Theoretical quark fusion found to be more powerful than hydrogen fusion - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2017-11-theoretical-quark-fusion-powerful-hydrogen.html <comment><USER2> > Since hydrogen fusion lies at the heart of hydrogen bombs, the researchers > were quite naturally alarmed at their findings. So much so that they > considered not publishing their results. But subsequent calculations showed > that it would be impossible to cause a chain reaction with quarks because > they exist for too short a period of time—approximately one picosecond—not > long enough to set off another baryon. They decay into much smaller, less > dangerous lighter quarks.

This must be either some kind of inside joke that was lost on the reporter, or a really poor reporting. You simply cannot accumulate stuff that decays in the order of picoseconds: if you can, you already have a bomb. No chain reaction needed.

After all, when they say "they decay into much smaller, less dangerous lighter quarks," it means they _release_ all this dangerous energy.

It's like saying "Fortunately, this TNT decays into a much less dangerous mixture of inert nitrogen, water vapor, and carbon monoxide." Well, duh, it's exactly the process of decaying that makes TNT so dangerous.

<comment><USER3> OK, but you have one picosecond to _assemble_ your bomb. Let me know how much explosive power you manage to accumulate in that time. Also let me know how far away from your manufacturing facility you manage to move it before it goes off...

<comment><USER4> Perhaps a precursor reaction could be used to generate the necessary ingredients "just in time", like how a fission type of explosion is a precursor to a fusion explosion.

<comment><USER3> That's not a bad idea, but I still don't think it would work. There are at least two problems.

First is the _rate_ at which you can generate the precursors. How many can you generate in a picosecond? That's how big your explosion can be. Or rather, the explosion will be as big as how many you can generate in a picosecond, times however many picoseconds you can sustain generating them (plus the force needed to make the fusion reaction happen).

The second problem is that generating the ingredients probably takes at least as much energy as you get out of the fusion reaction. At that point, whatever you're using to generate the energy can be your weapon, without needing the intermediate step of the quark fusion reaction. (As the Schlock Mercenary web comic says, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a really big gun.")

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > "Those components, scientists have found, are called quarks."

Does anyone proof read anymore?

<comment><USER6> That may well be my favorite sentence I have read this year. It implies that scientists built particle accelerators and then these things popped out, and spoke to the scientists saying "Hi! We're called 'quarks'!" The first known self-naming particle.

I mean, this really solves all the questions about whether or not consciousness is an inherent property of the universe, if quarks themselves are already at a level that they can communicate their name to scientists. Profound stuff.

Let's, as they say, eat grandma: [https://www.theguardian.com/media/mind-your- language/2014/se...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/mind-your- language/2014/sep/04/mind-your-language-commas)

<comment><USER7> It's like something out of the British series "Look Around You."

<comment><USER8> Perfect comparison.

For anyone that's not seen Look Around You, all the episodes are on youtube. Season 1 is the one to start with, there's two seasons and they're very different.

Some of this won't translate as well, the episodes are absurdist versions of shows that used to be on BBC2 very early in the morning. There would be a show as some science lesson, put on at 2am for people to tape and show in classes. I'm sure it's a pretty wide age range but I'm 30 and seeing slightly warped tapes playing this kind of thing was pretty common for me. Still, even without this I think they're pretty fun.

There's also the pilot for calcium on youtube but there's the other episodes here:

[https://www.youtube.com/user/LookAroundYouDVD](https://www.youtube.com/user/LookAroundYouDVD)

<comment><USER9> The shows to which you refer were not necessarily to be shown in classes - AIUI they _were_ the classes/lectures for the Open University, a distance learning uni which still exists to this day. The broadcasts lasted into the mid-00s: [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6182747.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6182747.stm)

<comment><USER8> Ah thanks, my viewing of them was limited entirely to secondary school lessons so I assumed a lot were intended with this audience in mind, sort of a forerunner to bitesize.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The two main paragraphs:

"Prior work has suggested that energy is involved when quarks fuse together. In studying the properties of one such fusing, a doubly-charmed baryon, the researchers found that it took 130 MeV to force the quarks into such a particular configuration, but they also found that fusing the quarks together wound up releasing 12 MeV more than that. Intrigued by their finding, they quickly focused on bottom quarks, which are much heavier—calculations showed it took 230 MeV to fuse such quarks, but doing so resulted in a net release of approximately 138 MeV, which the team calculated was approximately eight times more than the amount released during hydrogen fusion.

Since hydrogen fusion lies at the heart of hydrogen bombs, the researchers were quite naturally alarmed at their findings. So much so that they considered not publishing their results. But subsequent calculations showed that it would be impossible to cause a chain reaction with quarks because they exist for too short a period of time—approximately one picosecond—not long enough to set off another baryon. They decay into much smaller, less dangerous lighter quarks."

<comment><USER11> Isn't it bad science to suppress findings? Where does one draw the line?

Suppression of results introduces subjectivity and allows for injection of agenda into what should be an objective practice. Not to mention, someone else will likely make the discovery eventually; would you rather suppress your findings and allow say, North Korea to be the first to develop a dangerous technology without any study into countermeasures?

Add this kind of bad practice to the other contemporary problems in research (replicability crisis, p value misuse, etc) and it feels like the modern scientific establishment is regressing.

<comment><USER12> > Where does one draw the line?

Traditionally where there are clear military uses that one doesn't want to make available to an enemy.

> would you rather suppress your findings and allow say, North Korea to be the > first to develop a dangerous technology

They didn't say they wouldn't share it with anyone, they said they were thinking about not publishing it.

> it feels like the modern scientific establishment is regressing

This isn't new by any means. For example, the development of fission had similar concerns and restrictions nearly a century ago.

<comment><USER13> This is about fusion, not fission. Your point stands of course!

since they are technically inverse its important to clarify IMO.

<comment><USER12> Poor wording on my part. I've made it a little clearer. Thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Since hydrogen fusion lies at the heart of hydrogen bombs, the researchers > were quite naturally alarmed at their findings. So much so that they > considered not publishing their results. But subsequent calculations showed > that it would be impossible to cause a chain reaction with quarks because > they exist for too short a period of time—approximately one picosecond—not > long enough to set off another baryon. They decay into much smaller, less > dangerous lighter quarks.

I found this the most interesting part of the article. I wonder what, if any, groundbreaking research _has_ been hidden by its discoverers due to its potential for misuse.

<comment><USER15> I _hope_ that people are keeping a lot of virus research under wraps, because at some point the ability to construct random genomes from scratch is going to get easy and inexpensive enough for terrorists to knock together.

<comment><USER16> And you want to make sure that whatever the hypothetical terrorists whip up has never had any research done on its pathology, cure, or vaccine?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Here's my question: We know that in the case of hydrogen fusion, the individual protons and neutrons involved change the way they are bound (two separate hydrogen atoms into a single helium), but they don't change into something else. But this is altogether different- we have individual _quarks_ which are combining together to form a new kind of particle. Does that imply that quarks themselves are made of smaller particles?

I suppose there are other examples of this kind of fusion too- electron capture by a proton producing a neutron, for example.

<comment><USER18> This is a great question! From my understanding, Quantum Field Theory posits that what we think of as particles are actually excitations of the underlying fields.

So when a neutron decays into a proton and an electron, it doesn't mean that the neutron _consists_ of a proton and an electron; merely that the "neutron field" has a coupling with a "proton field" and an "electron field".

So particles can indeed turn into other particles, as long as certain conservation laws are obeyed.

[Edit: typo]

<comment><USER19> Wait, can you approximate protons and neurons as excitations in proton and neutron fields instead of as specific valences of a quark-gluon plasma?

<comment><USER18> I have no idea. That's why I put it in quotes :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The actual paper:

Quark-level analogue of nuclear fusion with doubly-heavy baryons

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.02547](https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.02547)

</comment><comment><USER21> Key phrase from this article:

> At present, however, the very short lifetimes of the heavy bottom and charm > quarks preclude any practical applications of such reactions.

In other words, this is just an academic exercise, albeit an interesting one.

</comment><comment><USER22> I am definitely not a physicist by any means - as I understand it, the problem with hydrogen fission is not the amount of energy released but rather containing it and keeping it running stably for long periods of time, whilst using it to heat other things.

Is there anything to suggest that quark fusion would make any of these problems easier, or is this too early a stage for anyone to know that yet?

