Navigating the Venture World as a Black VC - <AUTHOR> https://dot.la/black-venture-capital-2646196848.html <comment><USER2> >'I Don't Live in a World Where Fairness is an Option'

This sums it up perfectly. So many times I am asked what I think of all this as a black person in tech. I don't think anything of it. It simply is how things are. You can either live with that chip on your shoulder, or learn the skills to navigate life with the cards you were dealt and deal with it. There is no other option, and how you feel about it is irrelevant. Some people are born with physical disabilities or mental handicaps. It's no different. Should we live in a world without racism? Of course. But we should also live in a world without war, poverty, and disease as well. It's a part of the human condition.

<comment><USER3> Well said.

I'm not black, but I always frame it this way when I think about the problem: if I had children, what message would I want to convey to them to maximize their chances of success in life?

Life is difficult, there are lots of injustices in the world, but there is zero sense obsessing over that which you cannot control. Focus on being the best human possible and the world will take notice.

<comment><USER4> So you're basically saying black people should just accept racism is a thing and move on?

If people can, good for them. If not, I don't feel in any position to tell people that obsessing over injustices that I'm not experiencing makes zero sense.

<comment><USER2> >"So you're basically saying black people should just accept racism is a thing and move on?"

What is the alternative?

That's the point. I, as a single individual, can't spend my extremely finite time and resources howling at the moon and railing against a monolithic machine that cares nothing for justice or humanity. I can only try to live my life as effectively as possible within the bounds of our current reality. The civil rights movement won us equality under the law. But expecting the same tactics to result in social equality is a pipe dream.

<comment><USER5> > But expecting the same tactics to result in social equality is a pipe dream.

Someone had to try, and someone has to try. Same tactics, or different tactics, whatever. Try things, do more of what works. We have to split our time between ourselves and our communities.

Growing up as an immigrant Chinese person, "life is unfair, so you have to try harder than the white person" was what I was taught and what I did. It worked for my parents, to an incomplete extent, and it worked for my cohort of immigrants/ABC's, to a somewhat greater extent.

However, that same community today is wrestling with the problem that without unified political action in local/state/national politics, it won't get much better than being a model minority, which is to say it's a more privileged existence than being black is (sorry for the bluntness), but you're still acutely aware of your Asian-ness in other people's eyes and when it works against you, such as being co-opted into the message of "well why don't [minority group] just work harder like [model minority group]?" as a distraction from actually talking about addressing root causes.

<comment><USER6> > it won't get much better than being a model minority, which is to say it's a > more privileged existence than being black is (sorry for the bluntness),

As an Asian, I actually think that Asians are more privileged than White people. As a group we earn more, have better life expectancy, and have to deal with less historical baggage. If you search for it, any group can find areas where they feel they are being mistreated, but on the whole, your parents' strategy has succeeded spectacularly. I think this is in part, because it was a win-win strategy. We were able to make our lives better without making another race feel bad or making their lives worse. Nobody had to lose for us to win.

<comment><USER7> US Immigration policy prefers high socioeconomic migrants (after the 1965 immigration reform bill). Since most Asians have immigrated to the US since 1965, of course Asians as a group will have higher economic status than the average American. The question is whether you have better outcomes _controlling for parental socioeconomic status_.

Census Date: Total US Asian population

1970: 1.5M

1980: 3.5M

1990: 7.2M

2000: 10.6M

2010: 15.2M

2020 (proj): 19.7M

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic_d...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic_demographics_of_the_United_States#Historical_data_for_all_races_and_for_Hispanic_origin_\(1610%E2%80%932010\))

<comment><USER8> I remember there was an Soc119 class discussed that after controlling for education, asians actually make less than both whites and blacks.

If you pick the cream of the crop from Asia, they are going to do well even if you kick them down a peg.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Some black people assimilate into white culture while others push toward > perfectionism in order to overcome negative stereotypes. Others ignore the > microaggressions, despite the sting believing the merit of their work is the > most important metric of success.

This has been my experience, balancing everything that is happening with "maybe these microaggressions had nothing to do with race, like all the people on hackernews and linkedin would say" or maybe thats naivete as this is the exact experience other people that look like me are saying happens

"Kind of odd how these mormon investors never look at me during this entire meeting of three people"

"Kind of odd how I keep finding out that my business partners wrote themselves large stakes of newly formed companies, and I have to perform an arbitrary set of work over an arbitrary set of time to maybe get diluted in later"

 _maybe its just me [and a predictable experience echoed by people that look like me]_

On another note, which I think this article gets wrong or doesn't factor in well with the acknowledgement of assimilation, it assumes people of color in the space are trying to service "communities of color". It isn't factoring in the idea that they are playing the same world-changing moonshot game as everyone else, a game that doesn't care about nuances of any particular country's demographics. People are the same and want the spoils of this industry, thats the key thing to remember. Some people have their own idea of addressing underserved communities or paying it forward to people that look like them, but most people are aiming to perpetuate the industry itself.

<comment><USER10> I don't mean to minimize your experiences at all. But since you mentioned eye contact, I thought I might as well mention that as someone who suffers from social awkwardness and mild OCD, one result of all the societal discussion around racism is that being around black people often makes me feel very awkward. Like, I have compulsive thoughts about whether I am thinking any racist thoughts right now, or saying racist things, or doing some other microaggression, and that results in some mild social awkwardness / difficulty with eye contact, and difficulty relaxing socially. Which ironically might very well be interpreted as racism :( Again, I don't mean to say that racism is not a thing or anything like that (or even that I myself am never actually racist haha--that's hard to know, that's the issue). Just wanted to add this to your list of hypotheses to consider when you're trying to explain whatever it is that you see.

<comment><USER9> Sure, thanks for responding, so I didn't say racist or racism or make any conclusion, and that was on purpose!

I left it as open ended as my actual thoughts are, but acknowledge that it would be beneficial to factor in what so many people that look like me are saying are shared experiences.

Yes, I can tell when people are consciously trying to patch their behavior around black people (or other groups), distinct from being actually insensitive and distinct from treating them like people they are actually comfortable around.

You really don't have to feel like you are stepping on eggshells, even in your explanation here. I would call that awkwardness you described as a microaggression because it is an experience that shouldn't be a part of my daily experience, and it shouldn't be something you have to worry about, but in this case it would come from you towards me. So I wouldn't interpret that as "racism", but a _peculiarity_ that is definitely an unnecessary part of the black experience. These kinds of things affect the group decision on whether a candidate passed the "culture fit", and a whole host of other things that ultimately prevent that qualified person from being around everyone else more, or getting into a position over them, simply because the people approving it are uncomfortable for meta reasons. So I think it is important for you to address that and notice it in others as well.

<comment><USER10> >You really don't have to feel like you are stepping on eggshells, even in your explanation here.

Thanks, that's reassuring.

>I would call that awkwardness you described as a microaggression because it is an experience that shouldn't be a part of my daily experience, and it shouldn't be something you have to worry about, but in this case it would come from you towards me.

I agree that it isn't fair to you, and that causes me to develop meta-OCD about it, lol. I feel kinda bad even writing these comments, because I don't wanna be in a position where I'm unfairly making it into your problem to an even greater degree.

You can call it a microaggression if you like, but I think that will make the problem worse on my end, because I'll obsess over it even more. I read a self- help book by a psychologist on this OCD stuff, and one of the things it mentioned is that it is helpful for other people to make light of your condition, even cracking jokes about it. If they act really concerned, that ends up validating the compulsive behavior, according to the author.

My secret wish would be to make a deal with the black people I meet that they will agree to privately bring it up with me if they feel I'm actually being racist so we can have a (hopefully two-way) discussion about that, and then knowing that I trust them to do that, that might help me relax and not worry as much. I think a big part of the problem is the fear that I'm being racist without knowing it. Of course, privately confronting people about their racism may not always be the optimal strategy. But it could be an interesting experiment to offer to make that deal, if you sense the other person would want it.

