Before Silicon Valley, New Jersey Reigned As Nation's Center Of Innovation - happy-go-lucky http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2017/06/05/531250084/before-silicon-valley-new-jersey-reigned-as-nations-center-of-innovation <comment><USER2> Even as Silicon Valley was still in its infancy, a group of organizations including Bell, MCI, GM, and others hired Fred Terman from Stanford to make NJ more like what Silicon Valley (NJ and SV share a ton of similarities, i did a tedx talk about it below [1]) but Terman was unsuccessful. He pointed to how Princeton was not focused enough on applied science the way Stanford was. East coast politics and stock market downturn also hindered his efforts.

Also, don't forget Fort Monmouth, which was across the county, employed an equal number of scientists and was responsible for nearly as many inventions as Bell Labs (much classified). It was the home of the Army's software and signal operations. Just like Silicon Valley, the military kickstarted the world's most productive innovation cores.

New Jersey had (and continues to have) the richest concentration of scientists in the United States. Monmouth County and the Princeton had, for a very long time, the kind of serendipity that makes Silicon Valley so special—that you can walk down the street and bump into a bunch of engineers and VCs while walking your dog and strike up a conversation.

State politics in NJ, unfortunately, doesn't nurture these institutions and the ecosystem has grown weaker. It breaks my heart that Bell Labs is a mall and Fort Monmouth lays fallow when it should be bid out to universities to become the Stanford of the East—the applied sciences university that Fred Terman dreamed about.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2LbuqoNGGI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2LbuqoNGGI)

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

[3] [http://www.politifact.com/new- jersey/statements/2012/sep/06/...](http://www.politifact.com/new- jersey/statements/2012/sep/06/choose-new-jersey/new-jersey-leads-world-number- scientists-engineers/)

<comment><USER3> The old Bell Labs building is, finally, under a revitalization and reuse of the workspace called Bell Works ([http://bell.works/neighborhood/](http://bell.works/neighborhood/)). Based on job listings it seems NVIDIA's AI/Autonomous driving is happening there. As someone who lives close by, but commutes to NYC, I can only hope to see more big name companies move in.

As for Fort Monmouth, pretty much all the offices were moved to Aberdeen as part of the last BRAC. As you stated there was a lot of work being done there related to communications & intelligence (I believe a lot of GPS work was out of there). It was a real hit to the local community when it shut down since it happened in the middle of the housing crisis. A lot of families were forced to short sale or do long commutes. The space is finally up purchase, but sadly it will be getting used to build more condos & a shopping center. There were rumors of Monmouth University and Rutgers wanting to get access to the space but were declined.

<comment><USER4> But it'll be called Freedom Pointe now, so it has to be good: [http://www.njbiz.com/article/20170606/NJBIZ01/170609904/para...](http://www.njbiz.com/article/20170606/NJBIZ01/170609904/paramount- realty-has-big-plans-for-freedom-pointe-at-former-fort-monmouth)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Also central to New Jersey's weight as an innovation hub was Princeton University - where Alan Turning met and studied under Alonzo Church.[1].

Also worth mentioning is the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, N.J where Kurt Gödel remained a faculty member until his death in 1978.[2]

Alfred Einstein also spent the last two years of his life working at the Institute. Imagine the conversations Einstein and Godel might have had? If you're interested, this a nice piece worth reading(Gödel and Einstein were walking companions!) [3]

[1] [http://www.maa.org/book/export/html/606725](http://www.maa.org/book/export/html/606725)

[2] [https://www.ias.edu/scholars/godel](https://www.ias.edu/scholars/godel)

[3] [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/02/28/time- bandits-2](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/02/28/time-bandits-2)

<comment><USER6> John von Neumann worked in Princeton, I didn't realize the von Neumann architecture was aka the Princeton architecture.

Of course Einstein lived and worked in Princeton too.

<comment><USER7> Many people on HN seem to forget that many strides in computer science, computer architecture, and mathematics came from schools that don't start with an "S" and are from outside of the Bay Area. I think it is more that the definition of how you measure innovation has shifted over time -- now it is based on how many dollars are raised for your venture vs. actual strides being made in academic fields of study.

<comment><USER5> I find your comment a bit gratuitous. These seminal figures come up somewhat regularly on HN and it's no secret that these great minds hailed from Austria, Britain, Hungary, Germany etc.

<comment><USER6> Sure, but 100 years ago none of them would have thought of moving to Northern CA, where now they are more likely to go there than the East Coast.

<comment><USER5> MIT, CMU, Princeton, Harvard and Cornell are all top schools for C.S. and those are all still on the East Coast. None of these schools have any difficulty attracting top talent from around the world.

<comment><USER8> I got skewered in /r/cscareerquestions several months ago for suggesting that _any_ Ivy had a top-tier CS program. It may not be reality, but there is definitely a strong perception.

<comment><USER9> It's a very odd perception that I think comes from their size. They tend to be smaller, more focused departments. The education quality is still high and everyone's favorite companies recruit at them.

<comment><USER7> Agreed! If you actually talk to recruiters and teams at top-tier companies, then the stronger Ivies still do well when it comes to CS careers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> No discussion on New Jersey's glorious past is complete without a reference to the most passive-aggressive bridge in the world, located in Trenton [http://www.usw.org/blog/2015/intro/trenton- pics.jpg](http://www.usw.org/blog/2015/intro/trenton-pics.jpg)

<comment><USER11> I actually read that as a statement of pride.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't know what's more sad, the fact that NJ killed its own tech scene or that the revival efforts shining example focus on a "company that helps people make money on videos they post on social media".

That's certainly a far cry from inventing the transistor and pioneering radio. Yep, NJ is still (for now) dead to tech.

It reminds me of Columbus, Ohio, which used to be a big Internet and tech hub. Now, only burnt embers and dilapidated warehouses of prior successes remain. The only tech jobs are the fading and hold-over "IT Administrators" at lackluster companies like Nationwide and random health companies.

There have been a few scattershot efforts, very familiar to what is happening in NJ to try and get entrepreneurs to "startup" but it's not about the tech anymore. The real creative soul, and passion, love of science and wonderment of the natural world, which is really what fuels tech, is long gone. I'm sorry but social media marketing is a business, not real innovative technology.

<comment><USER13> > Some cultural differences were also shaped by the law. New Jersey has strict > anti-competitive laws that make it hard to take what you learn at your job > and create a new company.

This is probably the biggest influence. SV is built on people who starte working at HP, Microsoft, or Google, then left to found their own company - <AUTHOR> straight out of college for the lucky/rich kids like Zuckerberg and Gates. Then there is the wealthy ones who 'made it' sticking around and financing the next generation.

This is very likely the entrepreneurial, internally competitive, and experimentally financed system that was never properly established in NJ. New Jersey had their successful golden era, then instead of fostering the next one they focused only on the big companies, acted protective/insular as big companies do, and got government policy to protect their interests from the young upstarts - instead of fostering them.

<comment><USER14> A thousand times this. I had a discussion on the plane with a person trying to make their city more like the Bay Area. And they had looked at universities, and air ports, and demographics, and infrastructure. I asked them whether or not their state allowed the enforcement of non-compete agreements? Yes. Do they allow employers to take ownership of all work product even when it is done on the employee's non-work time on non-work equipment? Yes. So I said, first thing you have to do is make both of those 'no', then you can start on the other bits. But allowing people to compete with the people who hired them is essential.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> And before NJ the US tech hub was Baltimore. Information technology has been built into the economic history of the United States for quite some time.

The first electronic telegraph ran from DC to Bmore. Prior to the telegraph and it's forerunner, the optical telegraph, the fastest way to transmit goods and information were the Clipper ships coming out of the port of Baltimore ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltimore_Clipper](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltimore_Clipper)).

If you're interested in reading more economic history I highly recommend both The Weather Experiment ([https://www.amazon.com/Weather-Experiment-Pioneers- Sought-Fu...](https://www.amazon.com/Weather-Experiment-Pioneers-Sought- Future/dp/0374536201)) and Empire of Cotton ([https://www.amazon.com/Empire- Cotton-History-Sven-Beckert/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Empire-Cotton- History-Sven-Beckert/dp/0375713964))

</comment><comment><USER6> I think Wall st sucked up most of the tech talent from NJ. Well over half the IT staff I've seen in the big banks and hedge funds live in NJ and commute in. I dont think tech could compete salary wise, though is starting to change now. Also Virtually all the data centers for NYC banks are in NJ suburbs.

Other Scientists and business people moved into Pharma in the 80s & 90s - which is also not doing so well.

<comment><USER16> I know a lot of tech staff being made to relocate TO NJ. Due to Manhattan costs. This is a good thing for NJ.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> For those interested in learning more about Bell Labs I recommend you check out the book "The Idea Factory" ([https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11797471-the-idea- factor...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11797471-the-idea-factory)).

<comment><USER18> I saw this and came to make the same recommendation. I just finished this book and it is excellent. As an EE, the chapters on the discovery of the transistor by Brattain and Bardeen up to the experiment where their prototype starts actually amplifying an input signal for the first time represents such a seminal moment in the history of the world. Arguably, it is the most important invention of the 20th century.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's worth noting that today New Jersey votes for its next governor (primary). Phil Murphy took the time during his campaign to acknowledge the NJ Tech Meetup community (at Stevens Inst. in Hoboken) and has expressed an interest in supporting entrepreneurs. We'll see how the elections go this year and what the next administration does.

I'm a NJ native (NYC metro area), active contributor to open source tech communities, and tech-preneur.

