Brilliant Jerks in Engineering - <AUTHOR> http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2017-11-13/brilliant-jerks.html <comment><USER2> The situation I've encountered is a jerk who was actually fairly mediocre in his abilities but whose bully characteristics and brash confidence had led many of the non-technical people in the company to believe he was extremely skilled.

I think one reason people become bullies is because they know they can't back up their decisions with skill. Linus is brash, but is quite able to work well with people and has the results to prove it.

Most people who adopt bully tactics are simply doing it for tactical reasons to hide their own weaknesses.

The myth of "brilliant jerks" is harmful because it lets any jerk pretend he's doing it because he's brilliant, when chances are he's just afraid of being unmasked as mediocre.

As a corollary, engineering culture should be very open to every member of the team learning and being very open to lessons learned (read: mistakes made) in the process. Bullies often intimidate by criticizing others' decisions, which creates an atmosphere of fear that prevents rational thought and stifles group learning.

<comment><USER3> This is certainly a problem I've seen. One employee was hated by almost all the technical people because he was a jackass and couldn't work with others. He wanted everything done his way and wasn't interested in the opinions of others (except as they may bolster how great his ideas were).

The truth is he wasn't very good, at least not to the degree he tried to present.

Some of management loved him because he worked so hard. He was always there, always the one holding things together.

The truth was he was doing that because his methods were shoddy enough that things were always falling apart. He didn't want others working on stuff because that would either lose his control/power or people would see how bad things really were.

In the end it became too much. As the company grew and things were done without him it became clear just how little he actually accomplished. New employee worked as well and were easy to get along with, not hostile to help.

But we had to suffer with him sabotaging things and dealing with his outbursts for YEARS.

<comment><USER4> There are Jerks and Non-Jerks. Also Brilliant Folks and Averae Joes(?). I dont know why we tend to club two different qualities and consider them as a single entity. The question should be, "This employee is a jerk, what to do about it" rather than, "This employee is a brilliant jerk, should we tolerate it". There are enough brilliant people who are excellent human beings with no failings and plenty of mediocre bullies. The employee should conform to common sense behaviour which is compliant to their corporate culture like most tech workers do.

<comment><USER3> The problem is non-brilliant jerks are usually a lot easier to get rid of. They can be replaced.

When the jerk is brilliant and necessary (or at least perceived so) management can be much more hesitant. 'Yes he's horrible but we can't operate without him' or 'we don't have the slack to pick up that work' or 'it will take too long to train someone new right now'.

They get extra excuses that a medium or low performer wouldn't.

<comment><USER5> Sadly, that extends to behavior far worse than being a jerk.

<comment><USER3> WAY too true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been a smart jerk, dunno about brilliant but positive about the jerk part. More in the selfless camp, I cared about the company (Sun) a lot and ran rough shod over anyone who got in the way of my quest to make the company better.

I definitely hurt some people and, as a young guy, felt that making the company better trumped all of that. And I was a little clueless, I had ADD and no treatment and had no idea that communication happened non-verbally, just wasn't a thin g for me.

What made it better was when I added compassion and empathy to my thought process. Instead of barging into someone's office and yelling at them that their code was broken, I'd start with the people stuff. Ask if I could talk to them, ask how they were doing, ask if they knew about this problem in their code. More ask, less yelling. And in my head, i would ask myself is there anything going on in this dude's life that is negative? Sick kid? Divorce? Parent dieing?

I was still willing to come to the conclusion that the person sucked at whatever chunk of code it was that was in the spotlight but it took me a lot longer to get there because I was trying to see if there was something else going on that caused the crappy code.

Dunno if that helps, I'm sure people told me to think like that but it took me a while to get there. Maybe this shortens the path for someone else.

</comment><comment><USER7> I am an Alice and I need some feedback as why is it a bad thing! I work in an environment when very small percentage of people know what are they doing. and people that know what is going on do not speak up because they are frustrated and know probably nothing will change. in this environment I do speak up whenever I get a chance and I've been in arguments with managers 3 4 level above me. everybody else wants to be politicians and please everybody! but I believe because no one wants to hurt other people's feelings we are in a shit situation we are in.

why am I wrong ? should I care less like everybody else?

PS: where I currently work is wasting public money and I feel obligated to do something as a Libertarian!

<comment><USER8> You are wrong because the vast majority of people take criticism personally. It turns out that when you tell people they are wrong and present them with reasons they are wrong, a surprising number of people double down. I'm sure you have heard this before, but you have to make them think it was their idea.

Edit Source: I make this mistake all the god damn time, and never realize it until the person breaks and finally snaps at me. The whole time I thought we were just having a reasoned argument. I think that I am constructively invalidating the other persons arguments, meanwhile they are feeling belittled and defensive.

Edit edit: This is even worse if, like me, you think arguments are pretty much the greatest most entertaining game it is possible to play.

<comment><USER9> Agree totally.

In an idealized "intellectual-only" world, humans would be Spock-like and be pure rational actors.

But we aren't, not even close. (And I would argue that that's a good thing, but that discussion is waaaaay out of scope).

As soon as you accept that humans, including yourself, primarily make _emotional_ decisions and not rational ones, it becomes easier to steer decisions in a healthy manner.

<comment><USER10> > In an idealized "intellectual-only" world, humans would be Spock-like and be > pure rational actors.

I used to think more along these lines. I heard someone recently talk about Spock and Captain Kirk and their approaches to different situations, and he said that most people think Spock must always be right due to his logical side. He then said that many times Kirk's more human emotional approach actually worked out better in the end. Obviously you need a balance. Things should be logically thought out but sometimes you need to act out of empathy and sympathy towards others even when it might not make that much sense.

<comment><USER11> Right. In my opinion it's even worse. The thing that piss me off about Spock is that ignoring the emotional component is a very illogic thing to do. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If someone does something wrong, Alice tells them plainly, and they get offended, whose fault is it? Some people say it's Alice' fault for offending; some say it's the person's fault for doing it wrong in the first place, and for subsequently getting offended.

I think we're conflating is and ought here. It's probably a fact of reality that most people aren't happy to be told they're wrong. But arguably people _ought_ to accept the consequences of being wrong, e.g. feeling bad when they're told.

I've talked to lots of startups in San Francisco. Most are failing, just due to the nature of startups, but can survive if they reach a finite set of straightforward goals. They've found product/market fit, they know what they have to do, they just have to do it, and the correct 10,000 characters of code input into a computer would solve all their business problems. There's often a lot of handwringing about why they're failing: the process is wrong; communication is wrong; something or other. But the largest reason they're failing is that they're insufficiently good at technology. You know who'd be really good at fixing that? A team of Alices.

I think Alices get too much flak. Bob is genuinely a toxic character. But if your only fault is telling the truth, which offends people, and you're otherwise excellent at your job--- there's a huge opportunity for twenty Alices to get together, bypass the inefficiencies of being offended, and win big. Tech has an obvious historical example.

Edit: I reread the description of Alice. All right, maybe don't _browbeat_ your point into others.

<comment><USER13> Alice is so vaguely portrayed here that I think it's impossible to draw conclusions, let alone call her a brilliant jerk.

As you mention, pointing out when things are wrong isn't being a jerk, it's doing your damn job. "Having little empathy for others" isn't describing behavior, so it's meaningless here. OK, "browbeating" might be bad, but what does that mean anyway? Is she repeating the issue a month later after the problem got ignored, or is she micromanaging it, or what? There's no indication here. Whatever it means, Equifax could have used some browbeating on security issues.

There's no indication about why people try to avoid working with her. Does that refer to other developers, or does HR try to avoid her they go around asking for donations for girl scouts or something? I don't see a real problem with the latter. If somebody had reputation for pointing out problems in code, I wouldn't be avoiding her, I'd be seeking her out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Early on in my career (DevOps/Virtualization/SDN/etc) I landed a role as a junior admin, a backfill for a more senior engineer who was moving up in the organization, but staying on the same team. It could be said he landed somewhere between "Alice" and "Bob", probably due to some mild autism. Without getting into excessive detail, working with him was hard, but by far the most rewarding, educational, and instructive years of my career. I learned more in that short time from that one difficult engineer than the next 3 years combined.

I'm not excusing his behavior, but if you're able to handle that style and develop a functional relationship "brilliant but difficult" folks can be an amazing resource. He's the Sr Infrastructure Architect for that organization now, and they've never been doing better. His ability to be difficult but brilliant keeps the overbearing management folks in check, and has allowed the technology platform to move forward dramatically.

The one downside (other than the constant testing of my self esteem and resolve) was that I let him teach me D&D and he was a pedantic dick of a GM.

<comment><USER15> roll less than 10: you lose your job... :|

<comment><USER14> Lol, fortunately he wasn't my manager. The only time I rolled well was when it didn't matter :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Google has an interesting philosophy on this:

""" Cosgrove asked them to elaborate on the idea: "exile the knaves, but fight for the divas."

Rosenberg said maintaining Google's collaborative culture requires weeding out and getting rid of the knaves: Employees who lack integrity, who are jealous of their peers, take credit for others' work, and think only of themselves. "Nice humble engineers have a way of becoming insufferable when they think they are the sole inventors of the world's next big thing," they write in their book. "This is quite dangerous, as ego creates blind spots... Nip crazy in the bud."

Divas, on the other hand, display "high exceptionalism," Rosenberg said. If the divas are brilliant and doing a good job, they should be valued and allowed to do their jobs. "As long as ... the divas' achievements outweigh the collateral damage caused by their diva ways, you should fight for them."

