James Mickens' USENIX Speech [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajGX7odA87k <comment><USER2> Mickens is brilliant. His style may be polarizing, but he has insight and makes good points.

Talks like this are a nice counterbalance to the most upvoted viewpoints expressed here a couple of days ago [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18516177](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18516177) where people view their skills only as a way to make money and basically do not care how it is done or how safe it is. How many money makers are running around right now preaching these stupid ideas just to make money without even considering the real life implications their selfish actions will have on millions of people. It's downright terrifying. Technical excellence matters.

</comment><comment><USER3> Do yourself a favor and watch the video of the talk instead (the link is at the top of the transcript). Mickens is a hilarious and captivating speaker, and a mere transcript of his talk doesn't convey that experience.

<comment><USER4> It's also slightly wrong, and needs some proofreading.

Example:

      > Get at.

That's not what he says at the 24 second mark. If you can't get the first 30 seconds of an hour-long transcript right, why should I read on?

(btw, I get that it was an automated transcript [[http://temi.com](http://temi.com)], and has some OCR-like errors, which is apropos, considering the context of the speech)

<comment><USER5> The best part is that this "Audio to Text" transcription service says on its web page:

Proprietary algorithm

Built by our machine learning and speech recognition experts.

<comment><USER6> Who are experts in learning new machines and can nearly always recognise speech, but generally prefer email.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It just so happens it's the same James Mickens who wrote the Night Watch! What are the odds!

[https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1311_05-08_mickens.pdf](https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1311_05-08_mickens.pdf)

<comment><USER8> ... and many more Usenix writings, pretty much all of which are laugh-out-loud hilarious.

<comment><USER9> Links to those, and other videos of talks he's done, are available here: [https://mickens.seas.harvard.edu/wisdom-james- mickens](https://mickens.seas.harvard.edu/wisdom-james-mickens)

For anyone who isn't familiar with him, you should definitely check them out.

<comment><USER10> All of his talks are incredibly good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's _Partick_ Thistle, not Patrick Thistle, Kingsely's gonna be right steamin'.

<comment><USER11> James better start running.

<comment><USER6> Kingsley will have found out pretty quickly too as he follows all the latest developments in machine learning. One of the few luxuries allowed into Kingsleys's padded storage cell is a workstation packed with GPUs that Kingsley tests the latest algorithms on, in order to calculate his ideal fantasy-football team.

Edit - Mickens will have called Partick 'Patrick' on purpose, of course. He's been gunning for Kingsley for a while now, as James is a long time supporter of Dunfermline Athletic.

<comment><USER11> > starbeast

Yellow, pointy... Oh shit.

<comment><USER6> Nahh, wrong starbeast. I'm more of a lummox. [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/175328.The_Star_Beast](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/175328.The_Star_Beast)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Found the format a bit distracting to read, so cleaned it up a bit (removing Speaker 1 ... etc) - [https://pastebin.com/5nvvxSWB](https://pastebin.com/5nvvxSWB)

</comment><comment><USER13> Mmmh, that face looks familiar. He used to work at Microsoft, right? I remember reading a couple of his blog posts, and they as funny as they were interesting.

But he is so much better in person.

<comment><USER14> > He used to work at Microsoft, right?

Yes, same guy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> What a great talk. He brings up a lot of very important points that we all in tech need to consider and keep in mind.

</comment><comment><USER16> Transcript:

[http://www.zachpfeffer.com/single- post/2018/11/27/Transcript...](http://www.zachpfeffer.com/single- post/2018/11/27/Transcript-of-James-Mickens-USENIX-Speech)

</comment><comment><USER17> I love his work! Here's his page at Harvard that collects all of it: [https://mickens.seas.harvard.edu/wisdom-james- mickens](https://mickens.seas.harvard.edu/wisdom-james-mickens)

</comment><comment><USER18> Previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17785162](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17785162).

</comment><comment><USER19> God help Gritty when Mickens finds out about him.

</comment><comment><USER20> I hope he can make some better life choices.

</comment><comment><USER21> The speech: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajGX7odA87k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajGX7odA87k)</comment>


Apple Has $51 Billion and a Shopping List. Is Facebook On It? - <AUTHOR> http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20101018/live-apple-earnings-call-2/

<comment><USER2> List of mergers and acquisitions by Apple: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisition...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Apple)

Looks like they go after companies mainly for talent and IP. Facebook's biggest asset is their network effect and 500M eyeballs, not the software or talent, though I'm sure they have a lot of talent. Now that they are designing their own chips, after the PA Semi and Intrinsity buys, maybe silicon would fit the bill as a big aquisition for them - AMD (4.7B) or Nvidia (6.5B).

<comment><USER3> I could easily see Apple wanting to buy or closely partner with AMD in a few years, if things go well for AMD. Certainly, their graphics business is going quite well these days, but the future of their CPU products is uncertain. If both their Bobcat and Bulldozer architectures are successful, then Apple might well be willing to risk alienating Intel. (Not that Intel has been showing any sign that they care if they alienate Apple.)

There would still be the problem that AMD always lags behind Intel in fab technology, which is why they have trouble going after the highest-performance and lowest-power segments. No matter how much cash you have on hand, there's no quick fix for that. At least with Intel CPUs, Apple products can generally match the performance of any competitor, and any price premium can be attributed to the better industrial design, integration, and software. If Apple switched to AMD processors, most of their computers would now be afflicted by a performance deficit in addition to the existing "Apple tax".

NVidia doesn't seem like a tantalizing acquisition for anybody except perhaps Intel, if they can admit that they don't know how to make a good GPU. NVidia has been mostly squeezed out of the chipset and integrated graphics markets by Intel's shady tactics and the awkwardness of AMD now owning ATI, and the discrete graphics war hasn't been going well for NVidia for quite some time, with no respite in sight. (This month, AMD will be releasing their third consecutive generation of GPUs that soundly beat the competition in price/performance comparisons at most price points. NVidia can't really do anything about it in the short term, because their chips are simply bigger for the same performance, so their profit margins are lower. They've been trying to mitigate this by focusing on HPC, but that's not catching on quickly enough, either.)

<comment><USER4> "If Apple switched to AMD processors, most of their computers would now be afflicted by a performance deficit in addition to the existing "Apple tax"."

Apple could potentially transition parts of its line to AMD processors, without completely abandoning Intel.

It seems likely that Sandy Bridge will be the CPU of choice for workstations, while Bulldozer will be the throughput winner (hence server oriented), and Bobcat the performance/watt featherweight. Of course, none of this is certain until the actual products are available.

Bobcat might not have the performance to match up to Sandy Bridge, but having an AMD/ATI graphics processor could potentially make it a good choice for a souped up AppleTV product aimed a little higher. Ok, quite a bit higher. Serious 3D gaming higher. And I'm pretty sure that AMD would LOVE a design win like that!

The competition from AMD plus the the narrowing margins in CPU's is part of what's leading AMD and Intel toward system on a chip solutions, but although that's bad for the likes of nVidia, it's good for OEM's like Apple.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> By my calculations they could buy the following companies for cash at a 20% markup to become totally vertically integrated on a scale not seen since the days of Standard Oil:

ARM - Market cap 8.3B

CableVision - Market cap 8.13B

EA - Market cap 5.21B

Netflix - Market cap 8.01B

Sprint - Market cap 13.64B

Of course it will never happen but it's fun to think about.

<comment><USER6> I really think they should buy ARM. People say there would be a conflict, but ARM licenses architecture and designs, rather than selling chips, and the existing licensees would surely continue, and there's nothing stopping apple from selling new licenses. But having the ARM design team available to task for custom designs for apple (to be licensed as well to others, or not) would be worth about $8B, in my opinion. (given the size of the iOS market already.)

The rest of those are bad choices for Apple. Apple is what it is because it focuses. I think none of those companies are in Apple's focus.

