How to 2X Your Salary as a Software Engineer - <AUTHOR> http://youexec.com/articles/how-to-2x-your-salary-as-a-software-engineer <comment><USER2> Step 1 - Take a low paying job as your first software job.

Step 2 - Switch jobs for pay increases every couple of years.

Step 3 - When you get to market rate for senior devs, say, "Look! I doubled my salary!"

<comment><USER3> Yeah. Correlation something something causation.

"People who switch jobs are making more money!"

"People who are offered more money will switch jobs."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What is the difference between value and leverage on a microeconomic level?

Despite the common notion to "provide more value" to a business if you want a raise, it seems most business people, and thus those responsible for employee raises, conflate value with leverage.

Someone can double their output and easily be denied a raise because they have no leverage. However, if you have leverage but do not increase your output, you can likely get a raise.

So maybe we should nix the old advice about "creating more value" as it's a very confusing and an unclear metric. If businesses see value as leverage, employees should do the same as that's the only way they'll get what they want.

I hope this makes sense, I've been trying to figure out the relationship between value and leverage (at s microeconomic level) and they seem to be almost, if not completely, identical.

Thoughts?

</comment><comment><USER5> In my experience, just do the following:

Be generally likable Write decent to good code Connect on a regular basis with current and former co-workers Be aggressive about finding new opportunities (usually through people you've worked with)

I agree with most of the points the author makes here, but I don't think you need to stay 2 years at a particular job - 1 is usually sufficient to avoid the negative resume effects and still get some decent projects under your belt.

<comment><USER6> >1 is usually sufficient to avoid the negative resume effects

A string of one year stints would be a huge red flag to me. I would have a hard time selling this person up as we don't hire FTE's to come and go in a span of 12 months. Too much churn kills you, I'd likely pass unless circumstances where extraordinary.

<comment><USER7> I've worked for many 1 year stints (everywhere I've worked besides my old startup), and have never had a problem finding jobs.

Of course I probably wouldn't know if a place passed on me because of that.

I wonder what the probability distribution for how much hirers weight "loyalty" or "stick-around-ness" looks like.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, no idea. I'm not concerned with loyalty so much as I am with dealing with the fallout of churn. I've only ever worked at small companies on small teams, so a single engineer leaving tends to hurt. The company isn't loyal to them, so I expect an engineer to look out for their own self interest in the same way. That said, one year is a pretty short time, and if they're _only_ concerned with that next pay bump then they're probably going to cause my team some problems.

On the flip side, it's my responsibility to make sure that my engineers are happy in their position and weren't sold on a lie.

<comment><USER8> What EpicEng said. When I went to Sun it was more than a year before I was really worth anything as a kernel engineer. Took that long for the kernel to "come into focus" for me and the feedback I got from peers and management was that I was fast (I did POSIX conformance in the kernel that first year).

There is a huge difference between being able to fix bugs and being able to fix architecture problems. I needed at least a year before I was capable of the latter in SunOS, probably more than a year.

<comment><USER6> Yup, and there are plenty of places which expect this sort of churn. Where I work (biotech) there is a _ton_ of time dedicated up front to transferring domain knowledge. It takes at least a year for new hires to really understand how the lab works, how the hardware and assays work (even if they're in a more typical IT role, they need to 'get' what the hell we're actually doing), what the data means, etc. If I think they're likely to leave shortly after that investment I just can't bring them on.

<comment><USER8> Yep, that's my experience as well. I get that people want more money, I paid my people as much as I could (about $400K in the bay area, total comp) so there wasn't much churn.

But maybe the people jumping every year are doing more grunt stuff and the ramp up doesn't take as long? I dunno, I'm mostly retired and sort of a dinosaur.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In my experience this approach doesn't really scale any higher than junior to senior steps. I was repeatedly told "we just don't hire on levels higher than X". I guess once you reach the famous rockstar level this again becomes a thing, but probably the best bet at moving from 150k to 500k jobs is to stick in one place for ten or so years.

<comment><USER10> Apart from working at one of the big tech companies (Google, Amazon, MS, Facebook, etc), I can't see staying in one place for ten years as a good way to move from 150k to 500k. In most of the companies I've worked (outside of the big tech companies), going from 150k to 200k in 10 years would have been above average.

<comment><USER9> Does moving through smaller companies in 1-2 year steps do better? They don't seem to have that many high paying positions (maybe anymore, or in my region).

<comment><USER10> In my experience, switching among smaller companies at ~2-year intervals does better up until you hit that area-specific level of diminishing returns. When I was a team lead, I wasn't involved in salary negotiations, but I had access to my team's salary data and they were all over the map based on what their previous salaries had been, not what their value to the company was. It was eye-opening.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can someone fill me in, do most jurisdictions allow employers to report to each other how much you made in the previous job? Or is this considered protected data that employers cannot ask for?

Which jurisdictions have which rules?

Obviously if you don't have to disclose your previous salary you get an advantage. The same advantage as the employer has in not disclosing the salary they paid to the person you'll be replacing.

<comment><USER12> As far as I know, in my state, a previous employer is only allowed to say weather or not I worked there and for how long. Nothing else should be discussed, legally. IANAL

I've only changed jobs twice in my career but I included my salary requirements in a cover letter and did not disclose my previous salary.

<comment><USER13> "Can't" is not the same as "shouldn't". Any labor attorney worth their salt will adivse their clients not to divulge more than the minimum they can get away with, but that is not the same as not being allowed to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Job switching is the most effective way to pressure the employer to raise and keep the high salary.

If you pay well, good engineers swarm to apply the job.

Job switching is the best opportunity to negotiate your salary for both current and next employers.

"If current employer don't pay more, I'll leave."

"If the next would-be employer don't pay more, I'll stick with the current job."

Also, it pressures existing employers to raise and keep the high salary because if they don't, they'll lose the good engineers to the competitors. So the fact there are many job switching engineers benefits those who don't switch job that often.

</comment><comment><USER15> How realistic is this though? Imagine you come out of college and work for the Big 4 making $100k. Assuming you make 10% more (compounding) every 2 years, by 38-36 you would make over $200k, by 50 you are making close to $500k. You hit that much sooner if you change those numbers by 20%. At what point do those returns diminish and you're having to do something more creative than simply looking for a job every 2 years?

<comment><USER10> IMO, you see diminishing returns once you reach somewhere between ~125k (if you're in a low-demand area) and ~250k (if you're in a high-demand area such as the Bay Area). To get above that, you generally need to both switch jobs and be good at what you do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > One strategy to increase your salary 1.5X or even 2X across the next few > years is to switch companies every two years.

I did exactly that and my salary is more than double in less then 4 years. I started working after 1 year of experience, I have 5 years now.

</comment><comment><USER17> Is "double" not a verb anymore?

<comment><USER3> I 2Xed back at 2X time to 2X check that title before 2Xing over in pain as well ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> If you switch jobs every two years, you'll spend most of your time just ramping up and getting to know your team, unless the problems you're solving are so trivial that whatever you do does not justify a 2x bump in compensation.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is pretty spot on based on my experience.</comment>


Strong placebo response thwarts painkiller trials, but only in US - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/strong-placebo-response-thwarts-painkiller-trials-1.18511 <comment><USER2> Why are placebos becoming increasingly effective only in the US ?

A couple of hypotheses were mentioned in the article. One is that only in USA and New Zealand is direct-to-consumer drug advertising allowed. Another, which seems to have some supporting evidence, is that size and length of the drug trial may boost the placebo effect. The latter point is presumably about the _production value_ of the trial, mandated by increasingly stringent FDA regulations. The apparent cost sells the apparent effectiveness.

I wonder whether these results might be linked to USians sustained high level of religiosity, which is also unique in the developed world.

<comment><USER3> The worst part is that now the news is out that placebos are getting more powerful, people are expecting it. The effect will grow exponentially.

Wait, I guess that's not really bad.

<comment><USER4> At some point people will start to experience the negative side effects corresponding to the original drug, as advertised on the package.

And then when the first suicide by placebo pills comes, we'll know we nailed it.

<comment><USER5> I personally only take placebos.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hmm. What if It's just that more Americans are complaining about pain that isn't truly real? Like somewhat imagined.

So now a higher ratio of trial patients aren't I'll in the first place.

<comment><USER7> A valid question, but it raises another question - why just Americans?

<comment><USER8> Watching TV in America is nothing but a continuous flow of commercials about symptoms and diseases that they really want to convince you that you probably have. We know advertising can make you want all kinds of things, so why not symptoms and diseases?

<comment><USER9> Funny fact, any commercial for a drug, here in Romania, is ending with a very fast auction-style warning that last less than 5 seconds. In US you have like 5 minutes of country music and elder people having a picknic while all the possible dangers in the world are softly planted in your mind. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm not sure if I'm missing something either about statistics or about how the trials work, so maybe someone can enlighten me:

> _Based on patients' ratings of their pain, the effect of trialled drugs in > relieving symptoms stayed the same over the 23-year period — but placebo > responses rose. In 1996, patients in clinical trials reported that drugs > relieved their pain by 27% more than did a placebo. But by 2013, that gap > had slipped to just 9%._

Wouldn't an easier way to look at it be to completely ignore the effects of the actual drugs in those trials, and just look at the data of how many people took placebos and to what extent those people reported changes?