<comment><USER20> Primary, not general

<comment><USER19> updated

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I just stared an internship at Bell Labs Murray Hill. Growing up in Holmdel, I've been a fan of Bell Labs since childhood and feel so happy to be working here. The atmosphere and energy from all the amazing achievements is really palpable.

Word is the acquisition of Alcatel Lucent by Nokia has really put Bell Labs back into the public spotlight. Excited to see what the future holds and I hope I can still be a part of it!

<comment><USER22> Do they still have signs marking the places where historic things happened? Like the lab where the transistor was invented, or Claude Shannon's office?

<comment><USER21> Yes! They also have a museum and a showcase room. I was able to see the first transistor.

I believe they're reconstructing Dennis Ritchie's original office. They still have his chalkboard too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Boston's Route 128 was a center of innovation in the minicomputer era. DEC, Data General, Prime, and Wang were all Boston-area companies. None survived the transition to microprocessors.

<comment><USER24> EMC is still kickin

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The exact same story is told in the film industry. Edison's patents were very strongly enforced on the east coast, but not in California. All of the film studios then packed up and headed west.

<comment><USER16> Protectionism in capitalism does not work in the long run. Different forms of it are practiced to this day. US Capitalism is rife with with legislative protectionism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Interesting seeing this story this morning, my company recently moved into the old Bell Labs building. Now called Bell Works, it does actually look like it's going to become a hub of new tech companies in the area.

It's pretty humbling to walk into this giant building every day knowing some of the amazing things that were invented here.

<comment><USER3> I keep looking for opportunities in Bell Works. I would gladly give up my 2 hour commute from the shore area to NYC to work in Holmdel. I could even ride my bike.

<comment><USER27> Holy crap. You drive up from the jersey shore to NYC every day??

<comment><USER3> I take the train which is 78-80 minutes, but all told it takes 2 hours door to door.

<comment><USER27> There is a train service running from the shore area? From the Atlantic City area? I know there's one out of Trenton.

<comment><USER3> The shore technically encompasses Monmouth County down to Cape May county. There is the North Jersey Coast Line that runs from Bay Head to NYC, but not always direct which requires a change over in Long Branch. This is due to the Long Branch to Bay Head portion not having the newer lines run for the trains.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Headline is nicely illustrated by a friend of mine who visited the US for the first time, travelled to Menlo Park, CA, and was disappointed that he couldn't find Edison's lab.

</comment><comment><USER16> According to wikipedia, it also has more engineers per square meter than any state in the US. Not quite the trashy state people are led to believe it is.

Now that NYC is not affordable for startups, NJ will become a perfectly respectable tech/Start up hub. And good for it.

<comment><USER27> Nah, Jersey is done. The same 1950s attitudes/laws that caused it to lose the industry are still there. That's why it's tech scene consists mostly of big doofy defense contractors and Comcast.

<comment><USER16> Perhaps, But, I'm wagering that with NYC pricing out anyone but wall st banks, the pressure will build and it will change out of necessity. NJ shall be remade and reborn!

<comment><USER29> Not with the insane property taxes and other regulatory friction. Highest property taxes in the country. It also has some of the highest auto insurance rates in the country as well. Health insurance is also higher than in neighboring NYC (at least the last time I checked a few years ago.)

All of the Democrat candidates for NJ governor want to raise taxes even more.

NJ also has the most underfunded public pension system in the country. -- a $44 billion shortfall. As a tech entrepreneur, I'd be very nervous about locating in a state that could, at any moment decide that those "wealthy tech companies" ought to be bailing out decades of financial mismanagement.

NJ also ranked 49th in "Small Business Friendliness" \-- California was 50th. New York was 48th.

[http://www.nj.com/business/index.ssf/2014/12/nj_is_a_terribl...](http://www.nj.com/business/index.ssf/2014/12/nj_is_a_terrible_place_for_small_businesses_analysis_finds.html)

South Dakota, Nevada and Texas were the top three.

If anywhere should be the "next" place, it should probably be Houston -- one of the most diverse cities in the country, low taxes, access to a massive academic medical center, NASA, the energy industry, low cost of living, Rice University (pioneers in nano-tech including a Nobel winners,) University of Houston, including Paul Chu in superconducting. Texas A&M is about an hour away with more Nobel winners, including the 1996 Nobel in Physics and substantial engineering and science research programs

New Jersey does have Princeton of course and access to NYC (if that actually matters.) New Jersey's only "attraction" other than Princeton is "proximity to New York." I would have to see some actual data to be convinced that "proximity to New York" actually has a material affect on the success of startups. It's a fallacy that being in San Fran or NYC actually matters.

<comment><USER22> "It's a fallacy that being in San Fran or NYC actually matters."

If you want money, which let's be honest, is one of the most important things in this context, it highly does. All of the major VCs are in SF or NYC, and have shown very little desire to branch out from there. While we occasionally hear stories of a startup outside of those places doing well, it's generally the exception, not the rule.

<comment><USER30> I have to echo this.

You can start a company anywhere, but if you want to grow quickly, there are a few places where you can get the capital, infrastructure, community and talent quickly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> So there's silicon alley in NY, silicon prairie in the midwest, silicon forest in portland, what do we call Jersey?

<comment><USER32> If you wanted to confuse the hell out of people, you could call it "Silicon Garden", after the state's nickname, the Garden State.

<comment><USER33> Of course, it's only really confusing if your only touch points in the state are I-95 and US-1. A small handful of miles either direction off the Northeast Corridor, and the state earns its nickname.

<comment><USER32> I grew up in South Jersey and I agree that it does earn that nickname! But so many people only see New Jersey as a place to pass through and so they don't see it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The magic of silicon valley is an ecosystem where both people and money flock to the hottest ideas. Big companies like AT&T and GM are the antithesis to this.

</comment><comment><USER35> Well, New Jersey is still the only state to have a programming language named for it (SML/NJ, in case you were curious)...

<comment><USER36> SML/NJ is just a compiler/programming environment for SML[1], not a whole language on its own. Still impressive.

1: [http://www.smlnj.org/smlnj.html](http://www.smlnj.org/smlnj.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> How come nobody's mentioned pharma in Jersey's tech history?

I can't help but think like Yogi Berra when I look at my own trajectory. Tech overpaid me and tech displaced me. The winds blew west? Will they blow west again for the west coast departure and leave the USA entirely?

</comment><comment><USER37> When Franklin Computers dropped their Franklin Ace line they had a huge parking lot sale. Snagged a mess of motherboards and parts to make 5 2e compat machines.

</comment><comment><USER38> Most of my clients are in NJ, very tech-heavy still.

<comment><USER39> Yea it's tech heavy but not really startup heavy, which seems to be HN's bias. I'm pretty sure Intel and IBM have big campuses there still. Also quite a bit of finance spills over from New York. And lots of tech workers live in NJ and commute over to NY.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Why did Jet start here? Legitimate question.

<comment><USER30> I think the founder lived in Montclair, which is where they had their first office. As soon as they could move, they hiked over to Hoboken.

That helped them considerably as it allowed them to recruit people who lived in the city as it's just a few blocks from the Path station.

Had they set up shop anywhere else in NJ, it would have been difficult for them to hire as quickly as they did.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> TLDR: anti-competative laws shunted growth to areas like silicon Valley which didn't have them.

Seriously, why do we even allow people not at a C level to be impacted by these laws that say you can't leave to start a competitor? Moreover, why is it legal, like in NY, for a company to say they own all your work both on and off the job? We're killing ourselves.

<comment><USER42> I suspect that a lot of people over-emphasize the role of California non- compete lack of enforceability, specially given that (perhaps especially in the past) they've also reflected cultural differences between established large east coast firms and California startups.

I'm not aware of research in the area but states other than California vary in the degree they enforce non-competes and other restrictions. I'm not aware these have a clear correlation to business formation by state. I don't doubt it's one factor but, for example, Massachusetts hasn't been able to get rid of non-competes yet does pretty well as a tech center.

<comment><USER43> Massachusetts's enforcement of non-competes and poor performance relative to California is the classic variation, first (or at least famously) pointed out in 1994 and subject of many studies since; [http://webdoc.sub.gwdg.de/ebook/serien/lm/DRUIDwp/10-02.pdf](http://webdoc.sub.gwdg.de/ebook/serien/lm/DRUIDwp/10-02.pdf) is one from 2011 that extends analysis to all US metros: less enforcement correlated with more employment, business establishments, and patents (sigh) even if the SF bay area is excluded.</comment></comment></comment>


How to deploy a JavaScript video player with real DRM - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Axinom/drm-quick-start <comment><AUTHOR> The linked article is a bit narrow in scope but a very good first start.

I have been working with video DRM for quite a while now; feel free to ask me anything, I will try to answer topics that are not NDA-covered.</comment>


Google buying $39M fiber service in Utah for $1 - <AUTHOR> http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_GOOGLE_FIBER_UTAH?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-04-18-17-08-16 <comment><USER2> Since nobody has pointed out the obvious: buying things for $1 in the business world means that the thing has negative book value (= its liabilities exclude its assets), but not so much that you'd want to structure the sale the other way around (= Provo paying Google to get rid of the thing). So Google's not getting $39m worth of stuff for $1, they're getting $39m worth of assets plus $Nm worth of liabilities (where n > 39) for $1. See also: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppercorn_(legal)>

Also, paying $39m to build something doesn't mean the resulting asset is actually worth $39m any more, but that's another story.

(And obligatory disclaimer: I have no personal knowledge of how the valuation was actually made.)

<comment><USER3> > _So Google's not getting $39m worth of stuff for $1, they're getting $39m > worth of assets plus $Nm worth of liabilities (where n > 39) for $1._

Pete Ashdown of Xmission says "Google will not assume any of the debt, the Provo city taxpayer will continue paying that."

