US Budget Visualization Using d3 - <AUTHOR> http://solomonkahn.com/us_budget/# <comment><USER3> Why does it resort and regrow all the blocks when you switch between years or other settings? If the same blocks simply grew or shrunk, it would be a lot easier to follow the difference.

Actually, it sometimes simply converts blocks into others - switching between 2012 and 2013, the "Justice" block morphs into the "National Infrastructure Bank" block. Very confusing.

<comment><USER4> this is because some blocks are added and removed from year to year. In this type of visualization, it's impossible to keep things the same size and position while also changing the amounts.

The best way to use this isn't to switch between years. If you click on any cell, you can see a graph of how that changes over time. If you double click on any of the cells, you can see a new visualization of everything that makes up that cell. For example, double clicking on the department of justice will show you it is made up of X billion from the department of prisons and X billion from the FBI.

<comment><USER5> It's definitely not because some blocks are added and removed. Click on the same year twice and the blocks animate all over the place. The animations are worse than useless -- they actually hinder the ability to compare two years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is not a very good visualization.

It makes it impossible to compare values in any meaningful sense - either in a relative growth, or the size of the budget as a whole. The animation serves no purpose, other than to make the user wait a few seconds between switching years.

<comment><USER7> I took a stab at rewriting your comment so that it still got the point across but lost some of the tone that I felt was overly rude.

\</comment></comment><comment>---

This visualization, while technically impressive, could use a little work.

Comparing values is difficult because I can't see the relative growth between the boxes from year to year, or size of the budget as a whole. I don't quite see how the animation benefits the user, so you may want to scrap it for some sort of differential comparison. I also don't like the delay when I change from year to year. That could be optimized or reduced through the reduction of the animation time.

\</comment><comment>---

Yeah, I know it's kind of snarky of me to correct your entire comment here, but I think our community (yeah I know I haven't had my account here long) is overly focused on criticizing. While all the content of your comment was awesome, it could have been stated in a more polite manner.

I'm not sure how to fix the attitude that crops up in developer communities, all I can think to do is point it out when people may be coming off in way they don't mean to. Which is probably the root cause for this [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6353957](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6353957)

<comment><USER6> My intent was to be terse, not rude, and to give actionable feedback - <USER2> hidden in language and subtext. And anyway, language is supposed to have edge! I didn't want to say "this is sort of kind of less than optimal." I wanted to say "This is not good! You can do better! Here is how it can be improved!". If everyone just thought "meh" and said "well, that's pretty good. A+ for effort" \- or worse, said nothing - people wouldn't improve. Non-actionable positive feedback is as harmful as non-actionable negative feedback.

Your correction (which I don't mind in and of itself) adds complexity and obscures the meaning of my statements. It says in 85 words what I said more clearly (and sharply) in 51. You add a white lie - "technically impressive" \- to mask the true meaning of the point that is being made. And the tone is changed to reads as though you're talking to a child.

And - would a person whose second or third language was English more clearly understand your version or mine?

I agree that the community can be overly critical, but I don't think that this sort of criticism is the problem. The kind of criticism that is a problem is non-actionable criticism - insults to the person, or just "X already did this" or "nobody wants this".

I want terse, actionable feedback.

Also - "yeah I know I haven't had my account here long" are defense mechanisms, don't use them. You're a member of the community now, you get a voice like everyone else.

<comment><USER7> I agree that not everyone deserves a gold star but I tend to try the carrot over the stick in most instances. I do beat around the bush more than I should, and that's something I personally need to work on.

I realize that a lot of times terse can be better, and you modified your own comment better than I ever could. >"You can do better! Here is how it can be improved!"

That little bit of encouragement could be the support that changes the recipients reaction from "F-U man you don't know me" to "Wow, thanks for that criticism, I'll get on that." And you've only added 11 words.

High ranking HN comments tend to be negative, which leads me to feel like HN is not very supportive. This isn't the only metric, but having a good ratio of positive to negative feedback (assuming everything is equally actionable) is important. [http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/03/the_ideal_praise-to- criticis...](http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/03/the_ideal_praise-to- criticism.html)

>Also - "yeah I know I haven't had my account here long" are defense mechanisms, don't use them. You're a member of the community now, you get a voice like everyone else. Thank you, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5636314](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5636314) this kind of thing has made me hesitant to use terms like "our community".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Author here! There seems to be some confusion about this visualization, but we can solve it with just two words: Start Clicking!

The thing that makes this visualization different than other visualizations is that you can see the individual components of what makes up the large departments. Just double click on any of the boxes. If you single click on any box, you can see how that box changed over time.

So, for example, you can see that in 2012 that 2.89% of the budget went to education, but if you double click, you can see that only 13.73% of that went to elementary and secondary education.

You can also single click anywhere and see a graph of how things have changed over time. So you can see that in 2009 there was a huge spike in elementary and secondary education, and you can go to 2009 to further investigate, and find there was a "State Fiscal Stabilization Fund" in 2009 that sent $14 billion to education, and then went away.

As many have noted, this doesn't do a good job at comparing different departments to each other over time. This isn't a surprise, since a treemap is the completely wrong format to be able to do that. However, it is a very good format for exploring what agencies, bureaus and line items make up the large departments, which is data I've never seen anywhere else before, and why I built this visualization.

</comment><comment><USER8> NYT has a 2013 budget proposal visualization in d3, made I believe by Mike Bostock himself: [http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/02/13/us/politics/20...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/02/13/us/politics/2013-budget- proposal-graphic.html)

<comment><USER9> It says "By Shan Carter" on the webpage.

<comment><USER8> Ah, missed that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Failed to load resource [http://solomonkahn.com/us_budget/public/facebox.js](http://solomonkahn.com/us_budget/public/facebox.js)

Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'settings' of undefined

Chrome/Linux

<comment><USER4> are you on the latest version of chrome?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Does this include discretionary spending? I feel like that's pretty essential to understanding exactly what's going on... Mil-spending would look a lot more massive, I believe.

<comment><USER12> Basically everything beyond Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid is discretionary spending. If you get rid of those, then yes, military spending looks huge as a share of discretionary spending.

There are dozens of sites breaking down the spending (this is just another attempt at visualizing the data). A quick search led me to [http://nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal- budget-1...](http://nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal- budget-101/spending/) where you can find discretionary spending separated out on its own.

<comment><USER11> Well, if you mean [some people] get together and figure out what to do spend money on and call it "the budget." Yes, I guess so.

But I mean, my understanding is that there is un-allotted money the government is willing to spend, beyond whatever budget they approve. My understanding was that, in particular, the military budget increases dramatically under these mechanisms.

Also - Social Security should also be separate, really, it's a trust fund with a very specific money - if we turned Social Security off tomorrow, it isn't like the money collected could go elsewhere. Money collected into that fund & being spent into that fund should not be able to be reallocated elsewhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's pretty shocking how much more expensive Federal unemployment benefits have been for this most recent recession, assuming that's what's responsible for the massive spike in the Department of Labor's budget.

Compare with the 2001-2002 tech bust, for example.

<comment><USER14> The bubble destroyed US employment, and there has been very little improvement from the lowest percentage reached of prime aged workers that are employed:

[http://stateofworkingamerica.org/charts/drop-in- employment-d...](http://stateofworkingamerica.org/charts/drop-in-employment- during-2007-recession-truly-stunning/)

I assume that as unemployment benefits drop, these people will begin to move into homelessness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Please correct me, but there seems to be something wrong. Look at the 2013 budget, "Per Capita", and "Inflation Adjusted". Those numbers should essentially be the same as "Plain Dollars", which is multiples larger.

<comment><USER4> The base year for inflation is 1976, so the multiple is because a dollar in 1976 is worth multiples of a dollar in 2013.

<comment><USER15> OK, that explains things now. But I don't think that's the best default display, especially since it is not explained anywhere. I don't recall any examples where the base inflation year is the past by default.

It's great to allow users to adjust the base year in case they want to, e.g., for purposes of inform how past past dollars relate to today's circumstances (e.g. Neil Cavuto expressing how he worked for $2 an hour when he was younger and loved it and so can we), but 1976 being the base year is not very productive, it's a floating reference that loses relevance as a default.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So basically since 1976, the US is only on the positive side of the budget for 4 years (1998-2001). For all other (34) years, there has been a deficit. Yicks. If the US was a person, that person would be considered a financial disaster.

<comment><USER17> Lucky for us then, that the US is not a person.

Unlucky for us, it's even harder to determine a healthy budget than looking at income vs. outlays. E.g. if the money supply grows faster than the national debt then even a small but constant deficit may still be an entirely healthy thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This visualized well enough the difference in sectors for the same year but not the difference between years. Might be nice that selecting one section will show a line graph indicating the change over the years for that sector.

<comment><USER4> this is exactly how the visualization works! If you click on any cell, it shows you how that has changed over time. If you double click, you can see more details about whatever you clicked on.

For example, if you double click on the department of Justice, you can see it is made up of X billion of the FBI, X billion of the department of prisons, etc...