The reason I think it's better for the discussion to be two-way is because like a lot of engineers, I also have something of a compulsive need for the world to make sense and be a logical place. So if you were to tell me that I said X racist thing, but I don't initially see how it was racist, I feel a need to understand the root of our disagreement the same way I try to understand why there's a bug in a program. If I don't feel like I can do that, then that comes back to the original thing of me not feeling like I can be my authentic self. We don't necessarily need to see eye-to-eye on everything, but in an ideal world I'd like to get to the point where whatever disagreements remain are ones where you find my authentic opinion on the subject to be tolerable.

>These kinds of things affect the group decision on whether a candidate passed the "culture fit"

For what it's worth, back when my company was hiring a lot, I was very conscious of this kinda thing. I'm almost certain I ended up giving women and underrepresented minorities higher culture fit ratings overall. Partially because I wanted to account for any biases on my end, but it also gives me warm fuzzy feelings to have an (almost always positive) recruiting interaction with someone when there is so much BS on the internet saying that it should be hard for us to get along due to demographic characteristics. As cheesy as it may sound, at the end of the day we are all human beings, and if we can just see that in each other, I think it goes a long way. And once I've gotten past this kinda stuff with someone, it frequently forms the basis for a great friendship, in my experience.

\---

This is more of a side note, but as I was writing the above it occurred to me that in some cases there might be a useful analogy to be made between racism and mental illness. The traditional view of mental illness has been that if you suffered from some kind of mental illness, that represented a moral defect, and it was your responsibility to suck it up and do better. But recently there has been a more progressive view of mental illness that says we should treat mental illness as a disease just like any other disease, making use of evidence-based treatments, and only frame it as a moral defect if this framing has been shown to be an effective evidence-based treatment. (I don't know if moralizing actually ever ends up being an effective treatment--the one thing that comes to mind is Alcoholics Anonymous for addiction, but I don't know how evidence-based it is.) In any case, it might be useful / productive to separate out the question of whether racism is morally acceptable from the question of whether framing it as a moral defect will be a productive treatment for a particular person or situation. This is probably very person / situation-dependent, but as I tried to communicate above, at least for me, I suspect this kinda "moral defect" framing, especially when applied forcefully, can sometimes make the problem worse.

<comment><USER9> These are good points, I really want to break down everything one by one here, but you identified the root of it which is that people don't want to be treated differently. Black people, like everyone in America, want to exchange time for food and shelter, accumulate wealth and resources, contribute to the growth of the infrastructure.

The only reason you should be concerned that you have to patch your behavior is because your normal banter with friends includes insensitive stuff! If there is a genuine interest in being actively anti-racist, then call out your peers that want to bee-line conversations into frustrations about minorities. Or that are always looking for excuses to use the N word because it sounds cool (or trying to be actually racist). When - logic aside - you know normalizing that grammar would require constant patching around other people.

Another thing that underlies this code switching, for a lot of people, is an irrational fear of being beat up any black person in the vicinity, or _even worse_ "cancelled". For the former, I consider that an entirely racist assumption, people don't want a record or a ruined day over some slip up in grammar or a troll. For the latter, try not to do it on twitter, you'll be fine.

So if you need to, you should consider patching your default conversational behavior so that you don't have to patch it around black people. If you don't need to that, then just assume it's all in your head, just like I assume its all in my head when different mormons are being awkward to me specifically despite knowing what their religion teaches about people of color. Everyone is just trying to go about their day without wondering why anyone is being awkward around them exclusively.

<comment><USER10> >Black people, like everyone in America, want to exchange time for food and shelter, accumulate wealth and resources, contribute to the growth of the infrastructure.

Right on.

As to the rest... I don't use the n word and I can't remember the last time I heard a friend of mine use it (if they ever have). I'm not afraid of being beat up by black people--certainly not in a professional context! And yes, I'm aware that in-person interactions are much less likely to result in cancellation haha. So I guess I'll take your advice of just assuming that it's in my head. It usually goes away when I spend enough time around someone regardless.

Anyway, take it easy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > "I have been at network events where people don't know who I am, they > assumed I was a random moron," he said. "They treat you like you are not in > the room or you are some wait staff."

This reminds me of an article I read soon after Pichai became CEO of Google. It mentioned him, freshly made CEO, attending a tech conference/fair. Despite the Alphabet reorg and him becoming CEO going through tech news world wide a while prior, most people didn't recognize him.

Can't find the article any more, otherwise I'd link it here.

</comment><comment><USER12> Americans have some weird identity hangups.

I have what is now called "invisible disability". I wonder how I'd feel if my kind had some visible mark in their face. Would I feel awkward being the only QWERTY in the room? Would I feel especially succesful?

As it stands now I kind of feel the latter. It's a little secret, I have this disadvantage at the starting point of the race where the referee shoots his little gun at the sky, and yet here I am in the peloton with all the non- disadvantaged guys.

Of course, maybe if everyone _knew_ I'd be hyper-aware of the stereotypes that will inevitably play a part in the mental models of people with the best intentions. But are wealthy Americans really going for stereotypes when they see a fellow wealthy black person?

I know that the world of "invisible disability" activism is a self-defeating whirlpool of victimization.

<comment><USER13> I appreciate that you're sharing your own experience, but you can do that without nationalistic and racial flamebait, which your comments in this subthread unfortunately contain. I'm sure that was unintentional, but those are the things that people are going to react to, and when that happens, we won't end up anywhere interesting or good.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER12> Hi.

I'm willing to edit my comment (or outright delete it on my own initiative). I can remove the "Americans...", but much of the rest of it is a comment on the posted link, which is very much about race.

I like the way this place is run, which is to say, I trust the guidance of the moderator team. I'm just not sure how to proceed right now. Also because there's a downthread discussion that could be left without a referent.

Please advise.

<comment><USER13> I think it's ok to leave it. The primary thing is to be more careful in the future. When a topic is divisive, it's important to edit out provocations, including unintentional ones, because otherwise people will react to the provocation rather than to the substantive part of the comment, and that's how we end up with flamewars instead of curious conversations. But I'm repeating myself now.

<comment><USER14> Rather than repeating yourself, I think you need to dial down your threshold for paternalistically stepping in to chide commenters for benign statements. I am American, and I took no offense to the commenter's criticism of American culture. I saw nothing nationalistic in the comment, nor was there anything that looked remotely flamebait.

Unless I missed the initial edit that was full of swastika emojis and telling people to "go back to their countries," or something, I'm pretty sure you just pushed someone who was posting in good faith off this site over nothing. While I didn't see the second or any subsequent comments, I found the initial comment worth upvoting. I'm pretty sure you also just marginalized someone in a vulnerable group (those with invisible disabilities) to which I also belong, and, to which you probably do not.

As I have stated in the past, IMO, this site was far, far better when there was little to no active moderation beyond downvoting and flagging by the community.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The problem with keeping your head down and getting things done without "raising a fuss" is that people will see that and assume racism isn't a serious problem. You'll even see people here wondering what all the fuss is about, or wondering how being black in America is any different than being Vietnamese.

</comment><comment><USER13> There was a large related thread, but about CEOs rather than investors, two days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23540162](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23540162).

</comment><comment><USER16> Firstly, assume positive intent, I am not undermining the topic of racism and rather like that we are giving the issue the proper attention and hope to see real change.

That said, has anyone seen stats that say what is the right balance of POC based on market realities? I work in finance, not VC, but still as a hiring manager it's every difficult to force diversity when the overwhelming majority of candidates are white males. It's a similar issue as women in tech, you have to take a step back and look at the university systems and how a more diverse set can be encouraged to take a finance track. Likely, there is an issue with college in general and we need focus on why white have higher attendance rate (no data, pure assumption). And so on. It's a systemic issue that needs to be addressed. You can't always just rebalance the current diversity mix because the inventory of qualifying candidates may not support it.

I read recently that 13% of America is black. I googled that the average BOD is 9.2 members. To me, 1 black person in the room is about right. Granted there are probably high number of boards with 0 blacks. But I'd be interested to know if this is due to the above mentioned market realities. There are certainly racism impacting the micro but maybe the macro is better than we think?

