We Dare You to Explain Luke's Plan to Rescue Han in 'Return of the Jedi' - <AUTHOR> https://uproxx.com/movies/what-was-lukes-plan-star-wars-return-of-the-jedi/2/ <comment><USER2> Luke's plan was to destroy Jabba the Hut.

Jabba had been chasing Han since before _A New Hope_. If Luke just were to break Han out, then Han would be back in the same thicket he was before: running from Jabba. The group was tired of that.

The plan is rough, yes, but in a confident way: "If we just get us all inside the palace, it will be like planting dynamite."

Was it dishonest then, for Luke first to ask Jabba nicely? No, I don't think so. If Jabba sincerely gave up Han, then that means that Jabba's heart would have changed and would no longer be chasing Han. Therefore both goals would have been reached without blood (free Han and end the hunt). I don't think Luke counted on this. But even though Luke had a plan B, the chance presented to Jabba was real.

<comment><USER3> I like the explanation, but here's where I get hung up on it: at what point did Luke — in his collective scheming with the gang — inform Leia that she'd _probably_ be put in a bikini and licked upon by a slug gangster if anything went even slightly wrong? Or was Leia in Jabba-bondage part of Luke's plan all along, and he is, in reality, just kind of an inconsiderate dick?

<comment><USER4> Relatedly, at what point did George Lucas inform Carrie Fisher of the same?

<comment><USER5> From what I remember reading, this was Carrie Fisher's idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Luke was never meant to enter. He was supposed to be the getaway pilot.

Lando, R2D2 and C3PO are supposed to break out Chewie, fetch Leia and Han, then all escape and get picked up by Luke.

Luke is just winging it after everybody missed the rendezvous, as Leia underestimated just how long Jabba and his entourage could wait silently behind a curtain.

The lightsaber was carried in by R2D2 as a backup weapon for Leia, who also came up with the plan.

<comment><USER7> Leia, who has no training with a lightsaber?

<comment><USER6> She's got grenades and blasters down, so I suspect she could work out where the pointy end goes.

<comment><USER7> Well, those aren't civilized weapons, are they?

<comment><USER8> Well, her civilization was wiped out a couple films prior...

<comment><USER7> Alderaan is a peaceful planet, so it's not a great place to learn how to use weapons anyways…

<comment><USER9> It was a front for a terrorist organization, which is why the Empire freed every molecule of the planet with their liberation ray.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This sounds like a question Sci-fi Stack Exchange would make mince meat out of. For example: [https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/182014/why-does- th...](https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/182014/why-does-the-death- star-have-a-trash-compactor)

But seriously, little inconsistencies like these make me think Star Wars was just meant to be a kids' movie and not a sacred document to be handed down and analyzed by generations like the Tanakh or something.

<comment><USER11> _Star Wars was just meant to be a kids' movie and not a sacred document_

I saw The Last Jedi, had a great time, and came home to find Star Wars fans apoplectic about it, picking apart all kinds of things ("how does rey know how to swim?", "how does leia survive space?", etc). The original trilogy would never survive similar scrutiny.

I went to see a kids movie about space wizards, and that's what I got. It was fun.

<comment><USER12> Obviously, everyone is entitled to enjoy what they want, but this movie was difficult for me, even by Star Wars standards. If we can just destroy entire enemy fleets by jumping to lightspeed with one ship, why are not all battles fought that way. Also, why couldn't the captain leave and have the computer pilot the ship?

Maybe it's just that the original trilogy slipped in to me before I got old enough to where I think about such things. Maybe it is a double standard. But I don't feel like it is. And that's all I have to go on.

But, I don't begrudge you enjoying the movie! Wish I felt the same.

<comment><USER13> > If we can just destroy entire enemy fleets by jumping to lightspeed with one > ship, why are not all battles fought that way.

For the same reason naval battles in the real world weren't always fought by ramming ships into other ships. Ships are expensive, hyperdrives are expensive, and more valuable as ships than as ballistic mass. It would be a waste of resources for it to become a common tactic.

It was a lucky gamble that paid off.

>Maybe it's just that the original trilogy slipped in to me before I got old enough to where I think about such things

The OT is just as ridiculous. The trench run on the Death Star makes no sense outside of the context of the World War 2 film it was lifted from, no one in their right mind would design AT-ATs with such a high and vulnerable center of gravity, stormtrooper armor clearly does nothing against teddy bears and small rocks, spaceships _bank_ and _make noises_ in space, etc. Even lightsabers are just "cool laser swords" and metaphors for "space samurai" but don't make a lot of sense as weapons in a universe with telekinesis and blasters. Actual samurai weren't stupid enough to use their katanas if they had spears, bows and eventually guns available, yet I don't recall ever seeing a Jedi sniper, or the lightsaber version of a naginata.

Sound military tactics and plausible design were _never_ really a thing in Star Wars.

<comment><USER14> Ramming (or the threat thereof) is very much a real-world tactic:

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

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

<comment><USER13> It's a tactic, but it isn't used exclusively, and when it has been used regularly, it tends not to be more effective than conventional warfare.

The premise that because hyperspace ramming works, it should render all other forms of warfare in the Star Wars universe obsolete seems like nitpicking to me. Of course it works. It seems to be consistent with physics in the Star Wars universe - ships do travel through and interact with physical space while entering and exiting hyperspace, and collisions with realspace objects do occur (see Han Solo mentioning the dangers of flying "right through a star" in ANH.)

So if the tactic works in universe, but why isn't it used all the time? Because throwing starships at each other and risking the loss of your own personnel and equipment is a desperate and potentially suicidal tactic and _not doing that_ is almost always a better idea. Far more things can possibly go wrong than can go right.

Plus, once it becomes a regular tactic, countermeasures will get developed to take it into account - the enemy will disperse their command and control capabilities into multiple smaller ships or attempt to engage from a greater distance or whatever. So despite being wasteful, it's also short-sighted.

Notwithstanding the _real_ answer being that it wouldn't be as interesting to watch ships just kamikaze one another at lightspeed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It was like the idea behind a lot of startups: "We're gonna bring a lot of really talented people together in the same space to collaborate, and just see what happens."

In _another_ galaxy far, far away, the palace ended up as .jabba, a trendy coworking cafe. You had Boba Fett hacking away in the corner on his space-food delivery startup (bounty hunting's the day job), jawas on their ridesharing service (can't ever understand the damn drivers), C-3PO his AI blockchain chatbot, etc.

<comment><USER16> Who are the VC's? Emperor Palapatine and the Siths?

<comment><USER17> jaba would be the VC, the empire would be the large corporations aquihiring

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I always assumed they were there independently. Oddly it hadn't occurred to me that Luke, Leia, and Lando might have tried to coordinate.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'll do one better and explain how and why disney saves Luke in episode 9.

How: Time travel

Why: Money

<comment><USER20> Yep, they just added time travel to the Star Wars universe with the Rebels cartoon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> They did coordinate. It does not make any sense that they wouldn't after the ending of Empire.

Lando was not going to rescue Han. He was there just in case they needed backup.

Leia was going in to unfreeze Han. When they needed to get away quickly, they couldn't carry him frozen, and he needed time to come to after being unfrozen. My guess is that they planned to hide out until Luke came in, or Leia planned to go "well I don't know who unfroze him. Probably Chewy, but definitely not me, I am just a bounty hunter." Getting caught was not a part of the plan.

The droids came in to sneak in the lightsaber. Luke knew they weren't enough to pay for Han. Jabba would have never accepted that.

The plan for Luke was to mind trick Jabba. If that didn't work, it was to grab his lightsaber and fuck shit up. He got caught because Leia got caught. If Leia was still set up as an undercover bounty hunter, and R2D2 was close by, he could have just started slicing and dicing. Instead he had to fight the Rancor.

In the end, it was sheer luck that Jabba was doing the typical villain thing instead of just shooting them on the spot. To be fair, he clearly had a weakness for being theatrical. That's why he kept Han frozen.

But. Star Wars is full of ret conning by fans and by Lucas. None of this crap was thought through before filming. Well not a lot at least. I believe the basic plot was, but details were not. Like I don't think that Lando's character existed before ANH was filmed. Which does drive me kinda nuts because people hail SW as such a complete universe. In reality, Lucas did a lot of just random stuff in the first three movies and then it had to become canon, sometimes through really crazy explanations. See the gaffe with parsecs being a unit of distance and how what makes the Falcon so fast is it's navigational computer (a detail that was never mentioned in any movies for any ship, including the Falcon), and not because they screwed up how measurements of space and time work to sound cool.