<comment><USER4> > In 1996, patients in clinical trials reported that drugs relieved their pain > by 27% more than did a placebo. But by 2013, that gap had slipped to just > 9%.

Wait, this can be read as "Drugs are less efficient" just as well as "Placebo are more efficients".

<comment><USER10> They do say _" Based on patients' ratings of their pain, the effect of trialled drugs in relieving symptoms stayed the same over the 23-year period"_, too

<comment><USER11> Yeah, but when they compare subjective measurements across studies like that, it's really an apples and oranges comparison. The entire reason we use placebos is because there is no objective measurement for things like pain or sadness or "how well are you feeling in general?".

If the gap between placebos and pain medications is narrowing, my first assumption is that the experimental designs have tightened over time, so that the blinding is better, and subjects and doctors are less able to distinguish between treatments. It's not that pain medication is "less" effective, it's that it was always only (say) 9% better than placebo, but in crappy earlier studies where it was less well blinded, some subjects (or researchers working with the subjects) could tell they were taking the placebo, and reported feeling worse, and some subjects could tell they were taking the treatment, and reported feeling better.

If you tell me the gap has narrowed while the subjective reports of the treatments' effectiveness has stayed the same, I still believe my first assumption above, but now I'm a little bit suspicious of actual researcher bias. There are a vast number of ways researchers could "tune" for a target effect size, from classic ways like choosing the stopping point of the experiment to more subtle things like interpreting patient responses up or down based on whether a running analysis is coming in hot or cold.

(The later could be less overtly malicious than you might think -- imagine that you're continually analyzing the results of your experiment, without breaking blinding. You "know", from past experiments, that treatment X is 70% effective. If you are seeing it as 80% effective in your running analysis, you might assume your interactions with your subjects are subtly biased to encourage over-reporting of the effect and consciously or unconsciously alter them to encourage under-reporting, and vice versa if you only see a 60% effect. If your blinding is still good, your gap in effectiveness will still narrow, but the "absolute effectiveness" of the treatment will still narrow.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Placebo is highly sensitive to trial design, which is what I suspect is happening here. This is an intriguing effect, meaning that trials are increasingly reporting that all sorts of therapeutic effects are apparently less effective than previously thought. Or are they?

More on this at the excellent Mind Hacks blog:

[http://mindhacks.com/2015/07/08/cbt-is-becoming-less- effecti...](http://mindhacks.com/2015/07/08/cbt-is-becoming-less-effective- like-everything-else/)

</comment><comment><USER13> There are several problems with double-blind testing that have become apparent in the last few years, and that call for a new standard testing procedure.

Double-blind rests, among others, on the assumption that a) placebo effects are independent of and additive with actual drug-effects, b) placebo effects are nulled when participants know they're being given a placebo.

Although I'm currently without sources (hopefully I can rectify this soon) both a and b are actually false. Certain drugs have been found to interact with placebo, which decreases or enhances their effects, thus again conflating the medicative effects of the drugs being administered and the effects of actually taking a pill (or rather going through the process of administering medication).

Second, placebo has become such a household term, that the original meaning as a "fake" effect, seems to have been lost. Logically this makes sense, because its the end result that matters (being cured), not the way in which the drug is effective (placebo or not). The average person being told they're receiving a placebo can actually increase the placebo effect, rather than nulling it.

A second variable should be introduced in double-blind studies, to account for both factors I mentioned above. Variable 1 should be whether or not they're receiving the actual drug (1a) or a placebo drug (1b) (as double-blind currently tests for) and variable 2 should be whether participants are told that they're receiving the actual drug (2a), or a placebo drug (2b).

Testing the effects of combination 1a/2b vs 1b/2a should test whether the drug actually interacts with a placebo effect. Providing a measure of validity for the 1a/2a vs 1b/2a test.

EDIT: Fixed some spelling mistakes

EDIT2: Found some sources: Guardian article on how placebo can be enhanced when participants know they're being given a placebo: [http://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/dec/22/placebo- effec...](http://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/dec/22/placebo-effect- patients-sham-drug)

Published paper that used the set-up I suggested to find caffeine-placebo interaction effects - [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21092089](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21092089)

EDIT3:

This is the paper I remember reading on the subject - [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24416197](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24416197)

<comment><USER14> "Certain drugs have been found to interact with placebo" ??

<comment><USER15> Active placebos are chosen to have side effects similar to the drug being tested.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Were they using the same placebo? Perhaps 20 years ago they used a inert placebo, like (a sugar pill) and now they use an active placebo that mimic the side effects of the drug (for example, heartburn and indigestion). Both are placebos, but may have changed the supposed inert drug.

</comment><comment><USER17> If you double the amount of placebos people take do they get better twice as fast?

A placebo placebo trial if you will. But what would you use as a control? ;-)

</comment><comment><USER18> Why not use psychological methods in the first place, if placebo is that successful?

B/c people will rather eat pills to loose weight then to eat more vegetables and do some sports ...

</comment><comment><USER19> Whole lot of speculation in this article. I would guess more people know about the placebo effect in the U.S., than they did 20 years ago? Twenty years ago, we didn't question the efficacy of these drugs? Everyone I know now is very leery of any claims by drug companies, and their Wonder Drug.

"For companies trying to develop treatments, one remedy might be to compare new drugs against their best competitors instead of against placebo — or to go back to conducting smaller, shorter trials."

Lets Not do this. Lets continue to look for drugs that actually work on pain. The last thing we need is another drug that works slightly better than an ineffective pain drug that squeaked past the FDA? In the mean time there's a whole bunch of patients who are in extreme pain, and doctors are afraid to prescribe opioids. Doctors know opioid type medications work, but are afraid to prescribe them for a lot of reason, but mainly they don't want the FDA breathing down their backs.

My best friend died a horrid natural death a few years ago. He was in bad shape, but the doctors couldn't find anything really wrong with him besides being very old, and had a very bad case COPD. He was in constant daily pain.

I bought him to "the best pain clinic in San Francisco". They wouldn't alleviate his pain? They offed to cut some nerve, but wouldn't medicate him. (To that clinic, if you are going to stereotype patients, and offer no help-- Close down? You are of no service to anyone.)

I brought him back to his apartment, and offered my support every night. All I could do is cook for him, and offer hope. He died in his sleep a few months later. Those few months he were hell. All he had was ibuprofen, and some other safe/no potential to abuse drug. We looked into Hospice, but his doctors said he wasn't sick enough. Sometimes I think they have just seen too much, and common sense is lost?

My point is I have seen too many people die in extreme pain, including my father who was under medicated by Hospice.

I got off track. This is about painkiller trials, and placebo. I just don't want ineffective pain medication on the market.

I am shocked this group of researchers are trying to blame patients. It's your ineffective new medications? Lets not run off to some third world country and get "positive" results, or rely on a bunch of smaller studies that can be buried--if not satisfactory?. (By the way, this is going on as we speak, and has been for years. They offshore these double blind studies to the lowest bidder, and surprise, "Our drug worked better than we could have predicted!". Present their wonder drug to the FDA, and start the Marketing Party.

Right now, a drug only has to be slightly better than placebo in order to get past the FDA. That statistical difference is so small, in so many instances; I think if some of you knew just how slightly your drug works better than placebo, you might just go off the medication.

MY father died 11 years ago, and I still have weekly nightmares of his absolute misery. His last words to me were "Son when will this end?". If I could do it over, I would have gone to the bad part of my county, and bought him Heroin.

<comment><USER20> I don't know much about the American medical system, but in Canada, once you get into palliative care, you basically get put on narcotics, so your father probably would have been okay. For most people, this works well (there are some kinds of pain originating from the CNS that as far as I know have no good treatments).

The situation for out-patients is not that great though. All the strong analgesics make you loopy. This is fine if you are in a hospital, and under supervision, but it's dangerous if you're not in a hospital.

Unfortunately, the science just isn't there yet. Treating pain is like treating cancer: there are so many different forms of pain, different locations, different "causes", etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > _USians_

Out of curiosity, where are you from?

<comment><USER22> This is the second time recently that I've seen this demonym... it's really confusing.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10288270](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10288270)

<comment><USER15> There isn't really a good alternative. "Americans" doesn't work; Simón Bolívar went to war to liberate "the Americans" from the Spanish. I'm surrounded by Americans here in Buenos Aires. But almost none of them are USians. And no, I don't know how to pronounce "USian" either.

<comment><USER23> Would they, when speaking English, self identify as "Americans"?

I feel like the ambiguity exists only in some pedantic formal sense, that in colloquial usage it's clear enough what is meant.

<comment><USER24> I completely agree. In colloquial English, "An American" is someone from the United States.

I don't think I ever heard anyone from outside the US being referred to as "an American"

<comment><USER15> Well, I just gave you an example of people from outside the US being referred to as Americans. It's a political issue, though, like the use of "men" to mean "people", so you can't solve it by appealing to common usage. People who don't like your usage are still offended by it even when they know it's common. And they probably won't bother to talk to you, or, in many cases, even learn English.

Me, I'd prefer to be able to listen to them, especially since I live in Buenos Aires. So I'm going to continue to not use "American" in that sense, which means I still don't have a better alternative to the abominable "USian".

<comment><USER24> Okay, outside this thread, I have never heard it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


An excerpt from Part 2 of "Unreported Truths" – a brief history of lockdowns - <AUTHOR> http://www.alexberenson.com/an-excerpt-from-part-2-of-unreported-truths-a-brief-history-of-lockdowns/ <comment><USER2> >Experience has shown that communities faced with epidemics or other adverse events respond best and with the least anxiety when the normal social functioning of the community is least disrupted.

