Robert Morris: All About Programming - <AUTHOR> http://paulgraham.com/aap.html <comment><USER2> > My father tried to interest me in programming somewhat before high school; > it didn't work, and I didn't continue then.

I suspect, that it almost never works that way. Learning programming or hacking as a child is all about figuring it out on your own, doing something, what your parents or your teachers can not understand, defining your own identity.

That is why I doubt that all the programs in the US, which try to teach children programming, will work. They might teach some concepts, but in the end i fear, that they will hinder the children to aspire a career in the field. I see a bad parallel to beauty contests, were parents try to live their dreams through their children.

Of course it is never black and white, but I think you have to be ultra careful with stuff like this. I think naturally interesting, open platforms are a better way to get children to dig deeper. Minecraft is a perfect example.

<comment><USER3> My mom taught me programming as a 6 year old almost 25 years ago. I went on to study it at college night school from 10 to 14 and held a job before graduating high school programming ASP, JS, and MS SQL.

Sometimes parents can teach their children things _and_ have it stick.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, not everything involving generations is so myopic. My kids, 7 and 4, are absolutely entranced by computers and love to sit down at our old-school 8-bit battlestation and bash things out. The elder has figured out how to do his maths homework on it, and the younger has become an expert at loading files and running them. None of this would be possible if I hadn't encouraged them to investigate computers by setting up the battlestation in the first place .. I think the key to getting kids interested in programming is to understanding cyclomatic complexity in the first place, and not introducing them to things that will overwhelm their interest. In the case of our 8-bit machines, which are still fully functional programming devices, we seem to have met the sweet spot .. lets see if in a couple of years we upgrade them to a Linux box and compilers and so on. I'm fairly confident this will happen .. at least in the case of the 4 year old, whose affinity for the subject seems to be being amplified by observing daily his elder brothers' competence and confidence as they discover - together - new things.

<comment><USER5> I will be very interested if one day you write about it. How you "designed" the right battlestation (not too hard, but still challenging enough for their age), and how you get them interested while avoiding not to over push them.

Really cool!

<comment><USER4> Actually I didn't have to do much beyond setting up the machines (in our case an Oric-1/Atmos) and getting the means together to load the old software archives on it.. once that was ready and booted, the kids just took over. It turns out that 8-bit computing is really accessible to little kids, just like it was for me in the 80's, and while that may have changed with the current generation: the old machines still live!

;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Not wanting to look like a loser to the people I most admired, I was pretty late in admitting the obvious about math."

Don't understand this part, what's the obvious thing about math he was late in admitting? Were the Bell labs people right in his opinion or not?

<comment><USER7> I think he means the Bell Labs people were wrong, i.e Robert Morris did not enjoy math, for him it was about the programming. He later mentions that it was tough keeping in touch with the people at bell labs after ignoring their advice about math.

I THINK. You're right, it's a bit unclear.

<comment><USER8> This was my interpretation as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Took me a couple of minutes to figure who Robert Morris was so to save others the effort:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Tappan_Morris](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Tappan_Morris)

<comment><USER10> I just finished reading The Cuckoo's Egg by Cliff Stoll this morning (And I highly recommend it!). In the Epilogue, Stoll writes about the Morris worm and briefly mentions:

(Harvard student Paul Graham sent him mail asking for "Any news on the brilliant project")

When I read that, I wondered if that was THE Paul Graham.

<comment><USER11> Seconding this recommendation. I found a copy, used, at random for 50c. FIFTY CENTS. Easily the greatest enjoyment/price ratio of anything I own.

Have you read his later book, /Silicon Snake Oil/? It's interesting how wrong he ended up being about a lot of things.

<comment><USER12> Dead wrong about e-commerce and eBooks and good number of other things to boot.

On the other hand: "The truth is no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.""

He's _partially_ wrong -- we have online newspapers, online education resources that are better than nothing, and some political action via web- shared activity.

But in spirit, anybody who's been paying attention to journalism is worried about whether we even care to subsidize a healthy fifth estate anymore (or just want more listicles and cable news), even Khan Academy isn't a substitute for a competent teacher, and politics is still driven by the overriding incentives and foibles of human nature.

Some of our new tools/resources are making a bigger difference than others; some are just cosmetic changes.

<comment><USER13> Stoll has written a lovely 2010 mea culpa:

[http://boingboing.net/2010/02/26/curmudgeony-essay- on.html#c...](http://boingboing.net/2010/02/26/curmudgeony-essay- on.html#comment-723356)

Quoting:

"Of my many mistakes, flubs, and howlers, few have been as public as my 1995 howler.

Wrong? Yep.

At the time, I was trying to speak against the tide of futuristic commentary on how The Internet Will Solve Our Problems.

Gives me pause. Most of my screwups have had limited publicity: Forgetting my lines in my 4th grade play. Misidentifying a Gilbert and Sullivan song while suddenly drafted to fill in as announcer on a classical radio station. Wasting a week hunting for planets interior to Mercury's orbit using an infrared system with a noise level so high that it couldn't possibly detect 'em. Heck – trying to dry my sneakers in a microwave oven (a quarter century later, there's still a smudge on the kitchen ceiling)

And, as I've laughed at others' foibles, I think back to some of my own cringeworthy contributions.

Now, whenever I think I know what's happening, I temper my thoughts: Might be wrong, Cliff…

Warm cheers to all,

-Cliff Stoll on a rainy Friday afternoon in Oakland"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can someone translate?

Might be some good wisdom in there but that is the most convoluted, badly written several paragraphs I've seen in a while. Maybe they're taken out of context or something or assume some knowledge that is missing?

<comment><USER15> In sum, he never saw programming as work. Graham wrote that if you feel that what you do is not "work", then it indicates that what you do is a good career choice. But Morris says that even if someone explained it to him, he wouldn't have been able to grasp it back then. It took him a long time to realize that programming was more important to him than math, because of social pressure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I stayed away from pursuing programming as a vocation for almost 15 years.

I intuitively knew as a child that there were parts of programming and using computers which "weren't work" for me, but also very much ones that were, and I foresaw the probability that I might cease to enjoy the "not work" parts after being ground down by too much work.

As I come back to it now, I still think that. Increasingly I think it really, genuinely, depends on the style and language of programming you take up, and what you do with it. When I code in something like Lisp or Haskell, it doesn't feel like "work," it feels like problem solving. I tend to focus on CS topics as well; I built a VM, and a couple of programming languages, because they too were fun to think about, not work.

For me, I have progressively gravitated to more and more expressive languages, while moving away from more imperative ones which descend into repetitive "design patterns". I burned out quickly on the world of web programming, which inherently seems to require a whole lot of tedious yak shaving if you're flying solo.

Of course, the flipside which anyone bothering to read this may already be hastening to chastise me with is that none of this is likely to necessarily lead to actual employment.

Someone has to do the "work." And the amount of "work" to be done is a lot greater than there are people who don't find it work, which is why there will always be a lot more demand for that. In part I suspect this is because some kinds of "work" are self-replicating (Java programming begets the need for more Java programmers ...), but I nonetheless find myself fearing that my chosen "not work" is merely a fool's fantasy; and I occasionally have guilt complexes about "why am I not just learning JavaScript so I can at least get a gruntwork job at Rovio or somewhere" ...

<comment><USER17> I took a major pay cut so I wouldn't have to work with certain popular commercial languages ever again, and now enjoy working in a small studio where we create DSLs in Scheme. Every week I discover something new about Lisp and then use it on independent hobby projects, whereas before I didn't even want to look at a computer after work.

<comment><USER18> If you don't mind offering up the information, where do you work? Or at the very least, what field do you work in? That sounds extremely fun.

<comment><USER17> Small stealth mode startup in Vancouver, Canada that does custom DSLs for the oil & gas industry. I found the job on my local CL, they were advertising looking for anybody who had read SICP, or had experience doing functional programming. It doesn't pay a lot but enough to live comfortably while single plus I get to hack around in Scheme all day, though now they want me to learn Haskell too.

I work 6hrs a day usually and spend the rest of time experimenting with my own DSLs for future side projects or enjoying life whereas before I'd go to work before the sun came up, work in a windowless office under constant unachievable deadlines then leave at night. I had money but no life.

<comment><USER19> A job for the oil & gas industry which requires SICP level coders which doesn't pay well? I'm not sure what to think - that that industry really doesn't pay well, or that you need to read patio11's guide to salary negotiations.

<comment><USER20> He explains that he's happy and says he lives comfortably. Why is that not enough?

<comment><USER19> Because if he's making a below-market salary as it sounds like, he could be doing better. With a higher salary, he could have more savings, more security, more easily afford a family or the things he wants, donate more to charity, spend more on personal hobbies, etc. Money has many uses.