<comment><USER9> everything you said happens and should also be a focus which I'll reply to in another comment, the only lack of awareness here is using singular noun for plural form

when plural you want to use color descriptors as adjectives. black people, not "blacks", white people, not "whites".

nobody can say why, but they are not synonyms to be used interchangeably between sentences, and will undermine your positive intent.

<comment><USER16> I'm perfect by no means and willing to learn how to change my vocabulary if it's an issue. Grammar has always been a weakness of mine.

Why is this preferred and how would I know it's preferred (absent this conversation)? Is it a well known faux pas or something one person on the internet is nagging about (no offense)? In my mind, "people" is inferred. I think this is how people talk where I live, pretty sure I hear it on the local news/media. When I think of terms like "black college" it's inferred to be a college that is predominately attended by black people. The college is not literally the color black like with phrases like "white house".

Reminds me of when I was a kid and my grandpa would use the word "oriental" to describe Chinese, Korean, Japanese. He would use worse words at times but this was his version of the politically correct vocabulary. It was very commonly used as a PC phrase. As I got older, I learned it wasn't really the best word and reasons why. But it never would have been obvious to me that it was a racist term and seen as negative to those it was meant to described.

<comment><USER9> People don't say "the gays" or "gays" or "a gay" anymore, they use it as an adjective before a noun, and it is the same concept.

I am not sure there is any etymology to follow here, aside from the common theme of being recognized as people.

Regarding consensus, you can try blackpeopletwitter reddit on a throwaway. you can look at comment threads and see the reactions and facepalms when people use the adjective as a plural noun.

People definitely say it, but not people considered aware.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So he gets to take other people's money, invest it and take a cut without actually, like, having to do any actual work, but he's getting ignored at parties?

Damn it, where the hell do I sign up?

<comment><USER13> Please see [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23565658](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23565658).

<comment><USER17> How is this a tangent, or flamebait? I'm just pointing out that he's literally whining about a job I'd love to have and not seeing how lucky he is.

<comment><USER13> It's a generic tangent because it changes the subject to VCs in general. It's flamebait because it's snarky, inflammatory, and arguably also a personal attack. Everything I said in the other comment applies to your post as well, which is why I linked to it.

Posts like that aren't acceptable on HN, so if you'd please review [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and stick to the rules from now on, we'd be grateful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> S-E-P The idea that a VC is experiencing unfairness is a shocking revelation...

Not like a large majority of VCs are completely selfish or anything.

<comment><USER13> Please don't take HN threads on generic tangents. That's in the site guidelines: " _Eschew flamebait. Don 't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents._"

Nothing interesting's going to come from changing the topic to VC in general, and certainly not if you do it snarkily and with a shallow dismissal—both of which are also in the site guidelines, so this comment is a sort of trifecta.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > "I have been at network events where people don't know who I am, they > assumed I was a random moron,"

Poor millionaire. Turns out you still have to be interesting to have a good time at a party.</comment>


Intel's Skylake Core i7-6700K reviewed: Modest gains from a full Tick-Tock cycle - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/08/intel-skylake-core-i7-6700k-reviewed/

<comment><USER2> At the risk of being off-topic, an honest stupid EE question:

What physical innovations actually drive the processor releases, or even flash storage sizes? I understand that each generation shrinks the transistors. But what tangible things were invented in 2015 to make the transistors smaller? Is it that in order to make them smaller, Intel has to run some kind of circuit optimization calculations that weren't possible the year before? Or are there advances in manufacturing (e.g. physical inventions of new molding processes, new chemical processes, something else?) Or is it simply market forces driving the prices and the specs?

<comment><USER3> Disclaimer: because my university is nearby ASML, I get bombarded by their information... also I'm not an EE student

The actual progress of technology is in lithography. The lithography machines are produced by ASML and used by almost all major chip producers[1]. Currently ASML is building their new line of machines, namely with extreme ultraviolet lithography instead of what the line of current machines use.

What I do not know, if the machines are currently used for Intels 14nm or that the old machines are still used (or maybe both). What I do know, is that ASML and Intel are having problems with getting to 10nm. That is because they have to improve the current machines, you observe this from the delay in the Tick- Tock from Intel.

Which brings us to the Tick-Tock of Intel, this is the improvement of the chip structure itself. They do this because they have to wait for the smaller transistors.

At last, what I heard is that the ASML machine is getting more and more complicated. Especially because they are having troubles with the laws of nature.

[1] [http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014241278873238093045784288...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323809304578428850807241388)

<comment><USER4> To add to this: it's not just developing new lithography processes such as EUL. A large part of the recent improvements are due to optimization of existing litography processes by improving sensor accuracy, minimizing the error, and improving the throughput speed among others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Skylake was more about mobile/watts from what I understood. Desktop has been stagnating since Sandy Bridge for the most part.

<comment><USER6> That's how I understood it as well, though I was still disappointed that my expectations weren't exceeded. I am eagerly awaiting the day that new AAA games are playable at low quality settings on a MacBook Pro but I guess that's still a few years away.

<comment><USER7> For my definition of playable, for example Bioshock Infinite is perfectly playable on 2015 Macbook retina 13".

But personally it doesn't really matter. I don't have time to play anyways. Nor really so much desire either nowadays.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's a pity that the new AVX-512 SIMD instructions will only be available on Xeon Skylake chips.

<comment><USER9> AVX-512 looks kind of nuts: 32 registers of 64 bytes each, so 2KB of just registers, and apparently gate area to do eight 64-bit multiplies/divides at once. Also adds masking (only run this xor instruction on these three of the eight 64-bit words) and other stuff.

One other interesting feature for the long term, apparently in regular Skylake too, is a bounds-checking assist (MPX): instructions and registers and address-lookup hardware to make bounds checks cheaper. (The bounds check instructions are effectively NOPs on older hardware, I think.) I don't know what the economics of supporting it are, but I like anything that might lead to more code deployed with more safety belts.

Finally, I wonder when Skylake server is coming out. The process delays threw off their usual tick-tock rhythm; I wonder if it means large Skylake server chips will come out with less than the usual delay after the top of the Broadwell server line (which isn't out yet), or, less likely, if Intel will skip large Broadwell Xeons entirely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Despite all the talk about Moore's law and all that, what this really means is that user-experience has gone all the way down to silicon. Raw performance just isn't important to most people these days. They want a small, light, just-works, good power consumption, doesn't have annoying hickups or laggyness experience.

Intel's trying to build the chips that can support this and not trying to enable regular consumers to fold proteins or factor primes.

<comment><USER11> Needs have plateau-d too. Remember when transcoding a CD in mp3 was an hour thing that may fail ? Most of the mainstream needs have been addressed in term of compute power. What's missing, as you said, is global "perf", low Wattage, smooth UI, simple and fast enough peripherals. We'd love easy printers but Intel is only Intel.

<comment><USER10> Heck, even my 6 year old spare desktop can transcode highdef video on the fly. That used to be the stuff of dreams.

I think the implications are clear, it's time for software developers to start thinking about performance if their work is slow, you can't just expect consumers to go out and throw more hardware at it.

<comment><USER11> Yep, everythins is amazing yet nobody's happy.

Things are messy nowadays (web, native, crossplatform, gpgpu, opencl) and people can't apply their brain to performance as it was in the old days when there was simply no other choice.

I bet in a few years a lot of cruft will vanish. OpenGL removed a big part of it for clarity. The web and native will gather (see how dynamic languages are jit compiled, and take low level into account). Hopefully overall efficiency will improve, for builders and customers.

<comment> SG- People's happiness have started to shift with size and battery. People are willing to even get something a bit slower now if it means half the size (new MacBook, MacBook Air and other small laptops based on Intel's Core M Broadwell).

<comment><USER11> I have yet to use a laptop not from before 2009. I fail to see how even Core M are significantly slower.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I realize now that these skylakes are not really about enthusiasts.

Think about what will make your parent's computer feel more powerful. A more fluid GUI, higher resolution in windows, a higher framerate in windows and of course peripherals going faster. Skylake has much better onboard graphics (which take up half the die) and a lot more IO for USB 3.1, SSD storage and display port from integrated graphics.