<comment><USER18> I totally missed that I am truly sorry! well done!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Actually, the US budget is not at all inaccessible ... this is one in among thousands of budget visualizations that are done every year for all sorts of publications. It is nice, doesn't need the hype.

<comment><USER15> "hype"? Your bar for exaggeration is quite a bit lower than mine, which is impressive in and of itself. I thought we are just looking at it, constructively critiquing it, and supporting the effort, discovering any possible innovative or unique aspects, and informing people. But I guess some might see hype there instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The color profile on this chart makes it really hard to process... [http://grab.by/q7ja](http://grab.by/q7ja) It may be the text also and the choice of shapes.

<comment><USER20> that being said. I still enjoyed the insight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> You can almost see Gingrich's "Contract with America" happening in 1994-1996 as debt payments ballooned to almost a quarter of the budget.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is nice, but it would be useful to have a display mode that graphs categories' change in their fraction of overall expenditure over time.

</comment><comment><USER23> Why is there a Railroad Retirement Board in the US budget? Shouldn't that somehow be combined with Social Security?

<comment><USER15> Read up on the history of the railroad sector. It's corrupt, it's nasty, it's disgusting, and it's depressing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Nice! I think the inflation adjusted graphs should be the default though.

</comment><comment><USER9> Health and Human Services - 921.61B USD, important and interesting.

<comment><USER25> HHS spending is almost entirely spending for Medicare and Medicaid Services (see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Hea...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Health_and_Human_Services#Budget))

<comment><USER4> you can use the visualization to see exactly what makes up the health and human services budget item, by double clicking on it. Then you can also see the individual programs that make up medicare and medicaid.</comment></comment></comment>


Google Chrome has 20% global market share - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/google/2011/07/01/google-chrome-has-20-market-share-firefox-in-its-sights/ <comment><USER2> Isn't the bigger news here that IE has dropped below 50% market share (dramatically) for the first time in over a decade? It's dominance is kind of over.

<comment><USER3> _sigh_ \- the end users of the application I'm working on use 70%-90% IE depending on the platform. I wish this would change, but I doubt it as IE still is a major player in the enterprise market.

<comment><USER4> The great thing about IE being now a minority browser is that web developers can now say "Oh you want IE6/7/8 support? Oh, that's a minority browser that doesn't support recent things, we can't do that/will charge lots more/etc."

<comment><USER5> Minority? Sure, if compared to _every_ other browser. But in that respect, surely every browser is a minority browser?

<comment><USER4> No, IE/IE6 used to be a majority browser. It used to have 80%+ of the browser share. You could not refuse it. Now, you can.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I don't understand Google's game here. I thought Mozilla was being showered with cash from Google? If Google is now betting on Chrome, are they going to continue supporting Mozilla? Mozilla is a pretty small-budgeted non-profit and I think they rely heavily on Google's support.

<comment><USER6> I know a lot of people in the Green Party here in Germany who deliberately use Firefox because they deem it to be the most politically correct browser. My impression is that a lot of them neither realize that Firefox is indeed primarily sponsored by Google (which they consider evil), nor that Chrome/Chromium is open source, just as Firefox. They prefer Firefox for touchy-feely, not technical reasons.

So there's a market niche for a browser which comes from a sort-of neutral entity, and I think Google recognizes that and that's why they continue to pour money into Mozilla. Mozilla looks like a neutral entity, dedicated to the good, while in fact it's almost a wholly-owned subsidiary of Google.

<comment><USER7> Wow, people from the Green Party really consider Google evil? I wonder what they would say, were Google not to invest in renewable energy, and in reducing energy consumption * ... I can see how some people might be concerned about privacy, but there are many more companies I would consider evil before Google.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Energy>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google.org#Renewable_energy>

<http://www.google.com/green/>

*: reducing their energy expenditure is obviously not entirely altruistic. Powering data centers is costly. But still...

<comment><USER6> Good point. A lot of Green activists also abhor Apple even though Apple's hardware products are best of breed with regards to avoiding eco-hazardous materials (BFRs, arsenic in glass, etc). Their views are obviously not entirely rational. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So the real question is: What did Chrome do differently than Firefox to gain market share that fast?

<comment><USER9> It's fast.

It's fast.

It's fast.

Oh, and it pop-up blocks, adblocks, and flashblocks.

<comment><USER10> The question was what Chrome does _differently_ to Firefox. Firefox had adblocking before Chrome ever existed.

IMO Chrome:

\- Feels faster

\- Looks a bit better

Firefox, on the other hand:

\- Has better extensions

\- Has a better URL bar search function

I actually use Chrome nowadays. It turns out that the speed and looks of the UI are important enough that I can put up with less polished extensions and a slightly inferior URL bar.

I wish Google would make their URL bar better though. Surely it can't be that hard to match in the middle of URLs rather than just matching from the beginning? :/

<comment><USER11> * - Has a better URL bar search function *

For me, it's the opposite. Chrome's search bar does what I want predictably (run a Google search) where the awesome bar sends me all sorts of crazy places. It's that feature alone that keeps me on chrome.

<comment><USER10> I guess it depends on what you want to do. The Firefox awesome bar does a better job at guessing what bookmarked or historical site you want.

For instance, if I type in "y" or "yc" in Firefox, then it correctly guesses that I probably want "news.ycombinator.com", because it's a site I often visit and one of the very few with "y" or "yc" in the domain name.

Chrome, on the other hand, seems to only match from the start of bookmarked URLs. So "y" doesn't match, and nor does "yc". Instead it advises me to do a Google search. On the other hand, if I type "n", then it does guess that I want "news.ycombinator.com" (or "news.bbc.co.uk").

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm sold on Google Chrome, but it's frustrating that some sites aren't available on Chrome and I'm forced to used Firefox and Safari from time to time. Does that qualify me as a user of all three, thereby inflating the statistics?

<comment><USER13> What sites aren't available on Google Chrome?

<comment><USER14> Just the ones that you rarely have to deal with, but you do _have_ to deal with. Like your insurer's site, your bank's, if you're in college and you have to take tests online, that too.

Bank sites are just terrible in general. Why is my least secure password always on a bank site? Shouldn't they have the highest requirements as far as security goes?

<comment><USER15> Is is possible to spoof the user agent and fool the server into thinking you user Firefox?

Some of those places just hard-code the possible choices of compatible browsers, and that list is 5+ years old. Once in a while I still see sites that advertise their support for Netscape.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Statcounter has tended to estimate Chrome's share higher than other sources.

[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Sum...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Summary_table)]</comment>


Hosni Mubarak finally steps down - <AUTHOR> http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/02/201121125158705862.html <comment><USER3> Watching Al Jazeera's live stream and they had one of their journalists on the phone from the square. She expressed excitement and delight that Mubarak was gone. The host guy back in the studio pointed out the journalist on the phone had been impartial up until now, and basically apologised for her expressing her opinion.

I thought that was pretty classy.

<comment><USER4> He actually said something along the lines of "...do forgive her for her reaction. She was 1 week old when Mubarak came into office."

Very cool.

<comment><USER5> Now it happened another time, and he was even more harsh, sth like "we are sorry that some of our Egyptian correspondents express their private emotions and opinions instead of only doing their proffession". That's what shows class and a really PRO approach. In Poland, when the pope died or the plane crashed, journalists of our local news stations started a crying/mourning contest - <USER2> was disgusting and unbearable to watch, and nobody from tv even cared to think that there was something extremely not proffessional about it.

<comment><USER6> Everyone on TV crying sure seems like it would be super annoying. But I find the notion that journalist should, or even indeed ever could, be 100% objective and impartial - silly.

Silly and most prevalent in America. Curiously also in America we have Fox news which clearly does not abide by objectivity even as it advertises itself with it.

My point is simply that pure objectivity is an impossibility.

Attempting to reach pure objectivity can lead you down a wrong path, just look at how American journalists contort themselves in order to be nautral, facts and reality be damned.

In Europe it is much more prevalent that everyone has a bias, know what it is and keep it in mind as you read, watch, or listen to them.

I'm hoping that Al Jazeera, which is accused of having copied the style of fox news if not the substance, does not follow American journalism down the path of a bias free utopia.

I hope Egyptian journalists who show any kind of emotion at this news, are only jokingly reprimanded. As long as it doesn't turn into a soap opera, bias ought to be expected of mere humans, even if they are journalists.

<comment><USER7> An objective view is one where you focus on the facts of reality, without trying to superimpose opinions on them. Trying to equally present all opinions does not necessarily have anything at all to do with the facts, and is not objective reporting. And though our models of reality are necessarily imperfect, we can still try to get them to match reality as well as we can. One of the big hazards to avoid is being emotionally entangled with the news in a way that prevents you from reporting it neutrally.

Al Jazeera derives most of its fame from being the least biased news agency in the Middle East, with satellites that let it broadcast to places that would prefer for their citizens only to have access to the official state-run news.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "The struggle for justice should never be abandoned because of the apparent overwhelming power of those who seem invincible in their determination to hold on to it. That apparent power has, again and again, proved vulnerable to human qualities less measurable than bombs and dollars: moral fervor, determination, unity, organization, sacrifice, wit, ingenuity, courage, patience."