[http://transmission.xmission.com/2013/04/18/the-1-fiber- opti...](http://transmission.xmission.com/2013/04/18/the-1-fiber-optic- network)

Who is right? I haven't looked into it.

<comment><USER4> You can't blame google if the government officials were stupid enough to not extract the right value out if their assets

<comment><USER5> Watch me. I suspect there are many people here who had the opportunity to rip a client off but chose to instead do the right thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A $39M fiber service that has been a constant drain on the city's coffers and is in serious need of upgrading. I read that the fiber pull is about half the cost of this; the other half is the routers, switches and other equipment it takes to make it work. I'm sure Provo City is breathing a sigh of relief at getting that weight off their back.

And I'm hoping that Googke will decide to extend its market to outlying communities. Much of American Fork was wired by the same original company, and my town is next to American Fork.

Come on, Google, it's only 12 miles! (My wife already prohibited a move for better Internet connectivity. :)

<comment><USER7> Dang, your wife won't move to Provo either? Ok, I don't really want to move there either. But sometimes sacrifices have to be made in the name of fast internet!

On a more serious note. I had heard that Lehi did make a pitch to get Google Fiber when this first started. I wonder if there's still enough interest. This area is growing like crazy and it's rural enough to make installation easy.

<comment><USER6> I can't imagine Provo by itself is a big enough market to be interesting to Google. The entire county isn't much more than half the size of Austin. I have to believe that they see Provo as the starting point for entry into the Wasatch Front.

<comment><USER8> I definitely see that happening. The big question in my mind is how they're going to interact with Utopia. Both Orem and Lindon have Utopia already. So will they go head to head with them? Or are they just going to skip those cities and hit all the other ones?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For $1 and a guarantee that they'll upgrade the network to gigabit speeds. Most of the fiber has been laid, but they still need to do a lot of infrastructure changes.

<comment><USER10> Do you realize much of the cost is in the routers switches & other hardware that brings to the life the gigabit network?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am sure many more companies would have been interested in this deal. When it comes to selling the infrastructure built with tax-payer money, the government should be more transparent in its dealings. The city of Provo should have advertised the sale or lease of its fiber infrastructure and let companies bid on it. And the fiber should have gone to the highest bidder. Or at least, accept offers from multiple companies and let the residents decide (through voting) which company they want to give the infrastructure to.

<comment><USER6> Provo has been trying to unload their fiber network for a long time. I don't see this as a backroom deal that only benefits Google, but rather somebody finally putting the "under contract" sign above the "for sale" sign.

That nobody else came calling (or offered deals as good as Google's) is not Google nor Provo's fault.

From a taxpayer perspective, they get to stop paying for the upkeep on what is currently an unprofitable system. And those who keep paying for it get a significant upgrade.

<comment><USER8> Don't forget that this is a big marketing opportunity for Provo as well. As someone that is house hunting in Utah county the announcement of Google Fiber is the only thing making me consider Provo itself as a viable option.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm hoping to see Google move out to the east & west coasts with their fiber speeds as well.

</comment><comment><USER13> Please send ripples through to market Google.

<comment><USER14> All the news about where Google is rolling out GFiber seems to indicate they're getting their feet wet with smaller communities first, which makes logical sense in many ways.

On one hand the logistics of managing smaller municipal networks is easier, the politics is a lot less murky, and they establish a history of cooperation and reliability.

Where they start to ramp up in cities with >1M people is a mystery though, only time will tell. It may be Philadelphia, Cleveland, Atlanta, St Louis, Minneapolis, or even Dallas.

<comment><USER15> The first two places ( I know it isn't much data points) were Silicon Prairie- ish places. Provo I was a bit surprised by, but I think the main draw there was the in-place fiber that just needs bought for the $1 and then upgraded.

<comment><USER8> All of the major companies have a decent presence in Utah. Adobe just opened up a 1,000 shop in Lehi (15 minutes north of Provo). Utah is one of the larger growing secondary tech hubs in the nation. No where close to Silicon Valley or NYC, but still growing and doing quite well.

[http://www.siliconslopes.com/sites/default/files/silicon_slo...](http://www.siliconslopes.com/sites/default/files/silicon_slopes_calendar_2012.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think Google got a deal because Provo's 1 Gbps is only equivalent to 1000 mbps according to the article.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is something I've seen before, and expect more of.

Municipalities[taxpayers] paying to build out infrastructure, "mismanaging it"[then usually underfunding the administration because everyone wants 'small government', and then having the infrastructure scooped up for peanuts by a private company who makes a killing.

It's actually happening right now in slow motion in my hometown.

<comment><USER18> Given your derision for the term "small government", I'd guess you think this is a corrupt practice and that such infrastructure shouldn't be sold. But--at least to a small-government-er like myself--this seems like even _better_ evidence that the municipality shouldn't be trusted with building these things in the first place.

<comment><USER19> >underfunding

<comment><USER18> Yea, I read that part. Unfortunately, great governments supported by a steady stream of good decisions is not an option on the table. We need to decide whether to begin government projects _given_ that crappy and corrupt decisions will be made in the future.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Chrome Extension for the one thing I miss on HN - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-colors/adailobllebnhioglgkmaioilhlkdden

<comment><USER2> +1. I also recommend Hacked Hacker News [1] for unread comment counts on the homepage, highlighting unread comments and inline commenting/editing. I also use Hacker News Collapse [2] to make comment threads collapsible.

1: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacked-hacker- news...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacked-hacker- news/hlddllcemddpbekleofllndfidcgbgdp)

2: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news- collap...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news- collapse/bbkfcamiocfccgmcjngdljolljhifdph)

<comment><USER3> My favorite is Hacker News Enhancement Suite [1], for unread comment counts, voting on front page, highlight unread, inline comment, collapsible thread, etc.

1: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news- enhanc...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news- enhancement-s/bappiabcodbpphnojdiaddhnilfnjmpm)

<comment><USER4> It has color coded upvote counts too! <http://i.imgur.com/6NQyhPI.png>

I take pull requests at <https://github.com/etcet/HNES> but I only have a few hours a week to work on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I realise that the extension is released in good faith, but am I the only person who thinks that this is probably the best way to xss users and gain upvotes for your stories and "show hn" due to the nature of these extensions they can bypass same origin policy since they can do anything on news.yc and hence get the upvote token and send an upvote request. Since the extensions are updated automatically, we wouldn't even know it happened.

Same could be said about extensions that require access to all websites. If the extension dev gets compromised you could potentially get compromised

        Attacker hijacks developer account
                    ↓
                    ↓
        XSS cookie stealer or some 0-day payloads are dropped
                    ↓
                    ↓
        Your computer/accounts get owned. (paypal,mtgox,hsbc,gmail,yahoo etc)

Maybe there should be some sort of feature that blacklists websites that no extension is allowed to access.

</comment><comment><USER6> Why not write a userscript for this kind of thing and publish it on userscripts.org?

1) It's cross-browser: Firefox (Greasemonkey), Chrome (Tampermonkey), Opera users can install it

2) Users can easily read the source code before installation to assure it doesn't do anything malicious

If it changes DOM, but doesn't interact with the browser itself, it should be a userscript.

A small introductory presentation about userscripts and GM_ API that I've recently done: [https://speakerdeck.com/jakubg/userscripts-augmenting-and- au...](https://speakerdeck.com/jakubg/userscripts-augmenting-and-automating- web-browsing-and-debugging)

</comment><comment><USER7> For people (like me) who didn't know what this was due to lack of a Chrome browser - here's the description:

      Hacker News Colors

      Makes Hacker News easier to read by adding a bit of color
      next to the upvote button besides every story, where the
      color is based on the number of points.

<comment><USER8> The link showed a screenshot and that description for me (in Firefox), so I really don't get what you mean about Chrome being needed to find out.

<comment><USER9> This is what it looks like on an iPad at least <https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BKaxeNfCQAAp678.jpg>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> please don't force people to click your link to find out what the "one thing" is. mention it right in your title.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's true. I wish I would've come up with a more describing title. Spent a couple of minutes trying to compress what I wanted to convey in a couple of words and this was the result.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have two small quirks with this, aside from them, I like it.

The row spacing is too much now and the vote icon is now offsetting the title slightly. I feel that this simple idea can be executed without any other alterations to the interface.

Also, it only works for the front page and I'm a person that likes to check out the first 2 pages and the discrepancy is getting annoying.

</comment><comment><USER12> I use this:

<https://github.com/wuzhe/social-hotness> [https://raw.github.com/wuzhe/social- hotness/master/screensho...](https://raw.github.com/wuzhe/social- hotness/master/screenshots/yc_1.png)

</comment><comment><USER13> This thread happened again, and this time i'm ready - here's my HN extension!

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hnhance/ddidnigndc...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hnhance/ddidnigndcepokcpocecblkfeohcedlg)

Also compatible with greasemonkey for FF users.

All tweaks are optional with a discreet menu: two custom themes, hover user to view profile, hover parent link to see parent, option to confirm accidental downvotes, show submissions link in header, link to additional commentary on other sites

</comment><comment><USER14> This is really great! Exactly what I missed too.

Without getting in to feature bloat, I would like an indicator for the amount of comments too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I suspect this would be somthing others miss as well. I've thought about the comments too and I will have to come up with a good simple indicator for those as well I think. The feature creep begins... :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Well If I were you, I would color the points themselves. And follow the coloring scheme HN already uses (lighter grey for weaker and darker grey for stronger) If the points become unreadable due to very low score, user can always double click on it and it will highlight in blue background.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'd love to see it incorporate points over time too. You've got the post age right on the page, you should be able to factor that in.

