Natural Language Processing with Python, free online - <AUTHOR> http://www.nltk.org/book?=

<comment><USER2> I own the paper version of this - just a heads up, it's written primary for Language Scientists rather than developers. You may find yourself constantly pausing and looking up concepts and their meanings / practical uses on linguistics websites when returning to the book.

It's a great resource, but don't expect to get started quickly.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure that any book on the NLTK, even one written specifically for developers, could avoid the concepts you're referring to. These terms and concepts are inherent to the study of natural language processing. So while I agree that there are a significant number of NLP-related terms used, I think that has less to do with the book's audience and more to do with the book's subject matter. And the use of computational linguistic terminology is not gratuitous -- it's important to learn the jargon so you can look for the right type of help when you don't know how to do something.

On the flip side, the Python in the book is fairly straightforward, so developers should be able to dive right in with the code. In fact, experienced developers will probably find themselves skipping over many sections that are essentially lessons on Python.

Overall, this book is a good introduction to NLP and NLTK. That said, if you're at all familiar with NLP, you'd probably do just as well to dive right in and start working with the toolkit. NLTK is very well-documented and easy to work with. It's also amazingly complete -- tokenizers, stemmers, POS taggers, classifers, etc. etc etc. It also includes a number of algorithms that commonly fall under ML, data mining, and IR. If you work with Python and do any kind of work with unstructured text, you need to check NLTK out.

<comment><USER4> > NLTK is very well-documented and easy to work with.

Agreed.

> It's also amazingly complete -- tokenizers, stemmers, POS taggers, > classifers, etc. etc etc.

Don't agree. The biggest missing piece is a statistical parser which forms the basis for a lot of further linguistic analysis. It is hard to beat Stanford Parser for that. Check out <https://github.com/wavii/pfp> which has Python bindings.

For most of the ML stuff, you would be better off going to a specialist library like Scikits.learn directly. They are faster and implementations are more accurate. ( I found some of the implementations not quite correct in NLTK. For example, Naive Bays classifier which a lot of first time users use. The difference in results may not be much in practice but it is still incorrect.)

It is definitely a very good place to start but better alternatives exist for many of the pieces.

<comment><USER3> >Don't agree. The biggest missing piece is a statistical >parser which forms the basis for a lot of further linguistic >analysis.

Conceded and agreed. This is the one major gap. But I still maintain it's a remarkably complete toolkit. Plus you get to work in Python, which is a big advantage for me.

What's wrong with the Naive Bayes classifier? Did you submit a patch?

Likewise, I totally agree with you that there are faster/more accurate/more efficient implementations of many of the tools in the NLTK. If performance is a must, then you're better of prototyping in NLTK then using a specialized library. But in terms of completeness and ease of use, NLTK is very strong.

EDIT: I'm not sure why abhaga is being downvoted. There was nothing disrespectful in his response to me. Disagreement is an important part of intelligent discussion. Upvoting to counter the downvote(s).

<comment><USER4> > What's wrong with the Naive Bayes classifier?

The problem I found is that it mixes up the binomial and the multinomial event models for the naive bayes (See [http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~knigam/papers/multinomial- aaaiws98.pd...](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~knigam/papers/multinomial-aaaiws98.pdf) for reference). It computes the probabilities as per the binomial event model but doesn't include the probabilities of missing events. This was my understanding from reading the source code.

> Plus you get to work in Python, which is a big advantage for me.

Indeed. I so wish someone would build a dependency parser on top of pfp so that I can ditch Stanford parser. I have used <https://github.com/dasmith/stanford-corenlp-python> for interfacing with Stanford toolkit but it is somewhat brittle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> LinkGrammar: <http://www.link.cs.cmu.edu/link/> is the other NLP tool kit in python, may be suited for use by those who might be intimidated by the need to write their own grammar.

It is integrated into and maintained by the authors of Abiword. There is a talk on this other library at Pycon, this year: <https://us.pycon.org/2012/schedule/presentation/187/>

<comment><USER6> LinkGrammar is not really a toolkit and it is not written in Python. It is written in C.

<comment><USER5> Yup. My bad. There are python bindings, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you're interested in natural language processing (NLP), but don't have a linguistics background, I would suggest reading Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct. It will introduce you to the necessary terminology and concepts for NLP in an easy-to-digest way. (The NLTK book has been free online for quite some time as well.)

<comment><USER3> The Language Instinct is a great book, but unless the content of newer editions has changed significantly, it's more of an overview of linguistics in general, and language acquisition in particular. There's not much -- if any -- practical NLP. For example, looking at Amazon's statistically-improbable phrases (SIPs), I see nothing related to NLP, nor do I see any terms related to practical NLP during a quick glance of the book's index. The index includes references to a few pages on "statistics of language", but I honestly don't remember what those were about.

Also, the Language Instinct was written in the early 1990s, so although new editions have been released, it's a bit dated. It's a classic read for linguists and people interested in language, but I wouldn't recommend it as an introduction to NLP.

<comment><USER7> Oh no, I didn't intend for The Language Instinct as an introduction to NLP, but as a basic introduction to the fundamentals of linguistics. I mainly had in mind terms like morpheme, phoneme, scope, etc. A basic understanding of these concepts will make reading the NLTK book much easier, although it isn't necessary.

<comment><USER3> Ok, that makes more sense. I read your comment as being a recommendation of The Language Instinct to learn the fundamentals of NLP. But point taken, it's a good book about language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The book and software are both a great resource. I usually "roll my own" NLP software, but I have used NLTK for small customer text mining tasks. Definitely "batteries included." I bought the book years ago, but now, the online edition may be more current.

</comment><comment><USER3> Most of NLTK runs fine in PyPy, too, resulting in significant performance enhancements.

</comment><comment><USER9> Probably up there amongst the most useful Python libraries IMO. Hasn't it been available for free online for a long time now though?

Anyway, in case anyone reading this missed it, the Stanford NLP class taught by Chris Manning and Dan Jurafsky starting next week (Jan 23rd) will allow programming assignments to be submitted using Python and NLTK, which is really good news.

So now's a good time to get familiar with the NLTK, or for a refresher for those of us already acquainted with it.

</comment><comment><USER10> Some opinions <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3052540>

</comment><comment><USER11> We're using this library in class (Foundations of Language Technology) at the TU Darmstadt. From my point of view as a student, who hasn't done much Python in the past, it's pretty easy to use and works well for learning about NLP, hiding many implementation details and letting me focus on solving fairly complex tasks on data/algorithm levels.

</comment><comment><USER12> There is a free NLTK cloud API: <http://www.mashape.com/apis/Text-Processing>

It includes sentiment analysis, stemming and lemmatization, part-of-speech tagging and chunking, phrase extraction and named entity recognition.

</comment><comment><USER13> I came across _Natural Language Processing for the Working Programmer_ [1] recently. It's released under a creative commons license (CC-BY). It's still a work in progress, but might be interesting anyhow.

[1]: <http://nlpwp.org/book/>

</comment><comment><USER14> ipython+nltk+networkx+pytables+numpy+matplotlib=full of win

Seriously - text mining made fun and exploratory with open source tools.

One of the text sources I like to use is the Launchpad tickets for the Ubuntu project, since they get a good amount of traffic from international end users, a professional interest of mine.

It would be great to hear about some other interesting open data sets that people have found.

</comment><comment><USER15> oooooh , this has just made my day!

<comment><USER16> only the REST api is open source.

I see the book as a way to sell their API for a service for which everything (algorithm and methods) are obfuscated (server side).

I expected much insights for helping me on a project, I had less informations and more noise than what I already knew.

<comment><USER17> What on earth do you mean?

The entirety of NLTK is FOSS originally produced by a university. Even if NLTK had some sort of hosted version (and I was unaware that if they do, as your post seems to claim), you could always go D/L the whole source (<https://github.com/nltk/nltk> ) and use it as you see fit (it's even Apache Licensed).</comment></comment></comment>


Proposal for a packaging system for C++ [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://open-std.org/JTC1/SC22/WG21/docs/papers/2016/p0235r0.pdf <comment><USER2> This is exciting!

A few years ago, someone created dotc [0], which lets you use node-style require and export in C.

With that said, from skimming the document, I'm not a big fan of this variation of imports. You're dumping everything from the library into your environment. IMO, this makes it really difficult to trace code and figure out where stuff comes from.

For comparison, with ES6 you specify what you're importing and from where you're importing it:

        import * as Foo from './Foo'
        import { bar, baz } from './Bar'

When I see baz() used in my code, I know that I can look in the Bar file for its definition.

Isn't this a concern? I must recognize, though, that I've barely touched C++, so maybe I just don't know any better.

[0] [https://github.com/substack/dotc](https://github.com/substack/dotc)

<comment><USER3> Partially importing symbols from a header file in C++ could easily lead to bugs due to the way that name resolution and ADL work. I think doing this in a satisfactory way would end up being extremely complicated, and adding _even more_ complexity to how C++ name resolution works is... undesirable.

But moreover, for this to be maximally useful, it needs to work with the large set of existing C and C++ libraries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> C++ needs this more than anything else IMHO. After you've worked with D or Rust for a bit, trying to incorporate external code into a C++ project is like running your nails down a blackboard.

<comment><USER5> It's hard enough on Linux/Unix/BSD OSes ... you should try it on Windows ... fun times. Especially when the build instructions on Windows start with :

"Download and install Cygwin/Mingw..."

<comment><USER6> _shudder_

MinGW is alright... until you try targeting x86_64.