New Zealand is a counterexample. They locked down tighter than a radioactive waste storage drum, stopped new cases which led to practically no strain on their health system, people actually (SHOCK! SUPRISE!) listened and wore masks to reduce local transmission, and now movie and television studios are flying personnel there en-masse and putting them through the mandatory quarantine in order to restart production.

Geographic or demographic size differences are irrelevant-- the actions can be scaled to a quadrillion people if needed.

In the US at least, closures were necessary because a great proportion of Americans are so self-centered, selfish, and stupid that they think that wearing a mask is a conspiracy to steal their rights.

They would lick each other's tonsils just to "stick it to the gubmint". They would squeeze together into a single pair of sweatpants and rub their bodies up and down on each other saying "how's this for social distancing, STALIN!"

That is literally, in the literal traditional dictionary definition of the word literally, happening before our very eyes-- the statement is immediately self-evident based on any rational person's visual first-person observation of his or her community.

Edit: like this [https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/i67279/w...](https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/i67279/were_never_getting_out_of_covid/)</comment>


Ask HN: Is the iPad too cold? - <AUTHOR>

I received an iPad as research project at my school. I have it to use it as my own and I love it. It is a neat device that overall (despite noted downfalls) has a great web experience when you are sitting at home. However, I recently got really sick and the iPad was great, because laying down and being sick is much better with an iPad to pass the time. But, I noticed something as I used it in this colder part of the world, as the temperature got colder the iPad did too and when you are sick you notice it. Cold makes the device less enjoyable to use and has even made me think of the device as almost a soulless device. The temperature the iPad keeps is a testament to Apple engineering as in the past they were known for their laptops getting too hot. They really manage the temperature on this puppy. But, when it is cold out it makes me less willing to use it, and I can see it being a problem in places where it gets cold. It mostly has do with touching cold glass that really just isn't comfortable.
Should Apple find a way to heat up the iPad so that is more inviting and should tech in general be less cold (figuratively and literally) to help people connect with their devices better. I haven't seen any complaints on this yet, but the iPad has only really been available in warm months, as we turn to winter will we see more complaints?
Thoughts? <comment><USER2> Get a gel case. They are super cheap:

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_nr_i_0?rh=k%3Aipad+ge...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_nr_i_0?rh=k%3Aipad+gel+case%2Ci%3Aelectronics&keywords=ipad+gel+case&ie=UTF8)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your suggestion, I am referring to the front glass not the case, because I have a case. Unless you think some sort of invisible shield might make the glass feel less cold.

<comment><USER2> Try a screen guard then. Some are sold with the cases in the link I provided. You could even get one to reduce the glare.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Great, now all I think when I use my iPad is How cold the screen is. I'm going to have to jailbreak it and run distributed.net in the background.</comment>


Pwn Adventure 3: Pwnie Island - <AUTHOR> http://pwnadventure.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> This was created for the challenges in [http://www.ghostintheshellcode.com/](http://www.ghostintheshellcode.com/)</comment>


Oracle.com is down? - <AUTHOR> http://www.oracle.com/index.html

<comment><USER2> They're having database issues, it gave them an error code but no-one understood what it meant so they had to Google it. The first Google result was a non-sensical post on forums.oracle.com so they gave up and went to lunch.

(This will only make sense to anyone with experience with Oracle Database)

<comment><USER3> Nice one!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Ironically I was looking at it when they had sent me a marketing email for their new cloud computing service...

Yes I am fully aware that it's not a networking issue but it's still ironic

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It appears to be back up now!

It was down for a good 45 minutes though from when I got the email

</comment><comment><USER4> And now its back up. 8:53 CT.</comment>


Starting Up, One Year Later: Recovery - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dislocatedday.com/starting-up-one-year-later-recovery <comment><USER2> Excellent final blog post for this series Tom. I think a lot of us are right there with you, so thanks for putting your thoughts down on paper.

It's easy to get sucked into the stereotypical startup lifestyle of working all day, every day, while sacrificing everything else...only to realize a year later what a toll that's taken on you and the people around you. Posts like this help to set things back into perspective and re-evaluate if you have your priorities straight.

Keep up the good work with TS!

</comment><comment><USER3> Thank you for taking the time to share your experiences with us. I shuffled through a couple of your most recent posts. Your writing style is honest. I feel like I struggle with you! Glad to know we are not alone.

Keep up the good work. And yeah, make sure you tell that girl she makes you happy!

</comment><comment><USER4> "In my fervor to escape the slavery of corporate America, I'd made myself a slave to my supposed salvation."

</comment><comment><USER5> Folks often remark to me that they'd never want to run a business themselves because it would take up all their time. To that I'll reply "Yup, 'Freedom is Slavery'."

I find it disturbing how few catch that reference, but self-direction isn't for everyone.

</comment><comment><USER6> I believe that there's only one reason to start a business: because you absolutely _have_ to do this thing no matter what it takes.

All the other reasons you hear about:

      - to be my own boss
      - to get free time
      - to spend more time with my family
      - to get rich
      - to do what I want
      - to be famous

usually lead to disappointment. You'd be better off just getting a good job.

<comment><USER7> The strategy of only doing it because you _have_ to is one which probably allows for more sustained imbalance and lack of perspective (since the business is _everything_ and _must be done_ , etc.), but I think it is short sighted to believe it's the only reason to start one. Or the only reason one could avoid disappointment when doing so.

At the end of the day, maybe this wasn't something I _had_ to do, but it was something I _wanted_ to do. And it has certainly been an incredibly rewarding experience. Overall, I am anything but disappointed. I've made many great friends, grown exponentially as a programmer and designer, even gotten a taste of the investment world.

Sure, sometimes it sucks, but never _once_ have I said to myself, "I would've been better off getting a job." There's not once I'd have believed it.

<comment><USER6> "maybe this wasn't something I _had_ to do, but it was something I _wanted_ to do"

Semantics. I think we're saying the same thing.

You _really_ wanted to do it badly, right? That's what I call _had_ to do. Obviously, you don't _have_ to do anything except breathe & eat, but you get the idea.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask YC: Machine learning course recommendation. - <AUTHOR> I know there is a ton results for a google search, which is precisely my problem. SICP is a 4 letter word that everyone would understand here. Are there any such reputed courses for machine learning that jumps to your mind? Any help is much appreciated. <comment><USER4> A great strategy that I've learned a lot from is to use a database like citeseer or ISI to find the author's of the most cited papers for a topic and then find their lectures on videolectures.net

Other's already mentioned Jordan, Bishop and Friedman - these are all great

I really liked Thrun, Burgard, and Fox's text Probabilistic Robotics - <USER2> use a lot of ML like algorithms under very tough constraints (limited CPU and real-time performance)

Shapire (inventor of AdaBoost) has a good course <http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~schapire/>

Hinton et. al. have a good advanced course: <http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~hinton/csc2535/>

Moore from CMU has some good slides too: <http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~awm/10701/>

</comment><comment><USER5> Chris Bishop's Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning is a good recent book aimed at 'advanced undergraduates'. It seems to be 'the book' in ML right now. Norvig and Russel's AIMA is a good general AI resource. The twice annual machine learning summer schools get videoed and put up on videolectures.net. Really good introductory lectures from the basics on up to various application areas. Even better if you can go to one and pick the presenters brains for a couple weeks, they are intended for both new graduate students and interested people from industry. After that there are specialized books in the (many) subfields.

<comment><USER6> I second videolectures as an excellent source. Just listen to the ones you are interested in! One tip I'd offer is to make sure you understand the math of each lecture before moving on. Skip over the maths enough and you'll find you haven't truly learned much.

However, in terms of books I would add Elements of Statistical Learning (Hastie, Tibshirani, and Friedman). It is an excellent text that covers a lot of ground. The down side of this of course is that it is written at the graduate level, so be prepared.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Read Norvig's introductory text, but don't feel you have to know it all - <USER3> it as a way to pick something you really are interested in (genetic algorithms are always popular) and read academic literature on the topic (citeseer is a good resource here). Use Wikipedia, Scholarpedia. Get an intuitive sense of dynamical systems, problem spaces and landscapes, and chaos theory. Get a grip on combinatorial explosion, and just how much it can suck for optimization problems. Learn theory of computation, and glance (more than once) at symbolic logic.

That will set you on your way! Good luck, it is fascinating stuff.

</comment><comment><USER8> [http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and- Compute...](http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and-Computer- Science/6-867Machine-LearningFall2002/CourseHome/index.htm)

Machine Learning at MIT.

<comment><USER9> Some similar resources coming from Berkeley are:

[CS 188] Artificial Intelligence - <http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs188/sp08/lectures.html>

[CS 294] Practical Machine Learning - [http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~pliang/cs294-spring08/#administr...](http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~pliang/cs294-spring08/#administrivia)

[CS 281A] Statistical Learning Theory - <http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~jordan/courses/281A-fall07/>

[CS 281B] More Statistical Learning Theory - <http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bartlett/courses/281b-sp06/>

There may be more that I don't know of, but I know these courses are fairly well regarded (I'm planning to take 188 and 281A next semester).