 _\- Howard Zinn_

</comment><comment><USER9> The difficult part is always what comes after a revolution. Having the military in charge isn't necessarily a good thing, and whether Egypt does get a democratic government will now depend upon how the military behaves.

<comment><USER10> Not to mention that a democratic government, in itself, doesn't guarantee anything - large-scale corruption and incompetence are still a very real possibility.

Still, hopefully a step in the right direction - more options are now available to the Egyptian people.

<comment><USER11> Not just a real possibility, but a very likely one. I recall that in one interview, a protester was complaining about the lack of economic opportunity. "The supervisor hires all his nephews! Regular people can't get any hours!" (Or something to that effect.)

No matter how awesome the new regime is, I doubt they can fix this. Sad fact: many of Egypt's problems are inflicted by the people on themselves, not by Mubarak.

<comment><USER12> Alas, I can't find it now, but I recall reading a Foreign Policy article a few months ago which quoted one Egyptian as saying something like 'Mubarak is problem, but the much bigger problem is that this country has a million little Mubaraks, tiny totalitarians who rule their tiny fiefdoms with a tiny (iron) fist'; it seems that getting rid of Mubarak will have been much easier than displacing or reforming all the little Mubaraks.

<comment><USER8> That seems similar to the situation in Tunisia, and I'd say it's a common pattern that replicates itself whenever a country is under a dictatorship for decades.

This is a really incredible success of the Egyptian people, but it's just the first step of De-Mubarak-ification.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am so happy for the people of Egypt. This is one for the history books. Our kids will be reading about this revolution as an example of the peaceful power of the people.

I have to congratulate AlJazeera for their tremendous coverage of unfolding events. They have been very professional and fearless in their reporting. Western media should take notes.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring but for now Egypt and the entire world can smile wide and celebrate.

Mazal Tov to the people of Egypt!

<comment><USER14>
        Mazal Tov to the people of Egypt!

Why would you congratulate the people of Egypt in Hebrew?

<comment><USER15> I'd suspect that after enduring 30 years of struggle against a dictator that they wouldn't care what language they were cheered in. Most people just want to live in peace, it's only those who have an axe to grind that incite things by worrying what language someone is congratulated in.

<comment><USER14> Hebrew is my mother-tongue, I have no axe to grind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Mubarak handing power to the army probably means that the regime lives on, Mubarak's just not in charge of it anymore. Egypt's issues aren't settled now, this is only a step and it remains to be seen if real, true, democratic change is going to happen.

<comment><USER17> True. But there is an election coming up next. Now they have just began, Tunisia has just began too. There is an opportunity here since media will be opened (it already opened in Tunisia) and also the doors for true opponents. It's time to guard the election and ensure that the right one is elected.

We have just began, and I hope everything will be fine.

<comment><USER18> Many Egyptians were talking about having a constitutional convention to decide what sort of government they want. Perhaps it will acknowledge inalienable rights reserved to the people for example.

Hopefully that will be the next step, anything less than starting from scratch with their government is going to leave the old system and those who gained power from it in place.

<comment><USER19> That would be the smartest thing that they could possibly do, especially if they take the opportunity to define a constitution with strong protections for negative rights. With enough care they'll constrain any future government, protect fundamental freedoms and kill two birds with one stone by easing Western fears about the Muslim Brotherhood assuming power.

They would do well to learn from South Africa's example in this. I honestly believe that if it was not for the phased departure of apartheid from 1990 to 1994, combined with the constitutional convention and the preservation of the national police and the military, South Africa's transition would have ended in disaster. In the end the security forces played a massive role in creating a stable enough environment for the vital negotiations to take place and without the work of the military behind the scenes it's doubtful that the 1994 election would have happened at all.

So the biggest mistake now would be to rush this. Egyptians need to understand that the steps they take next are going to set the stage for the next 30 years and determine whether Mubarak will be followed by a true multi-party democracy or by yet another group of thuggish oppressors. They had better make it count.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> And Mubarak's Wikipedia entry is already edited:

 _Muhammad Hosni Sayyid Mubarak was the President of Egypt from 1981 to 2011._ [1]

History unfolding live indeed.

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

</comment><comment><USER21> Next time, don't take down your country's Internet.

<comment><USER22> About the only comment thread on this story that has a claim of belonging on HN.

<comment><USER23> Agreed. Sometimes people forget that this is "news for hackers" and not just news, however wide they are spread.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12433045>

_The BBC's Jon Leyne in Cairo said the announcement caught everyone by surprise, and all over the city drivers honked their horns and people fired guns into the air.

But the army takeover looks very much like a military coup, our correspondent adds.

The constitution has been breached, he says, because officially it should be the speaker of parliament who takes over, not the army leadership._

Hope for the best, plan for the worst. So far the Egyptian military have been on the right side of this situation but we have no guarantees what happens next. This is the end of the beginning, not the end.

<comment><USER25> Stratfor is also calling this a coup:

[http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20110211-red-alert- mubarak-...](http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20110211-red-alert-mubarak- resigns-military-in-charge)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm very happy for Egyptian people. People of Egypt deserve a better leader, a better government. The guy who said 'I am ready to die' yesterday on CNN almost made me cry. Thats the spirit, and that spirit deserved a victory which they finally achieved. I hope the same happens for other nations that have been held under dictatorship for decades.

<comment><USER17> Don't be very enthusiastic, especially for Egypt. They have got a very sensible position. They are Israel neighbor, they have the Suez Canal, and also the most populated Arabic country (They can become a power). That is, I don't think that the U.S will give up that easily.

Also keep in mind, that the Arab nations want to unite. If you give the people the power, you'll see tomorrow that most of the borders are removed, which let the place for the building of a very strong and influential civilization.

As I said in my other thread, we have just began and it'll be a very long road and will need a very long breath.

<comment><USER12> _If you give the people the power, you'll see tomorrow that most of the borders are removed_

WTF? Have you ever spoken with an actual Arab?

If you had, you'd know that nationalism is alive and well. Egyptians are quite cognizant of the differences between themselves and Syrians or Lebanese or Jordanians. They have zero interest in abolishing borders and uniting with other countries.

But what do I know, I'm only an Egyptian.

<comment><USER17> I really don't know about you. I'm not saying they want to form a one country and become one nation; but make trade easier, one currency (may be in the future). I was speaking from the financial side.

For their support for brothers countries like Palestine, may be you won't support them, but the majority does.

And you being an Egyptian doesn't represent what the majority of Egyptians think. Only the future will tell what their orientations will be.

<comment><USER27> Look at how difficult any of this similar co-operation has been for Europeans.

You seem to suggest that you can't extrapolate from one Egyptian to all Egyptians, yet at the same time you seem to be talking about Arabs as some monolithic mono-culture, which seems like a very backwards and ill-informed view.

Sure, Egyptians and, say, Jordanians are both Arabs, but guess what, Brits and, say, Austrians are both Germanic Caucasians, don't expect them to team up anytime soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> [http://blogs.aljazeera.net/sites/default/files/imagecache/Fe...](http://blogs.aljazeera.net/sites/default/files/imagecache/FeaturedImagePost/images/jomaaa.jpg)

This is one of the better images I've seen showing the pure scale of the protests. In the US, we had our "million man march" which questionably had so many people. In Egypt, many millions have been involved over the course of far longer than one day. With relation to their total population, the size of the movement is pretty mind boggling.

<comment><USER29> The only time I've seen this many people gathered in one place in the US... is back when Chicago used to do a single, large fireworks display.

I don't know whether that's a good or bad thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Portugal had a revolution in 1974 that ended an dictatorship of more than 40 years. The Army was fed up with the colonial wars and persuaded by the left- wing illegal parties, took control of the country. Democracy exists in Portugal, but corruption and widespread cleptocracy by a small number of elite families still rule. I hope Egypt avoids that.

</comment><comment><USER31> Reminds of 1989 here in Germany! Congratulation Egypt!

<comment><USER5> Which began in 1980 in Poland

<comment><USER32> Checz had it even earlier.

<comment><USER33> Hungary '56. Let's not get into a contest here.

<comment><USER5> We could probably go back to the 50s and all the events all around the eastern block during those times but that was not the point. Just that the events around 1980 (Gdansk .pl, Velvet .cz.sk) started the domino effect which led to dropping the Berlin Wall and eventually failure of the USSR. No contest here.

<comment><USER32> To be pedantic, it was the economic inefficiencies of the communist bloc that started everything. Events were just inevitablities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> If you can, I urge you to get a look of the live stream at aljazeera: <http://english.aljazeera.net/watch_now/> The Tahir square is absolutely euphoric.

</comment><comment><USER35> This is a side question and I'd like to get any/all opinions since I have yet to find a suitable answer to this.

How do I, as an American citizen, minimize cognitive dissonance when the following disparate events occur?

America's stance: democracy and 'freedom' are fundamental rights of all people.

-and-

America's actions: refusing to recognize a democratically elected body because the resulting will of the people is openly hostile towards America and Israel (Hamas winning seats in Palestinian elections).