If Intel wanted to, they could double the cores by taking the integrated graphics out. They could double the peak flops again by including the 512bit SIMD instructions. They've already demonstrated they can do it.

They know their real money making market and it isn't anyone here.

<comment><USER4> Two counterarguments to your realization:

1\. According to Anandtech [1], Intel is appealing to enthousiasts/gamers:

 _To go with the launch is a new look of Intel 's Core processor packaging, in part to appeal to the gaming crowd. As the gaming industry is considered one of the few remaining areas for potentially large growth in the PC industry, Intel is increasing its focus on gaming as a result._

2\. The Skylake-K processors launched today are the unlocked versions geared towards overclocking, again targeting enthousiasts. Skylake-S won't be out until later this year.

This makes it all the more perplexing that they decided to ``use so much die space'' for integrated graphics given their target audience.

[1] [http://www.anandtech.com/show/9483/intel-skylake- review-6700...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/9483/intel-skylake- review-6700k-6600k-ddr4-ddr3-ipc-6th-generation)

<comment><USER12> Maybe they are trying to market the first batch to enthusiasts but ultimately designed it for the average home user? Who knows. What they have right at this moment is awkward, but I have a difficult time believing that Intel doesn't have a good idea of what they are doing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ouch, it might be worth it to upgrade a 4 year old CPU.

Considering I actually have a four year old 2600K @4Ghz, it would be nice if they included an actual comparison.

<comment><USER14> It's truly disturbing how long Sandy Bridge has spent near the top of the CPU price/performance ranks, given how old it is. It's as if Intel just stopped trying back in 2010 or so.

I guess everything interesting has to run on a GPU nowadays.

<comment><USER15> I have an i5-2500K at home and an i5-3570K at work, neither is overclocked and neither is what you could call slow, moving to SSD was a much bigger upgrade.

In all my years of building PC's I can't remember a time when a nearly 5 year old machine would still run all everything I wanted to run, on the one hand that's cool on the other barring some shakeup it looks like the days of must have upgrades every year seem to be halting (for now).

<comment><USER16> Same. I was waiting for Skylake to upgrade but doesn't seem worth it; I'll probably wait for a 2x performance boost on the i5-2500k, which seems to be still a long way off. Although it seems disappointing perhaps I should be grateful I got lucky and chose the right generation last time I upgraded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is this going to create an opportunity for AMD to catch up? Would be great for CPUs to no longer be a one horse race even if only on the desktop.

<comment><USER18> It seems like we're significantly into diminishing returns with single core IPC, so AMD should largely catch up over the next decade (assuming the status quo doesn't change). In this metric, a chip 90% as fast as state of the art might be 1/10 the cost to develop by then. Or even less.

But even if Intel isn't seeing much progress in terms of single core performance, they're beating the crap out of AMD in terms of performance per watt, and by extension, absolute performance of the high end multi core parts.

Taking a look at the absolute insanity that are the 18 core Haswell-EP parts, and comparing them to the 8 module Piledriver parts, and the die size of each (i.e. the cost to make them), the gap is widening, not shrinking.

I think everyone here has known for a while that the free lunch is over with respect to writing single core programs and speeding up their execution on future hardware. That's going to take a while to filter down to building programs that take advantage of large amounts of parallelism, but it's going to happen. And when it does, consumer CPUs are going to look more like server parts.

With the programs of today, you'd rather a 4.0ghz quad core. But with the programs of tomorrow, a 2.0ghz 32 core will run circles around it. Amdahl's law is ever present, but we are very, very far from reaching the limits of what is possible.

If it gave a proportional speedup for everyday computing, I believe Intel would already have an 8 core mainstream part, and maybe even higher. Right now they can heavily price discriminate against the few that care about the bump to 6-8 slower cores.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> As an embedded developer, I'm pretty surprised to see good old SPI show up on the block diagram, connected to the chipset.

I knew I2C was already in PCs for sensors and whatnot, and SPI has the advantage that it can be driven at higher speeds, but I actually expected something homegrown from Intel.

</comment><comment><USER20> The days of Moore's law are long dead. Intel's transistors haven't been getting better since 5-6 years now. I wonder what direction the semiconductor industry will go in. These are very interesting times.

<comment><USER12> Moore's law is about transistor density, not individual thread speed. Transistor density continues to increase. Nvidia's Maxwell is supposed to have over 8 billion transistors on 28nm.

<comment><USER21> In 2012 Nvidia released Kepler, which had 7 billion transistors, also at 28nm. 3 years to increase transistor counts by 12.5%... Isn't that evidence that Moore's law is in fact dead?

If it were not dead, that should be 28 billion transistors in 2015. Instead you're talking about 8.

<comment><USER12> 1\. 14nm, which obviously is a working technology now would mean 4 times the transistors.

2\. The Kepler you are talking about was an outlier used in Tesla boards, it is not indicative of the general trend at all.

3\. Two cherry picked data points don't mean a trend that has been sustained for 40 years is dead.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bill Gates: Curing one deadly disease at a time [video] - <AUTHOR> http://blog.bitmakerlabs.com/2013/05/20/bill-gates-curing-one-deadly-disease-at-a-time/

<comment><USER2> In case this doesn't get deleted, here's a Bill Gates quotation: "A few billion people would have to die if we hadn't come up with fertilizer."

Not just in this case but he's confusing the cause and effect. The last century's rise in human population, and any rise in general is caused by more food and resources being available. There's always a balance.

On an unrelated note, I'm sure that his choices about spending his money are better than those of many philantropists, but there is sure room for improvement (education).

<comment><USER3> Full quote is "We couldn't feed" stops picking the word "A few billion people would have to die if we hadn't come up with fertilizer."

>Not just in this case but he's confusing the cause and effect.

Why do you assume he doesn't understand a trivial thing? "wouldn't be able to live" -> "would have to die" is an easy mistake to do while speaking

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why do this? Why have a page with nothing on but an embedded youtube video? [http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=04TrT3VjzvU)

Somebody please explain to me what benefit this site gets from this?

<comment><USER5> They get people linking to their page instead of the underlying YouTube video, hence better pagerank.

They get people visiting their page instead of just YouTube, and some of them reading other bits of their blog, hence more visibility for other stuff they want people to read.

They get their brand associated with Bill Gates doing cool philanthropic stuff.

The more difficult question is what benefit _Hacker News_ gets from a link that goes there rather than to the underlying YouTube video. Actually, that's not a difficult question either; the answer is "no benefit".

<comment><USER6> To be totally fair, I hadn't heard of Bits & Bytes before now, so that's a little value I didn't have before. It's not quite accurate to say we get _nothing_ out of linking to them instead of the youtube clip.</comment></comment></comment>


Consulting firm vs. traditional employment pros and cons? - <AUTHOR> I'm asking the opinion of those who have worked as a consultant in an established firm vs working in a "regular" job (one employer).  As a consultant I know you are always going on site or engaging new projects whereas you have to navigate the politics and day-to-day stuff in a regular 40hr job.  What are the pros and cons of working as a consultant in an established firm vs being an operational employee for a company IT department or dev shop? <comment><USER2> Pro: You don't have to deal with the mistakes you made in the past, or the mistakes other people have made.

Con: You don't learn from those mistakes. Consultants and maintainers will have very different views on what good architecture is.

Consultants are like locusts, moving from green field to green field and not seeing the devastation they leave behind.

<comment><USER3> _" You don't have to deal with the mistakes you made in the past..."_

If you refuse to come back and fix your mistakes, the customer might never hire you again. Having customers come to you with repeat business is much easier than having to go out and find a new customer each time, but they'll only do it if you've satisfied them the first time around. Also satisfied customers will recommend you to their friends. Someone who leaves devastation behind won't get any repeat business or recommendations, and might get sued.

 _"... or the mistakes other people have made."_

Isn't it quite common for a company to bring in consultants to clean up the mess made by their own employees or by the previous consultants? My impression is that consultants who can do this well can make a lot of money (especially when the customer realizes that their mess was caused by going with the cheapest consultants the last time around).