<comment><USER12> > the problem with hydrogen fission

It's actually fusion they're talking about here, not fission.

> rather containing it ...

You're referring to using fusion as an energy source. Here they're just talking about the energy liberated in individual collisions not in sustainable reactions.

> suggest that quark fusion would make any of these problems easier

The exact opposite. The article points out that there's no real chance of a chain reaction so you couldn't even produce a bomb never mind a sustainable energy source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> So, if this could be scaled, could the energy be harvested? The way the article was worded sounded like they were getting more energy out than what they put in, even if it is fractional. What is involved in actually putting a reactor that worked on this principle to use practically? Would it require a much larger reactor than what is currently being developed?

</comment><comment><USER24> Alternate title: Theoretical solution of the Fermi Paradox</comment>


AT&T wants to buy DirecTV - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/05/att-trying-to-buy-directv-gain-another-20-million-us-customers/

<comment><USER2> I wouldn't be surprised if this happened at some point.</comment>


Rendering Fonts in Today's Browsers - <AUTHOR> http://blog.typekit.com/2009/09/15/rendering-fonts-in-todays-browsers/ <comment><USER2> Highlights the need for more "meta-script" in web design, controlling the actual dynamic rendering of the page during load. Sure you can script client- side to explicitly manage divs etc. To do it right, every single subcomponent needs to become scripted. How about some style clues to the rendering engine: hide-until-complete, place-holder-strategy, link-disabled-until-visible etc.</comment>


The Gift of Death - <AUTHOR> http://www.monbiot.com/2012/12/10/the-gift-of-death/ <comment><USER2> This is exactly why my wife and I give home cooked food and preserves as gifts this time of year.

We are trying to declutter our life and everyone we talk to feels the same. Why give junk when you can give an experience.

For the same amount of time as going to the mall, we can cook up a chutney and can it for 20 people.

We've been doing this for the past 3 years and everyone seems to appreciate the various preserves and liquors we've created. It's also a lot of fun to make.

<comment><USER3> People tend to be polite, especially when it comes to expressing thanks for a gift.

One way to gauge the recipients' true enthusiasm would be to look at how many of them have followed your lead.

If you've been doing this for three years, how many home-made gifts did you receive in return in the second and third years? If you're counting this as the third year, how many such gifts did you receive last year?

<comment><USER4> My wife and I have been doing it for several years now, and over that time we've been getting increasingly many home-made gifts from people who know how to make things.

But I don't really expect the majority to follow suit, because most the people I know simply don't know how to make things. To them canning is a black art, and a batch of toffee involves hours in front of the stove and only comes out successfully a third of the time. Ironically, many members of this cross- section of my family have actually _ramped up_ their gifts to us in an apparent attempt to "keep up."

I'm not sure it would really be so great if all of them followed suit, anyway. The end result would just be that everyone ends up with twelve pounds of baked goods and confections to decide between eating (gluttonous) and throwing away (wasteful). We only do it because we know we can't convince everyone to cut us out of their gift-giving list entirely. Giving homemade food and baked goods is just a way to accomplish the mandatory reciprocation in a way that makes us feel a bit more comfortable with the whole affair. What I really do want is for the gift-giving tradition to go away, or at least be scaled way back. Wasteful overconsumption might involve more or less wasteful materials, but less wasteful is still a far cry from not wasteful.

<comment><USER3> Instead of discouraging people from showing their care/regard for you (which, with a generous helping of social obligation, is what gift-giving is about), why not try to find ways to help gift givers give useful/desirable gifts?

Children have wishlists (adults too nowadays -- e.g. Amazon), people 'register' for weddings, etc.

<comment><USER4> I've no desire to discourage people from showing their care or regard for me. But I would strongly for them to do it directly, by engaging in activites that center on care and regard for each other. Spending time together, perhaps.

Material goods are a poor proxy for that in my case, because they have the effect of actually reducing my quality of life. I've already got a cluttered house and more possessions than I know what to do with. It's actually pretty hard for me to think of objects that I genuinely want - so hard that when people give me gift cards, they generally go unused. I've got more than enough stuff, I'm actively working on having less stuff, and so I'd rather let it go to waste than acquire an object I don't want and will just go unused until I eventually discard it during the next round of decluttering.

So in any case I feel bad - either because of guilt over not appreciating an object that I simply can't because it brings me negative utility, or guilt over the money or effort people put into trying to give me an object that brings me negative utility, or for actively involving myself in the acquisition of an object that brings me negative utility, or for the sense of being wasteful that comes with the inevitable disposal of an object that brings me negative utility. And I would greatly prefer for people to show they care in a way that doesn't make me feel bad. I just wish I could understand why in this one situation I'm generally considered to be a bad person for wanting my loved ones to not make me feel bad. Isn't it supposed to be a time of year when we're supposed to gather together and try to make each other feel good?

Sadly the ritual just isn't really structured in a way that makes it workable for folks like us. The material gifts are inextricably placed at the core of the social construct, to the extent that there's really no way to extract them for the sake of respecting the feelings someone who doesn't desire a material gift. So inextricably that we can't just not give an object to someone who would rather not take part in the exchange of objects because we care about them and understand that would make them happier. Instead we have to make them out to be some sort of Scrooge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Originally a column in the Guardian[1], which explains a lot. If you give your loved ones store bought presents you are massacring people in the Congo, killing rhinos, and generally destroying the world. Apparently those presents will all be thrown out within a week. Merry Christmas.

This article, and the title especially, repulses me a quite a lot.

[1][http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/10/on-12th-...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/10/on-12th- day-christmas-present-junk)

<comment><USER6> At least we're not shooting everything into space after Christmas. That's the only way we'll actually deplete resources. Wealthy posh people like Monbiot needs to make up things like scarcity so they can lecture us on consumption.

I'm not a big fan of buying lots of rubbish for Christmas, but it's purely because I don't really see the point and could do with saving the time and effort.

<comment><USER7> > That's the only way we'll actually deplete resources.

Like we could recycle everything. Or like energy was currently free and non- polluting. Whoever the guy is, he actually gave good arguments in this article.

<comment><USER6> Throwing plastic toys into landfill is recycling, it's just not at the pace some require to offset their upper class guilt. Energy, we'll run out of it when we the sun burns out and we've depleted the other nuclear sources, not by taking stored energy from the sun and burning it to produce a gas that is then recombined with energy from the sun to give us fuel again.

<comment><USER7> Yes, and the Earth will recycle itself after the Sun runs out of hydrogen fuel.

You're completely ignoring time here. We may never get to recycle the landfill because the pollution will kill us before. Yes, the Earth will clean itself up in a thousand years, the plastics will decompose, and the Sun will refuel the Earth, but those things are irrelevant if humanity is dead by that time. If we want to keep rising the standard of living on the entire planet, we need to stop poisoning ourselves and trashing everything around us in such a stupid way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "People in eastern Congo are massacred to facilitate smart phone upgrades of ever diminishing marginal utility."

It's not just smart phones; it's anything that uses tantalum capacitors. If, as an engineer, you can avoid using tantalum capacitors in your designs, please do.

<comment><USER9> "However, although important for the local economy in Congo, the contribution of coltan mining in Congo to the world supply of tantalum is usually small. The United States Geological Survey reports in its yearbook that this region produced a little less than 1% of the world's tantalum output in 2002–2006, peaking at 10% in 2000 and 2008."

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humour." ― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

I'm not sure that Dicken's or pop culture calculated that our laughter and good humor might cause the disease and sorrow. Current Christmas culture just accentuates the problem that the average consumer is born into a world where it is often unclear how daily decisions affect the rest of the world.

<comment><USER11> I agree with you but I also believe that it goes further than current Christmas culture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> As long as environmental externalities of human economic behavior are underpriced, they will continue to happen for reasons that many consider insipid.

<comment><USER13> And that won't be changed by articles bemoaning consumerism and urging people to be virtuously frugal, while neglecting to mention potentially useful things like externality taxes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's always touching to see these people who have no problem at all with consumption during the whole year suddenly shed a tear around Christmas time to denounce the materialism of our lives. And to remind everyone how the world was such a better place when we had nothing at all to share and buy. They should go for a trip to North Korea and enjoy a "non-materialist" Christmas there, with just bananas as the little extra they can permit themselves to have on special occasions. That must be pure bliss! That does not explain why people are so eager to leave these countries whenever they can. (and of course there is a connection between authoritarian regimes and consumption. Isnt that obvious for everyone yet?)