Although, perhaps 'hot' stories are just the ones towards the top of the page anyway.

<comment><USER17> They are, factored in with the karma of the upvoters, as far as i know. And that's why I like this addon that much: It gives a feel for the age and the weight of a submission, when a red story is on the bottom of the page compared to when a bright yellow story is at the top.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Hey HN, slightly off-topic question: is it possible to have a "login to our website with HN" capability? similar to facebook and twitter connect.

</comment><comment><USER17> Have it now enabled since I saw that submission three days ago. Still like the effect, thanks for your work.</comment>


That Internet War Apocalypse Is a Lie - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5992652/that-internet-war-apocalypse-is-a-lie

<comment><USER2> The lie was front page. The flip side, not so much.</comment>


XKCD in decline - <AUTHOR> https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=xkcd <comment><USER2> That's strange... the graph directly corresponds with the rising popularity of DuckDuckGo.

</comment><comment><USER3> "An improvement to our data collection system was applied from 1/1/16"

Coincidence??

And yes... the decline started well before that!!

</comment><comment><USER4> The comic #2094 could be based on that graph.

<comment><USER5> ... tomorrow's comic? Hi, Randall?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Squiggly line plots get old after a while. No narrative plot probably means, like me, people don't stick around after the novelty wears off.

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't see how searches for xkcd being in decline necessarily means that xkcd itself is.

<comment><USER8> Exactly, most browsers nowadays will autosuggest the full domain if you give "xkcd" as input.

If we use the same criteria, google itself is at its hugest decline.

<comment><USER7> I just type x and then hit enter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> java-man or perhaps more and more people use adblocks?

<comment><USER9> I don't think it's that. I can only speak from my experience, but it seems like web comics have been replaced more by memes and I see a lot less of them, especially XKCD.</comment></comment>


Wake Up Call: Facebook Isn't A Safe Haven - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/08/wake-up-call-facebook-isnt-a-safe-haven/ <comment><USER2> I'm glad to see Zuckerberg called out on this one. Touting one's site as a "safe haven" is dangerous as well as a crock.

The most dangerous site is any site that is approached with one's guard down - with the idea, "it's safe here." Do not manufacturers of alcoholic beverages admonish, "drink responsibly" - rather than "ours is the beverage for safe drinking"?

Social sites need to promote "safe surfing," not promote themselves as safe for surfing.</comment>


Show HN: Interactive Talks via AskThe.Host - <AUTHOR> http://askthe.host/ <comment><AUTHOR> I needed something like this for my own talks and presentations. Speaking to larger crowds, or shy crowds this is an great tool to open people up and start a dialog about what matters to your audience.

Totally free, I don't even require you to register. Nothing to download, just start using it.

If you need something for your company, I found a similar (non-free) app called [https://www.polleverywhere.com](https://www.polleverywhere.com) that looks good.

</comment><comment><USER2> Cool, I like the instant setup and theme changes.</comment>


Ex-Microsoft privacy adviser: I don't trust company after NSA revelations - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/30/microsoft-privacy-chief-nsa

<comment><USER2> I want to know who ever trusted Microsoft to begin with?

<comment><USER3> Trust Microsoft before you trust Google. Microsoft never sold your data to advertisers.

Google will sell me all of the search data for a user. That includes "directions" so I can tell what household.

Google is evil.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Keeping your privacy advocate in the dark while handing over data from US- based operations can't be in harmony with data protection laws.

You have to wonder what liability US firms might be exposed to in Europe, and at what diplomatic arm-twisting must be under way to limit that exposure.

</comment><comment><USER3> Basically he is saying he sucked at his job, because when I was at Microsoft I knew we were sharing data with out warrants and I didn't even work in that group.

I knew that Hotmail shared data without warrants. I knew that we had archives of users passwords so that we could comply with orders from the Fed to provide them. I also knew that we didn't require paperwork just a request.

If I knew this why didn't the guy who was tasked with knowing this know? There are only two possible answers. He was stupid, or he didn't want to know.

There is a third scenario. He knew and is now lying.</comment>


Live ships map - jan-hocevar http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'm actually serving data to marinetraffic.com from a receiver near Point Conception, California. The AIS broadcasts in the VHF band so it's basically line of site, plus a bit more because of various scattering effects. We have a receiver on Santa Cruz Island at about 750 ft elevation that gets AIS signals from ships off Mexico (when the conditions are right) - way beyond the quoted range.

The amount of shipping along even our small section of coast boggles the mind. There's a seasonal signal to it also. See [1] for example.

[1] [http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2011/10/la-port-traffic- in...](http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2011/10/la-port-traffic-in-september- exports.html)

<comment><USER2> This makes me want to buy a bunch of AIS receivers and take a week or two off to travel to far flung locations to setup remote receiving locations.

Nerd level: Extreme

Bonus points that you cite Calculated Risk blog.

<comment><AUTHOR> _This makes me want to buy a bunch of AIS receivers and take a week or two off to travel to far flung locations to setup remote receiving locations._

We've been putting them at our HF radar sites to log ship data, so that we can use the ship data in a hack to get the radars to self calibrate. The radars measure ocean currents and are in some pretty 'far flung locations'. Yes it's fun!

<comment><USER3> Besides the fun this is, setting up the recievers I mean, great hack with the self-calibrating radars, elegant and effetive, respect! Maybe one should integrate ship data to freight tracking services, so you can actually locate your container, well more the vessel!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I believe that there are some companies that do just that (the container tracking bit that is).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For those that are not aware, this is crowd sourced aggregation of data received by AIS (Automatic Identification System) VHF receivers which are hosted by volunteers who put up a receiver, antenna, and send the data received from the ships to this site.

</comment><comment><USER5> At Bloomberg, we provide the same live vessel position via the BMAP function on the terminal mainly so that oil / natural gas traders can monitor and speculate commodities flows based on ship traffic and reported contents of ships. Someone posted a screenshot on this Quora question:

[http://www.quora.com/Investing/What-are-the-coolest- function...](http://www.quora.com/Investing/What-are-the-coolest-functions-on- Bloomberg)

It is definitely fun to play around with. Similar tools are provided to slice/dice the data to look at all the vessels which match particular criteria.

Similarly, all the data for positions of critical infrastructure (refineries, oil pipelines, power plants, etc) are provided as well as live storm tracking information so traders can determine if natural disasters will affect particular sectors or companies.

</comment><comment><USER6> Very nice, but I had to wonder why, of the thousands of ships whose positions are recorded, only 2 appear to be any significant distance from land. The answer is in the FAQ [1]:

> The MarineTraffic system does not cover all the seas of the world, but only > specific coastal areas where a land-based AIS receiver is installed.

[1] <http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/faq.aspx?level1=160#16>

<comment><USER7> The AIS transmissions are VHF (162MHz) so they are fairly short range, although with high gain antennas you can extend it a bit (with a corner reflector I once had intermittent data from a ship 600nm away).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There are a lot of tankers sitting off the coasts. I wonder if they are holding oil that was delivered to speculators, awaiting sale?

<comment><USER9> Often tankers sit out and wait for the oil price to change marginally (yes, really - its that silly). Other than that, could be many reasons including bunkering (via smaller ships), full port, repairs/servicing, etc.

<comment><USER10> It's not that silly when you work it out. You have a ship holding 2-3 million barrels of oil and a 20-40 crew. It looks like the market price of light sweet crude varies by as much as $1 per barrel per day. Which means a difference of _2-3 million dollars_ if you come to port today instead of yesterday.

<comment><USER9> Not silly in that sense. Silly in the pragmatic sense that expensive ships spend considerable amounts of time doing nothing...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have some friends who do this: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTE9Gr0ZmOc>

I bet they would love this app.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is very cool. Great tool for Somalian pirates too?

edit. Ahh never mind they don't seem to have any data on the east coast of Africa

<comment><USER4> They don't have any data for the east coast of Africa because there probably aren't any receivers setup to receive AIS signals in that area.

<comment><USER12> Yeah after reading the FAQ I came to the same conclusion. But also realized that pirates wouldn't actually need this site and could just get their own AIS receiver's

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you want to parse the AIS serial data you can use my AISparser project - <https://github.com/bcl/aisparser>

</comment><comment><USER13> This site is really cool. Everyone interested in this sort of tracking should checkout PlanePlotter from COAA <http://www.coaa.co.uk/planeplotter.htm>. It does a similar sort of thing but for planes which have ADS-B transmitters and a team of volunteers sharing data. It costs 25 euros to access the shared data but well worth the money (I'm not affiliated just a happy customer).

</comment><comment><USER14> Wow, really cool. My apartment overlooks Vancouver harbour and I can see every ship thats on the map.

</comment><comment><USER15> Am I the only one who searched for the Steve Irwin?

</comment><comment><USER16> It really needs a shaded overlay or similar that shows the coverage regions. If you don't know that a patch of sea isn't being monitored, it's not exactly reliable data.

</comment><comment><USER17> I live near the "oil capital of Europe" (I hate that name too), so there's quite a lot of ships floating around nearby. Very cool.

<comment><USER18> Do you mean Rotterdam? As far as I can tell it has the highest density of ships in the world.

<comment><USER19> I guess Aberdeen is the "oil capital of the world"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've been using <http://www.boatingsf.com/ais_map.php> and I like this better because (1) it's not flash and (2) your dataset is slightly more detailed.

I do miss boatingsf's animations, because it gives me a better idea about the path and trajectory of a ship than just a current position and heading.

