faces slowly start having their bones rot and their jaws fall off. It takes a decade for the link to be recognized between these symptoms and unsafe procedures for handling radium-based paint. Nobody really knows how many of the workers employed handling such paint eventually died from related illnesses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is it not possible we were always this dumb but more that most of us talked less? This isn't beyond the standard "pub talk" but today that "pub" is the online world and published for all to see. Where previously you'd have reporters and sub-editors and editors to publish; today you can just run your mouth off whenever you want and the crowds can all hear.

This sort of thing makes us _look_ dumber compared to the era of print media but maybe together and on average we were always this dumb in the first place but now we just see it better.

<comment><USER7> _This sort of thing makes us _look_ dumber_

Context is important; your friends in the pub know when you are joking, or not entirely serious, or making a rhetorical point, or playing devils advocate, or are referencing an earlier conversation, or telling an inside joke, or have just misunderstood something. Random strangers on Twitter read everything as an unequivocal statement. And respond accordingly.

<comment><USER8> My interpretation of the original comment isn't that context is key, it's that the internet amplifies the kind of extremist speech that wouldn't reach very many people pre-internet. For example: a suburban white supremacist in 1985 might feel isolated and alone, the same person in 2018 can publish their hatred on Twitter & Medium find like minded bigots on web forums.

<comment><USER6> exactly that but less so "extremist" more so "common". We've managed to forget about what the "common" sort of opinion is like. An opinion poll about the death penalty or immigration is a quick way of seeing that society at large is somewhat detached from what people assume is the "norm" from the world of edited media circa 1990 - 2010.

When the internet exploded that "average" was still glued to the TV and nerdy wasn't cool. Even in the 2000s you still had to run a PC to attach which is still a bar to hurdle. Today though we now have a generation that has grown up with internet enabled devices as a default feature in their phones, consoles, TVs or other formally "dumb" boxes. Now _everyone_ is online and perhaps that is just what we're seeing here as the bar for internet access has completely vanished.

<comment><USER9> If anything, _we_ are the extremists: I suspect that 90% of the readership of HN was in the top 10% of their high school class, or above. Everything in our daily lives filters out the voices of the other 90% of the world, because for the most part, our friends and the friends of our friends resemble us. This is the social bubble everyone talks about. I just think we consistently underestimate just how powerful that bubble is at insulating us, until we see dramatic evidence in politics or the mass media, or we stumble out of it somewhere online.

<comment><USER7> Indeed. Earlier today I replied to a comment that said

 _Perceiving white males to be hard done by is amusing_

I guess the poster of that never even considered the white males in former industrial regions. Or worse, considered that they deserved to lose their livelihoods because of their race and gender being "wrong". It's that kind of smug attitude that lead directly to Trump and Brexit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As a liberal that subscribe to The NY Times I wonder why they always have to make these issues so politicized, even when they are making a good observation. The problem they describe, violent reaction to opposing views, seem present amongst all sides of the political spectrum and it does not seem limited to extreme opinions.

The article seems in a very indirect way to make argument that violent reaction to and ostracizing of people that hold opposing opinions is ok when you hold the correct opinions and not when you don't, and I strongly believe all sides should be held to the same standard of discourse.

<comment><USER11> You make a good point - they appear to make themselves part of the problem, which in my view is the increasing polarization of topics. There no longer seems to be any middle ground in the public discourse, instead everyone is entrenched on their respective poles. It's immensely frustrating.

<comment><USER12> I hit this hard the other day. There's a TV show I really like called the Runaways. On Hulu, where I watch that show, they seem to constantly run this one commercial cheerleading how great it is that the show is so diverse. I commented on social media that the commercial felt like it was trying to lecture me and has ultimately detracted from my viewing experience. It didn't matter that in the context of this conversation I was talking about how this particular show, which happens to be very diverse, is one of my favorites, the fact that I rebuffed the SJW cheerleading instantly turned me into a Nazi.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It shows how far the US has shifted to the right when the NYT would describe Pinker as a liberal. Twenty years ago his views were considered more center- right (in the US at least). But, I am off-topic ...

The biggest problem with social media is that it massively amplifies radical (and, often ignorant or misguided) opinions. This especially disturbs me, because I sort of helped cause it. As a kid, I wanted the more radical, fringe perspectives to have greater influence in the mainstream. But, in an age when content is free (I.e. paid for by ads), the loudest and most extreme make the most money.

Now, I cringe. There's little discussion, dialogue, or dialectic - <USER2> prefrontal cortex and lots more amygdala and limbic. And, if we think of the PFC as what makes us most human, most intelligent - then yes, we dumb.

But, don't lose hope. There are still plenty of moderate and reasonable people out there. It's just that they're not normally the raucous, crass ones. A rule of thumb for me is to shun the loudest most aggressive voices, because they almost always know very little.

<comment><USER14> Pinker is a liberal, in almost any sense you could come up with, either by present standards, or the standards of twenty years ago.

I don't want to seem harsh, but unfortunately it seems warranted. Perhaps you have a poor familiarity with his work, and with the landscape of political thought, and intellectual culture in general.

Or perhaps you are the type of increasingly common individual that this piece is concerned about... an overly tribalistic individual for whom empirical reality conforms to politics.

<comment><USER13> Feel free to present your argument, which I welcome. I could be wrong and often am.

However, as an Anthropology major at a top tier university during the 90s, I can say for a fact that Pinker challenged convention (at my university, at least) and pushed the humanities toward a view that a person's attributes were more the result of biology than social conditions. He also pushed against the prevailing postmodernist and relativist perspectives, among other things. And, although I haven't read some of his recent work, nor kept up with his public views, I don't see how you can say that "The better angels" is liberal, given that it promotes markets and a policing forms of strong government.

Unfortunately, lots of internet content pre-2000, including discussion forums, has disappeared. So, I'm struggling to link to evidence of discussions happening at that time.

By the way, your comment is pretty much ad-hominem, and normally I wouldn't respond to you. But, because your type of behavior is the actual topic of conversation, I figured it was worth it. I find it amusing that you believe me a liberal ...

<comment><USER14> >Feel free to present your argument, which I welcome.

Sure. You could define a liberal in a number of ways. One possible definition is someone who is "center-left", generally votes for democrats, supports public provisioning of education, healthcare, welfare, and so forth.

Pinker posted regularly on Twitter during the elections, generally supporting Hillary Clinton and opposing Trump.

[https://twitter.com/sapinker/status/793455008939401216](https://twitter.com/sapinker/status/793455008939401216)

In a larger context of liberalism, as opposed to fascism or socialism, again he comes out as a liberal with fairly consistent support for individual rights, in both economic and political realms, although regularly modified by a utilitarian cost-benefit analysis... as is typical of liberals going back to Bentham and JS Mill.

None of what you said about human nature is at odds with his political, economic, and social identification as a liberal. It would've been unusual to find anyone of any era, including the present era, who fully denies the concept of a human nature.

Are there any traits that distinguish humans from anything else? If so, there is a human nature.

>I find it amusing that you believe me a liberal ...

I assumed that you were a member of the radical left, and not a liberal. Anthropology, as a discipline, currently has an overwhelming bias towards this leaning, moreso than nearly any other discipline.

<comment><USER15> You answered to a strawman argument, supporting it even. But its a loosing game for you, because you submit to a dogmatized interpretation that is easy to refute saying nothing would be as black and white as implied by the argument. Parent pretty much implied media presented someone as a strawman, you concord that someone was exemplary for the reduction of an idea, seemingly with the intent to discuss it further, while the parent pretty much suggested to be tired of the discussion.

And you weasel out of the discussion when you suddenly shift to put human nature as a whole into question, just to then _shift the goal post_ to an indefinite plurality of 'humans'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This book comes to my mind.

[https://www.amazon.com/How-News-Makes-Dumb- Information/dp/08...](https://www.amazon.com/How-News-Makes-Dumb- Information/dp/0830822038)

 _Sommerville argues that news began to make us dumber when we insisted on having it daily._

 _Now millions of column inches and airtime hours must be filled with information--every day, every hour, every minute. The news, Sommerville says, becomes the driving force for much of our public culture. News schedules turn politics into a perpetual campaign. News packaging influences the timing, content and perception of government initiatives._

 _News frenzies make a superstition out of scientific and medical research. News polls and statistics create opinion as much as they gauge it. Lost in the tidal wave of information is our ability to discern truly significant news-- and our ability to recognize and participate in true community._

I used to consume news daily, obsessively even when I was younger. I was that addict that used to refresh cnn.com compulsively every few minutes at a stretch. Now, I come to HN and a few other niche sites for 'information' or 'news'. But I no longer visit cnn or NYT as much any more.

<comment><USER17> Anecdote:. I was at a bar tonight and noticed the tv had the same "breaking news" headline on for three hours. It wasn't breaking news, just news. News that wasn't even that important

<comment><USER18> Mark Blythe: [https://youtu.be/TdivPhu-jTQ?t=380](https://youtu.be/TdivPhu- jTQ?t=380)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's become vogue to talk about social media in this manner but the problem is much more generalized. Sensationalist news from mainstream/traditional media outlets does exactly the same thing. And the sensitivity around issues of race, gender, sexuality, and so on, is destroying our ability to engage in civil discourse with one another - not just on social media, but even in our classrooms.