<comment><USER2> > If you refuse to come back and fix your mistakes, the customer might never > hire you again.

That might be true as an independent consultant but not as an employee of a consulting firm. They'll be charging to fix their mistakes though.

There is also an often abused trap here where consultants or consulting companies can intentionally require regular maintenance to charge clients more.

>Isn't it quite common for a company to bring in consultants to clean up the mess made by their own employees or by the previous consultants?

Yes, but my experience has been that this makes things worse. Again, this might be different for a consultant that had a specialized niche than it is for a generic consulting firm.</comment></comment></comment>


Jobs with prolonged standing double the risk of heart disease - <AUTHOR> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29020132 <comment><AUTHOR> Abstract: "While a growing body of research is examining the impacts of prolonged occupational sitting on cardiovascular and other health risk factors, relatively little work has examined the effects of occupational standing.

The objectives of this paper were to examine the relationship between occupations that require predominantly sitting and those that require predominantly standing and incident heart disease. A prospective cohort study combining responses to a population health survey with administrative health- care records, linked at the individual level, was conducted in Ontario, Canada. The sample included 7,320 employed labor-market participants (50% male) working 15 hours a week or more and free of heart disease at baseline. Incident heart disease was assessed using administrative records over an approximately 12-year follow-up period (2003–2015). Models adjusted for a wide range of potential confounding factors.

Occupations involving predominantly standing were associated with an approximately 2-fold risk of heart disease compared with occupations involving predominantly sitting. This association was robust to adjustment for other health, sociodemographic, and work variables.

Cardiovascular risk associated with occupations that involve combinations of sitting, standing, and walking differed for men and women, with these occupations associated with lower cardiovascular risk estimates among men but elevated risk estimates among women."

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Full paper: [https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/187/1/27/4081581](https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/187/1/27/4081581)</comment>


Raku vs. Perl - <AUTHOR> https://p6steve.wordpress.com/2020/04/17/raku-vs-perl-save-70/ <comment><USER2> > by getting the whole parser onto a single screen, I find that I can get the > whole problem into my brain's working memory and avoid burning cycles > scrolling up and down to pin down butterflies bugs.

This is an excellent point, and one that not enough programmers pay attention to (well, outside of the APL family of languages, anyway!)

<comment><USER3> As a C++ programmer, I've grown so sick of

                        }
                    } // not
                } // a single
            } // fucking else
            // implicit else
            // return nullptr
            return result;
        }

A deeply-indented scope should mean "shit is complicated, think deeply about it," not "there were five times I tried something and elected to punt and return null if it failed." The LLVM style guide has the right idea; if you're gonna punt, early-return.

As a side-note, I really wish the C++ community would take a page out of Lisp's book and stop giving closing braces their own lines. But that'll never happen.

<comment><USER4> In Python, it's even worse, since there's no braces and not returning anything implicitly returns None.

<comment><USER5> I always take this as Python's way of strongly discouraging deeply nested and overly long functions... ( I realise this might be Stockholm syndrome...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The main issue I have with swapping Perl with Raku is that a major strength of Perl is its ubiquitousness. Except on Windows, it's almost certainly installed on 90% of the systems I have ever used. Meanwhile, rakudo is not even in the repositories of most distributions. It's not very encouraging, if I have to be honest.

<comment><USER7> I'm the same way. I'd love to use Raku over Perl, because it looks like an improvement in many ways. Alas, the use case I have for Perl is whipping up a script on any server for some ad hoc analysis or data massaging or as a UI to something. If I first have to install Raku, I'm more likely to write a shell script or Python code -- both of which tend to execute out of the box.

This is also why I'm not as enthusiastic about CPAN as I could be. It's great that the modules are available for when you want to write real applications, but that's not what I do with Perl and one-off scripts really don't seem like it's worth pulling in external dependencies for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can someone give a little more background why a unit conversion library needs a parser?

Like an ELI5 for someone not into neither Perl or Raku and haven't met the units library before.

<comment><USER9> you would define values like

       weight = unit("10 kg")
       speed = unit("2.5 furlong per week")

<comment><USER8> My imaginary units library would have been like

        Unit(float, unit_as_string)

The free text version is pretty cool though

<comment><USER10> I would parse the free text version into something like your version. It could be used for user input from a text input field or the command line.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Out of interest: anyone in here using Perl 6 / Raku for anything in production?

<comment><AUTHOR> On the #raku channel on Freenode, several users are using Raku in production.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> So is Perl never going to go past version 5 now?

<comment><USER13> I thought the point of the rename was Perl 5 can now release Perl 6 or 7, with Raku being independent.

<comment><USER14> > I thought the point of the rename was Perl 5 can now release Perl 6

I think that would only add to the confusion, since Perl 6 was already a thing, albeit totally different from Perl 5

<comment><USER15> They should skip "Perl 6" and go directly to "Perl 7", like Windows that skip "Windows 9" to avoid confussion.

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately, "Perl 7" was a "thing" in the discussions before the name change. IMO, going to "Perl 32" makes more sense, as it actually reflects the current version numbering scheme. Or refer to the year: Perl 2020.

<comment><USER16> "Perl 32? But I have a 64 bit processor!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Yes – a recursive descent parser written from scratch in perl5 – pay dirt!

What made the author write this in the first place? He could use one of the many many parsing libraries, and then at least the comparison with Raku grammars would be honest and fair.

<comment><USER18> I'd prefer to write a hundred or so lines of code to adding a dependency. I can usually get those 100 lines of code right in an afternoon, but keeping up with the dependency is ongoing maintenance.

The dependency could break compatibility or add a bug a year from now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> ISTM that a grammar parser is a library feature, not a language feature, per se. Any reason you couldn't port the parser back to Perl 5 and get a similar savings in line count?

<comment><AUTHOR> In Raku, grammars are an integral part of the language. This is necessary, as the language _itself_ uses a grammar to compile Raku code.

<comment><USER20> But the grammar parsing and processing is not something which is done with core-only features. Later hopefully, but currently it's very dumb, and can easily be done as library. Only longest token matching is needed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Not a Perl guy. What are the semicolons in that if statement all about?

<comment><USER22> It's a C idiom. Some people prefer `for(;;)` over `while(1)` to create infinite loops.

<comment><USER21> I see. Just a c-style loop absent conditions. I find it kind of ugly for some reason.

<comment><USER23> Weird, since Raku has `loop { }` that means exactly that. I guess the author was not aware of it (or just doesn't like it).

EDIT: Oh, that's in the Perl (5) code. Nevermind then.

In C-like it kind of makes sense – it's 1 character shorter, and on some ancient crappy compilers it may actually run faster than while(1) since it doesn't have to check the condition every time ;)

<comment><USER24> I thought it was just some old weird hate on the while() construct. I remember a long time ago people advocating for using for() always for looping because that way the language was more regular. I thought it was a weird argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Perl 6 name maybe was a bad choice back then, but we all got used to it - there was no need changing it nowadays.

<comment><USER26> I disagree. It's a completely different language.

Try reading some of this: [https://github.com/Raku/problem- solving/issues/81](https://github.com/Raku/problem-solving/issues/81)

<comment><USER25> Yes, but I mean we all got used that "Perl 6" is a different language.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed, everybody got used to the idea that "Perl 6" was a different language. But a vocal part of prominent Perl community members, preferred for "Perl 6" not to be named "Perl" anymore. As well as a part of the "Perl 6" community.

In the end it felt better to stop wasting all those emocycles and suggest a rename.

<comment><USER14> Had viewers of Police academy 6 been treated to a brutal crime drama, rather than a continuation of the farce found in the series to date, you'd expect them to just get used to it, rather than accept that naming as the next version of something vastly different is a dumb idea.

Edit* I make no criticism of the language, simply the argument that a different language should have been named as the incremental release of another.

<comment><USER18> Highlander 2: Scotts from Space would have been a better comparison than Police Academy 6.