<comment><USER15> I'll assume you're either not commenting on the article, or you're unfamiliar with Monbiot.

<comment><USER14> Your second assumption is correct, but I was commenting on the article. This is not the only one of this kind I have seen in these past 2 weeks - so it is a general "thing to do" around Christmas for many political commentators/activists who have apparently nothing interesting/new to say.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'll give you one of two things: lego if you're under 12, tools if you're over 12. And good tools, no crap. And I'd rather give a select number of people something good than a lot of people something crappy. I'm also 100% anti- social in that I do not send out Christmas cards.

<comment><USER17> Good ideas, thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> A little exaggerated but not far from true. Not speaking of gifts specifically- I'm amazed by the amount of junk toys and useless gadgets coming from China. I actually don't know what amazes me more- that someone thought: "Hey, it's a great idea to make this <useless piece of crap>" or that someone out there is actually buying that stuff.

<comment><USER19> In a similar vein, a lot of internet bandwidth is filled with advertising.

<comment><USER20> Not really that much; video (mostly Netflix & Youtube) uses more than normal website resources as a whole do.

Besides, like RAM and unlike e.g. plastic, unused bandwidth is wasted bandwidth.

<comment><USER19> Moving information requires energy, and in the case of advertising, on the scale of Google's data centers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The only thing I ask for on Christmas is money to help me buy textbooks, because that's the only thing I really need. That, and maybe some bedsheets.

Even then, I really must point out that this problem is as old as humanity itself. There has never been a single generation of humans that has not attempted to flaunt their wealth in grotesquely pointless ways. The rise of the upper middle class simply creates more people rich enough to do so.

<comment><USER16> Drop me an email please (or put yours in your profile).

<comment><USER21> An email has been dropped, but may or may not get sent to your spam folder.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20>
      In the US in 2010 a remarkable 93% of the growth in incomes accrued to the top
      1% of the population(7). The old excuse, that we must trash the planet to help
      the poor, simply does not wash.

Yes, and we all know that those crappy gadgets are all made in the US.

<comment><USER6> The last time I had a quick look at the numbers, global inequality is down due to global trade. It's really that the bottom bit of developed nations lost a bit to those in developing nations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Personally, I have implemented a simple gift policy for the gift I make and the gift I receive:

\- no more than 1 gift

\- the gift must not cost overt 20 EUR, and the less expansive the better

\- if a list of suggestion is made, better pick up from the list.

Simple, effective and it does not prevent gifts or consumption.

I usually say that to everyone around me to avoid getting stuff I don't know what to do with and will hate myself if I throw it away (it's a gift you know!)

An example : last year xmas present I got from my mom : red ties. Still using them BTW.

If you receive something unexpected, accept it after taking time to inform the offerer of your policy, so that next year you won't be uncomfortable. A single awkward moment, then it will be fine for the next years.

BTW I'm trying to have people stop sending me cards, but I haven't succeeded yet, even after multiple requests- even when I stopped sending them.

The best agreement so far with my family : I explained some people love to receive cards, but I don't, and in fact it makes me very sad - as much as if they don't receive one. So I send them a card _IFF_ they don't send me one - that's a compromise acceptable by both parties.

And everyone is happy. No need for a bleeding hart moralizing article during a guilt trip.

</comment><comment><USER23> George Monbiot really should be given a nobel prize, it's absolutely amazing that if we just stop Christmas (and using Tantalum capacitors) everyone will live forever and no one will ever die.

Perhaps instead Mr. Monbiot should give himself the gift of a reasonable and nuanced position that doesn't make outlandish claims.

<comment><USER24> He's done every bit as much as Obama when Obama won the Prize.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I was amused that half the stuff he lists seems to be for sale at Think Geek.

I do try to buy people useful stuff though. Things that they may want to use for a while, and no gag gifts.

</comment><comment><USER26> I just had a realization on why people may consume like this.

People spend so much time working hard instead of doing what they really want to, because it is expected of them. By consuming they feel their work was worth it and it is the only way they can avoid the dread that they have wasted their lives not following their dreams?</comment>


Roila - Artificial language for communication with robots - <AUTHOR> http://roila.org/about/

<comment><USER2> The 3 word types they list are CVCV, CVCVC and CVCVCV. C is for consonant and V is for vowel. This is supposed to make speech recognition easier.

Yet the name of the language is Roila, so it is itself not a legal word in the language. Great!

<comment><USER3> How would you pronounce it?-couldn't find anything on their site. I could only think of one way to make the name fit into these syllable structures, but glottal stop is missing from its inventory. No diphthongs either! That's odd. How does the robot explain what it's speaking?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1515665> Duplicate post.

</comment><comment><USER5> If the intent is for a universal language that can overcome language translation issues then I think the main concern should be building an interpreter that is capable of parsing numerous real spoken languages. Or, perhaps, as the rest of the world has been doing for years with international interfaces-- use English.</comment>


Why 'Be Passionate' Is Awful Advice - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/millennial-entrepreneurs/why-be-passionate-is-awful-advice.html <comment><USER2> Since he starts with a bad premise, the whole thing is flawed.

"This sort of advice would have you believe that if you simply put your all into something you will be successful."

... that's not what it says at all. In fact, it says the opposite: If you don't put your all into something, you're much more likely to fail.

'Be Passionate' is great advice.

<comment><USER3> > 'Be Passionate' is great advice.

I've never understood that. It seams to me that you either feel passion or you don't. If you are already passionate you don't need the advice, but if you don't, what are you supposed to do? say "OK, I'll be passionate from now on"?

Same with "be confident".

<comment><USER4> you can learn to be confident

and as for "be passionate", I dont see if as something you learn, but if you arent passionate and realise that is an important fact, you can redirect your efforts to something you are passionate about.

<comment><USER5> What you say makes sense, but I'm not sure it applies to people. People can decide to believe things, why can't they decide to be passionate?

<comment><USER6> Passion isn't a belief, it's an emotion -- just like you can't simply decide to be happy, sad, or afraid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think the author's definition of "passion" is "blind love" whereas the HN definition of "passion" is "drive to do." Sure, if you're terrible and tasteless at something, be passionate about it on the weekends. If you're in the top 50th percentile in terms of ability--and passionate about it--it will work as a job.

<comment><USER8> "Be passionate", when the _statement_ is unqualified, is bad advice simply because our HN definition of passion as a synonym for having motivation is not the only definition, and it requires more than a bullet point, 2-word aphorism to qualify.

<comment><USER9> On the contrary, being passionate can _make you qualified._ (if you put in enough effort and stick with it long enough, which is all kind of bundled into the concept of passion)

<comment><USER8> I hadn't considered that reading; clarified what I meant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a really awful article (pun not intended, but enjoyed anyway). It is full of straw men, hand waving, and unsubstantiated claims. It is additionally poorly edited to the point of starting a list with "0" and continuing with "2". I suspect that the motivation for writing it was to plug his book, which hopefully was written by someone else. I move for immediate dismissal with prejudice, and I would like my two minutes back, please.

<comment><USER11> Second the motion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If he writes C like he numbers his bullet points he'll get a whole lot of seg faults...

</comment><comment><USER13> Don't confuse passion for focus. Passion pulls you. Focus pushes you. You need both.

</comment><comment><USER14> I agree with the author to the extent that being passionate about an idea is not enough if your goal is to be rich. However, if your goal is happiness, then I can't see a way to devote your life to a job without passion and be a happy person.

My startup is extraordinarily stressful. But I'm not in it just for the money. I was sick of working in a highly paid position in a field that I couldn't muster any passion towards. From the authors perspective, I imagine that my decision to walk away from that salary, and the bonus (oh, the bonus...), was a mistake. But, for all the hard work that I am committing to what we are doing and for all the stress it entails, I'm a happier person.

That's not a bad place to be.

</comment><comment><USER15> Though I find little of value in the article, I like the title taken in isolation. Being passionate is key to success in my opinion. Advice to 'Be Passionate' implies that you aren't and can turn it on in some sense. This tends to cause people to act like they're passionate, and when it is pretentious, it is really obnoxious.

It's like working with people who carp about having "a sense of urgency." I always want to set them on fire. We'd then see a genuine sense of urgency. Most of what they actually do is just pestering people.