However, Apple could buy Clearwire- Clearwire has very valuable spectrum licenses in the USA. This might be justified, but since Apple is a global business, it isn't a slam dunk, as whoever controls WiMax spectrum internationally would need to be contended with. On the third hand, they could use that spectrum to create their own LTE network in the USA, and still have enough spectrum on the side to create a parallel high bandwidth data-only network.

Hmmm.... Clearwire's market cap is $1.6B. They might need to buy sprint too (and then spin out the telecom business) to get full rights to the clearwire spectrum. (not sure about what the agreement is.)

Netflix is a great company with great management. But the streaming rights won't transfer thru an acquisition, I'm pretty sure. However, giving netflix a spot in the iTunes ecosystem seems like a good deal, maybe take an equity stake in the process, sure.

EA- no need to buy them, balloons headcount, very different business. EA will either put out the apps for Apple's devices, or other companies will beat them to it. Apple's in a strong position.

I'm not sure about Cablevision.

I think Apple should buy Adobe, though. I'm sure they still have some talent left, and owning what's left of the desktop software market would be good for Apple.... but that is a "mac primacy" play, and I think Steve and the rest of Apple is focused on iOS exclusively, so I'm sure they won't buy Adobe.

PS-- I realize your point was that they have the capital to buy all those companies if they wanted to, but I'm looking at it as a shopping list.

I'm pretty certain Apple has plans for the $51B. They could spend some of it buying back their stock, or as a dividend, but both of those are non-growth company strategies, essentially giving the money to investors and saying they can't manage it well.

I think Apple has its eye on some very big opportunities.

I think one of those opportunities is putting $10B-$20B into a vertically integrated automated manufacturing facility.

They cannot continue to scale their business on the backs of foxconn. At some point, this is becomes the biggest inefficiency, even though Chinese labor is inexpensive, it won't always be, and when it becomes as expensive as korea or singapore or even japan, where will foxconn move?

I think pure automation is the solution. Foxconn needs to be able to build anything, Apple just needs to build the products it desgins. There is a position to squeeze a lot of cost out.

And the other argument? Apple did it before. The Macintosh factory was a wonder of its age, and extremely automated. IT was designed along with the macintosh.

I think Apple is learning from foxconn, but eventually will need to build their own manufacturing base. Simply because you cannot keep doubling your device numbers forever.... foxconn will still build a lot of stuff for apple, but I'm waiting for Apple to take over a chunk of it.

<comment><USER3> Apple already has CPU design teams, from their acquisitions of Intrinsity (designers of what's now known as the Apple A4), and PA Semi. The Intrinsity acquisition in particular should have guaranteed that Apple has full licenses to all ARM tech (though given Apple's history with ARM, they probably already did). Since they've already got one of the best ARM design teams around, and a bunch of other experienced CPU designers, they probably wouldn't gain much from ARM itself. It certainly wouldn't be worth the trouble of getting the deal through regulators.

<comment><USER7> I'm still waiting to see PA Semi put to work though. We've seen Intrinsity's marks on the A4, but still nothing smelling like PA Semi stuff. It's annoying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _We know if we need to acquire something – a piece of the puzzle to make something big and bold – we can write a check for it and not borrow a lot of money and put our whole company at risk... The cash in the bank gives us tremendous security and flexibility..._

 _You never know what opportunities are going to be around the next corner. We are a large enough business now that, in order to really move the needle, we have to be thinking pretty bold -- pretty large._

\--Steve Jobs

</comment><comment><USER9> I really don't see Apple buying Facebook. It's just too far away from what Apple does best.

Unless they're planning on buying Wal-Mart, they probably will end up dividending pretty soon. There's nothing better to do with that much money.

<comment><USER10> _I really don't see Apple buying Facebook. It's just too far away from what Apple does best._

I can't say your opinion isn't rational, but.. Apple is weird. The iPod was far away from what Apple _did_ best too. As was the iPhone. As was the iPad. I admit, they're all at least hardware, but Apple is pretty diverse and I can at least _imagine_ them taking such a leap (see Logic, iTunes, iWork for software examples).

<comment><USER9> The iPod maybe, the other two not at all. Apple saw that iPods were going to be subsumed by phones so they made a phone that was the best iPod ever. They saw the notebook market was going to be cannibalized by the low end so they took that over.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Speaking as a former Apple employee, let me answer TFA:

No.

</comment><comment><USER12> There's a decent chance they'd buy ARM Holdings ($8.4B).

They could bring the processor design in-house. ARM chips already power all the IOS devices and could also power their server farms. They could also be planning for iOS/ARM systems to eventually replace their entire desktop and laptop lines.

<comment><USER13> ARM started out as a joint venture between Apple and Acorn. They would not be able to stop producing chips for other companies, so why would they do that? They already get everything out of ARM that they want, there would be very little benefit to this.

<comment><USER12> You're right, it may not be necessary. But there is speculation that ARM is on sale and Apple could be planning to expand beyond their current markets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Maybe Avid, although there might be some antitrust issues.

Possibly Quark, to ramp up a full publishing assault against Adobe.

Or maybe even Adobe as a defensive move against Microsoft.

</comment><comment><USER15> Why not wait a few more years and buy Disney? There's a relationship there, and it gets them a whole range from content providers to broadcasters.

<comment><USER16> I don't think Apple is interested in Disney. But a company that fits Apple and their revenue streams is Spotify. Many similarities between the companies as well, with focus on design and user experience rather than features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't know the figures of running a telecom but buying a carrier would make a lot of sense. There is a lot of Apple-cash that's being pumped into AT&T.

I've thought that would make sense for Google to do but it would presumably alienate the other carriers and destabilise Android. Apple however doesn't have any such conflicts.

I don't see them wanting to buy Facebook and moreover I can't possibly see Facebook selling to Apple. Their ideologies and goals are far too different.

<comment><USER18> Apple is not going to buy a mobile phone carrier. They are interested in a product or service that they can shutdown and relaunch into an Apple product as quickly as possible.

Mobile phone companies are not a unique market for Apple that can be i-stamped and sold. All carriers support competitor's products which cannot be easily removed.

<comment><USER17> Maybe but when they announce iTunes in the cloud there's going to be a massive youth sector for whom mobile access will be a killer feature and who won't be able to get it affordably or reliably from the current carriers.

If Apple were to buy a carrier they could relaunch it with dataplans focussed on kids and transition a massive younger section of the market across to them.

Ten years later that youth market grows up to become the adult market and all of a sudden Apple dominates the carriers too.

<comment><USER18> Apple is not known for affordable products, nor can they magic a phone carrier towards reliability.

AT&T is a massive company that cannot "relaunch" due to contractual obligations. Even if they did, carriers already offer "kid friendly" plans - unlimited data/text that Mommy and Daddy can pay for.

So the kids transition toward adulthood and iAT&T transitions back towards their successful business model of offering plans for everyone?

<comment><USER17> Your point about reliability is fair although doubling the capitalisation of a carrier would make a significant dent. However I think you overestimate the inertia of the status quo.

1\. Apple doesn't need to relaunch AT&T, Sprint or any other network it simply launches a supplementary branded network like Virgin mobile.

2\. The current unlimited data plans are only unlimited in the face of limited data utility. Where people can use massive amounts of data (i.e. the iPhone), unlimited comes at a premium.

3\. Although Apple is revered for its high end products its iOS marketshare is 41% iPod touch and most of its device sales come from low end products like the iPod touch and the nano. It's now no stranger to mass market affordability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Ludicrous. FB would be a terrible investment for Apple. It doesn't match their business at all.

They'll pursue more vertical integration in their hardware and network businesses.

</comment><comment><USER20> The Blofeld option: wait until they have $100B, buy Verizon, cancel Droid. =)

What they will do: start buying web/cloud companies so that they can offer a credible set of online services to complement the iOS devices. Apple prides itself on an 'integrated experience', but right now that implies an iOS device paired with a PC. I expect them to eventually offer a broader, more Googlian set of online services with tight iOS integration.