<comment><USER21> In the popup for a particular boat click "Show Vessel's Track" which appears to show a set of previous position reports with a line drawn between them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I built an app that combines freely available AIS data with other relevant inventory data and sell subscriptions to some local oil-spill recovery companies: <http://demo.dedicatedmaps.com/>

<comment><USER23> I'm building something that might be of interest to you. Would it be convenient to contact you? If so, how?

<comment><USER22> firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I use this to track the ships my sister works on. Awesome resource :)

</comment><comment><USER25> Wow. Notice the complete lack of anything around North Korea.

<comment><USER26> Lack of data, due to lack of AIS receivers, _not_ lack of shipping activity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is great, I live near one of the biggest ports in Australia. Great to be able to identify the ships I can see from my house.

</comment><comment><USER28> Neat, but <http://aprs.fi> has had this for years. Live cars map, too. :)

</comment><comment><USER29> Cool! FlightAware for boat traffic.

</comment><comment><USER30> Somehow related:

<http://www.localizatodo.com/mapa/>

</comment><comment><USER31> They also have a great iPhone app.

</comment><comment><USER32> Extremely cool!

</comment><comment><USER19> I have aggregated some of the other similar sources for vessel tracking:-

<http://www.sailwx.info/shiptrack/shiplocations.phtml> <http://www.mariweb.gr/ecs> <http://www.vesseltracker.com/app> <http://vesseltrax.com/> <http://www.shippingexplorer.net/en> <http://www.fleetmon.com/> <http://www.shiptracking.eu/ais/> <http://www.worldvtsguide.org/index.html>

Similarly live air traffic from around the world is aggregated and it uses ADS-B technique to receive flight information from aircraft:-

<http://www.radarvirtuel.com/> <http://www.flightradar24.com/> <http://www.flightstats.com/go/Home/home.do> <http://casperflights.com/> <http://radar.piopawlu.net/>

</comment><comment><USER33> And now i want some crewmen wi' long beards an' a frigate... ARRRRL</comment>


Show HN: A tool to let you find websites that accept guest post - <AUTHOR> http://www.wuztr.com <comment><USER2> How does this work? Is this related to the guest post spam we get daily for our blog on RemObjects.com?

<comment><USER3> Same question and more feedback: the first thing I did was look for regional lists and didn't get anything back for NYC.

<comment><AUTHOR> you need to search for categories like parenting, wedding, pets, Marketing and much more.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Working for defense drone startups - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN, I am really interested in working for startups that design and build drones for the defense industry. I'm a college junior in the US with some minimal embedded hardware experience. Are there any particularly interesting startups in this space or are drones made entirely by the big boys (Lockheed, Boeing etc)?<p>Thanks for your time! <comment><USER2> Check out WWW.GALOIS.COM.</comment>


Why Do Computers Suck at Math? - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/05/why-do-computers-suck-at-math.html

<comment><USER2> Odd post for Atwood - I have to imagine that 90% of his readers didn't come away with any new knowledge.</comment>


ESR: Is Danish Dying? - <AUTHOR> http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=965 <comment><USER2> #1 (rapid evolution) is not a sign of language dying, it is a sign of language living. Only dead languages don't evolve.

#2 and #3 are true, not sure if they are a sign of death. As a (Danish) kid I found Norwegian (bokmål) far easier to read than Danish.

#4: I don't believe the ads are significant, and certainly not English street signs in areas a tourist may visit.

However, the last example is what Danish linguists consider the greatest threat to the language: Domain loss. Danish is really to small a language for specialized domains. When I write about my work, I use English, as the majority of people who might potentially be interested are from outside Denmark, and those Danes that might be interested can all read English. A generation ago similar texts would likely be in Danish, but a generation ago there was far less international collaboration.

[ Domain loss in Denmark is nothing new, Latin, French and German have all been dominating various domains earlier. The German dominance was far greater than English today, before the rise of nationalism Danish was merely a peasant language, and even for the peasants German words replaced Danish to a large degree. ]

<comment><USER3> Interesting stuff. Thanks for sharing!

From my (limited) experience, it feels like small European languages are particularly susceptible to domain loss from English. Since they all share a common alphabet and the phonemes are "close enough", it's often trivial to grab a word or phrase from English when there isn't a proper native substitute. The technical fields are obviously going to go first, but other fields will follow as the world changes.

English is a highly predatory language. It absorbs foreign vocabulary extremely easily, and the grammar is remarkably flexible. If a language doesn't cover some conceptual territory, odds are that English will step in to fill the gap. I can easily envision a world where most people eventually speak some kind of English creole.

Oddly, the only major language (100 million+ speakers) I've seen that's resistant to English invasion is Chinese. The pictographic writing system, coupled with its monosyllabic tonal nature make it really hard for Chinese speakers to use unmodified foreign vocabulary. English has grabbed a number of Chinese words, but the transfer has been almost entirely one way.

I'm sure there's other languages that are incompatible with English, but they're in a distinct minority. I think the rest are going to experience at least some domain loss to English.

<comment><USER4> What about the Japanese?

<comment><USER5> Japanese has tons of English words, even for some pretty basic concepts (チャンス, タイプ, etc.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _Most linguists think it's Just Not Done to say that a speaker population is evolving its own language out of existence_

ESR == Steve Sailer

No matter what he's writing about there will always be a mention of how he can see situations more clearly than other people, but only because he's fearless in the face of the overbearing political correctness to which other people succumb.

He's just _so_ unafraid of thinking "taboo" thoughts.

<comment><USER7> I think you underestimate his ego. What you describe is true, but it's not all. For example, he's also smarter than all physicists:

<http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=690>

Oy! For relief, I suggest his epic spanking in the Linux Kernel Mailing List:

[http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0202.1/1909.h...](http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0202.1/1909.html)

Which is actually a good thread to understand kernel development.

<comment><USER6> _I think you underestimate his ego._

You're right. Painfully right.

"Eric realizes that if he'd had a bit more courage and self-discipline, and moved from mathematics into physics rather than programming, he would have been rather likely to have invented decoherence theory himself and become a physicist renowned for kicking the props out from under the Copenhagen Interpretation."

From the followup:

"I just turned 51. That means, in order to believe that I could do really strong and original physics work now, I'd have to start with a justified belief that I'm as talented as Hawking or Einstein. This is almost certainly not the case. I would say "certainly", except that my general track record of creativity and insight is far enough off the mean to raise just the tiniest smidgen of realistic doubt about this. And I was, after all, ahead of the physics literature on something conceptually important at least once - even a lot of physicists never manage that."

One reads such words, and what can one say but... "esr."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Another interesting development in the Danish language is the rise of 'multietnolekt' (multiethnolect) - a type of ethnolect that's emerged among multicultural communities.

It's gramatically different from Danish, and has words from Kurdish, Turkish and Arabic. As far as I know it's confined to immigrant communities, but that might change.

Not sure how this fits in with the idea that Danish is dying.

More info here <http://dialekt.dk/multietnolekt/> (article in Danish)

</comment><comment> barry-cotter No, but it is undergoing domain loss. Dialects with their very own army and navy don't disappear.

I spend a bit of time in Germany and while I can't speak to phoneme shifts in German because I can't speak the damned language yet, there's pseudo-English all over the place in advertising, street signs, tourist info. But for the advertising really is pseudo-English and sometimes translations are pretty desperate. At the very, very least 10% of Germans have English good enough to hold an intelligent conversation in.

ESR is putting too much weight on his personal experience. Most of the Germans I know are CS/Comp Ling or Psychology students and they use lots of English texts in their undergraduate courses and in the computery ones the Masters are all in English. But English is a domain specific language for them. But that's not a language shift. German's not going anywhere. Hell, German dialects aren't going anywhere, most of the Deutschsprecher countries are heavily diglossic, I'd be surprised if Denmark wasn't similar.

I think the post could have been written about any of the Germanic languages and it'd be just as wrong.

</comment><comment><USER9> I wrote this comment on ESR's site but it's in the moderation queue:

Interesting article. I myself am Danish but living in Miami. I left about 20 years ago but was back in Copenhagen for a couple of years recently. I did see a big change in Danish, in particularly with the use of English.

In the 80's it was not all that cool to talk English all the time. It was only a few of us in the hip hop community and programmers who got a way with it. This has changed, but not in the way you might think. I think even on the street someone would be thought of as a poser if he used nothing but English.

What Danes do, do is import English words and make them their own. A lot of this I think comes from the hip hop community which has gone mainstream in Denmark in the period I was away. My 2 favorite examples of English words that have become Danish is Slice and F _ck. Slice was new to me when I returned to Denmark. It means a slice of pizza. In Danish you can leave of Pizza and you can't use "slice" for anything else unless you're talking about servers.

F_ck has become such a common use in Denmark, that I don't think people even realize that it isn't Danish. It is used by just about everyone younger than 40 all the time, to such extent that Danes travelling to the English speaking countries routinely and unwittingly cause offence.

So my point about these words is that while they both come from English, they have now become absorbed with changed meaning into Danish. So when I'm in a 7/11 in Copenhagen saying "give mig et slajs" I'm not actually talking English, just modern street Danish.

This absorption of new words reminds me of when I lived in Panama, where words have been imported whole sale from Jamaican and American English to the local Spanish language. The word "Man" for example means "Person" and not "Male", which caused me never ending confusion when I heard people talking about "la man" and I thought they were talking about some guy.

My theory about what has happened in Denmark is that it is an extremely egalitarian society. Elitist language snobs are frowned upon. There was also a period (say the 80s) where very few decent TV or movies where made in Denmark. So my generation who grew up then absorbed everything we could from American and English culture. The growth of Hip Hop in Denmark has I'm certain also had a huge influence. In the 80s though there were lots of Danish groups singing in English, now I think the majority sing/rap in Danish.