Here's an example of what I mean. A couple of days ago I was in a waiting room somewhere and as a result ended up watching a few TV news headlines. Some teacher in Wisconsin assigned her fourth-graders some homework that asked them to provide "3 'good' reasons for slavery and 3 bad reasons", which sparked a predictable uproar:

[http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/school-homework-good- reas...](http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/school-homework-good-reasons- slavery_us_5a566d6be4b08a1f624af02f)

Unsurprisingly, no one was willing to go on the record to try and defend or even explain the assignment. It's toxic. And yet, I don't think it's racist to try and parse the teacher's intention here (or just ask for a comment from them!) The teacher put "good" in quotes, which is a good clue, and I can certainly come up with "good" (in quotes) reasons for slavery (e.g. cotton- picking is highly labour intensive and there was tremendous demand for raw cotton by the rapidly industrializing cotton industry in England).

That's a far cry from an assignment that says, "provide a persuasive moral basis for the goodness of slavery". But apparently we can't have conversations like this in our society any more, because there's no room for nuance.

As a nerd, like many of you, I like having intellectual conversations with plenty of nuance, in which one gives the people around you plenty of leeway _and_ the benefit of the doubt ("hmm, that sounds a bit racist, but I respect this person - let me ask a question to see what they mean"). It seems to me that the places in which we can have those conversations are increasingly limited. It definitely isn't social media. It's not the workplace. Apparently, it might not be academia, either, although I haven't been in school for a long time and can't speak from personal experience (stories like the one I just shared, though, seem to back up this impression).

We're left with smart, intellectual, nuanced people having hushed conversations in coffee shops or pubs where no one can overhear them, because we're all afraid of how our words might be twisted, misinterpreted, and ganged up on. It's a real shame.

<comment><USER20> I know where you're trying to go with this and your heart is in the right place, but the example is _awful_ and does not help in the slightest. I have a feeling that I'm gonna get "ugh, replies like yours are exactly the problem, smcl!" but to me asking children to come up with some good side of slavery is up there with trying to find the good side of the holocaust. Whether "good" or "bad" is in quotes doesn't really change that it's a stupendously bad way to approach the subject.

It might be an intellectually stimulating conversation for some, but if it's a conversation only occurring in hushed tones in coffee shops or in private then I think that's probably for the best.

<comment><USER21> I do agree that 4th grade is too young for such a topic, but perhaps precisely your reaction is what the parent commenter was speaking about. He made a meaningful observation, yet people were quick to jump on a passing example entirely of incidental importance to the point.

<comment><USER22> Actually, I think 3rd and 4th grade is a perfect time for these types of "easy" moral analyses.

If the goal is to teach kids to think, then you want excerises building critical thinking. Even kindergarten is a good time to start critical thinking on hard topics "Why do you think the police shot those people with a hose?" I remember coming up when taking my 1st grader to the MLK museum.

If the goal is indoctrinate kids until it's "safe" to understand why things are evil and wrong like slavery, then by all means wait until later. I'm not sure what the right age is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> _The drama of the Internet is that it has promoted the village idiot to the bearer of truth_

\- Umberto Eco, on Social Media

</comment><comment><USER24> To trust information given by someone I trust is probably in my hard wiring. I don't feel dumber because I reacted to shared information. However, more than ever, I try to question the validity of the content and won't go beyond a sensational title if the source is questionable. I used to trust content, but now I take deliberate, mindful steps to question it. At the least, social media has become more exhausting because of this.

If I could wave a magic wand, I would introduce friction to sharing media. It is far too easy to share false information. Further, information that bubbles to the top is rife with bias and fortifies a bubble.

Ideas worth experimenting:

1\. Make the decision to share more salient. Prompt the sharer with a question that forces a moment of reflection. For instance, "if we replaced the author's name with your own and your reputation were at risk, would you share this?".

2\. Replace the crude upvote/downvote mechanism with something more nuanced. Separate upvotes from downvotes. Prompt the voter with a list of reasons why he/she voted accordingly. Make voting history public.

<comment><USER25> > If I could wave a magic wand, I would introduce friction to sharing media

Even better, suffuse everyone with that great skepticism you speak of. Unfortunately, your suggestions are infinitely more practical.

<comment><USER26> Unfortunately, those suggestions are just as impractical, because maximally incontinent sharing is maximally remunerative to a platform which monetizes user engagement.

<comment><USER24> Yes, they are impractical for those platforms that monetize maximal engagement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I just did what I wanted to do since a very long time: deleted my Facebook company page and my personal profile and added all the facebook domains to my _/ etc/hosts_ sinkhole[¹]

I can finally breathe again.

[¹] [https://github.com/jmdugan/blocklists/blob/master/corporatio...](https://github.com/jmdugan/blocklists/blob/master/corporations/facebook/all)

</comment><comment><USER28> No, you're already dumb and social media is just bringing it out.

</comment><comment><USER29> We are getting dumber. Social media is simply a mirror.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm pretty sure it's just revealing the dumb, at scale.

<comment><USER31> It just make it is easier for extremists of all sides to find each other and build echo chambers to strengthen their ideas.

Now this article is a bit hypocritical as every journalist and news media out there is also on social media and use it as a communication and advertisement channel, just like like everyone else. NYT and co love Facebook and Twitter when it helps them bring in paid customers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> The other day I started reading a book and fell asleep almost instantly because it was so boring.

So instead I started listening to a lecture on YouTube and I fell asleep almost instantly.

So then after that I opened that Instagram explore page and was engaged for hours.

Social media is definitely making us dumber. It's 15-60-second hits of all the good parts of everything and that's it.

No context, no substance, just the good stuff.

</comment><comment><USER33> I think that using an example of people misinterpreting and then spreading something without having familiarized themselves with the original sources to claim that social media makes us dumber is pretty dumb.

</comment><comment><USER34> >That's because the pernicious social dynamics of these online spaces hammer home the idea that anyone who disagrees with you on any controversial subject, even a little bit, is incorrigibly dumb or evil or suspect.

I see some merits in this article and I agree with certain parts up to a certain point, but the portion I quoted above is actually more troubling to me. There are lots of people who refuse to believe basic, empirically-proven concepts about the world and social media is merely revealing the ignorance of those people. Celebrating it or saying that everyone has a valid opinion (despite that opinion being based on something false) is even more harmful than the conflict spurred by disagreement, in my opinion.

<comment><USER26> Anti-vaxers are a bugaboo here. When PZ Myers mistakes Steven Pinker for a fascist because no one has the interest or the attention span to grasp an argument that takes eight minutes to make, we have a real problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> So the singularity is approaching even faster!

</comment><comment><USER36> Why doesn't the opinion piece link to the youtube video it talks about?

</comment><comment><USER37> Does anyone have a twitter timeline archiving tool? I get some major FoMO when it comes to not checking twitter.

<comment><USER22> There are a bunch of twitter to RSS tools. Here's one I played around with a while ago, [https://twitrss.me/](https://twitrss.me/)

I actually prefer reading twitter via rss. There's no missing out, and you can organize by topics, user groups, stuff like that.

<comment><USER37> Thanks for the help!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Selection bias? ;-)

</comment><comment><USER39> surely, "Social Media Are Making Us Dumber"

[tongue firmly in cheek]

</comment><comment><USER40> NYT requires a digital subscription.

<comment><USER26> ...while Twitter and Facebook are free.

<comment><USER40> ... and none of them are good.</comment></comment></comment>


I Spent a Year in Space, and I Have Tips on Isolation to Share - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/21/opinion/scott-kelly-coronavirus-isolation.html <comment><USER2> Great article. Makes you think about the two million Americans in prison.

<comment><USER3> I wish there was some way to highlight this discussion better. For everyone going stir crazy right now, it really makes me appreciate having my freedom.

Of the 2mm+ people in prison, almost none of them should be there for as long as they are and many should not be there at all.

The entire situation is so awful, but I really don't know what I can do.

<comment><USER4> Honestly, I think the worst part is feeling like you _can 't_ go outside.

I voluntarily go days (sometimes more than a week) without leaving the house because I honestly like being at home (books, video games, wife and kids, etc). I don't feel like U need as much social stimulation as others.

My wife is pretty much the same way, but she gets really down when she cannot leave the house (e.g. when she has a newborn and I'm at work). Just having the _ability_ to leave, even if she doesn't take advantage of it, is enough for her.

I wonder whether being at home for days on end is the problem, or just the feeling that you can't or shouldn't leave the house? If it's the latter, we could probably recommend safe activities instead of focusing on banning/discouraging unsafe ones.

<comment><USER5> I knew a guy who quit his Wall St job and worked on investing/trading from home. Nice house, financially well off, kids, working wife etc but he hardly ever got out of the house. In 2 years he developed this lung condition (apparently there was some bug in the air conditioning that effected him more than anyone else cuz of the amt of time he was home...I forget the name of the condition) and now he needs to walk around with oxygen tanks for the rest of his life. So check those air filters regularly, if you plan to spend time in the same room for too long.

Also you can leave your room. Find spaces in the neighborhood that aren't used much or used throughout the day - a beach, the woods, a park, rooftops, yards, empty parking lots, terraces etc etc. If it has some sun(for that vitamin D), greenery and breeze even better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [http://archive.is/5Lj1N](http://archive.is/5Lj1N)

</comment><comment><USER7> The headlines apply to isolation but the text is very specific to astronauts.