<comment><USER10> Cool, I will likely also be taking 281A.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Peter Norvig recommends these: Hastie <http://books.google.com/books?id=VRzITwgNV2UC> Bishop <http://books.google.com/books?id=yHwhAAAACAAJ> Ripley <http://books.google.com/books?id=2SzT2p8vP1oC>

</comment><comment><USER12> I have Norvig's AI:AMA in PDF form; if you don't have it already and want it, send me an email.

<comment><USER13> could you put your email address here or in the "about" field of your profile? (the email address field isn't displayed to other users)

or email a copy to peter at pchristensen dot com

Thanks!

<comment><USER12> Check your email.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I thought this was the canonical ML book:

<http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tom/mlbook.html>

<comment><USER10> It used to be, but 1997 is a while ago; the Bishop book is more popular nowadays, I believe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I posted a bunch of machine learning video courses here:

[http://www.datawrangling.com/hidden-video-courses-in-math- sc...](http://www.datawrangling.com/hidden-video-courses-in-math-science-and- engineering)

videolectures.net has a ton of material as well

Hastie and Bishop are good books to start with, assuming you have a reasonable mathematics background.

</comment><comment><USER16> i just bought "programming collective intelligence". it's basically machine learning for engineers rather than mathematicians.

</comment><comment><USER17> <http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs229/></comment>


Vim Creep - <AUTHOR> http://www.rudism.com/s/vimcreep <comment><USER2> This is an extremely awesome, fantastic, exhilarating use of hyperbole.

What I gained from the article wasn't any explanation of why Vim is great; indeed, there was little included in this respect, aside from moving "entire blocks of code with the flick of a finger." Even the cool feeling of proficiency you get from knowing a tool well, and the fun of getting to show off a skill to a "how did he do that!?" audience was secondary.

My favorite part was the implicit reminder to relax about my tools. The most effective use of hyperbole is not the emphasis of a particular point, but a caution not to take ourselves too seriously, and place our self-satisfaction in proper perspective. The most powerful instances border on satire, and in that respect, this piece was perfect.

Addendum: I use vim and pentadactyl. They are extremely awesome, fantastic, and exhilarating.

<comment><USER3> Just watch the video of the page [http://blog.extracheese.org/2010/11/screencast-custom-vim- re...](http://blog.extracheese.org/2010/11/screencast-custom-vim- refactorings.html) to get the gist of "entire blocks of code with the flick of a finger".

<comment><USER4> I'm pretty sure that "re-factoring" could've been accomplished equally fast with the mouse. In most editors, you can double-click to select a token and triple-click to select a line. So the mouse version would be: double-click 10, copy, double-click ten, paste, triple click the line you want to delete, press delete. Pretty fast, really; especially if you're using a laptop where the cost of moving your hand to the mouse is negligible.

I tried Vim for several months and got reasonably competent. But then I timed myself doing the Vim tutorial with Vim and Gedit, and Gedit won handily. For this reason I'm convinced that Vim is only popular because using it gives you hacker cred.

I'm open to changing my mind based on solid experimental evidence, but for now I only use Vim occasionally, for the macros.

<comment><USER5> Your first paragraph ignores the central point of the screencast: How would you record those mouse interactions as a general, reprogrammable macro? He signs off the video with an important statement which hints at the 'zen' of using Vim for a long time: "It's a nice thing to aspire to, to automate all of your interactions with the code in this way".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This feels like an article about a religion or cult, not a software program.

I just don't get it. Ever since newer editors got block editing or multiple insertion cursors, and RegEx find & replace across multiple files, and searching filenames to open... I feel like I've already got everything I need!

What am I missing out on? I don't _feel_ like my text editor holds back my productivity. Using something like Sublime, I never think, man, if only Sublime did _x_ , it would save me five minutes, twenty times a week!

I've never had anyone explain to me what specific kind of code editing is so much more productive in vim than in any other editor. Can someone give me a real-world, _commonly occurring_ example?

Or is it not about productivity? Is it an interface thing? People like the way it feels to use? The article explains the "feeling" I always hear about, how vim is so much better, but for the millionth time, fails to tell me why, in a way a non-vim-user can understand.

<comment><USER7> You really have to sit down and see a vim user work to start to understand.

In vim you don't just move around with arrows, then delete and then replace the text you want. What happens is you can use noun-verb associations to do things.

For example on a line like this:

        var foo = "bar";

I could be at the beginning of the line and type the following keys to change the inside of the quotation marks:

        ci"baz<esc>

In sublime I would do the following:

        <cmd>→←←⌫⌫⌫baz

The difference between the two was an epiphany for me. In vim I could actually use verbs and nouns to determine how I will edit the text in front of me. I now have a language that I can use to edit text rather than editing the text using the most manual of tools and the verbs and nouns combination are only limited by my imagination and the plugins I install.

<comment><USER8> If you're into that sort of thing, you can do Ctrl + F, bar<esc> in Sublime too. Most of the comparisons in this discussion between vim and non vim demonstrate high proficiency in vim, but not as much elsewhere. Of course you are more proficient in the tool you know best.

<comment><USER9> Does your example include the action of deleting bar with baz?

Also, not having to move away from the home row makes me feel much faster. Having to use Alt/Control/Arrows makes me cry. (I know you can't avoid Control in Vim, but in this example it is not required.)

ci"baz<esc> is 7 keystrokes, only one of which is a jump.

<ctl-F>bar<esc>baz is 8 strokes and two jumps. It also requires typing the entire string in quotes. If the example were

var foo = "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog";

The vim example would not change but yours would.

I'm not trying to be an a-hole, use what you like, I'm just saying, that for me the attraction to vim is the strive toward the minimization of keystrokes, especially ones that require me to move my hands.

<comment><USER8> No, good point. You'd then have to type "baz".

However, if I was actually faced with this problem, I'd use End, Ctrl + Left, Ctrl + D, baz, which is a total of 7 keystrokes. (if you don't release Ctrl)

The vim example was 8 keystrokes. (" is shift + ') I have no doubt that you could manufacture an example that shows a benefit for vim, but I think that the advantages are overestimated by heavy vim users.

Edit: Your longer string example is a good example of a task that's more efficient in vim.

<comment><USER10> A commonly overlooked aspect to the vim way of describing what you're doing in verbs and nouns and prepositions is that the "." character in vim means "repeat my previous edit". So if you can find a way to "phrase" your edit as a single change (i.e., 6sasdf<esc> would delete six characters starting under the cursor and leaving me in insert mode, then insert the letters asdf and exit insert mode) instead of many (i.e., xxxxxxiasdf<esc>, deleting 6 characters separately, entering insert mode and entering the letters asdf) then you can go to another spot in the text and just hit . to repeat the edit. I've given a contrived example here, but this is enormously powerful. It's why there are several ways to enter insert mode: "i" to enter under the cursor, "a" for after the cursor, "I" for first non-whitespace character on the line, "A" for after the last character on the line, "o" for opening a new line below the cursor, "O" for above, "c"+motion for deleting through the motion and leaving in insert mode, count+"s" for removing count characters starting from cursor and leaving in insert mode. There are more....I'll stop :)

<comment><USER11> Sublime Text supports multiple cursors, which I find to be a more natural way to do things where you might use those tiny repetitions-- you select all the regions you want to edit first (usually by repeatedly adding the next match to the selection), then any typing or movements you do occur in parallel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My first week in college a distant relative of mine at the same school pulled me into the Sun lab. The sum-total of his instructions were:

* This is how you log in.

* This is ls.

* This is cd.

* This is man.

* This is apropos.

* Learn vi.

* Have fun.

What came from that 5 minute intro to Unix has been applied orders of magnitude more often than anything from 5 years of an EE degree.

<comment><USER7> Can you explain to me what apropos does?

<comment><USER12>
      $ man apropos

      apropos searches a set of database files containing
      short descriptions of system commands for keywords and
      displays the result on the standard output.

It answers the question "I wonder how to do [this English word]."

For example: "I wonder how I copy a file."

      $ apropos copy

Dumps out all of the matching entries from the man pages for the word "copy". If you just wanted general commands, as opposed to library functions, and assuming your system organizes man page sections in the typical manner, you can filter it down with:

      $ apropos copy | grep "(1)"
      cp                   (1)  - copy files and directories
      cpio                 (1)  - copy files to and from archives

<comment><USER13> Instead of using `grep "(1)"`, use the `-s` switch:

        $ apropos -s1 copy
        bsdcpio (1)          - copy files to and from archives
        cp (1)               - copy files and directories
        dd (1)               - convert and copy a file
        ....

<comment><USER14> I think it's better to use grep. Knowing the options to apropos has very low value. Knowing grep has lots and lots of value.

<comment><USER15> I agree. I have no idea how to use `find`. I always do `find . | grep whatever`, since I know the basics of grep.

<comment><USER16> Learning find is a worthy investment.

        find ./ -name "*.log" -size +2G -ctime +3 | xargs -P 8 gzip

Will find all log files over 2 gigs and older than 3 days. Then it will gzip them split across 8 parallel gzip processes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Can we all stop patting ourselves on the back for being vim badasses now?

Yes, its a fantastic editor. Yes, its probably going to make you more productive. Yes, its every bit as capable as any other IDE or editor out there.

No, it will not make you a better person. No, mastery of vim does not make you fart sunshine. No, it won't make you an enlightened buddha.

<comment><USER18> I think it's more about mastering tools with a high learning curve. It's our trade; it's fun to feel good about it.