<comment><USER19> The positions are not fundamentally opposed. You can believe that people have the right to choose their own leaders while also believing both that they should be accountable for that choice and that those leaders can be ignored or shunned if they do not follow the rules of the international community.

In other words, the only legitimacy that being elected democratically confers on leaders is that of being the authentic representatives of their people. The greater legitimacy of a government as a member of the international community of states might be influenced by whether it's democratic or not but is determined mostly by that governments actions and stated intentions. Hamas has refused to agree to steps, such as renouncing terrorism, that the US, EU and Israel believe are fundamental to a government being a member of the international community.

So they have accepted the results of the election, but they're under no obligation to be friendly with the result.

With that said, like all great powers the US's foreign policy is at times hypocritical to some extent. It will extol the virtues of rapid democratic change in some countries while discouraging it in others. This seeming mismatch in standards is the problem with a foreign policy with an idealistic rhetoric but a realpolitik reality. The truth is that encouraging rapid democratic change in all cases would be foolish and irresponsible, because it could lead to far worse outcomes than the status quo. Some countries can handle that kind of explosive change, others can't and need to be shepherded towards it at a slower rate. I think Egypt falls into the latter category.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> There's great live coverage on the BBC at the moment: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12307698>

It looks like a carnival erupted at Tahrir Square when word got out. It was pretty vibrant before, but euphoria is clearly evident.

<comment><USER37> The carnival has actually been there for days now...

<comment><USER36> Not like this, there's a reporter from the BBC tweeting how the streets going to the square are all packed, and palpable joy is everywhere.

Watch the video stream if you can, it's uplifting to see. It's more than just the anticipation of celebration, it's the pure and unadulterated celebration and the carnival atmosphere associated with that.

Just put it into perspective, a dictator that most have lived under all their lives, the fear that goes with it... it's all being released in one go.

It's really hard to watch these pictures and not feel that rub off, but down on the ground this is probably the highest concentration of pure happiness and elation on this planet.

Look, awesome is an over-used word and we're an extremely cynical bunch... but this really is awesome.

<comment><USER37> Oh I've been watching it. I'm mainly referring to the tent city in the middle of the square being there, but yes it's quite amazing overall. As happy as I am, I'm still feeling a little unsettled. It's a victory yes, but what comes next?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Whatever outcome may result over time, I'm happy for the people of Egypt. Once again, the desire to be free eventually overwhelms the arbitrary tyranny of a dictator.

It will certainly be interesting to see if this leads to a domino effect in the Middle East and how it affects US foreign policy.

</comment><comment><USER39> The swiss have frozen his assets:

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/11/us-swiss- mubarak-i...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/11/us-swiss-mubarak- idUSTRE71A58R20110211)

I'm glad to see this, its the first step to sending him to the Hague.

</comment><comment><USER40> The live stream is just incredible to watch. Just inspiring to hear these cheers <http://english.aljazeera.net/watch_now/>

</comment><comment><USER41> When do we get to see who is really in power now? It's hilarious to me that all the pictures of the 1-10 powers in Egypt are grainy screengrabs from old TV programs.

</comment><comment><USER42> It's indeed been a roller-coaster.

2/10 morning - He's going to step down.

2/10 evening - He's not stepping down.

2/11 morning - He's really stepping down.

Hopefully the rest of the ride will be less bumpy and more pleasant.

</comment><comment><USER43> puppet out, puppet in

</comment><comment><USER44> Another example of nonviolent action leading to real political change.

Now if the U.S. government gets on the ball, they will redirect some substantial portion of the Egyptian ~$2 billion military aid and announce we will help build science and technical schools, universities, and hospitals.

Thanks to those of you who have been hosting and continue to host Tor bridges in support of emerging democracies:

<https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-doc-relay.html.en>

<comment><USER19> Halting or redirecting the military aid would be the worst thing the US could do, because it would force the military (the guys who are actually in charge now) into a corner, remove any hope of being able to co-operate with it and undermine the most important source of stability the country has.

In any case, Egypt's security requirements are not going anywhere and the country will still have to maintain a sizable military in future, so cutting the funding will just mean that the state will have to obtain replacement funds from the national budget. Right now the $2 billion that the US gives to the Egyptian military is $2 billion that's freed up for the state to spend on other things like schools, universities and hospitals. That they don't do a good enough job of that already is due more to corruption than to any actual lack of funds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> the bad thing is that HM stole $50 billion from the citizens of Egypt..and the USA does nothing and UN does nothing

<comment><USER46> That $50 billion number seems to have been fished out of thin air. IIRC, the US government estimates his fortune at closer to $2 billion. Large, yes, but not at the same level.

<comment><USER47> Seriously? To me, the difference between $2B and $50B seems like diminishing returns (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diminishing_returns>). If you disagree, then I'd like to be you for a few days... ;-)

<comment><USER46> For a person, yes - there's little you can't do with $2B that you can do with $50B. For a country, though, it's the difference between a single shuttle launch and three years of NASA's budget.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Meanwhile, Israel is probably polishing its tanks and nukes.

</comment><comment><USER49> Flagged per the guidelines: if it's on TV, it doesn't belong here :-)

<comment><USER50> Enough users upvoted it to get it in spot #1 on the front page. The userbase thus finds it relevant to them.

<comment><USER51> > Enough users upvoted it to get it in spot #1 on the front page.

Well, now I'm curious to see if pg manually shoves it off again, like he did with the earlier Very Popular Egypt Submission.

<comment><USER52> That could have been a result of flagging. Flagging will push a submission down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Ok. We'll see what happens.

<http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MB02Ak01.html>

 _In the most fundamental matters, President and Mrs Mubarak are incomparably more enlightened than the Egyptian public._

<comment><USER12> So, does kidnapping innocent people off the streets, imprisoning them in dungeons and torturing them by wiring car batteries to their genitals count as "fundamental"? Or is that just one of those insignificant matters?

What about stealing billions of dollars from your people? Is that a sign of enlightenment?

<comment><USER53> "We'll see what happens."

The discussions I've seen about Egypt seem to assume that it can be governed like the countries we're familiar with. Most of the things that seem evil are in fact cock-ups or unfortunate necessities. We learned about this after ousting Saddam Hussein, and were forced into all sorts of brutalities that indeed would not work well in the US or Britain.

<comment><USER12> Actually, I'm pretty sure that when you wire up a car battery to someone's genitals, that IS evil. That's not an unfortunate necessity. And its not a screwup.

 _We learned about this after ousting Saddam Hussein, and were forced into all sorts of brutalities that indeed would not work well in the US or Britain._

What did History ever do to you that compelled you to slander and malign it so?

<comment><USER53> _What did History ever do to you that compelled you to slander and malign it so?_

Are you just completely irrational or does this mean something? I honestly can't tell.

My point is simply that regime change doesn't automatically generate the political equivilent of rainbow-shitting unicorns, which is what people seem to be assuming. Governments tend to be molded by circumstances more than we realize, and not the personality of such-and-such a strongman. "We'll see what happens," is my final analysis but the best guess is always repetition.

<comment><USER12> _Are you just completely irrational or does this mean something? I honestly can't tell._

I think your explanation of US behavior in post-Hussein Iraq is ahistorical...to say the least.

 _Governments tend to be molded by circumstances more than we realize, and not the personality of such-and-such a strongman._

Absolutely, I very much agree.

I'm still curious though: is child-rape enlightenment?

<comment><USER53> _is child-rape enlightenment?_

Okay, you're asking an imbecilic question, but I'll answer it because you're basically setting yourself up: No, it isn't.

Now, is the mutilation of children, practiced by the Egyptian population in general, enlightenment? Is it? Huh? I answered your bullshit question; do me the favor of answering my real question.

Maybe you should read the original article I posted and think twice.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


I Think I Broke Google - <AUTHOR> http://waynepan.com/2008/10/24/i-think-i-broke-google/

<comment><USER2> Ever tried putting a very long string to search? You get this ugly "400 Bad Request" message from the server. Maybe they should politely let the user know that the search string was too long!</comment>


Espressif releases ESP8266 killer (new ESP8285) - <AUTHOR> http://hackaday.com/2016/06/21/espressif-releases-esp8266-killer/ <comment><AUTHOR> The title is kind of a joke. It's just an ESP8266 with onboard Flash.

As one of the comments says _" Well, yeah. Wouldn't be much of a headline if it said "Company Introduces Slightly Different Version of Existing Product," would it?_</comment>


This guy is translating "Programming Collective Intelligence" from Python to Ruby - <AUTHOR> http://www.railsonwave.com/railsonwave/2008/1/15/programming-collective-intelligence

<comment><USER2> Why is there so much interest in reinventing the wheel around here? Many if not most of the examples would be best served by writing a flexible C/C++ library implementation and SWIGging or otherwise hooking them into (Ruby,Lisp,Perl,...)

For example, libSVM already exists as such an implementation. Using LAPACK or something like that for NNMF and writing an easy-to-use hook for Ruby would make more sense than doing it in Ruby. I just don't get the urge to rewrite code in another language without fundamentally improving the situation (obviously 'improvement' is subjective, but I mean here 'make it go faster').