I'm very interested in these kinds of changes to culture all over the world. I wrote this article about how globalization doesn't homogenize music and food, but rather create lots of interesting new micro fusions. It's kind of related to this debate and uses Denmark, the Philippines and others as examples.

[http://stakeventures.com/articles/2007/09/18/why- globalizati...](http://stakeventures.com/articles/2007/09/18/why- globalization-wont-make-everything-the-same)

<comment><USER10> Another example of word import in Danish: the word "shopping" (in Danish: "købe ind") is now used when shopping for fun stuff (girls/gays buying clothes) while the danish word is used when shopping for groceries.

So "jeg skal shoppe" (I have to shop) is shopping for fun, while "jeg skal købe ind" means "I have to buy groceries".

<comment><USER4> Same in German.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> so it's come full circle. anglo saxons that 'invaded' england originated from denmark.</comment>


"Russia needs Israeli-style airport security" Dmitry Medvedev - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12273145

<comment><USER2> That may be what it needs, but will it get US-style "security"? Gotta watch out for that one, Medvedev.</comment>


Company selling clones of web products (incl. airbnb, etsy, pininterest..) - <AUTHOR> http://www.agriya.com/products

<comment><USER2> Honestly, seems like a clever tactic to me as long as they don't wander into the realm of outright copyright infringement.

Think about it from the perspective of a freelance web developer: _How many times have I heard "build me a Groupon clone"? How many times have I heard "build me Facebook, but <with this subtle difference>"?_

From that perspective, it's actually a very clever and efficient way to attract a client base and not need to bash your head into your keyboard every time you receive a spec for a <business-name-here> clone.

That said--and I didn't look very closely at this particular site--infringing upon their technology is obviously unethical and wrong. Just my $0.02.

\--

Edit: It looks like they're actually labeling them as things like "Groupon clone." Clever, sure, but I think this crosses the line into infringement. I am not a lawyer, however, so someone who is more familiar with the subject should correct me if I'm wrong :)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is definitely over the line of infringement. Pininterest? Really? The idea isn't too bad IMO, but the way they are going about it is.</comment>


Claude Lévi-Strauss Dies at 100 - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/world/europe/04levistrauss.html?em=&pagewanted=all <comment><USER2> He was about the same age as Sartre, de Beauvoir, and Simone Weil. Not only did he outlive his own generation, he outlived the generation that overthrew his, in intellectual movement terms. That's amazing.

Also, that photograph of Sarkozy visiting Lévi-Strauss is quintessentially French.

<comment><USER3> I was kind of surprised that he was still alive. I don't think his stuffs are completed threw out. Even when you are working on post modernism, post structuralism, his stuffs still are classics to be read as reference frame.

I remember 20 years ago when I read "The Raw and the Cooked". It was still a pretty decent work to be read.

Sarkozy's visit to Lévi-Strauss is similar to Wen Jiabao's visit to Qian Xuesen. But you see, French is more philosophy oriented and Chinese is engineering oriented....

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Everybody is running the photo of him in the Amazon doing field research, even though his field research was not especially strong. A few quotes from the article:

 _Why not admit it? I was fairly quick to discover that I was more a man for the study than for the field._

 _I hate traveling and explorers._

Quite admirable! After discovering he had no taste for what was seen as the defining activity in his discipline, he didn't spend his life pretending or trying to be a brilliant field researcher. Nor did he resign himself to mediocrity. He found a way to bring his talents to bear in a field where everybody assumed that different talents were required.

</comment><comment><USER5> Levi Strauss is not only probably one of the two most famous anthropologists of all time (Magaret Meade being the other), but his work is cited by many of the foundational thinkers of cognitive science.

His book "Tristes Tropiques" was also so well written that it would have been awarded the Prix Goncourt except that it was non-fiction.

Probably one of the ten most important thinkers of the 20th century, though not nearly so important today.

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/nov/03/claude-levi- st...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/nov/03/claude-levi-strauss- obituary)

</comment><comment><USER6> One of the great things about him is that is work was very readable, even enjoyable even if parts of it are dated.

<comment><USER3> I found that a lot of old classic books in physics, mathematics and science are pretty readable. Such as those reprint titles from Dover Publications in U.S. Even Richard Feynman's lectures are pretty easy too read.

And books from early 20th century on psychoanalysis are readable, too.

It maybe that I am more experienced than I was so I can read those books faster with better comprehension. Or maybe I am old and fuzzy and thought I am getting their idea right with presumptuous inflated ego. Or maybe the pressure from getting grades is off the back, therefore I start to enjoy the pleasure of reading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This guy did us a disservice in many ways. He is one of the instigators of the politically correct Our Evil Religion school of thought that our culture is no better then anyone else's (thus chipping away at Western Civilization, the hidden agenda)

Whereas the truth is everyone in those 'equal' civilizations is pissing through concrete trying to get the the West. The know damn well the equality thing is not so.

On the whole, an intellectual idiot.

</comment><comment><USER8> Skimmed the article, but no mention of jeans....

<comment><USER9> For all those who have the same confusion, the person refered to in this article and the Levi Strauss (jeans guy) are different.

Claude Live-Strauss referenced in this article is an anthropologist. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_L%C3%A9vi-Strauss>

The Levi Strauss who ran a clothing company is here <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levi_Strauss>

<comment><USER10> Yeah, when I first saw this story somewhere, I thought, "Huh. Maybe you NEED tough pants to do anthropology."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can we please add linking to registration-required content as something to avoid in the HN guidelines? This kind of thing seems to be increasing...

<comment><USER12> <http://www.bugmenot.com/view/nytimes.com>

Or, just register. It takes like 30 seconds, the cookie never expires, and you don't even have to use a valid email.

<comment><USER11> Installing a plugin or having to register is still a waste of time - especially when the article could be sourced from a number of similarly reputable sources.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Crowdfunding Stupidity  - <AUTHOR> http://www.crowddare.com/dares/4

<comment><USER2> At least it's for a good cause. Sure beats crowdfunding already-successful game developers or movie stars who shouldn't need crowdfunding but are too scared to dip into their own pockets for a project.</comment>


Ask HN: What app/website has the best ux for threaded discussions? - <AUTHOR> What apps/website with threaded discussions are you using? What do you like / dislike in threaded discussion interfaces? <comment><USER2> Reddit.</comment>


Update to R requires re-installation of packages - <AUTHOR> https://www.dominodatalab.com/blog/significant-update-to-r-requires-re-installation-of-packages/ <comment><USER2> Repeatable work means understanding your inputs and outputs.

If you just slap a brand name on it without that understanding you've just added another black box.

Maybe I'm hard to convince because I've worked in this space, but the first thing I think is that this is "Anaconda 2.0"</comment>


How to Prevent a Hangover - <AUTHOR> http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Prevent_a_Hangover?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher <comment><USER2> [http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/26/080526fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/26/080526fa_fact_acocella)</comment>


Report: Google Will Get Access to Twitter's Firehose Again - <AUTHOR> http://searchengineland.com/report-google-will-get-access-twitters-firehose-214220

<comment><AUTHOR> pretty excited of the thought of this, not just for our company but for all of the applications that were halted as a result of this, and the new opportunities. A savvy programmer will make it rain.</comment>


Talking to users - <AUTHOR> http://www.defstartup.org/2016/11/23/talking-to-users.html <comment><USER2> Here's an easy way to start a conversation with new trial users:

Send a simple, one-line email that asks them what they hope to achieve with your product/service.

"Hi, saw you signed up for Acme, welcome! What are you hoping to get out of your trial?"

(I've written about this before: [http://www.gkogan.co/blog/question-for-saas- trial-users/](http://www.gkogan.co/blog/question-for-saas-trial-users/))

<comment><USER3> Personally, both as a consumer and as founder, I feel like intros like these come across as a bit aggressive, like I can almost read into the email that you want to sell me something. I prefer an intro of the lines of "Hey, glad to see you on board, I'm the founder of $company, let me know if you have any questions or if you just wanna chat, I'm around". Not that I have the data to know which works better, but to me it makes more sense that the intro is about just talking about the product rather than how can we get you to buy from us best.

<comment><USER4> I feel like I'd probably parse that message as non-information, since I know I can send them an email if I want to (but I probably won't).

What has led me to submit feedback most often is having a fairly prominent "send feedback" button somewhere on every page. It means as soon as I notice a problem or think of a useful feature, I'm immediately able to press a button and write even just a one sentence suggestion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm inclined to disagree with the author's thesis. I agree that talking to users is essential, but I think his heurstic is arbitrary: "You're doing it right if you can get a third of potential users to pay you money within a month of initial contact."

The real number you should be targeting is the number of users you need to pay in order to build a sustainable business, that could be above 80%, it could be below 5%, it could be 0 . . .

This is something that varies widely by business and I don't think it's good advice for a company that falls outside the scope I imagine the author is thinking of.

<comment><USER6> The premise is that you should aim for a higher conversion number because it forces you to focus on a more narrow audience segment. I think that's really sound advice, and might go as far as to say that's the key to building any business. Typically any business can find 1 person who loves their product, but then extrapolate incorrectly or slice the wrong segment to focus on. Higher conversion number means you've started to focus on the right segment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> From my experience, I disagree with the heuristic of money paid within the first month for knowing if you are really talking to users, because it doesn't apply especially for enterprise SaaS, where you likely to have a direct sales model, and as a co-founder with no sales experience at the beginning, as you continue to sell subscriptions, let's say the same functionality within a product, you will improve as a salesperson, closing deals earlier and by that heuristic, you know what your customers want.