Headlines: Follow a schedule; But pace yourself; Go outside; You need a hobby; Keep a journal; Take time to connect; Listen to experts; We are all connected; Oh, and wash your hands -- Often. (OK, this last one was just an important sentence.)

We're not boarding submarines and hiding from the world for three months at a time. This is more like living in a retirement home before you're ready and nobody wants to visit...

</comment><comment><USER8> I have always wanted to read science fiction which focuses on the psychological problems of prolonged solitude in ultra-cramped quarters. This should be an interesting thing to creatively think about. The only story I know which sort of deals with this is "Scanners live in vain"

<comment><USER9> You should check out "Red Mars", I haven't finished it but have so far enjoyed the treatment of cramped quarters and solitude.

<comment><USER8> Thanks... will check it out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why do the Kelly brothers have 100x the media exposure of any other astronaut?

<comment><USER11> Because they allowed themselves to be subjects in an unprecedented long-term experiment on the effects of space on the human body. Since they are identical twins, one is a near perfect control for the other who stayed in space. Unfortunately, it's not looking good for people traveling in space over long periods.

<comment><USER12> can you do a tldr on the body differences due to space?

<comment><USER11> [https://www.pbs.org/show/year-space/](https://www.pbs.org/show/year-space/)

[https://www.pbs.org/a-year-in-space/home/](https://www.pbs.org/a-year-in- space/home/)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Open Usage Commons - <AUTHOR> https://openusage.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> [https://openusage.org/news/introducing-the-open-usage- common...](https://openusage.org/news/introducing-the-open-usage-commons/)

> Open source maintainers don't often spend time thinking about their > project's trademarks, and with good reason: between code contribution, > documentation, crafting the technical direction, and creating a healthy > contributor community, there's plenty to do without spending time > considering how your project's name or logo will be used. But trademarks – > whether a name, logo, or badge – are an extension of a project's decision to > be open source. Just as your project's open source license demonstrates that > your codebase is for free and fair use, an open source project trademark > policy in keeping with the Open Source Definition gives everyone – upstream > contributors and downstream consumers – comfort that they are using your > project's marks in a fair and accurate way.

> We created the Open Usage Commons because free and fair open source > trademark use is critical to the long-term sustainability of open source. > However, understanding and managing trademarks takes more legal know-how > than most project maintainers can do themselves.

</comment><comment><USER2> The Linux Foundation (with MS on its board) and Google are now suddenly interested in "helping" with trademark issues.

I smell a rat. This makes no sense.

15 U.S.C. § 1125(a) creates a civil cause of action for claims of false designation of origin and false advertising. This provides federal protection for unregistered marks.

Do you expect that MS and Google are going to fight a civil suit to protect your trademark? Or do you have to sign over the rights to your trademark first, which means you no longer control the trademark. You no longer control your project.

Who benefits? Well if MS and Google get people to "sign over" their trademarks then they can freely define what the trademark means. This would feed into the MS embrace-extend-extinguish technique. The end result is that they effectively "own" open source projects. Imagine if MS or Google owned the Linux trademark and were able to define what was "officially Linux".

This sounds like a "collect the trademarks" competition.

Corporate pokemon.</comment>


The Social Dilemma (Netflix) the Doll House Syndrome - <AUTHOR> Watch this video. It is about the social impact of algorithms which are driven to maximize sales. They don't have a name for the syndrome.
I call it "The Doll House" syndrome. Back in my childhood the Barbie doll was "the thing". Of course, Barbie needed new dresses. And shoes. And a house. And a car. And a boyfriend. And other dolls. etc. All driven by social pressure based on advertising.
If you have kids, you MUST watch this video.
Presidents went into office with normal hair. They left office with grey hair. Mostly because the first thing they got in the morning was "The Daily Brief" which listed all of the world's troubles. All I got growing up was a newspaper and the 5pm news.
Now kids likely know about some dangerous world event before the President knows (e.g. China fighter jets overflying Taiwan). They wake up to violent news worldwide.
Added to that, they are in high school, where social pressure is everything.
And they have a long term prospect of a climate changed world with no jobs due to automation.
Do you wonder why kids are stressed? <comment><USER2> >Presidents went into office with normal hair. They left office with grey hair. Mostly because the first thing they got in the morning was "The Daily Brief" which listed all of the world's troubles. All I got growing up was a newspaper and the 5pm news.

Also all presidents at least at an age where they are going to go gray/white hair, or probably have an are covering it up. If you look at normal people at that age after 8 years, probably not that much of a difference.</comment>


Why Directory Opus 10 is the king of file browsers - <AUTHOR> http://nerdbusiness.com/blog/directory-opus-10-king-review <comment><USER2> Most of the features you list are available by default in Nautilus. For example, I can hit F3 to have dual panes in Nautilus, view FTP and network drives like normal directories, go into and view and move around stuff between archives and folders without extracting, preview a large array of file types, documents, and media quickly, and have bookmarked directories and files on the side to be quickly accessible.

Nautilus is pretty customizable with hotkeys, ways to interact with not only Git but other VCS-es through plugins or otherwise. I appreciate you introducing Directory Opus though, I'll definitely take it for a spin on my Windows boxes.

</comment><comment><USER3> I havent tried Directory Opus since version 6 as I found it too slow with the extra bells and whistles, maybe time to try it I guess.

I can however vouch for xplorer^2, both feature and speed-wise which is my default file explorer in windows.

</comment><comment><USER4> Your review feels a bit like an affiliate sales letter. In case this is an affiliate product, you should disclose that.

On a substantive level, I think all file managers should have tagging, smartly filtered collections (a la itunes "smart folders", but more powerful), and built-in full-text search. On top of that, a rules engine for copying/moving around files (e.g. move all downloaded pdf's older than 15 days to the trash). Ideally, this stuff would be higher level than the file-system, thus allowing cross-platform use of this system.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's actually my writing style, its no affiliate letter.

Some of the features you're looking for are rather dynamic - so might be beyond the scope of a file browser. That kind of thing might take it into the realm more of a passive service. Though, in another 20+ years I can certainly see DOpus accommodating that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> As someone who currently has 8 explorer windows open and is often frustrated with how unwieldy it is to work with, I have to say I'm impressed and tempted to purchase this thing. I was just to the point of starting to set up Cygwin with a bunch of alias and symlink entries to streamline my file operations. Now I'm torn between continuing that path and buying this thing. I think the dual panes and the tabs would solve many of the problems I currently have with explorer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Dude, the trial is 60 days (fully functional) so at the very least its' not a hard decision to download and try it out. Or do I have to wrestle you ? ;)

<comment><USER5> Ha, I guess the free trial makes it an easy decision. I'll give it a spin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I always find myself put off articles that use "M$" to refer to Microsoft.

</comment><comment><USER7> 88 bucks for a file browser still sounds extremely exorbitant though. Explorer++ is free and does at least whatever it is supposed to do decently..

</comment><comment><USER8> "programmed in low level c++" no less!

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, C++ is not the 'lowest level' but the point is that this thing is architected masterfully. It was originally written for Amiga.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How does this compare to Total Commander?

<comment><AUTHOR> More polished UI, more functionality, better Windows integration, and overall more awesomeness.</comment></comment>


Job interview with no specific project details revealed - <AUTHOR> Hey all.
I just had this strange thing happen. I went to a job interview for a Senior iOS developer, eager to learn about the projects this company might have me work on. I got there and showed them a few things I had done in the past, discussed general background questions, and then tried as hard as I could to get some details about the project itself. Their lips were sealed the whole time. I got nothing out of them other than the technologies and platforms I would be working with.
Is this sort of thing common in the software industry? I know that projects sometimes need to be kept secret for whatever reason, but from my perspective as a job candidate, I need to know about the content of the work before accepting a job -- Does the CEO have a vision with this product? Is this project going to succeed? Who is their designer? What sorts of prototypes have they built? etc.
I say this because I know from my past experiences that my enthusiasm for the job is directly correlated with the degree to which I perceive their projects will be both meaningful & successful.
So now I am in a weird spot because I might really want to take the job, but if I were offered it tomorrow, I wouldn't be able to take it until I get more information about the specifics of the project I would be working on. I want to make sure they have an enthusiastic employee who is eager to do the project because the vision is truly impressive. If I sign an employment contract, and the project is a lemon, I don't want to put them through the trouble of my early exit.
If anyone has run into this problem and solved it, what did you do? My only thought is to be up front about this and tell them I can't accept the job without any specifics about the project itself. It seems like the only ethical thing to do here.
Thanks for any thoughts & experiences you might have <comment><USER2> It depends.

I've dealt with a few clients like this. Most wouldn't say anything till I signed an NDA, usually the first day of working on the project. However, with some, if I came out and said I wasn't comfortable until I knew more, and was willing to sign an NDA, they'd agree, I'd sign, and get the whole spiel.

Here comes the bite: Some would respond to the request by showing me the door.

Information is paramount in business, and some people are simply unwilling to risk letting anything leak till they're ready.

I absolutely agree that faith in a project determines how much effort beyond the norm I put in. [0] However, sometimes you'll just get a job that needs the professional treatment, because it will fail no matter how well you do: but its still a paycheck, and you still have a contract.

If they end up unwilling to let you know more, then try and judge the product on its caretakers, the people you meet. It might be worth the risk of a terrible tedious failure. [1]

[0] On a bad project, I work my hours. On something I believe in, I've been found sketching relationship trees at 4AM because I had an idea.