<comment><USER19> I think that's something we as a community forget. It's _ok_ to feel proud of being good with your tools. It is _fun_. As long as we don't turn it into a "holier than thou" situation, it's neat to have an editor that you have such mastery over that you can control blocks of text with keystrokes _.

_ Note: I don't quite have it yet myself. I'm been using vim for about 6 months (with only 2-3 of active use) and I'm actually right on that cusp he mentions--where you are searching less and less, and only for more powerful and obscure commands, and things are _just_ starting to all become extremely useful. It's beautiful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've said it before, and I'll say it again...

Editing text is a solved problem: vim or emacs. Pick one and get back to work.

<comment><USER21> Although I agree with you, IDE fans feel the same way: "Writing code is a solved problem: eclipse or xcode or visual studio. Pick one based on your environment and get back to work"

An argument I hear a lot is: 'vim is fine for editing files on a remote server, but not suitable for everyday work'. I believe it is a common belief outside of the HN crowd.

<comment><USER22> On IDEs: I have the 'pleasure' of being one of those chaps who spends parts of his day job reworking massive Java projects. There is no way in hell I'm touching that without an editor that __deeply __understands Java.

<comment><USER20> There are multiple variables in your equation. You may be altering the wrong one.

<comment><USER23> What are you talking about? His job?

<comment><USER24> Java.

Seriously, it's a language sufficiently verbose and inexpressive to effectively _require_ an IDE. If you're just going to be generating 70% of your code from your IDE, why is it there in the first place?

<comment><USER25> Languages don't just fall into two black and white categories of whether or not it requires an IDE that understands the language. It's a spectrum, which means that all languages should benefit from an IDE that understands the language. If not, then you've just found the perfect holy grail of computer languages. Until then, face the fact that language integration is nice.

Unless I'm missing something, specialized non-VIM IDEs tend to be much better at auto completion (especially in C++), jump-to-definition, refactoring, etc. IDE users (who typically are ignorant to VIM) can use these features with extreme productivity. On the other hand, VIM users tend to be rather ignorant of how incredibly productive you can be and how nice it feels to have these powerful context-sensitive tools at your fingertips (and sorry, but CTAGS is useless). Regardless of what IDE you use, nobody can deny IMO that having an editor look up APIs and function lists for you in a context-relevant manner is productivity-boosting versus the alternate of scanning headers manually.

So in this sense I think both VIM/EMACS and IDE users are ignorant to other editor paradigms. What I don't like is how each party tries to claim that their method is the best, without having truly tried both.

I've used both extensively (used VIM for years) and I prefer IDEs by far, but that's just my personal preference.

<comment><USER24> I've used both IDEs (Eclipse, IntelliJ IDEA) and Emacs. Originally I preferred the IDEs, but then I learned how to use Emacs properly. Besides, Emacs actually combines the best of both worlds for some languages like Scala or any sort of Lisp. (But, notably, _not_ Java.)

I may be crazy about Emacs, but I'd probably still use an IDE if I had to do significant Java development. This says far less about IDEs and editors than it does about Java: I'm going to try very hard _not_ to do any significant Java development in the future, thank you very much!

And that's really the entire point of my earlier post: it was not in favor of editors or IDEs, it was in favor of not using Java. Java is a poor language cursed with a good implementation: it's too good to die but not good enough to use.

A common argument I hear from people defending Java is that their IDE can generate half their code for them. And that was what I was really responding to: if you can use a tool to automatically generate all that code, it should just not be there in the first place!

Your experiences using an IDE for Java say as little about the relative merits of an IDE or text editor as experiences using Emacs on some Lisp: they're both extreme cases. And, more importantly, the reason normal editors are poor for Java, and the reason that SCdF is not touching a normal editor, are endemic to _Java_ and not to the other tools.

<comment><USER26> You spend as much time reading code as writing it. An IDE that can show you context relevant info at all time and facilitate browsing is interesting in _any_ language. (like where is this set, where else it is used, what the doc for it, ...)

You can also see it as a "problem" of the language if you cannot create an IDE that improve your productivity over a text editor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Somehow this reminds me of an Everything2 article about Nethack titled "You have a sad feeling for a moment, and then it passes."

It inspires the same kind of nostalgia.

[http://everything2.com/title/You+have+a+sad+feeling+for+a+mo...](http://everything2.com/title/You+have+a+sad+feeling+for+a+moment%252C+then+it+passes)

</comment><comment><USER28> I have never been moved so close to tears by an article about a text editor before.

<comment><USER12> Most people have read this before, but maybe some of the kidlets here haven't seen it.

<http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html>

464gg for the greatest chapter about an OS ever written.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I started using vi in high school. Used it extensively throughout college. Then I had my first taste of a proper GUI IDE.

Since then, I've only used vim for editing config files on a remote unix system.

</comment><comment><USER30> Not so subtly the author is telling the reader if you program with Vim you'll be just like "all the really great programmers" who can write 4 line solutions to problems that take ordinary programmers 10 pages. You'll produce "impossible patterns of code and text manipulation", and be able to "fill dozens of registers" (admittedly I don't know what that means). This is all bit silly and reminds me of "hacking" in the Hollywood films.

I understand that this post was tongue in cheek. I also understand that not all text editors are equal, if you see someone writing their first hello world program in Notepad yes you should tell them about much better alternatives. But this post confuses ability to program with ability to use Vim.

Being really good at using Vim will definitely let you say you're part of the club of people who are really good at using Vim. It just might make you more efficient at manipulating code. But let's not perpetuate the elitism that is pervasive enough in hacking, it's a text editor. It doesn't make you more intelligent, better at problem solving, or writing more efficient code.

<comment><USER31> He's not saying that using Vim will make you a better hacker. You're the one who's confusing remarks on correlation for causation.

Its probably likely that there is such a correlation; those who are willing to put in the time learning vim/emacs are probably those who spend the most time coding, and thus have the most practice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> You could do a global search and replace of "vim" with "emacs" (or pretty much any other development tool for that matter) and it would not change the semantic content of this article at all.

</comment><comment><USER33> LOL so in my early days it was "vi" but I too use "vim" now a days.

Either way the funny thing is when someone asks me "how do you do THAT in vi?" I often find myself typing in the air to replay the muscle memory that executes those instructions.

For better or for worse I've become muscle programmed to execute vi commands in flashes of thought that really never reach my normal cognitive functions. I love to watch people stunned as they see me do something I've taken for granted for years or figured everyone else knew how to do.

All that said, all tools are not for all situations and all people. I do at times find myself jumping into eclipse (Java I'm looking at you!!!) because of the many additional features available in a good IDE.

I know you can run the vim extensions in eclipse but I've never bothered. I figure if I'm going to mouse my way through an IDE I'm not sure what having vi commands will do to make my life easier. :-)

</comment><comment><USER34> Nice. Very nice.

I even tweeted it. With TwitVim, naturally. <http://vim.sourceforge.net/scripts/script.php?script_id=2204>

</comment><comment><USER35> Also feels good to have vim bindings inside of emacs using evil (<http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Evil>).

<comment><USER36> Oddly, I've found myself using vimacs (<https://github.com/andrep/vimacs>) to have emacs keybindings available with the quick startup / easy configurability of vim.

I make no claim that emacs keybindings are superior to vim's native keybindings, but for whatever reason, I type more naturally using them at this point. (Which somewhat mystifies me, since for years I used vi/vim as a primary editor with it's normal keybindings.)

I still think that vim keybindings are faster than Emacs for actually editing text, but the emacs keybindings feel more pleasant to me (unless I'm using something without a dedicated control key - like a phone or tablet).

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> This article has changed(or at least I hope) my life. I'm installing Vim today on my Windows Laptop. Does anyone know of a good guide for beginners?

<comment><USER38> I learn by watching and following along with examples, so the following YouTube videos are the ones that I've found the most useful:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71YTkxUNwmg> <\--Covers the basics and helpful commands. I had never used vim before watching this video, and now I'm reasonably competent at basic text editing.

I needed to do find and replace on a short story I'm working on (changed a character's name), and I found this one helpful: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1_CfIb-3X4>

I wanted to understand/use the .vimrc file, so I googled until I hit this one, which I found quite informative: [UPDATE: put in the wrong link, serves me right for picking the last history item with .vimrc in it instead of watching it. The actual video I found helpful was this one of a guy showing his .vimrc file and what various things in it do: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZuy4gBghho>]

Lastly, once you're comfortable using it, try going into command mode and typing Shift-a, and notice that it moves your cursor to the end of the line _and puts you in insert mode_. I saw this tip on HN awhile back, and I hadn't seen it in any basic tutorials, but it is the single most useful command I've come across.

<comment><USER39> Shift+I moves your cursor to the start of the line, and enters insert mode, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I've never found that symbols -> buffer is the bottleneck for me. Instead, it exists somewhere between problem -> symbols.

<comment><USER41> Yeah, but having got through the problem->symbols bottleneck, it's nice not to have another one waiting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> looks like he forgot to switch to command mode at the end of the post.

<comment><USER43> Which is the the :wq got inserted and not executed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I'm all for vim or whatever other editor you prefer.

But to somehow claim that one editor or another is going to make you a better programmer and make your 10 pages of crap code become 4 elegant lines is pretty nonsensical.

No matter what editor you use; if you're not good at problem solving, you're not going to make a good programmer.