<comment><USER7> Msys2 [1], I have found, is a workable choice for this. It comes with a port of pacman and has a decent, but by no means comprehensive, set of packages.

[1] [https://msys2.github.io/](https://msys2.github.io/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I never had any problem with using libraries packaged into distro repositories. And I don't want C++ package manager. From my experience with other languages, it would result in lots of low-quality and poorly maintained packages used instead of established standard libraries.

On the other hand, it may be acceptable for "applications" world, as opposed to system software. Desktop applications may benefit from it, but first we need proper sandboxing to prevent low-quality libraries from undermining security.

</comment><comment><USER9> I applaud the effort.

Nothing much has changed beyond C and the FTP-zip-tar-configure-make landscape since, what, 1980? The distro package systems have improved things a little.

This will have a bigger impact on the language than a lot of the individual library incorporation that's been going on.

<comment><USER10> configure scripts became ubiquitous in the mid nineties about the same time as Linux.

Prior to that, it was FTP-uncompress-untar-edit config.h-make.

You'd be expected to spend 10-30 minutes scanning a long config.h file or similar and adjusting as per your local unix variant. Often a BSD or SVR4 like system (rarely both) would work mostly out of the box. AIX, Ultrix, or HP-UX were more troublesome from what I can remember, SunOS or Solaris (never both ;-)) would mostly work out of the box as that was commonly the dev platform.

<comment><USER11> Ah, yes. There was also the imake/IMakefile variant too, mostly for X11 related stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If the C++ standards committee isn't building it and Stroustrup isn't backing it, then it won't get adopted.

I could also see boost getting something though.

</comment><comment><USER13> What would differentiate this from something like cmake's current package system? As far as I can tell the only advantage of something like this is if a _majority_ of packages adopted it (like pip).

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm slowly reading this with a lot of attention, will soon have a better idea of the proposal. Until there, take a look at this [https://github.com/floooh/fips](https://github.com/floooh/fips) (and yes, I know about CPM, Biicode, Conan, Hunter, etc..)

</comment><comment><USER15> Sounds like the focus here is on libraries not available in the system package manager. I.e, the goal is not to supersede the system package manager (because that would be nigh on impossible, IMO).

</comment><comment><USER16> Oof, not another language package manager.</comment>


The Great Asshole Fallacy - <AUTHOR> https://500ish.com/the-great-asshole-fallacy-82e108a755c7 <comment><USER3> Some of this thread is conflating being an asshole (subjective) with being abusive. Jordan was abusive and thought that was the way to get the best out of those around him.

So it's worth remembering that The Last Dance wasn't Jordan's last time in the NBA.

MJ came out of retirement to play for the Wizards. Acted just as he did when he was Air Jordan with the Bulls, but could no longer back up his abusive behavior with his play [0]. Instead of elevating the Wizards, Jordan being an asshole now hurt the team in a number of different ways.

A person may be deemed an asshole for having high standards. They don't have to be abusive to hold those high standards though.

Ed Catmull and Pixar have high standards but are not abusive in the mold of Jordan or Jobs [1]. Kim Scott wrote an entire book, Radical Candor, about how to demand excellence without being abusive [2].

[0] [https://slate.com/culture/2020/05/the-last-dance-michael- jor...](https://slate.com/culture/2020/05/the-last-dance-michael-jordan-bulls- wizards.html) [1] [http://www.bugaj.com/blog/2014/9/14/you-sir-are-no-ed- catmul...](http://www.bugaj.com/blog/2014/9/14/you-sir-are-no-ed-catmull) [2] [https://www.radicalcandor.com/](https://www.radicalcandor.com/)

<comment> gustavo-fring Just a reminder that the environment at Pixar was abusive in other ways, notably in the other major figure being a serial harrasser that had moves designed after him to avoid his advances. I think that says a lot about Catmull and the leadership there that they tolerated that kind of abusive behavior to get greatness.

But yeah, to get to your other point, I recall Jerry Stackhouse saying he hated playing with Jordan (was sorry he did) and I figure Kwame Brown's career certainly wasn't helped. The repeated belittling of Krause by Jordan that comes up in the doc (height, weight) was that of a small mean person. His interactions with Kerr suggest that Jordan valued people standing up to him above all, which was also something he had in common with Jobs. I think this meanness is something that we should watch out for in leaders, it is a sign that something is broken and that brokenness can hurt others. Jobs, Jordan, and Musk all display it, the small ugly pettiness. It is destructive and dehumanizing to both the victim and the person doing it.

Phil Jackson (as others have pointed out) shows you don't need it. There's no way he is the coach he was without the humility and empathy he had. Jordan et al saw someone like Rodman as talent to be used for a time, Jackson genuinely cared about him. It's what drives me crazy when people ignore the destructive behavior of Musk - he's the kind of personality that has shown time and time again that peole are disposable, even his biggest fans. He'll dispose of you as soon as it is convenient. We should dispose of that leadership style.

<comment><USER3> Agree 100 percent about Catmull and Pixar ignoring and enabling John Lasseter's sexual harassment/abuse of women at the company.

Appreciate you bringing it up and contrasting with the "small ugly pettiness" of the MJ/Jobs/Musk ilk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Contrast Jordan's greatness and being an asshole with Lebron James's greatness and being a nice guy. Sure Lebron has not won as many championships as Jordan (Lebron's 3 to Jordan's 6) but he is an atypical pro athlete in that he wants to see his teammates score vs. himself score [1] . Also Lebron has never gotten in a fight with his own teammates like Jordan did twice, or maybe more? Jordan also had the benefit of Scottie Pippen who is a all-pro/50 greatest player [2] and far exceeded the skill of any of Lebron James teammates(Dwayne Wade prb being the closest to Pippen.) Sure Lebron is demanding and has extremely high standards, but there are different ways to influence greatness from your teammates other than being an extreme asshole.

[1] - [https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/lebron-james-says-he- and-...](https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/lebron-james-says-he-and-michael- jordan-wouldve-been-ideal-teammates-my-assets-work-perfectly-with-mike/) [2] - [https://www.nba.com/history/nba- at-50/top-50-players](https://www.nba.com/history/nba-at-50/top-50-players)

<comment><USER5> > Sure Lebron has not won as many championships as Jordan (Lebron's 3 to > Jordan's 6)

Your sure statement is quite the qualification. Three versus six rings is an enormous difference in the NBA. That's a Larry Bird of a difference. Charles Barkley, Karl Malone, John Stockton, Reggie Miller, Patrick Ewing, Chris Mullin and Dominique Wilkins won zero rings.

> but he is an atypical pro athlete in that he wants to see his teammates > score vs. himself score

Jordan's average was 5.3 assists per game (as a shooting guard, emphasis). That's good enough for #29 in the NBA this season and #28 last season. He was winning scoring titles while simultaneously out-competing some starting point guards when it came to assists.

Jordan ranks #45 all-time in assists, in 14 equivalent full seasons, ahead of a large list of point guards.

He averaged 8 assists and 32.5 points in the same season in 1989, during the height of his scoring capabilities. 8 assists per game is good enough for #5 this season (for those that don't know basketball well, that's typically elite point guard territory).

Lebron is #4 all-time in points per game. Your argument is pretty amusing to make given the numbers. He wants to see his teammates score vs himself? He has led his team in scoring for 16 years in a row, including his rookie season.

Lebron's scoring average per game is 27.1, Jordan's was 30.1. Lebron has averaged 20 shots per game, Jordan averaged 23. Your premise is plainly false, the gulf between them on scoring behavior is simply not that great. Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant won championships with Jordan and became renowned players - with Pippen being named to the all-time 50 list - precisely because Jordan had no problem with them scoring as well.

The scoring label was only partially true in the early years of Jordan's career where he was on a very mediocre Bulls team and attempted to do too much of the scoring out of necessity.

Lebron averaged 31.4 points and took 23 shots per game, with 6.6 assists, his third season in the league as a reference. Lebron clearly wasn't lacking in aggressive scoring behavior in his early years either.

<comment> tech-historian Jordan was blessed with having the greatest NBA coach of all time to guide his team. After coaching Jordan to 6 titles, Phil Jackson went on to win another 5 with the Lakers.

Lebron's coaches have been pedestrian in comparison. That's one reason the comparison is so difficult between the two.

<comment><USER6> > Lebron's coaches have been pedestrian in comparison.

LeBron has been hand-picking his whole team for a decade now. If he was unable to find a decent coach, which is not subject to the same restrictions as stacking the team with all-star players, then that shortcoming is also entirely on LeBron.

And Phil Jackson's championships were on team's featuring arguably three of the greatest players of all times: Jordan, O'Neal, and Briant. I wouldn't argue that O'Neal and Briant's rings were a result of Phil Jackson.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Excellence awards you the choice of being an asshole.

It also allows you to be revisionist in excusing you being an asshole as necessary in retrospect, even if it wasn't.

Some people will be assholes if allowed to, but I don't think it's (positively) correlated with success.

I imagine few people work better for/with an asshole, and if someone excellent/smart/1000x developer is pleasant to work with (but perhaps assertive) the results are probably even better.

<comment><USER8> I wonder. You look at someone like Linus that has created untold trillions of wealth and given a lot of that wealth away. Yet, there are also many very public asshole blow ups.

Are there counter examples of success like that which don't have a severe asshole at the epicenter? Carmack and Tim Sweeney?

<comment><USER9> Torvalds's "public blow ups" are not really about being an asshole though, it's just a playful style of communication. Maybe it shows more confidence and assertiveness, but that's not a bad thing.