And I could ask you the same question: the startup founders and oil industry would live comfortably enough if they made a little less and paid him better; why is that not enough? Why should they be making more?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> _> The idea that one should ask questions about one's own life (e.g. your "What seems like work...?") and act on the answers was completely alien to me in those days, and I doubt I could have absorbed any wisdom in this department._

That resonates deeply with me. Until my early 20s, I was terrible at absorbing any form of wisdom from anyone. I just went ahead forward into whatever interested me, with no regard for what anyone would have to say about it. I was fortunate enough to be born with a brain that worked fairly well and allowed me to get away with this behavior for the longest time.

It is for this reason that I consider my time in grad school as mostly a failure - I joined at 19 as a PhD student and left 2 years later with a Master's degree, leaving the PhD for startups, and in those 2 years I didn't achieve anything that I'd consider interesting work (completely by my own fault). Even worse, my immaturity resulted in me making very little of the absolutely brilliant advisor I had (the perfect combo: a researcher whose early work pioneered a new field and gave him enormous peer recognition, but who was still early enough in his career that he had plenty of time to devote to his students), who had high hopes for me that ended up completely unfulfilled.

It was only after a few years of working in the real world with some very smart (and some very dumb) people, getting yelled at, seeing friends get fired (I never got fired myself although I came close a few times), and a few other similar experiences that I realized that indeed my life would be much improved if I stopped and recognized that some people do have words of wisdom that hold value for me. Psychedelics and traveling the world+meeting people who had it way worse than me yet achieved way more with what they had also contributed significantly to my maturing - the rewards of it being that I now am starting to enjoy an amount of success, clarity, and reward in my work that would have been unconceivable 6 years ago (although it still feels like most of the road is ahead, as it should).

For those reasons, it feels like advice such as the one given by PG is lost: the people who need it most won't really get the importance of what he means, and the people who will get it can do so because they've already internalized it.

All that being said, I look forward to 5 years from now, when I will say things about my mid-20s similar to what I just said about my early 20s :)

<comment><USER22> I advice you to stay away from the psychedelics. Trust me, this is an advice you can't afford not to believe until it is too late.

<comment><USER23> You've clearly been burned. That's fine, but tell us your story rather than giving some vague advice devoid of context.

<comment><USER24> My friend's mental health was seriously and irreversibly damaged by a one time adventure with psychedelics... Apparenty, non-negligible (over 1%?) portion of the population reacts this way.

<comment><USER25> I know a kid whose throat swelled up, couldn't breathe for several minutes, and suffered brain damage after a one time incident of eating peanuts... Apparently, non-negligible (over 1% [1]) portion of the population reacts this way.

Lesson for everybody: Don't eat nuts!

[1] [http://www.mountsinai.org/about-us/newsroom/press- releases/r...](http://www.mountsinai.org/about-us/newsroom/press- releases/rate-of-childhood-peanut-allergies-more-than-tripled- between-1997-and-2008)

Your argument against psychedelics is not persuasive in the manner presented.

<comment><USER24> It depends on how much risk averse you are - I know that, for me, trying out psychedelics is not worth the 1% risk of going into psychotic breakdown, being admitted to psychiatric ward or even messing myself up permanently. For others it might be worth it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is one of those places where I've been really conflicted for as long as I've been back with programming.

Right now, I'm going with the path that not only makes more money(and thusly induces less stress), but also has a higher probability of making people's lives better, through the kinds of things I want to put my time and effort into being focused around enabling people to create their own jobs.

Yet I know __extremely __well what I want to do, what makes me happy. It will make some others happy, but a significantly smaller number. It certainly won 't change lives for the better. But doing it would make it so the things I think about in the margins of my mind, all day and night, for as long as I can remember, are what I spend my life working on.

In essence: I can't tell if it's a better idea to do what makes me happy, or what makes others' lives better.

<comment><USER27> Given that money has a time value, it makes sense to do the latter in your early years and gradually tilt the balance towards the former.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> typo: absorbtion should be absorption</comment>


Moscow Cops Sell Access to City CCTV, Facial Recognition Data - Crypt0-5haman https://sritutorials.com/moscow-cops-sell-access-to-city-cctv-facial-recognition-data/ <comment> Crypt0-5haman Text From The Article...

Anyone with a little money can buy access to Moscow's surveillance system of tens of thousands of cameras along and check footage stored over the previous five days.

Sellers on forums and messenger groups that trade illegal data also provide facial recognition lookup services.

City-wide surveillance To ensure safety in the city, there are over 175,000 CCTV cameras in Moscow, most of them installed at entrances and more than 4,000 present in crowded places.

Back in 2017, the mayor's office in Moscow stated that facial recognition technology integrated with Russia's police databases had been activated and it was pulling data from 3,000 cameras.

The plan was to link the rest of the video surveillance to the facial recognition system.

"Restricted" access Investigative media outlet MBKh Media found that access to this technology and the live streams is being sold on underground forums and chat rooms.

Andrey Kaganskikh, the journalist that did the investigation says that the sellers are law enforcement individuals as well as government bureaucrats that can log into the Integrated Center for Data Processing and Storage (YTKD), the very system that keeps the data from cameras in Moscow.

Whoever wants to check the live stream from a camera receives a unique link to the City CCTV System that connects to all public cameras in Moscow. The URL works for five days, Kaganskikh says.

Furthermore, government officials or police officers sell their login credentials to the system to provide unlimited access to all cameras. The price of admission is 30,000 rubles ($470), according to Kaganskikh.

"We managed to find the cameras from the file at the indicated addresses – their angles coincided with the pictures, the camera indices and the camera indices from the open registry also coincided" – Andrey Kaganskikh

CONTINUE READING THE ARTICLE via LINK provided</comment>


Sandra Bland arrest video has continuity problems, anomalies - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-sandra-bland-footage-20150721-htmlstory.html <comment><USER2> Nothing about this adds up. The video is flawed during both the arrest and around the time of death. Given her activities, saying this warrants further investigation is a gross understatement.

The willingness of police to label death a suicide never ceases to amaze me. I was on the beach down in Florida a few years ago and found a dead girl with her hands tied. Cops showed up and immediately assumed suicide. Turns out she had drug issues and had a history to support the assumption, but no reasonable person would approach a situation like that with such strong priors.

I'm not saying every crime scene is out of a Hollywood movie with a serial killer lurking in the shadows, but I would have really liked to see zero prior beliefs at that point. I'd sleep better knowing the people out there in charge of "serving and protecting" the general public viewed their occupation as a search for truth rather than some perverse version of The Office with guns.

<comment><USER3> What doesn't add up about the video? She was argumentative from the very beginning, refused to follow an order to get out the vehicle (right or wrong, you have to if stopped in a traffic violation in Texas), and then escalates the situation to the end with physical and verbal combative behavior.

And the story is that because the shitty quality video _long after the main event happens_ has a few frames messed-up - which more than likely originates from technical issues - that this proves that there is something being covered up.

<comment><USER4> Wrong. The video was clearly edited:

[http://bennorton.com/dashcam-video-of-violent-arrest-of- sand...](http://bennorton.com/dashcam-video-of-violent-arrest-of-sandra-bland- was-edited/)

<comment><USER5> I watched the video too.

If someone edited the video, why did they choose to make their cuts at times where cars or people are in scene? They would have gone unnoticed had they occurred a few seconds earlier. Who would be so stupid?

<comment><USER4> I suspect it's something akin to risking a tampering with evidence charge by hiding a body.

<comment><USER5> I'm not asking why they might want to tamper with evidence. The motive for doing so is obvious. I'm asking why, if they did decide to tamper with evidence, did they do such a bad job of it? If they were already editing the video, why didn't they make their edits at times where they wouldn't be obvious?

<comment><USER6> That's obvious right? Perhaps the frames that needed to be edited out weren't conveniently conducive to a seamless end product. And, editing out too much wasn't an option for obvious reasons.

But, as another commenter stated, we can't know the answer until we know what the original video holds.

Interestingly, if they then release the full video which shows nothing, then suspicions around the overall case will presumably be calmed. That would make me wonder if it was an intentional red herring to engender more trust and reduce suspicion around her eventual death. After all, why else release obviously edited video that would raise suspicion only to later quell it with unedited footage that was always available?

<comment><USER7> > Interestingly, if they then release the full video which shows nothing, then > suspicion's around the overall case will presumably be calmed.

Sadly their actions have created suspicion. Further releases of video will be doubted by a wide range of people, from calm but cautious scrutineers to rabid conspiracy theorists.

Truth doesn't matter at that point.

<comment><USER6> Absolutely. OTOH, the far weightier suspicion is around the eventual death of Ms. Bland. An effective PR strategy might be to do something relatively ancillary that heightens the overall degree of suspicion. You then unequivocally address the ancillary issue (i.e. by rleasing the full video), which has the effect of reducing suspicion overall, including on the far weightier issue. That is, people think "Hey, maybe these guys aren't so bad. Maybe we are just jumping the gun".