Consistent user engagement with the product is a better metric to build such a heuristic, because user engagement is direct correlated to value IMO. That's why I am a fan of even charging $1 per month for a product, because it easier (relative to having given it away for free) to increase pricing based on the value you deliver to your customer, which can be measured through user engagement with the product.

<comment><USER8> _> user engagement is direct correlated to value IMO_

It is not. At RethinkDB we had great user engagement, but people were unwilling to pay (or unwilling to pay enough to keep the business going). The heuristic of getting money in early avoids markets with bad fundamentals (developer tools is one instance of such markets).

<comment><USER9> Building a DB is a large endeavor, it's hard to see being able to get people to buy within only a month of contact for it (without playing with it and such). If you were to start from scratch again with RethinkDB, do you feel this logic still applies?

<comment><USER8> I would build it as a PaaS business (e.g. see Firebase), although that's a bad business for other reasons (impossible to effectively compete with Google Cloud and AWS).

<comment><USER10> Why not rent out access to AWS / GC instances running your software?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This post makes no sense to me. The goal of talking to users is not to sell them something. The goal is to better understand their needs/attitudes/pain points/etc. so that you can improve your products and services.

That eventually leads to product/market fit (and therefore revenue), but putting a conversion goal on user research sounds more like a sales activity than true user research to me...

Did I just miss the point of the post?

<comment><USER12> Yes, you kinda did. User research is very hard to believe when users aren't putting their money where their mouth is. It doesn't even matter if you take users to a credit card form and then throw away their card details. The fact that they were willing to take their credit card out for you means they actually, genuinely care about this pain point, in a non-theoretical way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm not sure about the magic number here, but as a user, I do know that I appreciate hearing from the company.

Years ago I signed up for Todoist and I was so impressed by the emails and communication that I got (on top of it being a fantastic product) that I subscribed to premium and have been ever since.

<comment><USER14> I'll be honest, I really don't appreciate it. I've become very leery of giving out real information when I have to before downloading some trial product[1], because if I put real email addresses and phone numbers, I start getting hounded by sales reps. It's not worth wasting their time or mine.

[1] typical case is, some customer of ours has a weird piece of third-party enterprise software that is flubbing up one of our products. Anti-virus and web proxies tend to be particularly over-aggressive, both with dorking up other software, and with the sales reps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Overall I agree with the spirit of the article but 30% could be too high based on the vertical you are in. Collecting feedback when you dont have direct connection to your users ( like you don't have email address ) is hard. Progressively engaging with users and asking/helping them what they want to accomplish will yield lot of insights.</comment>


Quantum supremacy is coming. It won't change the world - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/aug/02/quantum-supremacy-computers <comment><USER2> > They must take a good, hard look at the quantum computers they are building > and ask how will they make them useful.

Plenty of people in the field are working on exactly this. For example:

[https://journals.aps.org/prx/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevX.8.041...](https://journals.aps.org/prx/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevX.8.041015)</comment>


Ask HN: Freelance Work Questions - <AUTHOR>

I've been looking at software development freelancing gigs on elance, odesk, etc and have been seeing really low rates. On top of that, I see bids coming from other countries that I'm sure someone in the US couldn't beat. Are US based freelancers making a living wage? What sites are they using to find work? Any advice is appreciated. <comment><USER2> I've heard you get better rates on TopTal and through 10x.</comment>


Ask HN: What to do about "grand ideas" in fields you have no expertise in? - <AUTHOR>

Assume you have a great idea in a field you have no expertise in.
Of course, almost all people who are in this situation really don't have a great idea, but for the sake of this thread, let's assume that the idea is indeed great.
That is, great in the sense that if people with expertise and a proven track record in the field, and with connections in the industry, and with a lot of hard work, etc, could turn into something valuable.
e.g. a dentist having the idea for Tivo years before Tivo was out, or a computer programmer coming up with a design for a better propeller for oil tankers.
It seems to me that there is almost nothing you can do in this situation. Breaking into the TV/entertainment business, or the oil tanker business, or similar large industries is close to impossible for outsiders with no expertise in the field.
On the other end of the spectrum, I'm always fascinated by how easy it is for people within a field to test even half-baked ideas. A simple example is on the show Survivor, when the host once said that his niece had an idea for a challenge for the players, and the Survivor crew put it together and it was on the next episode. An outsider to the show and/or the industry would likely have to have a huge compelling case and do a lot of hard work before they even listen to his idea for the show.
This imbalance (for insiders and outsiders) is large and could be leading us to miss out on some great stuff in various fields.
Some questions for you guys:
1) Is it as impossible to do anything about ideas in fields you have no expertise in as I think it is?
2) Are we as a society losing out on some great or at least useful innovations because as society is currently set up, it doesn't facilitate cross-discipline (outsider) idea dissemination?
3) If the answers to the above are 'yes', is there anything that can be done to change this?
4) Is my premise wrong? Am I missing something?
(I should note that I can see that most ideas coming from people outside a particular field are useless, have been done before, are impractical, etc, but I think there may be a tiny minority that could prove useful in the right hands) <comment><USER2> _Of course, almost all people who are in this situation really don't have a great idea, but for the sake of this thread, let's assume that the idea is indeed great._

Why are we assuming that, again? Surely we should start by supposing we _think_ we have a really great idea, and then making our first step figuring out to figure out whether we have an actual great idea or a bad one. And the best way to do that is to talk to someone who is an expert.

So while I don't have a solution to the general problem of what if you really _do_ have a great idea, I do have the following advice: if you _think_ you have a great idea, please be humble and skeptical about it. Please be willing to accept that it might actually be a dumb idea because of some detail that you, as a non-expert, know nothing about.

Personally I'm sick of reading disproofs of relativity and plans for perpetual motion machines.

<comment><AUTHOR> I need to clarify the OP, since it seems many are responding to points I wasn't making.

Basically, like many of you, I have some ideas for things outside my field. I can see that, if pursued by someone _in that field_ , they have an epsilon probability of success and a (1-epsilon) probability of failure, where epsilon can be very small.

What I was trying to say in the OP is that even if one of the ideas is within the epsilon range, that doesn't mean that if _I_ pursue it, it will have probability of success epsilon.

Most likely, if I pursue it, it will have probability of success of delta and probability of failure (1-delta), where delta is much smaller than epsilon, and is zero in most cases.

That's why some ideas, if they are had by people in the field may be worth pursuing by them, since the odds of success, even if small, are not negligible. If those same ideas are had by people outside the field, the odds of success become negligible or zero, so they are never pursued.

As a small throw-away example, I live in an area where people put those silver or white covers on the dashboard of their cars, to prevent the sun from overheating the cabin of the car. I always thought that instead of this being a gadget you buy and then have to manually fold and unfold and store when not in use, cars should have those built-in, and you just press a button and some silver-coated cover emerges from the front of the dashboard and covers the front wind shield. Whether or not this particular idea would ever work, the point is that if someone inside, say, Honda or BMW or whatever, has this idea they can quickly make a CAD drawing and see how it would fit and work within the existing CAD drawing of one of the company's cars, they could probably price it, and if things look decent, they can pitch it to their boss. If someone from outside the car company has this idea, the number of obstacles they have to overcome just to get the idea heard is huge.

(Wasn't there a movie recently with Greg Kinnear where he played a guy who invented intermittent windshield wipers and had a very tough time with the car companies? I just found the person he was portraying: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kearns>)

The question is how many innovations like the intermittent windshield wipers do we as a society miss out on because of the huge imbalance of how easy/hard it is for people inside/outside a field to pursue ideas?

<comment><USER3> This is true only for ideas that aren't original, but instead are very small modifications to existing products.

<comment> alok-g Or is it?

Even ignoring that the idea may be very original and still be a very small modification to existing products, validating or implementing an idea takes a lot more effort than coming up with an idea whether or not it is a small modification to an existing product.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you think that if a dentist comes up with an idea for a more efficient internal combustion engine, or comes up with the idea for intermittent windshield wipers, that the effort to validate or implement those two ideas is the same?

Validating small improvements to existing products is usually much easier than validating fundamental changes to how things are done.

(Even ignoring the fact that, when the idea comes from someone outside the field, if the idea is a fundamental change to how things are done, it has a much higher probability of being a crackpot case, than if the idea is a small modification to an existing product)

<comment> alok-g Sure. Sure.

Having an existing product gives you a framework to validate it, so makes things much easier. Yet, it is going to take more time and effort than thinking of the idea itself.

Someone outside of the field may still come up with an original idea (with much higher chance of it being a crackpot case), but would have no easy means to validate it, whether it relates to an existing product or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If it is something you want to spend time doing, then act on it. Your outsider status can be construed as an advantage in that you are less likely to be constrained by unconscious acceptance of the current dogma of the field.

You have less excuses that ever before, and the availability of knowledge and tools is greater than ever before.

If you want to design a 3D model - <http://sketchup.google.com/>

If you want to learn more about aeronautics - [http://videolectures.net/mitworld_young_corn_garvey_haggerty...](http://videolectures.net/mitworld_young_corn_garvey_haggerty_flight/)

or, Neuropsychological Associations with Social Versus other Media - <http://videolectures.net/icwsm2010_counts_ybf/>

or, whatever - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCourseWare>

If it is not something you want to spend time on, but feel it is truly a 'great idea,' then I would advise clarifying the idea and passing it on to someone you think might be interested in acting on it. The ability to locate these people is greater than ever before as well.

A google query of inurl:.edu _topic of interest_ , and you are essentially searching across all the university departments in the USA.