[1] The last project I had was terrible. The inception idea was fantastic. It got gutted twice over whilst I was still building it. I went from senior developer, to junior. I lost creative input. So, I was pissed off, exhausted with politics, and demoralised. However, I still got the project in on time, to specification, and got a nice paycheck.

Edit: Why I did [1].

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I get where you are coming from. We all have to eat.

I got the impression from them that they wanted more than 40 hrs a week from me, almost to the point of wanting to own me. One of the managers had a problem with me continuing to support my own apps after accepting the job.

For me, that's a pretty steep job requirement. You'd have to really convince me that what you're doing matters and that lives are literally at stake if I don't come join your company. Otherwise you're just being selfish in my view.

I told them I can't accept the job unless they give me more details, and you're right, there's a good chance they will show me the door.

But then I'm pretty sure that's a business I wouldn't want to work for anyway.

<comment><USER2> On the bright side, they might give you some insight, and it might be a great product.

In the end though, its not worth risking your humanity over. If they show you the door, it's probably a bullet dodged.

I didn't start in software development: I was in forensics. But, though I loved the work, I didn't love what I found. I was losing faith in people, so I moved away to what had been only an interest area. You don't want to get caught up by a company that eats you alive.

There's not really a bad outcome here, the worst case is you get something boring on your plate.

Though, anecdotally, just about every contract I've had wanted exclusivity, to ensure I didn't steal their ideas, or borrow any code I wrote on their dime. It was annoying, but I mostly dealt with it by: a. Putting my projects on a temporary hold, or b. Getting them to acknowledge I already had support contracts for my projects, and wouldn't they want support from me, too? (I usually have 6 months support in my agreements, after that... Depends how much I like the client.)

But again, it isn't really something to sweat over, but it does seem to be getting more common.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting. This wasn't really sold to me as a contract but rather as a full- time employment situation. I think I might be willing to make that sort of compromise if I knew I had a chance to decompress after the six months are over and I'm on to the next thing.

And yeah, part-time software dev jobs seem to be increasingly rare these days. People either want your soul or they don't want anything to do with you. I would be totally happy working half as many hours at the same hourly rate with lower living expenses than working full-time or overtime with a high salary. We all have different priorities. I need my tinkering time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> _Is this sort of thing common in the software industry?_

Oh, it's incredibly common. Aside from companies paranoid (perhaps justifiably so) about sensitive information leaking out through the interview process, by default many companies use at least the initial stages of the process as a kind of a "one-way mirror" \-- in which they're scrutinizing _you_ for ticks, fleas, what-have-you, and only in subsequent stages do they lift the skirts, as it were, on the actual projects you might be working on.

With the apparent basic message in mind that they (and their projects) are so self-evidently awesome that they shouldn't have to bother trying to sell you in the idea of working for them (by say, letting you know what you might actually be working on).

But it could also be much more mundane than that. Sometimes the reason they won't go into details is because they've already decided to pass on you, and so they prefer to cut the discussion short to whatever extent possible.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, it just seems kind of odd being the one who is interviewed. They ask me if I have any questions, and the only question I can ask is "well what the hell will I be working on?" (obviously phrased in a much more diplomatic way).

I think a company like Apple could get away with this because their reputation in the space speaks for them, but this company hadn't ever launched a mobile app of any sort.

Perhaps the best thing in these sorts of interviews is to try and ask as many questions as I can so they have fewer chances to get information out of me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How big is the company and who was interviewing? If it's HR, they genuinely might not know. I've been to interviews where the interviewer admitted they had grabbed him 5 minutes ago while he was walking past, and he had no idea about the project. They might be hiring because they have budget, for some future project (that might never happen).

Don't get me wrong, all of these scenarios aren't good, and it's a warning sign. Personally, the secrecy alone would make me think the job isn't a great fit for me.

> tell them I can't accept the job without any specifics about the project > itself

This, if you aren't happy with the arrangement don't do it (if you have that luxury). Gut feeling can be quite helpful.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a 600 person company, and I interviewed with engineers as well as management for the project. They all knew in advance that they would be interviewing with me.

Once again, not a good sign. It means a few possibilities.

1.) They didn't think I was good enough, so they decided to keep the information secret.

2.) It wasn't really an interview but more of a screening. They wanted to see if I pass their smell test.

Gut feeling overall wasn't good. I'll have to go with that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > I might really want to take the job, but if I were offered it tomorrow...

Turns out that companies blow the Interview Courtship Dance ALL the time. Hence the War for Talent myth.

Push for a follow up meeting with the Hiring Executing, your direct boss. Be candid, tell him you have some areas you need to discuss before moving forward.

Have a solid list of probing questions prepared in advance. If they can't or won't answer to your satisfaction, move on. You've got leverage.

</comment><comment><USER6> You can always quit if the work isn't good enough. Realistically, they're not going to be able to give you a full and accurate picture of the work ahead of time anyway.

<comment><USER7> Most places I've worked there's been a fairly good idea of what I'll be doing before I start.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll add that it would feel as though I am acting in bad faith not notifying them about my uneasiness up front.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yes this is quite common.

I would try telling them what you said here - "I know from my past experiences that my enthusiasm for the job is directly correlated with the degree to which I perceive their projects will be both meaningful & successful."

Then you can find a middle ground - maybe they can tell you about a past project, or maybe you sign an NDA, or maybe they can just tell you.

</comment><comment><USER9> If it's a consultancy, it might be the case that they don't have any big signed projects for you to work on yet and they're hiring in the hope of closing some deals soon.</comment>


How easily we are fooled: The rotating grid illusion - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ted.com/2008/09/rotating_grid_i_1.php

<comment><USER2> it's the same mechanism by which propellers spinning at certain speeds appear to be moving slowly, or even backwards.</comment>


People move to the suburbs because that's where the housing growth is - <AUTHOR> http://newyorkyimby.com/2014/06/suburbs-outpace-housing-growth-in-45-boroughs.html <comment><AUTHOR> See further Matt Yglesias, _The Rent Is Too Damn High_ ([http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0078XGJXO](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0078XGJXO)).</comment>


Github based report card (here's mine) - <AUTHOR> http://osrc.dfm.io/tachang

<comment><AUTHOR> Though this was kinda cool. Not sure how accurate it is but stumbled upon it.</comment>


Don't write your own framework - <AUTHOR> https://stitcher.io/blog/dont-write-your-own-framework <comment><USER2> Great article!,

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, sometimes I get tired of all the frameworks and tools that are available. I just want to build things. That's is why I decided to make a side project with purely PHP and jquery (yes jquery :). I am familiar with vue.js and react but lately, I notice that I am making less progress with frameworks such as nuxt.js and next.js. At the end of the day, you just want to get things done.

And there are quite a few examples of successful projects that don't use frameworks. Like e.g. nomadlist by @levelsio. They develop new features so quickly that I start to doubt frameworks more and more.

Don't get me wrong I think for many project frameworks are useful, but if you want to get a lot done and you don't want to focus too much on the techniques, I have doubts about your statement.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have mixed feelings about this. Big projects, while definitely having more capacity (engineering efforts, documentation, etc) than your local team, also have bugs. And sometimes serious ones. Plus, more often than not, those bugs are exploited via automated tools. Having a good custom framework will often be immune to these "low-hanging-fruit" scannings.

During my career, I've developed custom frameworks (way more than I wished for - at least 4), and they all came out of specific necessities - stuff existing frameworks either lack, or catered to the lowest common denominator that wouldn't fit the desired approach. Most of them started on top of existing frameworks, extending over time, upto a point where they basically replaced most or all functionality from the base framework. They weren't perfect, they had bugs, of course - but often worked quite better than the code they replaced.

The one thing I learned while doing this is that it works well - you start from a familiar, robust system, and focus your effort on what you need to improve on your specific scope (eg. module initialization, event handling, database extensions, templating, etc) over time and as needed and to cater your needs, but using a holistic approach - design for big picture, implement for a specific case that can be extended. However, there are some pitfalls with this approach to take into account - integration with the base framework should be well thought of, and clearly defined in a way to reduce coupling and avoiding the situation where you have to maintain your own dogfood as well as the integration with someone else's dogfood. This often isn't easy, and requires a bit of planning, but it can be done.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is a very difficult approach in our industry as we face the challenge of not invented here, I do not need all that complexity (which actually ends up happening), this is just a quick project (are they ever) as many organizations build their own tools

I personally spend lots of time looking for pre-built solutions, its almost fanatical, after being burnt by my own home grow inventions (at the time)

</comment><comment><USER5> Such issues can appear everywhere. But if such bug will be found in widespread framework or CMS, zero-days will be exploited immediately by automated scanners (Drupal, Joomla and Wordpress had some in the history). So, protection through obscurity is some kind of protection too.

</comment><comment><USER6> Since more hands work on open source projects the chances for such vulnerabilities are minimized, but not eliminated. Despite that, more secure is better than less secure. There are some dangers to using OS as well though. Once a vulnerability is found, it is only a matter of execution and our own sites' security can be compromised. The idea should be to know our tools as much as we can.

</comment><comment><USER7> Thanks for sharing. But out of all frameworks out there for NodeJS, none could meet my requirement. None are easy to adapt. Hence I did make a small framework [https://www.npmjs.com/package/@jaydadarkar/nitromvc](https://www.npmjs.com/package/@jaydadarkar/nitromvc) inspired by Laravel.