"They will pay off your investment by doing interesting things," they write. "...Remember that Steve Jobs was one of the greatest business divas the world has ever known!" """ [1]

[1] [http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2014/10/googles_...](http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2014/10/googles_eric_schmidt_and_jonathan_rosenberg_share_how_google_works_with_cleveland_clinics_dr_toby_cosgrove.html)

<comment><USER17> By all accounts I've heard from friends working at Google X, Sergey Brin is the textbook definition of a "brilliant jerk". This probably has something to do with it.

<comment><USER18> Facebook has open floor plans not because they are effective at collaboration or productive work environments, but because Mark Zuckerberg prefers being able to see everyone at work.

Companies tend to be modeled around the strengths and weaknesses of their founders.

<comment><USER17> Not disagreeing with you at all; simply pointing out there may be a good reason why Google is more tolerant of brilliant jerks than other places. I do have to say that most "brilliant jerks" don't end up being worth the time you put into them because they're usually the first to jump ship when something better comes along...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is a great article. It's a terrific opportunity for introspection.

I do however want to point out that some of these may be less about being an insufferably relentless jerk than other pieces.

> He is late to meetings, ... then looks at his phone or laptop while ignoring > everyone around him

This is also a pretty common indicator for ADHD. Not to say that excuses being a "jerk", but there are people out there that have a fundamentally difficult time tracking and arriving at meetings properly, and it's not always easy to account for. It also goes hand in hand with a few other related issues here. It's also somewhat common in the world of software.

I have some semblance of issue arriving at meetings properly, and it takes sincere effort to correct for it. When I started my career (admittedly, not so long ago) I definitely displayed more pieces of what is described as brilliant jerk than I would like to have (though certainly nothing like gaslighting and exploitation of others around me - more those things in line with adhd).

On the other hand, I spent 3 years working especially hard on self improvement here, and I certainly appreciate the patience of those around me in helping me realize my failures. It took me a year of effort to really avoid interrupting others while talking - not as a matter of being a jerk, but simply because my mind gets lost in conversation and feels the need to begin talking with less cognizance than I wish I had that others were speaking. These days, I am quick to apologize upon realizing I've interrupted, and ask the speaker to continue. That's strictly worse than never interrupting, but it both publicly acknowledges that I know this is a problem for me in conversation, and helps move forward.

The best thing for some people who have some of these issues is to give them honest, direct, and proactive feedback regarding it. They may well have no idea the ways in which they're impacting those around them, and they may well be surprisingly proactive in self-improvement upon being spoken to.

It's non-proactivity in self-improvement that you should be far less accepting of, ADHD or not.

<comment><USER20> Good point about the meetings. With Bob, he's doing this on purpose to assert dominance. If you ask Bob a direct question in this meeting, he'll ignore it on purpose the first time and continue working on his phone/laptop, and make you ask again, and plead for his attention. Making you beg is a way to humiliate you in front of others, and to show that he's more important than the others in the room. And the kicker: everyone in the room knows he's doing this on purpose, but no one speaks up, because he's the rock star engineer that we must tolerate. (Wrong.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I was so Alice for much of my career. I know this is going to sound totally cliche because this book get's recommended everywhere, but How to Win Friends and Influence People really did help me.

<comment><USER22> I prefer working with "Alices". It's refreshing to see people actually called on their bullshit.

IMHO there's also a limit to how much you can spare everybody's feelings and still be effective at that ^^. I think the OP believed that there isn't a limit. I think he's wrong.

In a corporate environment, there's almost no value in actually being one though. Linus Torvalds would almost never be promoted and would frequently be unceremoniously terminated - as advocated for by Brendan Gregg.

<comment><USER23> Do you like the act, or the result?

That is, do you like "seeing people actually called on their BS"? Or, do you like people stop doing BS things as a result?

IMO, the latter is much more interesting than the former. Being a 100% Alice guarantees the former, but does not guarantee the latter.

<comment><USER24> Nothing guarantees the latter ever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'd add that from an engineering perspective, 'brilliant' jerks aren't even that brilliant.

An actually intelligent person is happy to prove his thinking via truthful argumentation (and unit tests, documentation, and so on), and also happy to get his points refuted by similarly reasonable peers.

Anything other than that approach is noise.

<comment><USER26> Imagine that every time you implemented a new feature in your existing Java codebase, everyone asked you to explain Java. Would you be happy to prove the value of Java to your colleagues constantly? Would you start thinking that your peers maybe weren't similarly reasonable to you? At what point does explaining things become frustrating to you?

<comment><USER25> I think you should reword your question as it's not a realistic scenario.

Engineers freely choose to learn Java and apply to Java job postings, and if that's not the case I doubt they'd be vocal against the "value" of Java.

<comment><USER26> You seem like you're imagining a very ideal world. I personally know many engineers who joined a company for one reason, then the team/company began a new project and migrated to Java. I have seen people argue about the choice of underlying technology in code reviews. And if you think my specific scenario was unrealistic, then perhaps attempt to understand it as a general example of "something that is obvious to you and which you think you have explained adequately in the past and should not need to explain again and again". If you still can't understand it, then I think you may simply have never worked with anyone who was at a significantly lower level of knowledge/comprehension than yourself, and perhaps you just aren't capable of understanding the situation without having been in it.

<comment><USER25> I see your point.

Still that's quite an extreme case. Devs regularly questioning a programming language is not a code-review problem, or a should-I-be-a-jerk problem.

It's more like the problem that you escalate to the CTO (with argumentation!). Or you can pick your battles and move to a saner company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Meanwhile management and executive positions are teeming with not-Brilliant only-Jerks. It's the norm rather than the exception.

Totally makes sense.

<comment><USER28> Sounds like you are referring to _The Gervais Principle_ ?

[https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais- principle-...](https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or- the-office-according-to-the-office/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I've worked with so many brilliant jerks. They're incredibly toxic. The Bob example is bordering on sociopathic, or is a sociopath.

I've worked with someone who ticks almost all of the Bob traits. He would actively try to get people fired who he didn't like, spending time gaslighting everyone around them until enough people disliked his victim where it was possible to fire them. He turned entire teams against each other, causing organizational issues that lasted years after he was eventually fired.

The problem is that he was legitimately brilliant, and he was incredibly productive. This made his gaslighting all the more effective. When we spoke about things and people, people listened. He was charismatic, funny, and had a long-standing reputation.

After firing this person, we found out he has a history of being abusive and getting fired. It's hard to know this because he's in leadership positions in a few important open source communities.

Thankfully this org is numerous years in my past and I've eventually moved past the stress associated with it, but it's an experience that stuck with me for a long time.

</comment><comment><USER30> I found the line of questioning and discussion by the manager of the employee he "told off" to be profound, yet succinct:

> 1\. Was it my intent to make his staff unproductive?

> 2\. Do you think you could have told my engineer what you needed to, in a > way that left them feeling positive and motivated to fix it?

> Always do that in the future, please.

<comment><USER31> In my case, for most my teenage and short adult life I was always left "feeling positive and motivated" except I would always fall back into the same habits. I started to expect the gentleness and kindness. What I needed was a good ass whooping. If I look back at my life in hindsight, I learned the most when I was under the gun -- had to succeed, failure not an option -- not "motivated" and "positively influenced"

Maybe there is a "non-asshole" way to do that, but there needs to be a place for this in society as well. Some people respond to gentleness and nudges, some don't.

The person I think back early in my career when I was an associate and my first tech lead -- yes! he was the biggest asshole I met at that time -- but it would be remiss of me to not admit that I learned and stretched more on his team than I did the rest of my time at that company by a mile.

<comment><USER26> How are you defining 'motivated'? To me it seems like an oxymoron to be motivated and not do anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I would hire a brilliant jerk. Our company has 3. 2 of them I actually like, they fit the likable jerk archetype (common in sitcoms, I think Bill Maher is a good example), and they're good. The other one is basically not interested in human interaction. This offends people somehow, but I'd rather work w someone who doesn't want to talk to me than someone who I don't want to talk to.

</comment><comment><USER33> The real problem with jerks is that "you get what you role model". If you have senior technical people acting like jerks and getting away with it, you have junior people concluding that being a jerk is the way to get a leadership position. That creates a toxic workplace over the long haul. Jerk-like behavior is a performance management issue and managers that don't confront it dig their own grave.

</comment><comment><USER34> I feel that the Kotlin community definitely needs a "No Jerk approach". I've recently been to a meet-up which was on the advantages of using Kotlin for Android development, the speaker exhibited many characteristics from this article.

1\. Bob interrupts others, and ignores their opinions (When people asked questions, he downplayed them and in some cases declined to answer them)

2\. Bob bullies, humiliates, and oppresses individuals. With non-technical people, he wins arguments by bamboozling them with irrelevant technical detail, making them feel dumb (When asked about Coroutines he started explaining irrelevant stuff like locks and guards and compiler level instructions without actually answering the questions)

3\. Bob engages in displays of dominance in front of groups (He was quite assertive that his language is better than Java, no one could convince him otherwise)

4\. Bob is negative. He trash-talks other technologies, companies, and people behind their backs (He trash talked Java)

5\. Bob manipulates and misleads. Sometimes he misleads subtly, by presenting facts that are literally true in a way that is intentionally misleading. (He mislead people into thinking that null checks were just wrong and should be avoided altogether by writing code in Kotlin, he also indicated that writing data objects was not possible in Java)

6\. Bob uses physical intimidation. Bob glares at those he doesn't like, and may invade people's personal space. (He said that if his team member was unwilling to learn Kotlin he was probably not worth his salt)

7\. Bob gives great talks – about himself.