</comment><comment><USER16> Be passionate is advice along the lines of "be a sea turtle" or "be a tea kettle."

Passion is something you discover, sometimes by accident. Discover passion is better advice — the verb is much more likely to get you moving in the right direction. Once you have a clear understanding of your passion, it's pretty hard not to be influenced by it — the "be" part takes care of itself.

</comment><comment><USER17> I have been having a discussion with some friends of mine about this topic and I was actually going to write a blog post about it, but now I would just look like a tool if I did so. I'll just summarize what I was going to say here.

I think passion is generally stupid for a couple reasons. First off, we use it as a defense mechanism. "If I am passionate, I won't care about failure because I'll be doing what I love!" Not only will you have a hard time pivoting or calling it quites all together but this mentality already sets you up for failure on a bunch of other levels.

Secondly, how many people have been passionate about their projects that ended up failing? We tell ourselves to be passionate because Zuck was passionate about Facebook or the Groupon guys were passionate about their project, if we're passionate about ours WE CAN'T FAIL!

We don't need passion to succeed, we need brains to succeed. Think critically about what you're doing and you'll be way better off then loving your dumb idea into the ground.

</comment><comment><USER18> I think the author is attacking the wrong viewpoint. Being passionate about some idea I scrawled on a napkin at a bar is a great way to start a business.

The phrase "Be passionate" says nothing about discipline or determination. Most of his points seem to focus on these qualities. Sure, I've been part of many passionate conversations that started "Wouldn't it be cool if...?". Many of these ideas never made it past the beers they were shared over. But for the ones that did, passion is a good start.

If you are passionate over a long period of time, you will be good at what you do. This is not the same as making money, but you will be good at whatever it is you do. You can fake passion for a job, but those who matter will notice.

</comment><comment><USER19> I wish he would have gone after the real culprit: hand wavy advice. Telling someone to be passionate about one's work is about as helpful as telling someone not to set himself on fire.

He should have singled out Gary V to make his point. The guy didn't start with only his passion and a video camera. He started with employees and a multi- million dollar business. Responding to comments is not hustling.

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't think Apple, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Netscape or any company I can think of off the top of my head could answer more than 50 percent of his questions with a high degree of confidence at their outset. That's not to say they aren't important questions, though.

</comment><comment><USER21> Wrong.

Proof: [http://don.blogs.smugmug.com/2010/11/10/why-be-passionate- is...](http://don.blogs.smugmug.com/2010/11/10/why-be-passionate-is-awesome- advice/)

</comment><comment><USER22> Not valid for programming/developing.</comment>


Music 2.0 book - Gerd Leonhard - <AUTHOR> http://www.music20.kotisivukone.com/1

<comment><USER2> Not to be disrespectful but perhaps you shouldn't be using Hacker News to sell books.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's free.</comment></comment>


Ron Johnson ousted as JC Penney CEO - <AUTHOR> http://www.tuaw.com/2013/04/08/ron-johnson-ousted-as-jc-penney-ceo/ <comment><USER2> "I've said many times that when a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact."

-Warren Buffett

<comment><USER3> That quotation is also how James Surowiecki ends his pretty decent column on Ron Johnson: [http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2013/03/25/130325ta_...](http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2013/03/25/130325ta_talk_surowiecki)

<comment><USER2> I give Surowiecki for knowing that quote.

It perfectly describes the situation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's a sad state of affairs in American consumerism that folks are attracted more to _discounts_ than _low prices_. Johnson's plan made sense: lower prices to what average selling prices are during promotions and cut back on promotions. Lower noise. Less discount anxiety. Too bad consumers aren't strictly speaking rational in this way (1, 2).

1)<http://cl.ly/image/2y1T1L2M1s0e> 2)<http://cl.ly/image/1a3D3c1J1Z0I>

<comment><USER5> People don't buy discounted items just because the price is low.

We buy discounted items because _discounts tell us which items to buy._

For a given product, there are usually several competing choices, and most people don't have enough time to evaluate whether each one is a good deal for the price it's offered at. So the easiest way to select is to just pick the one that's on sale--or if they're all on sale, pick the one that appears to have the biggest discount relative to the MSRP.

The discount also tells us "you should buy this now, because if you buy it later, the price may go up."

Without this important signal, customers don't really know which one to buy, plus there's no urgency to buy the item now, because it's always that price.

So, while Johnson's approach may have "made sense," and may have worked for Apple products because their market position and product lifecycle makes discounts unnecessary, this strategy really didn't play to consumer psychology, at least in the apparel space.

<comment><USER4> _The discount also tells us "you should buy this now, because if you buy it later, the price may go up."_

But who cares if it's average or even poor value at the current discount? My thinking should be, "which item offers me the best value as priced _right now_ "? I think what you're suggesting is that the "full price" gives customers a "hint" about how much to subjectively value the item, which is also sad because the last person I want telling me how much something should be worth is the person selling it to me.

<comment><USER6> You're running something of a fool's errand arguing this point. Of course you're right. It's sad on so many levels that retail stores are important, that fashion is important, that fads, trends, and other trivialities are important.

However if we accept that all of the above are inevitable, then we must accept a friction-free experience as valuable. And the poster above is pointing out that whether it's logical or not, the feeling of "I made the smart choice!" by buying the discounted option, provides this easier experience.

At a high level human choices aren't rational which is sad, but we must accept it.

<comment><USER7> >At a high level human choices aren't rational which is sad, but we must accept it.

I can accept that but I have to ask: who would have the time to make a deep, rational analysis of the value for everything they buy? At some point I think the quick "discount heuristic" is the more rational choice because it saves time.

On the other hand, for big ticket items (cars and houses) I'd hope people would spend a lot more time making a rational choice.

<comment><USER6> Good point

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If they really wanted change, they should probably have rebranded completely.

I'm 40 years old and throughout my entire life, JC Penney has represented a pretty consistent image of being a discount store where old people shopped. I don't think anyone (including Steve Jobs) would have been able to modify that image in my mind in a scant 2 years while keeping the brand name, the image is just too entrenched at this point.

This leaves the store in a worst-of-all-worlds position where people who don't currently shop there maintain the decades-old image of what the store used to be while people who did shop there are put off by the changes.

I don't know anything about the retail clothing business but just based off common sense I could have predicted this short-term result based on the half- way measure of trying to redefine an iconic (for better or worse) brand without actually rebranding. Seems pretty obvious, no?

<comment><USER9> You are spot on. This is hardly a surprise to anyone who has been watching, and I personally just made a little bit of money on my bet he would get fired :) Time to share my understanding. My connection: I used to live off Legacy Drive in the Deerfield neighborhood in Plano and hence have heard some second- hand accounts about his behavior.

If you read anything about this guy's tenure at the company, it becomes apparent he was riding someone else's coattails at Apple and possibly at Target... because all he did was copy org structures from Apple to graft them onto JCP without understanding why or how they worked at Apple. He lacked basic retail understanding and was a typical middle-road MBA pointy-haired boss. I just wish I understood how I could get hired to fail like he and so many other execs do -- the pay is so much better! The joke is clearly on me.

He was no different than a 'Senior dev' copy-pasting a bunch of Stack Overflow Java code in your team's C environment. Guess what, it was convincing at first but doesn't work ("what do you mean C has memory leaks?").

His approach failed for many reasons, but most succinctly the failure is because JCP is a discount brand and Apple is a premium brand. So far our understanding of retail is that premium and discount stores operate differently. He thought he could take premium behaviors and apply them to discounts (in fairness, this is what he took credit for at Target, but having talked to people in MN it seems that credit was JCP PR to explain how he got hired).

My favorite moves from this guy (recalling from memory, apologies for not providing HN-worthy citations):

\-- When it became clear JCP was't getting traction with the new promotion structure ('best price' nonsense) last summer he blamed and fired his good friend and longtime colleague who he personally brought to JCP. He had worked with the guy for years, and somehow the execution of a bad idea was the problem. He took no responsibility and charged ahead. Very quietly he started dismantling his bad ideas.

\-- He stopped discount sales altogether. At a discounter. Without explaining or convincing others that they would have cheaper prices than competition.

\-- He stopped clearance altogether. Most of my purchases at JCP over the years have been from clearance, so people like me had zero reason to step inside the store ever again.