</comment><comment><USER21> It makes no sense to me. If Apple thought Facebook's terms for Ping integration were unreasonable, the terms of a deal would likely be even more disagreeable. But even that aside, look at where Apple lacks control currently. They would likely want to plug a shortcoming there. The two places that leap to mind are manufacturing and wireless service. Jobs must be so annoyed that they have to depend on contract manufacturing. One of the primary reasons they didn't move more product this quarter was supply. The Apple of old did a lot of their own manufacturing. Likewise, dealing with wireless network providers has got to be a drag. But buying Clear or Sprint doesn't help internationally as others point out.

</comment><comment><USER22> What about Nintendo? Same color scheme, gets them in the gaming console business.

<comment><USER23> Not likely. Bill Gates offered 'name your price' and a golden pony to them, but old Yamauchi declined the sale. Apparently, japanese companies tied to national identity are impossible to buy (for foreigners at least).

<comment><USER24> link? i'd love to see the journalism on this.

<comment><USER23> I remember this: [http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1027928/how- nintend...](http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1027928/how-nintendo- boss-silenced-steve-ballmer) it's humorous, but not true - although it was widely reported.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Tivo? Hmm, that's just a rounding error ($1B) for Apple's cash balance.

Netflix? Quite affordable: $8B.

</comment><comment><USER26> No.

</comment><comment><USER27> Fun to speculate, maybe clearwire? Or enter a new market and buy whirlpool and make iMicrowaves?

<comment><USER28> i realize iMicrowave is a joke, but honestly its brilliant. Imagine a line of custom kitchen appliances running iOS. Apps for your oven.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> no one is going to buy facebook because anyone with enough money to offer a deal that zuckerberg would accept is smart enough to know that it isn't worth that much

</comment><comment><USER30> That would be one method of solving the Facebook/Ping conflict.

</comment><comment><USER31> Could they get into the car industry?

<comment><USER24> (jk, but) Apple buying Tesla, would be bold, big and .... very interesting. BMW would shit their pants. Which would you rather have, an Apple Power Roadster, or an M5?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to not share anything personal with screen sharing apps? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking for tutors online to learn to front end dev/programming from and I was wondering how to stay safe and not accidentally or non-accidentally share more that what needs to be shared.<p>Are there any screen sharing apps that are more geared towards maintaining privacy? <comment><USER2> What exactly do you not want to share? Is this solely a concern you will leak visible information on your desktop, browser, etc? Or do you have deeper concerns about the communication channel and security etc?

I'd suggest using an audio call (phone, Skype, Google Hangout) and a code pad that is synced in realtime (free ones exist like collabedit.com). In other words, don't share your screen, share your voice.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm concerned about both.

<comment><USER2> Create a "fake" Gmail account that is not linked to anything personal.

Use a fake name/alias. Sign up for something like Cloud9 ([https://c9.io](https://c9.io)) or use another synced editor like collabedit or even Google Docs (make sure to use the fake gmail account and not your own).

Sign up for Skype with the fake gmail account and fill out the details like you did on the fake gmail account.

Then sync up with someone online using audio only and using the synced editor of your choice.

You will leak your IP information most likely so they could figure out in what vicinity you live, but you could setup a proxy if you wanted even more security to hide your location.

As long as you're not hiding from any three letter agencies this is probably more than enough.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hard work vs. Long work (2011) - <AUTHOR> https://seths.blog/2011/05/hard-work-vs-long-work/ <comment><USER3> I like this, but also on some level I feel like it's nothing more than inspirational "rah-rah" garbage.

I wish he would have expanded on it.

A great example of the distinction from my younger days:

We had the game GranTurismo2 back when I was 12 or so.

We wanted the really fancy "best" car in the game.

The right way to get the good cars is to improve your skill and gain access to the higher level races that have bigger prizes.

That's the "hard work" part.

What we did instead was do one of the easy races over and over and over again for a couple days until we had enough saved up in the game to buy the car.

That's "long work"

It's stupid and boring and no fun.

If you want a fulfilling life, go for the "hard work".

Which I guess is also just a stupid "rah-rah" inspirational quip.

<comment><USER4> There was an MMO game called "Kingdom of Loathing" I played back in 2006.

The right way to get more money in the game is to improve your skills/equipment and gain access to the higher level areas that have bigger monsters/better loot. (hard work)

What we did instead was manually create hundreds of new accounts, complete the tutorial level and then send the tutorial prize to the main account for selling on the open market (long work).

Eventually I figured out how to create an "autoit" script that automated the process of creating a new account, completing the tutorial, and then sending the goods over to the main account. The main account was getting very wealthy, but I should have known I needed to launder the ill-gotten gains somehow because an admin (Multi Czar) eventually caught on and all the accounts (including the main one) got banned.

<comment><USER5> So does coding bots to do the long work for you count as hard work or long work? Because that's the kind of work I've always preferred.

<comment><USER6> Hard work takes over and replaces long work when innovation, new skills and modalities are center stage and repetitive tasks take a back seat. I'd consider any form of automation hard work.

<comment><USER7> Relevant xkcd: [https://xkcd.com/1319/](https://xkcd.com/1319/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a useful distinction, but it this misses what's actually hard about "hard work." The risk of failure is only 20% of the issue.

What's central is the fact that do hard work well, you need to temporarily tear apart the solution-forming systems that have served you adequately so far -- and put them back together in a different way. In the midst of this, there's genuine discomfort and nausea. Even if you know you'll eventually get it right, having everything in pieces on the floor is very jarring.

Finding your way through a lot of missteps, near misses and roadblocks takes a special sort of perseverance. I've done this long enough in my work that I get mordant joy from tracking the misses. Versions 2, 2A, 2B and 2C were dead- ends. It's on to Versions 3, 3A, etc.

Usually version 4E or so gets the job done. And it's elegant and I'm happy again. I had one epic struggle that went into the 7s. I ended up cracking it in a borrowed lab in Arizona, because the usual settings in NYC and CT were not getting me there.

Being patient and persistent at times like that is hard.

<comment><USER9> It is hard. After a few times around, you start to recognize the dreaded feeling. But then you realize you are closer to the other side than the way back and press on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This makes me think of war time vs peace time. During a war, the govt will put engineers and architects into an R&D incubator with all the resources they need. To the engineers, the fact that there is a war is irrelevant, they aren't paying attention to that, they're just focussing on innovation because it's their job.

Couldn't this scenario be simulated, even without war? I think of bell labs.

It strange that innovative environments, filled with hard work, aren't a priority until its a matter of life or death (of a company, nations, etc.)

Related movie by studio Ghibli (engineers innovating during war time): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wind_Rises](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wind_Rises)

<comment><USER11> If a department is doing well, or even just fair, it will do everything it possibly can to prevent any sort of innovation. When innovation happens, new rules and safeguards are put into place to make sure it doesn't happen again. Of course they'll keep talking about how innovation is very important and rewarded all the while they're stamping it out.

Innovation is a rebellious act which is why it typically only happens in small startup environments. Occasionally a larger company will set up a "skunkworks" where it can be temporarily tolerated by hiding it from the view of the rest of the organization.

<comment><USER12> This is a remarkably myopic view of innovation that completely ignores the roles of government, research institutions and yes, large companies, in a huge chunk of all the innovations of the last 120 years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> >Hard work is frightening. We shy away from hard work because inherent in hard work is risk. Hard work is hard because you might fail. You can't fail at long work, you merely show up. You fail at hard work when you don't make an emotional connection, or when you don't solve the problem or when you hesitate.

I disagree with this, at least what the author classifies as risk. I'm more than happy to take on challenging work, work I am emotionally connected to and want to see succeed--then fail. I can deal with failure and progress on just fine because I have pretty iron clad motivation. I've worked in R&D environments most my life and I can assure you, research has a lot of failure if you're doing it correctly.

The risk that makes certain work "hard" vs others is that failure results in livelihood setbacks: not having food, not having a place to live, financial failure, health risks, not having any bit of job security, etc. Those to me are the real risks people shy away from when we talk about "hard" work.