8\. Bob refuses to change. (This was quite evident about him)

To sum up, he was arrogant and loved humiliating the audience, I and a few others left the talk after 30 mins.

</comment><comment><USER35> I previously worked in a place with a Bob (who ticks 80% of the boxes there) and it really is super-toxic. He got plenty of "gaslight" because he had special treatment. He didn't need to follow the processes like everyone else. He got cool work. Hence my 'previously worked'.

</comment><comment><USER36> Jerk is often just a paraphrase for "mildly autistic."

I've had really good results hiring "jerks" and actually taking the time to understand them as people, and then put them into positions to succeed.

Calling out others as jerks is very often a power play to gain social leverage over people who aren't good at that game.

<comment><USER37> It really depends on your business model. Are you selling results, or expectations/head count? Is the engineering work actually vital to company success or is it mostly about maintaining a stable product that doesn't need much change? So what may work for some businesses, would raise terrible issues with others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I've never come across this problem, at least not in software 'engineering'. I have met the odd jerk from other departments, but 99% of people who try that stuff will back down when you push back. Dealing with jerks is a good skill to cultivate (one that I've only recently got the hang of).

</comment><comment><USER39> Either people are normal or they are not.

If you have a chip on your shoulder, always have something to prove or want 'revenge' on an unnamed whole because you were bullied in school you are unlikely to work well with others and are going to be a liability in every single context.

Either you are brilliant or you are a jerk. Being able to respect and work well with others is a basic life skill.

Linus for instance respects and works well with thousands of people. Let's have the same transparency that someone like Linus works under for other CEOs before feeding into tabloid level sensationalist journalism that singles out one in tens of thousands of interactions.

Just being able to write a software program or doing what you were trained to do does not make anyone a genius and the vast majority of software is mundane.

</comment><comment><USER40> At one of my previous employers, we had one such jerk who was so bad that even his manager quit in frustration. None of the other managers wanted to take him in their team. This guy was technically bright but very hard to get along with. He would intimidate everything into getting his way. At one point, none of the engineers wanted to work with him. Management did warn him but it didn't make a difference. So the company found a new manager and put this guy under that poor soul. Eventually things were suddenly resolved when this jerk verbally harassed a key technical lead who was ready to quit if that guy was still around. If you look at this resume, he has a patchy work history of short stints. But his is good technically so companies are lured by him.

</comment><comment><USER41> This is not a new observation, but it is a worthwhile one.

I ran across it in [https://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Computer-Programming- Silve...](https://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Computer-Programming-Silver- Anniversary/dp/0932633420) in the form, "If you see a programmer trying to become indispensable, fire him." Followed by a note written 25 years later saying, "I have received more thanks for this piece of advice than anything else that I have said." (Both quotes paraphrased from memory.)

</comment><comment><USER42> This hits close to home for me. I've received feedback (never from management—from peers) that I've exhibited some of the "brilliant jerk" behavior (hopefully more Alice than Bob, but I'd rather not be a jerk at all...). A few reflections I've had:

1\. Part of it is personality differences. I often default to taking a fairly aggressive approach to discussions, and appreciate a spirited debate on the merits of a particular issue. Depending on who I'm talking with, this can be a good experience, as long as neither side is taking it personally—and I have plenty of colleagues that seem to enjoy working with me. However, this rubs some people the wrong way, and I can come off as domineering if I'm not careful, especially to people that prefer to avoid confrontation. Of course, how I am perceived by others is my own responsibility—but my default personality seems to be more compatible with some people than others.

2\. When paired with a strong personality, I tend to take an approach to balance them out. All of the times I've been called out for being too negative, it's been when I've been working closely with a person that is overwhelmingly positive. I feel that I tend to be more critical when I feel that others are not properly vetting new ideas. On the flip-side, I've also noticed that when I'm talking to someone more negative, I tend to take a more positive approach, especially if I feel that they're ignoring the positives in an idea or situation.

3\. I tend to be more harsh on people that I perceive as at or above my level—I feel that honesty is something that everyone deserves from me, but I'm direct to a fault. However, with people that I perceive as junior, I find I'm naturally more diplomatic and constructive—I don't want to demoralize them, and I am thankful to be able to play some small part in building someone else's career. I need to remind myself that all people—even those that I perceive as senior to me—benefit from affirmation and constructive feedback; it's easy for me to underestimate the power of my words.

The hard part for me is to identify which parts of my personality are jerk- like, and which parts—when channeled appropriately—are useful (a team lacking critical voices is also going to be ineffective).

I fervently believe that the greatest challenge in our field is not technical—it's interpersonal. Rarely do projects fail because of technical reasons; instead, they fail because of communication breakdown, interpersonal conflict, and other "soft" attributes. I hope that I can be part of the solution, rather than the problem.

<comment><USER43> > The hard part for me is to identify which parts of my personality are jerk- > like, and which parts—when channeled appropriately—are useful (a team > lacking critical voices is also going to be ineffective).

I think this might be the wrong way to think about this stuff.

Different communication strategies appeal to _different listeners_. Rather than analyzing yourself, saying "some parts of me are effective, others fail," I think it's more useful to analyze your interactions. You've almost certainly had really productive, energizing debates with people in which everyone walked away feeling glad that all the cards were laid on the table.

You've probably _also_ had really unproductive, demotivating debates in which people felt attacked, unable to express themselves, and frustrated.

Here's the skill to work on: _before_ you start that debate, try to understand the person you're talking with. How do they want to talk about this topic? Do they do better with collaborative, friendly, "That's a good idea"-type discussion, or with hard-edged debate? Now, mold your communication to _their_ style.

You said this yourself in your #2, but I want to triple-underline it. That's _the whole job_ when you are communicating. It's all about finding ways to get your point across as effectively as possible, which means it's _your job_ to communicate the way _they_ will listen to.

This is hard! But it's worth it. You definitely don't want to just have one way of communicating - that just makes you frustrated when people aren't receptive to that style.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I think Brendan must have worked with quite a lot of brilliant jerks in the ZFS appliance days at Sun/Oracle. The Fishworks team was excellent but some of the top heads were quite toxic.

</comment><comment><USER45> This really hit close to home.

I work with engineer whose is brilliant. We originally thought he was jerk, but the bosses loved him because he was a 5x engineer with the ability to handle huge cognitive loads, catch errors or conflicts in our large systems in the planning phase.

It turns out he was neuro atypical, and was actually nice guy, it turned out he was the one paying for friday pizzas not the boss. He was just too ahead of us, and honestly we let our inferiority complexes and frustration color our opinions of him.

</comment><comment><USER46> You have to understand one thing: A Brilliant Jerk is not brilliant.

He/She excels in one specific topic and perhaps never thought about excel in all necessary skills. He/She is caught in her/his world and might not be able to learn proper social skills. It is quite hard to change long lasting behaviour.

I'm quite surprised how many adults stop evolving.

</comment><comment><USER47> This is one of the great examples of survivorship bias. You start to think that all of the most brilliant people are jerks, but the reality is that all of the non-brilliant jerks were fired long ago for crossing the line. The only ones left are very very valuable -- and still should fired if they can't play nice.

<comment><USER48> ... which is how you end up in a company with mediocre engineers, developing mediocre products, sliding into mediocre abyss.

But at least while making those mediocre salaries they can all hate those "brilliant jerks" that they fired.

<comment><USER47> Funny you say this while commenting on an engineer's opinion from Netflix. Believe it or not you can fire jerks and still be technologically innovative.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I have totally turned into an Alice recently. I am watching an important project turn into a failure for no good reason at all, and I feel like I can either just stop giving a shit about the outcome and go along with it, or I can keep saying that this isn't going to work, and to recover we need to do x.

</comment><comment><USER49> > coworkers become accomplices, and gaslight his abuse

Personally I think this is the worst part. It's much harder to deal with a group of jerks and their like-minds. A group typically self-justifies their behaviors and more likely to defy company policies. That's why bullies typically come in packs.

</comment><comment><USER48> The hilarity of this advice in a single chart:

[http://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ERIC/prices/ericsso...](http://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ERIC/prices/ericsson- lm-adr-stock-price-history)

<comment><USER28> I'm scratching my head as to the point you are trying to make. What's the chart got to do with the topic?

<comment><USER48> Look at the post that stared the thread. It has a picture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I had a brilliant jerk at another job. One time, he just blabbered and interrupted a junior engineer in a meeting so much, another senior engineer stood up, took off his glasses and screamed loudly,

"Let the man talk, will ya?"

The room just went silent for a few moments after.

</comment><comment><USER51> > Bob interrupts others, and ignores their opinions

You don't know what a brilliant jerk is. Brilliant jerks never interrupt anyone and listen to everyone. But they always find a way to do (and make other people do) what's best for themselves.

</comment><comment><USER52> Alice will make a great founder.

Alice, if you're listening, quit your job and go start your own company!

<comment><USER53> So will Bob, if Apple is any indication.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Why should nothing ever feel bad?

<comment><USER55> Why should everything be terrible forever?

The article is talking about people who are systematically bad for organizations, not people who have a bad day sometimes.