Not saying this is happening. But, if the full video suddenly comes out and is "all-clear", then the police department will certainly receive that benefit, whether intentional or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> While it is never a bright idea, it is certainly not illegal to be rude to a police officer. Assaulting them certainly is but no-one is claiming that in this case.

What this is, is an ultra-common case of yet another cop "escalating everything always" because there is no downside for them to do so. They do it because they can, because they are taught power and control over people is everything and the slightest challenge should be met with extreme force.

She should have never have been ordered to get out of the car, so this was a false arrest.

<comment><USER9> As an aside, in the UK being rude as in using offensive language directed towards them twice is illegal and I think classed as assault.

<comment><USER10> There's section 5 of the public order act which is about saying / doing things "likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress" to the public, which has been interpreted as including police officers. I don't know anything about having to say things twice or it being classed as assault.

<comment><USER11> There was a 2011 ruling in England where the judge said that officers were so regularly on the receiving end of the "rather commonplace" expletive that it was unlikely to cause them "harassment, alarm or distress".

The Met continues to arrest people for swearing at police as they rejected the ruling. I know that Police Scotland continue to arrest people for swearing at police but I'm not sure how/if it has affected forces in England and Wales. At the time it was reported that the precedent could likely quash any future charges in similar circumstances.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The third video shows cars disappearing. It looks like they want to hide something. I see several episodes where nothing happens, no cars and no people in view. Why not copy those moments? Or is this done on purpose by an editor who cannot disobey an order (to make parts of the video disappear), but can sabotage the result by playing stupid?

<comment><USER13> Never put down to malice something that can be attributed to stupidity or bugs.

Far more likely the recording software is crappy and sometimes skips back a second or two.

The problem is whatever they released, people would start picking apart and launching conspiracy theories about.

<comment><USER14> If this is the case right then there should be tons of other video where this happens. It happens what 5 or 6 times in one video?

<comment><USER15> Exactly, also, if this were the case, it implies that every other dash camera of the same make is unsuitable for use as evidence & not fit for purpose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There are some evidence recording systems that are supposed to be tamper- proof. So the video while being recorded is digitally signed, and then the officer's recording system uploads it securely to the police servers when back at the station. This is to maintain a complete chain-of-custody, so that when used as evidence in court, it can't easily be dismissed or disregarded.

This one... is apparently not? What's going on here?

<comment><USER17> Don't worry. The camera was just malfunctioning!

<comment><USER18> Did you read the parent comment? What does tamper-proof mean to you?

It's digitally signed and then the officer's recording system uploads it securely to the police servers when back at the station. This is all to maintain a complete chain-of-custody, so when used as evidence in court it can't be easily dismissed or disregarded by the criminal's attorney.

It can't be edited because there wouldn't be a digital signature!!!?

Cameras will malfunction but not like you're saying they will.

<comment><USER19> Relax, he made an joke!

<comment><USER20> This joke has spawned a large monitor's worth of discussion, none of which is really contributing to the conversation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> So lets look at what we have in terms of video / audio.

1)Repeated unimportant segments of video.

2)A fairly good sounding audio track.

3)An audio track which is not the same length of the video track.

4)The video issues do not start happening till over 20 minutes into the uploaded video, and then happen at multiple times over the next 15 minutes.

What can we conclude about the video? Well I can't conclude anything, but I sure get a lot of questions.

Could this be an issue with the recording of the video stream? I don't know seems like we might have some experts here on video recording equipment here that might be able to say if this is a type of problem that is even possible, maybe even some with knowledge of the type of equipment used in police dash cams.

Has anyone seen anything like this 'just happen' in digital video before? I haven't but my experience is limited. Anyone else?

Why is the audio OK but the video is bad? Well audio and video could be recorded separately, and if they weren't they are not hard to separate, and audio is much easier to edit.

Could the video of been edited? Well sure it was probably at least cut for upload. If it was edited the editor really sucked.

If the video was edited, why would the video be edited? Maybe it was cut to remove something that happened in one of the frames somewhere during one of the repeats. Maybe the audio was edited too and it was edited to more closely match the audio length (matching just as well as the video was edited). Maybe someone started editing the video to hide something in a missing segment and didn't finish or get to the audio before it was uploaded.

What other things besides editing and recording failure could explain the video issue? I don't know.

Do we have any experts here who given the available youtube video on the Texas Department of Public Safetys youtube page could do analysis on a more in depth level than watching it? I don't know but I think this question is why I see this belonging on Hacker News.

<comment><USER8> They are now claiming there were technical issues uploading it and are going to re-post it corrected.

This is plausible.

But is this quote really from the video or someone's imagination?

If it is true, holy hell:

         "Why are you arresting me?"

         "Because you know your rights."
         "Because I can."
         "Because no one'll believe you."

<comment><USER22> No. No, no, no! We do not live in a universe where "issues uploading" a video results in edits to that video. That explanation is _immeasurably_ implausible.

Is sharing doctored evidence with the media a crime itself, or is it only a crime if that evidence is used in court? Sure, the are free to only share a subset because of privacy etc., but purposefully misleading?

<comment><USER23> When that uploading includes recoding and other processing, it's plausible.

This video is probably encoded 2-3 times. The first time it is digitized in the camera. The cops might have recoded after taking it off the camera. And then youtube.

This is some low budget police department whose IT department is probably a secretary who happened to have a PC at her house in 1993 when the spot was created.

Warez scene release come with errors with regularity and those guys release stuff all the time and know what they are doing.

<comment><USER24> > Warez scene release come with errors with regularity and those guys release > stuff all the time and know what they are doing.

That's because they are _supposed_ to make edits (cutting out the commercial breaks, for instance), the errors happen because the edits are done hastily, in order to release first.

The police isn't supposed to edit or tamper with the video _at all_ , and I can't imagine any way edits like this (missing bits and looping) can just _appear_ by accident or technical error. The only edit I can imagine to happen by accident is an interrupted upload/transfer, which would cause the video to be truncated at some point, all the way to the end. It can't just leave parts out in the middle or loop certain bits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Edits in the middle should've been in NFO. Runtime is short. Good effort w/ the source. For a cam A3/V3.

<comment><USER25> NUKED - reason: stolen from P2P

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I bought two cheap dash cams from Amazon. They shipped from China. They were 14.99 each. You get a cam, suction cup, and cig. Lighter plug. I bought two because I keep one in the in the car in case one breaks.(you need to buy a sd card). It's been a year, and no pullovers? The cam is holding up just fine. It loops. You will forget it's there. It goes on when you start the car. It will stay on when the officer tells you to turn off the vehicle.(need to program it though).

Cops have stopped pulling me over for no reason. Before the cam, I was getting pulled over for driving an old car, or I was driving between 10 p.m. - 2:30 a.m.? I wish I had these cams when I was younger. Could have saved a lot of pointless questions, and aggravation?

I'm a white guy who's been pulled over so many times for no reason--I lost count; I can't imagine what minorites have to go through? We should be able to drive without that constant fear of harassment. Harrasement is being pulled over for made up reasons? Cams have helped in my world. They have worked so well, I thinking about mounting a rear cam? "See them coming and going?" Sorry, if I sound jaded, but I live in a low crime area. Cops have become revenue collects here.

<comment><USER27> > I live in a low crime area

> I'm a white guy who's been pulled over so many times for no reason

Is there a correlation here?

Where I'm from you don't get pulled over for anything. The roads are a free- for-all wild west: taxis stop in the middle of the road in front of you for no reason. So many people die on the road every year. If you do get pulled over for a misdemeanor there is a good chance you can talk or bribe your way out of it and carry on with your reckless driving.

I would happily take a ticket for failing to indicate.

That is different from racial profiling and hate crimes. Don't confuse hard working cops doing their job with idiots with badges and guns.

<comment><USER28> Since you didn't indicate where you're actually from, I'm not sure what to make of your anecdotes. I'm from a small town in Indiana that has/had very little actual crime and yet a relatively large police force. When I was a minor I was harassed multiple times by police for violating curfew. Took a few rides in a cop car for nothing other than being out past 11pm. In 2004, some of Indiana's curfew laws were struck down by the federal supreme court, but that didn't stop the bastards, and new laws keep coming. Have a look at the mess here:

[http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/tag/curfew](http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/tag/curfew)

Having been on the receiving end of (just a little) police harassment, it's very easy to see how aggressive policing has led to tragedies like this one and countless others. Cops deal with a lot of bad characters, but it seems they're too often looking for trouble when they harass people like this.