<comment><USER13> To be fair, I think the parsec line was supposed to be intentional. Han was making up some obvious nonsense and wanted to see whether or not these two suckers were smart enough to call him out on it. For some reason, this was retconned to the Kessel Cluster being a maze of black holes and parsecs being used correctly, because of how difficult it was to navigate around all of those gravity wells in hyperspace. Even though that makes even less sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I assumed that they really just didn't communicate with each other well. Leia showed up on her own (and failed), Luke sent the droids as part of _his_ plan (also failed), Lando was trying to get Han out from the inside (interrupted by the other plans)... they just didn't coordinate.

<comment><USER8> At the end of ESB, Luke and Leia are together with the droids in the medical frigate, while Lando and Chewie are together in the _Falcon_. They have plans to meet on Tatooine to rescue Han. It would be surprising if, after meeting on Tatooine, they all went their separate ways to try their own plans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's interesting to wonder how crowds would receive Empire Strikes Back if it came out today. I wager it would get roughly the same praise about special effects in action and criticism about bizarre story as the most recent Disney episode

<comment><USER24> There's a cool 2 part video series by Mikey Neumann that delves into the immediate post-release reception for each of the Star Wars films, it's pretty interesting: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij5fWCAnBPY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij5fWCAnBPY)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I have a similar question about a different movie: in _Die Hard_ , Bruce sure whines a lot about how the police are _following the Plan_. But...what were they _supposed_ to do, if not follow their best available Plan? What did Bruce _want_ them to do, if he had his druthers? Should they...NOT follow The Plan? Follow the _second_ -best available Plan?

Going forward, how ought The Plan be modified? Should they add a "now we roll a 20-sided die!" step, so future terrorists can never again be sure what'll happen?

<comment><USER26> I've always thought he was whining because he knew the Plan would not work, because things had changed. The Plan was designed for someone taking over a building, holding hostages, and demanding a ransom of some sort. Indeed, Hans even makes it seem like this is the case; assuming, correctly, that the police will follow standard procedures for such an incident. McCain (Bruce) knows the truth, that Hans is going to blow the building and it's not about hostages.

Pre-9/11, if a plane was hijacked, it was flown somewhere and there was some sort of ransom; no one thought a plane would be hijacked and flown into a building, so no one resisted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's simple. Luke had no clue what to do. He just trusted The Force, like he was trained. It worked out fine.

<comment><USER28> The Force works in mysterious ways.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Someone should start a movement to point out the plot holes in Star Wars from wipe transitions that would obviously have killed the characters in the scene being wiped. Yet later, there the characters are again, no explanation given.

</comment><comment><USER30> The "How it should have ended" series is great.

How Return Of The Jedi Should Have Ended [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdukWtJwlPU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdukWtJwlPU)</comment>


Twitter = Fastest Growing Search Engine - <AUTHOR> http://socialnomics.net/2010/07/07/twitter-fastest-growing-search-engine/ <comment><USER2> What proportion of those searches are people following hashtags? Or checking for replies from people they don't follow?

<comment><AUTHOR> I was wondering the same thing. Or are trending topic searches included?</comment></comment>


Solar Industry Learns Lessons in Spanish Sun - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/09/business/energy-environment/09solar.html

<comment><USER2> Money = resources.

If you need extra money to run your solar plant, that means you are consuming more resources than a comparable plant.

Which means you are not "green". And often means it actually can take more energy to make solar power than it returns.

The only reason to do this is to spur research into solar energy that might eventually reduce the resources required. But this isn't really the best way to do that.

<comment><USER3> That's an odd argument, a waste water treatment plant costs a lot more than just dumping raw sewage into the closest body of water, but they are also generally called "green". Subsidies on solar plants are based on the time value of money if they produced all their energy in the first day they would cost far less than coal.

<comment><USER2> A sewage plant is not intended for producing energy (or resources). Its goal is reducing pollution, and people are willing to trade energy and other resource usage (and their pollution) for that.

> Subsidies on solar plants are based on the time value of money if they > produced all their energy in the first day they would cost far less than > coal.

If that were true, you would not need subsidies, investors would be happy to fund it.

<comment><USER4> Cost does not equate with energy.

Back in the 1950's, Freeman Dyson did a study on the cost of electricity. Electricity costs much more to use than to generate. If electricity were free there would be only about a 5 percent drop in the GNP.

<http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.02/dyson_pr.html>

As for not needing subsidies, there's a significant cost of capital beyond inflation, and there's also some risk due to its being a new technology. These dissuade investors.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


If Stackexchange ran Adsense - <AUTHOR> http://www.pagemilk.org/if-stackexchange-ran-adsense/

<comment><USER2> 1% CTR is a high estimate for Adsense on a site like Stackexchange. 3% is downright fantasy.

SE is basically a forum, and forums are notoriously difficult to monetize with general ads. I think it'd be better to hire a sales person and get ads from companies that want to advertise to the coder-demographic directly. They'll be able to command higher prices, and do so based on CPM instead of clicks.

<comment><USER3> >1% CTR is a high estimate for Adsense on a site like Stackexchange. 3% is downright fantasy.

I came here to stipulate something similar, but I figured I'd back it up with at least something of an anecdote.

How often do I click on AdSense ads? Ready for it? 1 to 2 per month. 2 per month would be generous. I'm not the type to block ads either (at least, not currently).

I'm a typical advertising network's worst nightmare. I click on virtually nothing that someone is trying to push on me. I rely on curated advertisements that... often aren't advertisements. For example, blogs and tweets from very trusted sources. Advertising networks like The Deck have a _better_ hit rate, but, not amazingly so.

On top of that, while my conversion rate is high, the amount of things I buy overall is rather small. What I buy is exactly what I want (or I think I want), and nothing but. Random noise almost never sways my opinion. I know I'm not representative of the entire StackExchange (or StackOverflow) audience, but I know that folks like me are a reasonable portion of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> They tried Adsense on StackOverflow. It was a "crushing disappointment". See <http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/08/podcast-64/>

</comment><comment><USER5> The Stackoverflow community are tech savvy programmers and IT geeks - and the entire audience for that site run ad blocking software in their browsers. That's why Adsense won't work for monetizing that traffic.

</comment><comment> mh- Did I miss something?

Here are some arbitrary numbers, I know they're fantasy but let's roll with it anyway. Now let's pare those down to something equally arbitrary but maybe more believable. Let's do some multiplication and.. end article.

No way are they going to pull a 1% CTR. Nor does this take into account any of the other variables.</comment>


Amazon Takes Fresh Stab at $16B Housekeeping Industry - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-28/amazon-takes-fresh-stab-at-16-billion-housekeeping-industry <comment><USER2> Amazon and Google will end up being the middle men for everything.

You simply can't compete with a company that has all the data, all the money, the best engineers, the patents, etc... Once they like your business model, you are out of business. This is happening at an increasingly faster pase. There will be an Amazon AirBnB, and Amazon Uber, Amazon Food, Amazon Freight, etc... the future of free markets is not free. They will own every slot in the monopoly game and we will receive a basic income to keep the game going.

<comment><USER3> > Amazon and Google

A couple of weeks ago, your list would have included Facebook. The future is a lot less deterministic than you think.

<comment><USER4> Yes, but does this make OPs forecast any less possible?

<comment><USER3> The OPs forecast is predicated on an understanding of companies like Google and Amazon being so big and powerful that they are immune to the ebb and flow that define normal market conditions and allow new entrants to prosper and old companies to whither when they no longer create enough value for consumers.

My argument is that when Facebook, a company until a few weeks ago commonly understood to be every bit as immortal as Google and Amazon, can be so deeply upset by a scandal that isn't even predominantly their own making (I don't mean to imply that FB isn't culpable, but CA did the bad stuff and explicitly and broadly broke terms in doing so), this immortality is a lot shallower than it seems. Facebook isn't dead, and won't be for a long time, but the idea that Facebook moving into Airbnb's space will immediately monopolise it for the detriment of consumers seems rather more of a silly fantasy than a "forecast".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > The online retailer is swapping the low cost of contract workers for the > greater control of employing its own people. Doing so puts it on the hook > for things like minimum wage, workers compensation and overtime pay. But it > also lets Amazon determine how the workers are trained, which cleaning > products they use and how they organize their schedules.

As an Amazon employee, I very much hope this trend continues. Amazon logistics has gone the industry standard route of contractors hiring contractors and no one seems to be happy with it at all. When Amazon is the employer, Amazon can control quality better. Customer obsession means more than just lowest possible price.

(My own personal opinion and of course I don't speak for the company)

<comment><USER6> I think the fact that cleaning services are a lot less standardized is what drives the need to hire people. There's very little difference in logistics: its both easy to do an average job (just take the route google maps suggests) and its easy to monitor if contractors are doing a reasonable job.

The impression I get for cleaning services from people who have hired them is that the person doing it will generally do the smallest/easiest amount of work possible in the allocated time, which leads to poor customer satisfaction/retention, so exercising more control as an employer is necessary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does anyone remember HomeJoy? See [1] and [2] below.