<comment><USER56> Things can be terrible because some people don't know how to act.

Things can also be terrible because some people don't know how to do the job properly.

It is a lot easier to find a yes-man/woman than a brilliant anyone. Companies are ruined by mediocrity far more than they're ruined by 'brilliant jerks' bullying the company into non-existence.

Who'd you rather have as your surgeon - a brilliant jerk the nurses have to put up with, or a nice guy/lady who screws up sometimes but will feel really bad about it afterwards and will write you a hand-written apology.

I'll take the jerk every time.

<comment><USER55> > _" a brilliant jerk the nurses have to put up with, or a nice guy/lady who > screws up sometimes but will feel really bad about it afterwards and will > write you a hand-written apology."_

The brilliant jerk will have set a precedent in the operating room that leads to people not questioning their decisions, even when they are wrong, leading to uncaught mistakes.

The most brilliant jerk will sometimes slip up. [0]

See also Crew Resource Management: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_resource_management](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_resource_management)

0\. [https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/book/the- gloss...](https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/book/the-glossary-of- human-computer-interaction/human-error-slips-and-mistakes)

<comment><USER56> Great, we agree to hire people who are good at their job, and then train them to be effective at communication with others.

I didn't see that in the article. All I saw was a witch hunt.

A witch hunt (aka don't hire them witches) because the witches are disturbing the health of the village.

It's stone-age thinking - I've heard of a story about a brilliant jerk, his name was Jesus Christ.

The irony of a Christian nation calling for excommunication of those most resembling their savior is really something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I've never actually come across an actually brilliant engineering person who was also a jerk. Maybe they sometimes superficially seemed like a jerk at first (particularly if you had a very thin skin), but not after you actually made an effort to get to know them.

Most of the time though, the jerks just aren't even close to being brilliant. I feel this jerk attitude is quite often something that is used to mask ineptitude.

This is after 20 years, 7+ companies and quite close work with hundreds of individuals (often in a managing position, so maybe they think I was the jerk ;P).

(In fact I feel like most of the "brilliant" people I have worked with have actually been nicer than the average person.)

<comment><USER58> I've met the brilliant jerk (and depending on who you ask, I've _been_ the brilliant jerk). It's a real thing.

One surprising thing is that it is possible for people to change, at least in how they treat people. Once I was told I would have to interact with the "brilliant jerk" and I complained and my manager said, "no, really, he has CHANGED" and, miracle of miracles, he had.

I wish I knew exactly how and why he changed, my best guess is treatment for clinical depression, which often surfaces as extreme irritability.

<comment><USER59> Amen and kudos for mentioning clinical depression as a thing that causes extreme irritability.

I know a few Bobs. They are hard to deal with. They get promoted. And eventually you might want to trade them out for a different Bob - which can mean just flat out leaving an organization. They aren't likely to go, so that means it's you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Hiring brilliant jerks is fundamentally a decision that comes down to the specific situation and imo it should rest with the hiring manager.

Letting brilliant jerks ruin it for others is a management problem, not a brilliant jerk problem.

However, professionalism is a two way street. Bobs and Alices that make professional salaries can be expected to improve, though the professionals that work with them should make some concessions.

One major problem with corporations / labor / the modern world is that the demands on employees are extremely high. It makes sense - people want to work in good jobs and corporations are paying for the labor and the corporations have to make money so they have incentives to hire the best people for the jobs.

Professional standards are very high - I'd say that most professionals in America are in the top 20%-30% of multiple skill sets - communication, leadership, self-directedness, tolerance for b.s, along with any domain specific skills.

We don't have an environment that most people can succeed in. And solving it would be good for people who struggle with some things or people who don't want to focus their life around professional accountability/development.

The right question to ask isn't "is bob valuable" but more like "how can build a company in that gets a single parent to manage Bob"?

<comment><USER61> _Letting brilliant jerks ruin it for others is a management problem, not a brilliant jerk problem._

Great comment of an instance.

The class:

"Letting <anything> ruin it for others is a management problem, not an <anything> problem."

I have rarely run into the "brilliant jerk" problem.

I have almost always run into the "incompetent manager" problem.

"Incompetent Managers in Engineering". Now there's an article I'd really like to read.

<comment><USER62> There are people, including highly skilled, who are not jerks and are not destroying anything to others. There are even people who are not jerks despite management itself being evil.

Management has part of blame, but jerk is responsible for his own behavior. Jerk is responsible for what strategies he choose to look brilliant. (And people with autism don't count as jerks unless they are. Most of them are willing to stop behavior when explained what the issue is directly.)

<comment><USER60> You're right that productive people are productive _despite_ being jerks, _not because_ they're jerks. And sure, cast as much judgement on jerks as you feel is proper.

But most people are pretty set in their ways. Everyone who yells at cashiers when they're 40 has done so before, they've probably faced some consequences for their actions and the behavior persists so either you need to be more persuasive than the totality of their lived experience or you can adjust your sails.

If we can accept people who miss work for sick kids, we can accept jerks. But we don't have to accept either. Everything is subservient to money. You can simply pay for excellent people, but some corporations need to compete elsewhere.

I wouldn't pay a jerk as much as a team player (all other things equal), but for the right price I'd put up with the headaches. That's the right call for me, it's not the right call for others. What's important is that corporations and managers get creative about making things work for people.

<comment><USER62> Yes, old jerk have often been young jerks. But the reason why behaviour escalates is that it is rewarded or at least tolerated. In an environment where yelling at cashier is not socially accepted, yelling at cashier happen less often. If senior cuts junior and then manager/leader address behavior and let junior speak, then the team work entirely different then if leader makes fun of half heard junior proposal.

1.) Many jerks are considered brilliant because they act like jerks, not despite or in addition to. Acting like jerk makes people less likely to question you, it makes your collegues look less capable if managent believes your crap. It makes them more angry and less confident.

Association between jerk and brilliant does not help, I have seen (literally) people finish complaint about bad behavior with "but he is great coder" over dude they knew nothing about profesionally. Zero information. He acted arrogant, therefore they assumed higher competence.

2.) Parent comment put all the blame on management and none on jerk. That is not fair and amounts to blaming other tribe.

<comment><USER60> I completely put all the blame of the costs of jerks on management and you should too. Every jerk you work with was hired by management! Jerks don't wonder around the street, finding their ways into offices and meeting rooms and then start talking over people.

Management hires jerks and puts people into situations with the jerks they hired.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> This doesn't pass the Torvald test. i.e. Would your startup hire Linus if he hadn't yet created linux and git?

<comment><USER25> \- Actual Linuses start up their own projects

\- A successful startup does not depend on miracles, geniuses and such.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> I have no problem working with jerks, as long as they're brilliant. Culture fit _also_ means not hiring people who are going to scream bloody murder at a disagreement, if your team is full of disagreeables.

<comment><USER65> Being a jerk and disagreeing are orthogonal. You can be a jerk while agreeing with someone, and be a not-jerk while disagreeing.

I'm curious, in reference to the post, how you would have no problem working with a "Bob"? Is there really no behaviour there that would bother you in a coworker?

<comment><USER66> > Being a jerk and disagreeing are orthogonal

In theory. In practice, it's much more difficult.

<comment><USER5> Not really. It's quite possible to do. The problem is that many in tech haven't really tried to develop the skill. Part of that whole, "Soft skills are useless in STEM; raw engineering prowess is all that matters!" mindset.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> >2\. Does the person target people who are less powerful than him/her?

YMMV but there is a problem in that leaders and brilliant-but-non-expendable (for w/e reason) engineers can often be jerks themselves. So much so that they use their power to write the narrative that the less-powerful was the jerk.

I know it is politically incorrect to say this kind of thing, but it certainly does happen. This happened at NASA when engineeres voiced concerns of the dangers of a foam strike. Management bullied them and the _groupthink_ culture there made people side with authority. Then this caused the Challenger disaster.

And let's be honest: get out of STEM and into something like politics, and it's very sadly a significant part of the game.

</comment><comment><USER68> Americans somehow not only manage to conflate use of bad words with mission- hostile management, on top of that they don't even recognize mission-hostile management when it doesn't use bad words. That saga with Torvalds and USB-3 was quite something.

<comment><USER69> Hand-wavey generalizations like this are not so good for Hacker News; please refrain.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Reed Hastings looks like a brilliant jerk in that photo...

</comment><comment><USER66> I'm not entirely sure I subscribe to this "behavior based" vs "merit based" look at job performance.

Consider this criterion:

> 1\. After encountering the person, do people feel oppressed, humiliated or > otherwise worse about themselves?

Bob and Mary are staunch members of <opposing political parties>. While they never discuss it at work, Mary deeply resents the views Bob posts on social media. During a code review, Bob is bluntly critical of Mary's code. Mary perceives this to be related to their political differences, and feels oppressed. Mary files a complaint with HR.

Bob claims he is being objective, and targeted for his political views. Others are hesitant to criticize Mary's code, lest they be lumped into a "tolerance witch hunt".

If you want to talk about performance, it should be objective, not subjective. Anything else opens the door to drama. Yes, "jerks" create issues. But making a rule that says "no jerks" will not solve those problems. It might even make things worse.

<comment><USER28> > Bob and Mary are staunch members of <political party>. While they never > discuss it at work, Mary deeply resents the views Bob posts on social media.

I'm assuming Bob and Mary are members of opposing political parties?

Even if that is not the case, is it really mandatory to friend/follow co- workers' stream of consciousness on social media?