Are there really a ton of sites that are so heavily invested in Ruby that they fail to see its shortcomings in this respect? (As in, it's slow for many types of operations... that's why most scientific libraries are written in C++ or Fortran and then interfaced to a more flexible language or languages) NumPy exists, for example, because Python sucks at manipulating matrices.

I guess I've been an academic for too long at this point, but it seems a little sad to do this unless someone is paying you for the tedium. YMMV.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm assuming he's doing it primarily for educational purposes.

Even if he weren't, there's nothing wrong with porting libraries to Ruby. There's always an impedance mismatch when you SWIG or otherwise FFI a library into a native application.

Besides, let's be honest -- Python ain't _that_ much faster than Ruby, especially with Rubinius et al on the horizon.

<comment><USER2> is there a Ruby version of NumPy?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> And this guy is translating to Common Lisp:

[1] [http://i-need-closures.blogspot.com/2007/09/programming- coll...](http://i-need-closures.blogspot.com/2007/09/programming-collective- intelligence-in.html)

[2] [http://i-need-closures.blogspot.com/2007/09/programming- coll...](http://i-need-closures.blogspot.com/2007/09/programming-collective- intelligence-in_27.html)

[3] [http://i-need-closures.blogspot.com/2007/10/programming- coll...](http://i-need-closures.blogspot.com/2007/10/programming-collective- intelligence.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> On to this topic:

Am I the only one who thinks that this field still seems so incredibly privative? Online recommendation systems particularly... they suck!

But more importantly, even if someone developed a "perfect" recommendation system, what would that be worth? For example, it has been said that symmetric encryption is good enough today that even if the perfect (could only be beaten via bruit force) algorithm was created , nothing would change.

Are we facing the same problem in this field? Or are those implementing these systems today just neglecting to take the field to the next level?

</comment><comment><USER5> what do you think of the book itself (Programming Collective Intelligence)?

It might be just me but I found the book fairly useless. All the author does is take some ultra basic AI/Machine Learning algorithms and build some bare bones web 2.0 type scenarios around it. The chapters on neural networks, svms and decision trees struck me as particularly primitive. A lot of additional work would need to be done (e.g: nomalizing data for the NNs) before those algorithms would be useful in a real world context.

An ok book if you know nothing at all about AI/machine learning. I wonder how much value it actually provides. I might be missing something. If you think so feel free to correct me.

<comment><USER2> it's a good starting point for someone with no mathematical background. A lot of these were state of the art in eg compbio a few short years ago... Very few applied texts out there use examples from interesting sources for a lay reader.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If I am correct, this has been done before...

[Though he did exactly what I planned. I just picked up Programming Collective Intelligence, and plan to write the examples in Ruby... ]

</comment><comment><USER7> Oh boy euclidean distance!

<comment><USER4> Agreed. Although the author's work is still appreciated.</comment></comment>


AeroFarms Plans Aeroponic Farm in Newark to Grow Leafy Greens - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-10-30/aerofarms-plans-aeroponic-farm-in-newark-to-grow-leafy-greens <comment><USER2> I've been long fascinated by hydroponics. I've watched similar companies launch for the past twenty years. The economics simply aren't there. When similar projects shared their numbers the yields they project are unrealistic. Or their production quickly exceeds the small market willing to pay a considerable premium for a better product.

The numbers work, sometimes with flowers yet these guys always try growing lettuce or tomatoes.

<comment><USER3> I wonder, does the higher price take subsidies into account? Any is it possible to grow any kind of produce? Ie. carrots and potatoes as well?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I see that it produces a fair amount of CO2 from the lighting. It would be great to see how this compares to the amount of CO2 used to ship a similar product from the fields.

(Plus, presumably, higher harvesting energy costs.)

<comment><USER5> Plants need CO2 to grow. Most of the time CO2 is added. So I don't think CO2 production from lighting is an issue.

<comment><USER4> I'd like to see some comparison. If 10x as much is produced as is used, that's possibly an issue!</comment></comment></comment>


The Toxic Bubble of Technical Debt Threatening America - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/10/california-fires-and-pge-toxic-debt/600979/ <comment><AUTHOR> The tech term pulled into the mainstream:

> _For decades, corporate executives, as well as city, county, state, and > federal officials, not to mention voters, have decided against doing the > routine maintenance and deeper upgrades to ensure that electrical systems, > roads, bridges, dams, and other infrastructure can function properly under a > range of conditions. Kicking the can down the road like this is often seen > as the profit-maximizing or politically expedient option. But it's really > borrowing against the future, without putting that debt on the books._

> _In software development, engineers have long noted that taking the easy way > out of coding problems builds up what they call "technical debt," as the > tech journalist Quinn Norton has written._

Norton's article:

* [https://www.emptywheel.net/2019/10/18/a-world-we-built-to-bu...](https://www.emptywheel.net/2019/10/18/a-world-we-built-to-burn/)

</comment><comment><USER2> Wait, don't turn tech debt into a climate change thing. That's our word!

I can just hear the Backlog Grooming conversations...

Devs: "When are we going to schedule time for tech debt? We haven't done any chores in 3 months."

Manager: "Oh, you didn't see the CEO's email? Instead of handling tech debt with engineer time, we're turning off the A/C every Thursday."</comment>


Books on Dogs - <AUTHOR> https://fivebooks.com/best-books/dogs-jose-castello/ <comment><USER2> Book links silently reroute to Amazon affiliate links (tag=fivebooks001-20) in violation of Amazon's own rules.

<comment><USER3> They identify themselves as an Amazon affiliate pretty clearly on the bottom of the page, but I guess they don't know the rule forbidding redirection/shortening :/</comment></comment>


What I Learned Going Through YC as a 17 Year Old - <AUTHOR> https://tieshunroquerre.com/blog/yc-learnings <comment><USER3> > East Coast VCs are much more conservative, which is ultimately bad because > it results in less moonshots succeeding.

This is really accurate, at least from my experience as someone of a similar age working on my first startup at the time.

With cold outreach to VCs in NYC I had zero responses, and only two meetings with BigCos curious about us; they seemed easier to get the attention of.

When I reached out to investors on the west coast it was entirely different. I still remember getting my first reply. It was a rejection, but a super- detailed one from Topher Conway of SV Angel that stuck with me. Despite it being a cold email, he offered up a lot of points that helped me adapt my strategy and address what investors may be concerned about.

I was a kid with anxiety and never replied back to that rejection email (pains me to this day), but I have so much appreciation for people like that, who are aplenty in the Bay Area.

<comment><USER4> > East Coast VCs are much more conservative, which is ultimately bad because > it results in less moonshots succeeding.

"East Coast VCs are much more conservative, which is actually better in a longer term because it results in more stable return rates (less failure)"

<comment><USER3> I should've only quoted the first part of the sentence as relevant to me, but:

Better for whom?

I agree it could result in better average returns for the firm, but it likely isn't better for moving society forward as a whole.

<comment><USER5> Firms that do not make a solid profit margin are a really bad sign - it means that there is little value add by the firm.

If I buy $10 worth of paints (and equipment) then use that to create and sell you a painting for $10, that is society signalling that I really should find something better to do with my time. The raw materials are about as hard to produce as the care anyone has for my work. The value created by me doing the work was $0.

On the other hand, an artist who turns $10 worth of paint into a $100 painting has created enormous value - that artist should be the one who gets all the paint, and that is what the market will sort out. That artist is not wasting time, their art is high value add over the raw materials. The time they spent on art added $90 in value.

If firms tend to have solid profit margins, almost by magic society at large will get more actual value out of the same amount of resources. Nothing is good in excess, and there is plenty of intellectual room to quibble about where the threshold and preconditions need to be for the outcome to be 'good', but investors making a solid return is very healthy. It can move society as a whole forward.

<comment><USER6> By that logic, take all the paint away from Van Gogh and give it all to Jeff Koons.

<comment><USER7> Van Gogh tried to sell his art for more than the price of parts. He was unsuccessful in his life due to being ahead of the curve. Much like Betamax, he died before being appreciated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> ian-g I have a lot of thoughts about this. I'm glad he's seen some success! That's great for him! I just don't know that all or even much of what he's learned is transferable

> I was able to get a job in SF with a single cold email and zero connections

This seems like sheer dumb luck. For every one of him (or you, if you're reading this) there's a lot of people who thrash and struggle. I went through 80+ job applications before I got one offer last search, and that's less than I thought I would need

> You don't need experience to get started

This one seems situational. Best example I saw recently (and I can't find the twitter thread, I'm sorry) was weirdly shaped food startups. The large point was that there are stores for oddly shaped food, they're just ones rich people don't normally shop at (WinCo anybody?). And there are uses for damaged food, like juice. Sometimes you think you've found a niche, but you should still research it a bit

> Silicon Valley doesn't care about your background

Sure it cares less than other places. It still cares a lot. It's not everywhere people would support you that way. My silicon valley high school wouldn't have allowed folks to try and make scheduling software for them, not a chance.