They both got 0% on rotten tomatoes, but I don't think Police Academy 6 tried to switch genres.

<comment><USER14> That is my point. "Perl" didn't try to change genres, something different came along and called itself "Perl 6". No disrespect to either language, but linguistically this is has a negative impact for both Perl 5 and "Perl 6". Maintaining that certain people got "used to" the idea proves that it was never a wise move.

Also, note what chromatic has to say:

[https://perlmonks.com/?node_id=1220578](https://perlmonks.com/?node_id=1220578)

[https://perlmonks.com/?node_id=11105180](https://perlmonks.com/?node_id=11105180)

And so on.

<comment><AUTHOR> > something different came along and called itself "Perl 6"

You appear to forget that the "Perl 6" initiative originally came from the Perl 5 Porters. It did not just come along and called itself "Perl 6": the "Perl 6" name was used because originally it _was_ intended as the successor of Perl 5.

That it didn't materialize in time, that it became something much different, is something that happened later. But even with Pugs around 2005, Perl 6 was still the successor to Perl 5. Only around 2010, when the sister language concept was introduced, was Perl 6 considered to be a different language.

<comment><USER14> The concept of perl 6, at some stage shifted from being the next incremental release of the Perl language, sure. For around 10 or so years the Perl 6 crew knew this was going to be a different language, yet held onto the name for this period of time and even made arguments in public that Perl 6 should remain the name, given all the facts, as recently as last year. This sort of thing can cause problems in communities, and nobody on the outside of the inner clan really cares, beyond the point that all the slight of hand and infighting pushes good folk away.

Bullying Isn't Effective Advocacy: [https://perlmonks.com/?node_id=1221390](https://perlmonks.com/?node_id=1221390)

Also, when it was known Perl 6 was going to be a different language, they were several year away from a release</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Americans think they are better at social distancing than their neighbors - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1856224/has-covid-19-made-americans-more-judgmental-of-their-neighbors/ <comment><USER2> If perfect compliance was required we'd be suffering the consequence right now. Turns out, the American way of half-assing it has been sufficient to slow the spread of the virus more than enough to avert catastrophe. Even the predictable, politically-motivated free-riders haven't been enough to render our efforts ineffective (so far).

In the coming months, this is going to be more about endurance than strict compliance. Better to praise people for the efforts they do make than to berate them for failing to meet whatever strict criteria you've developed after reading too many fear-mongering articles. That runner without a mask almost certainly won't spread the virus, but a group of people having a protest or an underground party or church service will! If we drive people to abandon the cause because of purity tests, we will all suffer.

<comment><USER3> >If perfect compliance was required we'd be suffering the consequence right now. Turns out, the American way of half-assing it has been sufficient to slow the spread of the virus more than enough to avert catastrophe. Even the predictable, politically-motivated free-riders haven't been enough to render our efforts ineffective (so far).

I suspect that American's are the only ones in the world that share this view. To the rest of us your response has been among the worst on the planet. We watch in horror as you intentionally throw lives away.

<comment><USER2> Per capita deaths in the US are far below the levels in Sweden, the Netherlands, France, the UK, Italy and Spain. So it must be the _other_ parts of the world watching in horror, because many other Western nations are dealing with their own horror at the moment.

<comment><USER4> It's been truly amazing to me how few people understand per capita statistics.

Virtually everybody seems to think that the US is doing much worse than Europe, when the exact opposite is the truth.

<comment><USER5> The US is doing better than Andorra, San Marino, Belgium, Spain, the UK, Italy, Ireland, France, Sweden, and the Netherlands on per capita deaths. The rest of Europe is doing better [1].

If we expand beyond Europe, the list of countries that the US is doing better than remains the same. The list of countries doing better than the US massively expands, to around 180 or more.

[1] [http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid- visualization/](http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/)

<comment><USER4> You're just wrong man.

[https://i.imgur.com/DqhlWRq.png](https://i.imgur.com/DqhlWRq.png)

Reported Deaths per Capita:

      1. San Marino
      2. Belgium
      3. Andorra
      4. Spain
      5. Italy
      6. United Kingdom
      7. France
      8. Sweden
      9. Netherlands
      10. Ireland

Not even in the top 10.

      11. US

Unreported Deaths in the developing world are without a doubt much worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Do I think I'm better at social distancing than my neighbors? Yes. But when I'm asked to rate my neighbors, I immediately think of the one neighbor I always see out socializing on the street. I don't think of all the neighbors I never see, presumably because they're hiding out at home. A form of availability bias is coloring my perceptions here.

</comment><comment><USER7> In other news, people also think they're better drivers than their neighbors, have smarter children then their neighbors, and are better looking than their neighbors.

It's a well-known bias: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Wobegon#The_Lake_Wobegon_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Wobegon#The_Lake_Wobegon_effect)

</comment><comment><USER8> Passed someone yesterday not wearing a mask pointing out how other people were not wearing masks :)

(In San Francisco)

<comment><USER9> Ha. SF described in a single line. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Maybe they are! The friendship paradox says the average person's friends have more social connections on average than the original person.

</comment><comment><USER11> Isn't this a natural result of how empathy works?

You can both feel the urge from your own brain, and far more comprehensively understand the consequences, of not doing a thing (employment, meeting a long term partner, friend, ...).

By contrast when you see a person on the street it's easy to think "rules say no hence bad".

As others state, you're also wired to think of the novel/interesting case and ignore the people holed up at home because they're invisible.

<comment><USER12> Or the fundamental attribution error. If someone else does something wrong, it's because of who they are as a person; if I do something wrong, it's because of my special circumstances.

<comment><USER11> You've taught me the name for what I was attempting to explain in my first post :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Isn't most of the data coming out of the states majorly skewed by the amount of testing being done? Surely there are many more cases than are reported due to this.

</comment><comment><USER14> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism)</comment>


Show HN: Pravda for the People: We Rate Billionaires.club - <AUTHOR> https://weratebillionaires.club <comment><USER2> Your project aims to rate billionaires...but based on what aspect of their personality? Musk wants to rate journalists based on their credibility: do they write what is true or do they blend the truth for a better story? A yes- no rating, regardless of what your target group, makes absolutely no sense.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't aim to rate billionaires, I wish to point out the stupidity of allowing the internet at large to vote on the $value of any other random individual in the world.

There are huge problems with our media but a large part of those stem from the proprietors, whether huge corporations in the US or billionaire owned such as Fox. It's rarely down to individual journalists

Sure I could add comments, the ability to submit links with references etc but we all know how it would turn out. A complete shitshow of spam, libellous comments and junk. Much like I expect a crowd based site voting on fellow humans who happen to work for media companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> A nice start. However, there seems to be plenty of room for improvement. You seem to have "Founded Own Company" set to "No" for everyone. Perhaps that field is not actually getting pulled from your database?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I was supposed to be working today and it's just a piece of fun based on the news so thought I should draw a line under it rather than improving for ever! You're right tho, I misread the dataset - it's year company founded, not boolean yes/ no, will amend now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I scrolled through the first 4 people and saw 2 Bill Gates' profiles... Maybe some moderation would help?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, all dupes have now been merged :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is pretty amusing. But where is Musk?

<comment><AUTHOR> He was languishing near the bottom, looking young and unhealthy, so I've bumped up his net worth to the most current figure and stuck him to the top :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Pravda for the People

Is there a reason you're associating yourself with the propaganda arm of mass murderer, Joseph Stalin?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a reference to Elon Musk wanting to rate journalists for 'credibility' on a site he's going to call Pravda. I agree, stupid choice of name..</comment></comment>


TCP connections reuse in Firefox 5 and related performance improvements - <AUTHOR> http://blog.httpwatch.com/2011/06/10/investigating-the-network-performance-of-firefox-5/

<comment><USER2> The TCP window is calculated after some sending activity. It reflects the amount of data that can be transmitted in one shot without hurting other TCP flows at the bottleneck.

Reusing TCP windows after a while does not reflect the actual state of the network as things would have changed. In fact, there have been proposals about CWND reset[1] that adress this issue.