Wouldn't it be more productive (from Mary's perspective) to segment professional from personal views by not _actively following_ someone who's personal views she has disagreed with in the past, to keep all future interactions focused on work-related topics?

<comment><USER66> Correct, I meant to say opposing political parties.

I suppose my point is: criticism and being a jerk are orthogonal in theory, but in practice it's much more difficult.

Making a rule that says, you can get someone fired if they hurt your feelings gives disproportionate power to anyone with thin skin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> I once left the most toxic organization I could ever imagine. I was initially very excited to work with people so experienced, but I slowly learned it was just people experienced with being jerks for decades with minimal brilliance to accompany. I turned into an Alice trying to deal with at-best-mediocre/at- worst-negligent Bobs. The article has nailed things pretty accurately, except that the ability of the Bobs was the poorest I've ever seen in about 10 years of working. Every success of mine was accompanied by huge failures on their part, and they felt extremely threatened, which really exacerbated things. The worst strategy, which was effective for them, was to constantly spread misinformation about their work, as well as mine, and to organize secret meetings. This created a false perspective that they have a bigger picture in mind, even though each lie fell apart weeks to months later.

If you find yourself in an environment where your Alice-jerkiness is forced to grow significantly to deal with Bobs, you should leave if you can.

My fondest engineering experiences are working with Alices. I've worked with kids fresh out of school that have made me a better engineer; debate is healthy, and no one knows everything. When you encounter a situation with people who refuse to accept that there are things they don't innately know, and are offended at the prospect of debate, you have Bob.

Another strategy of some Bobs, which wasn't mentioned specifically, is for Bobs to try and make Alices (really anyone who won't submit to their egos, or who work off of objective evidence) out to be Bobs to avoid arguments and to make unilateral decisions that are not empiricallly driven. Not all Bobs are like this, though, which is part of why the Brilliant Jerk archetype tends to overfit, IMO.

Edit: these Bobs were "too experienced" for code review, pull requests, design planning, and testing of any sort.

<comment><USER71> Just so anyone reading can take something away that might be useful if they find themselves in a similar situation... In the first one, I became a hardcore Alice, specifically got promoted because of it, and the jerkiness on all fronts accelerated. There are cultures where jerks thrive.

Another culture I've previously worked in appreciated people that could "level" their brilliant jerks because management didn't want to replace them (growth stage -> acquisition). I've found sometimes people turn into brilliant jerks, and it's allowed/tolerated, in part due to compensation inequality. These people were hired at a lower salary for whatever reasons, and in exchange received freedom to be a brilliant jerk because they became hard to replace at a certain price. The jerks in question were working their butts off to move up, which never happened in any significant way. So there can definitely be multiple sides as to why someone is behaving like a jerk.</comment></comment>


Is algorithmic trading making markets less efficient & gaming the system? - <AUTHOR> http://www.themistrading.com/article_files/0000/0348/Toxic_Equity_Trading_on_Wall_Street_12-17-08.pdf

<comment><USER2> Having read this white paper the general impression I get from the authors is that they are unhappy about automated market traders exploiting other poor algorithms. In essence this is five pages dedicated to,"Entity A has better algorithms than we do, this should be illegal because we don't know how to compete."

If you can identify the bubble, you can make money. These guys have figured out how the game works now they need to exploit it, in the name of free market capitalism of course.

<comment><USER3> Well said. Though given the stupidity of their examples, I would not bet on these guys to write any winning trades any time soon. Better to cry foul and scam a few buy-siders into buying their snake oil.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cute:

 _To illustrate, let's use an institutional algo order pegged to the NBBO with discretion to pay up to $20.10. First, the predatory algo uses methods similar to the liquidity rebate trader to spot this as an institutional algo order. Next, with a bid of $20.01, the predatory algo goes on the attack. The institutional algo immediately goes to $20.01. Then, the predatory algo goes $20.02, and the institutional algo follows. In similar fashion, the predatory algo runs up the institutional algo to its $20.10 limit. At that point, the predatory algo sells the stock short at $20.10 to the institutional algo, knowing it is highly likely that the price of the stock will fall. When it does, the predatory algo covers._

</comment><comment><USER5> 3 ways of making profits in secondary markets for an Individual Investor.

        Insider-Trading
        Invest via IPOs
        Mutual Funds

</comment><comment><USER6> machine trading has been in heavy use for a decade. a little late to wonder about its efficacy now

<comment><USER7> When it's just a tiny percentage of the overall trades, it doesn't really matter.

As Goldman Sachs is now proving though, it can be wildly profitable. What happens if it eventually becomes the dominant form of trading? What does the stock market then represent? Surely not the value of a company, based on research and bets on the future. Doesn't it just become a high speed game where computers try to steal pennies from each other?

<comment><USER8> Ahem. Please don't attribute Goldman's success to _trading_. Goldman Sachs recent "success" is largely due to them adroitly navigating the political waters of the bailout, without which i suspect they would be in serious trouble.

As for machine trading or stat-arb, high freq, whatever...i don't think it is any better than a random walk. Risk was (is?) just being hidden somewhere and lied about.

<comment><USER9> Not necessarily. E.g. arbitrage is really risk-free.

<comment><USER8> Frictionless arbitrage?

<comment><USER9> No. You need to find enough of an arbitrage opportunity to overcome the friction. But once you found it, it's a risk-free profit. (You can't do too complex an atomic transaction on the financial markets; but most arbitrage deals take much less than a day --- even less than a few minutes, so your window of exposure is quite short.)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Will cloud services always remain a bad deal? - <AUTHOR>

Just wondering, so far all cloud services are more expensive than the classic alternatives. For example I just bought a subscription to WeeWar. It costs 24$ for 24 months. I almost could have bought "Empire Deluxe" for that price and keep it forever, no recurring fees required.
Many of the other services look affordable if you look at them isolated - blogging, wikis, issue trackers, versioning systems and what not, they all seem to start from 10$/month. However, if you need all of them, you are already at 50$/month just for the ones I listed. Buying a vServer and just installing them oneself suddenly seems competitive (administration costs money, but that might get easier, too - in fact it is not that bad in the end).
As for the generic clouds, none of them seem to offer affordable RAM. I can see how it works if you pass on the costs to your client (add EC2 costs for one instance per client to basic cost of your service). But for me I must admit I see services like Heroku or App Engine mainly as cheap prototyping platforms for now. If traffic would get serious, I expect I would be looking into more affordable solutions.
What do you think? Obviously the price will come down as hardware becomes cheaper, but I don't see how anything could be done against the subscription fees. Why do I have to pay 50$/month just to get 3GB of RAM in my server (didn't look actual numbers, but RAM is out of my price range atm)? That is some very expensive RAM... <comment><USER2> Yeah, the price of Software as a Service. It might seem low while you're looking at their pricing page, but it really can add up over the months. If you can find cheaper alternatives that you can run on your own server, go for it. You'll be dealing with scaling, fixing servers that go down, etc, but it might be worth it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thinking it over, I suppose the problem really only applies to small fish clients. Big companies probably don't care that they pay 600$/year for 2GB of RAM.</comment></comment>


It's Official. Facebook Is Running A Protection Racket On App Developers  - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/17/its-official-facebook-is-running-a-protection-racket-on-app-developers/ <comment><USER2> Here's why I don't like Mike Arrington's style of journalism. Earlier today, he was singing their praises ("One hell of a revenue model"): [http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/17/facebook-rolls-out- veri...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/17/facebook-rolls-out-verified-app- program-plus-one-hell-of-a-revenue-model-for-themselves)

It's great that he gets twice the hits for one story, but both pieces have been extreme in their expression to the point that I'd call them misleading.

<comment><USER3> Journalism?

<comment><USER4> Sensationalism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> while this smacks of other "rackets" like SSL certificates (especially when they used to cost hundreds of dollars and verification was dubious at best), this isn't that outlandish of a practice -- think MSDN subscriptions, apple developer network subscriptions, etc.

generating cash probably isn't the motive here -- rather it's putting a $375 hurdle in front of an app developer so that they only have to deal with reasonably serious verification requests.

(put another way, when you raise $500mm, and have a $15bn valuation, $10mm yearly revenue -- and that's assuming half of all app developers convert, which is extremely unlikely given that most have probably moved on -- is a drop in the bucket.)

if the $375 is really a pain for devs, they could probably come up with some non-cash hurdle (i.e. something that is just annoying/takes time, like an essay or a petition or something equally inane that's a pain to do but trivial to verify) for the cash-strapped

<comment><USER6> If the company is really worth 15bn then at a 10% ROI they should be making 1500million profit /year, 10mm yearly revenue would be ~.75% of that which is not a "lot" but it's still a useful number. At 30x it's 2.25% of revenue which is still valuable.

However, compared to their 500mm raised it could significantly increase their runway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Suppose there is exactly $1,000,000/year worth of demand for product X.

If there are 20 teams creating product X and they all do reasonably good job then each one will make on average $50,000. This much money is not enough to invest into actually developing product only in sustaining it and doing small, insignificant improvements. So user will have to chose between 20 mediocre apps.

However, if there are only 3 teams going after the same market each one on average will make $333,000 and will be able to assign two full-time engineers to work on improving the product. Users will have 3 higher-quality products to chose from.

Now if there is exactly one team doing X they will capture entire $1,000,000 and do abslutely nothing as there is not competition to push them. That's bad for the users.