<comment><USER27> > I'm not sure what to make of your anecdotes

3rd world. It would be pointless to divulge more because: people would have a hard time believing it, it would detract from what happened to Sandra and it's quite off-topic. The core of the point is that there are good cops and bad cops.

> I was harassed multiple times by police for violating curfew.

There's a line. Harassment/your experience is firmly on the wrong side of the line. Being kindly escorted home during a lawful curfew is not the wrong side of the line. I'd happily oblige to the later: the cop is just doing his job.

What I'm really trying to say is: the American police force seems so have a bunch of bad apples, however, you _really_ don't want to tie the hands of the good apples.

<comment><USER29> I don't know why you can't just say that you are from South Africa.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Has anyone here been pulled over for failing to signal a lane change?

<comment><USER16> Look up the term "driving while black", though it happens to other groups too.

<comment><USER31> This certainly wasn't the case here and it a great many cases the officer won't be able to discern the race of driver until stopped. Now there may be some truth to the matter of what happens after a stop.

As for the pull over, out of state tags and not signaling when a cop is coming up on you just makes you a good choice to pull over.

<comment><USER32> Given the fact that the officer made a u-turn in order to speedily follow her car way _before_ the "failure to signal" happened, it seems to me watching the video without pretty much any context, that the lane change was merely an excuse to pull her over.

Any police officers knows if they really need such an excuse, they just need to follow a given car for a few minutes: it's guaranteed _something_ will happen which justifies the traffic stop.

<comment><USER33> > Any police officers knows if they really need such an excuse, they just need > to follow a given car for a few minutes

And the worst thing is they tail you when they follow you, making you nervous and more likely to make a mistake. That's also what the officer did here.

<comment><USER34> Tailgating is illegal (at least, here in the UK) precisely because it is so dangerous, for many reasons including the one you point out. Of course, that doesn't apply to officers of the law.

<comment><USER33> Illegal here in the US as well. Doesn't stop cops though. Seriously, this must be standard operating procedure for cops, happens to me all the time (and I'm white, fwiw). It usually doesn't result in me getting pulled over, but it's nerve-racking. Which I imagine is intended...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> At what point are video and sound getting out of sync?

At 12:50 the policeman slams shut the door of her car and it is in sync with the audio.

At 25:55 the same door gots slammed, but no sound is to be heard. Maybe because the policeman is carrying the microphone? Is he that far away?

At about 48:00 the door of another car gets slammed. Its clearly on the audio, but about 1 second too early.

</comment><comment><USER36> If an officer says "Get out of the car please." You can ask if it's a question or an order.

If it's an order, get out of the car. White, black, asian, or hispanic, once that order is given, you're getting out of the car one way or another.

If you really think the order was given unlawfully, take it to court where these things can be debated.

<comment><USER37> You are 100x more likely to end the encounter in your favor if you do as the officer says.

Do not, under any circumstance, make the officer feel uncomfortable. If you play nice, so will they. Always respect/practice the 4th.

<comment><USER38> So you really think that all of the people recently murdered by police officers would be fine if they had just "behaved"?

<comment><USER39> All? No. He never said all, and that's an unfair way you're phrasing the argument. You're deliberately setting it up so that anyone who disagrees with you is immediately painted as blaming the victim. That's not what this discussion is about and you know it, so shame on you. He said you're more likely to. But in some cases, the situation could have been improved to the point where the outcome could have been completely different if the person had complied with the officer. I'm not saying the cop was right in any of the cases, but if I see a semi truck barreling down the freeway into oncoming traffic... I have the right-of-way because I'm in the correct lane, but you'd better believe I'm going to get out of that truck's way. Because absolute best case result there is that I will die a quick and painless death.

I was in Madison WI when Tony Robinson was killed and saw some of the protests against the police. It was interesting to me that the spirit of the protests weren't harmed by the fact that Tony had assaulted people on the street then tried to kill the police officer responding to the incident.

Sitting in jail innocent and alive is always better in my book than being gunned down in the street by a scared and trigger-happy cop.

<comment><USER38> Shame on me? Bull. Plain and simple. The commenter completely painted the victim in the wrong here. If cops are comparable to semis baring down on the freeway then we need to abolish them completely because they are out of control. And playing nice isn't going to change that.

Sitting in jail innocent and alive should not be the lesser of two evils.

<comment><USER39> Again, you're framing it as a black and white, this or that argument. It's not. Cops abusing their power is wrong. People refusing to follow the orders of police officers is wrong. Arresting someone for contempt of cop is wrong. Resisting arrest is wrong. Driving a semi the wrong way down the road is wrong. Not swerving to avoid the semi is wrong. If an officer wants to arrest you and you start becoming physically violent, you are in the wrong. At that point it doesn't matter that the cop was wrong first, because you're already dead.

Now, if your goal is to become a martyr for your cause, then you've just hit the jackpot. If your goal is to take another breath, to see your loved ones one more time... becoming physically violent with a cop is a really bad idea. Is this the way it should be? No, we shouldn't be afraid of police officers. But for better or worse, this is how it _is_. Your platitudes about "cops are bad, the victim is right" isn't entirely realistic unless the goal is to create more martyrs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Self-driving cars cannot get here soon enough. Police interactions as a result of driver error will be obsolete.

<comment><USER41> True. The police will simply stop your car remotely, or redirect it to wherever they want to interact with you, based on whatever information about you and your driving patterns the car is required to provide to law enforcement.

But yes, legitimate issues with driver error will be a thing of the past.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Instead of teaching kids how to code at school we should teach them law and what police officers are allowed and not allowed to do when pulling you over or showing up on your property, etc.

I have no clue if the cop was right when he said that he has "every right" to ask her to put down her cigarette and step out of her car. Cops pull this shit all the time betting on the fact that citizens have no f-ing idea what they actually can and can't order them to do.

"I will light you up!", just for that this guy deserves to be fired.

<comment><USER23> The problem with teaching this is that is depends highly on the situation. There are not brightline rules that a person can easily understand.

Are you being detained or arrested is not a bright line rule. You can go from one to teh other without anyone saying anything. And the rules for police differ.

I'm a lawyer and I couldn't even begin to tell you the rules for my own state, let a lone some random place in Texas.

Though one bright line rule is that cops can make you get out of your car. That is pretty much their discretion.

<comment><USER42> The fact that you are a lawyer and can't describe the rules is scary. I'm not calling you an idiot, this is a comment on the stupidity of lawmakers if what you say is true.

I find it very scary that we accept a principle such as Ignorantia juris non excusat but don't bother teaching law and make it understandable to common people.

And to be clear, I'm not talking about details to be used during a trial, but just day-to-day interaction with police officer / social services / etc.

Can they really order you out of your car? Do they have to give a reason? Can they enter your home without a warrant? Can they really take your kids if you don't willingly let them in? Are they authorized to ask you about your profession?

They will always use people's ignorance to scare them and force them to comply, but that's the direct road towards a police state.

<comment><USER23> It isn't law makers, it's the common law system. The law isn't just statutes, but also law created by judges over all of US and even English history. Most of the law surrounding traffic stops is created entirely by court rulings.

The big stuff is more clear but there are always exceptions. So no, a cop can't just enter your house without a weapon. EXCEPT: if they are in hot pursuit of a criminal; as part of a legal arrest; to save someones life; etc. But each of those rules has wrinkles that local courts have rules on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> What, no timecode? Has it been removed?

</comment><comment><USER44> The implication here seems to be that the dashcam video was re-edited before being released to the public.

If true, oddly enough, I'm not sure a crime was committed, although it sure feels like somebody should go to jail. But I am not sure. Is there a law that says that everything the police releases to the media concerning possible court cases must be the same evidence that will be presented at trial? Or are they free to spin and edit things however they like? I believe they are.

Assuming this line of reasoning, the LAT may have jumped the gun by releasing the story when it did. It would have been much more interesting to have let the video stand as a Press Release, then see if they tried to use it in court, then run the story. As it is now, we'll never know how that scenario would have turned out.

</comment><comment><USER45> looks like they edited out another 3 minutes... original, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBh3wzXd3vg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBh3wzXd3vg), new one, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaW09Ymr2BA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaW09Ymr2BA)

<comment><USER46> Is the audio the same?

Is it possible the original audio stretched to fill the old "glitched" video?

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Who is accountable? Names. I imagine no one here is for abuse of power. How about use thereof?

</comment><comment><USER48> [https://youtu.be/qEGFaOeUm2A?t=31](https://youtu.be/qEGFaOeUm2A?t=31)

</comment><comment> anti-shill disrepecting a cop....more americans are executed for this crime each year than for any other crime....executed on the spot, in fact...

<comment><USER49> Not sure why you're getting down voted. It might be true given the number of people killed by the police in the US for whatever reason: [http://killedbypolice.net/](http://killedbypolice.net/) and number of people legally executed in the US for various crimes: [http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/execution- list-2015](http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/execution-list-2015)

Some police killings most likely could have been avoided if not for the disrespect given to the police.