<comment><USER10> I don't know about that. He's said some incredibly mean and offensive things. It is detrimental IMO. There is basically no way I would want to collaborate with him. You couldn't pay me to contribute to the Linux kernel, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels that way. He gets away with it because the world has become very dependent on Linux.

<comment><USER9> His thing is being "mean and offensive" to the inner circle of kernel maintainers, not to random contributors. It's all about not being collectively wishy-washy, and making it clear what is expected of that inner circle. Some people might call it a bit unprofessional and be bothered by that kind of style, but many are clearly fine with it.

<comment><USER11> But that's the classic defense for asshole behavior in the workplace (or, in this case, the collaborative space). Are many "clear fine with it", or is it just accepted as what you had to put up with to operate in that space? And, as the center of that space, was Linus's behavior and attitude setting expectations about how people should act if they wanted to participate, and consequently what people just had to deal with as "the culture"?

To go back to Jobs, obviously many people worked with him and he had his inner circle. Was everyone fine with him being an asshole, or did they just put up with it because he's the boss and that's what you had to deal with if you wanted to work at Apple?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think it's reverse causality.

If you're incredibly talented and have enormous success for most of your life then you probably have gotten away with being an asshole time and time again. What are you going to do, fire Michael Jordan because he's mean? You're going to kick Ellen off your TV channel because she's rude to her people? Over time they get reinforcement that being an asshole is acceptable for them. And it's so convenient to be a jerk.

Later on when someone asks about it, well, that was my secret to success of course. You have to be an asshole to get ahead. To heck with that!

Successful people being assholes is a sign of their weakness, not their strength.

<comment><USER13> Related: That's why I think physically attractive people often (but not always) have worse personalities. They can get away with more.

Studies show this too[0]:

> When the defendant was attractive, there was a shift in judgments toward > acquittal, but when the defendant was unattractive, there was no such shift. > As a result, mock juries were more likely to acquit the attractive defendant > than the unattractive defendant.

If people are more likely to acquit attractive defendants in criminal trials, they're certainly going to let more social "crimes" pass.

[0] [https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/009385489001700...](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0093854890017003005)

<comment><USER14> I find it amusing how often attractive women get two words that sound similar, mixed up. Things like, "for all intensive purposes" or others — I think you know what I mean.

My hypothesis is that no one wants to correct them, the way they would someone they don't fear retribution from. Their friends might fear being ostracized for implying they're stupid. Their suitors might fear pushing them away for the same reason. They just say it wrong for years while everyone nods and smiles.

I've made a habit of noting them in meetings and then privately informing them after. Have heard replies like, "Wait, really!? That's so embarrassing, I've been saying that wrong for YEARS."

Constantly getting a pass cuts both ways. It's also harder to stand on their own, since they grow so accustomed to people constantly offering help, and free stuff.

<comment><USER15> > how often attractive women get two words that sound similar, mixed up.

> I've made a habit of noting them in meetings and then privately informing > them after.

You have an unhealthy bias and condescension is not a solution.

<comment><USER14> I don't just do it for women, I just made a comment about how it feels more frequent with attractive women, shared my observation, and attempted to explain why I think that might be the case. There is a difference.

I don't believe it's condescending to recognize a error, and offer assistance. We all make mistakes. It's literally the first thing I ask every new manager to do for me if they observe something less than ideal in an interaction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Everyone focuses on Jordan but Jerry Krause is the one who makes the best case for being an asshole leading to great success.

Many people seem to interpret being an asshole as causal for success, but they're not even corelated. Michael Jordan may or may not be an asshole depending on when and who interacted with him, but he demanded the same absolute perfection from others that he did of himself. The problem was no one was as good as him so he essentially asked for more than they could ever deliver, leading to him taking it all on his shoulders. This inevitably lead to tensions with the "second tier" stars on the team like Pipen and Grant who likely felt they could handle both the burden and benefit of the spotlight.

If there's a lesson here it's likely more on delegation and success of the team over individuals. Phil Jackson gets discounted as they guy who sat and watched Jordan do all the work, but he's won more NBA titles than anyone on the Bulls dream squad. He is someone who definitely does not present as an asshole.

<comment><USER17> _Jerry Krause is the one who makes the best case for being an asshole leading to great success._

I agree with this summation fully, having said as much in many conversations on the topic since "The Last Dance" documentary aired and I discovered many of my friends were suddenly experts on the 90's era Bulls. Even the fans who swore they hated professional sports and couldn't separate Tony Kukoč from Tony Parker

 _Phil Jackson gets discounted as they guy who sat and watched Jordan do all the work...He is someone who definitely does not present as an asshole._

That's because the people who do this probably haven't bothered themselves to know anything more about Phil Jackson than the one they see on the court; a common malady of critiquing the human machinations of sports and sports personalities.

Read _any_ of his books (but maybe especially "Sacred Hoops"), enter his head space and see his motivations as player turned coach-they're amazing. Phil Jackson the younger wasn't quite the same man, but in 'Sacred Hoops' it's really interesting how Phil Jackson the older didn't rebuke his younger self, merely embraced him, molded him and constantly reflected back on that young man while coaching Mike. Phil says as much and cites especially when his father passed away, as the moment that allowed him a certain "freedom" to be himself. I'm taking a lot of these same lessons and applying them to my team at work, while reading my second Phil Jackson book, "More than a Game".

Even taking his philosophies out of it, Phil Jackson was and I think still is an enormous _student_ of the game-going all the way back even before his days playing for the Knicks, like you said-the man didn't just happen upon success because he found himself coaching stellar players, his willingness to buck traditional thought at the time in the NBA and embrace his assistant coaches "Triangle Offense" and successful integration of that into the Bulls played just as much a part in that team becoming who they did as Air Jordan's ability to defy gravity and hit buckets from just about anywhere on the court (except from the perimeter[1], consistently at least).

\---

[1] [https://www.theringer.com/nba/2020/5/18/21260106/michael- jor...](https://www.theringer.com/nba/2020/5/18/21260106/michael-jordan-the- last-dance-evolution)

<comment><USER18> Just read the Ringer link.

It's an interesting take. But give Jordan one or two off seasons to adapt to the modern game, and he would be a good to great 3-point shooter. The article even mentions the NBA Finals game where he made 6 threes in the first half, just because.

There are no DNA mutations between the players in the 90s and players today that made so many current NBA players better 3-point shooters. The owners and coaches favoring demanding those skill sets led to players practicing them more in order to increase their value.

(And I've considered before blogging a take on Jordan-Pippen-Rodman playing the 3-4-5 could be the core of an amazing modern small-ball line up.)

<comment><USER19> > > The article even mentions the NBA Finals game where he made 6 threes in > the first half, just because.

The 6 threes are a little weird because Portland insisted on guarding him with tons of space, essentially daring him to take what they viewed as a low- percentage shot. It's doubly weird to watch them repeatedly concede open 3s now -- it's not even a result of scrambled defensive rotations, they just watch him spot up and shoot.

I think I agree with you though. The fact that he had such a lovely midrange game suggests he'd have picked up the 3 if he tried. Plus that first step and the need to pack the paint to guard against those weird hanging double clutch layups, he would have had space to shoot too.

So I guess I'm making the tiresome argument that "your claim is probably right, but one specific bit of evidence is weak".

<comment><USER17> I mean you're not wrong, I think it's fair to say the three-point shooter was kind of a specialist position in that era of the NBA, which is what allowed guys like Steve Kerr to steal games in the final seconds (like he did against Utah in 97) BECAUSE nobody chased out to the perimeter, but this _combined_ with the novelty of the Triangle Offense which exploited defenses eager to keep Mike out of the paint and kept the ball moving so that (yep, I'm going back to Phil Jackson here) "nobody felt like a spectator" just created those opportunities naturally, I think.

Game is completely different now, guys like Kerr (current all time leader) and most recently Steph Curry has made perimeter defense more important than it ever has been.

(Holy crap basketball analysis on HN, I'm loving this thread)

<comment><USER19> Heh. I also wonder if Jordan's mentality would have let him take full advantage of the 3. This is pretty much just conjecture, but it's hard for me to square staying out and playing the math on 3s with Jordan's aggression and insistence on _beating_ people.

<comment><USER17> Now _THAT_ is a good question!

He certainly wasn't above taking a shot right in your face if you dilly dally'd around from the field. First time I saw Jordan just rip one off after toying around with a 20 year old Kobe Bryant struggling to keep pace, then stop dead in his tracks to put one up from what felt like MILES behind the line I knew I was watching peak basketball

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'd add that lessons from sports leadership don't always apply in other contexts. Sports at the highest levels require extreme competitiveness and aggression. A Jordan-style asshole leader might succeed by motivating the development of those traits in their teammates, but those same traits are probably toxic and unhelpful in other environments.

<comment><USER21> Yeah, also to be an effective leader in that mold you should start by being a generational talent like Michael Jordan.

When all those Steve Jobs biographies came out there was a population who thought if they just became really picky about design and impulsive about personnel decisions their business would become another Apple.

Just being a jerk isn't really a strategy, even in sports.

<comment><USER22> This is always my answer to people trying to justify being an asshole by comparing themselves to Steve Jobs or Michael Jordan. If you are as talented as them, maybe you can make that argument. But if you are not literally the best in the world at something and/or arguably the best of all time at something, you can't use their examples.