Amazon isn't necessarily using this business model so that it may differentiate itself from hands-off matching services. In this case, regulation and legal battles that have destroyed entrepreneurial enterprises like HomeJoy are guiding Amazon. Improved customer experience is a side effect.

[1] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenhuet/2015/07/23/what- reall...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenhuet/2015/07/23/what-really- killed-homejoy-it-couldnt-hold-onto-its-customers/#59188c4e1874)

[2] [https://www.recode.net/2015/7/17/11614814/cleaning- services-...](https://www.recode.net/2015/7/17/11614814/cleaning-services- startup-homejoy-shuts-down-after-battling-worker)

<comment><USER8> Aaron Cheung, co-founder of HomeJoy, launched Homeaglow which seem like the same business model as HomeJoy. Xiao Wei Chen, COO at HomeJoy, is also a co- founder of Homeaglow.

I'm not saying it'll succeed this time, but two execs at HomeJoy have decided to dedicate another 3 years of their lives to the idea with Homeaglow.

I know that the articles mention the lawsuits over classification of independent-contractor vs employee, but nestled in there is a huge customer acquisition cost against a low lifetime value. Offering an initial $19 cleaning means very high acquisition costs and you're getting customers who probably won't return with $100 a month later. The Forbes article notes that Handy has a much better customer retention rate and recurring revenue is so important.

It also sounds like HomeJoy might have been over-staffed. Re/code notes that 20 employees of HomeJoy would be joining Googles product and engineering teams. That seems like a lot of salary. I don't know what HomeJoy's site was like, but Homeaglow's seems simplistic - some PHP just meant to handle the booking/matching/reviews. Even small things like the forms are the kinda simplistic looking ones where the zip-code box takes up the full width of the form on a new line (the way it would if you grabbed Bootstrap and didn't want to customize anything) rather than having a form with a more natural City, State, Zip layout. But it gets the job done and looks like it can be maintained with minimal effort.

If you have 20 employees of Google-caliber, you have to imagine a lot of salary cost. From LinkedIn, it looks like Homeaglow is a 2-person shop.

It could just be that while it's a large industry, they had trouble retaining customers and had a high run rate at HomeJoy. With a lower run rate and some alterations, Homeaglow might be a happy business. They don't seem to discount first cleanings hugely. It looks like they offer a free half hour on a 3 hour cleaning for first-time users, but that means that someone is willing to spend a hundred compared to someone that just sees a deal at $19. They also only allow recurring plans that you can cancel, but it gets you into the mindset that this should be a weekly/bi-weekly/monthly recurring expense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Data point: I just moved and Amazon sent me a $20 off cleaning offer, which I used to clean out my old rental this past weekend. They did a nice job (I think, haven't gotten my deposit back yet). I was talking to the cleaner and she said she used to work through HomeAdvisor exclusively but has put HA on hold because Amazon takes less commission and keeps her just as busy.

The price was OK with $20 off, I know you can do better if you search out the right service, but I imagine that you can already ask Alexa to schedule a house cleaning, so the integration & convenience would have to be pretty compelling for me to make it a regular thing.

</comment><comment><USER10> The general problem with "Uber for X" is that mostly consumers don't want one- time anonymous services. It works for cabs and probably for one-time cleaning, but if I'm going to have someone clean my apartment every week I want the same person there every time, and I think that's pretty typical.

</comment><comment><USER11> > A weekly cleaning of a 1,500-square-foot home runs about $156.

It doesn't say what's included but off hand that seems 2-4x expensive for a weekly house cleaning of that size.

That (relatively) high pricing may be specific to Seattle though as they've got a high ($15/hr) min wage laws there that would apply. Combined with non- contractor employees, FICA, and benefits, they're easily looking at $20+/hr in labor costs.

<comment><USER12> I have housecleaning every few weeks. It's about $100 and takes 2-3 hours for about the same square footage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > "Any products that require additional services beyond opening a box, Amazon > doesn't do well," Kalyanam said.

Well, there's AWS, which smashes that mold.

<comment><USER14> How's AWS human customer service?

<comment><USER13> Quite good for us. We have a team from AWS on-site every other Thursday (and subject matter experts from AWS that we can call in as/if needed).

AWS started out as a REST-services-only take-it-or-leave-it business. They've expanded quite substantially their human-provided sales, service, success operation in recent years.

Even on my personal account (spending <$50/month), I get quick and sensible email replies to my account-related inquiries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm in the weird position where, we are family planning, but (to our knowledge) unsuccessful, but started getting a series of emails from Amazon congratulating us and offering up suggestions like vitamins, baby registry and, of course, housecleaning services w/ discounts available.

(The first email was, to put it lightly, premature. Now we got one that says "week one", and it could be right, or not. We don't know yet.)

These emails puzzle me, because I pored over my shopping history, and I can't find any indicator that would tip off their algorithm.

But I do get the idea of trying to sell things to expectant mothers. Such as convenience services.

<comment><USER5> We may not be there yet, but there's certainly going to be a day where online advertisers know a woman is pregnant before she does based on the changes in her behavior.

I'm not sure if that counts as a dystopia or not. Is there a good word for "Weirdtopia"?

<comment><USER16> Helpful?

I mean honestly, the whole point of computing is to do things we as humans can't do with data to make our lives easier. Now that it's actually doing those things, people think it's creepy and scary.

If a computing system knows you are pregnant before you do then maybe it can help you take steps (like taking pre-natal vitamins, abstaining from heavy drinking/smoking, starting a savings account etc...) weeks before you would have normally. How is that dystopian?

<comment><USER17> I can't help but think about how it would give you more time to consider carrying to term vs abortion, since there is a hard time limit and earlier is better in terms of stress on the body and ethics.

This would make it a target for anti-choice groups as well as internal company ethics, however, so it's a complicated issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Cached Version: [https://archive.is/SdQas](https://archive.is/SdQas)

</comment><comment><USER19> They have the keys to your house through Ring and others. So now we see their conquest of our homes coming to a completion.

</comment><comment><USER20> as a customer, I think it's great. Few purchases make me as happy as the amazon house cleaning.</comment>


Show HN: New way of software development – phpAppBuild - <AUTHOR> https://www.phpappbuild.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> This tool can help you a lot with application development. With this tool you can save time and money. It is not code generator. Register your first application for free on phpappbuild.com</comment>


Should we build our religious prayer app? - <AUTHOR> http://invite.get-prayer.com

<comment><USER2> I've always seen prayer as personal relationship with God, not one to be turned into a popularity contest. Putting prayer into social media kind of sickens me.

If you want to channel good will and enter into a conversation with God about an issue by way of prayer then you should do so fully committed.

You should not be able to touch a button and 'upvote' a prayer by a stranger who has tugged at your heartstrings from only a glance. That is shallow and lacking in love.

God's grace may cover many things, but this? I think not.

</comment><comment><USER3> What problem is this solving? Do people not know what to pray for? Is their really a need for me to get prayer requests from whomever is the most popular? Would the site being trying to get people off the site(and into prayer) or is the goal of the site to have people on it, browsing, etc(and not praying)?</comment>


Startup Investment Hits 3.5 Year Low in December, Q1 M&A Slowest Since 1995 - <AUTHOR> http://www.daniellemorrill.com/2013/04/startup-investment-hits-3-5-year-low-in-december-q1-ma-slowest-since-1995/

<comment><USER2> This news was reported in January: [http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/01/16/vc-funding- increasi...](http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/01/16/vc-funding-increasing- for-mobile-and-healthcare-startups/). Also, using Crunchbase as a source for total funding is not incredibly accurate. CBInsights has far better data on this since they are tracking literally all venture funding activity. What would be more valuable is to see how this differs from one market segment to the next over time.

Update: I just saw this was for Q1. Totally got that mixed up. Still though, not sure crunchbase data is most accurate.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah my bad, should have been clear it was the Q1 part about IPOs and M&A that I didn't see reported in tech pubs. Will clarify.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > Other possible explanation: people aren't using Crunchbase as religiously as > they used to. We didn't put our round on Crunchbase. Everyone we care about > uses AngelList.

I find this much more likely. A couple years ago Crunchbase seemed to be way more up-to-date than it is now. Reasons probably include: AngelList gaining traction, TechCrunch no longer seems to be as actively updating Crunchbase and isn't including a big "Crunchbase box" at the bottom of each article like they used to.

<comment><AUTHOR> Even if AngelList data were added I don't think it would account for more than 25,000,000 in a month (about 1% of the investment logged in December) which is a comparably small amount. The bulk of the money comes from Series A, B, C and later stage deals from VCs and I think TechCrunch keeps those updated themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Even more concerning, on Monday the National Venture Capital Association reported..._

But is it concerning? These numbers, in isolation, aren't necessarily an indicator of a Bad Thing. Maybe the cost of founding a startup has dropped to the point that fewer startups are choosing the venture capital route? Maybe more people are bootstrapping, crowd-funding, and funding organic growth from customer revenue?