[2] <http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2861.txt></comment>


Ask HN: Should I learn Linear Algebra? Why? - <AUTHOR> Broad question by design, I think it would be cool and helpful to see what reasons people have to learn linear algebra. <comment><USER2> Computer Graphics; Data Science; and ML/AI are your obvious ones. Most engineers can benefit from it, because all you're doing is modelling systems; take a look at how Spice programs model electrical circuits as an example of this. There's a lot of math that needs an understanding of vector spaces to grasp the concepts. Most Lin Alg books and courses that are more geared towards graduate level students (so folks with the basic lin alg info under their belt) work on generalization, and it directly leads to some interesting applications in probability, graph theory, number theory, and a whole host of other more advanced topics. There's even whole programs built around solving things from a linear algebra perspective (see MatLab for example)

Linear algebra is just a tool that fits nicely in a lot of computer science and various engineering toolboxes.

</comment><comment><USER3> For the everyday developer messing with data, there are some nice concepts to know.

I'm talking super basic like when is it useful to transpose a dataset, to apply some function, then transpose back?

Being congnizant of the data-shape is something that comes as a side effect of studying linalg and matrices.

Just recognizing things like that will be the most value add unless you get into some domain specific requirements (games/engineering software).

</comment><comment><USER4> Here's a fun problem which can be solved by linear algebra.

You have a group of 20 people. Each of them rates how much they like everyone else, on a scale of 1 to 10. Your task is to figure out how popular everyone is, again on a scale from 1 to 10. Someone's "popularity" is based on how much the other kids like them, except the cool kids' opinion count more. You're popular if the popular people like you.

Can you mathematically compute how popular everyone is? Is the solution unique? Or might there be more than one solution? The problem seems hopelessly circular -- you have to figure out who is popular before you can figure out who is popular -- but actually it turns out to be a standard linear algebra problem.

<comment><USER5> Ooh that's cool - can you elaborate on the solution?

<comment><USER4> Suppose that the popularities of everyone are p_1, p_2, through p_20. Then, if you write "~" for "is proportional to", you get a bunch of equations like

0p_1 + 8p_2 + 4p_3 + ... + 4p_20 ~ p_1

7p_2 + 0p_2 + 7p_3 + ... + 9p_20 ~ p_2

...

if you assume that Person #1 is rated 8 by Person #2, 4 by Person #3, and so on, and that nobody rates themselves.

Anyway, you can combine these into a matrix equation

Mv = cv

where M is the matrix with all the popularity ratings that students give each other, v is a vector which says how popular everyone is, and c is a constant. M is known, and you have to solve it for v and c.

Anyway, v is an _eigenvector_ of the matrix M, and finding them is a standard problem.

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

The same idea shows up all over the place in linear algebra.

<comment><USER6> I still can't grasp the concept of eigenvalues and eigenvectors, any references that have good and intuitive explanations, thanks

<comment><USER7> The videos of 3blue1brown are very good:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFDu9oVAE-g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFDu9oVAE-g)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you want to do ML/AI or scientific computing then it's a pretty useful skill to have.</comment>


Elizabeth Warren puts a giant tech breakup billboard in San Francisco's face - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/29/18644590/elizabeth-warren-break-up-big-tech-billboard-amazon-facebook-apple-google <comment><USER2> > Her proposal also includes a plan to pass legislation that would prohibit > platform owners with more than $25 billion in revenue to participate on > their platforms as well. This policy would largely affect companies like > Amazon that both run a sales platform and sell their own products on the > site.

Seems like this proposal is essentially just anti-trust legislation. I'm all for it. What I particularly like about it is that she's demonstrating her commitment to the citizenry, not to the Democratic party. She's not only going after coal companies or traditional (R) strongholds. She's taking on tech, a left-leaning industry, too. This is the type of bipartisanship I think we need to see in candidates and politicians.

<comment><USER3> I wonder if that would forbid Comcast from using their internet

<comment><USER4> I really do hope we don't end up with an internet connection counting as a platform.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Her policies that are on the news are breaking up Google and reducing income inequality.

Both are dubious and shouldn't be her first priorities.

I can elaborate:

1\. Breaking up Google doesn't sound like the biggest problem right now. How about Comcast? How about Equifax? Those are monopolies and act in bad faith. Why is Google the top of her list?

2\. Income inequality is not an important goal. I don't care if Bezos has 100 trillion dollars. I want affordable healthcare, education and a good life.

It makes me feel reluctant to vote for her.

<comment><USER6> Other real monopolies that actually technically meet the definition of monopolies have needed attention for years and she decides to go after a web search engine.

<comment><USER7> Google ceased to be a "web search engine" over fifteen years ago.

Life as we know it depends on Google's products and services more than we ever did on Microsoft. They have Search, OS, Browser, Device and Service under one brand. Not to mention analytics and advertising on those properties and systems.

Taking advantage of that position at the expense of participants/customers is wrong and should be prevented.

That's what monopoly busting is about - AT&T, MSFT, Alphabet/Google, makes no difference.

You can apply the same principles to health care, credit and for profit colleges. She does.

<comment><USER5> Her billboard only focuses on big tech. Her priority is, at best, dubious.

<comment><USER7> One issue per billboard is a pretty fine ratio in my view.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This will lead to some interesting discussions during election campaigns...

<comment><USER9> This is the kind of shit that Democrats focus on that loses elections. Why is this a big campaign issue? Why not break up Walmart while we're at it?

<comment><USER10> > Why is this a big campaign issue?

It's a big campaign issue (for Warren, and simultaneously not really a big campaign issue otherwise) because Warren is far behind the leading candidates, in a distant third or fourth place depending on the poll, so she's trying to use big concrete policy proposals like this to gain traction.

> Why not break up Walmart while we're at it?

She has other policies that would target Walmart, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> While hosting her email on Google apps. [https://securitytrails.com/domain/Elizabethwarren.com/dns](https://securitytrails.com/domain/Elizabethwarren.com/dns)

<comment><USER12> What's your point?

<comment><USER9> If she breaks up Google Search and Gmail, and Google decides to shut down gmail, she'll not have an email service and lose all her email.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, because Google would totally shut it down overnight without any warning</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Sept. 24, 1993: Beautiful 'Myst' Ushers In Era of CD-ROM Gaming - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2008/09/sept-24-1993-beautiful-myst-ushers-in-era-of-cd-rom-gaming/

<comment><USER2> According to this,

[http://mystonline.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=16869&sid=5...](http://mystonline.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=16869&sid=5c68d0b545a8d760e6c102661bccadda)

Myst was created on a Mac, and the first release platform was Mac. The game engine was Apple's Hypercard. The then-stunning 3D graphics were designed using Strata Studio Pro (never heard of it); this product it's still alive as Strata 3D CX:

<http://www.strata.com>

Later versions were modeled in 3DSMax.

</comment><comment><USER3> Bought the iphone version a week ago, to kill some time on a long plane trip. I knew the game by reputation but never played it. I wasn't disappointed. The graphics are a bit dated but the game looks fun and challenging (haven't got very far yet)

Myst on the iTunes store: [http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftwa...](http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=311941991&mt=8)

<comment><USER4> I find it hilarious that I am in the process of re-creating pages of notes when I know full well that an exact replica of these same notes sit somewhere in my mother's basement. fifteen years is just about the right amount of time where I have a sense of intense familiarity as I wander about solving the puzzles, but is long enough ago that I don't remember the solutions instantly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is going to end up a Myst reminiscence thread, but what's so wrong with that...?

Myst was the first game my mum really got into. I tried introducing her to a few of the games I played (as she showed interest) but nothing grabbed her until the beautiful scenery, bizarre puzzles and entrancing world of Myst. I still clearly remember that eerie feeling you got of being the only person there, while this whole universe existed around you...

</comment><comment><USER6> Myst was great because it strove for organic puzzles which the 7th guest and their ilk didn't quite achieve. I think that they achieved it in Riven (Myst 2) which was by far the best game in the series, and I would consider to be one of the best games of all time.