\-- He never moved to Plano so he could keep attending church in CA, and he only flew to the HQ 3 days a week (on average). Plano has an equivalent denomination church, and I imagine his CA community would understand the absence. Few people at the company HQ had a chance to talk to him in person. I don't understand how you can turn around a billion-dollar corporation remotely.

\-- He encouraged teams not to talk to each other and be secretive, because somehow that led to a better customer experience when everyone was confused. He asked some teams to report directly to him. JCP doesn't build consumer products, they build store layouts and discount structures. The secrecy was stupid when you consider he managed remotely and was a communication point-of- failure. Some 'incubator' teams were allowed full access to disrupt normal operations, and my understanding is that there was quite a bit of friction that led to much lower productivity.

\-- The store-within-a-store concept was an udder failure. However, all public reports are that sales/sq-foot were higher in these store-within-a-store and therefore we were to infer a success. The real story is JCP took its best selling items, put them in the innovation, and sure enough they continued to be well-selling. Of course the per-sq-foot space sold better when the best selling items are concentrated. However, sales for the items dropped worse at a store-within-a-store once re-arranged alongside the rest of sales. If you are curious about this pattern in general, you should watch what happens to Best Buy and Samsung with their new store-within-a-store experiment. I personally don't believe retailers should turn themselves into malls :)

\-- They had a small layoff where they targeted HQ people who watched too much YouTube. The packet inspection company had a PR-like piece in the WSJ advertising how well it worked to target those shirking employees. The narrative makes sense except the positions eliminated were predominantly __fashion buyers__ , who most likely were watching fashion shows and aspiring fashion makers on YouTube because travel budgets had been cut that same year.

\-- The Martha Stewart trial is beyond stupid and short-sighted. I think he should have found an up-and-coming who could produce similar quality but CHEAPER products rather than overpay for a has-been brand. There is a reason that Macy's is not giving Martha as much floor space as she expected.

So, this rodeo has been extremely fun to watch, and I sincerely hope the next chapter for James Cash Penny's store is brighter. It is a good company with good people. It should be focused on the founder's values: good value and fair prices.

<comment><USER10> _\-- They had a small layoff where they targeted HQ people who watched too much YouTube. The packet inspection company had a PR-like piece in the WSJ advertising how well it worked to target those shirking employees. The narrative makes sense except the positions eliminated were predominantly _fashion buyers_, who most likely were watching fashion shows and aspiring fashion makers on YouTube because travel budgets had been cut that same year._

This is a very interesting allegation, and I would love to see additional information about it.

<comment><USER11> The notion of " _the positions eliminated were predominantly _fashion buyers_, who most likely were watching fashion shows and aspiring fashion makers on YouTube because travel budgets had been cut that same year._ "

Would be interesting, but I wonder at sources. An outcry of justification of said-Youtube viewing would probably have been heard or referenced.

The main references in articles are "back office support," corporate, and cashiers:

This article continues the theme (that you will find on most articles) of the YouTube volume [1]

 _Kramer shared an example: There were 4,800 employees at the HQ in January 2012, and in one month they had watched five million YouTube videos during work hours. He said that 35 percent of bandwidth at HQ was used for "loafing off." One big consequence was the culling of staff. Now, a little more than a year later, 1,600 of those workers have been sent packing._

Jan, 2013 _The moves will eliminate about 5,000 department-store jobs, 300 more at headquarters and regional offices and 265 Eckerd positions — all told, less than 2 percent of the company's work force of 290,000._ [2]

 _The latest job cuts were concentrated in about 100 stores where sales fell the most, and the eliminations hit back office positions. A Penney spokeswoman said none of the cuts affected staff who deal with customers._ [3]

March, 2013 [4] _J.C. Penney Co. (JCP) is cutting an additional 2,200 jobs to trim costs as Chief Executive Officer Ron Johnson's revamp of the department- store chain causes sales to plunge.

_ The positions to be eliminated include back-office administrators in stores and district offices as well as store leadership positions, Joey Thomas, a spokesman, said in an e- mail yesterday. About 10 percent of J.C. Penney's 1,100 stores cut their headcounts because of sales volume shifts, he said.

Johnson said last week that 19,000 J.C. Penney employees have lost their jobs in the past year as his turnaround struggles to gain traction.*

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com/jcpenney-coo-michael- kramer-c...](http://www.businessinsider.com/jcpenney-coo-michael-kramer- culture-2013-2)

[2] [http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=88710&page=1#.UW...](http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=88710&page=1#.UWQwuquClOE)

[3] [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/07/jc-penney- layoffs-s...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/07/jc-penney-layoffs- sales-decline_n_2829868.html)

[4] [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-07/j-c-penney- cutting-...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-07/j-c-penney- cutting-2-200-jobs-as-sales-plunge.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> JCPenney (JCP now?) is SEVERELY lacking a vision. And they have been for years. In my undergrad, I was on the school advertising team competing for NSAC (<http://www.aaf.org/default.asp?id=123>) and JCPenney was our client. We were tasked with creating a $100,000,000 integrated marketing campaign. All along I knew that this money absolutely did not need to go to a marketing campaign. It needed to go to top-down, business level reinvention. New branding would have to be part of it, obviously, but a culture change inside the company was a lot more necessary.

This was during the time when "New look, new day, who knew?" was their tagline. Which was utter shit when every time you go into a store it looked like it was in shambles, and telling people you had a new look when they could clearly smell the same pile of dung from a block away doesn't increase customers. It was bad.

Then about 4 weeks from competition, they release a new logo and a new tagline (honestly we were rebranding towards a JCP moniker during our ideation phase anyways), basically throwing us under the bus. We had to make something for their rebrand - it had been 10 years since they did anything previously.

It's no surprise to me that anything unconventional was discarded quickly, and Ron was booted. These people are short-term thinkers, that are entrenched with the big-box department discount store mantra. They were getting close with store-in-a-store ideas like MNG by Mango and Sephora taking up space inside. It's just unfortunate that they're so worried about providing discounts and racing to the bottom with cut-rate merchandise (even their self-created brands like St. John's Bay had a ~4% profit margin).

The market is huge, but they are stuck in the stone age.

<comment><USER13> The point of those mini-stores (store-within-a-store) that make Target so successful is that you can possibly get things that you don't have access to. It brings people looking and those people will hopefully see your other stuff while they are there.

JCPs that are big enough to have a Sephora are typically in a large enough mall that already has a Sephora. What new customers are you getting into your store then? Why go into a JCP if you just need something from Sephora? They are also typically located in the front of the store. Go in, get Sephora, walk out. They don't even see any of your other stuff (although I don't think the Sephora consumer overlaps with the JCP consumer).

<comment><USER14> They have many more "mini-stores" than Sephora, so picking on that one to make it look like a bad idea overall is a little unfair.

<comment><USER13> Yet, none of the others seemed to help their bottom line either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Whether his strategy is flawed or not is, unfortunately, not the issue at hand. As great as it would be to discuss the technical merits of what he was trying to achieve, it seems like Johnson's biggest failing was not properly contextualizing what he was trying to do to the company.

For instance, JCP has been rather drastically upgrading the quality of their menswear. They've not only started catering to a much more fashion-oriented consumer (they even brought on Nick Wooster, who was previously at Bergdorf Goodman and Gilt Groupe's high end retail site Park & Bond - [http://www.jcpenney.com/dotcom/jsp/browse/marketing/promotio...](http://www.jcpenney.com/dotcom/jsp/browse/marketing/promotion.jsp?pageId=pg40023600013)) but they took a stand that such clothes should be wearable and affordable. It's an audacious, if respectable, goal that anyone should be able to see can't be achieved in a year or two. It took JCrew much longer than that to make a similar transition.

Shareholders should have been very aware that things will get much worse before they get better, as it takes time and conditioning to expunge "bargain basement" from the brain and into something that more closely resembles a homegrown Uniqlo. People gave Johnson credit for doing so at Target but to be fair Target didn't gain traction on the upward move till years after he left. He should have never put himself in a position where people were expecting progress barely a year after taking the reins.

Turning around an entrenched company like JCP is a task that really doesn't follow much of Apple's game plan, and I think Johnson's decade in the tech sector might have spoiled him in estimating customer trends (especially with regards to reconditioning behavior). It's a bummer, as someone into clothes AND tech I feel like the JCP transformation could have been a really great story.