<comment><USER5> I like the optimism, however, you'd expect the same factors would be at play as you move backwards into the past (while funding amounts continued to rise).

I don't think any major event happened around Jul-Sept 2012 (about where it started to trail off) that precipitated significantly cheaper cost of founding a startup.

<comment><USER6> I don't have a very strong opinion or thought one way or another here really, but perhaps it just became more mainstream "knowledge" (right or wrong), or more common / trendy even, to not look for VC money quite as aggressively...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Crunchbase data backfills, you'll usually see the most recent 1-2 quarters lower than what they'll be a year from now.

</comment><comment><USER8> Economics 101: "An increase in supply leads to a decrease in price" The influx(crazy influx) of startups has allowed VCs to invest less an get higher % ownership. You will not see a $40mill color type investment for a long time, at least until we have a shakeout, which we will. Bloomberg West has just added an additional hr to cover the tech industry 10am/3pm. This smells a lot like the hedgefund biz. The startups remaining will be those that test monetization from day one.

Note: I got a downvote, if u going to downvote at least explain why. If can't then don't participate at all because it does not help the community.

<comment><USER9> I didn't downvote you, but that is _not_ Economics 101. To give you an example, supply is irrelevant to price in a perfect monopoly. Not all startups are created equal. A lot of the new startups that are rushing in are just noise. "Startups" are not a fungible product for which there are perfect substitutes. A VC does not typically decline a deal because "I could just put the money into another startup that has an identical team and identical idea." If they like the startup they'll invest. If they don't they won't.

Demand is not spread out evenly among startups. A 95th percentile startup will get multiple competing VC/angel offers, which bids up the valuation. A 30th percentile startup is going to get no offers.

Furthermore, you could also say that demand is rising as well: exits from previous years means that there are a lot of angel investors out there flush with cash who are looking for the best deals.

From my experience (as an early employee at a VC-backed startup in SV), the top startups (95th percentile), are still seeing high seed valuations.

As a side-note. If someone downvotes you, they _do not_ have an obligation to explain themselves. If I recall correctly, pg stated somewhere a long time ago that he was fine with people downvoting just to express disagreement.

EDIT: I found the link: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171>

<comment><USER8> _"I didn't downvote you, but that is not Economics 101. To give you an example, supply is irrelevant to price in a perfect monopoly."

Yes it is. A perfect monopoly is very rare and i don't see any, you using an extreme case. Most importantly, the difference between company and industry disappears under conditions of a monopoly.

_" A lot of the new startups that are rushing in are just noise."

That is your point of view and not a fact. This sets up my next point.

 _""Startups" are not a fungible product for which there are perfect substitutes.

True. Although there are many startups circling the same new hot space, after instagram, how many many new photo startups sprung up funded or not funded? SoloMo, how many startups circled this space when it was hot? I heard a VC say he is tired of hearing pitches about discovering friends nearby. Startups can be put into clusters, if you ran a k-means or hierarchical clustering algorithm on the startup scene you would see this. In these clusters is where VC's or angel investors are spoiled for choice, they may not have perfect substitutes but they are pretty darn close.

_"exits from previous years means that there are a lot of angel investors out there flush with cash who are looking for the best deals."

This is just not true. Angel Investing is damn hard, have you ever looked at the return distribution of the VC industry, it is more fat-tailed than anything else. How many angel investors on AngelList have had profitable exits in the last 3yrs? I see a lot of people outside of tech with money coming in to be angel investors because its the new hot thing and they just need to put in $20 000 per company. I have seen places popup where they give you just accomodation and office space for a huge share of your business.

 _"From my experience (as an early employee at a VC-backed startup in SV), the top startups (95th percentile), are still seeing high seed valuations."

You are talking about extremes here again.

_" If I recall correctly, pg stated somewhere a long time ago that he was fine with people downvoting just to express disagreement."

Yes, but wouldn't it make a better community if out of courtesy you did. I have seen people do it and i am impressed.

<comment><USER9> _> That is your point of view and not a fact. This sets up my next point._

Okay. I was only saying that even though there are tons of startups, most startups are not very valuable. Given that everything follows a power law, I don't think this is just an opinion, but rather a widely held sentiment in the VC community, the Y Combinator community, and the wider SV community.

 _In these clusters is where VC's or angel investors are spoiled for choice, they may not have perfect substitutes but they are pretty darn close._

VCs and angels understand that it's not the idea, it's the team. There is most certainly clustering of ideas (i.e. crowdfunding, X-sharing, etc.) Yet VCs are by no means spoiled when it comes to choice of teams. There is a _huge_ amount of variability when it comes to the quality of founding teams. The best founding teams will still get extremely high valuations, and mediocre teams will get no funding at all.

 _> This is just not true. Angel Investing is damn hard_

I am well aware that angel investing returns suck. I'm not talking about those people. I'm talking about founders/employees who are now multimillionaires due to acquisitions/IPOs. You forget that every time a company has an exit of 30M-1B, you now have 3-10 multimillionaires. There are probably 50+ early Facebook employees who are now dabbling in angel investing after the IPO (lackluster IPO notwithstanding).

 _> You are talking about extremes here again._

This sentence does nothing to actually disprove my point. The whole economics of startup investing revolves around the extremes. So of course we need to talk about the startups at the 90th and 95th percentile. Your "average-case" startup never gets funding and fails, no matter what the economic condition is.

 _> Yes, but wouldn't it make a better community if out of courtesy you did. I have seen people do it and i am impressed._

It would be helpful, but the tone of your original post made it sound like a demand: "If can't then don't participate at all."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> edit: Dec 2012 was the worst month for VC investment since August 2012

page 10 of this report -- [https://www.cbinsights.com/reports/Q4%202012%20Venture%20Cap...](https://www.cbinsights.com/reports/Q4%202012%20Venture%20Capital%20Activity%20Report.pdf)

Picking any month or quarter as suggestive of a trend is generally not going to work. Funding #s get skewed wildly by mega-deals (throw in one big clean tech or Groupon type of financing and things look great and if they're missing, not so good). As of late, mega deals to clean tech have been non- existent which has been a drag on numbers overall.

The Q4 2012 #s did show a decline vs the earlier quarters of 2012. The data is here - [http://www.cbinsights.com/blog/trends/venture- capital-2012-r...](http://www.cbinsights.com/blog/trends/venture- capital-2012-report)

Re: exits -- again a single quarter doesn't make for a trend.

If we see sluggish investment and funding levels for many quarters, then there may be reason for "concern" although it is probably a healthy purging of the system in our view.

Note: Our company, CB Insights, tracks VC investment flows and exits. We compete against Thomson (the provider of the NVCA data).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I just signed up and I hope I'll be able to use your data to support future blog posts.

While I agree that a single quarter doesn't make a trend, according to this Crunchbase data there has been a steady decline over the past 10-12 months. I'll have to dig into CBinsights to see whether this is similar in your data set as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here are three potential reasons.

1\. It could just be a random drop in the numbers. The VC world is VERY small and there are VERY few players. Equally, VERY few deals get done every year. Moreover, megadeals can really skew the numbers. So even seemingly small randomness can have big effects on volatility. Heck, look at the chart!

2\. There's a well documented drop in the number of venture firms out there and in turn with available capital. Less supply...

3\. Many venture firms have been burned by gaming and consumer oriented investments and moving trying to move back to their IT roots. However, the majority of angel and seed investing only recently started focusing IT so the there could be a pipeline issue.

</comment><comment><USER12> Related to mindcrime's comment, with data points updated monthly, there is a lot of volatility in that graph and it's hard to draw conclusions. While having that drastic a drop isn't inspiring news, it could be due to a number of factors. To her credit, Danielle does not add her own causation theories and merely quotes the NVCA's.

My point is that if next month jumps back to a number closer to recent trends, the last month could easily be an outlier.

Now, if there is a continued depressed trend in startup investments over the next six months, one could put forth a convincing case that new tax laws and problems in the Euro-zone (as NVCA suggests) are hurting startup investments.

<comment><AUTHOR> I absolutely agree, and hopefully there is a lag in investment reporting, but I find the fact that the NVCA issued this report to Reuters and it was picked up by the finance press by no one in tech strange as this is certainly of public interest to the startup community. I've attempted to present the information objectively.

<comment><USER13> It is my impression that NVCA data is... ok at best; ie, there's many times that they don't pick up on stuff till months, maybes years later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It could just mean that VC folks were on holiday in Dec. Interestingly, investments have consistently taken a dip in Dec and shot up in Jan.</comment>


Manhattan Startup Meeting This Saturday - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> <http://newtech.meetup.com/21/>

<http://www.nextny.org/wiki/show/Events>

we're also in nyc...