</comment><comment><USER45> You know, I'm doing an experiment like this with Tetris. I was looking at the world record for 40 line clear (20.55 seconds at <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzUUKKuye24>) and I realized that the limit is not how fast he thinks, but how fast he is pressing the keys.

So I designed my own system. One key press drops the piece instantly into the correct spot, with the correct rotation. It's making my brain hurt practicing because it requires so much thinking, but once I get it into muscle memory, things are going to get really interesting. My 40 line best using the arrow keys is 45 seconds and with my new scheme it is 2:21. But I'm dropping time quickly and I'm sure very soon I'll beat my record.

<comment><USER45> Okay, maybe you didn't see how this related. I should have made it clearer. There are a lot of discussions on this page about how Vim's advantage comes from the muscle memory adaptation, relegating text editing to a subconscious, effortless activity rather than something that requires active thought.

I was expounding on this concept with an idea of my own and speculating about its potential benefits using analogous logic to that used in the reasoning about Vim's efficiency.

Better?

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> "Knife skills" don't make you a good developer. Cook a great steak and worry less about cutting it. Tools are boring. People are far more important. A post like this is akin to "I LOVE BRITNEY SPEARS." Please God, make the programmer pop culture stop.

<comment><USER47> Coincidentally, I've been working on my knife skills lately. In the past, I often served dinner late because I took so long to chop the vegetables. (I'm vegetarian.) Now that I'm focusing on proper knife technique to chop quickly, I find that I can get dinner served faster — but also I have more flexibility to respond and experiment in the kitchen, because I can, for example, put the skillet on the stove before I start chopping the onion I'm going to sauté. And I'm less likely to burn things, because chopping takes less of my time and attention.

Of course, knowing how to cut isn't the same as knowing how to cook. Vegetables chopped slowly taste the same as vegetables chopped fast. But if you already know a thing or two about food, you can cook a little bit better if your cutting technique is better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Nope. Don't get me wrong, I love vim, but I don't need to have it _everywhere_. It makes no sense in the browser. It's lacking some features Eclipse has (although if Eclipse had a _proper_ Vim mode, I'd use it in a heartbeat).

<comment><USER49> I'm using viPlugin( <http://www.viplugin.com/> ) for months now and I'm pretty happy with it. I don't think I could use Eclipse without it.

<comment><USER48> Thanks, I'll have a look

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I'm like that, exactly, but with Emacs.

A long time ago I narrowly escaped being like that exactly, but with TECO :-)

I've learned not to fret about people's choice of editor. FOr instance, if someone was happy in NotePad, as long as it didn't affect me, I learned not to care. (I might grit my teeth in frustration, watching them flail for minutes at something I could do in seconds with my choice of editor, but that's my problem).

</comment><comment><USER51> For me pragmatism wins the day. Vim has been installed on every machine I've ever ssh'ed into. Not true for emacs or even nano or pico.

<comment><USER52> Vim, really?

Some vi variant, save but for a few instances. But not necessarily vim.

Being stuck to use old-school vi a few times in the not-to-distant past made me realize how massive an improvement over it vim is.

Yes, I can GSD with vi, but I can _really_ GSD with vim.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Fully recognize I am outing myself here but the timing seems great given the Vim articles that have been coming up lately, as well as my Lead Engineer keeps bugging me to really get into Vim. I have used it before, but never GOT it. Is there an online guide that is great (and not just a story like this one) or do I need to get the O'Reily Vi and Vim book?

</comment><comment><USER54> I chose vim because it was radically different than anything else.

All text editors have crazy shortcuts that do magic, but only vim has the ironically named NORMAL mode with its verbs, movements and registers...

I treated it like a new game to learn. Sometimes I will write a macro because it is more fun, even though it might not save me raw time.

</comment><comment><USER55> Nice writing, this goes straight to the HN monthly. Ultra nerdy nonetheless.

</comment><comment><USER56> Being somewhere in the middle of that timeline, I'd watch that movie. This piece reminds me that an authors vision is always more important to communication than the subject itself.

</comment><comment><USER57> If someone can always "churned out 4 line solutions for an assignment that took you 10 pages of code to complete", he can use any editor or maybe simply "cat >".

</comment><comment><USER58> How do people use Vi on large projects? Do you just manually type in the name of the file you're looking for every time?

<comment><USER59> I use the CommandT plugin: ,/ and then start typing fragments of the filename / path to open.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I definitely save this article not for the awesome main post but for the useful comments and replies.

Thanks all.

</comment><comment><USER61> I admit that this is beautifully written, even though I strongly disagree with the premise.

</comment><comment><USER62> macvim for objective-c? That sounds like a PITA to set up properly.

</comment><comment><USER63> why vim creep, it should be titled "ode to vim"

</comment><comment><USER64> What a feel-good piece.

</comment><comment><USER65> No, I didn't.

</comment><comment><USER66> I still can't believe people love that damn thing so much, even after all these years. There are way better tools in my opinion.

Of course, if you like it by all means continue using it. But if you think it has anything to do with your talent as an engineer, you are wrong. And if you see other engineers not using it and think it implies anything about their talent, you are wrong.

Side note: if anyone wrote in such a breathless tone about Apple, they would be skewered as a fanboy and a drinker of the Kool-Aid.</comment>


New Twitter Has Become Browser Poison - <AUTHOR> http://mikecanex.wordpress.com/2011/01/17/new-twitter-has-become-browser-poison/ <comment><USER2> Over time, NewTwitter does incur a large memory footprint. I've been traveling for a month and haven't looked into the problem in depth, but I'd bet the major culprit is our aggressive caching techniques. It's also worth investigating the number of polls and their frequencies. Timeline refreshes are dropped back to 90 seconds when the tab isn't focused, but not sure about other ones.

As most people have reported, infinite scroll is an easy way to introduce a slowdown over time. The sheer number of DOM nodes becomes quite significant - there are things we can do to ameliorate that issue, as well. Will take a look tomorrow. The feedback is greatly appreciated.

<comment><USER3> Infinite scroll is also a way to make scrolling infuriating, especially if you are wanting to click links and fan out from that location: it forces you to avoid your browser's carefully designed history stack like the plague (opening new tabs or windows for navigation instead) lest you lose your incredibly valuable document you've carefully been scrolling down in (and which is now so large it is threatening to cripple your browser anyway). What happened to normal "next page" paradigms? Does user testing really show that infinite scroll is better?

<comment><USER4> That's not a problem inherent to infinite scroll at all. It's easily fixed by setting a hash value on the current page (the #foo in a URL) corresponding to the current scroll state, and updating it each time infinite scroll happens.

Why Twitter doesn't implement something like this is a whole different issue.

<comment><USER2> You can imagine attempting to support something like this when the user has scrolled 20 pages worth through a timeline. We could, of course, backfill newer tweets subsequently up to the most recent (taking a minimum of two requests and a maximum of 20), but this would be expensive.

I mentioned somewhere else in this thread that we could maintain an accurate scroll height but detach more recent tweets when a timeline is scrolled a long distance. We could do the same thing here, and backfill as the user scrolls up. There are some challenging things to get right though if the user decides to jump to the top, etc. Definitely non-trivial.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the response, I thought the reality would be much more complicated due to issues of scale.

This is primarily about supporting the back button, and I don't think users expect the latest data when going back through their browser history - generally pages aren't refreshed, and that's not an unusual or unexpected behavior. So you could cache each page state, without worrying about displaying newer tweets, though the caching mechanism itself incurs some nontrivial cost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The thing I noticed in the slow new Twitter is that typing a new status seems to involve continuous autofill-like behavior for each character typed, which seemed to introduce round-trip lag (or javascript-parsing, or...) and causes characters to appear at a rate of ~1/second. Unusable.

And this is one way that dominant sites fall: business considerations are given priority over the user experience. Maybe they just have Flickr-itis and just can't adapt to leaving well enough alone, but for the time being I'm on old-Twitter and not contributing much to the Twitterverse until this is sorted out. If it never winds up being fixed, I've got a head start in living without them.

There is also a possible Second System Effect amongst Twitter's UX gods. It's interesting that after having switched to the new Twitter a couplefew weeks ago, last week I started seeing a "Wanna switch back to the old Twitter?" header. Of course I did, but to me this possibly points to a level of complaints that I did not realize.

<comment><USER6> Or it could also point to a "Hey, this is different. I don't like change!" reaction that you always get when you change something's UI.

<comment><USER5> I don't think so. I'm not a huge tweeter and so anything that gets in the way of the rare things really jumps out at me, of which the slow status box is no small issue. Other than that the redesign is just that, an expanded sidebar with some fleshed out boxes. No big deal. That it's causing different problems for different people tells me that maybe something else is going on behind the hood. Heck, maybe they just want to be the network and aren't interested in providing a groovy webapp interface anymore, who knows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been keeping twitter open in its own Firefox browser on one screen (of three). It routinely refreshes itself and there is some kind of memory leak whereas after a day it is consuming about half a gig of memory, forcing me to kill and restart.

<comment><USER8> Firefox has crazy memory leaks. Don't blame it on twitter, regardless how bad their code may be.

A tab should be completely and utterly destroyed when refreshed. It doesn't matter how much memory it used, refreshing it or navigating away from that page should (ignoring optimizations, caching, etc. etc. etc.) be like you were never there.