Give me a difficult/creative problem or task and I can try for hours, days, weeks, months, years... to find a solution, but only if I know at the end of the day I'll have a reasonably comfortable life.

The way a lot of work is structured, I find "hard" work is that which has inherent livelihood risk to the person doing the work in some way, shape, or form. It could be health risk work (say a police officer), failed research resulting in lack of a job, or a poor new art collection that ruins the future career of an artist.

Our society needs to learn to be more accepting to to a few more degrees of failure than the hypercompetiveness currently allows. Less and less failure is being acceptable and it's completely unrealistic to hold all humans to these standards. Yes, we should reward high risk success but should we punish every form of failure as we often do? Sure, laziness can be masked under failure and abuse this leniency, but so can success.

</comment><comment><USER14> I prefer the labels "predictable" vs "unpredictable" work. For example, I've been experience the difference between research and back-end web dev work lately, and the main difference is that for research you don't know if it will pan out, while for back-end work you're almost always making incremental progress towards the end-goal. But I wouldn't necessarily call research "harder", it's just different. It's usually more difficult conceptually, but there's also way less stuff you need to keep in your head at the same time.

<comment><USER15> I think the hard part is that unpredictable work has to be done more with discipline. Predictable work often originates from external requirements, and the external interest to the work gives you motivation. However, unpredictable work requires more intrinsic motivation (or discipline), as there is no external interest until you get some results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "You can work long, you can work hard and you can work smart, but you can only do 2 out of 3"

\-- source unknown, common among programmers on usenet in the 1990s

</comment><comment><USER16> [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Df6ZI4...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Df6ZI4_GhcgJ:https://seths.blog/2011/05/hard- work-vs-long-work/+&cd=2&hl=it&ct=clnk&gl=ch&client=ubuntu)

</comment><comment><USER17> It seems what is being called "hard work" here really is "expert work" which often can be no work at all, in that it rests on the shoulders of likely thousands of previous hours of long work, and can sometimes feel effortless. One seminal example of this Paula Scher's 5 minute design of the Citigroup logo. [https://link.medium.com/KuxBw6rJi9](https://link.medium.com/KuxBw6rJi9)

</comment><comment><USER18> Somewhat related, from Andy Matuschak whose notes were on here earlier today, on the feeling of progress when doing open-ended work:

[https://blog.andymatuschak.org/post/159979927467/satisfactio...](https://blog.andymatuschak.org/post/159979927467/satisfaction- and-progress-in-open-ended-work)

</comment><comment><USER19> I really love this graphic showing the difference between hard work and being productive: [https://twitter.com/lizandmollie/status/1231605700960432128/...](https://twitter.com/lizandmollie/status/1231605700960432128/photo/1)

</comment><comment><USER20> For those who are musically inclined -- When learning to play a musical instrument (including voice), the distinction between long work and hard work is the difference between spending time and making progress. Long work is mindless practice; hard work is identifying weaknesses and using targeted practice to improve.

For those in marketing -- Long work is spending more on an advertising campaign; hard work is determining what increases the conversion rate.

For those in computer science or mathematics -- Long work is implementing a brute force approach to calculating a specific result; hard work is generalizing the problem and generating a class of results.

For students -- Long work is studying to pass a specific exam; hard work is internalizing the fundamental principles of a subject so you can derive answers regardless of the particular exam questions.

</comment><comment><USER21> Important point: "Hard work" doesn't mean it has to be feel hard for you to do it.

If you have fun setting up a K8s cluster, that's still hard work.

<comment><USER22> One thing I've found interesting is that the first time I do something related to tech as long as it isn't mind boggling frustrating _cough_ Oracle _cough_ I enjoy learning it. The second and third times it's tolerable, but if I have to keep doing something repeatedly the only way I can enjoy it any longer is by listening to an audiobook while doing it or by automating it.

As soon as I set myself to automating I realize that I like it again because now I am interacting with it in a new way.

<comment><USER23> Oracle isn't even fun when automating.

<comment><USER24> But seeing a modern ecommerce platform fully integrated with Oracle payments, invoices, inventory, and shipping is pretty satisfying when it's done.

<comment><USER23> Satisfying for Oracle overlords for sure.

Always remember, Oracle doesn't have customers, only hostages!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> What about "deep" work? The kind of work that requires you to understand the fundamentals of a complex system to be able to simplify/modify it for the better.

<comment><USER26> I think understanding a system enough to modify/extend/repair it would be "wide" work. If one is dipping in thoroughly enough to truly understand all components and be able to build such a system that is also open to later modification - that is "deep" work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Seth is always pithy and thus leaves a lot of room for interpretation, but I do find this an interesting prompt.

"Hard" is, of course, very subjective and depends a lot on the person and the project. What's hard for me may not be hard for someone else due to skillset, personal risk, time pressure, mindset, etc. and vice versa.

What's created hard work for me in the course of founding a startup is constantly balancing delivery timelines against a lack of resources and deep skills on the team. Having to invent my way out of situations I'm not technically qualified to handle where there is real risk to the business in being wrong or late has been harrowing, but also a very effective way to grow my skillset.

</comment><comment><USER28> [https://archive.is/nGVxb](https://archive.is/nGVxb)

</comment><comment><USER29> I think it's what the "failure" would mean for a person that makes it hard, part of the fixed mindset Carol Dweck is talking about, i.e. only seeking validation of what one thinks of oneself.

</comment><comment><USER30> there are two other salient differences between hard work and long work - <USER2> work when the person is skillful enough to do it is energizing, long work is always draining.

<comment><USER31> Only if you're using someone else's definition of hard instead of your own.

If by 'energizing' you mean morale-boosting, yes. But hard work is generally taxing. You are paying for long-term happiness with short term pain. Having slain a dragon on Thursday, you are likely to be in high spirits on Tuesday. But for the rest of the day and possibly tomorrow, you're may be sitting here doing menial tasks or reading documentation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> It's like sports stars. You se the championship game on TV, but you don't see the years of practicing, eating the right diet, all the sacrifices...

</comment><comment><USER33> The Self-Attribution Fallacy [https://archive.is/VCuFO](https://archive.is/VCuFO)

</comment><comment><USER34> Using his definitions, I hate long work.

I avoid long work, I'll take hard work always.

<comment><USER31> Our jobs revolve around convincing machines to do the long work for us.

I don't think I'll ever understand why so many of us are perfectly content doing the same long work over and over again. Do you know what computers are _for_?

<comment><USER35> Never really thought of computers as needing convincing but come to think of it it takes about as many tries to convince my computer to do want I want as it takes to convince my son. Hmm..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> aka the toil vs the hustle</comment>


Bees cleverer than we thought - <AUTHOR> http://www.michalpaszkiewicz.co.uk/blog/beetraining/ <comment><USER2> I can't wait to see if we will be able to teach bees 2 or 3 stage processes...

<comment><AUTHOR> Apparently researchers have already been training bees to find drugs: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/33195468/honey-bees- tr...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/33195468/honey-bees-trained-to- detect-illegal-drugs)</comment></comment>


Show HN: BudgetDuo – Easily determine your share of household expenses - <AUTHOR> https://budgetduo.com <comment><USER2> I'm curious about how many people use each method. The 50/50 split seemed like the clear choice for me. Can anyone share their reasons for doing the proportional split? My expenses are things where we both agree about it and decide on our own about if we could individually budget it. Certain things that are more "for" someone become proportional, but those are always one-off purchases.

<comment><USER3> I make way more money than my partner and doing a 50/50 split would be really hard for them to swing each month.

<comment><USER4> You could always just live to the standard of the least income, and save money. It's what I do and has proved to be great since no matter whom is working, the finances are covered.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would love to do this, but in areas with a high cost of living it's not always possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Simple, easy to use, and useful. Nice work. It would be very interesting to see stats on how couples choose how their bills are divided.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, and I agree, being able to gather some high level insights would be pretty interesting - perhaps something I can look into once the sample size is large enough.