</comment><comment><USER5> Do not confuse ideas about the thing with the thing itself. [1]

You can have the idea for the TiVo without ever building a TiVo, just as Babbage had the idea of the digital computer but couldn't find the money or expertise to build one. But you can't watch television with your idea.

And it turns out that you can have a very complicated thing -- a dinosaur, say, or a monkey -- without _anyone ever_ having had the _idea_ of a dinosaur or a monkey.

The connection between great ideas and great things is often exaggerated. A person with no ideas and an auto parts store is more likely to build a great car than a person with nothing but ideas.

\---

[1] [http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/not-ideas-about-the-thing- but...](http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/not-ideas-about-the-thing-but-the- thing-itself/)

<comment><USER6> Exactly.

Arthur C. Clarke is generally considered to be the guy who "invented" telecommunications satellites. But he didn't build the first one. He just had an idea. And he may not really have been the first person to have the idea, just the first one to publish a document describing it that was read widely by others. But if you want to somehow give monetary credit to anybody anywhere who merely "has an idea" for something, without really going into the critical details of making it real, and without making a real thing based on it, then that leads to a world where patent trolls are much more powerful and malevolent than they are currently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Most of the comments seem to be missing the point. There's a lack of cross- discipline. If you are bad in field A, and an expert in field B, you may be able to comeup with a revolutionary idea for field B, not because you're one lucky son of a bitch, but because your expertise in area A put you in advantageous/unique perspective. We all saw biologist cooperate with engineers (using nature-invented systems in engineering, prostetic arms, etc), politicians cooperate with doctors (cheap medical solutions for poorer countries), and many more awesome examples. I think we're lacking some kind of platform or incentive to interconnect disciplines. Programmers among us see it everyday — just go to your local DMV, take a spot in the endless waiting line, and notice how much you wish they'd let you write a decent piece of software or build a simple mechanism to make this hell go away. We need to allow people to tinker in unrelated to their own fields. How? I don't know, but I think it's a big deal.

</comment><comment><USER8> > _Assume you have a great idea in a field you have no expertise in._

Assume flaming monkeys are crawling out of my nose. How often does that ever happen? I couldn't name three real examples off the top of my head.

</comment><comment><USER9> Since the best idea without the knowledge or ability to execute is worth $20 at most (<http://sivers.org/multiply>) I think your best bet would be to try and give your idea to someone who can execute on it and if your lucky get a point or two in their company or a role as an advisor.

</comment><comment><USER3> If your idea is really good and truly concrete, you can just make it. If a dentist had an actionable idea for a DVR and the drive to make it happen, he could have made it.

If you can't make the idea a reality, then you didn't have an actionable idea to begin with. I don't believe you can possibly have a novel idea that a skilled worker could implement as-is but not have the know-how to do so yourself or hire someone to do it for you.

If you won't put in the effort to make it happen, then it doesn't make any difference whether you were in the field or not.

<comment><USER10> _If a dentist had an actionable idea for a DVR and the drive to make it happen, he could have made it._

Yeah but if a DVR firmware developer had an actionable idea for a new form of filling substrate it's unlikely he'd be able to get his idea to market. It's a regulated area practiced by individuals with academic and industry accreditation

(unlike the DVR, and wider software/hardware, industries which has no real formal accreditation or academic requirements. This is why your way around works and thus the answer to OP is "depends which market").

<comment><USER11> Well, he could set up shop in a non-regulated region and make a killing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a well known problem. How do you filter through the tons of junk to find the golden nuggets? Experts are bandwidth constrained and can't look at everything. So if you have a great idea/ product you must market it through your social graph until someone who believes in you recommends to an expert who values their opinion that they should look at the idea.

The only way around this is to implement the idea/product yourself or be famous.

</comment><comment><USER13> People often think their idea is great or very unique. What makes an idea great is not that you think its great, but that it has transformed from just merely an idea in your brain or skecth-pad to an action and the end result has met your expectation for it to be considered a great idea. Then we can safely say your idea is great.

At this moment, your idea is just an idea. Its not great. Yet.

</comment><comment><USER14> People are treating cancer fairly effectively with antiangiogenic drugs, which restrict the tumors' blood supply.

Tumors generally have a poor blood supply in the first place. A while back I read about some researchers who were using some kind of microbe that attacked cells with poor blood supplies, as a way of attacking tumors.

I had just read about antiangiogenic therapy, which I think was fairly new at the time. So I thought, hey, combine the two! Use the drugs to restrict the tumor's blood supply even more, and then apply the microbe!

So I tracked down the email address of one of the microbe researchers, and sent him my idea, prefaced by saying that I was an amateur and was probably wasting his time.

Unfortunately he did not send back "OMG you just cured cancer!!" But he did send a pleasant response saying that some of the best ideas in science come from people outside the field.

</comment><comment><USER15> My advice would be to find someone who is experienced in that field. I don't mean cold-call the leading expert.

I mean dial up a buddy in a related field. Talk with them about your idea. They can help you understand the things you might be overlooking or introduce you to someone closer to that topic.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is a great question. I think you're right that we need some new social institutions to make it easier for outsiders to propose ideas for other industries.

For the time being i make sure to write down my ideas for other industries.

<comment><USER11> That social institution is already here, it's called the comment section on just about every blog.

BP has a problem with their well at a mile under water ? Let's send divers there! And so on.

Outsiders will _very_ rarely have a 'great idea' for some other field, but the cost of processing all the junk probably far outweighs the benefits.

A more likely course is that someone is able to take an idea from a non- related field and apply it to their own.

For instance, I have an 'idea' (more of a sketch of an implementation) about a solar powered Stirling engine coupled with a Stirling engine driven in reverse to provide air conditioning driven by renewables. I probably have the gear required to make a proto type and I might just be able to find the time to do it.

But heating and cooling is not 'my field' (not by a long shot), so instead of sitting on the idea or trying to mint it (very very hard, for just an idea) I've thrown it out often enough that it would be fairly hard for someone else to come along and patent an implementation. So even if I won't derive direct value from the idea I may one day be able to buy the device.

And I even doubt that my 'idea' is an original one, it's a pretty obvious combination of elements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Even if the idea is great, for the sake of argument, it doesnt count for as much as you seem to think it should. There are several products that I thought of before they were released, but I didn't see them as good enough to throw my life at. It's safe to assume that for _any_ good idea that takes lots of initiative to get off the ground, it was already thought up by dozens of people who were either lazy or underestimated its significance. The idea doesn't entitle you to anything just because somebody somewhere might be willing to run with it.

</comment><comment><USER18> Few grand / silly ideas had:

Neuroscience - Brain scan a person from all religions to show it's the same thing that they are all doing. (massive blood flow reduction in the part of the brain that orientates their positioning)

Eco - Do a tidal power generator crossed with a desalination plant. Experiment with resonance frequencies of hydrogen and ionosphere for clean power. Make ultra cheap solar panels and dump them in the desert. (pretty sure some tin foil, a way of converting and some genetic algorithm shaping should get this done) Patch any ozone holes with spraying of o^3 / something to counter act the cfcs. Co2 problem (down to 60% of the problem from 90% a few years ago) harvest the co2 out!

Physics - There's always going to be smaller! One of the strings in string theory is consciousness

Society - Legalise all drugs, prostitution and assisted suicide (stops making so many people into criminals) No speed limit on motorways at certain times

Biology - Find what plants grow well in all soil / sand conditions. (grow the desert / useless land) Bacterial recycling / break down of rubbish.

TV/entertainment - Providers release torrents / streams to anywhere with ads before the pirates do it for them.

And to answer the ops questions: 1\. I think it's possible to influence fields you have no expertise in, as can email scientists / producers. 2\. yes 3\. More empowerment to people to get involved. One day a year ask people if they have any ideas or suggestions in x field.

</comment><comment><USER19> Occasional false negatives are the price you pay for filtering out the crackpot ideas and I, for one, am OK with that.

</comment><comment><USER20> There's an app for that: <http://www.halfbakery.com/>

</comment><comment><USER6> the modern web should make this less of a problem though. just imagine sites where folks of a certain profession/industry gather. now somebody outside that profession can go to that site, post their idea, boom, it's seen, and somebody in that industry or with the right skills can act on it. it's not perfect, but it does allow something like you're describing.

now if you want to make something where the contributor's idea is "protected", while still being thrown over the wall like that, it would be harder. by protected I mean ensuring the contributor will get credited or paid if the idea turns into something. The standard solutions for that are to start a business and/or file a patent.

</comment><comment><USER21> Peter Thiel and Alex Karp had absolutely no exp in the field for Palantir, yet they've executed and made it happen: <http://bit.ly/Ja6YZ>

<comment><USER22> On the plus side, Thiel was already really rich, which made it a lot easier to hire people who did have experience in the field. May have been trickier if it was two people with no experience in the field and _also_ not in possession of billions of dollars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr#Frequency- hopping_s...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr#Frequency- hopping_spread-spectrum_invention)

</comment><comment><USER24> I think the saying "if it were that easy, everyone would be doing it" holds true. Not everybody can be a Steve Jobs or Lary Page.

</comment><comment><USER25> I would suggest pitching your idea to people who are active in that industry but not in a position to execute the idea, he will have a more educated grasp if you can execute your idea on your own. There is a quote from someone that you might find useful (if anybody on HN knows from who this quote is, please tell)

The difference between a visionary idea and a stupid idea is that other people can see the vision</comment>


Want to know what mice in labs are saying? Try DeepSqueak - <AUTHOR> https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/deepsqueak-reveals-what-mice-are-saying- <comment><USER2> "Alexa, reorder cheese and peanut butter."</comment>