<comment><USER50> He's probably getting down voted because his statement does not appear to be even remotely true, at least judging by the data in your first link.

I picked a few at random from the July group, and the closest any came to someone being killed for "disrespecting" the police was a couple of them who were shot for pointing guns at police, which is certainly disrespectful.

I have no idea why _you_ are getting down voted.

<comment><USER49> I don't think that anyone would written in any formal document or non-fringe paper that killing was caused by disrespectful behavior. But I can't imagine that it was no factor in any of the killings.

If you have a group of people that have right to kill someone for legitimate reason you can be sure, I think, that some of them will be less reluctant to exercise this right if they are distressed by disrespect shown towards them by this person.

Take this guy for example (I just read about one at random):

[http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-man-wounded- lapd...](http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-man-wounded-lapd- dies-20150710-story.html)

Unarmed guy who riding skateboard down the street was killed because he didn't obey commands from police and they were unable to subdue him. Technically he was killed for using potentially lethal weapon on police officer. For me if disrespect and police vulnerability towards disrespect wasn't a factor there, the policemen would back off after initial trouble and keep an eye on the guy while waiting for back-up.

<comment><USER51> The Guardian has a pretty good online feature that aggregates the data on police-involved killings. If you look past the sometimes-disingenuous framing and dive right into the data, there are plenty of interesting things to learn.

One of the first things you notice after for instance binning all the deaths for a couple randomly-selected months: the modal circumstance for police- involved fatality in the US is "engage in a confrontation with police with a lethal weapon". This remains the case even after you discard from that bin every story in which the involvement of the weapon is contested. For every case in which the victim's family, friends, or bystanders argue no weapon was involved, there are several --- often 4-5 --- in which the victim was clearly armed; roughly 1:3 knives:firearms.

Really, the modal circumstance for police-involved fatality in the US is "engage in a confrontation with police while illegally armed with a firearm".

It's easy to see why the data would show this but the news narrative wouldn't. People who wave guns at police officers are almost always in some way marginalized: they're mentally ill, and/or already deeply involved in criminality. Those stories are unfortunately not newsworthy. There's a bigtime availability bias involved in analyzing police policy from the news media.

I'm not even saying that's a bad thing. I think the attention being focused on police departments today is an unalloyed good.

The next thing you learn is that we really need to do something about tasers, because if there's a top 3 set of circumstances for death involving police officers, "death after tasing" is at least #3.

<comment><USER52> > The next thing you learn is that we really need to do something about > tasers, because if there's a top 3 set of circumstances for death involving > police officers, "death after tasing" is at least #3.

Since you've looked at the data, could this be survivorship bias? Is there data on how often tasers are used where firearms would've been, in the absence of tasers? It certainly could be that tasers reduce the number of people killed by police, but it sounds hard to measure that.

<comment><USER51> For the past few months of the data, the overwhelming majority of people killed by police tasings appear to have been unarmed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Why is this on HN? How does it relate?

<comment><USER54> I see this question a lot. I think we as a community can decide that by way of votes. The moderation team can also offer second judgement, which it seems to have passed. Liberty and actions of the police seems like a topic many hackers are interested in. The consistent votes on such issues lend credence to this.

<comment><USER34> Quite aside from the fact that hackers are people too and care about all sorts of issues, this article is specifically about the video tape being doctored, so has a technical aspect that could lead off into discussions in several directions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I really, REALLY want the cops to be at fault here, but I just don't know about this one. The sound seems to be mostly intact, unless there is some kind of offset because it does crackle and spit at one point. A lot goes on between the suspect and officer ON camera and I wonder what could've possible happened off camera bad enough to warrant being hidden when what's on the camera is already there. I mean, this guy pulled her out of her car and threw her on the sidewalk because she got a bit snarky over a ticket.

Another concern is the absence of a timestamp. This I'm not as worried about because they probably cropped it out. It's definitely understandable, especially for public-facing video to crop out some of more sensitive metadata like time, officer info, car info, etc. It's not nearly as concerning as the video itself.

Then there is the case of the actual jumps themselves. What makes me doubt is that they aren't just jump cuts, there's some stutter and back and forth motion for each cut, and there's also some video artifacts for each one.

I despise the police, I really do. The very idea of police is repulsive and disturbing, in my opinion. That being said, I think LA Times is definitely suspect here for such a bait-y headline over what looks to be an actual video issue. I mean: "arrest video has continuit problems, anomalies"? No shit, the video is messed up. It also has the entire dialogue between the two leading up to the arrest, it even has a whole other stop from another time!

I just don't see the possibility that they are hiding something, when there is so much on tape already.

<comment><USER56> _I despise the police, I really do. The very idea of police is repulsive and disturbing, in my opinion._

You mean this in an idealistic sense? I was just remembering this morning an old friend who regularly used the word 'pigs' to describe police, and how I found it ridiculous.

And I still do.

How would a world without police be better than the one we have? It wouldn't. It would be a horrendous place where the strong, the violent, the aggressive, triumph over the vulnerable. I honestly can't understand your attitude.

<comment><USER57> _strong, the violent, the aggressive, triumph over the vulnerable_

At their worst, the police can do this.

Police following the Peel principles are a great improvement to society. Many of the US's fragmented matrix of police forces have forgotten them and succumbed to lazy racism and target-driven enforcement.

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

<comment><USER58> The sad thing is that the deterioration of professionalism among police forces has led to the world that paublyrne described. I mean... in practice... for a large number of Americans... it already IS a world where "strong, the violent, the aggressive, triumph over the vulnerable". It's just that the "strong, violent and aggressive" are police, or gangs, or your occasional supremacist. I feel bad for certain demographics in the US... but don't really have any sort of realistic solution for their issues. I just wish it wasn't this way.

<comment><USER57> It is fixable, once people want to fix it. But that generally only happens once the status quo is seen as really unacceptable. Whenever police violence is brought up, at the moment there are plenty of people willing to say "well she deserved it" or "it didn't happen that way". Enough of them need to be brought round or embarrased into silence.

The UK equivalent would be the rebuilding of the Police Service of Northern Ireland to stop it being explicitly sectarian.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Could the dashcam video have been (amateurishly) edited to hide car's plate so that people present on the spot can't be harassed by journalists, etc. ?

</comment><comment><USER60> The video and audio tracks were recorded separately, and the dash cam skipped backwards during playback.

The officer's behavior was deplorable, but I'm not convinced the video was doctored.

<comment><USER57> _dash cam skipped backwards during playback_

How often does this "just happen"? It's not like someone jogging a CD player.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Would it be so hard for her to just do what he asked instead of blowing things up...

I really don't understand the absolute lack of respect some people have for the law and other humans. Is it that hard to be civil?

<comment><USER21> He could also respond to her question about why she should put out her cigarette with out going full Judge Dredd on her.

Also she responded in a way that seemed to be in keeping with her civil rights.

<comment><USER13> He asked her nicely if she could put out her cigarette for his benefit. She in return started ranting about how it was her car etc.

I don't care if she has the right to remain smoking in her car or not. Someone asked kindly for her to put it out, and she went full rant in return.

I'm sure statistically speaking, if someone is a complete asshole and "resists" any attempt to be nice to the police, they're likely to be breaking other laws - carrying drugs, no car insurance, etc etc.

If you get pulled over by the police, starting an argument and forcing them to escalate things isn't the best idea.

<comment><USER61> If you get (illegally) pulled over by the (racist) police, what should you do? Submit to their power trip instead?

Given that there's a lot of questions about the audio in general, I'm not sure how nicely he _really_ asked - the entire veracity of the audio stream is under question here: the video skips around but the audio doesn't. That certainly lends credence to the "he was being nice" argument, except for the part where the "nice" could well have been added in post-processing.

Ultimately, a racist institution staffed by racists most likely murdered a woman whose only crimes were (a) not signaling to pull over _after the officer signaled her to pull over, for some other reason_ , and (b) not being polite to the officer in question.

Until and unless you show me that police deserve politeness, the only reason to be polite to them is "because otherwise they may kill you". That is not only f'd up, it's literally terrorism. As in: these acts make us terrified and we are less likely to resist their authority. So, yeah.

<comment><USER42> " the only reason to be polite to them is "because otherwise they may kill you". "

Spot on. Everyone saying "she should have been nicer" are effectively saying that you should submit to the police or they'll kill you. Nobody is saying "he deserved politeness and she was rude" because it's very obvious that he was not polite to her. "How are you doing? You seem upset?" Well she just got pulled over and is getting a ticket bozo, what do you think?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Having watched the two short videos I really don't see any obvious things they could have hidden there. The audio (which I presume is the important part) appears to keep on going, while a short segment of the video repeats. They also mention in the article that "The audio ends more than a minute before the video images do. "

So to me this just sounds like some small parts of the video got repeated by accident, leading to a slightly "extended" video that becomes out of sync with the audio.