Just in some of the initial feedback I've received it's been surprising to hear how passionate folks are about the different approaches - it is definitely not a one-size-fits-all type of situation. Ultimately folks should do what works best for them, my hope is the BudgetDuo will provide a bit of insight to help make some decisions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Simple idea, and yet useful for those that need a dashboard to manage the day to day expenses that people generally not find the time to do otherwise.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the kind words!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wouldn't a spreadsheet program be easier and would not require trusting a third party with data about your income and your expenses?

Especially since you might want to revisit the same sheet over time to add or remove people, add or remove expenses, or change the weighting, specifically without needing to store that data with a third party or maintain a separate sign-in credential to access a history of data.

<comment><USER7> You're thinking about this from the perspective of a developer, rather than the population at large. Suggest building a spreadsheet to one of your non- technical friends or family for something like this and you'll get a blank stare.

<comment><USER6> My non-technical grandparents use Excel for tracking expenses. Yeah, they couldn't do complex formulas or macros, but that's irrelevant.

Using basic spreadsheet software is at least as ubiquitous as owning a home PC in the US. You can assume pretty much everyone can work their way through it, maybe with some help.

Meanwhile, you could easily argue that filling in the same data in a web form via a browser would be less intuitive for many people.

And regardless of which is easier, keeping the data private is clearly a priority.

<comment><USER7> Yet despite all of those arguments, there are many budgeting or expense tracking "apps" (of the non-spreadsheet variety) out there that are popular, some of them massively.

Analogy: with a little time and some equipment, practically anyone could learn to DIY their own oil changes, yet very few do.

<comment><USER6> I doubt the existence of apps has much relationship to whether people are capable with a spreadsheet, and it also doesn't control for whether a person who finds spreadsheets difficult would also find an app or a web form difficult. If someone is just trying to avoid tech generally, apps vs web forms vs spreadsheets aren't going to matter, and to anyone else, decades of ubiquity of using spreadsheet software for badic things would favor spreadsheets. Heck, even a lot of high schools teach basic personal finance using Excel and have been since the 90s (my extremely poor rural public high school was doing this in 1995 for example).

Also the top expense tracking app by number of users appears to be Mint (which claims somewhere near only 20MM users), which involves a great deal of data sharing and privacy questions. If we require a solution that keeps expense data private, it would shift a lot of favor to spreadsheets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why taking the numbers before taxes?

<comment><AUTHOR> Mostly for simplicity. Most folks can quickly tell you their annual salary, it would likely be more difficult to calculate their post-tax income. There is also the possibility that individuals may prefer to withhold more or less throughout the year depending on how they approach taxes, so that could potentially skew the numbers.

<comment><USER8> Ah alright. I pay nearly 50% taxes here in germany and it gets deducted from my loan before I get it, so it's probably a bigger deal here then elsewhere.

comparison of income taxes: [https://www.csmonitor.com/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/med...](https://www.csmonitor.com/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/media/images/chart- income-tax-rates-how-the-us-stacks-up/7715608-1-eng-US/Chart-Income-tax-rates- how-the-US-stacks-up_full_600.jpg)</comment></comment></comment>


After decades of pushing bachelor's degrees, U.S. needs more tradespeople - <AUTHOR> https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/decades-pushing-bachelors-degrees-u-s-needs-tradespeople <comment><USER2> And it needs to pay them enough to live a modest, reasonable life.

<comment><USER3> I was pulling in 100K (base pay) as a tradesman, granted I was an operator, but it is still considered a "trades" position. Also, a college degree is not required in order to land most power plant/transmission/distribution system operator positions. Hell, you have nuclear power plant reactor operators making > 175k/yr and they don't have any degree whatsoever.

<comment><USER4> > Hell, you have nuclear power plant reactor operators making > 175k/yr and > they don't have any degree whatsoever.

Experience is required in lieu of a degree. But, to your point, no degree is required.

We should be finding every opportunity to get people into jobs that don't require a degree but require specialized skills, as it sidesteps an inflated credential gate (Sidenote: I don't think college is entirely useless, but its value has been drastically disconnected from its cost for some time).

"A reactor operator license requires 3 years of experience as an operator for a nuclear reactor. This can be as a field operator, or can include military/naval time. No college degree required. A certain amount (Typically 1 year) must be at a similar plant design and 6 months must be on site before starting license class.

A senior reactor operator can be "instant" or "upgrade". The upgrade process is a reactor operator becoming a senior reactor operator and requires an RO to have at least 1 year of licensed experience. For instant candidates, you need an engineering degree, or certain types of naval experience as a watch officer, plus on site time, plus 3 years experience in the industry (or naval experience).

These time requirements are time required PRIOR to starting license class. The class itself is around 18-20 months."

Source: [https://www.reddit.com/r/energy/comments/3nm9ox/whats_it_lik...](https://www.reddit.com/r/energy/comments/3nm9ox/whats_it_like_to_work_as_a_power_plant_operator/cvplobc/)

<comment><USER3> What you found for RO/SRO positions is pretty much spot on, and there are other "experience-in-lieu-of-degree" types of jobs that pay exceptionally well.

Regarding the naval experience aspect, the utilities that hire navy veterans look for certain qualifications obtained while in the navy (EWS for enlisted folks in lieu of a degree).

<comment><USER4> My concern with reactor operators is that it's a dying industry due to the challenges in getting a commercial reactor permitted and constructed, along with the costs of renewables driving nuclear out of commercial viability.

With that said, I think there'd be great value in an organization advocating and enabled students to get into these "experience-in-lieu-of-degree" types of jobs you mention. Mike Rowe is doing this [1] as part of his mikeroweWORKS Foundation/"Profoundly Disconnected", but my opinion is this needs to be performed at scale nationwide (such as getting involved with school counselors at the high school level).

[1] [http://profoundlydisconnected.com/](http://profoundlydisconnected.com/)

<comment><USER3> > "My concern with reactor operators is that it's a dying industry due to the > challenges in getting a commercial reactor permitted and constructed, along > with the costs of renewables driving nuclear out of commercial viability."

When nuclear power plants shut down, the ROs/SROs will not be too hard pressed to find new opportunities. The renewable energy plants that are replacing nuclear will still need to have their control rooms staffed, and operators will simply move into new roles with those utilities, or they'll get out of the generation business altogether and find a cushy transmission/distribution operator role, which isn't really dependent on the political climate with regards to generation technology.

<comment><USER4> I agree that the best transition strategy would be for grid/network operators to acquire these people as reactors reach their end of life and are decommissioned.

<comment><USER3> Plus, the TSO/Dispatcher role is a lot less bureaucratic than being an RO/SRO. I think most current RO/SROs would enjoy the job immensely more. You still get to operate a pretty large, intricate, and intellectually interesting system but without all the fuss of dealing with the NRC.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Just for fun: WebQuery is YQL in Python - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/inportb/webquery

<comment><AUTHOR> I did this for the lulz and I'm not sure if this would ever be useful, but here is a locally-hosted imitation of YQL that can be used from the shell or imported into Python programs. It's an abstraction layer for interacting with various API's in a uniform way.

As of now, it only supports SELECT and does not do any caching. It's also slightly different from YQL in that it's actually SQL, and it uses a different definition format (it would be nice to support the Open Data Tables format, though).

What do you think?</comment>


Robot Cops Used as Traffic Police in Democratic Republic of Congo - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/travel/2015/mar/05/robocops-being-used-as-traffic-police-in-democratic-republic-of-congo

<comment><USER2> "In our city, someone can commit an offence and run away, and say that no one saw him. But now, day or night, we'll be able to see him in real time and he will pay his fine like in all the serious countries of the world,"

Yes, nice going, now everyone will think you're a serious country.</comment>


Android App Devs Find Clever Trick for Fooling Users into Installing Crapware - <AUTHOR> https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/mobile/android-app-devs-find-clever-trick-for-fooling-users-into-installing-their-crapware/ <comment><USER2> Thank you for the information. I hope Google play store will take this notice and rectify it sooner.</comment>


Eigencluster search engine - <AUTHOR> http://arc2.cc.gatech.edu/cgi-bin/main.cgi?query=cluster

<comment><AUTHOR> Hm, looks like HN maybe sent too much load their way -- the service is not working for me now that this submission has made it to the front page. Too bad, I would be interested to hear people's take on this.