</comment><comment><USER8> its too late, i build my own PHP framework inspired by angular and built another for API(Clean Architecture) inspired by dotnetCore Web API -> [https://packagist.org/packages/spatial/spatial](https://packagist.org/packages/spatial/spatial) the routing works like this [https://packagist.org/packages/spatial/route](https://packagist.org/packages/spatial/route) i am just waiting for PHP 8's Attribute to implement in the routing. i now use angular with my Spatial Framework with Doctrine & Guzzle HTTP PSR

<comment><USER8> i (solo developer) currently have 10 apps/ apis as a single project and the routing was killing me. so i decided to create a route template to easily access the controllers. I personally encourage devs to write a framework just for learning. i discovered the Refection Class because of that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The same could have happened with any ready-made framework. You'd still have to manually update 200 sites... :)

And even worse, a known vulnerability on a popular framework could have hit you harder.

</comment><comment><USER10> Does the same hold true form home-grown CMS?</comment>


Italian customers cannot access Shopify sites for over a week - <AUTHOR> https://status.shopify.com/ <comment><USER2> > While the root cause of this issue is still outside of Shopify, we have > implemented a solution which has successfully restored connectivity for the > majority of stores from the affected ISPs.

Looks like the issue was the ISPs, not Shopify. I wonder if other sites were also affected.</comment>


Show HN: Weltschmerz by age - <AUTHOR> https://p.migdal.pl/weltschmerz/ <comment><AUTHOR> Author here. I defrosted a 4-year old project, thanks to this tweet: [https://twitter.com/brian_bilston/status/1031844013236789248](https://twitter.com/brian_bilston/status/1031844013236789248) ("Love in the Age of Google").

Also, a lot of inspiration from various xkcd experiments with Google search (such as "I should have" [https://xkcd.com/458/](https://xkcd.com/458/) and "stripped game of life" [https://xkcd.com/696/](https://xkcd.com/696/)).

Looking for interesting phrases. (Found one? Share it!)

Also, since this project is old, I would have started it with better modularizaiton (Vue?) + texts in url bar. If you want to fork it, go for it.

</comment><comment><USER2> I just get horizontal line with numbers on it, there is nothing else on the page when I click "Go!". Is it down somehow?

<comment><USER3> I used it with "I am 30 years old and" which yielded your result.

But you have to use an X as placeholder somewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My takeaway is that people use this query for things they are worried about. Personally, I have never entered my age as part of a full sentence in a search query.

</comment><comment><USER5> Doing the "I am X years old and" for X in [30,40], a few observations:

"want to go back to school" and "broke" stop at 40.

"have no energy" and "can't lose weight" start at 40.

"have no friends" appears somewhat age-independent but does have peaks.

<comment><USER3> End of their 30s people stop asking why they are single and start asking why they are tired.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Note: you need to disable PrivacyBadger (if installed) to allow the (many) requests to suggestqueries.google.com

</comment><comment><USER7> Linguistic observation with the default setting (I am [12-50] years old and):

"i don't know what to do with my life" peaks at 20-25, "don't know what to do with my life" at 30-40. "i want to lose weight" peaks at 12-15, "want to lose weight" at 40-50.

I wasn't aware of preference for the "I am X and I do Y" scheme vs the "I am X and do Y" one being correlated to age, but the data seems to say so.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is nifty. I'm kind of surprised Google hasn't flagged you for being a bot, doing all these queries.

There's a typo while querying: "quering"

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed.

<comment><USER8> That was fast!

<comment><AUTHOR> I hope Google won't be nearly as fast. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What I'd like to know is who searched for "I am 80 years old and pregnant"?

</comment><comment><USER10> Any recommendations which queries to try besides "I am X years old and"?

<comment><AUTHOR> To get it grim try "X months since" (1-24); similar for years.

To get a lot of time-stuff "I had sex X" (1-30), to get about money "I need X" (1-30), about weight "I lost X" (1-100), etc.

Waiting for for more suggestions!

<comment><USER11> "sleep X" (0–50) is an interesting mix of sleep disorders, child care, programming and some fad of sleeping 15, 20 or 30 minutes every 4 hours.

"My girlfriend is X" shows more younger than older (and a bunch of pregnancy worries), while "my boyfriend is X" shows more older than younger (and a disturbing age range with completion "... and im 14").

"I got X" (0–100) yields grade distributions, but they seem to skew to the top (at least if you go by "percentile in cat", which _should_ be uniform but isn't).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Oh, this is depressing. :(

<comment><USER13> I don't know if I'd call it depressing. I think the results are more an indication of how we use search engines in general than an accurate portrayal of the human condition. We search out answers to our questions and solutions to our problems, right? I'd guess it's pretty rare for someone to enter a string like "I'm 20 years old and I'm in perfect health!" or "I'm 38 years old and I've never had a cavity" in a search box. Still, kind of interesting to see the types of things a demographic wants answers to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It does not work for me when I try to change the query in any way. For example "I have X years left to live and"

<comment><USER8> It worked for me when I tried "I weigh X pounds" from 100 to 250... I think it only returns results for queries that have been asked enough times to generate Google's suggestions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> FYI "Weltschmerz" is a German word variously defined as...

1) German, from Welt 'world' + Schmerz 'pain'

2) Sadness or melancholy at the evils of the world; world-weariness

3) Sorrow that one feels and accepts as one's necessary portion in life

<comment><USER16> This is not a portmanteau at all. It's just two words combined.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wow, cool project! Funny how with the query there's so many results to do with being or getting pregnant.

</comment><comment><USER18> Works for other stuff too. Try "District X" from 8 to 12.

</comment><comment><USER19> Really cool

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm not sure what I'm looking at.

<comment><USER21> The result of Google search's auto-complete for the string on the left of "[Google autocomplete...]", so some kind of most common query with that particular prefix.

Quite the downer, in my opinion.

<comment><USER20> What are the numbers on the right for?

<comment><USER22> That's the age range it replaces X with. It conducts the query multiple times, across that range.

It makes sense if you just press "Go" when you visit the page (don't change anything). My first instinct was to replace X with an integer and you only get one result when you do that.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Surprise: Bike-friendly Netherlands named best place in the world to be a driver - <AUTHOR> http://dailyhive.com/vancouver/best-place-in-the-world-to-be-a-driver-netherlands <comment><USER2> How is that a surprise? It kind of seems obvious. If you have fewer drivers on the road, it should be much nicer to drive.

<comment><USER3> If people are convinced that funding other transport modes is a waste of money for projects that no one will use, then your precondition ("fewer drivers on the road") is not met. (Consider the beliefs of people living in suburban areas designed around cars, where cycling is only for the most stubborn.)

If people believe that space for a bike lane takes away from a car lane, and that few people will use the bike lane, then while there are fewer drivers, the traffic density and (presumably) congestion will increase, making driving more difficult.</comment></comment>


Writing an OS in Rust: Testing - <AUTHOR> https://os.phil-opp.com/testing/ <comment> phil-opp Author here. This post is a rewrite of the previous Unit Testing [1] and Integration Tests [2] posts. It creates a custom test framework that runs test functions inside QEMU, so that they run in a realistic environment (compared to running on the host system).

[1]: [https://os.phil-opp.com/unit-testing/](https://os.phil-opp.com/unit- testing/) [2]: [https://os.phil-opp.com/integration-tests/](https://os.phil- opp.com/integration-tests/)

The new test framework directly works with `cargo xtest`, which brings the project closer to using standard cargo programs for building, testing, and running. The last remaining step is the `std` Aware Cargo RFC [3]. When the RFC is merged and implemented, cargo-xbuild will no longer be needed and the familiar cargo build, cargo run, and cargo test commands will just work, including IDE integration.

[3]: [https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/pull/2663](https://github.com/rust- lang/rfcs/pull/2663)

<comment><USER2> Just wanted to say thanks so much for your blog posts! I have been working on a medical device in no_std Rust and your articles have been super helpful in setting up a robust unit test suite. I have been trying to hack at the utest crate and get on-device integration tests running again for quite some time... good to know there is movement on the custom test runner front :)

<comment> phil-opp It's the first time that I hear about Rust on medical devices. Sounds really interesting! I'm glad to hear that my blog was useful to you!

> I have been trying to hack at the utest crate and get on-device integration > tests running again for quite some time... good to know there is movement on > the custom test runner front :)

The custom test framework feature of Rust was silently introduced in [https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/53410](https://github.com/rust- lang/rust/pull/53410) and I didn't know that it even existed a month ago. But it works really well and seems like a good solution for your problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've started writing my own OS with this tutorial for a school project with a friend. It is a big help! Our next step now is the GDT

[https://github.com/oyagci/kfs/tree/dev](https://github.com/oyagci/kfs/tree/dev)

<comment> phil-opp Great to hear that!</comment></comment>


Show HN: Evvo – an open source framework for distributed evolutionary algorithms - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/evvo-labs/evvo <comment><AUTHOR> We're two Northeastern University students (jfz and drassaby on HN), and one professor (not on HN), who started this project because there were no frameworks that allowed people to productionize evolutionary algorithms by running them in distributed environments. We wanted to make a type-safe, user- friendly interface to a parallel backend that would allow optimization problems to be solved more easily. We have validated the framework, using it in a paper that evolved fair and accurate machine learning models ([https://github.com/julian-zucker/evolving-fair- models/blob/m...](https://github.com/julian-zucker/evolving-fair- models/blob/master/paper/evolving-fair-models.pdf)). This project is still in early beta, but it is mature enough to be used for proofs of concept and to play with high-performance evolutionary algorithms.