An NBA bench player can't behave like Michael Jordan and expect to stay in the league, even though an NBA bench player is probably one of the best 400 basketball players in the world.

Even then, I would argue that guys like Jordan and Jobs succeeded in spite of being assholes, not necessarily because of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> If anyone wants to see how asshole management works in reality, just visit any random retail store, franchise or independent. Or worse, call centers.

These places typically have very limited upward mobility, and their only requirement for future operational (i.e, not corporate) "leaders" would be results from working at the ground floor.

This means that they tend to hire people that aren't necessarily the best leaders, but the best sellers. It's basically the Peter Principle in action, but often with only one step up on the ladder.

And because these people, or leaders, have very limited training or exposure to good leadership (their old leaders got to the same place, the same way), they perpetuate the same sh!tty anti-leadership practices - which is very much something one could call asshole management. And what's more, there's often such a extreme level of power asymmetry / imbalance, that lower-level workers are completely at the mercy of their middle-managers.

It is something you can draw parallels to in sports. You're being measured by KPI / performance measures, and get more responsibilities the better you perform. Everyone who's ever played any competitive team sports knows or has experiences this - some star player(s) that have can rein freely, because they exceed at some important measure (score goals, or whatever) - while rest of their teammates are walking on eggshells.

But to tie it all together: The problem is that entities (businesses, sports teams, whatever) become dependent on these stars, even though it could completely destroy morale, and create toxic cultures within.

I think that if you identify these following points in some environment, there's a great chance you'll meet on great asshole bosses / leaders

1) Great power imbalance between worker and leader.

2) Leadership compensation is dependent on worker performance.

3) Levels of compensation is driven by a very few measures / KPI.

4) Upward mobility is squarely tied to your KPI performance (from 3).

Basically - if the only way to succeed within is to be a rainmaker, and being a rainmaker makes you the king, then that could easily foster assholes.

</comment><comment><USER24> I've had one boss who was terrible at basically everything, and he actually justified his behavior using Steve Jobs as an example. His company was only successful because he was in the right place at the right time, but the company was failing to maximize its full potential because of him.

Would anyone try to claim there is a shortage of asshole managers, owners, or bosses out there? It's just a fact that many jerks exist, and a portion will inevitably end up at the top despite this behavior.

Would YC have been more successful if it better emphasized seeking out this behavior in founders? If this behavior is critical to success then shouldn't we be training people to be jerks?

<comment><USER25> The most impressive managerial implosion I've ever heard of was one of those bosses. He'd been hired on to be a whip-cracker; he did get results, but was remarkably unliked by staff.

Company got purchased and it became clear some team members were not going to be hired by the new owning company. Team was trying to knock out a few last big-ticket TODOs before the handoff of projects. So the boss is going around the room in the scrum, and the DB lead announces he missed his target on some work remaining to be done. Conversation went something like this:

Boss: "How are the DB changes?"

DB guy: "Not done yet. I should be able to knock them out this week."

Boss: "You had them on the calendar as ready by Monday."

DB guy: "I know."

Boss: "Didn't knock them out this weekend?"

DB guy: "Nope."

Boss: "What happened?"

DB guy: _crosses arms behind the back of his head and leans back in his chair_ "I spent the time polishing my résumé and setting up interviews for new opportunities this week."

The whip-cracking approach to project management utterly collapses if the whip no longer stings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I try very hard not to be an asshole, but I see assholes somehow being respected for being assholes.

Is this similar to patio11 saying that charging more for a service makes it easier for people to value the service? Is this an innate property of the way some people think? Can we change our system of values to appreciate value based on non monetary terms, and leadership based on non degrading terms?

I don't have answers for these questions, but I think they're important...

<comment><USER27> People aren't attracted to assholes, people are attracted to confidence and assertiveness. The problem is that while not all confident people are assholes, all assholes are confident.

<comment><USER28> You just don't notice the non-confident assholes because they don't seek the spotlight.

<comment><USER16> to tie it back to the netflix series this is Phil Jackson in a nutshell. He appears to quietly fade into the background but is busy coaching and letting these guys do their thing, tweaking and making small incremental changes - <USER2> winning championships.

Steve Kerr (who played for him) had success with a similar coaching style in Golden State (at least up until this season!). These guys are known as a player's coach because they are most definitely not assholes.

<comment><USER29> I wouldn't say that about Phil Jackson. Over and over I have heard about how incredibly manipulative he was, playing games with his players' heads. Sure, he's doing it to try to get 1% more out of them, which is also good for the player, but... I wouldn't put him in the non-a-hole category.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Relentlessly upping a teams standards in everything - strategy, execution, effort etc, tires out everyone on that team. But that's usually what you need to win or succeed in a competitive system.

People who push for this will always be called assholes because they force team members to stretch themselves which is never a comfortable proposition.

The corollary to this is that to win by not being an asshole, find something that is needed/wanted but no one else does or that which you can do 10x better than everyone else. Without competition you won't need to push you or your team that hard.

(The only catch with having no competition, is that, having no competition will slow down the rate at which you can improve or stop all improvement in most people.)

<comment><USER31> I think raising standards or changing things is different from being an asshole. Having dealt with this in a big way recently, it's very much on my mind.

It's entirely possible to say "we need to work harder, or take a risk, or be bold" while understanding where your colleagues are at in terms of what they need to do that, or what has or hasn't been communicated to them about how that will happen, or how things have been done in the past to change them.

Too often bad management or administration is justified by saying "well things needed change" or "things needed to be shaken up." There's a way to implement that while bringing others on board, giving credit where things are due, etc.

Put another way, it's easy to ruthlessly level an organization and rebuild it in the way you want to if you have the power to do that, but it doesn't mean the fairy tale you tell yourself about it having been necessary is actually true. More often than not you're just rationalizing away being inhumane and destructive, and probably even losing out on even better possibilities in the process.

<comment><USER32> >It's entirely possible to say "we need to work harder, or take a risk, or be bold" while understanding where your colleagues are at in terms of what they need to do that, or what has or hasn't been communicated to them about how that will happen, or how things have been done in the past to change them.

Great leaders, in my experience, haven't asked these questions or pushed performance in this way - they led their reports through soft management to come to the conclusion that it was necessary to increase performance. They framed questions that led people to the conclusions they had already made. Of course, this also requires that the reports are capable enough of being led in the right direction.

<comment><USER30> There's no soft way to say - "you're not good. You need to get better."

It is hurtful and painful to hear however put.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> US business culture has two leadership archetypes: The brilliant asshole and the kind uncle who leads by example (think Steve Jobs and Tim Cook). Despite there being _two_ archetypes, asshole culture is endemic in American business. Why is that? My theory is that more often than not, the kind fatherly leader relies on a cadre of assholes to do his job for him. Elsewhere in this thread there is the example of Ed Catmull and John Lasseter that reinforces my impression.

<comment><USER34> My theory is that the brilliant asshole just tends to gravitate toward the limelight. In other words they are also very self-congratulatory and therefore market themselves better. Look at a FAAMG - of the acronym, I would only consider Jobs a "brillant" asshole and _maybe_ Bezos (although he seems way more dogmatic than an asshole). Despite all being incredibly companies, Jobs is by and far the most famous.

<comment><USER35> What? Bill Gates was ruthless.

[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/news/gates-is-a- ru...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/news/gates-is-a-ruthless- schemer-says-his-microsoft-co-founder-2257843.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I think the fallacy is to confuse cause and effect. The characteristics necessary to achieve greatness are very likely to also make you an asshole. But, deliberately being an asshole is only going to make you less likely to achieve greatness.

<comment><USER37> > I think the fallacy is to confuse cause and effect. The characteristics > necessary to achieve greatness are very likely to also make you an asshole.

I would rephrase to: "The characteristics necessary to be _noticed above your teammates_ are very likely to also make you an asshole."

The best professionals I have ever worked with are kind, willing to help and growth themselves and their teams. And too often are missed by management, the self-promoting assholes are noticed and promoted by management.

Great leaders are kind, great leaders are smart, great leaders help you, great leaders go unnoticed because are one of you working within the team.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Some so called 'assholes' are in fact really good mirrors and amplifiers of our existing insecurities. Is it fun when someone is able to 'push our buttons' and make us feel worthless? Rarely. Is it useful to further explore why it made us uncomfortable? Always.

I am not preaching that you should tolerate abuse, far from it. But you should be aware of your own dark side and recognize it for what it is.

</comment><comment><USER39> Was he really an a-hole?

It's hard for many people to fathom different environments, but sports, sometimes startups, the Army for example ... different communication styles.

Even mild 'Military Communication' would make many people uncomfortable, because of the almost total lack of emotional empathy in most scenarios. But - it works, really well. To the point that some people (maybe myself included) feel that we should all learn to be a little more in control of our emotions and less 'needy' of our peers and managers.

When a manager tries too hard with empathy frankly is feels patronizing, like I'm a child or diva whose ego needs to be managed. I feel that it's coddling, and it shouldn't be needed with professionals, other than the very occasional kudos and only when warranted.

There are instances of Jordan in public life being a 'real jerk' ... and maybe some instances of him doing that on the court - but this is not unreasonable for such a long career.

Also, here is a good example: Pippin seemed nice, but then famously refused to go on the court once after he didn't like the coach's call. Some might argue that this is the absolute height of arrogance and jerkoffness, because it's the most self-centered thing possible. I don't think Jordan ever did this.

I watch junior Hockey players get reamed out by their coaches after the 1st period, and they're just utterly calm, it's just words to them.