Therefore, a balance needs to be maintained to ensure optimal user experience. In real life economy this balance is maintained by boom-bust cycle where weaker business are regularly purged and consolidated. In fast markets like web boom-bust cycle takes far too much time and an artificial pruning mechanism is neccessary.

Of course if you do not believe in making money then none of these applies - you can have a thousand develoeprs chaising market of X and each one making only a thousand dollars/year. Since they will all have to take up day jobs they will end up spending only 5 hours a week to work on the app and you will have a thousand of half-assed apps. Kind of like on the iPhone.

A yearly fee may not be ideal pruning mechanism, but I can't think of anything better.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm glad they are putting this verification process in place, and I think it is fair that some of the cost of this process is borne by the developers. I'm not sure whether $375 is fair in that respect - I'd have to see the math.

But what I find disturbing (and inflammatory) about this post is the accusation of 'protection racket'. By Arrington's logic, the following would also be protection rackets:

1\. The driving license assessment fee, for operating a motor vehicle on public roads.

2\. Assessment fees and membership fees paid by professional coaches (e.g. to make sure your ski instructor is up to standard)

3\. The requirement that porn stars have regular STD test to minimize infection. These are paid for out-of-pocket by the actor.

I am glad that we have all the above three, and am happy to see Facebook App verification added as a fourth.

It is however important to ensure that the cost is reasonable. Perhaps Facebook could allow developers the option of having their app verified by a 3rd party? That way market forces would make the pricing 'fair'.

<comment><USER9> > 3\. The requirement that porn stars have regular STD test to minimize > infection. These are paid for out-of-pocket by the actor.

Is that a law or is it just the way that reputable porn companies operate? If the latter (which I think is how it actually is), you're free to skip the STD tests - you just have to find folks willing to do the same.

"do it my way or do it with someone else" is not a protection racket.

I'm pretty sure that there's no law requiring "assessment fees and membership fees" for professional coaches either.

<comment><USER8> > "do it my way or do it with someone else" is not a protection racket.

I totally agree. Perhaps my post was ambiguous as this is exactly what I was trying to say.

My comment was not about the _law_ it was about _rules_ set by _private institutions_ \- Facebook are not making any _laws_. I do not know whether (2) and (3) are required by law, but it is irrelevant to the point I was making, which is: Arrington's definition of 'protection racket' would clasify lots of _rules_ that we consider beneficial to society as 'protection rackets', therefore his accusation is unfair.

You're quite right in saying that "..you just have to find folks willing to do the same..", this applies to (2) (3) and Facebook. I.e. the analogy holds: Just as a porn-star can look for work where STD tests are not required#, developers can choose to not develop for Facebook (or be unverified). If the market of non-STD-requiring-studios / webapps-outside-facebook proves too small to be viable for them then they have to get-the-test/ get-the-app- verified. It's no different. It seems to be that in both these cases the person would be best served by paying the cash to get verified, but it is a free world, so they can choose to do whatever they think best for them. (# - even if it is the law, they can always go outside the US)

> I'm pretty sure that there's no law requiring "assessment fees and > membership fees" for professional coaches either.

There is no law that I am aware of. But the professional bodies of which I am a part all have _rules_ that do involve the payment of fees for accreditation, and I'm glad they do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I find it strange that it's $375/yr as opposed to a smaller amount per change (that's per app change and per significant change to APIs etc.)

<comment><USER7> I think the idea is to prune deadwood - apps which are no longer maintained and just sit there occupying the virtual shelf and distracting users.

<comment><USER11> best opinion i've heard all morning regarding this. thanks for the thought.

<comment><USER7> It makes sense to you because you're an ecnomically-minded person judging by your other commetns. A lot of hackers get offended when presented with unpleasnat but economically sound theories like this and start downmodding.

It upsets me some because I want to be heard and understood, but then it also gives me an edge. Funny how that works.

<comment><USER11> i'll take that as a compliment. thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> do facebook apps make any money? Seems like you'll be paying to improve facebook's product.

What do you gain really from the verified status? If you have a good product people will install it anyways, whether its verified or not. And if your product is crap, you just threw away good money, that could have been spent better on ads

</comment><comment><USER13> What is the difference between this and tech crunch selling advertising on their site? Both offer access to a market for a fee. Paying for job listings seems to fall in the same bucket.

</comment><comment><USER14> To me, this is no different than Facebook charging users for features they already got for free. For example, "pay us $5/month or your feed items will always show up at the bottom of your friends lists" or "pay us $1/month or your news feed of your friends' activities will be delayed by 48 hours" or some crap like that. They'd still be giving your feature, technically, but they'd be limiting it unless you paid instead of giving you something EXTRA if you paid.

In this case, they created an API for developers that brought thousands of developers and a whole lot of user traffic to their system when they didn't have a clue how to monotize it. Now, after all the work has been done by developers, they are imposing limits than can only be removed by paying instead of adding NEW VALUE to those developers who pay.

</comment><comment><USER15> The whole point on having a Facebook app is to make money eventually so if $375 gets better placement in their app index and separates your app from the riffraff then it's worth it. I don't understand how anyone expects to make money in web 2.0 when everything is expected to be free.

</comment><comment><USER16> I think this is a good compromise and much better way of doing things than App Store.

</comment><comment><USER17> I thought I read this somewhere before...

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/27/dziuba_apple_app_sto...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/27/dziuba_apple_app_store/)

Guess Arrington still has a man-crush on Dziuba. Rip-off post is full of fail.

</comment><comment><USER7> I like it. Hopefully users will be more likely to try the apps when there are fewer and of higher quality. Therefore I consider writing an app now with more enthusiasm than before.

<comment><USER3> Why do you think paying will equal higher quality? This, IMHE, will just rank higher more applications coming from random aspiring entrepreneurs hiring people in rent-a-coder doing one time lol-apps, instead of passionate skilled developers who might already have a day job or are students.

One of the typical killers for corporate software projects is too much budget. I remember reading studies about project size and budget vs. delivery.

<comment><USER7> The fewer developers compete for the attention of fixed number of users, the more resoruces each developer can dedicate to further development. Too much competition == race to the bottom.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If they we're charging their end users a fee, in order to guarantee they won't use and "bad" applications, while allowing the bad applications to exist, then that would be considered a protection racket.

Charging the applications to be certified sounds like good business.

</comment><comment><USER19> ehh. you think people are going to waste effort and verify everyone's app for FREE?

there has to be some kind of lockout involved or every piece of crap will have to be picked apart.

this is assuming they actually run checks to make sure the apps are secure, useful, and genuine (not cons)

375$ per year IS steep, however

i would never pay that

<comment><USER20> _there has to be some kind of lockout involved or every piece of crap will have to be picked apart._

It's not clear to me from the article whether the fee is paid as part of the submission process or after the app is verified. If it's the latter, then the verified apps are paying the burden of cost for those that fail verification. If the fee is not part of the verification submission, then every POC app _will_ have to be picked apart, and I'd guess the process wouldn't be too rigorous.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Online thesaurus - <AUTHOR> http://www.matchingwords.com

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a website I just launched.

I've solely been doing Android stuff for the past three years. The last Android app I launched, in conjunction with another programmer, was a Thesaurus app. There are a few Android thesaurus apps out there, but ours does all the EFIGS languages (English, French, Italian, German, Spanish) as well as one or two others.

The Android app is built on such things as the BSD licensed MyThes library and the LGPL licensed Hunspell library. We connect to the open source C/C++ libraries via JNI, do some Android UI and some other coding, and voila, a useful app. MyThes does the thesaurus part, Hunspell is useful for certain things - like finding word stems so that we are accepting plural for nouns (mouse or mice), or some different tenses for verbs (sing, singing, sung).

All the different language libraries were too big to pack with the Android APK so we made the language libraries free download packs. But then the app is useless while it is being downloaded. So I wrote a backend API to do MyThes/Hunspell on a Linux VPS and ctypes C/C++ library foreign functions for Python, so that people could avoid downloading the language packs if they wanted, or at least could search words while waiting for their language pack to download.

Once all that was in place, I said to myself, why not throw a website up? Most of the work has been done. So I did.

Right now Adwords is rejecting my site for being a "placeholder". At first I thought it was due to an earlier crawl, or it's bare bones nature, but then I realized the site didn't work well if Javascript was turned off. So I've made some accommodations for that.

I haven't launched a website on which I plan to make revenues from ads since 1999, so even though it is bare bones I am excited. It has a lot of that open source person-hours behind it as well. There's a few English thesauruses online, but I don't see much for some of the languages we've done. So if Google smiles on the changes done, perhaps it will have some popularity in Europe, as these other language thesauruses seem as scarce on the web as they are in Android apps.</comment>


Show HN: Dynamic Coupon at Startup Weekend Stanford - <AUTHOR> http://dynamiccoupon.co/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a concept of a coupon that can change values based on how many people shared it. The coupon is a fake one on the testing website. Criticism and suggestions welcome! Several problems we are facing: How to avoid being scam while providing values? Will user ever share?</comment>


My Karma stopped moving? Not that it matters - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> It doesn't matter?! The score you get for playing the internet is my favorite contribution of reddit to social site design. Things just haven't been as much fun ever since slashdot got rid of numerical karma scores.

</comment><comment><USER3> I just upmodded this post and your karma went up by a point. But I did just release a new version, so if anyone notices a bug, let me know.

</comment><comment><USER4> I definitely noticed that too.