Let us know what you think and how you want to see the project develop! We'd be happy to answer any questions you might have either here or at: email@example.com and firstname.lastname@example.com</comment>


Syrian Crisis Explained in 15 Animated Maps - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJtUQjJC4a0 <comment><AUTHOR> How accurate is this?</comment>


The Frustratingly Lovable Crazy-making Huggable Ball of Whack That Is Ember.js - <AUTHOR> http://www.wekeroad.com/2014/05/28/the-frustratingly-lovable-crazy-making-huggable-ball-of-whack-that-is-ember-js/

<comment><USER2> Ember is on the list of things where I think the main tutorials are far too shallow to really get a sense of how to use it. I wish there was a more full- blown REST-API backed tutorial with complex nested views and such.

Really it's not Ember, I guess, so much as it is the notion that a todo list app exposes you to the key things you actually want to know about a particular front end framework. If you think about it, it's a silly notion.</comment>


Voting system with jQuery and Ajax. - <AUTHOR> http://9lessons.blogspot.com/2009/08/vote-with-jquery-ajax-and-php.html

<comment><USER2> You should add an authorization key that is generated for each page uniquely so that the ballot box can not be stuffed by calling the ajax url from pages elsewhere.

It's very gameable right now.</comment>


Show HN: Free and Open Source Dataset Version Control Tool for Open Data - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/opendata/comments/adxydk/free_open_source_dataset_version_control_tool_for/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'm promoting the latest release of Qri -pronounced 'query'- (0.6.1), a free and open source dataset version control system / network for finding, collaborating on and publishing open datasets on IPFS. It's a kind of git/github just for open datasets.</comment>


HTTP Methods and Redirect Status Codes - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ieinternals/archive/2011/08/19/understanding-the-impact-of-redirect-response-status-codes-on-http-methods-like-head-get-post-and-delete.aspx <comment><USER2> Is anyone else shocked to see Microsoft doing something horribly backwards- incompatible AND standards compliant all at once?</comment>


Chromium Fix for SVG Sprite Scrolling Performance Bug - <AUTHOR> https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=253091

<comment><USER2> Original thread about PNG vs SVG scrolling demo: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5924706](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5924706)</comment>


[German] Google buys the German Groupon competitor DailyDeal - <AUTHOR> http://faz-community.faz.net/blogs/netzkonom/archive/2011/09/19/google-uebernimmt-dailydeal.aspx

<comment><USER2> Does it really make sense to have German posts on the HN frontpage? I am German and understand this one, but I think the value of the HN frontpage would be greatly reduced if half of the articles were in a language I can't understand (granted, there is google translate, but still).

<comment><USER3> I suppose people are upvoting the title, which is in English ("Google buys the German Groupon competitor DailyDeal") rather than the linked web page. If I had submitted this, I would have been tempted not to submit the URL but rather to put the URL somewhere "underneath" the title (e.g., in a comment) with a note saying that the purpose of the URL is to provide evidence of the truth of the title -- much like the purpose of a citation in a scholarly article -- in an attempt to signal to the reader that I was not advising that the average reader to read the linked page. However such a submission seems to go against the implication in the instructions on <http://news.ycombinator.com/submit> that the purpose of a URL-less submission is "to submit a question for discussion".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great. Now that's even more encouragement for German copycat startups…

<comment><USER5> that is something that I always found intriguing, with all their technical chops why germans are so good at producing copycats. Any Idea?

<comment><USER6> Look at the BMW, Porsche, Mercedes from the first one to the current one. Germans are incredibly good at refining and improving on top of a good idea. They do that with extremely rigorous scientific approach. So, the copycat is often better than the original, because they took the good idea and pushed it ahead.

This is what I understood from the German culture after living there the past 6 years.

<comment><USER4> This analogy isn't exactly the best, considering that Germans came up with a lot of the automotive innovations in the first place… I'd be careful with quick cultural assumptions (Germans this, Japanese that etc.), a lot more often you'll have to follow the money, i.e. investment, banking system, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> copy cat.

</comment><comment><USER8> I can't wait for this bubble to burst.

<comment><USER9> It seems like a reasonable thing for Google to do, while I agree that Groupon and friends are probably a bubble, I think Google could turn it into a feature that their advertisement customers want.</comment></comment>


ICANN lifts the price cap on .org domains - <AUTHOR> https://domainnamewire.com/2019/06/30/domain-overseer-lifts-all-price-caps-on-org-domain-names/ <comment><USER2> The whole domain market experience is utter crap. Commoditizing domain names has created such an unbalanced power dynamic between buyers and sellers where the sellers hold all the power. Gatekeeping at it's finest.

Contrast this with acquiring a business name through any Department of State/Division of Corporations.

I shouldn't have to name my company some contorted bastardization to successfully enter the market.

<comment><USER3> Registering a trademark is generally more expensive than a domain name, and trademarks don't compete on the same namespace and is split depending on industry. The biggest difference to the domain market is that with domain names everyone is clogging the same namespace. If people just spread out based on nationality and industry it would be easy and cheap.

To make a direct example, if I talked about Abba here in Sweden, most people think about the music band. But if I talk about Abba in the context of food, people will instead think of Abba seafood that make Kalles Kaviar and pickled herring. Abba.se as a domain is thus very ambiguous as it doesn't specify if it about food or music, and abba.com is likely to surprise people as it has nothing to do with either.

To make matter worse, companies that want to protect their trademark or work actively at preventing fake shops will often buy several hundred versions of their domain names under different name spaces. It is seen as best practice, especially for online shops.

<comment><USER4> But at the same time, I think we might be a bit to far with the current setup of the web to change this. Not saying it can't be redesigned better, though. I can't see everyone moving to "abba.food.se" or "abba.music.se", especially as domain length is at a serious premium (though my information is old and it's just a correlation, it's the best factual support I could find short-notice for what is commonly known). [0]

There's a fine line between "clogging the namespace" and commoditizing something. I like being able to have my own domain - I can host stuff, run a web site, access services with a friendly name, attach friendly names to my internal IPs, etc. Why should I have to be a legally-registered something-or- other to do that? And if I'm not, why should I have to settle for something three times as long? Most of the pollution is from squatters, who are cancerous to the internet.

[0] [http://www.gaebler.com/Domain-Length- Research.htm](http://www.gaebler.com/Domain-Length-Research.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The whole decentralize everything! movement seems to overlook DNS. I get that technically the DNS system is decentralized, but in reality, you lease a domain from a random, usually politically charged entity, who can do anything with it, if they wish.

We need a real DNS system, one where an individual can request and have a domain for life and which is truly decentralized.

Unfortunately none of the attempts - .onion with tor, .bit with namecoin, etc - seem to be working. .onion is despised because tor and impossible to memorize them; .bit never gained any traction and namecoin, being a bitcoin clone, has it's own issues.

Anyone knows of any working approach?

<comment><USER6> > We need a real DNS system, one where an individual can request and have a > domain for life and which is truly decentralized.

I very much want this also - but this cannot be solved in the same way as the challenge of business domain name assignment - a different approach should be used:

[idx].[yyyyddmm].[given_names].[family_name].id

e.g.

023.19830210.john_smith_3rd.doe.id

given_names can have some standard seperator

And then if there are two people with same given names with same family name they get different indexes. And this will get everyone riled up because this means you will need a worldwide consistent database of people and you will only be able to get this if you give very good proof of ID and then this because your world ID number basically.

<comment><USER7> Unless someone goes out their way to choose their own 'branded' name perhaps they could just receive a unique hash of their name for a domain? Tools can always be built to handle these names so you're not memorising such lengthy domains.

<comment><USER6> How do you decide which person get which name? This just gets you back to the whole ICANN problem. I can remember a couple of digits which makes my name unique. I cannot remember 1e873645-1f68-4b48-9eae-934ec717229b

<comment><USER7> That's just a technical problem that new infrastructure can solve by abstracting away the name. Instead of visiting 1e873645-1f68-4b48-9eae-934ec717229b.com/foo, you're just visiting "bar/foo", where 'bar' is their name. Click on the URL and the full hashed version is revealed for proper sharing.

In the same way that nobody memorised Facebook's UUID of a person, they can just remember their name.

<comment><USER6> And then we are back to the problem of deciding who gets what name

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Press release from Public Interest Registry, which oversees .org and similar TLDs: [https://pir.org/pir-welcomes-renewed-org- agreement/](https://pir.org/pir-welcomes-renewed-org-agreement/)

> Regarding the removal of price caps, we would like to underscore that Public > Interest Registry is a mission driven non-profit registry and currently has > no specific plans for any price changes for .ORG. Should there be a need for > a sensible price increase at some point in the future, we will provide > advanced notice to the public. The .ORG community is considered in every > decision we make, and we are incredibly proud of the more than 15 years we > have spent as a responsible steward of .ORG. PIR remains committed to acting > in the best interest of the .ORG community for years to come.

And PIR's May 1 open letter to the .org community, which has much the same message as Friday's press release: [https://pir.org/an-open-letter-to-the-org- community/](https://pir.org/an-open-letter-to-the-org-community/)

<comment><USER9> > Public Interest Registry is a mission driven non-profit registry and > currently has no specific plans for any price changes

This means nothing. It's like when you get the hiring paperwork and the HR person says regarding the non-compete: "oh, don't worry about it, it's not enforceable"...