We need to contextualize what we consider to be real arrogance from merely more aggressive communication or communication that is assertive and lacking in emotional empathy.

After watching the special, I'm not so sure if Jordan was an asshole. Obviously self-centered, and assertive, but that's not being an asshole. He was also one part of a unit of other types of characters that seemed to blend.

<comment><USER40> That is... not the take I'd expect on military effectiveness. I think there is are good reasons the private sector doesn't emulate the military in command structure.

I know I am more productive with an understanding manager than being screamed at, and I am more efficient with a manager who values my ideas and encourages taking risks than one who forces me to do things exactly by the book. Admittedly, I don't have military experience, but it seems like it's more akin to a manager I would hate to have than one who would help me grow.

<comment><USER39> This is an understandable position, but one that does not quite grasp at why the military communicates the way it does.

It's almost entirely not 'yelling and screaming' this is something that exists in basic training, or maybe in the movies.

The military is _excruciatingly_ more operationally effective than the nearest civilian entity for the things that it is designed to do.

For most of the things the forces do, there are barely any civilian counterparts that could even contemplate the job.

That said, for a whole host of regular, garrison tasks, the military is probably the least suited. I'm thinking of peacetime IT services, etc..

For example, if you want a field hospital built with 100-400 beds? It can basically be done anywhere, almost instantly. Aside from the operational limitations of most civilians entities (i.e. they don't have easy access to Chinooks), it would take them months, and/or extraordinary complexity and expense. The COVID hospital beds were coming in at $500K each, which is massive money required to overcome the extreme inefficiency we have normally in that area. The same thing for an airfield, for example, the Air Force Engineers are ridiculous, they will build an airstrip, anywhere, in no time and have operationalized flights in and out ... like in the jungle or Himalayas.

A few things that make it different:

1) It's existential. It's the most dramatically 'real' operating environment one can imagine, both in terms of one's own life, but also the lives of others, civilians (both sides) and in many ways the ultimate consequence of entire nations being ruined/turned upside down. This is hard to grasp until one has lived in that world, it's very 'heavy' and I think the issue that weighs down service members psychologically over time. Your civilian buddies are having a 'good life' but many service members cannot escape the heavy consequences of their daily lives.

Can you imagine having to coddle a group of Engineers, balance personalities, staff reviews, people demanding 'more money and promotions', internal culture wars etc. when the 'build going out' is really a 'sortie' in support of some ground forces under fire? No. When the consequences are much bigger, and people realize this, they start to change their tune.

2) It's the most egoless job. This subject pains me the most, especially when I hear civilians talking about service people in a negative light when they see violence in particular. The level of selfless dedication in the service is incomparable. Though some individuals might be drawn in by salary or 'cheap college' it's basically impossible to continue to motivate oneself on that basis. It's the hardest work you'll ever have to do, with by far the least pay. It's ultra communitarian. On operation and in the field, even money becomes an abstract concept, almost irrelevant.

You'll see regular people, coming together, putting aside their petty, selfish desires, doing their absolute best, and it's just remarkable. Sad to say but it really brings out the best in people.

Having a limited military experience, it pains me that most people have no idea how self-oriented the civilian world is, and though we are all capable of greatness, it's very rare that we are in conditions such that we see this come to the fore. We're seeing it to some extent now with COVID.

In terms of what might be perceived to be 'ugly communication' but which really is not, consider that rank and role become a function of _group need_ and not individual desire. You play some role, ostensibly because you are trained and suited to it, not because you are 'competing with others for the best pay'. You 'respect the rank not necessarily the person' which means an internalized understanding that it's not 'some petty ego bossing you around', rather, it's someone communicating the group needs that they are very legitimately authorized to do, and it's your job to understand and execute well. It's your team's responsibility to act in kind. Sometimes you're leading, sometimes you're following, you may go up and down in power depending on the situation, everyone is just 'playing a role on the team'. Obviously, most things in the military are done on an operational, time-constrained basis, and in the field, it's not academic, it's execution-oriented.

So if your 'Michael Jordan' boss was getting intense, there probably was a very legit reason. "Hey, listen up, there is a company-sized group of Taliban on patrol less than 1km away fro this waterworks we are building, so we need to A, B, and C and don't f* it up". It doesn't seem so 'a&&holish' in that context.

So in a 'very legitimately authoritative, time-constrained environment with very high stakes' people learn to communicate fairly plainly and effectively, which means there are no expectations of coddling or need for emotional empathy because that would an unprofessional expectation.

The 'yelling' might happen in basic training, but outside of that, it would generally happen in scenarios where you might expect it to happen, and it's not something that would upset most.

Finally, I would say that most in the service are absolutely not blind automatons. While operationally, there tends not to be a lot of back and forth, the focus really is on mission orientation, and always so much the details. It's initially micromanaged, but once in the field, most commanders have immense latitude and this implies a kind of 'out of the box' thinking one might not expect. Even for the tiniest, smallest mission of 'taking a machine bun position' \- no two approaches are even the same, they vary wildly and success depends on the training and operational intelligence of the team. On a bigger scale, your 'mission' may be to build a bridge by a certain time, at this location so the 5th cavalry can cross a river and join the rearguard or whatever. You'd actually have a tremendous degree in latitude in pulling that off, and in some ways, the only thing that matters is that the bridge gets built and all other things are kind of secondary. You may not have a 'long strategic back and forth with your manager', but these are generally not the types of conditions that call for this kind of communication.

In fact, depending on the circumstance, you would have more 'latitude' in building that bridge than is maybe even comprehensible to most: you may have to knock down buildings, power lines, infrastructure, you may have to call in support, you may have to draw a lot of blood to get that thing built. All the regular, civil aspects of our lives, things like 'driving down the right side of the road' or 'social rules about private property' go out the window, the only thing remaining is the chain of command, the communications and the mission.

Sorry for that long diatribe, but it's an interesting subject that depends almost entirely on perspective, which is to say seeing the world through an entirely different lens wherein different operating modes become more obvious.

<comment><USER41> This was a very interesting post and I liked a lot of it so I won't talk about that part. You mention "This subject pains me the most, especially when I hear civilians talking about service people in a negative light when they see violence in particular". At least in the US, it is taboo in most circles to criticize soldiers. All the people I have met who have served in the military, including my brother in law, are extremely kind, selfless people. But there are also soldiers who commit war crimes. We need to be more open talking about the military and the use of violence, not less.

<comment><USER39> Yes, the people in the forces vary as much as any group no doubt.

The thing that 'pains me' \- is that some groups of people simply cannot comprehend the notion of 'duty'. They have an inner cynicism that is so deep, that they cannot believe the notion of 'True Boy Scout'. It's not possible in their worldview.

I'm not referring to civilians legitimately concerned about 'war crimes', I mean to say, civilians who think that 'soldering = murdering' and that's it, i.e. the 'only people who sign up must just want to be killers' or something along those lines.

The 'excessive violence' problem - which will happen - this is altogether another thorny issue. There, it's much more understandable that civilians have a hard time grasping how 'someone was killed' and that it's not outright murder, that the situation is more nuanced when you put 19-year olds with guns 1/2 across the planet and ask them to do hard things.

I respect Michael Jordan's style and am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt from what I saw. He was a hyper-exceptional pushing hyper-exceptionals, who probably saw himself as the center of the universe ... but I don't see arbitrary or demeaning behavior, rather, a hyper-competitive attitude.

It takes a different worldview I think to see how his behavior is within the range of normal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> In this thread. Bunch of people who haven't won anything criticizing the methods of the greatest winner.

</comment><comment><USER43> This seems quite wishy-washy to me.

Excellence and leadership requires strength, and determination, no doubt about it.

But do you then ruthlessly impose those values on everyone else, or help them get there?

To me, that's the difference between a leader and an ahole.

<comment><USER44> I think the tolerance of the a-hole also depends on whether that a-hole is a unicorn.

MJ, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk etc. They're not everyday a-holes. These guys are/were arguably at the top of their game during the peak of their a-holery, so to speak.

The acceptance of their a-holery is going to be much broader than it is for some random wannabe who thinks they are greater than they really are.

It might be important to note that with the exception of Musk, the examples I used came up in a different time, and the tolerance for some of their behaviour would be much lower today.

<comment><USER45> Consider also survivor bias, luck, and the privilege these may have been born into.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I read the article and the HN posts, but they all miss the point, calling it the "Great Asshole Fallacy" is incorrect.

One of Jordan's coaches said in an interview, "[What most people don't understand about Jordan is that he isn't there to play, he's there to win.]"

Meaning the game of basketball wasn't important, winning was important.

Tiger Woods said the same thing in an interview, "if I can't win, I won't play,' he said. 'I simply couldn't stand it and I will walk away when I can no longer play at the highest level."

Winners are there to win, not to enjoy the game. So in that respect they have no problem acting or being perceived as assholes, since winning is all that matters.

If you pay attention to the media, you'll see that most champions don't just play and hope to excel, they are driven to win, regardless of their sport. Often they'll say, "I wanted to go out at the top."

(I'll let the hard-core sports fans research the Jordan quote and fill in the verbatim version.)