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'll definitely be going to the next meetings.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> My partner and I are looking to meet up with other startups and form a regular meetup in the area. My email is in my profile.

<comment><USER2> btw you have to put your email in the about section -- the email field isn't public.</comment></comment>


Black Ops 2: $1 Billion in 15 Days, 150 Million Hours of Online Play  - <AUTHOR> http://winsupersite.com/xbox/black-ops-2-1-billion-15-days-150-million-hours-online-play <comment><USER2> Jeesh that's a lot of hours. That's like 75,000 people each playing 40 hours a week for a year.

I read Ben Franklin's biography a while back and got the impression that he had an advantage over many of his contemporaries because it was the custom to drink beer all day. Many would be useless by noon.

I think video games might be the modern day equivalent.

</comment><comment><USER3> They should put some of that money into the multiplayer servers they're terrible! I just played, tried to play, six games and each one crashed kicking everyone off. Six in a row.

Other times too it's bad, it's worse now than it ever has been.

<comment><USER4> Xbox multiplayer is peer-to-peer, right?

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure, a quick Google seems to indicate it may be or sort of. I know often when one player leaves the entire map load screen will reset, so it appear someone is a "server".

I know my connection is good, low latency but CoD is worse than ever but nothing on my end has changed much in fact it's a better.

<comment><USER4> Halo 3, which I played a bit in college, certainly used one member as the host.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How did you get your site unbanned from HN?</comment>


Schema Design for Social Inboxes in MongoDB - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mongodb.org/post/65612078649/schema-design-for-social-inboxes-in-mongodb

<comment><USER2> I have never thought about schema designing this much deep!

</comment><comment><USER3> optimization of data base is very important, thank you.</comment>


The 24th IOCCC Winners Announced - <AUTHOR> http://ioccc.org/2015/whowon.html <comment><USER2> Anybody willing to ELI5 for the programming novices?</comment>


How Uber's Autonomous Cars Will Destroy 10M Jobs by 2025 - <AUTHOR> http://zackkanter.com/2015/01/23/how-ubers-autonomous-cars-will-destroy-10-million-jobs-by-2025/ <comment><USER2> Why the need to focus on the negative: "DESTROY 10M Jobs".

Jobs will be lost, yes. Yet everyone will enjoy the same service as before at a _safer_ level.

In essence nothing is lost. Human beings won free time. I really hope I live to see the day where we stop idealizing the fact that everyone has a job.

</comment><comment><USER3> If only the elected officials would see it the same way.</comment>


Hosting backdoors in hardware - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ksplice.com/2010/10/hosting-backdoors-in-hardware/

<comment><USER2> "Just like you should not run untrusted software, you should not install hardware provided by untrusted sources."

This is harder than it sounds. Remember when it came out that secret service had a secret deal with printer manufacturers to print identifiable small dots? Consumer level home routers or wifi APs should be approached with the same level or trust. And the vulnerability does not have to be necessarily intentional.</comment>


U.S. Labor department sues Google for compensation data - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-alphabet-lawsuit-idUSKBN14O2D9 <comment><USER2> The OFCCP is now demanding Google provide names and private contact information of tens of thousands of employees and ex-employees (some of which haven't been been associated with Google for years)[1]. Unless the OFCCP can give a _really_ compelling reason why this sensitive info is suddenly now required for their "compliance evaluations", Google has a very real obligation to fight overbroad data requests in ALL cases.

[1] [https://www.dol.gov/sites/default/files/newsroom/newsrelease...](https://www.dol.gov/sites/default/files/newsroom/newsreleases/OFCCP20162406_0.pdf)

<comment><USER3> If Google didn't want to reveal this information, they shouldn't have taken federal contracts.

<comment><USER4> Do you know that they are in breach, or are you just assuming?

<comment><USER5> That's the whole reason the government is taking them to court: Google and the Labor Department have a disagreement and a judge will figure it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is the same office that is shaking down Palantir for not hiring more than 44% of Asian engineer applicants. Asians only make up 4.4% of the population. Looks like they're trying to find out who's got money at Google.

<comment><USER7> Google already publishes diversity statistics. So the purpose of this audit has to be something else - such as making sure that e.g. women are not being systematically paid less than men in the same position.

<comment><USER8> _Google already publishes diversity statistics._

Oh, of course! It seems so obvious. I see why so many people say the government is dumb and inefficient now. Why didn't they just check Google's marketing materials, take them at face value, and not want to know anything else in the first place?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Any other perspectives on this? Racial and gender diversity is clearly lacking in tech and I have a feeling that's even more concentrated at the "top" employers.

Not sure if we can do much about it though. Anyone that's been to school can see it's clearly something happening before college level. Seems like 5% or less of CS program students are women or minorities besides Asians, that doesn't give tech companies much to choose from.

The lack of diversity is being driven by something at highschool level or below, it's stupid to blame tech companies for something so obvious.

<comment><USER7> It's actually more like 20% women in CS programs now, and it was 30% a decade ago. It would be stupid to attribute that 50% decline to changes at high school or below though, wouldn't it?

And what does any of this have to do with equal compensation? If 0.01% of CS graduates were women they should still receive the same pay as men do.

<comment><USER10> I always use plumbing as an example. You never hear about that being not diverse enough. Look, I'm all for equal pay, but I didn't see those ladies in my classroom 10-15 years ago. Only after it became "cool" to be a nerd, seeing that there is money to be made being a nerd, and realizing that living in a major city can't be subsidized by whatever they chose to study, did they start hammering on about this.

Equal pay will be very difficult to enforce unless you make salaries public. I can assure you that among your peers there are plenty of differences in compensation.

<comment><USER11> It's not fair to compare them, plumbing requires physical strength, whereas tech jobs don't. Women have anywhere from 40-60% of the strength men do, and men have especially greater hand strength than women [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_human_physi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_human_physiology#Muscle_mass_and_strength) Given that you need really good hand strength to do plumbing, it's never something that will see sex diversity.

<comment><USER12> I worked in remodeling before and during college, including plumbing. It requires less physical strength than what you are implying.

The parent comment makes a good point. There are few (if any) calls for diversity in regards to "dirty" jobs.

<comment><USER11> Are you a male? You think it takes less physical strength because what's physically easy for a male would be harder for a female. Ever been asked to open a jar for your wife?

<comment><USER12> Yes, I'm male. No, I've never opened a jar for my wife. My wife actually has as much physical strength as I, perhaps more.

For what it's worth, there were 3 female crew members with which I worked at the remodeling company. None of them had issues turning a pipe wrench. It's seriously not as strenuous as you seem to think. Have you tried it?

Edit: I also feel like you are missing the point, which is that there is relatively little call for diversity outside of "more women in STEM".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This whole topic is very bothersome, as many of the comments in the thread so far have pointed out.

For anyone who is generally for these kinds of policies (equality, diversity, whatever), can you please explain your position from the ground up? I am genuinely asking, because from my point of view there are huge assumptions made that seem to me, on the surface, to be unjustified.

<comment><USER14> One version is: we're still crawling out from under the _very_ long shadow of centuries (in the US, arguably millennia in many other places) of codified society-wide discrimination, enforced by law and by custom, to ensure that people of a certain gender or a certain race aren't allowed to pursue particular career paths or do particular things with their lives.

It is ludicrous to think that this has been completely toppled and undone with no lingering sequelae whatsoever, entirely within living memory (large, organized nationwide movements in the US for sexual and racial equality have only reached the point of realistically being able to even start fighting for equal access to industries and jobs in the last 50-60 years or so), and that now we just somehow know that the distributions of people in industries we happen to see right now are the "natural" distributions, produced free of bias, prejudice or discrimination. _Especially_ when high-paying/high-prestige industries still disproportionately are made up of (relative to the general population) the gender and race which historically rigged things to their benefit. Any claim that bias has been removed and we still got this result is incredibly suspicious in the face of historical evidence.

Thus, explicit, active measures should be employed to watch for and counteract the bias which is highly likely to still exist and be in operation.

Another version is: because every time an industry has claimed to be meritocratic in its hiring process, that low diversity is because "that group just _isn 't interested_ in our field", etc., it's turned out -- on actual inspection -- to be false. The classic example is orchestra blind auditions: once reviewers were unable to know the gender of a candidate, suddenly a lot more women were discovered to be qualified to play in orchestras!

Given how often this type of thing has happened in other fields, there is no reason to presume that tech is some sort of special exception. Think of it like the principle of mediocrity in cosmology, where constantly-recentered claims of "well, where _we_ are is special and unique" continually got blown out of the water until people learned to assume that where we are is average. Attempts to label tech as the one industry that really _is_ somehow a unique outlier in being free of bias and that a majority of the human race just "naturally isn't interested in" or "naturally aren't as good at" are overwhelmingly likely to be blown out of the water sooner or later. Where we are now is not some special ordained natural law engraved into our DNA.