</comment><comment><USER5> Karma definitely matters. Hey- at least yours _was_ moving.

</comment><comment><USER6> You need to kill more boars to get to the next level, then you can wear plate mail and get your mount. (World of Warcraft) ;)</comment>


Where to begin with Arduino - <AUTHOR> http://g33ktalk.com/?p=25 <comment><USER2> Arduino isn't just for hobbyists at this point -- it's already had a huge impact on the research world. I do HCI research, and making prototypes of interfaces and devices takes a few weeks instead of months.

It allows you to iterate on hardware much faster -- it's a lot like what Rails did to web development.

It also greatly reduces the amount of documentation I'd need to do for a project, because C code with Arduino is much more intuitive than many alternatives (no need to manually set registers and mess with a lot of low- level microcontroller quirks).

<comment><USER3> This is exactly what blew me away during my trip to China. The collision of quickly prototyping hardware using Arduino with the manufacturing muscle of China is fascinating. One interesting company to check out is <http://makible.com>.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I started using microprocessors before Arduino was popular and found there is a large learning curve to jump from software -> microprocessors involving the programmer, building the supporting circuitry (power supply, oscillator, programmer), etc.

While that's still my preferred method for anything I design, the Arduino (like any all-in-one dev board for the platform) is great for testing fast solutions in the time it'd take me just to find all the parts for my generic AVR programming kit.

<comment><USER5> I started playing with Arduino just a few weeks ago. I have many other kits/demo boards, mostly for PIC and ARM UCs, and while it's not that powerful, Arduino is the best for fast and simple solutions. It's nice to have the power of an ARM core or PIC32 @80MHz in a small device, but it gets less interesting when you have to program for half an hour just to get a C++ environment for your application.

The best thing is that Arduino brings together two worlds of tinkerers: the hardware/electronics guys now have a lot of software libraries available for free (drivers for a lot of hardware, filesystems), and the software/programming guys now have easy to use hardware modules, so they don't have to think too much about what kind of resistor this LED needs or how can I get a 3.3V supply for that GPS chip.

<comment><USER6> I like to call Arduino "electronics duct tape".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Arduino's own "getting started" page is probably a good start[1] Lady Ada has a starter kit[2] and beginner tutorials[3] Sparkfun has an "inventor's kit" with teacher/student resources[4] [1]<http://arduino.cc/en/Guide/HomePage> [2]<http://www.adafruit.com/products/68> [3]<http://www.ladyada.net/learn/arduino/> [4]<http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10173>

</comment><comment><USER8> A starter kit is a good place to start.

Edit: ARDX is supposed to be good [http://www.oomlout.co.uk/starter-kit-for- arduino-ardx-p-183....](http://www.oomlout.co.uk/starter-kit-for-arduino- ardx-p-183.html)

<comment><USER9> Yes, I got myself the SparkFun branded version <http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10173> for Christmas, and it's a blast. Very easy to get started, and yet, compared to the inventor kits of my childhood, much more versatile because of all the third party hardware that is made for Arduino or can be made to work for it, and because an open source community has developed around it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Good links, thanks all. I ended up buying the 'Getting Started with Arduino' book ([https://www.amazon.com/gp/css/order- history?opt=ab&searc...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/css/order- history?opt=ab&search=arduino)) and there's also a parts package for the exercises you can buy to keep things simple - [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004HL44MI/ref=wms_ohs_prod...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004HL44MI/ref=wms_ohs_product)

<comment><USER3> My bad on the first link, should be [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1449309879/ref=wms_ohs_prod...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1449309879/ref=wms_ohs_product)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I also noticed a book a while back on the pragprog blog about Arduino. <http://pragprog.com/book/mrhome/programming-your-home> I think I'm going to check this out once it's complete.

</comment><comment><USER11> This video gets into exactly what I want to know: how can I turn my Arduino- based prototype into a commercial product? The video is really light on details, though.

Has anyone here done this?

I've got one prototype completed, and two others I'm working on. Unfortunately, I'm a programmer type, with very little knowledge of electronics, circuit design, and electronics production. Also, I just ordered a couple TI MSP430 LaunchPads to see if they're capable of doing what I've done with the Arduino, since the MSP430 looks like a much cheaper option.</comment>


Mindfulness video game changes areas of the brain associated with attention - <AUTHOR> https://news.wisc.edu/mindfulness-video-game-changes-areas-of-the-brain-associated-with-attention/ <comment><USER2> A comment[0] by lubujackson[1] from the previous submission[2]:

 _A shame it isn 't available to try. I love the idea of games for education like this. For 30 some odd years education games have mostly been sad "make multiplication fun" attempts, but games are mediocre at conveying through text or words (read the screen like a book or stand around and listen to audio snippets) but amazing at conveying explorable space and first-person experiences._

 _I have read a few things that show results managing psychological effects through simple experiential games. Two that stand out are VR that gives visual acknowledgment of phantom limb pain and a simple "walking through snow" iPad game that reduced burn victims pain by a significant degree._

 _I think this is probably going to be a huge industry soon because we are just starting to understand and respect the value of mindset as integral to healing and integral to education._

</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21901158](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21901158)

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=lubujackson](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=lubujackson)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21892229](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21892229)</comment>


From NAND to Tetris: The Elements of Computing Systems [repost] - <AUTHOR> http://nand2tetris.org/

<comment><AUTHOR> For those inspired by Harry Porter's Relay Computer, here's a link to a suitable project/course to get your teeth into understanding how these things work from the ground up.

</comment><comment><USER2> Does anyone know about any alternatives to this course? Just curious.

<comment><USER3> Project Oberon [http://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/ProjectOberon/](http://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/ProjectOberon/)

discusson on HN a few weeks ago [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6829464](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6829464)</comment></comment>


This Startup's on a Mission to Save Us from Seedy Debt Collectors - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/08/trueaccord

<comment><USER2> Read the NY Times article a week or two ago that was up here on HN. This seems like a much more productive way to approach people that owe money.</comment>


Run Your Business Like a Drug Lord (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.business.com/articles/why-you-should-run-your-business-like-a-drug-lord/?q=Drug+lord <comment><USER2> The article completly ignores the fact the goods that were sold are highly addictive and quick to build tolerance these combined properties are very rare and really helped the syndicate success.

<comment><USER3> Elasticity of demand. I was just reading a piece about mental models and how having one or two is like the old hammer nail problem. I think this article suffers of that a bit along with generalising to a set of principles anyone can agree with.

What works when your product becomes a life or death necessity to people will be much different than what works else where.

Run your business like a business that sells your product. If you're selling cocaine, you should probably run it like a drug lord. If enterprise software, run it like an enterprise software company.

Maybe there's a case again what I'm saying with disruption but let's be honest: running dental practice like an actual drug lord will probably get you struck off.

An example: "Run your business like a cockroach. You're the head: work to make it run without your presence."

A template: "Run your business like a <type>. <insert positive attribute generalised from type>"

<comment><USER4> Run your business like an unsigned int. There are no negatives!

<comment><USER3> Run your business like a monad. Remain pure whilst working with the real world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A more profitable black market model is the gangster business model, where your only inventory is tools of intimidation for extortion of the market. Since you never need to manufacture or handle the product and just demand a tax you avoid all the pitfalls of regulatory authorities closing your business (possession/criminal conspiracy to traffic) and just need to be concerned with recruiting staff to help you intimidate instead of building a complex supply chain and network of sales associates. The US border criminal groups perfected this model sitting on all the major border crossings and demanding any drug smugglers give them a percentage to cross through their territory. Could title that article, 'Run Your Business Like a Patent Troll' or 'Run Your Business Like a Government'.

Here this model is usually practiced by taking over existing lines. Find a popular dial-a-dope line and just kick down the door and take control of it, insisting all drivers pay you 30% of sales in exchange for protection from other extortion startups.

</comment><comment><USER6> Probably not the best comparison. Reality is more like:

\- Kill your competition, literally.

\- Assassinate politicians that won't work with you.

\- Murder anyone in the press that speaks ill of you.

\- Pay off regulators that might interfere with your business.

\- Slowly kill your client base as you ruin their life.

<comment><USER7> All of these seem like they're just more brutal parallels to existing business practices.

> Kill your competition, literally.

Buy them out or price them out of business.

> Assassinate politicians that won't work with you.

Buy them, or their competition. Call it "lobbying".

> Murder anyone in the press that speaks ill of you.

Discredit them instead with carefully planned leaks and press releases.

> Slowly kill your client base as you ruin their life.

Seems to work for the Tobacco and Alcohol industries.

<comment><USER6> Haha, right. That is how the article should have read.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> the phrase "shoe-horn" came to mind.

"what's a good article WE can write that can feed off the popularity of NARCOS?!"

<comment><USER9> Seriously, I feel like you could just as easily write an article comparing drug lords to poorly run companies -- like not betting your life and that of your family on a hugely risky venture. Don't nearly all drug lords flame out in a pretty short amount of time...?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'll never forget a cartoon in the back of a research magazine before the internet where there were two scientists in lab coats with their beakers on the bench, and over the intercom the boss says "Hey you all down in R&D, get off your butts and invent something habit-forming!"

Anyway, it is so important where to draw the line when it comes to ruthlessness, or whether it should ever be a consideration.

This could be said of registered pharma as well as unlicensed cartels.

With greed you can only divide the spoils, and therefore almost always returns less than anticipated.

You're going to have to do the opposite to maximize your chances of returning more than anticipated.