But maybe I'm being too naive here, I don't actually know the backstory of this.

<comment><USER63> Or, as I've read elsewhere, you pad unimportant sections of the video by looping, then cut out a few short important bits, and the overall length is unchanged.

<comment><USER62> But the length is actually increased by about a minute from the sound of it. Unless they also cut some parts of the audio but then forgot to match the length up again, which seems like a really weird mistake to make...</comment></comment></comment>


The Economics of Time and Effort and OpenSource - <AUTHOR> http://www.j5live.com/2009/02/24/the-economics-of-time-and-effort/

<comment><USER2> When we talk about software development, it's easy to spread the value created by the community to all people. What about other spheres of economy (agriculture, for example), it's much more difficult.</comment>


How Many Languages Do Developers Need To Know?  - <AUTHOR> http://readwrite.com/2014/06/17/apple-swift-facebook-hack-google-dart#awesm=~oHw4XHrZcE6yYU <comment><USER2> Seems author is not familiar with Xamarin and C#.</comment>


Feedly pro - available for all - <AUTHOR> http://blog.feedly.com/2013/08/26/feedly-pro-available-for-all/

<comment><USER2> Available for all, at $5 per month you mean. There is a subtle differences between "all" and "all that can pay", isn't it :)</comment>


Why You Need to be in Silicon Valley  - <AUTHOR> http://startupboy.com/2010/01/17/why-you-need-to-be-in-silicon-valley/

<comment><USER2> Tell that to foursquare, tumblr, bit.ly, etsy, gilt, drop.io, aviary, boxee, meetup, gdgt, hunch, betaworks, hot potato, kickstarter, challengepost, etc, etc, etc. All New York startups.

<comment><USER3> Interesting list.

But, if you summed the market caps of all these companies, what would you get?

My guess is $2-5 billion.

Now Google alone is worth ~$200B.

I agree that you can start a really successful Internet company in NYC. I'd say any city in the U.S. would do. However, if you have some pathological urge to build a gigantic Internet company, you absolutely _need_ to be in Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER4> Like Amazon, Microsoft and Activision Blizard?

Being in the valley is definitely a boon, but calling it a _must_ is silly. Those guys combined have a market cap of $343 billion. The other end of the bullshit-spectrum is people pretending that it doesn't make a difference because they don't want to move.

<comment><USER5> Part of the guy's argument (and one I've heard from a few YC founders) is that with all the other odds that are stacked against you in a startup, do you really want to take a chance on location too? If it gives you a few percentage points better chance of success, why not take it? If your startup failed, how would you feel if it was only because you didn't move to Silicon Valley? Tech markets are often winner-take-all - if you're a couple percentage points better than the other guy, you win.

<comment><USER4> That uhm, wasn't _part_ of his argument, that _was_ his argument. And it's a fair one.

That said, all startup successes are statistical anomalies. The implicit irrational assumption is that you can beat the odds. Some companies beat harder odds than others, and being outside the valley does set them up for that.

There are lots of reasons one might not want or be able to move -- visas, family, other attachment to a particular place -- and that just has to become part of the calculation, "This makes it x% more likely that I'm just wasting my time, but I'm still [irrationally] convinced I can beat those odds."

We know that this works because there are examples of it. We also know that it's harder because of how relatively few there are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You can succeed ANYWHERE, just like you can succeed regardless of what college you go to. Silicon Valley is a lot like Harvard in the sense that you afford yourself with the best possible resources (education, peers, network, opportunities,etc.), except it's open to everyone. Why not give yourself the best possible opportunity if you can have it?

<comment><USER7> _Silicon Valley is a lot like Harvard... Why not give yourself the best possible opportunity if you can have it?_

Crikey, you are nearly giving me flashbacks to high school. I was speaking to an admissions officer from Harvard and, after answering his questions about myself, he asked me whether I had a question for him. I asked "Well, you know, I probably have a bit of ability to pick where I go to school. Why should I go to Harvard?" I remember his response _exactly_ : "If you can get into Harvard, why would you go anywhere else?"

That line convinced me not to apply, on the theory I'd have to spend four years of my life with people who thought like that. (Which, come to think of it, is one reason I would not love to live in Silicon Valley.)

<comment><USER8> I see your point, but I don't entirely agree with the analogy; the types of people who think like the admissions officer you quote are influenced a lot by the prestige that comes from saying "I went to Harvard." Saying "I live in Silicon Valley" isn't nearly as impressive to most folks. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Living in Silicon Valley can be advantageous.

Never mistake advantage for necessity.

Startups thrive and wither in the Valley, just as they do anywhere else. Silicon Valley can be a useful card in your hand, but the flop is more important.

<comment><USER6> Pretty much what I was saying above. As a startup, you need to give yourself as many possible advantages as you can. Silicon Valley lets you do that over any other geo, hence why it makes the most sense.

<comment><USER10>
      Silicon Valley lets you do that over any other geo, hence
      why it makes the most sense.

Other things being equal, of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What most distinguishes Silicon Valley from elsewhere is how much easier it is to find investors - not just VC, but angels who are comfortable putting their money into tech startups.

Startups in the Valley are never more than a couple degrees of separation from someone who's made money in tech, or has friends who did. There's a level of comfort with tech startups that doesn't exist elsewhere. Though there may be plenty of rich people in other areas, they don't have the familiarity with tech to risk their money on a startup when they could buy real estate or whatever.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've given this a lot of thought recently, and I _don't_ think you need to be in Silicon Valley. Rather, I think you need to be surrounded by a lively startup community, so that you have opportunities to interact with other startup founders and to learn from each other. The chances of that are much greater in Silicon Valley, but now that there's little pockets of startup activity springing up all around the US (and the world, it seems), it's not a necessity.

</comment><comment><USER13> It's advantageous to be in Silicon Valley if you're going the VC route. If you're going to bootstrap for awhile, SV is quite expensive to live and work in and other cities may actually be a better fit. Agreed though that most other cities outside NY and Boston, and maybe Austin you're going to feel much more isolated.

</comment><comment><USER14> Just think about how much more successful you could have been as an _early adopter_ of Twitter and Nexus One.

<comment><USER15> think about how much more successful you could have been as a _creator_ of Twitter or Nexus One

</comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 Caterina Fake on how there are great engineers everywhere: <http://www.caterina.net/archive/001215.html>

she also touches on some cultural differences between NYC and CA:

 _But what NYC is actually missing is not engineers. In NYC you can find lots of great engineers, visual designers, and great publishers and contributors to social media. But in CA I seem to find far more people with multiple skills - engineers who blog and dabble in design, designers who can do great UI but also great UX, etc. These multidisciplinary people are the ones who hack together brilliant new stuff, can innovate across the board, see various avenues of attack, and are indispensable at startups. It is these hybrid people that we are always looking for at Hunch and for whatever reason find them much more often in CA than NYC._

<comment><USER16> Her article is wrong. NYC actually is missing engineers, or more accurately, missing internet-software-company-potential-employees. There are quantifiably more of these people in the Bay Area than there are in NYC. I don't have any numbers to back this up, but I actually think there are a higher percentage of "jack of all trades" programmers in NYC. In the Bay Area there are enough software engineers so that people can get much more specific about their areas of expertise. In NYC, there are fewer engineers, so people are forced to do a bit of everything.

Caterina Fake's real complaint is that she can't find one person to do three jobs at once for her at Hunch, which isn't surprising.

<comment> brown9-2 Are you basing this opinion on experience of working in NYC?

<comment><USER16> I worked in the Bay Area (SF, Cupertino) for 5 years and now work in Manhattan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't get what makes "startups" different from other businesses. Why is a "cloud social network" business different from a new innovative retailer. Why is Wal-mart (started in Alabama), less financially successful than Google (started in CA).

</comment><comment><USER15> take a look at facebook, a bostonian startup, i've heard they are pretty successful

<comment><USER18> Yes, they _started_ in Boston. But they moved to Palo Alto very, very early on because that's where their first investor was from.

<comment><USER15> i see 3 underlying assumptions here (both in your reply and in the original post) 1) You need investors to scale 2) It is easier to find VC money in the Valley 3) Being an early adopter is a critical factor in startup success. I would disagree with all of these, i think you need a good product and loyal customers, everything else including the "networking edge" of being in the center of the startup universe is secondary in my opinion. Paying customers will let you scale. It is bad to be an "adopter", make your own thing. And its easy to find an investor if you have a good product, no matter where you are. I'd move from Boston to CA just for the sake of windsurfing.