<comment><USER16> It all comes back to the pricing debacle at the start of his tenure. Getting rid of sales and clearance was just not a good idea: it chased away old customers and didn't bring in many new ones. That drove sales dramatically down at the stores, and when it was reverted, it took away a lot of his credibility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think this is an amazing example of an employee who is a bad fit. Ron was clearly a star at Apple but he was a dud at J.C. Penny. There will be lots of arguments about why that is, from classic operational economics to somewhat fuzzier buyer happiness metrics, but the more interesting message is that the problems can't be fixed by swapping out one piece.

This is true in groups too. I've seen groups lose a star player, only to have another 'star' swapped in but with a different vibe and it all goes to hell. This seems to be magnified with CEOs.

I know that I do not have the fortitude that it takes to be successful in a walmart/target/costco kind of retail space. So I wish him luck.

</comment><comment><USER13> There's nothing left to say except the people who hired Johnson are idiots. He was successful at marketing a high-end brand as high-end and had no clue on how to _tactfully_ re-brand a company that had been around for generations. Especially considering it didn't need to be re-branded.

Do you know why Nike doesn't sell shoes in Target or Walmart? You'd dilute the brand. So they bought Converse. The opposite is true as well, however. You certainly can cause brand confusion where your old customers don't like the changes and your new higher-end customers - well, they are still shopping at Nordstrom.

Every step he made was fraught with clear consequences. Getting rid of discounts. Over-streamlining stores to a point they look partially empty. Trying to bring Target's successful ideas (like their mini-boutiques) into JCP just on a bigger scale. And trying to steal Martha Stewart from Macy's was just plain dumb, that's going to cost the company a lot of money.

The board should've hired a CEO from the ranks of Target, Macy's, or Nordstrom instead of Apple. The high-end tech marketing didn't translate to middle-tier consumer shopping marketing.

</comment><comment><USER18> Planet Money had a relevant/good discussion about the fallout from JC Penney's coupon-less strategy on one of their recent podcasts:

[http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/03/08/173829409/episode-...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/03/08/173829409/episode-442-into- the-future)

<comment><USER19> Yes. Whats most interesting about it was all the customers they interviewed that loved the old JC Penny and hated the new one.

It takes a long time to change the image of a brand. Alienating your old customers before you have gotten new ones is a strategy for failure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Every time my wife drags me into JCPenney, I ask myself the following question: What is this company about?

\- Brand recognition (status)? Nope.

\- Low Prices? Nope.

\- Quality (higher than) products? Nope.

\- Cutting edge fashion? Nope.

\- Fashion for average folk? Nope.

They are simply without a defined aim. And that's why their business lacks. Retail is still alive and kicking, but not for companies who still live in the days of The Brady Bunch.

<comment><USER21> I'd say that a lot of Johnson's strategy addressed many of your concerns.

Personally, I shopped more at JCP over the past 8 months than the previous 15 years. There was an appealing mix of brands, quality, and fair prices that struck a chord with me. Unfortunately, it clearly didn't work for the majority of the mall-shopping public that has been trained to only buy when there's a sale or coupon.

<comment><USER20> Edit:

His strategy seems to be based at copying what worked with Apple. Reducing product lines, making things upscale, removing sales, etc. I don't think how anyone who actually knew JCPenney would have thought that was a good idea. Their brand was already ruined.

Its not the general public at fault. Past JCPenney management ruined the brand by going coupon crazy. To the point that my wife only shops there when there is some stupid _take 15% off, then add and additional 12% off of you buy another_ coupon. Otherwise, she thinks its too expensive (which I do think is right) for a department store.

This is the same kind of scenario that happens to businesses that became Groupon addicted. People stopped buying when no Groupon was available.

<comment><USER22> It seems to be a classic retail problem. How does a retailer hold enough sales and issue enough coupons to beat last year's sales, but avoid making their customers addicted to (or fatigued by) coupons and sales?

<comment><USER20> It's more of a market fit problem. You can use coupon almost everywhere and not damage your brand. Bit you can't use them to cover up fundamentals flaws in your business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm not completely up to date on the happenings at JCP, but my understanding was that Ron's strategy was going to take time to be fully realized. I would not be surprised if this is short term thinking getting in the way of a long term strategy. Regardless, JCP shareholders should be very worried since now they've traded a potentially flawed strategy with effectively no strategy at all.

<comment><USER21> While I'd normally agree that shareholders can't be trusted to make sound long-term strategy decisions, in this case Johnson demolished JCP's financials over the past few quarters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The problem was not that people like discounts more than low prices. It was that the company never got rid of discounts. They advertised new low prices and no discounts and then still had discount racks all over the store, leading customers to recalibrate the goods in their minds as being less expensive (and possibly "cheaper") then before while still allowing them to wait for discounts.

The company also introduced a lot of product lines that were supposed to be specialty brands which led to entire stores looking like disjointed flea markets. There was no way to tell what was unique or special because everything was branded as unique and special.

</comment><comment><USER25> Dangit. I really liked shopping at the new JCPenny. Every price was rounded to the nearest dollar (and usually the nearest 5 dollar) and included tax. I could walk in, try the things on I needed, hand the cashier exact change, and get out, all without needing to do stupid coupon crap. I could buy jeans and shirts and the cognitive load was really low.

I liked not having to think really hard while clothes shopping. I liked it a lot. But I suppose a target market of "people who hate clothes shopping due to the artificially high cognitive load" is a pretty slim market segment.

</comment><comment><USER26> I liked what he was trying to do, but he may have been too upscale for what that JC Penny as brand has become. Also the fact that JC Penny was based in Texas is just a bad omen for a company focused on making retail fashion exciting.

<comment><USER27> What's so bad about being based in Texas? Isn't Neiman Marcus also based in Texas?

<comment><USER26> Texas is known for many things, but not fashion. Neiman Marcus is more about luxury goods than fashion. JC Penney is more about the clothing, and even with the lower end of the market you still have to follow trends. Also you have to attract talent: And I just don't see people with a fashion sense running to Texas for the opportunities. And yes you can be an exception to the rule — but then you have to really work hard at it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I went to JC Penney this past weekend and it was wonderful. I got some jeans and a shirt for like 40 bucks.

They had a coupon though, it was spend 50 get 10 off. I didn't have one and the cashier used the one at the register. She also used an iPhone to ring up up instead of the cash register sitting in front of her.

</comment><comment><USER29> NPR had a great piece about JC Penney's about a month ago. The reporter, her sources, and the customers she talked with made a very convincing case that in its zeal to attract trendy fashionistas in the coastal cities, it had driven away its long-time customers (mostly middle-aged and older) looking for deals.

Found it: [http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/03/01/173203739/sales- ar...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/03/01/173203739/sales-are-like- drugs-what-happens-when-a-store-wants-customers-to-quit) (I recommend listening to the audio, which has more detail)

</comment><comment><USER30> He's a one trick pony and clearly out of touch. He doesn't really seem to have any grasp of the market JC Penny was actually in or that discount cheap clothes is a pretty radically different market then high end premium electronics. (further whereas Apple was the sole supplier/manufacturer, JC Penny was just reseller of various brands they picked). Then he executed the one strategy he know that apparently just luckily worked for him at Apple. Sadly, based deeply outside of reality it epically failed to execute as hoped here and JC Penny lost half their market.

The whole thing is a little sad. Thankfully he's gone and maybe for the company's sake they can pull out of his tailspin. If not oh well, that's also what you get for not vetting people and just buying into their PR and dropping a rockstar into the driver seat and giving him the keys without vetting him.

<comment><USER31> He ran merchandising at Target before Apple, which was pretty successful.

He clearly made a mistake at JCP. That doesn't make all his previous successes invalid or luck.

<comment><USER14> Exactly. For some reason everyone remembers Apple as his only success story, but he was leading Target merchandising during their transformation to what they are today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> You can take a brand down-market, but it's very, very difficult to take it up- market.

JCP stands a better shot at dominating the "discount" market, which everyone associates it with, than combating half a century of marketing.

<comment><USER33> Or creating a new up-market brand, like Lexus or Banana Republic.

<comment><USER5> Which would be an extraordinarily expensive and risky marketing effort, but perhaps one of only a handful of possible ways to save the company at this point.

<comment><USER33> Yeah, I don't think it's a good or safe idea, but it would at least be exciting to see them try.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> When I shopped for my wedding, I had to convince both my mother and my wife that JCP would have the highest quality at the lowest price. They disagreed, I was proven correct.