[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/golf/article-1097074/If-I-...](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/golf/article-1097074/If-I-8217-t-win- I-won-8217-t-play-says-Woods-superstar-eyes-New-Years-comeback.html)

</comment><comment><USER47> Felix Dennis in his book has a quote related to committing to becoming rich

The people who suffer most are the ones closest to you

It's meant for family and friends

It also applies to an extent to your work colleagues

If you pursue excellence, people around you are going to get pulled along with you

Some of them will think you are a dick or a jerk or an asshole

 __ __ __

You can 't be nice to everyone

Even if you are, a fraction of people will still think you're a dick

 __ __ __ __ __ __

Now take that same person and give them success

People suddenly have TWO reasons to think they are a dick

A) They are more focused than you

B) They are more successful than you

 __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __*

I don't ever see people complaining about someone they are more successful than, but almost always about people who did better than them

<comment><USER48> I think that you may lead a sheltered life. Arrogance is by no means always accompanied by performance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I think this is the mechanism: Let us hypothesize the nicest possible person who is willing to do what it takes to be great. Unfailingly polite. Gracious with the money. Helps out those less fortunate as much as is possible under the constraints of doing what it takes to be great. An inspiration and a role model. By definition, by any sensible definition of the term, if you knew this person well you would agree they are as far from an asshole as it is possible to be.

There is a non-zero set of people in this person's life who will necessarily decide this person is an asshole anyhow. In the early days, you invite this person to social events, and they decline because they're practicing. Maybe someone's even crushing on this person and consistently asks them out and consistently gets declined. However polite they are in declining, there's one person who is going to decide they're an asshole. Whoever it is in second place on the team, who under normal circumstances would talented enough to be the star player on the team but is getting shown up by the fact they're on a team with Michael freakin' Jordan... they're likely to harbor opinions of assholery, because if we humans are good at anything, it's rationalizing our pre-existing beliefs and finding reasons why we're right.

When professional and financial success is obtained in later years, people who want a piece of it but are denied will decide this person is an asshole. A coach who tries to control this person to take credit for their fame but is rebuffed because what the coach is saying to do is not what it takes to be great will decide this guy is an asshole. The reporter who tries to weasel their way in to hitch themselves to this rising star and asks for interviews but gets rebuffed because it's not what is necessary to become great may do a hit piece around convincing everyone they're an asshole.

And so forth and so on.

On the Internet, if you simply express a strong opinion, of any kind, no matter how politely, some subset of people will take as proof you're an asshole. If someone posts disagreement and you decline to instantly and totally agree with that person, a somewhat larger group of people will decide you're an asshole.

The upshot is that there's two different kinds of assholery; actually being a jerk, in as objective a sense as possible, and people who will decide you're being an asshole because you've done things that are (again as objectively as possible) not assholery, but because you are resisting doing what they want or some other thing that is really entirely on them.

From where we sit at a distance, it is often difficult to borderline impossible to tell which is which, or to tell the difference between a genuinely nice guy and someone who got advised to hire a PR firm.

<comment><USER50> I agree with you here.

In a previous career, I was responsible for delivering timely and accurate information to people who then went and put their lives on the line based off of that information.

I was regarded as "brash" and an "asshole" because I would correct my colleagues information as they were giving it to those individuals who were going to put their life on the line.

I wasn't doing it to demean or belittle the people who I was correcting, I was doing it because had those operators gone out with wrong information, it could lead to their deaths. And I would much rather be thought of as an asshole than quietly and kindly "talk" to my colleagues AFTER they had delivered bad information and corrected them in private.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I think the writer is correct: there is a meme out there that in order to be great, a leader, a trailblazer etc you have to become inevitably the arsehole. So much so, that arseholism is not just tolerated but celebrated.

I wonder why the author did not feel persuaded to mention our current poster child of arseholism, the quintessential kind: Donald Trump.

Here's a good video essay on the same subject by a filmmaker, Max Joseph: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRRvjZ_XNog](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRRvjZ_XNog)

<comment><USER52> I don't understand this as an argument _against_ being an asshole. Watch out, you might become the president or one of the greatest athletes in history!

I find this stuff very suspect to begin with. Sure we can all grew Trump is an asshole, but in smaller scope, what really matters is who gets to decide who is an asshole. That's the whole game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Fair enough, but I think it misses the more important point. If we cancel all the assholes, or demand that they be well-rounded people, we will lose some of our highest performers.

Most assholes are not great. Many greats are not assholes. Some of the greatest were assholes.

<comment><USER54> There's an alternate universe where no assholes are allowed to progress, and someone is saying "If we let people be assholes, think of what great things they could accomplish". And another (like the Evil Star Trek universe) where everyone is a gigantic asshole, and someone is saying "If we weren't such assholes all the time, maybe we could still accomplish good things, and not hate each other".

Is there anything special about the level of asshood we're willing to put up with? Is this some kind of global maximum?

AFAICT, it's merely a local maximum of "as big of an asshole as you can be without the general public realizing that you're an asshole". Maybe we should aspire to be better, and ask more of our leaders. That's a pretty low bar.

<comment><USER55> Really I think the issue is partially a matter of control and subset constraints. First off if you filter for something goddamn rare in the first place you are far more likely to squander it no matter how good or bad tbe criteria.

Of course one thing nobody recognizes about canceling the assholes is tbat the ability for society to control itself means being worse off. There is now an additional axis for manipulation by to take out tall poppies deservedly or not social manipulators will abuse it no matter how pure or reasonable the original motive or metric may be. Or even just natural culture turnint against those not fitting with the toxic norms. And the extreme successes are always outside the norm by definition. Not saying to excuse everything but to have a sense of proportion for the offenses and that society doesn't know jack shit about how to regulate itself historically - its attempts to do so have a track record of causing far more harm than good. "That Semelweiss guy is an asshole saying surgeons should wash their hands! A gentleman's hands are always clean!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Jobs wasn't great at what he did because he was an asshole, it's just he was allowed to be an asshole because he was great at what he did. A lot of people seem to have these things around the wrong way.

</comment><comment><USER57> This is a very anti-postmodernist post, where neither the author nor the commenters realise that their most insightful thoughts on the topic are literal quotes from "Crime and Punishment".

</comment><comment> tech-historian It boils down to a real challenge in leadership. How to be demanding without being demeaning? For some, this is straightforward, but for others, it's nearly impossible.

</comment><comment><USER25> There's a lot to be said of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's quote about ships and the love of the sea. Great leaders can find a way to communicate that. It can be a challenge finding the balance between being driven (and driving a team) and being an asshole; you have to remember that people can't love the work if they're starved for something else.

(For my money, personally, the highest praise I can hear of a team leader is "That person doesn't ask more of the team than they demand of themselves, but also, be warned that person does not sleep.")

</comment><comment><USER58> Random website demands Google or Facebook sign-in?

Goes with the topic I suppose...

</comment><comment><USER59> Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole...or so I've heard.

</comment><comment><USER60> Worth noting this is written by a very successful venture capitalist, with a firm that is the product of one of the fastest growing companies ever. It's not a reason to believe him one way or another, but when he writes, "That's what i think of when I think of leadership. Someone who is malleable enough to both know and to react to the different needs of different people on their team," I'd posit it's pretty clear he's talking his own book.

I do not know the author, and taking shots at him on an internet forum is small, but as a general principle, Jeffery Pfeffer talks about this retroactive continuity of virtue in success stories in his books. Everyone wants to think their luck made them good. Riding growth up to the top is a different set of skills than setting off the chain reaction that creates the energy behind it. In fact, malleability is precisely what you need to ride growth, but I'd argue you need a force of will to be the one to create it. That carries asshole-risk.

The stories successful people tell about how they became successful are almost exclusively about how virtuous they were, and how their path was noble. A critical view of success and its factors is very much the "loser's" view, as telling it from outside means you don't have it, but it still has some value because the one told from inside is not the one that will get you there. They aren't in the business of building (ungated) ladders behind them. The story successful people don't tell is the one where they leveraged someones trust, scandalizing, discrediting, and isolating someone who lacked their mendacity, or put people who trusted them at more personal risk than they may have perceived.

Nobody likes an asshole, and it's a good thing to build things that select against them, but the definition has to be better than what the losers just call the person they lose to, or as a foil for back-fitting a story of skill and virtue onto some really grisly work and luck.

It's like Ray Dalio saying he's a billionaire because of transcendental meditation. If that sentence causes your middle finger to involuntarily leap into the air, you can appreciate how these other auto-hagiographies are received.

Anyway, not to take pot shots from the cheap seats, but it's better to be suspicious of free advice that tells you to be nice. Not because being nice is wrong, but because when someone gives it to you free, it is probably worth more to them than you.

</comment><comment><USER61> Assholes shake up hive minds

Hive minds create cohesion and work better as teams..but they squash excellence.

Both are needed

<comment><USER62> This logic doesn't hold up, because there's something very important missing:

Sure, assholes _can_ sometimes shake up hive minds. But it doesn't _require_ an asshole to shake up a hive mind and bring excellence.

What it requires...is a leader. Like the article says, someone who can recognize what each person or group actually needs to be brought to excellence, which is _not always an asshole_.

<comment><USER61> the problem with the whole leader thing is often the institution and the culture of a given organization (government, corporate, sports, religious, etc..) will often avoid putting leaders into place that are like that purely to preserve things the way they are. People prefer a lack of disruption.

An asshole.. usually just kinda ends up there and elbows people out of the way. An asshole exists regardless of the organizational culture or the institutional pressures.

Whereas you have to sit around and wait for said organization to bless you with such a leader at their discretion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> This idiot has clearly never built anything in his life.

Blogger -> VC blogger.

</comment><comment><USER64> Yikes, it's a Medium site, but disguised. Had I known that, I would not have clicked that link. With a little bit of imagination that could be interpreted as a practical demonstration of assholery.