And yet people consistently argue that tech is that one unique special outlier where it really _is_ the case that women/black people/etc. "just aren't interested" or "naturally aren't as good".

Thus, explicit, active measures should be employed to watch for and counteract the bias which is highly likely to still exist and be in operation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Labor department can't access IRS filings?

<comment><USER16> Everything has a process, it is not surprising government entity X cannot access government entity Y stuff automatically. Would you assume the CIA can access the FBI documents? Its not always so obviously simple.

<comment><USER17> > Would you assume the CIA can access the FBI documents?

Legally, or realistically?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I dislike employment anti-discrimination laws. They were originally designed for manual labor jobs and the like. I would be willing to compromise by limiting them to these kinds of jobs.

<comment><USER19> You're seriously suggesting legalizing racial and gender discrimination for all jobs except digging ditches?

Please consider any group that you were born into, and imagine being denied entry to an industry based solely on your inclusion in that group. Or perhaps being admitted, but at a fraction of the pay off someone bit in your group.

Anti discrimination laws exist because historically dominant groups in the US have treated people from protected classes very, very poorly in matters of employment, housing, and access to services. Removal of these laws could very easily lead to reinstatment of segregation or other kinds of severe abuses that we as a society have decided are odious. We can see this directly with the pretty blatant anti black voting laws being enacted in many of the southern states after the supreme Court gutted the voting Rights act recently.

<comment><USER18> Manual labor was just an example. The key is that the job performance for example is easily measurable.

<comment><USER19> Are you arguing that discrimination should be illegal only when it's difficult to cover up? Not sure I see where you're coming from here.

<comment><USER18> Well, you need evidence to prove discrimination, and not all discrimination leave evidence. This is unlike things like theft or injury.

<comment><USER19> Luckily, the courts require evidence to make a decision. With a large company, systematic pay discrimination can certainly be observed (or not, if no pay discrimination is taking place). If, for example, all women at a large enough company were being parted a fraction of what men in comparable positions were making, we would have strong statistical evidence of discrimination, and the courts could make a decision against that company.

Requesting data from Google is presumably for this kind of a statistical investigation into whether systematic discrimination has taken place. Google, for its part, is arguing that the particular kinds of data being requested are beyond what is needed for this kind of analysis.

<comment><USER18> But there are things like "PIPs" that have problems, just to name one example. Of course, it is probably a good idea to mention that some of this stuff varies by state. I think California is one of the most strict in this area, making it even worse (a lot of posters mentioned this when Yishan, a former Reddit CEO, posted against an employee).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As the filing says, Google signed a contract which included a clause agreeing to "permit the Government to inspect and copy any books, accounts, records (including computerized records), and other material that may be relevant" etc.

What did they expect would happen?

<comment><USER2> They're only required to provide information that is "pertinent to compliance...". The question is whether or not the private contact details of tens of thousands of employees and ex-employees is pertinent. Google thinks not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'd argue the CNN article contains more info: [http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/04/technology/google-labor- depa...](http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/04/technology/google-labor-department- lawsuit/index.html)

And links to the actual lawsuit: [https://www.dol.gov/sites/default/files/newsroom/newsrelease...](https://www.dol.gov/sites/default/files/newsroom/newsreleases/OFCCP20162406_0.pdf)

"Google has repeatedly refused to provide names, contact information, job history and salary history details that the government has requested for its employees."</comment>


Let's Build a Simple Interpreter, Part 2 - <AUTHOR> http://ruslanspivak.com/lsbasi-part2/

<comment><USER2> Peter Norvig has some good posts about building a small lisp in Python: [http://norvig.com/lispy.html](http://norvig.com/lispy.html) and [http://norvig.com/lispy2.html](http://norvig.com/lispy2.html)

<comment><USER3> Doing those exercises in Javascript (which I'm very familiar with and has better functions than Python, IMO) really helped me understand compilers, and lisp better. Lisps are awesome, and I've been picking up a lot of Clojure lately. Love it, and never want to go back.

<comment><USER4> Probably I will go a bit off-topic, but as a person, who is more familiar with python than any other programming language, what functions JS has, which are "better"?

<comment><USER5> The only thing I could think of at the moment is that JS gets lambdas right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Neat post, though I'm a bit disappointed it didn't go into infix to postfix conversions.</comment>


Thoughts on Angular 2 after ng-conf 2015 (and some whisky) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@aripalo/thoughts-on-angular-2-after-ng-conf-2015-and-some-whisky-8392c260095c

<comment><USER2> "On Migrating from Angular 1 to Angular 2, the New Syntax, Web Components, Performance, TypeScript and Future of JavaScript."</comment>


Mandrill pauses email sending without prior notification - <AUTHOR> This is the second time I am experiencing this with Mandrill. Email sending was paused without notifying the account email. In both instance (2 different sites/accounts), it took hours to notice users are not receiving emails and even when we did, we were checking the wrong source for the problem. This is really unprofessional. If for any reason email sending should be paused, I think the email on file should at least be notified. Some time critical messages are being sent via those emails. Anyone experienced this too? <comment><USER2> We send out quite a bit of email via mandrill (as well as SES) and haven't ever experienced this. They should alert you no matter and I am surprised they didn't.

As for mandrill what is your deliverability rate and reputation? We generally maintain just shy of 98% deliverability and an "excellent" reputation on their dashboard. We also follow all the rules for canSPAM even on transactional emails where technically you could get away without some of it. We developed an automated list cleansing system to make sure we keep hard bounces from getting resent, fixes common typos in domains, only retry soft bounces twice for the same campaign etc. The list cleansing helped us go from 95% deliverability and a "Good" reputation up to the 97.5+ and "excellent", which for us helps our clients. Also, another point, you can use sub-accounts to manage higher risk campaigns etc which can help prevent some of the headaches.

Not that this solves mandrill not notifying you, but out of curiosity, do you have webhooks setup? We extensively use webhooks to tell us what is happening and while they don't directly tell you sending has been paused (that I know of), the status of the emails in the webhooks would tell you something is wrong. I know for our platform we have a small component we wrote that monitors when email is being sent and expects to see the statuses updated fairly quickly, if it doesn't we get alerted, or if certain percentages of emails start coming back with "bad" statuses as we defined them we get an alert. I would think if you are sending enough email and using any third party email gateway you would want the same thing.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am an overall happy customer of Mandrill. But they have a reputation system which sets a hourly quota. If your reputation gets hurt, your hourly quota could go down significantly. I had a client who once got tagged as a spammer and that brought down the hourly emails quota to literally 2 digits and it was in thousands before. But mandrill is very good at improving the reputation as well if you use it correctly. Also, they do send you emails everytime your hourly quota is adjusted. So that is your signal to check and ensure that emails can still be sent.

</comment><comment><USER4> Haven't used Mandrill but in the past used the parent MailChimp a lot. While the service was great most of the time, when we ran into issues, MailChimp support sucked. It was hard to get issues resolved and often times they would not resolve the right issues in the first place.

In my opinion, if you have a high amount of email transactions, I would not use MailChimp or Mandrill because they don't back up their service with a good enterprise level support.

<comment><USER2> Who do you use now? I haven't experienced any support issues with Mandrill yet, although I have heard others say they are slow to respond and aren't always very helpful.</comment></comment>


Covid-19 Positivity Rate Might Not Mean What You Think It Does - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-positivity-rate-might-not-mean-what-you-think-it-does-11599211800 <comment><USER2> Yet one more reason to push for antigen testing for asymptomatic people. Those will detect a likely live virus, albeit with lower sensitivity than the PCR test.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [https://archive.vn/oeDAP](https://archive.vn/oeDAP)</comment>


How to convince my friend that open source is good? - <AUTHOR>

My friend doesn't believe in open source projects, especially in a crowded market.
How do I convince him that with open source we build awareness and indirect income?
What are the pros and cons of open source? <comment><USER2> Just ask your friend what all websites/web applications does he use on a daily basis, there should be something from open source out of that set. I believe many websites make money using open source technologies and many companies/startups release their technologies as open source helping others benefit out of it. Current tech scene would never have improved without open source community and collaboration.

</comment><comment><USER3> Present several case studies of companies/products that you wish to emulate.</comment>


A Private View of Quantum Reality - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/06/private-view-quantum-reality/ <comment><USER2> I guess I don't get it. How is this different from a hidden-variable theory? How does it explain the two-slit experiment?

<comment><USER3> Yep this is hidden value theorem.

I think either the author messed up the concept badly, or what is more likely, the proponent of this 'QBism' doesn't get it.