Has long amazed me that JCP couldn't brand properly when their other competencies were so strong.

I was absolutely aghast when I first heard what Johnson was doing. It sounded — almost literally — insane, and never for a moment looked or sounded any better. Marketing is marketing. Target and Apple did the marketing for him, so apparently he never really learned what marketing is.

</comment><comment><USER35> Shoulda never agreed to the role unless he was gonna be given 5 years of runway. They wanted a turnaround far faster than they had capital for.

<comment><USER36> "during his helm as CEO, shares of J.C. Penney have plummeted by 51 percent while the company's market cap dropped from $6.84 billion to $3.49 billion."

No board will put up with that.

<comment><USER35> No board should try to make a major strategic change unless it's willing to disrupt its operations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I have often said that wholesale website redesigns are a bad idea because they alienate the hardcore fans while swapping one set of problems for a different set of problems. I hadn't, before this, realized that the same might hold true for department stores.

</comment><comment><USER37> Well I think the lesson here is don't embark on an ambitious radical strategy without first doing some testing/sampling.

</comment><comment><USER38> Fix JC Penney. You have 3 minutes. Go!!

<comment><USER39> Jeff Bezos buys it for 15% above yesterdays closing price. Rebrands it as the Amazon Store®. What do I win?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> and now a triumphant return to Apple?!?

</comment><comment><USER40> JCPenny is still in business?</comment>


Show HN: Small todo app with create-react-kotlin-app - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cnguy/kotlin-react-todos <comment><AUTHOR> Hi all! This is my first post on this account.

Here is a small todo app I wanted to share for anyone looking into Kotlin / React. Note that it doesn't implement the MVC part of todomvc, the localstorage, and the router components. Those are todos (we'll see :).. I have local code that implements those features though, but that's a WIP).

Some thoughts as a student dev with some JavaScript experience:

I found that it was really easy to get into Kotlin + React (from a JavaScript perspective) compared to other alternatives (Reason/Scala/etc) not only because the language is really concise/expressive/simple/easy-to-learn, but also because it didn't add unfamiliar tools. create-react-kotlin-app allowed me to use the same workflow I already use (npm/yarn/package.json) and also of course get the same create-react-app benefits (psuedo-hot-reloading, no configs early on, production build) I'm used to.

I'm open to all advice as I'm still very new to Kotlin. I'm sure there are tons of things I could have done better (I was mostly writing code based on the HTML structure produced by other demos -- code can definitely be improved). One goal was to keep everything immutable.

All build instructions and stuffs are included in the README.md.</comment>


Ask HN: What are some great websites for me to visit? - <AUTHOR> I seem to have become narrow in my browsing. What can you recommend? <comment><USER2> popurls.com is a good aggregator of links from different sites/topics, give it a go.</comment>


Why it's hard to write a dupefinder - <AUTHOR> http://rmlint.readthedocs.org/en/latest/cautions.html <comment><USER2> I wrote one of these for fun a while back using the following approach:

\- Files are indexed by inode and device, files with the same inode + device are considered equal. (My main use case for this was to bundle up JS files.)

\- Files are then indexed by size; only files with the same size are compared.

\- During comparison, the files are read at block sizes increasing in powers of two, starting with 2k. The blocks are hashed and compared, and if they do not match the comparison is stopped early (often without having to read the full file). If all the hashes are equal, then the files are considered to be equal.

\- Hashes are only computed when needed and cached in memory. Since the hash block size increases in powers of two, only a few dozen hashes are needed even for large files (reducing memory usage compared to a fixed hash block size).

link: [https://github.com/mixu/file-dedupe](https://github.com/mixu/file- dedupe)

<comment><USER3> I wrote mine along similar lines, except without using hashing at all. Files of identical size are compared byte-by-byte instead, until first difference or end of file. As many files as possible at a time, of course, to avoid having to read through files multiple times. This avoids any uncertainty about hash collisions.

To find out how many files of each size you have:

find ~ -type f -printf '%s\n' | sort | uniq -c | sort -n

<comment><USER4> A hash is often use for an online algorithm. If you know the hash you know there is a potential for dedupe, and you can do a byte for byte comparison. I suppose you could use size as a prefilter for dedupe. This is if you do dedupe on a file level. Dedupe on block level doesn't care about the content, only the blocks, and it's not unusual to see for instance mp3 files with the same mp3 stream but different metadata. You cannot do the latter without hashing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can think of a slightly more general solution to the problem of not being sure if A and B are different views on the same file or not, especially if you plan to hardlink one to the other: Hardlink A to a tempfile, hardlink the tempfile in place of both A and B, then remove the tempfile. This will give the right outcome regardless of whether A and B are secretly the same underlying file (assuming that they are on the same filesystem).

</comment><comment><USER6> The approach that [http://www.pixelbeat.org/fslint](http://www.pixelbeat.org/fslint) takes is to md5 and sha1 the files to avoid false positives.

The core of the duplicate detection is the shell script here:

[https://github.com/pixelb/fslint/blob/ffcd3b85/fslint/findup...](https://github.com/pixelb/fslint/blob/ffcd3b85/fslint/findup#L162)

</comment><comment><USER7> One of the odd things I've seen that marks a "good" admin from a "bad" admin is their reliance on md5s as a checksum for file differences for anything in bulk. It's extremely rare to see a collision, but it definitely happens (I've seen it once after a decently sized config change. Nobody believed me :( ). That's not to say it's not a useful hash, just that it should be used with caution.

<comment><USER8> You saw a full 128 bit collision on real files? They were right not to believe you...

<comment><USER9> While it's rare, do remember that hash collisions need to be thought of in birthday-paradox terms, which does increase the chance of observing a collision significantly. Hitting MD5's birthday point (50% chance of collision) requires a couple tens of quintillions of hashes, but that's probably a lot smaller number than people expect, and a not-unreasonable number to see in a sufficiently large-scale data archiving system.

(meanwhile there's stuff in the wild using things like Java hashCode() to determine identities, and the birthday point on that is only around 75k IIRC)

<comment><USER4> "probably a lot smaller number than people expect"

If you crunch your way through files (and lets assume they're random from the hash functions point of view) for 10 years, you have to calculate the hash of 60.000.000.000 files / second - to have 50% chance of finding a collision. If the average filesize is 1 KB, that is ~56TB data every single second.

Md5 is not bad as long as you're not expecting malicious input, or gigantic datasets.

<comment><USER9> Well, a couple years ago it was reported that YouTube alone receives 300 hours' worth of video uploads every minute. That's without considering other social-media properties with file-upload capability, or PaaS offerings like AWS.

So I'd say it's certain that the requisite number of MD5 hashes have been generated across the aggregate of those systems (assuming enough of them use MD5 in some fashion), and I'd personally bet money there's at least one real- world deployment out there that's handled enough all on its own to hit the birthday point.

<comment><USER4> Humans really cannot fanthom the magnitude of the numbers involved here. 2^64 is an astronomically large number - it's mindboggling huge. Really, I will put money on the the claim that YouTube have not seen a collision yet. Let me explain:

300 hours every minute, equals 300 _60_ 24*365.25 = 157.788.000 hours / year.

Lets assume it's all HD and 2 gb an hour, that is ~30pb / year. Storing all that video surely uses large capacity harddrive with a 4k sector size, so that it the smallest it makes sense to perform dedupe on.

That is ~82726 billion blocks / year.

To have 50% probability of a collision, we need to calculate 2^64 blocks, so we need 222985 years of video before there is more than 50% probability.

Lets move away from YouTube for a moment, and move towards the IP trafic as a whole. Cisco has estimated the total IP trafic to 27483 pb / month in 2011, if we're looking at the growth it is growing less and less for every year, and from 2010 to 2011 it was only 34% down from 65% from 2005 to 2006. I assume 30% growth from 2011 and forward, and we end up with ~291 exabytes / month, or 3497 exabytes / year in 2020, this is total IP trafic and will include a lot of duplicated data (e.g. Netflix streams). Again, lets assume a 4kb block, and the total estimated IP trafic in 2020 generates ~961e10^15 blocks. We need 2^64 blocks to have a 50% probability of collision, that is more than 19 times of the total estimated IP trafic in 2020, the vast majority of which is duplicated.