However you can see the author is pointing out some structural and marketing observations and not advocating cartelism or gangsterism.

</comment><comment><USER11> I don't think you have to look at drug dealers to know most of the items on that list... good product, the need for innovation, and ultimately the goal of making money are all somewhat common sense in the business world.

</comment><comment><USER12> Articles like this are why people view the tech industry as predatory and out of touch. No, we should not try to emulate an industry that operates by making a product so addictive that it becomes self-destructive. Reading comments that buy into this crap makes me ashamed to be a part of this industry.

<comment><USER13> > Articles like this are why people view the tech industry as predatory and > out of touch.

As opposed to what percentage of industries that are a paragon of social good over profits?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think the title might just be the closest I've ever seen a click bait headline come to art.

</comment><comment><USER15> At one point in "Narcos", Escobar literally burned money to keep warm while on the run from police. So, I would not take this lesson too far.

<comment><USER16> If you need to burn money to survive, perhaps a lesson.

I think the lesson there was that you need to always have another escape plan?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Working link: [https://www.business.com/articles/why-you-should-run-your- bu...](https://www.business.com/articles/why-you-should-run-your-business- like-a-drug-lord/?q=Drug+lord)

<comment><AUTHOR> Damn! That worked for me just shortly ago. And I cannot change the URL.

Feel free to flag this submission away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> TLDR: Starting a business is hard and entrepreneurs must be persistent in order to succeed. Also, businesses that involve international, vertically integrated supply chains resemble each other in several obvious ways.</comment>


How to crack an old BIOS with password corruption the CMOS - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.twitter.com/IgorSkochinsky/status/1192127786829451264 <comment><USER2> I used to be able to just remove the bios coin battery and have it reset to default. You'll lose all setting so decide if it's something you can do without making things worse.</comment>


Ask HN: What DVR do you use? - <AUTHOR>

I'm sick of the crappy generic DVR my cable provider offers me. It locks up constantly and the data, like scheduled recordings, eventually gets corrupted. This is the 3rd box I've tried so it's clearly a problem with the underlying software & hardware.
I recently ordered a Tivo premiere but the software is awful. The overlay menus are hard to read and at times prevent me from watching TV until I complete an action.
Now I'm left with the option of staying with the poorly built generic DVR, Moxi or DIY with Windows 7 Media. Moxi seems like the most promising option.
What does the HN community use for a DVR and are you happy with it? <comment><USER2> We have a HR20 from Direct TV. What a pile of sh __. This thing sounds like its grinding coffee non-stop. It also locks up and jitters during play back. I would also like to know what designer thought it would be a good idea to put a circle of blue flashing/rotating LED's on the front of this thing. He should be hung by his nuts!

</comment><comment><USER3> Sky+ in the UK. 160Gb. It's not the High Definition box either. It's managed to survive since 2006 but locks up nearly every day needing a hard reset to restore. Looking for alternatives.

</comment><comment><USER4> You could try out boxee and an eyeTV on a mini or shuttle pc, it's pretty easy to set up.</comment>


How do I get started in LISP? - <AUTHOR>

I'd like to humor you with a story (although if you are feeling impatient and would like to get to the point, you can skip to the "here it is" part):
Now, I kept hearing about how great it is to learn LISP. It is supposed to adhere closely to what some people would call 'ideal' programming habits. I decided to give it a crack-- maybe what people say is true.
Unfortunately, what was supposed to be a short trip through the Google search engine ended up turning into a journey. No matter where I look, I can't find a LISP implementation.
It seems as if LISP doesn't have a very strong community (and when I say this, I mean in comparison to other programming language communities such as those for python or ruby).
I did manage to find a few downloads of what I think are implementations, but I feel as if they are outdated. I found more than enough material to learn from. There are great books and tutorials all over the internet.
So here it is: Can anyone direct me to the appropriate website where one can download the CLISP (common lisp) implementation for Windows (my Unix machine is down right now)?
Before somebody blows up on me for asking such a dumb question, let me explain why I posted this question here of all places:(1) this place seemed like my best bet since it seems like the largest gathering of people who may know LISP outside of actual LISP-related conferences (2) It may help others who fell victim to the same issue. <comment><USER2> <http://common-lisp.net/project/lispbox/>

second result after googling for 'windows lisp'

As far as a community, it does exist but I'm not up to date on it but I'm sure some others on news.yc are. Last I remember, there were a lot of active newsgroups participating in Lisp discussion.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think that because the LISP community pre-dates the web, it's not nearly as visible or accessible as post-web languages. For instance (I am a LISP newbie too) I was looking for a way to do the equivalent of:

cc -o myprog myprog.c

The actual way to do this in LISP (saving a memory image) is hairy enough, but even finding out that that was what I had to do was a ridiculous amount of effort. Not only that, people say "but there isn't only one implementation of LISP" but GUESS WHAT CHUMPS - there is more than one implementation of C too, and in my experience _all_ C compilers can be used as per my example. Why can't I do

clisp -o myprog myprog.lisp

There is no sensible reason.

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://gigamonkeys.com/book/>

</comment><comment><USER5> for commonlisp, see lispbox link below.

for Scheme, use Dr Scheme: <http://www.drscheme.org/></comment>


Encyclopedia Britannica Print Edition Discontinued After 244 Years - <AUTHOR> http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2012/03/change/ <comment><USER2> See discussion on the page about the NYTimes story about this: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3700635>

</comment><comment><USER3> It's sad.

Much of the knowledge that serves me well today was gained as a child sprawled across the carpet in our 'study' just flipping through encyclopaedia pages and reading what interested me.

Children of subsequent generations will never know that joy.

That being said, it's all part of the general flow of things. Change is inevitable!

<comment><USER4> Agreed. I had a collection Brittanica back in the day and I remember randomly perusing through it and finding interesting tidbits of information I would otherwise be ignorant of. What a resource it was. That experience is not found by today's technology, yet. Wikipedia has a "random article" link, but it's not the same as flipping through a Book and stopping when you see interesting key-words/pictures.

Maybe there is an iPad app in here somewhere that mimics this behavior ;-)

<comment><USER3> Hah! That's giving Job's API's too much credit :)

The feeling of pages ruffling past your thumb as the words flew past you at lightning speed, the slight upward draught created by the screaming pages...and suddenly _stop_ _thud_ _stillness_ \-- not knowing whether it was a word or a colour or a picture that caught your attention, but here you were, another page, but a whole new world to discover. The whole process almost imitates the way your mind moves -- fast movement between subjects...and still contemplation within them.

Contrast that with the "tap" or "swipe" on an iPad or the "click" of a mouse and it all just seems a little...bland.

This got me thinking about API's and the limitations of hardware in providing experiences, and then I realised that the ultimate consumer computing device would be some kind of "possibility field" that could morph into whatever was required by the user.

The hardware itself would be an API called by the user's interactions... _ah_ one can dream, right? :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Although I find this development far from unexpected, one cannot feel a pang of sadness to see an institution as celebrated the Encyclopedia Britannica going ever so gently into the good night.

Even today, I remember using the venerable (1911) eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica as a starting point for numerous research papers on topics as diverse as the r the history of classical mathematics to the repeal of the English Corn Laws. While the information was often far from definitive, it always provided an excellent starting point for subsequent research. An added pleasure of a well used set of those volumes was the traces of previous seekers of knowledge. A forgotten piece of pater here and a faint underlining there could be a great reassurance when you though your were off in the weeds alone.

While the physical print runs fo the Britannica have come to an end, happily several of the classic editions are now in the public domain and are thus accessible to a vastly greater portion of humanity than was every envisioned by the founders of this noble project.

<comment><USER6> Why "going to good night"? They will still exist in the digital form...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Browsing their website, the print edition costs over one thousand USD. It is listed as containing "over 65,000 articles"

The most expensive software edition is $40. It is listed as containing "Over 100,000 articles"

Surely it doesn't cost over a thousand dollars to print 32 books?

<comment><USER8> But how much does it cost to staff the people that actually do the research for it, update the encyclopedia, etc?

Printing books isn't just about printing books. Someone actually has to come up with the contents and this person has to be paid!

<comment><USER9> I think you've completely missed his point. The digital version has even more content than the print version, but only costs $40.

<comment><USER8> They're doing digital _right_. They know that they will sell many more copies of the digital version, because it's digital and because they lowered the price mark.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It is sad for nostalgic reasons, but what a brilliant sign of an amazing feat that we have accomplished since the dawn of the internet age. Print material was the only way to disseminate information for about 500 years and this marks a significant milestone for information distribution in the digital age.

</comment><comment><USER10> The online version is free for one week beginning March 13, 2012</comment>


Introducing WSJ's 'Billion-Dollar Startup Club' Interactive  - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/01/23/introducing-wsjs-billion-dollar-startup-club-interactive/

<comment><USER2> I'm surprised Shopify[1] isn't on the list seeing as they're a fairly well known Canadian startup.

1: [http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small- busi...](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb- money/business-funding/a-rare-startup-success-story-shopify-hits-1-billion- milestone/article15892998/)</comment>


Uber challenges - <AUTHOR> http://www.talentbuddy.co/set/523cc5174af0110af38303a8 A set of challenges that explore some of the things that happen when you connect with a driver on Uber. <comment><USER2> Yet another site that requires Facebook login to use. Makes me sad...

<comment><USER3> Not to mention it asks for your friend list..

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great new challenges - love the Pub Crawl one</comment>