<comment><USER19> Boston's great for windsurfing! Pleasure Bay is convenient. And Kalmus beach in Hyannis is statistically the windiest place on the east coast.

<comment><USER15> nice! didn't know that. I need to get out of New York more often</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Anyone uses Shopify or any other e-commerce platform? - <AUTHOR> We're thinking about a marketing solution for e-commerce people and we're curious about your experience with Shopify and other various e-commerce platforms. <comment><USER2> I used Shopify a couple of years ago, they are great. They integrated the payment directly in Shopify right after I started using them. It's a truly great platform for online shops :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Shopify and the modules solve virtually any configuration of e-commerce you could want.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, just noticed that there's a ton of solutions already out there based off of Shopify.</comment></comment>


Gene Therapy Is Nearing a Breakthrough - <AUTHOR> http://www.barrons.com/articles/gene-therapy-is-nearing-a-major-breakthrough-1506140340?shareToken=st6ea3eae0818340d09e66102bc654b51c&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosam&stream=top-stories <comment><USER2> The article focuses on inherited diseases, but that is a proving ground for the later, larger market of enhancement. An order of magnitude more healthy people will be willing to undergo gene therapy to gain greater muscle mass and less fat tissue (myostatin / follistatin) or greater stem cell activity (telomerase) than is the case for patients with serious inherited conditions willing to undergo gene therapy.

The breakthrough waiting to take place is the development of a methodology of reliable transfection of large enough number of cells to produce the desired outcome in adults. That seems to be not that far away, but it isn't the case today; the gene delivery mechanisms work, but that isn't the same thing as succeeding in altering a sufficient number of cells every time.

This is one of the reasons why there are no clinics offering enhancement gene therapies via medical tourism. That will happen soon, however, in a similar pattern to that followed for stem cell therapies at the outset of their clinical availability.

<comment><USER3> Wait, stem cell therapies are actually effective? For what? I'm only aware of shady cosmetic clinics advertising in Mexico or Greece.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm a bit suspicious of the hype + Ticker symbol. The Ticker Symbol for Spark Therapeutics is "ONCE". It is a $3bn valued company although is doesn't look like it has any revenue (around $1.5m) and has a huge deficit of -$74m (probably will be higher for the next year).

Seems like I have seen this movie before...

<comment><USER5> Most biotechs don't have any revenue when they go public. They are traded on scientific progress through clinical trials. The idea being that if they do get through a phase 3, they are immediately valuable since they have a monopoly on a valuable therapeutic. Most likely, they get acquired by large pharma before that point - see Kite & Gilead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> When can I gene-therapy away my 'seasonal' allergies? As an otherwise-healthy thirtysomething, that's the big one for me at this time in my life :-)

</comment><comment><USER7> This plus Alnylam's recent success with their interference RNA approval means we're making amazing progress in new therapies! Exciting times.

<comment><USER8> The next ethics wall is gonna be steep.</comment></comment>


Entrpreneurship Means I Give Up - <AUTHOR> https://morecrows.wordpress.com/2016/01/15/entrpreneurship-means-i-give-up/ <comment><USER2> > 95% fluff

> poorly researched

> Energy determinism

> What was your major?

> Meta: How is such a low quality post getting so many upvotes?

I think a lot of people are missing the point of this post. Let me explain how I read it and why I've upvoted it.

I think the essence of the piece is this: _So, what's a smart person to do to avoid pauperism? Well that's obvious, isn't it? Create your own job! Start a new business in a day! Making… well… this is the part where it gets tricky. If it were apparent what businesses need started already, they'd be started already. The first "job" today's kids have to answer is, what the hell am I going to do that anyone is willing to pay me for? And each kid, increasingly, is expected to answer this alone as an individual._

On the one hand, I think this is true, and well said. The economy is changing in such a way that we are being increasingly forced to find our own way, as she says, individually. Anyone who wants to be successful needs to identify and develop their own unique talent.

Where I disagree with her is whether this change is salutory in the long run. I believe that it will be: that it will unlock human potential in a way the world has never seen.

But I understand that this process is discouraging and scary for many, and that there will be losers as well as winners. I think it's good to be reminded of that, and I think this post expresses well what many people are probably feeling.

<comment><USER3> > So, what's a smart person to do to avoid pauperism?

Entrepreneurship should not be a generally advisable path for young people. It's high risk and requires some uncommon traits (resilience, resourcefulness, and hard work more than being "smart"). If you're leading average college students into entrepreneurship you're causing a lot of unnecessary misery.

Individuals have a lot of control over their economic value through their choice of what they study. There are still large portions of the student body which choose majors where empirically the graduates end up working in low paying service jobs. If you're choosing what to study, it should be a function of both what appeals to you and what is economically valuable. The average student seems to only consider the former, which leads to lots of people who think they are increasing their economic value in college, but are not (at least not by much).

(Some universities put out great empirical data on the economic value of majors, e.g. [https://career.berkeley.edu/Survey/2015Majors](https://career.berkeley.edu/Survey/2015Majors))

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Energy determinism is one of the worst theories of civilization.

I remember that book "Hubbert's peak" that came out around 2000, to his credit he did say that the bullet could be dodged if somebody figured out how to deliver energy into shale in such a way to get the trapped oil and gas out and you know somebody did.

Some other guys had a site called "dieoff.com" that predicted that electric grids would go down circa 2013.

The one thing that is predictable about energy pricing is that it is volatile in the short term and remarkably stable in the long term.

We have enough energy in the nuclear waste that is already above ground to run our civlization for a few centuries, we may not have the will to use it yet, but that will will materialize if things get dire enough. Fukushima set things back a few decades, but it is not a story about nuclear power being dangerous as much as it is the operators being too cheap to spend $1M fortifying the diesel generator installation a bit.

<comment><USER5> Decreasing use of fossil fuels isn't a problem of having no alternative.

As the article alludes, it is a political problem. Many powerful governments are controlled to some degree by fossil-fuel tycoons (including the US), and these vastly wealthy people won't allow their governments to switch.

<comment><USER4> By that argument, chemical companies would not have allowed the switch from CFCs to HFCs and then the switch from HFCs to fluoroketones.

Actually the chemical industry made huge amounts of $$$ from each transition. For instance, you can't get a generic asthma inhaler now because all of the CFC-free formulations are patented and by the time those go off patent they will have finally determined it is safe to puff fluoroketones and they will ban HFCs and there will be another decades of paying extra for asthma inhalers.

<comment><USER5> My argument wasn't absolute. Many, many incumbents have blocked important social change. Exxon is a classic energy example (covering up climate change once they knew it was happening). Another is the maker of TurboTax blocking reforms to the US tax filing system because it would have killed their product.

Sometimes big industries suffer due to policy decisions. Sometimes they take advantage of change and make money. Sometimes they use their money to fight the change instead.

Oil companies happen to fall into the last category with no sign things will change.

<comment><USER6> If Exxon is covering up climate change, they are doing a pretty damn poor job of it considering the hysteria in most media about it.

The tax system was insane long before Turbo Tax came on the scene. Sure they may have a vested interest in the status quo but they didn't create the insanity and they are not the primary cause it's not being reduced.

<comment><USER5> They did cover it up and had a lot of success: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExxonMobil_climate_change_co...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExxonMobil_climate_change_controversy)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Commenters giving this post way too hard a time. Look at some of the other posts on this blog (the Unnecessariat piece from a few days ago [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11765581](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11765581) is them)

This is not a Medium post about why Startup.ly failed and what they learned. This a person who is fundamentally different from the typical HN poster. They're very much conscious of a bifurcation of the economy in which there are "winners" and "losers." We would generally be called the winners and the author one of the losers. (I'm not insulting them, I think they would agree with that assessment). They're not in a situation where most people are doing great, but there are a few exceptions. Most things and people they know are deeply broken.

The current system that lead to that bifurcation is the one we'd be betting our hopes for getting off fossil fuels on. It hasn't been all cupcakes are roses, so maybe don't bet everything on it.

<comment><USER3> Is there any quantitative study of this winners/losers bifurcation? In my own anecdotal experience I see a bifurcation, but it's more of a "big winners" vs. "everyone else" split. Most of us are "everyone else," but if you're on the internet every day looking at the "big winners" you feel like a loser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> By definition, innovation is looking for the next solution to today's problems. We've arbed everything away, exhausted most of the gains from globalization. Now maleate are sophisticated, many more people are qualified and educated than there are jobs, and housing scarcity in the areas where there are jobs is putting downward pressure on potential lifestyle gains for those lucky enough to get a good education. Entrepreneurship doesn't mean I give up, it means that it's our only hope. The alternative will be another round of dictators. I'll side with innovation over populism any day.