He appears to think spooky action is just lack of information - something like "if I open the box and see white marble, you must have the black one". Possibly haven't read or doesn't understand EPR thought experiment (which shows how by choosing to make a certain kind of observation, what he and thus the other guy sees).

Looks like pseudoscience to me.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, no, Chris Fuchs is definitely not doing pseudoscience. Please don't make judgements like that based on popular science writeups (though, this is actually one of the better ones I've seen on interpretations of QM, even if the figure is horribly misleading/wrong).

More generally, QBism is not a hidden variable theorem in any sense. What the article glosses over is that QBism does still require a modification to standard probabilities that (when combined with Baysian/information theoretic reasoning) gives you the measurement probabilities you actually see in the lab.

Chris Fuchs' writeups are pretty fantastic: [http://perimeterinstitute.ca/personal/cfuchs/](http://perimeterinstitute.ca/personal/cfuchs/)

Specifically, "Quantum Mechanics as Quantum Information, Mostly" is a short and fun introduction (okay, 32 pages, but pretty easy reading).

<comment><USER5> It's very difficult to read "Quantum Mechanics as Quantum Information, Mostly", in particular because it mixes the equations with unrelated comments like:

> _A grain of sand falls into the shell of an oyster and the result is a > pearl. The oyster 's sensitivity to the touch is the source of a beautiful > gem._

> _Last year, I watched my two-year old learn things at a fantastic rate, and > though there were untold lessons for her, there were a sprinkling for me > too._

A better reading material is the solution of a simple exercise, that explains the difference between the usual approach and the QB approach. (Is there any differences in the results?)

Someone has suggested the double slit experiment, because it's nice and easy to explain with words, but the continuous distribution makes the calculations difficult. I prefer the three Stern-Gerlach experiments because it's discrete and the math is easier. I think I read that experiment in a Feynman book, but I don't remember the exact citation. (The SG in the middle is the equivalent to the double slit.)

I just found this PDF that explain clearly the situation: [http://docslide.us/documents/spin-and-quantum-measurement- da...](http://docslide.us/documents/spin-and-quantum-measurement-david- mcintyre.html) . It's the "Experiment 4" (subsection 1.2.4, page 10). Can you explain the differences between the usual and the QB approach in this experiment?

<comment><USER4> So I think you're confused between: (a) Experimental predictions of QM calculations (b) Interpretations of why you're performing those calculations

In particular, things like collapse of the wave-function (for example) present some difficulty for (b) -- not for (a) -- which is what QBism is trying to address. It's also why you don't get problems to solve here, and why I recommended "Quantum Mechanics as Quantum Information, Mostly". Yes, it's written casually (have a look at Fuchs' and others' publications on the arXiv that made it to scientific journals if you want fewer asides about children) but the casual nature is because this is about how we view the problems in the first place, and why we make the calculations we do, not how to carry out the specific calculations.

Consider this (example stolen from Fuchs, somewhere): We knew the correct equations of special relativity years before Einstein came along -- that's why it's called the Lorentz transform, not the Einstein transform. But Einstein's genius was to boil things down to two laws (within an inertial reference frame, typical laws of motion hold, and the speed of light is the same in all reference frames). From _there_ we moved from simple calculations that we already knew how to do to a much deeper understanding of the subject. That's what Fuchs' and others working on interpretations of QM are trying to do -- not change the way we make calculations, but understand why the laws are the way they are in the hopes of extracting something new and different from that knowledge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> QM interpretation is a subtle thing and QBism makes a lot of sense. Yet (IMHO) it trades practical interpretation for some (nomen omen) purity.

In QM you can describe a quantum state with a wavefunction (to incorporate quantum ignorance) or a density matrix (to incorporate both quantum and classical ignorance). (A for classical ignorance only, one would just use probability vector).

States than can be described with just a wavefuctions are called pure states. And many-world interpretation revolves around having _only_ pure states (so, while being unsettling, does not add other assumptions and is, well... more pure). In QBsim pure states are not singled out.

Having said that, if you are coming to QM, QBism will protect you against a lot of BS. :)

And BTW: I remember my meeting with Chris Fuchs. It was a very illuminating story how did he turned from a (sinful) frequentist to an (enlightened) bayesianist. And how we should focus on knowing and not knowing things, rather that consider reality as an abstract thing.

A --bit-- lot of shameless self-advertisement:

\- Hydrogen ion and classical vs quantum not-knowing: [https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2015/03/13/quantum- supe...](https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2015/03/13/quantum- superposition/)

\- My quantum game - I want _show_ how does quantum mechanics work [http://quantumgame.io/](http://quantumgame.io/) (just a sign-up list; I will release alpha this Sept)

\- in my PhD thesis I coined qubism (for a plotting scheme for quantum states), only to realize later that a similar word is already taken; chapter 3 of [http://arxiv.org/abs/1412.6796](http://arxiv.org/abs/1412.6796): "The name qubism (inspired by Cubism, the art movement) should not be confused with QBsim (quantum Bayesianism)"

<comment><USER7> QB still seems like Berkely to me, but just with a dose of math.

<comment><USER6> In QM math is essential. Most of things I had learnt about QM before learning its basic, well, mechanics were actually building false intuitions.

Without math, many-world interpretation is a ridiculous absurd, and an Ockham's nightmare. With - well, it's pure QM _without_ adding additional assumptions.

<comment><USER8> > ...and an Ockham's nightmare...

Just never forget that Ockham's razor has absolutely no basis in science. Also, what one person finds a simpler or more elegant theory, another person might not; in that sense it is quite arbitrary.

<comment><USER9> Has a basis in information theory. But it's funny how you would assert that so confidently. What lead you to being that confident? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity)

<comment><USER8> > What lead you to being that confident?

It was certainly not my intention to impress an opinion on anyone else. Everybody here has the brains to think differently.

I'll be happy to see my comments proved wrong; please provide proper argumentation.

To elaborate a little more on my original point: the razor has proved useful as a guidance for thinking, and historically it has helped us to avoid going into paths that are not worthwhile, but there is absolutely no guarantee. In fact, the razor might even prevent us from going into paths that _are_ fruitful. So, I'd be cautious about it. That was all, basically.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is one of those things where it's really hard to tell whether it's a major step forward or utter bullshit. The question to ask, of course, is "how could this be tested experimentally?". It it's testable, it's a lot more important than if it isn't.

The proposed theory would seem to indicate that it's possible to get the real world into a state similar to an out-of-sync network game. Some games can get into a state where the player states have diverged, but the players are still connected. Is this article claiming that the real world can do that? That should be testable.

<comment><USER11> A good litmus test for an article like this is whether it talks about the Bell inequalities. If it doesn't (and this one doesn't) it's very likely bullshit.

<comment><USER5> I agree with both sentences, but this articles at least say something about the Bell inequalities:

> _My fellow QBists and I instead think that what Bell's theorem really > indicates is that the outcomes of measurements are experiences, not > revelations of something that's already there._

I studied the Bell inequalities at the university, but I have no cue about what this sentence means.

<comment><USER11> Makes two of us. Sounds like BS to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Luboš Motl, arch conservative, thinks it's essentially correct and is exactly what the founders tried to convey in the first place. As always, of course, Lumo gets it and almost no one else does. :-)

[http://motls.blogspot.com/2015/06/is-quantum-reality- persona...](http://motls.blogspot.com/2015/06/is-quantum-reality- personal.html)

</comment><comment><USER13> I think its a step in the right direction, but I believe one can go even further. It is not necessary to assume an observer or a conscious entity (the dog problem in the article), if one remarks that physical entities that have the "collapse of the wave function" property make good measurement instruments. In other words, knowledge is gained more rapidly with a good measurement instrument, and that is what defines the "collapse", not consciousness.

In that interpretation, QM is seen as the only way to do physics when you represent your knowledge of a system using probabilities. Measurement instruments are a choice among all the physical systems, and what we consider good physical instruments lead to QM "axioms".

This is elaborated here: [http://cc3d.free.fr/tim.pdf](http://cc3d.free.fr/tim.pdf).

<comment><USER14> This kind of argument works for classical thermodynamics too, where observing a particle in a gas collapses it's velocity distribution; where if we take a confined gas we can localize it (confining it within a tight space), only to grow uncertain about the momentum of constituents, or expand it, growing uncertain about the position.

In other words, for any probabilistic physical framework it seems to me you are going to need to put a magical 'sampling' or 'observation' somewhere.