<comment><USER10> Exactly. If it's not an issue or it's not enforceable, then why not put it in writing?

<comment><USER11> Because then they would be accountable. This whole process was a sham, I wrote about it [https://reviewsignal.com/blog/2019/07/01/icann-fails-the- int...](https://reviewsignal.com/blog/2019/07/01/icann-fails-the-internet- community-allows-an-unlimited-non-profit-tax/)

The contract was written behind closed doors and approved exactly as proposed. The public comment period was a sham (no surprise).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm _slowly_ starting to suspect that maybe having human-readable names for domains is a mistake.

Partially because phishing domains is already kind of easy (the rapid increase in tlds _isn 't helping_), partially because the race to grab and hold names has been having increasing negative effects, and partially because (aside from domains) many actual URLs are already impossible to remember. We're running into the same problem with SSL certificates -- the position of LetsEncrypt is now that they shouldn't be used for identity verification.

There would be some awful challenges if we got rid of the human-readable part of domains, but the benefits of moving to something like a unique hash or key instead:

\- instantly getting a domain for anything and have it be permanent, without any renewals.

\- getting rid of most name-squatting.

\- being explicit and up-front with consumers about the dangers of phishing, and the need to build separate identity-verification infrastructure that couldn't be beaten with dumb attacks like the `rn m` trick.

I dunno. It could be a really bad, stupid idea, but I want to start thinking about if there are ways we could share domains in a hashed form on podcasts/posters/etc... that would mitigate some of the obvious downsides to having them be difficult to remember or type.

I know IPFS and DAT are using hashes for everything, but as far as I know they're both falling back on stuff like IPNS and human-readable aliases when URLs get shared, and to me those have the exact same downsides as the domain system we're already using today. I'm not necessarily advocating anything, it's just less obvious to me today that a naming system that uses actual words provides more benefits than downsides.

<comment><USER12> The DNS only provides one upside: memorable names.

But there aren't enough downsides to ever be more important than this one feature, or you would just be telling people IP addresses already.

<comment><USER10> I want to be able to carry a domain between IP addresses.

But to rephrase your argument in a way that does feel more convincing to me, maybe there aren't enough downsides to ever be more important than this one feature, or I would be registering random strings for my domains already, just to get rid of the effort of finding new names for things I'm building.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In light of the prior article about ICANN as an unaccountable private company (1), this is a good time to encourage everyone to read Bruce Bueno de Mesquita's _The Dictator 's Handbook_ (2). This is a classic setup for dictatorship by a small cabal (the board): a vast, unempowered populace, a clear source of money (increasing domain fees), and a fairly small elite that needs to be compromised, particularly relative to the size of the unempowered populace.

If governments and corporations haven't already started buying influence, I'd be shocked.

(1) [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/sep/21/icann- int...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/sep/21/icann-internet-us- government)

(2) [https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost- Po...](https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost- Politics/dp/1610391845)

</comment><comment><USER14> > This is despite only six out of over 3,000 comments being in favor of > removing price caps.

Oh.. okay. Seems totally fair. If ICANN et al. want to charge an arm and a leg from non-profits seeking a .org domain on a public utility, I guess we can say goodbye to the prestige generally associated with that extension.

<comment><USER15> And all six were written by lobbyists for Verisign.

<comment><USER16> It's a shame you're being downvoted, considering there was a post here last week proving this very fact.

<comment><USER17> Accusations of shilling are pretty serious, and should include evidence alongside the claim.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "The good news is that Public Interest Registry's management is competent and well-guided. They will likely wait a while before making any major changes to avoid comments of "we told you so"."

Well that's nice of them, so we get to pay crazy amounts in the near future instead of instantly. how generous.

<comment><USER19> Bets on how long? I reckon 6 months. And they'll use some excuse like "to prevent spam" or "infrastructure costs are going up" (despite them earning millions per year and having practically no expenses)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Does it mean that renewal prices for currently owned .org domains will sky- rocket?

<comment><USER5> Potentially yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Related to discussion about domain industry in general, I stumbled on the weirdest business the other day trying to go to a website name and instead typing crun.com.

It leads to [https://venture.com/domains/](https://venture.com/domains/), which is... a startup that rents out high visibility domains to others, with discount plans available where the price increases exponentially with the assumption that your startup does as well.

One of those things where you're not sure if it's satire at first.

<comment><USER22> Interesting quote that I found from Venture's homepage:

> The problem with not having the .com of your name is that it signals > weakness. Unless you're so big that your reputation precedes you, a marginal > domain suggests you're a marginal company.

\- PAUL GRAHAM, Y Combinator

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> One of the article comments suggests antitrust action, so I looked up prior lawsuits against ICANN for abusing their monopoly. The only one I found shows it being settled, not dismissed. Maybe it's time to start filing complaints with government agencies against ICANN.

</comment><comment><USER24> Ever since icann lifted the floodgates on all the new gTLDs, it's been almost nothing but unmitigated mediocrity. Follow the money, look at how much a company like donuts pays to icann for the "application fee" for each individual gtld.

Giving .Amazon to the company and not the brazilian-peruvian group that wanted to run it was really a fine example of icann in the year 2019.

<comment><USER6> > Giving .Amazon to the company and not the brazilian-peruvian group that > wanted to run it was really a fine example of icann in the year 2019.

Not to be that guy - but why should the brazilian-peruvian group have gotten it instead? If you said that the actual group of mythical woman should have gotten it I would say maybe you have a point, but then we would have to first figure out how mythical creatures can own things.

<comment><USER25> >Not to be that guy - but why should the brazilian-peruvian group have gotten it instead?

News flash: You're being that guy.

They have a far more legitimate claim because they administer the majority of the geological zone known as the Amazon Basin, and have since long before Amazon the company was a twinkle in Bezos' eye?

I mean... I'm hoping you were being tongue-in-cheek... Nowadays it seems to be getting more difficult to separate the jokers from those who just haven't quite thought through things long enough before posting.

<comment><USER26> Notably, it's not called "the Amazon Basin" to the people who live there (given that English is not their primary language).

<comment><USER24> You may be talking about the indigenous languages of the region, but the whole region is literally called "Amazonas" in Spanish and Portuguese.

[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Amazonas](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Amazonas)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> If you have any .org domains, you may want to consider a 10-year renewal before any price increases happen.

<comment><USER28> Network Solutions also offers 20 year and 100 year terms. ICANN rules say 10 years is the max, so I'm not sure how this works. Does NS just deal with it 10 years at a time at the underlying registry, eating any price increases themselves?

20 years .org at NS is $13.99/year, which is close to the more reasonable registries, such as Namecheap. 100 years gets it to $9.99/year, which is pretty good--if you believe that NS will really eat any underlying price increases over that time (and, of course, you will actually be using the domain for most of that time). (Well...pretty good until you remember that NS charges another $10/month for WHOIS privacy, which is free at Namecheap [1]).

[1] ...and I would assume at other popular registries. I'm just using Namecheap for comparisons because that is where I now have my domains.

<comment><USER15> That's a brilliant business model. They get all the money up front, get to invest how they want, and if there is a price increase, it probably will be less than inflation, and almost certainly less than their investment returns on your upfront payment.

<comment><USER19> Potentially unlimited losses if the price goes up to $99999 per year...

Although in that case, I bet they'd just give an excuse and offer a refund of the originally paid amount.

<comment><USER15> Keep in mind though that the price of the domains has to still be feasible for other people to register, so it would never go that high.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> 1-6 Will .com prices eventually increase? That'll bring havoc to my collection.

<comment><USER29> From the article:

 _" ICANN's decision foreshadows that the organization will agree to .com price increases. Eventually, caps on .com domains could disappear."_

So make of that what you will.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> ICANN is a mafia. Not sure why it exists in its ugly form today. I'd rather transfer these rights to Mozilla.

</comment><comment><USER31> Not to be bitchy maybe Poptel should have won the bid to run .org back in the day - not that I am biased :-)

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm glad I don't own any .org domains...

I bet the renewal price will now go up by 25% every year forever...</comment>


Dataspace 3: It Came from the S-Expressions - <AUTHOR> http://natecull.org/wordpress/2017/07/06/dataspace-3/ <comment><USER2> It is an interesting article! However, regarding the Prolog-related statements in the article, I think a few clarifications, qualifications and corrections would improve it considerably.

For example, the article states:

 _" The Prolog data model – based on logical terms , which are very similar to SQL relations, [...]"_

Prolog _predicates_ can be compared to SQL relations. Prolog _terms_ , though, are data structures that can be arbitrarily deeply nested and correspond more closely to Lisp's S-expressions, with the addition that Prolog also supports logical _variables_ in terms. Due to this feature, Prolog terms can be more flexibly constructed than data structures in languages that lack logical variables. As one consequence, more Prolog predicates are naturally _tail recursive_ than corresponding Lisp functions. For example, the predicate append/3 is naturally tail recursive in Prolog, but the corresponding function is _not_ naturally tail recursive in Lisp.

Here is another quote from the article:

 _" For one thing, a Prolog term looks like a C function call [...] but that syntax is rather irregular."_

A Prolog term is completely regular, defined inductively from three basic cases: variables, atomic terms, and compound terms. Maybe the article means _predicate_ calls? Yet, these are also completely regular, because each goal is, syntactically, also a valid Prolog term.