> Failure is acceptable

This one, I somewhat like. Avoiding failure is definitely prioritized. I think maybe we should emphasize fallback plans maybe? Some people just can't afford to fail completely unless they have people who will support them through it

<comment><AUTHOR> > This seems like sheer dumb luck. For every one of him (or you, if you're > reading this) there's a lot of people who thrash and struggle. I went > through 80+ job applications before I got one offer last search, and that's > less than I thought I would need Author here. There was definitely luck > involved (the luckiest part imo was that Teespring was an incredible company > to work at and I had no idea when I reached out), but I think cold emails > are a surprisingly effective tool that are underutilized for some reason.

I sent two emails, one to the CEO of Teespring and one to the CEO of Y Combinator at the time (Sam Altman). Both replied (though sama politely declined my request to be his summer intern haha) so getting a response from high profile entrepreneurs is definitely possible without much luck.

<comment> ian-g That's totally fair, and congrats on that working! I don't want to take away at all from what you've accomplished!

It's very interesting looking at how you - a successful newcomer - <USER2> silicon valley compared to the way I see it - as somebody who grew up there and left.

The other interesting bit is how you got here. It looks like you've been coding and elbows deep in computers forever. I'd hazard a guess that also helped you over folks like me who are quite a bit less certain of where we want to go

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right that's an interesting contrast. Can you share why you ended up leaving? I'm curious about your perspective.

I started coding when I was 13 and started wanting to build companies around the same time so I think that focus of desire definitely benefited me. I strongly believe finding what you want to focus on is more valuable than how early you start. Greg Brockman (founder of OpenAI) didn't start coding until he went to college, and there are numerous examples of people in tech, art, and other fields discovering their focus later in life and succeeding.

<comment> ian-g I left twice, both times personal. Once for college, once a bit over a year ago.

Tech permeates the area, and the expectations surrounding it can be harsh. The expectations put on kids can be too much, and I hated it. And honestly, I really didn't like the people I went to high school with or the people in my hometown much. I needed something new and different, an entirely different sort of culture to grow out of this tech and real estate focused town. So I went to Minnesota.

After college, I came back since I couldn't find work, and I got to know a lot of the better parts a bit outside my hometown. First Fridays in San Jose and Del Valle park in Livermore are two. I got a tech support job I didn't like and a bike mechanic gig on the side that I loved. What really got me to leave was getting a job in Seattle. I was prepared to stay a few more years because of the sheer number of jobs, but the area just wasn't one I could settle in long-term. There were too many bad associations for me personally.

I'm not going to say Seattle is better for everybody, but it's new to me. And I'm better equipped to find people I enjoy hanging out with, to put myself in situations that work well for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> From my experience east cost VCs are mostly former wall st folks, lawyers or family offices who are playing VC. Very few of them have any operating experience, and if they do, it's at BigCo, not in or around startups. I don't think they are well tuned to what non-traditional success looks like, and as a result they have problems pattern matching.

<comment><USER9> This has been exactly my experience. Even in the earliest stage startupS they'll be looking for the fastest line to profitability rather than prioritizing to build something that's big and important. It's low conviction investing where the financial model matters more than traditional west coast indicators of future success.

<comment><USER10> "they'll be looking for the fastest line to profitability rather than prioritizing to build something that's big and important"

First - don't assume that the 'big thing entrepreneurs are building' is in any way 'important'.

9 times out of 10 the 'big thing' is just neat idea, a project, and may have nothing to do with profiability.

Most 'grand visions' are that.

MS, Amazon, Snap, FB, Insta, Google - they all started pretty small, and worked at a fairly small scale. Surely they had visions, but they were fulfilling needs from the get-go.

I think what you are confusing is probably 'risk profile' of smaller VC funds, who in fact, don't have the patience to worry about building large marketplaces for example. It has to do with mentality, but also the size of the funds, and their experience with bigger bets.

And of course, nothing compares to SoftBank in terms of a 'massive fund looking to support global penetration'.

<comment><USER9> Either you missed the point or you'd be a bad VC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It may be true that you don't need to have worked in a white shoe firm to be respected in SV, but I'm pretty sure there's certain characteristics that are advantageous:

\- Got into a top university. Good grades are popular, unsurprisingly. A proxy for intelligence and hard work.

\- Speaks English. How many YC folks don't? I'm sure there are a lot of smart people in the world who just didn't grow up with English and so are somewhat cut off from SV. Not insurmountable though.

\- High EQ. Helps smooth interactions with just about everyone, including investors and employees.

<comment><USER12> funny hearing you say high EQ and then looking at Zuck, Elon and even bill gates.

all of whom are bordering on the spectrum

<comment><USER13> Maybe being a Harvard dropout with low EQ appeals more to VC. Elon makes up for it by working really work and having savior ego/massive hype that appeals to his fans and investors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > ...we realized we needed to build a services business more than a technology > business and that's not what we set out to do...

Welcome to one of the cold, hard realities of forming a company and selling something. If you don't make something that someone wants to buy, you won't succeed. And that something needs to be more than just a shiny or useful object. (Those are commodities and can be replaced -- it's your service which'll set you apart and make you worth paying.)

Even if tech is your primary focus, that needs to be bundled up in some sort of package that makes it worth paying for.

Doubly (or more) so if you are going to have actual customers and aren't going through the startup process in the hopes that some other company buys you out.

</comment><comment><USER15> > In school, the experts — teachers — always knew the right answer

Now I'm wondering what school they went to where they went to, since all the ones I have attended this hasn't been even close to being true…

<comment><USER16> The teachers present themselves as knowing the answer. They also get really mad if you point out mistakes they make, at least in middle school / high school.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Silicon Valley doesn't care about your background

This is BS. You have a much higher chance of rasing money for the same idea if you worked in FAANG than if you worked in Accenture.

Same goes to someone who went to Harvard vs someone who went to University of Colorado.

<comment><USER18> It may be easier if you have credentials, but it's certainly possible without them.

I'd argue how your business is running is 10x as important as credentials.

(I dropped out of a non-prestigious school and had work experience at one company, have raised $120m+ in <4 yrs).

<comment><USER19> > (I dropped out of a non-prestigious school and had work experience at one > company, have raised $120m+ in <4 yrs).

In other words, you had connections? I'm guessing you weren't a poor single mother who dropped out of school to raise her kid.

How do you drop out, have 1 job experience and raise $120m? Either you are extremely privilege and/or extraordinarily lucky.

Stop making it sound so easy like everyone can do what you did. Most people, who didn't even drop out, wouldn't know where to start.

<comment><USER20> [https://twitter.com/Austen/status/997604313362034689](https://twitter.com/Austen/status/997604313362034689)

> My experience: everything I own in one suitcase, here's my sleeping > situation. Would shower at YMCA and work at coworking space. $300/mo > personal burn. If you could combine the two you'd fill it 100% and make SF > possible again.

[https://twitter.com/Austen/status/1093540469022195712](https://twitter.com/Austen/status/1093540469022195712)

> Lambda School wouldn't exist without Gumroad.

> We bootstrapped for the first several months without salaries from the > proceeds of the book I sold there. Gave us enough runway to try the crazy > "pay back when you're hired" things. Thanks Sahil!

Wanna try again?

<comment><USER19> > Wanna try again?

No need. Everything you linked is self proclaimed tweets. By someone obviously very good at selling himself.

I'm sure I can link to Zuckerburg tweeting about how concerned he is about privacy issues. Does that make it so?

I've actually lived like the guy claimed and even worse. You certainly don't have time and energy to write a book. Certainly don't take pics. Seems more like the guy was hipster "slumming" for cred rather than someone truly struggling.

So a classic dropout bum who magically sells a book to start a startup? Like I said, " Either [he is] extremely privilege and/or extraordinarily lucky."

Do you want to try again?

If his story is true, he is extremely privileged and/or extraordinarily lucky. How about this, if every college student dropped out and lived like a bum, what percentage of them would be able to raise $120 million?

Also, lambdaschool isn't a new idea. The idea of tech training school has been around at least since the 90s.

<comment><USER21> > lambdaschool isn't a new idea. The idea of tech training school has been > around at least since the 90s

Yep, and the apprenticeship model even longer (which I'd argue is a category lambdaschool falls under)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Would like to know how he at 16/15 years of age got a fulltime job at teespring.

        2014 - Moved from Boston to San Francisco to work as a
        fulltime engineer at Teespring instead of doing my
        junior year of high school.

<comment><AUTHOR> I sent a cold email to Walker Williams who was the CEO of Teespring at the time. I created a functional clone of Teespring and shared the demo with him which got me the job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> > Silicon Valley doesn't care about your background

To an extent yes, but generally it still matters a lot. Look at any big tech company, and you'll find a significant number of Ivy League grads and Forbes top 25 grads.

Or look at YC itself. Anecdotally I'd say at least 50% of the YC founders have a degree from a Forbes top 25 school (it would be great if someone had the real stats).

</comment><comment><USER12> "silicon valley doesn't care about your background"

>> went to MIT

<comment><USER24> Also went to an expensive private school.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> > But I was able to get a job in SF with a single cold email and zero > connections.