The idea is to return a set of clusters of search results -- so for example the phrase "Mickey" would return grouped results for "Mickey Mouse", "Mickey Mantle", "Mickey Rourke", etc. It was doing a pretty good job when I played with it earlier.

Here is the about page, with a link to details of the clustering method: <http://arc2.cc.gatech.edu/about.html>

<comment><USER2> This was news more than half a decade ago; at this point, all the major search engines do clustering at various levels.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you have any more info on this?

Even if so, this work seems interesting because they are showing the derived clusters to the users, thereby providing value. (Though I'm interested more in their approach than in this application -- it's a hard problem that pertains to my work on neural circuit reconstruction.)</comment></comment></comment>


WakaTime – Growing a side project to $10k monthly revenue - <AUTHOR> https://indiehackers.com/businesses/wakatime <comment><USER2> How would you describe other competitors on the market? Have you found anyone doing such a set of tools or did you find anyone before you started developing it?

Didn't know of it, but found it interesting and pricing model seems quite fair, actually. You will have my feedback soon. And surely you have my vote now.</comment>


Anybody using Amazon Web Services (S3, EC2) in their startup? - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/Why-Use-AWS%3F-home-page/b/ref=sc_fe_l_1/103-1678423-5846208?ie=UTF8&node=15763371&no=3435361&me=A36L942TSJ2AJA <comment><USER2> AWS is truly amazing.

I'm currently developing an open-source framework that allows theoretically infinite scalability utilizing round-robin dns, S3, EC2, S3DFS (allows mounting an S3 bucket as a local file system on multiple EC2 instances), SQLite (serverless embeddable database where each db is just a flat file).

S3DFS works at the block level and has read/write caching so is really fast. However, it requires a commercial license for non-personal use.

SQLite is amazing in it's power and simplicity. It will start to have issues on a high-traffic website, but I'm breaking each user into their own db file. That sounds really bad - but SQLite has a great feature that allows you to attach multiple databases together and run queries across them as if it's just one database (handy for site-wide stats, search indexing, etc). Also, since the db's are just flat-files - backing up is super-easy with tar gzip!

I'm using PHP for the coding, but anticipate other languages libraries to be built to use the system as well.

Help is welcome, just let me know if you're interested!

I was thinking of calling it infinizon - but that sounds kinda dorky - thoughts?

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

<http://www.openfount.com/blog/s3dfs-for-ec2>

Update: I just came across <http://rightscale.com> which is an amazing AWS console that allows you to control almost all aspects of EC2, S3, and SQS. Too many features to list here, but definitely a must see. I've been playing around with it and it works great.

</comment><comment><USER3> Practically all the current batch of YC startups are using S3.

</comment><comment><USER4> Just so everyone is aware, S3 guarantees only 4 nines of relability (99.99% uptime), not 5 nines.

5 nines means the service is down, on average, 5 minutes out of a year.

4 nines would be almost an hour.

That's still pretty damn good.

</comment><comment><USER5> I love S3! It's so easy to get started. I have less use for EC2 since I have less computations to do. I wish I could run a database on EC2...

<comment><USER6> You can't run a database?

What's the point of this, then: [http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/entry!default.jspa?categoryID=101&externalID;=519&fromSearchPage;=true](http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/entry!default.jspa?categoryID=101&externalID=519&fromSearchPage=true)

<comment><USER5> This past week I listened in on Werner Vogels' ETech 2007 speech and he said, explicitly, that EC2 is not suitable for high performance, large scale, databases. My database is more than 10Gb in size. You can't have that large image on EC2. I guess you could get away by hosting some tables there that:

a) don't take up much space,

b) don't change much and

c) don't have to have the latest data.

<comment><USER6> "Each instance predictably provides the equivalent of a system with a 1.7Ghz x86 processor, 1.75GB of RAM, 160GB of local disk, and 250Mb/s of network bandwidth."

I'm not seeing where you can't host that DB on EC2. It might not be the optimal platform, but my guess is that EC2 will do a pretty good job for the money.

<comment><USER7> 1) The data is not persistent -- meaning, if your server dies, you loose your database with it. Rebooting the server gives you a clean slate.

This theoretically can be addressed with a complex backup/redundancy model, but frankly, it's not worth the trouble. Alternatively, you can use a distributed filesystem based on S3, but the performance will be poor. Long story short, your database is your bread and butter, and EC2 simply can't provide the basic services required to run a DB efficiently.

2) Dynamic DNS. Extra headaches, simply not worth it.

EC2 was not designed for persistent data storage, it's a compute cloud.

<comment><USER8> Re: "rebooting the server gives you a clean state"

That's not quite true: the HD contents survive crashes and reboots. Only if you release the node (or lose it otherwise -- it's not guaranteed to stay with you), the HD contents are lost.

I suspect lots of startups are finding it "stable enough", and the backup/redundancy planning needed manageable.

<comment><USER7> Are you certain? This must be new, because before your would get a fresh machine every time. Anytime you boot, AMZ looks at the image you want to run, and they unpack and uninstall it for you, meaning that even a reboot led to a clean drive. Now, there's been some talk about 'shadow copies' where you might even get access to other customers data by simply starting a deep scan on the drive.. but that's hardly persistence.

<comment><USER8> Yes. Of course, you lose the HD contents if you release the instance, or for other occasional failure and system events.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is just another cool thing happening to reduce the cost of new software apps. Salesforce.com has the same thing with Apex. The only bad thing there is that they tie you a bit too much to their technologies (Java/Oracle). They have adapters for other platforms but it still runs on Java/Oracle.

</comment><comment><USER9> Using it on <http://onetimeline.com> \- EC2 for indexing nodes and web front end, s3 for data storage and awsp for webcrawler. Couldn't have got up this fast without it - 1.5 years in the making (well fast to develop a search engine anyways!)

</comment><comment><USER10> I know that YouOS uses it.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've used S3 on a few projects and would definitely endorse it. I just got accepted to the EC2 beta last week and haven't started messing around with it.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This seems like the coolest thing since sliced bread. We're experimenting with S3 but I'm really interested in EC2 also. Anybody else using AWS?

<comment><USER12> Sure, if you're using Rails it's really easy to use attachment_fu (the new generation of the image/file storing acts_as_attachment plugin) to keep uploaded photos on S3. Also for Rails, Jamglue's technique of putting your entire static file hierarchy on S3 is great for maximimizing your app servers' bandwidth. BTW, Justin.tv runs off EC2 servers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sure are. We're melding ec2 instances to s3 as an actual filesystem.

-Steve fooworks.com</comment>


Ask HN: How do you cut down long B2B sales cycles? - <AUTHOR> Can you help me with some examples of startups in the  B2B space that had long sales cycles, which were later cut down to very short sales cycles. ? How was this done. <comment><USER2> The most common ways:

1\. Adjust your target market. Large enterprises will always take longer than SMB's to make a purchase. However, if you build up a solid SMB market with a few Enterprises than the cycle shortens.

2\. Adjust your price point and up-sell more. Large enterprises give managers and directors freedom to spend a certain amount of money each month without going through a procurement process. So one way is to adjust your basic price with enough features to get you in the door at the lower manager or director level. Then as they become dependent on your company and need more features you can get walked through the procurement much faster because it is already a vetted tool.

3\. Networking is not necessarily fast on its own, but it helps drastically in cutting down the delays on sales. A good networked intro can save you 50-75% of the time you would otherwise spend getting in the door and past the gatekeepers.

4\. Having a product that solves a serious pain point is critical. If you build a me to product it will take you 6-18 months to sell to large enterprises. If you build a product no one else is offering and is desperately needed by an enterprise it is crazy how fast they'll move. I had a fortune 100 firm sign a deal in less then 10 days from the first meeting when we solved a serious pain problem they were having, pricing was barely even discussed and we all kicked ourselves at that point knowing we were not priced high enough and represented too good a value.