</comment><comment><USER7> Long live Hypercard. My first exposure (Macintosh SE)

Check out this unique yet subversive 1994 press release from Rand and Robyn Miller:

<http://www.wordyard.com/dmz/mail.html>

<comment><USER8> That was what I used to build my first point and click game in. __misty eyes __

It was so much like javascript and html are today

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What about The Seventh Guest? Beat Myst by five months. Just sayin.

<comment><USER10> I liked them both but Myst was better in my eyes. Myst had a more cohesive storyline instead of a bunch of disjoint puzzles held together buy a weak story. This is not to say that The 7th Guest was not groundbreaking and great for it's time because it was.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Myst was one of the first computer games I played as a kid and I still remember being in awe of it, so much so that my cousin and I dreamed up this scheme for a similar game called "Omega". I still have hundreds of pages of notes and drawings for the environments, puzzles, characters, etc.

</comment><comment><USER12> I loved myst! Does anybody know if there is a way to play it (or the even better sequel, Riven) on modern computers?

</comment><comment><USER13> Still to me one of the best games ever created...</comment>


Show HN: Moneyed – be your own financial adviser – built with Quart and React - <AUTHOR> https://moneyed.co.uk/app/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi Hacker News,

I've reached an age now where I need to start thinking about my retirement, in addition to buying a house, saving for a wedding, starting a family, affording to pay for childcare, amongst other things. Frustratingly, it is really hard to know if I'm saving enough, or even how much I should be aiming to save. The best tools to solve my problem model cash flows and are only available through expensive financial advisors. I've built Moneyed to solve my own, and many other people's, problem.

Moneyed, at the core, takes into account personalised financial goals and models cash flows i.e. the growth of assets, savings rates, and spending. Difficulties arise in the details, especially taking into account tax rules, and building a plan that is fully optimised (i.e. one where you minimise the amount you save whilst still being tax efficient and meeting your goals).

Moneyed also utilises Open Banking to give a full financial overview (UK current accounts, credit cards, savings, investments, pensions), to understand current spending, and to make it easy to know if you're on track.

The backend of the app is built in Quart, an async version of Flask (Python), and utilises React for the frontend. The site also uses Quart for the backend but uses Svelte for the frontend. I'm the author of Quart, so it is an obvious choice for me. As for the frontend, React works really well for the app given the complexity, but I find it too heavy for the site. Fortunately Svelte exists, which I think is perfect for the site.

To build an optimised financial plan, we're implementing SciPy's minimize function as it enables us to model both linear and non-linear constraints and is relatively quick to solve (provided the initial first guess is good). We're planning on leveraging more data science techniques: building a recommender engine to help people decide where to save/invest and cohort analysis to give for social validation and insights.

As for our go-to-market, we're targeting young professionals working in tech as part of their employer's benefits and wellbeing strategy as this enables us to create a "trigger" to get people thinking about their financial future.</comment>


Deutsche Bank Bans Text Messages, WhatsApp on Company Phones - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-13/deutsche-bank-is-banning-text-messages-on-company-issued-phones <comment><USER2> Wait, you mean bank employees could previously install random apps on their phones?</comment>


Ask HN: Connecting with other developers on side projects? - <AUTHOR> Would anyone be interested in a site to connect with other developers based on common interest in topics as well as programming languages? The purpose being to find people to work on side projects with.<p>Anything like this already exist? If so, what's your experience with it? <comment><USER2> Used to peruse this every now and again, been a few years, [https://builditwith.me](https://builditwith.me)

A hn user also launched [http://www.weekendhacker.net](http://www.weekendhacker.net) which got a bit of traction at the time.

You have also reminded me of the Startup or Shutup thread someone started in 2012.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3394844](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3394844)

Some of the discussion is here...

[https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!forum/startup-or-shut- up](https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!forum/startup-or-shut-up)

I recall the live document linked in the hn thread having activity at the time too but its not working anymore.

</comment><comment><USER3> There is a portal for connecting startup CoFounders. [http://www.cofounderslab.com](http://www.cofounderslab.com) While this portals connects anyone with inclination towards startup, you might also find enthusiast developers for your side project.(which can later turn into a startup if you are interested)

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes, I would be interested.

It could be a nice idea to let users add topics they are interested in building something for. Then, when someone else have the same interests, send out an email.

For example. I am working on an iOS application about the Thai language. And it would be awesome to find someone else interested in it. But it feels strange to ask about either one in forums related to either one.

</comment><comment><USER5> This idea sounds like it would devolve into an advertising board of weekend projects really fast. Which might not be that bad.

</comment><comment><USER6> There's [https://www.indiehackers.com](https://www.indiehackers.com), which is pretty popular. They have a relatively active forum (even though it could use some work as a lot of good discussions can go unnoticed), plus founder interviews and a good podcast.

</comment><comment><USER7> Yeah, would be interesting if you could somehow make it easy to figure out who would make a good fit.

</comment><comment><USER8> I would

</comment><comment><USER9> I would</comment>


Pythagorean Cup: Practical Joke Chalice Overflows with Ancient Greek Humor - <AUTHOR> http://99percentinvisible.org/article/pythagorean-cup-practical-joke-chalice-overflows-ancient-greek-humor/ <comment><USER2> Cliff Stoll has a page about this. He calls it a Cup of Tantalus and it's part of his Klein Bottle collection. Makes for a fun gift for geeks.

[http://www.kleinbottle.com/Tantalus.html](http://www.kleinbottle.com/Tantalus.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> In respect of the greeks, this is one cheap souvenir that can actually provide timeless merriment. I have a few made of burnt clay that are souvenirs from decades ago and still there are new people who can delightfully be educated on the principles of these wonderfull devices.

<comment><USER4> Wouldn't it actually be very annoying to have to mop and/or clean things every time?

<comment><USER3> Some houses are equipped with sinks, bathubs, etc :)

<comment><USER4> Ah yes, the old "Here's your completely ordinary cup of wine. Please drink it over the sink for no particular reason" gag. Gets them every time! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> With respect to "drinking normally" when the cup is filled below the siphoning point: if you drink by tipping the cup towards the drain pipe, wouldn't that engage the siphon?

<comment><USER6> The drain pipe is as close to the center as possible. When you tilt a cylinder half full of water, the point at the center remains at the same height. Considering the cups are slightly wider at the top than the bottom, it can hold more liquid when tilted, so the height at the center would be a bit lower.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here's a neat 4 min video demonstrating how the cup works & how to "beat" it with mercury: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISfIT3B4y6E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISfIT3B4y6E)

</comment><comment><USER8> Neat. It's like a tiny toilet.

<comment><USER9> Self flushing urinals used to work this way. The tank above the urinal was filled at a constant rate, and would discharge when the level ran over the top of the siphon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I remember this cup. I also remember thinking Those both greedy and smart could have simply plugged the hole with their finger and all is good.

Pythagoras should have given his students smaller normal cups because, if we go Machiavellian for a moment, people are unscrupulous and will plug the hole, therefore a smaller cup will be more effective. And limited servings.

<comment><USER11> You can make this harder by providing multiple small holes all over the bottom of the cup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is how toilets work.

</comment><comment><USER13> Anywhere to buy one cheaply?

<comment><USER14> 3D print one?

<comment><USER11> 3D printing stuff that's foodsafe is nontrivial. You not only need a material that is not directly harmful (in temperatures it will be used in), but also most 3d printed surfaces will not be smooth. This makes them very hard to properly clean (especially the parts of such a cup that wouldn't be reachable), which causes biological problems (bacteria and mold growing there).

Whatever material such a cup was made out of, I'd've wanted to be able to dismantle it for cleaning, which lessens the advantage of 3d printing over more traditional fabrication techniques.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Also like Soxhlet extractors. That is the coolest chemistry glassware.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'd encourage anyone to read up on Pythagoras. He was a really weird guy who held some inane beliefs and superstitions. Also a cult leader.

<comment><USER17> I don't think we can know what he really believed or if he existed at all. He's a semi-mythical figure and there are no contemporary accounts of him.</comment></comment>