</comment><comment><USER65> Those that do try to apply this asshole logic outside this highly specific context, make 2 very painful mistakes.

One, whatever you do, isn't memorable, and has no glory. 90s Chicago Bulls took the world by storm. Jordan is perceived as one of the greatest athletes ever. Him being that asshole may very well have secured multiple championships. Which is a big thing, something millions of people care about and still talk about decades later.

Not so much for your soulless corp few even know exists at all. Nobody cares about your performance but yourself. There is no glory to pushing people to the very edge, therefore it's not worth it or justifiable. In business, people shouldn't be expected to deliver super human effort or endure this behavior.

The situations just don't compare.

Two, you're not Jordan. And not Jobs. Nor will you become one by being an asshole. A handful of people have the character, vision and skill to touch, change and inspire the world, and you're not it. Not even close.

</comment><comment><USER66> Another article from someone who hasn't accomplished anything, talking about how he/she is _worried_ that somebody is going to _maybe_ misinterpret _something_ someone else said...

Quality content folks.

There is no fallacy - if you want to work as much as Jordan or Steve Jobs did, you've gotta be a lunatic to begin with. Why would you expect a lunatic to _not_ be eccentric, in most cases?

One of the ways a lunatic can be eccentric is being an asshole - media _loves_ to blow them out of proportion. Another way a lunatic can be eccentric is being extra quiet and extra nice aka Steve Wozniak. It's hard to write blog posts and get clicks about how nice Steve Wozniak is, people love drama far more than they love _nice_.

So what do we have, writers _creating_ a myth of these tyrants where in reality they are just eccentric most of the time, and then other pathetic writers _writing about_ what another set of writers has created.

Pathetic - journalists are largely such low life, talentless scum, oh well, at least they're _nice_ , oh wait, or are they, with all the misquotes and poorly researched trash they publish on a daily basis, is that _nice_?</comment>


Zero elephants poached in a year in top Africa wildlife park - <AUTHOR> https://www.apnews.com/ef25debd7ab74b7ca5dc3fe9692c1fa8 <comment><USER2> African elephant populations are very healthy, just barely qualifying for IUCN "vulnerable" status. They're not a significant conservation risk, but they are a big money-maker for Western wildlife charities and African governments. The genus has more than enough protected habitat and more than enough monitoring.

The Borneo, Indian and Sri Lankan elephants are all endangered, while the Sumatran elephant is critically endangered. The Sumatran elephant is overwhelmingly not being poached for ivory, but being killed due to conflict with agriculture and human settlement; similar problems affect the rest of the Asian elephant population. Only a small proportion of conservation efforts are directed towards this critical but extremely difficult issue - how do you protect elephants from people, while also protecting people from elephants?

<comment><USER3> If the protection of wildlife is profit-driven by governments, I'm fine with that. Maybe these other places where endangerment is a problem can learn from the other ones. If they can make more money from milking foreigners for protection, rather than land encroachment, maybe they wouldn't hesitate to try it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interestingly, rich people who want to hunt African wildlife help bolster and reduce poaching in these giant wildlife reserves. Providing locals an economic incentive to stop poachers actually works really well.

Here's the site for if you want to help Niassa protect elephants. [http://niassahunter.com/](http://niassahunter.com/)

<comment><USER5> Many people are surprised by how hunters are natural allies of conservationists. In Africa, hunters bring in precious money to the thousands of community run conservancies. And the North American Model of wildlife conservation considers the rights and cooperation of hunters to be an essential component in it's successful defense of conservation.

<comment><USER4> My wife worked as a nanny for a surgeon who went on these expeditions. He had stuffed lions and antelope in his house, it was pretty wild. The pricing isn't listed on these, but here's a site that gives people an idea of the huge amount of money these hunters are willing to pay. An exportable elephant trophy is $60,000 plus hundreds of dollars a day for general amenities. A basic package is more like $2500, where you're hunting things like wildebeests and warthogs.

[https://africahuntlodge.com/hunting-packages/elephant- hunts](https://africahuntlodge.com/hunting-packages/elephant-hunts)

The whole Cecil the Lion thing shows what happens when the general public gets wind of these hunting expeditions, and negatively impacted the revenue for these preserves, unfortunately.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder how much China's ban on ivory has had an effect on illegal poaching. According to an article last year[0], demand went down significantly over 2018, and it seems possible that there was a "snowball" effect on consumers.

[0] [https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2018/09/wildlife-...](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2018/09/wildlife- watch-news-ivory-demand-reduction-china-ban/)

</comment><comment><USER7> 'Political will is a key reason for the success, Bampton said, with Mozambique's president keen to see poaching reduced.'

=> "Do not give up"

</comment><comment><USER8> The most proficient elephant killer is Allan Savory.

He killed 40,000 elephants "to prevent desertification", only to make desertification worse. That is about 5% to 10% of the entire world elephant population.

<comment><USER9> You didn't mention that this was in the 1960s, that he acknowledged it was a terrible mistake, and that his subsequent work has been based on trying to correct it.

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

I'd never heard of Allan Savory, but this took less than a minute to look up.

<comment><USER8> Does that change the fact that he killed 40,000 elephants for the wrong reasons?

<comment><USER9> Of course not. It means you misleadingly gave one side of the story. I doubt you'd like it if someone took the worst thing you ever did, defined you publicly by that, and didn't mention your efforts to make amends.

Look at this way. When I read your comment I thought, "what a monster. How is it possible that such a monster exists in this world." That's why I went to look him up. But when I read two or three other facts about the story, that feeling went away and was replaced by the feeling that I had been tricked. Had you mentioned that this happened over 50 years ago, your comment wouldn't have had that effect, because today's knowledge and moral consciousness, both of which you're relying on, didn't exist back then. But instead you wrote in the present tense, obfuscating that. You also used the word "proficient", implying that killing elephants was his main goal. And you put his stated goal in scare quotes. That just seems like a lot of misleading for a short comment.

<comment><USER10> Perhaps the story isn't very one-sided, if one digs deeper.

Instead of testing the elephant culling hypothesis, the man ran wholesale with an idea that appealed to his senses.

He was later involved in politics and essentially called himself a terrorist, if he were black. Which pretty much got him the boot.

He's now advocating for grazing patterns and movements to "mimic" natural patterns, even though the evidence for his theories are thin.

The man has a habit of hubris yet manages to retain influence, which is not to be lightly ignored.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Dave Barry on College - <AUTHOR> http://users.soe.ucsc.edu/~martine/light/barrycollege.html

<comment><USER2> but what about Engineers?</comment>


Minimizing Computations in your Rails App - <AUTHOR> https://www.codemy.net/posts/optimizing-your-rails-app-part-2-minimize-computations

<comment><USER2> I don't know, they've got a lot of code to gain a 1.5 second lookup speed on 10 million lookups!

To me, that sounds like over engineering. Even at Facebook scale, can we say we are talking 1/10 of a millisecond per lookup? Is it worth the extra performance gain?

At the same time? I'm surprised the hash lookup isn't faster.</comment>


Japanese Service Lets You Stick Your Head On A Doll's Body - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/04/japanese-service-lets-you-stick-your-head-on-a-dolls-body/

<comment><USER2> That's creepy in a way that is typically Japanese.

<comment><USER3> It would be creepier if you put someone else's head on the doll.

<comment><USER4> This is the obvious use case here...</comment></comment></comment>


Why I'm Wagering $100,000 on Quantum Computing - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/hardware/why-im-wagering-100000-on-quantum-computing

<comment><USER2> Quantum Computing is the ultimate bounty for mastering the atom, and the quantum world.</comment>


Facial recognition tech wrongly identified 2,000 people as potential criminals - <AUTHOR> https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/05/05/police-defend-facial-recognition-technology-wrongly-identified/ <comment><USER2> [I focus only on the performance of facial recognition system, not on whether it's good idea to have such systems in place.]

From the systems performance point of view, this is non-story. If you deploy detection system, you have to make trade-off between precision (how many false positives you will have) and recall (how many false negatives -- misses) you will have [1]. How you do this trade-off depends on cost of false positive, and cost of false negative.

For example, if false positive means, that someone will point camera to that part of stadium and someone will manually check if it's correct [2], and then arrest, then 2000 false positives might be good performance if recall is good, because there is no negative impact on false positive, only some wasted effort by police.

On the other hand, if this AI match would be used as evidence in court, then the it would be terrible, as it would cause much more harm than good. From the article it seems that police is using it more closely to the first case, than to the second case, so the performance of this system might be good, so really the article is non-story.

[1] I simplified the "precision" and "recall". [2] Or send more security guards / police to that area, or whatever discrete measure.

<comment><USER3> People being arrested clearly qualifies as a negative impact. Asking for ID and arresting even 1 of those 2000 people also qualifys as a negative.

Worse even if police simply go up to these people to do a manual comparison that's a downside as police confrontations risk death.

<comment><USER2> Article does not claim happening any one of those, as there is _no_ information about how police handle this.

[edit] actually they claim that no false positive was arrested. But not others.

<comment><USER4> Article in fact claims police force said no-one was arrested after an incorrect match.

> It also said no-one had been arrested after an incorrect match.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sounds like someone sold them a promise and no one wants to be accountable for it underperforming.

</comment><comment><USER6> As long as the data is used as one of many guideline sources which is scrutinised by human officers before the individuals are suspected and acted upon, I personally don't see a problem with the inaccuracy (which will get better over time).