Making this explicit is one of the reasons I like Bohm's formulation: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Broglie%E2%80%93Bohm_theory...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Broglie%E2%80%93Bohm_theory#Relation_to_the_Born_Rule)

</comment></comment><comment> norea-armozel It seems like an odd approach, but it could explain consciousness better since it assumes that each measured outcome is private information of the observer and each observer makes up the difference in regards to having differently measured outcomes. But there's something troubling about that for me. Does it mean when someone measured the health of Christopher Lee he didn't die? But for another observer who watched his vitals he did die? Are they in the same world? Or does this require the many world's interpretation to remain intact? I hope I'm not stretching QBism beyond its intended goals, but that's the sort of conclusion I can see being made from it.

</comment><comment><USER15> Original source: [https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150604-quantum- bayesianism-...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150604-quantum-bayesianism- qbism/)</comment>


Ask: Is there something like Hacker News in Spanish or other languages? - <AUTHOR>

I speak English but in the case I'll write an App just in Spanish (example: something to learn English) where do I have to publish it? There is something like HN in Spanish? I know, this is not probably the best place to ask that but maybe some one knows. <comment><USER2> Brazil: [http://www.startupnews.com.br](http://www.startupnews.com.br)

launched just a couple weeks ago.

<comment><USER3> The best plataform ever.

<comment><USER2> good to see brazilians strong in HN :) we're going to conquer the world!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's a Slashdot clone in Spanish, I don't frequent it, but I'd try there:

[http://barrapunto.com/](http://barrapunto.com/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Barrapunto was important, but now is so boring sophisticated web. I prefer the simplicity of HN, to be honest.

<comment><AUTHOR> well, it looks so complicated, it doesn't have the simplicity of HN and also is doesn't look like the news are up to date.

<comment><USER5> It was the Slashdot of its time. But then, a website called Meneame.net (Digg like) took over it leading them a bare few active users. Meneame design- feature like was more easy and interesting than the old ones. They died the same way Slashdot did against Digg.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The brazilian one is pretty nice :)</comment>


Creative Genius Driven by Distraction - <AUTHOR> http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2015/03/creative-genius-driven-by-distraction.html <comment><USER2> I always hate reading things like this because I find myself saying things like, "Oh, just like me," \---even if I read a similar article with opposite findings the day before. Then I point out to myself my biases, and feel bad for, basically, being human.

Back to work.

<comment><USER3> Don't spoil this for me! I'm a creative genius damnit, and my inability to focus on work proves it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My observations about a different kind of noise ...

There are people who have focused, surgical thinking. They solve a hard problem by trying to follow a chain of logic arguments, and give up after a few tries. When they don't fail, they find the solution quickly.

There are also people with "noisier" thinking, who can stray from the chain of logic arguments, or even get lost. These people throw everything and the kitchen sink at the problem, can think of almost unlimited ways of attacking a hard problem, and often discover unexpected properties.

The "noisy thinkers" take a longer path to arrive at the solution, but they often manage to go around barriers in a way that is impossible for the former group.

<comment><USER5> >The "noisy thinkers" take a longer path to arrive at the solution, but they often manage to go around barriers in a way that is impossible for the former group.

creative annealing

<comment><USER6> And people in the opposite regime basically suffer from a strong Einstellung. They can recall more easily, but that also means that they are strongly primed on things they've learned, it's perhaps similar to overfitting. I'd wager there is a golden mean.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I humbly submit that many folks "driven by distraction" may have an attention deficit disorder. The creative sorts described in the article strike me as people with AD/HD.

"Driven to Distraction" by Drs. Hallowell and Ratey [0] changed my life. The big moment for me was learning that AD/HD doesn't mean that you can't pay attention ... it's that you have little conscious control over where your attention goes unless the novelty factor is high.

Seriously. Changed my life.

[0]: [http://www.amazon.com/dp/0307743152/](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0307743152/)

<comment><USER8> It's not really a disorder if it doesn't cause problems.

<comment><USER7> It caused problems until I sought treatment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The brain is an antenna. A poorly tuned radio connected to a large antenna picks up a lot of nonsense - but it sometimes also picks up novelty. It can sense and concentrate the signals/ideas that others miss.

Creating an intelligent thing is like creating a garden, all that is required is to prepare the soil and remove those plants/ideas which do not serve the purpose of the garden.

Perhaps the idea that is contained in this message will find a home in the garden of another mind - give it a chance to grow, it needs a particular kind of soil. But once you get it started it's a corker.

Perhaps someone with a different set of skills to mine can make this idea manifest. I strongly believe that formalising this notion will lead to strong AI.

<comment><USER10> So if I understand you correctly, what you're saying is that if one were to bury a radio in rich soil, it will grow a large antenna and eventually become self-aware.

<comment><USER11> We're part-way there: [http://www.pbase.com/trip/image/107161981](http://www.pbase.com/trip/image/107161981)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I take Adderall and it's kind of a trade off between the ability to be creative and the ability to be persistent and methodical. Before I had the Adderall, in order to complete methodical tasks, I had to have either the kind of silence described in the article, or I could find certain types of noisy environments that would also help.

<comment><USER13> Has your creativity changed since starting adderall?

<comment><USER7> Speaking for myself - no. I compose music and write creatively, and Adderall (and Vyvanse) give me the ability to choose where my focus/attention goes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "leaky" filters are also characteristic of ASD and ADD/ADHD. I have often wondered if these conditions occur at a higher frequency in the creative thinkers vs general population. I wonder if they will look at that too?

<comment><USER15> They do. Also at higher frequency in pilots, ER staff, accountants, salespeople, entrepreneurs. At least before kids started being medicated.

<comment><USER7> Kids being medicated - now that's an unfortunate generalization. Please don't assume that all medicated children are being fed drugs to make them conform to a group norm. There are some kids who legitimately have problems with managing their attention, and who could benefit greatly from a medication that offsets the neurotransmitter imbalance that prevents them from doing so.

<comment><USER15> No assumption made. Just noting that medications are a relatively new input into the ongoing data on choice of profession, so frequency will likely be impacted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is that saying that the easier you are to distract, the more likely you are to be a creative genius?

Sweet. There's still hope for me...

</comment><comment><USER17> Reminds me of yvain's "Negative Creativity"[0]. The gist of it is that maybe building "creative machines" is actually an easy task - because even if our first AI will have zero creativity, humans seem to have a negative amount of it - because we need to induce random noise in ourselves to get out of a mental rut.

[0] - [http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/05/negative- creativity/](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/05/negative-creativity/)

</comment><comment><USER18> This sounds awfully similar to being a highly sensitive person. I.E. covering your ears when a siren goes by, being exhausted after being around too many people, being aware of subtleties in your environment.

I encourage anyone who identifies with the above to take this HSP quiz: [http://hsperson.com/test/highly-sensitive- test/](http://hsperson.com/test/highly-sensitive-test/)

</comment><comment><USER19> > The study suggests that creative people with "leaky" sensory gating may have > a propensity to deploy attention over a wider focus or a larger range of > stimuli.

I've always thought that creativity and chaos go hand in hand. At least in my experience. The inability to draw barriers between categories and subjects.

I think the bigger struggle is being able to retain focus on an idea once you've conceived it. You can have all the innovative ideas in the world, doesn't really amount to much if you can't pull it together and ship.

<comment><USER20> Yep, many discoveries recently seems to come from someone glancing over the category fence and going "hey, that looks similar to xyz".

<comment><USER19> Yeah. I was sitting in my PHIL 101 class way back in the day and was like, "Wait, this argument doesn't work because it assumes too low a level of computational complexity." Made for a great paper.

I also took some advanced creative writing courses. I was the only science major in my Novella class. So of course I wrote sci-fi. Had the most original story out of the group.

<comment><USER20> Reminds me of Peter Watts. Educated as a marine biologist, writes hard sci-fi for a living. Seems to have a very cynical world view to boot. The latter could be in part because he is apparently a trouble magnet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> i am the exact opposite. ha ha ha ... once i get going on a problem, you could fire a cannon next to my ear and i may notice. as a matter of fact, i _prefer_ noise around me when i'm working. i'm not being sarcastic. i'm pretty good at my job, although no genius (not even that smart) by any stretch in any way :)

but i feel that this ability to hyper-concentrate helps me overcome an otherwise average intelligence. anyone else experiences this?

<comment><USER22> It's impossible for me to focus if I am not interested in something, but if something is fascinating to me, I forget to eat, drink water and do normal tasks and keep at this thing for hours. It has nearly ruined my life.

<comment><USER21> yeah. same. but for me it doesn't matter. if it's a puzzle (from number theory to computational geometry and everything in btwn) if i start, game over. it's a problem.

<comment><USER15> search 'hyperfocus'

set timers

<comment><USER7> And read "Driven to Distraction", seriously.

[http://www.amazon.com/dp/0307743152/](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0307743152/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Here's the original paper (PDF): [https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-_F9a3KJf3LWmlWdzd6OU5MM28...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-_F9a3KJf3LWmlWdzd6OU5MM28/view)

I'm surprised this wasn't linked anywhere in the press release.</comment>