I don't think there are "shortcuts" to take beyond working the larger businesses processes against itself.

<comment><USER3> Thanks a lot davismfl for taking time to write detailed and useful advice. If its not a secret I would love to hear more about the product you sold in 10 days to a fortune 100 firm.

<comment><USER2> Definitely not a secret. I did it years ago. We had an CRM solution focused on events (think conferences) that had built in digital advertising management and marketing automation, e.g. emails, sms reminders, follow up sales etc. Clients we sold to were usually small to mid sized and were putting together conferences or hosting events at like hotel conference rooms etc and needed to get the word out and manage the event (500 people and less was a typical client conference with a few in the 1000s). Essentially from advertising, signup and then check-in at the event the software handled it all, including posting facebook, google ads (and managing/tracking them).

What happened for us to sell it to this enterprise was we found out they (a large public firm) were trying to hold a conference but had been struggling to glue systems together themselves to make it work and advertise it etc (they disliked other in market products). We heard this as a pure rumor from some engineers that were bitching about it at a meetup we went to on mobile development. From there we researched the company, the conference and started cold emailing/calling the people who were responsible for the conference at the company. We were able to meet with them within a couple of days, did a few demo's and showed them it wasn't vapor and really existed (seems to always be an enterprises concern). Like all small companies, we had the normal "call for pricing" for "enterprise" clients (though we hadn't really had anyone this size), so pricing was on the fly customized for them. We screwed up a little on pricing because I bet they would've been happy to pay double the price and still feel they got a good value which would've given us a better margin.

In the end, no regrets just a good lesson for the team (me included) that pricing is relative to the client and while you should never rape a client you do need to make sure the clients expectations and your pricing are in line. In our case we made a profit, but it wasn't as much as even a standard client simply because of all the extra support we had to do, hence we should've asked for more. Enterprise clients are super needy and they know it so pricing it like they are is critical. Funny part is we came up with a price, then doubled it (thinking they would be needy) which also made them feel good about it (too cheap and enterprise clients will back away knowing you can't handle them), but we should've triple or quadrupled it to make better margins.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks davismwfl, what we do at forestpin is to help companies find mistakes and fraud in transactions, the customers who use the product really like it. How ever some of the discussion goes on and on. The longest sale took 2 years from the first meeting and the shortest sale was about three months. We pitch to the finance director of the company. In its pretty hard to find the correct influencer in the company since no body in a company is responsible for collective mistakes. Lot of companies have no insight to the cost of transactional mistakes they make. We got customers after doing proof of concept projects successfully. These take time, since once a POC is agreed, we need to depend on different teams to get data and the associated time lags. I had a one on one session with a YC partner (SUS online) and he recommended the book "Impossible to Inevitable" I am going thru the book these days its pretty helpful. Thanks again on your helpful insights. Hope you and your loved ones stay safe from COVID19</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Only six countries in the world give women and men equal legal work rights - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/mar/01/only-six-countries-in-the-world-give-women-and-men-equal-legal-rights <comment><USER2> Weird. The data is flawed, at least for Germany. We do have "equal pay for equal work" ("Entgeldgleichheitsgesetz", literally "equal pay law"; the data says no), we do have paid paternity leave (and it's compulsory for women, they are compensated with "Mutterschaftsgeld", literally "Motherhoodmoney", defined in the "Mutterschutzgesetz", "Mother protection law"; they say no), and we have an added voluntary paid paternity leave that both parents can take ("Elternzeitgesetz", literally "Parent time law").

It's the World Bank, I would've guessed they pay attention to detail, but I suppose that's naive.

</comment><comment><USER3> Spain just passed a law [1] requiring any business with more than 50 employees to disclose salaries, according to gender and position, to make sure equal pay is applied. Or to shame them into it, I guess.

[1] ( Spanish ) [https://www.businessinsider.es/empresas-50-trabajadores- debe...](https://www.businessinsider.es/empresas-50-trabajadores-deberan- informar-sueldos-382385)

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm not sold on the "unequal" pay issue they cite, at least not in most Western Nations.</comment>


Acer C720 Chromebook Review - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/23/4948120/acer-c720-chromebook-review

<comment><USER2> Co-worker got one and installed Cruton on it. Haven't gotten dual monitors to work (mirrored only), but am really impressed with it right now.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is very exciting</comment>


The Fifty is awake again - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1969/12/iron-giant/8886/ <comment><USER3> Not mentioned in the article is that forging delivers a stronger part than casting or machining, since the grain of the metal remains continuous. Hence its use in turbine blades and so on.

If you ever want to see a true craftsman in action, it's a master blacksmith in charge of a steam hammer. He can go from literally cracking an egg to delivering a blow whose resonance nearly brings the building down. Combined with with the way he manipulates the workpiece, it is poetry in motion.

<comment><USER4> I would really like to see that. Unfortunately I don't think we have a neighborhood blacksmith. Do you know of any videos on youtube?

<comment><USER5> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmS3LgfdT7E>

That is one hot and noisy job.

<comment><USER6> I think this one is better - you can see what they make, rather than just fireballs.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBQQS7oMW2A>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This PDF will tell you all about the press: [http://files.asme.org/asmeorg/communities/history/landmarks/...](http://files.asme.org/asmeorg/communities/history/landmarks/5488.pdf)

<comment><USER3> I love the pictures in that article. The views of Metsa machine tools creating Metsa machine tools has a real "self replication" feel. Put iron into an engineering shop and out pops a copy of the engineering shop.

Does the Metsa company still exist?

<comment><USER8> The Mesta Machine Company is now part of WHEMCO - specifically, what used to be Mesta is now WHEMCO Steel Castings Inc.

<http://www.whemco.com/whemco_steel_castings.aspx>

There's a bit of company history at [http://todengine.websitetoolbox.com/post/Mesta-Machine- Compa...](http://todengine.websitetoolbox.com/post/Mesta-Machine- Company-3662333) .

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A fascinating read.

In _Warfighting_ , the USMC doctrinal manual, there is a discussion of war as a process of seeking out and exploiting weaknesses in the enemy's system.

This press strikes me as such a weakness: it is the only one of its kind in the US, a pretty clear industrial chokepoint. And there are lots of such chokepoints. German military production was stunted during WW2 by the bombing of ball-bearing factories.

<comment><USER10> Considering the decimation of the manufacturing base here in the USA, I shudder to think what would happen were we required to make war on the scale of the previous World Wars.

Virtually all our electronics are made somewhere else. We can't even build our own infrastructure[0]. Who will build the Liberty Ships[1]?

[0][http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/business/global/26bridge.h...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/business/global/26bridge.html?pagewanted=all)

[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_ship>

<comment><USER11> > war on the scale of the previous World Wars.

That will not happen again. It is a bygone era. Now it will either be country to country attacks (Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam) or full blown nuclear wipe- out. In either case protecting Cleveland won't make much of a difference.

<comment><USER12> People said the same thing after WWI. ...and they were right. WWII was fought differently from WWI.

<comment><USER13> With WWI or WWII era technology, it would take a great power months, even years to destroy the population of another. Now? Less than an hour.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Strategic resource storage and strategic industry development was a big part of making me start questioning libertarianism. I then learned a bit about common power dynamics and met a lot of people who felt trapped in bad situations getting screwed around with, and the break was made for me.

I'm still sympathetic to the cause, and think libertarians are really fantastic people who believe immensely in human potential. I also know the counterarguments -- _at what cost?_ , etc, etc -- but I'm glad the USA built industry that wouldn't necessarily be economical on the timeframes that standard capital investments generally look for.

<comment><USER15> There's two kinds of Libertarians - the ones who actually think all government interference is bad, and those who think that governments simply have a tendency to go too far, so fighting government interference will probably push them back to a more reasonable position. The first kind are louder.

<comment><USER16> But isn't the result the same?

I can't help think that we started without governments and ended up with them. In fact it seems like governments beat every other known alternative power structure.