Care to share anything more about this, purely out of intrigue? My own experiences have shown me that folks aren't as quick to respond, especially when you have limited value (experience) to show, even if you're just looking for mentorship.

<comment><USER26> In addition to OP being a strong candidate, this line basically screams, "I was very lucky."

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> As someone who had some small success early in life I want to send a message directly to this kid that may be unpopular on Hacker News: Pace yourself, do NOT pin your happiness on the occurrence of great wealth or success early in your life, spend a large amount of time appreciating the great success you've already had, take things slowly and experience as much "normal" life as possible - get a girlfriend, try out a normal job with minimal responsibility but strong mentorship, and appreciate that the world is filled with vast knowledge that will not be gained instantaneously and MOST CERTAINLY is not contained in any mono-culture such as the tech-startup scene.

To everyone else, the mid-west front-end developer making 55k who thinks he's a failure because he hasn't had the same success as a 17 year old MIT student and YC alum... happiness is an internal force that comes from inside you and not from external luxuries. Its OK that you didn't go to MIT, its OK that your company didn't go through YC. Its OK that you don't post a 200k+ salary on levels.fyi. Many people who have had those accolades are currently MISERABLE or have faced many hard failures since. Those hard failures are rarely publicized. We all will face great hardships in life... its the human condition. Instead of worrying about these things focus on finding your own internal happiness and pride.

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. I appreciate you sharing this message and I completely agree — I think it's really important to separate happiness from being dependent on success. So much of success comes from luck and timing that basing happiness off it is a recipe for being unhappy most of the time.

Have you read The Courage to be Disliked or A Guide to the Good Life? These books resonated with me and it seems like you may enjoy them too :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> > In the East Coast experience and status are highly valued. Bill Gates > created class scheduling software in high school, and I wanted to replicate > that. I approached our school admin about doing the same when I was 16 and > was promptly shut down because I was too young and "entire companies are > required to create scheduling software." I wasn't even given the chance to > fail.

I mean, when Bill Gates was in High School computers weren't really in general use, so they probably were still doing it on paper. Why say no? They wouldn't have to use it if he failed. Also, did he build it first, or ask for the business first?

Whereas it sounds like this person asked his school if they would convert to his scheduling tool before he had built it to try out? I can imagine a school administrator saying "we'll probably stick with our enterprise contract, thanks" in the 2010s, and it would be a reasonable answer.

I wouldn't personally recommend that one experience be the basis for your East Coast / West Coast judgments.

</comment><comment><USER10> Silicon Valley cares very much about your background.

50% of VC's are Harvard/Stanford.

FB, Insta, MS, Snapchat, Amazon, Google etc. - Ivy League or Stanford.

(Ok, Amazon and MS are not 'Valley' but ...)

So the industry is more open to 'outsiders' of the cliques than say, banking - definitely, but it's still a clique, don't kid yourself.

</comment><comment><USER29> > Experience is only loosely correlated with age

It's very important to remember that just as youth is not necessarily a disadvantage, so too is being older than the average anything to worry about.

</comment><comment><USER30> Does that mean you signed up for HN when you were 10?!? Awesome!

<comment><USER31> I think 14 because he mentioned being in a 2016 batch of YC

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah it was around 13/14 that I found YC. I think it was through a programming humor subreddit haha.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> >we realized we needed to build a services business more than a technology business and that's not what we set out to do

Wouldn't surprise me if this applies to majority of applicants.

</comment><comment><USER33> >> No one knows the right answer

Hmmmm. Be careful about this. Lots of people do know the right answer.

Youth energy and enthusiasm count for a lot, especially backin the earliest days of computing like when bill gates got started. That was because adults knew very little.

> Experience is only loosely correlated with age

These days age and experience count for a lot. Lots of older people have incredibly valuable answers to common challenges in competing and business.

<comment><USER34> There is a pretty good book called "the Death or Expertise" that discusses the broad trend towards people with little specialized knowledge feeling they can learn a domain quickly and know more than experts.

So many problems we have in society seem to be caused by this mass weaponized Dunning-Kruger effect.

<comment><USER35> I personally view this as less DK and more just removing fences[1] until the externalizations blow up. By then you've probably moved on or can divert some profit to putting the fences back.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> What I learned from this article:

1\. Privilege opens doors not available to others.

2\. Those with privilege are often oblivious to the advantages they have.

<comment><USER20> "Coming from a Boston suburb" was enough for you to dismiss his talent and effort as irrelevant? Geez.

<comment><USER37> On another part of his homepage it says he went to MIT around the same time he did YC. As someone who interviewed for YC myself while attending MIT, I am not even going to pretend I got the interview entirely independent of my background and the opportunities it gave me - and indirectly, my ability and decision to finance a very expensive education, even after financial aid.

Now, he obviously had talent to even get into a top engineering school at that age, so there is some correlation as well as causation here. Still, unless he wasn't admitted yet or actively hid the fact from YC, it seems highly unlikely it didn't carry some weight - especially at that age, with so much less track record to look at.

<comment><USER38> How many people are not going to MIT because they are financially unable? I'm curious.

<comment><USER39> Now that I'm on the "other side" (got my PhD from an Ivy League uni), I constantly meet people who don't even begin to grasp how far away growing up poor puts you from things and resources they take for granted. Even stuff that may seem obviously within reach.

I'll give you an example from my own life. My dream schools were Duke and MIT. I applied to Duke, but didn't even apply to MIT. Want to know why? Because it cost $40 to apply. Every school charged an application fee, so I had to be incredibly picky about where I applied to stretch the money from my $5.50 / hr part-time job at Chik-Fil-A. I had to narrow my list to 4, and I figured MIT was a long-shot so it didn't make the cut (Wofford, Furman, Duke, College of Charleston; got into all but Duke).

It wasn't until years later that I found out all you have to do is call up the admissions office and they'll waive the fee. You can't imagine how gutted I felt when I learned this. I wanted to cry. I was doing pretty good by then but my mind was filled with the alternate histories that were within reach without me even knowing it.

Somebody is probably reading this and thinking I wasn't poor, I was just stupid. Maybe so, but it's really hard to put yourself in the position of someone who has no resources, no perspective, and no people in their life to guide them through basic things like this (my parents didn't go to college). Sometimes being blessed with a good brain just isn't enough.

<comment><USER40> Your skin color, who your parents are (educated or not), where you live have a big impact on your life. The effect of parents and mentors (if you are lucky enough to find even one) have an out sized impact on your choices, I've observed this through personal experience. In high school, we had kids who i didn't think were that exceptional by any means but they got funneled into ivy leagues/top universities due to the fact that their parents were educated upper middle class types that push their kids, and give them proper guidance as to how the world really works. The talented poor kids were pushed to go to the local state universities by the parents who though top schools were out of reach/too expensive. The folks that went to the top schools went straight to SV/NYC/Boston, while the talented poor kids kinda stayed in our local Midwest cities, talk about a huge opportunity cost of being born poor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Privilege... love it.

<comment><USER42> Can you please not be a jerk in HN comments? Maybe you don't owe better to people you feel are privileged, but you owe better to this community if you're commenting here.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful. Note that they include:

" _Be kind. Don 't be snarky._"

" _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something._"

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I wish we could take comments from threads like these and turn them into a kind of compendium of HN, so that outsiders can know what to expect of this site.

Need to determine if it fits under the "Race Baiting" or the "Educating Adolescents on Privilege" category.

<comment><USER15> I feel like cherry-picking from a particular thread is the exact opposite of what a "compendium" is.</comment></comment>


Twitter bans ads from two Russian media outlets, cites election meddling - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-twitter/twitter-bans-ads-from-two-russian-media-outlets-cites-election-meddling-idUSKBN1CV2FG <comment><AUTHOR> Techmeme summary: _Twitter: Twitter decides to ban advertising from all accounts owned by Russia Today and Sputnik and will donate estimated $1.9M earnings since 2011 to misinfo research_</comment>


Making audio more accessible with two new apps - <AUTHOR> https://www.blog.google/outreach-initiatives/accessibility/making-audio-more-accessible-two-new-apps/ <comment><USER2> It seems to me that the audio space is still quite undeveloped when it comes to Machine Learning.

I mean we have visual style transfer (look at the Deep Video Portraits shown at SIGGRAPH, it's insane..) yet the equivalent in speech isn't even usable.

I think largely it is just a harder problem as you can break a video into frames and each frame can be treated independently, of course you may wish to take the sequential nature into account but there is a lot of information in each static frame.

Contrast this with audio where a very small clip (analogous to a video frame) is insufficient to get even phonemes let alone words, or to identify if the speaker is male/female or if there is even any speech at all...

That said - I think it is the area with the most potential and the one which interests me the most.</comment>


What I learnt about sales from the angry subway preacher - <AUTHOR> http://aarjav.wordpress.com/2010/05/13/what-i-learnt-about-sales-from-the-angry-subway-preacher/ <comment><USER2> _I believe in the utility of my product more than he believes in his._

I can almost guarantee you this is false. His beliefs have driven him to stand on the street corner every day and yell at strangers. Your beliefs have you picking up the phone here and there or sending a few emails. Not even remotely similar in terms of evidence of underlying belief in what you have to offer.