Just look at the hundreds of complaints here: [http://neosmart.net/blog/2008/firefox-3-is-still-a-memory- ho...](http://neosmart.net/blog/2008/firefox-3-is-still-a-memory-hog/)

<comment><USER9> _Firefox has crazy memory leaks._

Proof? This was the case with Firefox 2 but now it just seems like this is part of their reputation and is not necessarily grounded in fact.

<comment><USER10> I routinely leave my browser open for days on end and simply cycle through tabs, closing and opening new ones as needed, with usually ~10 open at a given time. I, too, noticed that firefox was eating up about half a gig of ram even when it wasn't doing anything, didn't have any youtube tabs open, etc. It got to the point where I would have to close firefox and restart after a day or two. Chrome fixed that. Now, I just use firefox with the modify headers extension to watch domain-specific video, and have no plans to go back.

<comment><USER11> Now, maybe I'm to blame here, using the nightly build of chromium, but webkit is a walking memory leak. Just for a comparison, I have the same amount of tabs on firefox and chromium and firefox is using 500mb of ram, while chromium is using 3.5 GIGABYTES. And I'm not even using it much. But really, the problem is easily reproducible. Just open whatever webkit based browser you want, and keep reloading the same moderately big page. Ram goes up, never to return. That works with a trivial program that embeds webkit via gtk, too. Or you can just look at the commits on webkit: a couple of leaks fixes every week.

<comment><USER12> Good thing Chrome kills the entire process hosting a tab when you close it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In other news, you'll be way more productive if you don't hang out on Twitter all day :-)

<comment><USER14> And use some sort of browser extension...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I can't help thinking that the tacked-on whine about _this is why people want iPads and not PCs_ would make more sense if this post were not about a web-app that would probably slow down any tablet it was accessed on.

<comment><USER16> No, because the site wouldn't be able to consume cpu and memory in a background tab on the ipad.

<comment><USER15> In that case, wouldn't the "new twitter" view be utterly useless on the iPad, anyway? Couldn't you as easily go to it with a bookmark?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I noticed the same thing on my girlfriends CR-48, twitter wont scroll properly (studders) and everything else hangs a bit. She filed a bug report with google chrome os support, but I suspect twitter is doing a lot of heavy stuff in the background.

<comment><USER18> I've noticed the same thing on mine. It seems like the site is only functional when you first load it. After new tweets start rolling in, it becomes worse and worse. I don't think it's the fault of the CR-48, I think we're just seeing the effects worse on this hardware.

<comment><USER19> Same thing here. It's not ChromeOS-related? I note the same problem in Chromium.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Agreed, the new twitter is way demanding compared to the older version.

Once they stop allowing the old version, I'll probably have twitter loaded much less. On a core 2 duo, even scrolling in new twitter is way below par.

Is there a low cpu-usage client? I tried one of the flash based ones, but it brought the fans permanently on on my MacBook... Yeah, that's not going to fly.

<comment><USER21> I'm using the new Twitter client from the Mac App Store - it's quite good:

<http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/twitter/id409789998?mt=12>

<comment><USER22> While it's better than the web UI, it suffers from the "mp3 player" problem of trying to make up its own widget library and UI style, and actually is kind of lame in a lot of ways (there is no top-level "new tweet" button, which is kind of a feature of all the mobile clients, and it's definitely a pain to use for DM conversations. It pops up weird non-standard shaped windows all over. I'd consider it a respectable indy effort, but pretty disappointing for Twitter, Inc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> New MBP here. It looks like it stays at a constant 7-8% cpu while sitting on the page, with momentary spikes to 30% every 15 seconds or so.

<comment><USER20> 3% cpu continuously is enough to make a (my) macbook noticeably hotter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've experimented with the new twitter web app on both Chrome and Safari (Mac).

It automatically loads a chunk of data when I scroll to the bottom. The CPU use seems to be proportional to the number of chunks that have been loaded. Initially about 2% and increasing to 50% with 20 chunks.

The new twitter almost unusable because of this. Hoping for a fix soon.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The point of my post is also this: Something changed in the behavior of New Twitter. None of this happened when I was first given access to NT months ago. The problems seemed to crop up simulataneously -- coincidentally -- with my moving to Opera 11 beta. The problems have since spread to all 3 of the browsers I wound up cycling through. So I think Twitter changed something on their end and are unaware of the ripple effect on some users. Someone, on Twitter, suggested they were once polling every 90 seconds in the beginning and now that the switch is complete, we are getting "live streaming." That might be too much for some systems to handle. Perhaps a user option to throttle back polling? [typo edit]

<comment><USER2> Currently, we're not live streaming. We poll every 30 seconds when focused and fall back to 90 seconds unfocused. When we do push, we'll be using User Streams (<http://dev.twitter.com/pages/user_streams>) with either Websockets or Flash. Performance should improve when that happens. There are also some other neat tricks we'll be able to do to make the site even faster.

<comment><AUTHOR> But something changed somewhere. Scrolling used to be a smooth experience. The entire use of NT was exciting and not cloggy. Now it is hell scrolling and very cloggy and even autocomplete of IDs is a torment. What did you guys do over there to the code?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I didn't notice the excessive CPU usage until very recently, meaning that it may be a recent patch or change causing this problem. Safari still operates quite well as long as I don't have the Twitter tab open, and even then I don't notice a slow down until a try to scroll the page.

That said, because of the problems with the web version I have switched to the new standalone Twitter application for Mac OS X. I think this is better as well as it allows me to use Growl notifications, notification sounds, and other nice features.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is the least scientific analysis I think anyone could get away with. Why doesn't the author just profile the Twitter page to see how much time his CPU spends executing Javascript code and how much memory it consumes while running?

<comment><USER27> The author mentioned Shockwave. I don't think he's too technical a user.

<comment><AUTHOR> I dropped Shockwave in there as yet another example of something else that needs to be checked for the latest version. Not every plug-in is good about saying there's an update and most of the time the update notifications come in the middle of getting work done, so people tend to disable that distraction.

<comment><USER27> Yeah - but New Twitter has absolutely nothing to do with Shockwave.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I know that. You are taking it too literally, that one little bit. I was simply listing a bunch of updates that techs always ask about having been updated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> well, i just deleted all twitter apps on my mac because they became too much of a time hog, and well new twitter on the web sucks currently so this means one thing ... i'm free

</comment><comment><USER29> Am I the only person who doesn't keep twitter open constantly?

<comment><USER15> No. I only check it once or twice a workday.

However, this is because I use Google Reader to follow feeds and only use Twitter to keep up to date with friends and acquaintances. That's not the typical use-case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Profiling is a fair game, right?

[https://img.skitch.com/20110118-egpetjh52gwnsxr9ct2g8bxtad.p...](https://img.skitch.com/20110118-egpetjh52gwnsxr9ct2g8bxtad.png)

Gives a deep insight on what contributes slowdown to new twitter.

EDIT: I mean, that's on 3GHz 4GB RAM machine. No wonder it freezes slower computers.

</comment><comment><USER2> The pronounced slowness was primarily due to an upgrade from jQuery 1.4.2 to 1.4.4 (we're going to downgrade). In addition, we're moving from listening to the scroll event to a time-based dispatcher for loading subsequent pages of tweets.

</comment><comment><USER31> New Twitter has a login popup everytime I open it. I am already logged in. I can close this popup and my twitter experience is not effected. Why is this thing even there?

<comment><USER2> Is the popup a HTTP Basic Auth window? If so, are you using Firefox? This is a ridiculously elusive bug that a couple of us have been trying to diagnose. It appears to be buried in the FF implementation of XHR when a reference to an XHR instance is shared across iFrames. We're working on it.

<comment><USER32> Have you done a Firefox HTTP log? I'd be curious to see what the browser thinks is going on here...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> otoh, Twitter.app on the Mac is awesome.

<comment><USER34> ... except it uses the t.co URL shortener by default for everything you post. I had to switch back to the old Tweetie (which doesn't do this).

<comment><USER6> I'm curious, what's wrong with t.co?

<comment><USER34> I don't want all of my URLs shortened.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> isn't the whole point of chrome's tab-process thingy to avoid one tab f __-ing up the rest ? if it's as the author says, that's not helping that much.

</comment><comment><USER36> Good luck doing anything intensive on a Celeron.

<comment><USER37> Twitter is a web UI for a stream of messages. It shouldn't _be_ CPU-intensive.

<comment><USER38> Good point, though not quite contradicting that of the grandparent post.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> New twitter page doesn't work on Opera browser

</comment><comment><USER40> what is twitter?

</comment><comment><USER41> I wouldn't even consider keeping Twitter or Facebook open in a tab. That's a sure way to get less done.</comment>


Google's Current Bid for Groupon: $5 Billion. - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/technology/30google.html?_r=1&hp <comment><USER2> The value of an acquisition is (simplifying) a product of how easy it would be to replicate the target without buying it, that is itself a combination of (again simplifying) how big a first/early mover advantage they have, and the technical lead they have, in terms of software, data, infrastructure, etc.

Groupon obviously has an early-mover advantage, although it doesn't seem insurmountable, but their technical advantage doesn't seem enormous. I don't mean to undersell what they've done and fall into the "I could build X in a weekend" trap, but what they've accomplished technically seems easily repeatable in a year by a company of Google's talent, if not less.

Their early-mover advantage has established them as the definite leader in the area, but again, it does not seems insurmountable. There isn't significant vendor lockin (the vendors are constantly changing), nor customer lockin, (other than having to sign up for a new site). There is a clear avenue for competitors to break in, by offering better terms.