My claim is that unless you're google, md5 is fine. If you're google, md5 is still fine, but you should be looking to prepare your system to accept a hash with a larger output space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Friend wrote this a long time ago when he was a young C++ coder. It's hosted on another friends' Github but the author is John Brooks, the author of Ricochet.

[https://github.com/rburchell/fastdup](https://github.com/rburchell/fastdup)

:-)

</comment><comment><USER11> I did some quick checks to investigate how size helps with deduplication.

Size is a fast initial differentiator because scanning for file size only needs to read metadata, but how good does it differentiate?

      # all files
      find ~ -type f | wc -l
      1098045
      # files with a unique size
      find ~ -type f -printf '%s\n'|sort|uniq -c|grep ' 1 '|wc -l
      48437
      # most prevalent sizes (prevalence vs size)
      find ~ -type f -printf '%s\n'|sort |uniq -c |sort -nr|head
      36972 0
      12707 24
       9480 22
       8036 39
       5025 12
       4804 26
       3879 6
       3232 76
       2946 38
       2855 20

In my home dir, less than 5% of files have a unique size.

</comment><comment><USER12> we wrote such dupefinders as fun hackathon contest organized by the dallas perl user group 2013:

[http://perlmonks.org/?node_id=1067570](http://perlmonks.org/?node_id=1067570)

discussion at [http://mail.pm.org/pipermail/dfw- pm/2013-December/thread.htm...](http://mail.pm.org/pipermail/dfw- pm/2013-December/thread.html)

=> [http://dfw.pm.org/winners.html](http://dfw.pm.org/winners.html)

it is really not easy. I used as only one bloom hashes, which explains why mine was fastest and smallest, but unfortunately not correct.

</comment><comment><USER13> one simple option might be to just use sha256 sums on files. if done incrementally, it's not that expensive computationally, unless files are very large (couple of gb's).

one way to mitigate that might be take a _few_ random, say, 1k chunks of file content, and hash those. as long as you have a map of (offset, hash) de-duping should be just fine.

the only thing is, i don't really know, what an upper bound on 'few samples' would be like. asymptotically, it should approach file-size/chunk-size, but ideally, it should be way less than that.

any ideas on how to determine a minimal but complete set ?

<comment><USER14> The minimal set is to use full content of the file.

Consider the case of a log file and its backup made one short log message earlier.

If you want to gamble on using only a partial hash, I would hash the last few kb of each file, as that (at least based on this 30-second 'analysis' of the problem domain) likely would work better in practice. Theoretically, it is as vulnerable, though.

Edit: if you have a VM image on your disk, and that small append happens to a log file in the image, that small change can happen anywhere. It also can be even smaller; someone might run 'touch' on an already existing file. Theoretically, that could be a one-byte change.

<comment><USER15> The idea is to use a two stage process:

1\. take a sha1 hash of the last 4KB of each file.

2\. for any equal hashes, compare the _whole_ file.

With this method you should be able to skip reading many large files in their entirety.

<comment><USER14> That is _an_ idea, and it would, in typical cases, avoid reading _most_ large files in their entirety, but it is not what I read in signa11's comment.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A JavaScript package manager for loading any library into any website - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/seleniumbase/SeleniumBase/blob/master/help_docs/js_package_mgr.md <comment><AUTHOR> Link moved to: [https://github.com/seleniumbase/SeleniumBase/blob/master/hel...](https://github.com/seleniumbase/SeleniumBase/blob/master/help_docs/js_package_manager.md)</comment>


Man allegedly burgles home after cancelling Airbnb reservation - <AUTHOR> https://mountainviewpoliceblog.com/2016/08/22/man-allegedly-burglarizes-home-after-cancelling-airbnb-reservation/ <comment><USER2> In a somewhat similar vein, a few years back my wife got in to the whole Couchsurfing thing - which could be said to be a forerunner of AirBnB.

A nice couple from the other side of the world stayed with us for the weekend. When they left I noticed they had taken six Intermec Windows CE warehouse scanners with them. I'd been working from home for a bit so that why I had them, I was updating the software to work with our new ERP system.

They were backpacking so I'm not too sure what they planned to do with them. These devices are hard to hide and they didn't take the charging cradles.

I had to pay to replace them out of my own pocket as our home insurance wouldn't cover work owned items.

<comment><USER3> Was it too late to chase them down?

<comment><USER2> I only noticed after they had left the country. I did go to the Guards (Irish police), but they confirmed what I thought that because they were now out of the country then there wasn't a lot that could be done.

We also reported them to Couchsurfing who seemed completely disinterested.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Though this is only tangentially related - door locks with digital codes really need to be the standard. I live in NYC and have never seen this here. Meanwhile, in South Korea digital code locks seem to be the standard.

Copying a key takes 2 seconds and costs less than a dollar. Giving your keys to someone is a huge security risk.

<comment><USER5> I mostly agree with you. But let's be fair about the process for getting a key copied:

1\. Wander around the store finding someone who looks like they know how to copy a key

2\. Follow them awkwardly while they finish helping someone else

3\. Watch them wander through all the key templates to find the right one.

4\. 20 seconds into the first attempt he notices a deformity and starts over.

5\. 11 seconds into the second attempt, the key catches and goes soaring majestically across the store.

6\. 53 seconds into the third attempt you finally have your key.

7\. Discover you forgot your wallet.

Still a bigger security risk than having digital lock doors.

<comment><USER6> My local grocer has a self-service machine that will copy a key in a minute or two.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Technology is always cool until the idiots and criminals figure out how to use it...

</comment><comment><USER8> AirBnB must hate this type of news. It undermines the trust that is essential to bring "sellers" to their marketplace.

<comment> et-al Not necessarily. From my personal experience more Airbnb hosts are renting out places that aren't their primary residences, so there's nothing of value in the apartment (as mentioned in the article).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> That's a surprisingly helpful blog post from the police department. Very practical tips that will keep you safe from 98% of this kind of trouble.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm surprised the police followed through with the information from the victim. I went through the same after being burglarized and I couldn't do anything because the detectives didn't care and/or were unreachable. This was in Houston though.

</comment><comment><USER11> I wonder if thieves build up reputation on AirBnB before burgling. I know this is reasonably easy to automate on eBay (buy many lowcost items), but it seems AirBnB's reputation system would be harder to game.

<comment><USER12> I had a new AirBnB account (0 reviews) and booked 3 places in advance and had 0 issues. Hosts are just glad to take someone's money most of the time, and aren't very picky.

I don't think they'll need to game the system with fake reviews for a long time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I guess AirBnB will go the way of ebay: First thought to be for normal people to make their excess stuff to money, now a platform for big sellers.

</comment><comment><USER14> "If you must leave these items at home, lock them in a safe that is secured to the floor of your home. Please remember that whatever is left at your home may be stolen, even if it is in a safe or hidden in a place you think nobody will ever find."

This is odd advice. Essentially: "lock your stuff up in a safe but that's likely not sufficient."

In fact, it's absolutely not sufficient because safes are rated based on how long it takes to get into them. If the thief is renting out a place which has the safe they'll get into it, especially since most people following the advice to lock their stuff up in a safe are likely not going to purchase anything stronger than a consumer grade safe, all of which tend to be fairly trivial to break into either covertly or through brute force given sufficient time.

The better advice would be to not leave anything of value, period. A safe isn't going to save your stuff.

</comment><comment><USER15> * burgles.

I tend to ignore these types of news articles, of the format: "[Pokemon Go/AirBnB/Uber/New Thing] used in crime!". Crime remains the same, the landscape and tools change. Crime rates have been dropping for decades, and continue to fall, new technologies are not bringing in a new crimewave, although you wouldn't know it from reading some news sources.

<comment><USER16> Did you read the article? It's a police blog - and has a list of things to consider doing when letting a place on AirBnB et al. Doesn't at all appear to be what you think it is. Certainly not just a 'new article'.

<comment><USER17> Are you sure? Specifically the list of things to consider seems to be something that gets posted over and over again, slightly modified for different contexts.

There's been no lack of articles about burglars using social media sites to find empty homes, google "facebook burglary tips" (sans quotes) for lots of examples.

<comment><USER17> Surprising amounts of downvotes (at least 5!), especially considering I was just trying to provide another point of view when ciaranm was straight up accusing fredley of not reading the article.</comment></comment></comment></comment>