In other words even if we removed all nation states and started from scratch we would most likely end up with some sort of government.

The reasons for this are manifold, but especially the democratic state have some inherent perceptual integrity since it allows for "resetting".

But of course as always these are not objective metrics at all. But the problem with libertarians isn't their view but rather the idea it itself.

We started in many ways in a libertarian world. Evolution took us to the states and technology will maybe take us through the state and to something completely different but carried on from the current system.

<comment><USER17> You're arguing against anarchism, not libertarianism.

<comment><USER16> Not really. I am arguing against the idea of non-governments.

<comment><USER17> What does that have to do with libertarianism? Most libertarians want a government.

<comment><USER16> My experience is the opposite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd love to have a chance to see it in action. Many of us here work as engineers. Few of us are likely to be building something like this, a machine that will be able to serve its purpose relatively unmodified for over a century.

<comment><USER18> Agreed, barring a sudden resurgence in the use of COBOL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Very neat, but I'd be more worried that the next generation of materials manufacturing - carbon fiber and nanotube looms and autoclaves - will be completely China based.

<comment><USER20> The more interdependent the world gets, the harder it will be for any one nation to go rogue. That is a good thing. However, if, instead of a cyclical graph, we wind up with a tree, things could get very ugly (but don't have to).

The US likes to think of itself as the root of the tree, and maybe it even was for part of the 20th century (the US was central to a lot of manufacturing and design), but those days seem to be over now. As a citizen of the US, I find that scary, but only because I think many people in the US will fight tooth and nail to try to keep being the root.

<comment><USER21> " _The more interdependent the world gets, the harder it will be for any one nation to go rogue._ "

The world pre-WWI was actually quite globalised[1], more so than most people today would imagine that it was. Yet that wasn't enough to prevent the horrors of WWI trench warfare. I think a similar fallacy exists today - <USER2> globalisation will prevent WWIII. Violence and combat has existed for all of human history and there's no reason to think it will ever disappear, sadly. In a few decades anyone that remembers being alive during WWII will be dead and the possibility of WWIII will become stronger, IMO.

Just like the Glass-Steagall act was enacted after the 1929 crash[2], but repealed once the scars of the Great Depression had faded from the public's consciousness, the spectre of the outbreak of WWIII will loom ever larger as those who remember the horror of WWI & WWII pass on, and the lessons learned forgotten.

[1] [http://www.americanforeignrelations.com/E-N/Globalization- Fi...](http://www.americanforeignrelations.com/E-N/Globalization-First-era-of- modern-globalization-to-1914.html#b)

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_Act>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This reminds me of the recent book review on the Economist.

<http://www.economist.com/node/21545983>

To quote one passage: "Mr Collini is moved by Newman's insistence that a liberal education is not about what students learn or what skills they acquire but "the perspective they have on the place of their knowledge in a wider map of human understanding"."

</comment><comment><USER23> I visited the ALS at LBL many years ago. Then I got to see that big (really big) laser at LLNL a few years ago. I'd like to see this machine too, I bet it's bigger than both of those...

</comment><comment><USER24> I guess we could call this "Big Iron", eh?

</comment><comment><USER25> This type of romanticization of military production is obscene.

One of my worst fears is that we might see the current military campaigns surrounding Iran and the area around it develop into another "great" war.

There is nothing stopping us from using this manufacturing equipment to build tools of creation rather than destruction.

I remember reading something in my history textbooks many years ago that suggested that although war meant massive loss of life and destruction, it wasn't all bad, because it was "very good for the economy". That line of thinking only holds water if you believe that humans are disposable or buy into a sort of 19th century Social Darwinism.

There is so much money to be made in war. Please, everyone look at a map. <http://binged.it/A6U96Z> These activities in Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, etc. are not isolated instances.

This is an aggressive war of domination, resource acquisition and territorial control. It is completely insane and inexcusable.

<comment><USER26> > This type of romanticization of military production is obscene.

If you study history even on a superficial basis, you'll find that violence only breaks out in asymmetric situations. In other words, only when one side is thoroughly convinced it can kick the other's ass.

The best way to prevent war is through trade. The second best is to make sure both sides engage in "obscene" military production and are evenly matched. Weapons are merely tools. If deployed intelligently, they can be used to mitigate any violent impulses and keep the peace.

<comment><USER27> _The best way to prevent war is through trade._

Actually trade means opposed interests, which is the fastest way to get into a war. There's a wishful thinking picture by some economists that trade is always beneficial to all parties involved, and countries that trade cannot go to war, bla, bla. The funny thing is, those theories were at their peak around 1900 too, "surely global trade as it is now will end wars etc" and we know what followed then.

Actually, weren't Afghanistan and Iraq countries that traded oil with most of the countries that bombed them? Then, one thinks, why pay X for oil, and be subject to the seller's demands and/or willingness to prefer my over other buyers, when I can just get there and just take it?

<comment><USER28> > Actually trade means opposed interests, which is the fastest way to get into > a war.

Actually, trade means a joined interest in making an exchange, since if both sides didn't see the exchange as in their own best interest they wouldn't be making the trade. Moreover, trading relationships are not usually based on one-off trades. Which means that you'll want to trade again. Which means that getting into a war with the other party would be a bad idea.

All this reminds me of a quote by the late philosopher Robert Nozick, who defined "Marxist exploitation" as "the exploitation, by Marxists, of people's ignorance of economics."

<comment><USER27> _Actually, trade means a joined interest in making an exchange, since if both sides didn't see the exchange as in their own best interest they wouldn't be making the trade._

Actually, no. Countries are _forced_ to trade all the time, despite their best interests. From the Opium Wars ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars> ) to NAFTA ( [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agree...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement) ). Ask a citizen of any "banana republic" about it.

 _Moreover, trading relationships are not usually based on one-off trades. Which means that you'll want to trade again. Which means that getting into a war with the other party would be a bad idea._

In this naive worldview there are only two parties that trade. It also presumes, "getting into a war" means you don't get to trade anymore. Like, how Japan and Germany do not trade with the US after WWII, right? The only thing it means is that you get to dictate the terms for subsequent trading.

But the worst about this view is that it also presumes this traded material comes out of thin air: ie. it forgets that trade can lead to war for control of natural resources, trade routes, and, of course, markets.

Here's a funny story:

= = =

 _The Great Illusion is a book by Norman Angell, first published in Britain in 1909 and republished in 1910 and subsequently in various enlarged and revised editions under the title The Great Illusion. (The "Great Illusion" of the title was the belief that there would soon be another major and destructive European war.)

According to John Keegan "Europe in the summer of 1914 enjoyed a peaceful productivity so dependent on international exchange and co-operation that a belief in the impossibility of a general war seemed the most conventional of wisdoms. In 1910 an analysis of prevailing economic interdependence, The Great Illusion, had become a best-seller; its author Norman Angell had demonstrated, to the satisfaction of almost all informed opinion, that the disruption of international credit inevitably to be caused by war would either deter its outbreak or bring it speedily to an end."

= = =

We know how that one ended.

_All this reminds me of a quote by the late philosopher Robert Nozick, who defined "Marxist exploitation" as "the exploitation, by Marxists, of people's ignorance of economics."*

Yeah, except most marxists have also studied thoroughly traditional and liberal economists of their time, from Ricardo and Smith to Hayek and Friedman. Including Marx himself, who was a walking encyclopedia of political economy. Criticizing something does not mean you are ignorant about it. While not a Marxist, I'm with the camp that calls the entrenched political economy a "dismal science", 90% ideology and 10% applied mathematics.

<comment><USER29> That observation of how peaceful and interdependent the world looked at the dawn of the 20th century is also how Niall Ferguson's book _The War of the World_ starts.

It really is quite sobering to appreciate how people back then really believed that mutual dependence and globalization would make large-scale warfare impossible.

<comment><USER27> Exactly. And let's not forget the "End of History" by Fukuyama, circa the fall of the Berlin wall. That also didn't turn out that good.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>