<comment><USER3> You're probably right, but everything is relative. Maybe he's deathly afraid of phones. Maybe the other guy feels very at home yelling at strangers.

Que Dr. Jules Hilbert "if you pause to think, you'd realize that that answer is inextricably contingent upon the type of life being led... and, of course, the quality of the pancakes."

<comment><AUTHOR> I am not deathly afraid of phones, in fact I have grown sort of fond of the challenge of calling of stranger and convincing them about something I believe in. In that sense at least, I am not very different from the preacher. (Assuming of course that he likes what he does. Didn't seem that way from his demeanor :))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A funny experiment in street preaching and the crowd's reaction:

<http://kcimprov.com/?p=mission02>

</comment><comment><USER5> Of course the question I want to know his how many sales does the angry subway preacher make. More then one every few months like this guy?

<comment><USER6> If you're talking about public conversions, very few, I would guess.

Most preachers I have heard speak on the subject like to say that if you witness to people and the number of conversions you see in your lifetime is > 0, then you can call it a success, and if the number of conversions = 0, then you can at least be confident that it had some impact according to a verse in Isaiah 55:11 that says "So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it."

Given that, from the street preacher's perspective, his success-rate is 100%.

As far as actual conversions, also called a Profession of Faith, I would guess that the quality of the pitch has a lot to do with the final results. Here's an example of a good pitch (American street preaching in Peru, with subtitles):

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

<comment><AUTHOR> I suspect that this is true, although in my view religious conversion is not very different from changing your clothes. Neither, in and of itself, affects how good of a person you are.</comment></comment></comment>


Ex-US security official: Prism 'fully authorised by US law' [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22851199

<comment><USER2> The word "intelligence" should really not be used to describe this program. In Latin _intelligere_ means "to understand"; an "intelligent" person is a clever person.

What the NSA is doing is gathering ALL possible information in the remote chance that an infinite part of it might maybe be useful some day. At the time of collection, no effort is made to assess the relevance of the information collected.

This is not clever or "intelligent" in any sense of the term.

"Intelligence" for an intelligence agency means doing actual spy work; namely, having agents infiltrate terrorist networks and learn about their plans (and risking their lives in the process).

This is carpet-bombing. This is cowardly. This is despicable.

</comment><comment><USER3> this is worth watching to see the mental gymnastics that the locutor goes through to justify 'legality'. While yes, the program may have had the FORM of a legal procedure, it's clear that at some level, he understands the absurdity of reconciling the ideal of having a government accountable, and being subject to oversight - with the fact that the legislature has crafted a law that gives authority to an organization that can secretly expand its powers. Yet he tries to anyway, and he stammers like crazy - because there's something wrong at the core that he's trying to paper over. 'The conversation should have happened five years ago' \- with what? Deposition of witnesses that have come from the future to testify that the secret system that can bootstrap its own rules has not gotten out of hand and has been effective beyond their wildest dreams?

</comment><comment><USER4> Isn't there an article circulating that that "law" was found "unconstitutional" already, but that that ruling was classified as soon as it was made?

I can't find it now, but I'll keep looking.

<comment><USER5> I think you are referring to a FISA opinion that found some 4th amendment violations were had, and that they felt the "spirit" of the law was being violated.

[http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/06/justice- departme...](http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/06/justice-department- electronic-frontier-foundation-fisa-court-opinion)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "US law" is not a valid justification. Segregation was US law. Slavery was US law. The detention of Japanese Americans during WWII was US law. "It's the law" is a useless moral justification unless the law is grounded in something greater than merely the paper it is written on. Especially when it is written by the government who uses it to defend their creeping invasions of our liberty.

The reason we have a Constitution is to constrain the power of the government to make such laws, and if such laws do exist, they are (or should be) considered invalid.

<comment><USER3> exactly. The argument this guy is making is structurally equivalent to if the courts told Korematsu, "the conversation about internment should have happened in 1941, when congress gave the military broad powers to prosecute the war. If you didn't want the military to intern civilians, you would have written a prohibition against the power of internment into the declaration of war."

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Time to change the laws then. These laws were rushed through Congress with little public debate, and whenever EFF or ACLU tried to fight them the Obama administration tried to dismiss the cases or stop them somehow.

I want to see the constitutionality of scooping 100 million phone records at once, gathering all data from ISP cables, and asking Google and others for probably thousands if not millions of users' profiles and logs at once, being tested in Court, and I want it all to reach the Supreme Court.

 _Then_ we can establish how legal everything was. You can't trust Congress with any of the laws they've been passing. Remember the NDAA and the indefinite detention clause? That was another one rushed through around new year's eve time. This needs to stop, or I can't ever take them seriously when they say "it's all legal".

<comment><USER8> Indeed. The question isn't whether the surveillance was legal, but rather if the laws allowing it are constitutional.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This whole "scandal" is a tempest in a teapot stirred up by the privacy fear- mongering industry.

There is nothing to suggest any wrongdoing by any NSA personnel involved (except for Snowden). No harm of this NSA program to any US individual has ever been demonstrated, let alone proven. No proof of any abuse whatsoever.

What we have here is a publicity-seeker with a sensationalist story blown out of proportion to drive pageviews, at the cost of undermining and compromising the program that has successfully foiled terrorist plots. Manufactured outrage drives modern media. We should be thanking the designers and operators of PRISM.

[http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/06/07/Foiled-2009-Pl...](http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/06/07/Foiled-2009-Plot- Involved-Emails-Sent-to-an-Al-Qaeda-Email-Account)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/us/mining-of-data-is- calle...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/us/mining-of-data-is-called- crucial-to-fight-terror.html)

PS: It is also pretty funny how the people who claim to be standing up for our liberties rush to downvote opinions different from their own

<comment><USER10> You are perfectly free to express your opinion and we are perfectly free to express our disagreement.

<comment><USER11> That's not what the down arrows are for.</comment></comment></comment>


Want new customers? Stop trying to find new customers. - <AUTHOR> http://unplugged.restaurantintelligenceagency.com/2010/09/an-open-challenge-to-chefs-for-2010.php

<comment><USER2> Really enjoyed this- the best customer acquisition strategy is building a compelling user experience.

<comment><USER3> yes and no i would think to "the best customer acquisition strategy is building a compelling user experience".

yes - if you already have customers looking at your product offering.

no - if you are starting fresh out. If people aren't coming (build it, they will come) then nobody is going to use or talk about your compelling user experience.</comment></comment>


Apple may steal Netflix streaming crown, but only for a year - <AUTHOR> https://japantoday.com/category/tech/apple-may-steal-netflix-streaming-crown-but-only-for-a-year <comment><USER2> It looks like you can't even access Apple TV+ from a browser, and even Android and Windows support seems to be missing. Their offering looks more like something you might consider if you own Apple hardware, rather than a more general offering like Netflix and Disney+.

With no licenced content — only content Apple had made — it looks relatively expensive too compared to the other offerings.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think this is another area where Apple isn't worried about stealing a crown or being #1, but another area where Apple wants to make products it believes people like. Apple isn't trying to take over the streaming video market.

"But that still leaves it way short of the 700 separate shows Netflix made last year, including dozens in the U.S. list of top 100 most-watched"

Honestly, I'd rather have a shorter list of shows that are completed instead of the Netflix "let's green light pretty much everything and cancel it after a season or two" approach. Quality over Quantity. So far it looks like over the next year, Apple will do a decent job there.

"It seems unlikely that new entrants such as Apple TV Plus will be able to find a footing given how crowded the field has become."

This sentiment sounds very familiar. Analysts said the same thing about Apple Music (and still do) yet it continues to grow.</comment>


Procedural content generation: Creating an entire universe from three integers - <AUTHOR> http://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2015/01/14/procedural-content-generation-creating-a-universe/ <comment><AUTHOR> Here's my question... if the entire universe of Elite was generated by procedural code, that is, a function, an iterated function system, a fractal, then

a) Are celestial bodies (planets, solar systems, etc.) positioned according to a higher-level fractal or fractal-like function that we are as-of-yet unaware of, and

b) If a is true, then how could we begin to compute, or at least to understand, what that mathematical function (or iterated function system) might look like?

?

<comment><USER2> Are you asking about real life or within Elite?

<comment><AUTHOR> Real life...

Why not?

Perhaps the fact that Elite could create its universe via mathematical functions points to something that we as-of-yet do not understand (mathematically) about the nature of our own (real) universe...

<comment><AUTHOR> Also... if you think about the information generated by Elite's procedural functions as raw information, then, by going in reverse, you can think about Elite's procedural functions as a very specific DATA COMPRESSION ALGORITHM... which only works on Elite's data. From this, one could speculate that for any given set of data, there should be an algorithm for which that data could be generated procedurally. That is, the best data compression for any given set of data, if it could be found, might be in the form of an ALGORITHM, a CUSTOM ALGORITHM (as Elite's is) for a specific set of data, and that there might be AN INFINITE AMOUNT OF THESE ALGORITHMS... but how to find them? That is the question...</comment></comment></comment></comment>