Regarding Prolog implementations, the article states:

" _Traditionally, Prolog systems tend to be compilers (for speed) and internally don't use linked lists to store data. The architecture generally derives from a 1983 specification, the Warren Abstract Machine, which was intended for raw speed. Unfortunately, the WAM has hardcoded in some annoying limitations._ "

The WAM is definitely a popular option for implementing Prolog, yet there are several other architectures that are also used with considerable success. For example, SWI-Prolog - which is also mentioned in the article - is _not_ based on the WAM, but on the ZIP.

Further, the article states:

" _Note that – just as we can't express (a b c . d) in an array, we also can't express 'likes (John . @X') in standard Prolog term form. There is no syntax for it, because there's no semantic model for it – because the Prolog term data model comes from formal logic, not from S-expressions. And because the formal logic community existed centuries to decades before Lisp, nobody in that community quite got around to thinking that 'capturing the remainder of an expression in a logical variable might be useful'._ "

Yet, "capturing the remainder of an expression in a logical variable" is possible in Prolog. In fact, the ability to write down and reason about so- called _partially instantiated_ data structures is one of the defining characteristics of logic programming languages such as Prolog, and an immediate consequence of their using _logical variables_ as in formal logic.

For example, we can write:

        [a,b,c|Ls]

In canonical form, this is the Prolog term:

        '.'(a,'.'(b,'.'(c,Ls)))

This is a compound term of the form '.'(A,B), i.e., a term with functor '.' and two arguments, whose second argument has the same shape as the primary term, and whose innermost compound term is '.'(c, Ls), where Ls is a Prolog variable. This is completely analogous to Lisp's S-expressions, with the exception of the logical variable Ls that denotes the remainder, if any, which cannot be expressed in Lisp in this generality.

It is unclear what is meant with 'likes(John . @X)' in the article; however, I consider it reasonable to assume that it means the perfectly admissible Prolog term likes(john, X), where X is a variable.

Regarding the statement:

" _But the formal logic community made a bit of a huge oversight when it assumed that 'higher order logic' meant higher order semantics rather than higher order syntax._ "

Personally, I find that having a higher-order syntax without associated semantics would leave something to be desired. Is there an advantage to being able to write down a higher-order term without defining what that means?

Plain Prolog does provide several higher-order mechanisms, such as the meta- predicates functor/3 and (=..)/2, all-solution predicates like setof/3 and findall/3, and also the call/N family predicates for calling arbitrary goals dynamically. Using these mechanisms, you can dynamically inspect and construct terms:

        ?- functor(f(a,b), Functor, Arity).
        Functor = f,
        Arity = 2.

        ?- functor(Term, f, 2).
        Term = f(_3934, _3936).

In this way, you can implement additional higher-order constructs within Prolog.

</comment><comment><USER3> I feel like Cyc was left out of his list of lisp representations of universal quantification (prologgy lisps).

They did several interesting things, going way back to the 90s. I'm probably going to grossly misrepresent the idea, but they have a way to structure and represent knowledge (an ontology) as an atomic frame, a way to represent relations between frames, a way to reason about it (eg check that assertions and relations are consistent), and then--brute force by hand--wrote thousands of common sense meatspace frames. The idea was a lispy prolog that came with a database of things a five year old human might know about.

[http://opencyc.org](http://opencyc.org)

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

</comment><comment><USER4> This belongs to a series of blog posts [0] by Nate Cull. He subtitled it: "An attempt at rethinking computation. Periodically updated." A refreshing read.

[0] [http://natecull.org/wordpress/dataspace/](http://natecull.org/wordpress/dataspace/)

</comment><comment><USER5> If the ideas of this series of posts interests you, I think you may also find tuple spaces interesting.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuple_space](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuple_space)</comment>


Why Being Outside Silicon Valley is Good for Startups - <AUTHOR> http://venturelaw.blogspot.com/2007/11/why-being-outside-silicon-valley-is.html <comment><USER2> A few clarifications: Canada is generally a country where the concept of "employment at will" does not exist. You want to fire someone? You need to pay severance. We also have human rights legislation that can add to what you must pay if you fire someone who is older, pregnant or has one of a wide range of conditions that can be deemed a disability (drug addiction, alcoholism, depression). There are penalties payable for toxic work places or for firing in a particularly harsh manner. These are many reasons why employers based in the US tend to dislike Canadian employment laws - if you hire the wrong person, you have to pay to get rid of them.

Onto the stickiness issue - you're generally right - there is great R&D talent in Ottawa, for example, but very few superstar tech companies at the moment. If you are like most R&D talent and attracted by the quality of work, you're pretty sticky.

A related point - thanks to the limited number ofwork Visas to the US, we've become a naturally sticky country for near-shoring talent from India, etc that cannot get a permit to work in the valley. Sticky by geography works for us, too.

<comment><USER3> Boy, that sure sounds nice! Wish I could have applied some of those laws to my last employer...

<comment><USER4> It's really a double edged sword with some unintended consequences. Italy has similar (probably stronger) laws. One of the results is that most employers are very, very wary of hiring women of childbearing age.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The main reason to build outside of silicon valley-- less people poaching your employees, yes, but more importantly: You don't have the bad advice constantly being forced on you.

in SV, its like being in a bar full of hot chicks who are constantly coming on to you, and telling you that they will sleep with you, if only you'll get a vasectamy, shave your ballsack, take female hormones, grow your hair out, start dressing in womens clothes, etc-- where each time you do something to please one of them they have another suggestion and two more show up with completely different suggestions. You can never make them happy and none of them will sleep with you, until you have proven yourself to be completely desperate, and wrapped around your finger. So you ultimately end up with an ugly one after being teased by hot chicks to the point of total desperation. Then when they do sleep with you, you find out they have herpes, and a few days later, they start sleeping with your best friend instead and tell you that you have to stop going to bars, or they will make sure you never get laid again.

In the end you're screwed, diseased and have wasted several years trying to get laid when you should have been trying to build your business.

Only, when I talk about women here I'm talking about VCs and when I talk about changing you I'm talking about really bad business advice. You're left with the choice of running your company into the ground based on their bad advice, or being pushed out of your own company because you wouldn't destroy it for them. No VC realizes that they are incompetent at business and giving their clients bad advice-- the best you can hope for is one that is so busy they aren't paying attention to you. People say you just need to find a good VC-- but the reality is, VCs are like politicians: there are no good ones. If they were decent people they wouldn't be in that line of work. (Not that there's anything wrong with venture investing, just the way its practiced in Silicon Valley is death to high tech startups.)

Unless you're a MBA with a marketing focus and cant' write code to save your life, and your only way to make it big is to latch onto some actually talented people and od the high burn rate high profile startup thing-- the Valley is the last place you want to go.

<comment><USER6> Pressure from investors to do stupid things is a real problem, but it's actually less of a problem in SV than anywhere else.

You need roughly as much money to do a given startup outside the valley as in it. That means you're roughly as beholden to investors no matter where you are. And stupid as many SV investors are, they are on average smarter than those outside it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The employee retention argument is a misleading one. It only matters if you make it past earlier and much higher hurdles, like creating something novel that users like, and getting funded.

Someone who wants to start a startup and avoids SV because it will be harder to retain employees is like someone who wants to become a movie star and avoids LA because the higher crime rate means he'll have to worry about people breaking into his mansion after he succeeds.

</comment><comment><USER7> "IBM is said to love buying Canadian companies like Cognos because of their tremendous employee stickiness. Next time one of my American clients ridicules Canada's pro-employee ways, I'll remind them of this."

I didn't know Canada had "pro-employee ways" (whatever that is), let alone that they were being ridiculed for it by Americans. Last time I checked, Canadian companies were just as interested in down-sizing as American companies are. The "employee stickiness" IBM is talking about probably has more to do with the mindset of employees in Canada rather than anything employers or the government might be doing. Maybe Canadians are more reluctant to move cities for a different job than Americans are, but the people I know in IT in Canada, at least, have no qualms about leaving their jobs if they can find something better. Even people at Cognos.

<comment><USER8> "employee stickiness" is a bad sign for employees. It means that finding and keeping a rewarding job is hard.

<comment><USER9> Not quite a bad sign. Maybe they're just happy at the place they're working and the employees are loyal people.

<comment><USER8> Why would you want to be a loyal employee?

<comment><USER9> The employer treated me alright, good benefits, nice working environments. I value trust and connection.

<comment><USER10> There are very few companies like that - the names i can come up with are less than the number of fingers that i have...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Couldn't agree more. FInding right employees at right prices is extremely hard to do in the Valley. You're competing with the likes of Google, Facebook etc and it can take forever to fill a position at an inflated price. While you're small and your startup consists of a few founders, there's no better place on Earth to be at but as soon as you get that check from a VC, things are gonna get tough.

</comment><comment><USER12> > For these reasons many SV VCs, he says, will not fund startups unless at > least 50% of their development work is done outside of California.

I don't buy that, at least for generous definitions of "many SV VCs". I don't think any intelligent VC would follow a blanket prohibition like that. And at least in my experience, most SV startups do the vast majority of their key engineering work in the Valley.

</comment><comment><USER13> Remember the blub vs better languages debates? Chalk one up for better languages, where you get more done with LESS people. Have fun trying to hire java engineers in the valley right now :)</comment>