<comment><USER7> > As long as the data is used as one of many guideline sources which is > scrutinised by human officers

What makes you think that's going to happen? If anything, the trend is in the opposite direction - reducing the need for humans within automated systems as much as possible.

If a fast food store manager brings in robots to serve people food, do you think he'll still want to hire people around to make sure the robots are serving the right food to people? No, if he brought in robots, then it's because he wants to get rid of as many human employees as possible.

Maybe the humans will be there for like the first month or two while the robots are being tested, but that's it - or at least that would be the goal. Look how fast Musk wanted to get rid of human employees at Tesla, too. Complete 100% automation will be the goal for both companies and governments.

Even the Pentagon is rushing to allow its AI drones to kill "targets" on their own (thanks, Google). You don't think governments will rush to get humans out of the equation for more "trivial" stuff like arresting people?

If 20% of the people are wrongfully accused, but the system catches 99.9% of the actual criminals, then they will be very happy with that system. Just like Facebook is happy to censor 10%, 20%, 40% other innocent content, as long as it can brag to Congress that it "censored 99% of the terrorist content" (which probably isn't true, either). They don't care about the collateral damage.

<comment><USER6> Some programs are designed to replace humans, others are designed as tools. Automation does not always equal the replacement of humans.

I appreciate your analogies but there is not evidence in the article to suggests that police and investigators are being replaced by automated systems.

Data such as this can be used to eliminate a lot of the investigative work which usually goes into law enforcement.

Are you familiar with a police lineup? Police detain a selection of suspects based on various characteristics and ask witnesses to select the perpetrator, who may or may not be present at the lineup.

Neither a police lineup nor facial recognition are accurate or reliable when used alone, but when used in combination with other facts, tools, and resources an arrest can be made with increased speed and confidence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> While the article does go into the detail of the accuracy of the deployed systems, it's both sad and worrying that the counter arguments to mass facial recognition are reduced to a single positioning quote.

</comment><comment><USER9> let me guess... its 3,000 potential criminals...

</comment><comment><USER10> The algorithm isn't arresting people. It's cutting down the suspect pool from 17000 to 2500, the fact that 2000 of those are innoscent while 500 are criminals isn't a damning issue, it's just a point where it could improve. Without the system the 500 people would not have been identified at all.

<comment><USER11> > 2,470 potential matches were identified. [...]

> 2,297 - 92% - were found to be "false positives".

... so we have 173 true positives, but 450 people were arrested.

I guess the 277 wrongfully arrested ones may have an opinion different from yours.

<comment><USER2> That assumes that both numbers are for the same period and that each arrest correspond to 1 match, which most likely will not be be true. For example if system identified only subset of people, but when you make arrest you arrest all. That means that now you have more arrest attributed to system, than number of matches.

Since article does not do any attempt to answer these discrepancies, there is high chance the devil is in the details of definitions of those numbers.</comment></comment></comment>


Rivers have filed a lawsuit against Juno for securities fraud - <AUTHOR> https://www.recode.net/2017/6/19/15832238/juno-gett-securities-fraud-drivers-lawsuit <comment><USER2> Title should read Drivers, not Rivers</comment>


Outreach Program For Women—FOSS internships for cis and trans women, and genderqueer - <AUTHOR> http://gnome.org/opw/

<comment><USER2> It's fantastic to see such prolific and powerful organizations be so inclusive. A+.

<comment><USER3> I approve and support this effort. But the word 'inclusive' is a reach, when their target is actually a fraction of humanity. Yes, a normally-excluded fraction but the word 'inclusive' means something, and it doesn't mean this.

\--- Grammar Police

<comment><USER2> "containing (a specified element) as part of a whole.".

Checks out.

<comment><USER3> In the vaguest sense. But as an adjective with no modifier, it implies "of everyone". Does that seem appropriate here?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


99 bottles of beer - <AUTHOR> http://www.99-bottles-of-beer.net/

<comment><USER2> The discussion of the java version is neat:

<http://www.99-bottles-of-beer.net/language-java-3.html>

In the red corner: People who want short code.

In the blue corner: People want to to see "true" OOP.

Personally, as an example of java code, I think its better to do something like this than to just have the simple for loop. It turns the site from something stupid about beer to a demonstration of what each language can do (assuming each program is written in the "correct" way for that language).

<comment><USER3> When I read that the first time, I assumed the comments defending the Java version were trolling. Exactly the kind of sarcastic humour you may find here. Now you've introduced the possibility that they're actually serious, and a little piece of me is dying inside...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have also contributed my Progress/OpenEdge version of a 99-bottles program. I was really surprised to be the first one to submit on in Progress, while there was already a malbolge version O_o. I love browsing through that site, just finding new (mostly esotheric) programming languages that I have never heard of before. It made me program a 'fizzbuzz' program in BeFunge. Not the most usefull thing, but actually very fun to do :)</comment>


Experimental Australian scheme to eradicate long-term homelessness - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/apr/30/experimental-victorian-scheme-could-virtually-eradicate-homelessness

<comment><USER3> The reason this worked is because 1) the charity took the time to do economic modelling that shows the actual benefit to government in dollars, and 2) the scenario is actually tractable to this sort of modelling.

There are a lot of nonprofits out there that can't get funding because their benefits are difficult to quantify, or because their benefits are too diffused and doesn't impact government bottom line directly.

<comment><USER4> Also they seemed to have avoided the corruption that is rampant in social services. My town tried something very similar to this, starting off with a new apartment building for the "chronically homeless" which very curiously was constructed at a per-square-foot cost about 4x market averages.

<comment><USER5> I wonder how many of these people use Dan Pallotta's 2013 TED Talk to rationalize their own corruption.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > After three years, researchers found that 75% of the Journey to Social > Inclusion participants were still in stable housing, compared with 58% of > the other group.

The analyzing-results link is the fulltext, for those who missed it: [https://www.sacredheartmission.org/sites/default/files/publi...](https://www.sacredheartmission.org/sites/default/files/publication- documents/j2si_sustaining_exits_from_longterm_homelessness_2015.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER7> It's great to hear this turned into a win-win. A high rate of the homeless people in the program remained in stable housing after 3 years and modelling show that the program helps the government save money by investing in homeless people rather than dealing with them with police and medical services.

</comment><comment><USER8> This mirrors some of the results of the Housing First program in the US - <USER2> similar elsewhere: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_First](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_First)

There are quite a few analyses of the results in Utah, which saw a substantial reduction in homelessness.

</comment><comment><USER9> So we go from 58% being non-homeless to 75% being non-homeless in return for spending a lot of money on them?

Somehow that doesn't seem like a lot. I would have expected the original number to be much smaller.

It will be interesting to see how this works out in the long term, as well as a way to focus on the 17% who benefitted from the program.

<comment><USER10> > Over 10 years the government will save $1.32 for every $1 invested for > fuller support for the chronically homeless, Sacred Heart Mission estimates

32% return on investment sounds like a lot to me.

<comment><USER11> That's an estimated 2.8% annually for a high-risk investment. It doesn't really make financial sense.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure how you're coming up with "2.8% annually". This is an ongoing effort, not a one-time investment; the local government is spending money every year, and _each year_ they estimate they're saving $1.32 for every dollar they spend.

<comment><USER13> 1.32^(1/10)-1

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> They had great results, it seems, but the headline is misleading. Homelessness was not eradicated.

<comment><USER15> "Scheme to eradicate" means that eradication was the goal, doesn't mean that the scheme was successful.

<comment><USER16> The subject is ambiguous since headlines often use "to" in place of "is to" (as in "Smith to resign").

<comment><USER15> You're right.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Having a Baby Made Me a Better Entrepreneur - <AUTHOR> https://www.groovehq.com/blog/being-a-founder-and-a-father <comment><USER2> Now I have about 3 hours less time each day. The time had to come from somewhere, mostly meaning less time with video games and Reddit. Turns out playing with your own baby is a lot of fun, so it's not an unpleasant trade.

Before I could afford to be more wasteful with time, now I'm one of those people planning their lives into weekly calendars, just to make sure I make the time to progress in life goals too.</comment>


Ask HN: Can You Tweet From Australia? - <AUTHOR>

I'm visiting Australia/New Zealand over the next six weeks and I've gotten a loaner GSM phone from travel cell to use while I'm there.<p>Is there an easy way to tweet from there? The only thing I could find on the web was SMS'ing to some 13-digit number. Is that the way it's done? If so, is this a long distance number and would incur some kind of special charge?<p>(see http://help.twitter.com/forums/59008/entries/14014) <comment><USER2> I think they have Internet there, too. SCNR.

</comment><comment><USER3> Long distance sms is a bit more expensive than 'local', but it works ok (I use it for pages from the US to alert me of server troubles).

It gets _really_ expensive when you send or receive using your regular phone abroad (roaming).</comment>


HashTest – Realtime Hashtag Testing – Chrome Web Store - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hashtest-realtime-hashtag/nehbfkpdfnkmjmlpkiajkbdkbcfhahbn?authUser=0&hl=en-US <comment><AUTHOR> This was my first -- and only -- Chrome extension that I ever wrote (I'm not a developer). And yes, I realize it's essentially just a simple iframe popup lol ... still, I'm pretty excited that after ~ 2 years, a blogger (Neil Patel) discovered it (#2 in his list @ [https://neilpatel.com/blog/google-chrome- extensions-marketin...](https://neilpatel.com/blog/google-chrome-extensions- marketing/)) and it's suddenly seeing a spike in installs! Woohoo! :)</comment>