</comment><comment><USER9> I greatly appreciate this blog for breaking up the monotonous techno-optimism native to HN, but I don't know that the author has thought through this particular position very well. He's right that, strictly speaking, our odds of preventing climate catastrophe would be better if we would at least _consider_ the idea of substantial reductions to our energy budget; _but_ , the reason that we don't generally think that way is that meaningful reductions to our energy use would entail _tremendous suffering._

Speaking personally, my gentrified urbanite lifestyle wouldn't likely be too changed- I don't own a car to buy fuel for and the electric bill for my tiny apartment isn't irksome, the price of groceries would go up but even a 2- or 3-times increase wouldn't meaningfully impact my budget. My job is sufficiently abstracted from physical industry that its not going to be rendered uneconomical by any sudden change in global circumstances. But my lifestyle is very strange in this regard (and I'm probably missing some ways in which I _would_ be meaningfully effected.)

If you're living out in the boondocks (requiring a car to get anywhere) far inland (so all your food and etc is shipped in likely via truck) and working a blue-collar job (in an industry or context that can be outsourced, rendered unnecessary, or simply done without, in case of economic downturn,) a 2x rise in the price of oil could _absolutely destroy your life._ The vast majority of humans on this planet don't have the sort of economic buffer that they could tighten their belts to cope with the economic retraction entailed by decreasing energy availability. The governmental and economic elite have "given up" that approach because no one wants to be responsible for that sort of catastrophe.

It is valid, I guess, to be of the opinion that "since the world might _literally end_ otherwise, needs must", but I don't get the impression that the author is of this mentality. In either case, they would likely agree that in the face of this extreme option, ways to cheat around it ought to be explored.

</comment><comment><USER10> > Even the modern replacement careers- nursing schools, medical schools, > which, contrary to the American legend, are calibrated to turn out very few > brilliant practitioners in favor of a large, reliable number of perfectly > adequate practitioners and a vanishingly small number of screwups- are > becoming more lottery-like. Specifically, the ratio of medical school > "slots" to the number of residencies waiting for those students once they > graduate is going way up… but I digress.

Wut? I'm pretty sure the AMA would never let Med school seats exceed the number of residency positions.

</comment><comment><USER11> Core issue I see is that there are different types of innovation, some are in the right direction, some are in the wrong direction, and most are just something new.

First step to an innovative culture is to not trying to make everyone the same, which is likely one of the most basic ingredients of real change. Next is to help people be innovative in a way that's what is need; mainly see thinking like this at successful advance R&D labs.

</comment><comment><USER12> Ok so is this talking about fossil fuels being extracted from the ground and pumped into the air?

ALL of the accessible fossil fuels will be released eventually. Whether you have carbon credits or anything else. It's just a question of how fast. So we may as well assume that it's all going to be released. And the next question is: _what should we do about it_?

The answer is planting more trees and plankton to capture the carbon from yhe atmosphere but not burn it!!

<comment><USER10> Honestly, while that's a good suggestion, I think it's only part of the answer:

1) Trees used to be a lot more abundant _before_ fossil fuels were a big a thing, but now people are using the land the trees would need for other things (e.g. farming, cities) that are unlikely to be displaced.

2) At some point organic carbon sinks will hit equilibrium as the organisms that compose them start to die and decompose.

<comment><USER12> Well the assumption is that we will develop alternative energy sources byt STILL eventually release all the fossil carbon.

And then it won't matter if te carbon sinks hit equilibrium. I am actually surprised how for most of the planet's history there was an equilibrium, when the gases distribute so globally. How does the system adjust without collapses? I think there was once a great oxygenation event, which killed off most anaerobic life on the planet. But since then there's been equilibrium...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There seem to be parallels with academia here. In fact, what she is describing is the academic grant-giving method: Fund a million independent ideas, profit from a few. I suppose that method trickled down from academics to policy, and now it's become the current world economic plan.

The problem is that this model is not guaranteed optimal. In academia, centralized big projects have sometimes reaped great rewards.

</comment><comment><USER14> (stolen from the comments:)

Economists Advise Nation's Poor To Invent The Next Facebook

[http://www.theonion.com/article/economists-advise-nations- po...](http://www.theonion.com/article/economists-advise-nations-poor-to- invent-the-next--33573)

</comment><comment><USER3> "...I'm making… USD0.65 more than minimum wage."

What was your major?

A common misconception among young people in America seems to be that all majors are equally economically valuable. What you study matters more than whether you have a college degree.

<comment><USER15> Outside of certain fields - law, medicine, engineering - getting a degree is becoming a pure market signal.

Get a degree from [top tier school] and it probably can be any degree because the school itself is a filter that gets "the best" however they define it. Get a degree from [2nd tier or worse school] and it better be something that demonstrates academic or intellectual rigor.

But outside of a degree, another market signal is relevant experience. Considering the teenage and young adult unemployment rate, that is harder and harder to get.. which means they start their professional/productive years that much later, which means responsible adulthood comes later, which means family, house, etc, etc comes that much later.

Eventually (already?) it can put an entire area, city, region, or generation on a lower trajectory for their lives, negatively affecting everyone.

 _That_ is what concerns me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This article is made up of 95% fluff and 4% content, and 1% the word "Keynesian".

And even that 4% content has no logic, just trying to deceive readers using lots of confusing/dubious expressions.

"Since then I've gotten a college degree, come within striking distance of finishing grad school, and acquired a number of practical and social skills I simply didn't have as a teenager."

> So basically if you trim it down it means "I became and adult and went to > college". (I had to re-read to realize "come within striking distance of > finishing grad school" means nothing. "Acquired a number of ..." also means > nothing because that's the definition of growing up. I acquired number of > practical and social skills too. And so did everyone else.)

As for the content itself, this person needs to learn a lot more than some esoteric economics theory books and some blog posts about startups, before criticizing how startups work. It's all based on shallow understanding of how things work.

<comment><USER17> You're not offering a counterpoint. Try adding something constructive to the conversation.

<comment><USER16> I normally do when I comment on HN. But honestly there's nothing to "counter" because like I said there's no substance to the article. I could criticize all the little details but that also doesn't feel right. It would be like a professor trying to grade a student's report and having no idea where to start because it's just a long rambling about nothing and has nothing to do with the suggested topic. In these cases they will just say "Rewrite".

<comment><USER18> It needs more than a rewrite. The author has misspelled Entrpreneurship (sic) in the title itself. I usually try to look past typos, but that one (and the others sprinkled throughout) make it difficult for me to take it seriously.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's "They bring you up to do like you daddy ..."

</comment><comment><USER19> This is very poorly researched and written article.

We don't need "Zero point energy", we need a more efficient form of energy compared to Fossil Fuels which have been the driver of the economy. It's quite likely that leaps in Solar, Battery and Nuclear will allow us to "upgrade" civilization.

Energy is also only one part of the society/economy, the other part is cognitive/computation. The emergence of networked world along with AI and Sensing, will provide civilization with another leap in terms of efficiency.

The idea that "if there was something to be discovered (or businesses that would need to be started), it would have been already discovered" is completely wrong. Rather technological inventions allow us to build more efficient system that would not have been previously feasible.

This article reminds me of the socialists who despise Green Revolution, claiming it was a "Technological Solution" to problem of hunger (and inequality) in India, etc. and would rather have preferred mass revolutions and social change with "equitable" distribution. All the while enjoying privileges that come with living in a developed country.

<comment><USER14> > we need a more efficient form of energy compared to Fossil Fuels

Category error, fossil fuels are already 100% efficient.

Any fuel is.

<comment><USER19> [http://blogs.wsj.com/numbers/what-is-the-most-efficient- sour...](http://blogs.wsj.com/numbers/what-is-the-most-efficient-source-of- electricity-1754/)

This is what I referred to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The stupidest point of this article is the phrase "these businesses would have already been built". No, that's the point of the whole startup thing.

You can invest the same amount of money into 100 startups, or 10,000 mom&dad shops. Which choice is better depends, among other things, on big can such a startup get. And in todays connected world, it's possible to scale to levels unthinkable just a few decades prior — and bring more value to humanity as a whole while you're at it. 100 years ago, mom&dad option would've been the most beneficial to society and the most rational from economic perspective — now its the startup one.

</comment><comment><USER3> Meta: How is such a low quality post getting so many upvotes?

<comment><USER21> Meta-meta: How comes the one comment that immediately springs to mind gets downvoted into the light grey shades (as of this time)?

<comment><USER3> I can answer that - initially I had a couple more sentences in my comment which in retrospect came across as condescending and gross. People stopped downvoting after I deleted them. (I had said something along the lines of "My guess is the article is connecting with people's emotions. Please upvote more thoughtfully.")

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Had me till this:

"If it were apparent what businesses need started already, they'd be started already. "

(while recognizing my white male privilege)</comment>