Basically, they are printing money by being a middleman. Funny, i thought the internet was supposed to eliminate that kind of business. They are certainly worth billions, as they are enormously profitable, but 6 billion seems excessive. What this says to me is that Google sees locally-based commerce that occurs online (bad phrasing by me) as a critical space in the coming years, and they would rather significantly overpay and jump ahead rather than risk being lapped.

<comment><USER3> If you've had no experience in E-commerce it's often overlooked just _how hard_ it is to get people to come to your site and open their wallets. This is part analytical, part marketing and part secret sauce.

Groupon has figured it out and they are scaling it up. This is not something that anyone can replicate.

Anyone can build a group-buying site and hire a sales force to do deals. Acquiring the members and getting them to buy stuff to the point where you are doing $50MM in sales p/m is a _vastly_ different set of challenges that I think most of their competitors are incapable of.

<comment><USER4> I wonder what Living Social is doing these days in revenue? It may be difficult, but you can't convince me it can't be replicated for far under $5 Billion. In my small sample Groupon hardly has a ton of brand loyalty and they certainly haven't penetrated the larger mindshare in the same way companies like Google or Facebook have.

Google surely knows something that I don't... but I just can't imagine them shelling this type of money out for something like this.

<comment><USER5> Google could build it for sure, but they can't have any guarantees that it won't turn into a failed Wave or Lively. They already have coupons for local listings ( <http://www.google.com/local/add/coupons> , Google sign in required) and I don't see that anywhere near as popular as Groupon.

On the other hand, their ad business could benefit greatly from a coupon/promotion system that actually works. They already have advertisers pouring in billions of dollars, just imagine the leverage of owning the world's leading coupon platform as well --they just need to improve revenue by 10% or so and you have 0.5 billions more each year, which is enough to justify the 5 billion price tag.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I get shivers imagining a single company that combines the integrity of Groupon with the customer service of Google.

</comment><comment><USER7> On the face of it this is hard for me to understand.

Here's the way I can rationalize it: imagine Google spends $20 million (or whatever) to build underlying technology. Then spends $2 billion to roll out a nationwide sales force sufficient to saturate all cities of some threshold size, and another $1 billion for a nationwide marketing campaign to introduce the project to consumers, all over the course of 1 year.

On the surface this is a better deal. But does it remind you of anyone? Microsoft. This is what Microsoft does when they try to do something new. And all too often, they fail. One reason they fail is that it's hard to effectively mobilize thousands of people and spend gobs of money in a short amount of time. The effort is so big it threatens to crush itself under its own weight if it is not properly managed. And management is hard.

Google is essentially sidestepping this management risk by spending a ton of money. They get something that is in a working state, rather than trying to quickly deploy something huge and new. Money is (relatively) cheap to Google, but opportunities for low risk, significant growth into a complementary space are rare. So this makes sense for them.

Here endeth the half-baked disquisition.

</comment><comment><USER8> Would this mean their army of Ruby on Rails developers being laid off and replaced with a team of many fewer Google engineers?

edit: sure it is a bit offensive, but it is a serious question

<comment><USER9> from what I've seen of their UI and feature breadth, a site like Groupon should not require many web developers. It's so limited and "canned" in it's look. Now having several smart engineers to help make it highly performant and scale up -- that would be useful, and would be something Google could obviously help with.

<comment><USER10> Groupon doesn't have that many developers- it's sales in which they have an army of employees. The most recent number I've heard is 2,500. Groupon is not a tech company, it's a sales company. Lefkofsky and Keywell (the original investors who often are referred to as "founders") continually bring a slight bit of tech into old industries and then throw tons of salespeople into them. Highly doubt the profits will last.

<comment><USER9> sounds like that aspect is a good fit for Google then, since Google is strong in tech but weak in sales and customer service.

I think $5b is overpaying. But at a much lower price point I can see how acquiring them would make sense, because of this tech-needs-sales&service fit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Difference between Google and Apple: Steve Jobs would commit seppuku before spending $5 billion on something he could remake, better, in a couple of months with a handful of dedicated engineers and a barn full of even more dedicated marketeers.

<comment><USER12> And he'd continue to enjoy his niche.

<comment><USER11> Niche? Apple is the second largest company in the world. It's long past being 'niche'.

For perspective: when I started there, the market cap was less than the amount of cash we had in the bank.

<comment><USER13> They are still a minority in some of their markets, even if they are a highly profitable minority. This is where people get 'niche' from.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I was curious how this compared to other acquisitions in terms of ROI for the investors. Here are a few I drummed up (from Crunchbase):

      Groupon:   171m  => 5b    = 30x
      YouTube:   11.5m => 1.65b = 145x
      MySpace:   21m   => 580m  = 27x
      AdMob:     47m   => 750m  = 16x
      GeoCities: 40m   => 2.87b = 71x

<comment><USER15> Maybe I don't understand these investments but I don't think that makes any sense. Presumably the 171m that's been invested in Groupon hasn't bought the whole company, only a proportion of it, so the investors only get that same proportion of the 5bn. For example if that 171m represents only 10% of Groupon's shares then the investors only get 500m back; a 3x return rather than a 30x return.

<comment><USER16> While true, I doubt investors own only 10% of Groupon, especially not at a $171M stake. Groupon had (at least) two cash injections, one for $1M in seed money, the other for $135M. The last round was for 10%, which gave them a $1.35B valuation in April.

Some reading: [http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0830/entrepreneurs- groupon...](http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0830/entrepreneurs-groupon- facebook-twitter-next-web-phenom.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Where does all that revenue come from? (I'm not in the US so I don't use the site). Forbes is reporting $500mm annual sales.

Boston, for example, has a deal today for 150 * $15 meals at a restaurant.That's $2250 revenue for a day or about $800k for the year. Assuming there are about 30 large cities in the US thats $24mm annual revenues.

Even if the average deal size (item price * count) is FIVE times that its about $110mm annually.

Also kind of tough to scale when the USP is ONE deal a day right? I mean will this work with two deals a day?

What am i missing?

Thanks.

<comment><USER18> Multiple cities, and you're looking at a small deal. For instance, the recent GAP deal for $25 - sold 20,000. At $12.50 (50% margin), that's over $200k for one day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Why didn't Google move quickly to make a competitor to Groupon? I feel like this would have given them much more leverage to offer a lower price.

With google's reach and talent, I feel like they could have made groupon sweat. And then bought groupon for a more reasonable amount of money.

5 billion seems like a lot for a company that has such a low barrier to entry for competitors.

<comment><USER14> Probably because they didn't want someone else to buy it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> And if they buy in the next 17 hours, 23 minutes, and 15 seconds, they can have $6 billion worth of Groupon for only $3 billion.

<comment><USER21> What Groupon deal tips after only _one_ acquirer?

<comment><USER22> This one: <http://www.grouponforgroupon.com/>

<comment><USER23> heh - looks like an IC startup ( <http://incubatorincubator.com> )

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Google bought youtube for 1.65$ billion and is now paying 3 times as much for something which is basicly an email marketing list and who get all their customers from aggressivly marketing on adwords? They have an good idea but the price is pretty steep. On the other hand they have been good at buying up local companies doing the same (they bought mycitydeal which operated in scandinavia/germany)

</comment><comment><USER25> I can't help but remember Geocities, which sold for $3.5 billion way back when. Sometimes you buy a company on the cusp of rapid exponential growth, other times it's merely on the cusp of rapid obsolescence by a flurry of superior competitors.

I have a hard time buying the idea that groupon is actually worth $5 billion.

<comment><USER14> The major difference is that Groupon has revenue estimated around $350m, and is profitable ($50m/year).

As far as I can tell, GeoCities never turned a profit and only had something like $30m in revenue their last year.

That said, buying a company for 100x its annual profit still seems pretty steep.

<comment><USER25> In hindsight, sure. At the time of its acquisition by yahoo geocities was the 3rd most visited site on the web, and was publicly traded with a market cap very near what yahoo paid. At the time it looked like a sure bet to snag geocities, bring it under the Yahoo ad network umbrella and simply wait for the inevitable windfall from ad revenue tied to continued exponential traffic growth.

Unfortunately, Yahoo screwed up, they killed a lot of traffic by driving away users through unpopular terms of service changes and other silly changes. Meanwhile, the web was growing up and sprouting innumerable new free content hosting sites that were far better than geocities (blog hosting sites like blogspot being the prime example) while the cost of full service paid web- hosting was falling through the floor. At the same time the dot-com bubble burst and internet ad revenue dried up. Geocities found itself obsolete, unliked, and decidedly unprofitable.

In comparison, groupon looks positively questionable. It needs to grow not merely 100x but more like 1,000x in order to justify the huge investment that google will put into it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Hard to believe the company is so young.

Founded only two years ago by Andrew Mason. Built on collective buying technology that he built for a site, The Point, that he started only a year before in 2007.

<http://www.groupon.com/about>

<comment><USER27> And Jason Fried is on the board of directors??

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> For the same price they should be buying Twitter.

<comment><USER29> I suspect at this time Groupon would be a better business model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Is Groupon really that big?

<comment><USER31> Dunno how big is it, but the whole internet advertisement business lately seems just about groupon promotions.

(yes I surf without adblock)

<comment><USER32> ever googled for 'pizza delivery near me'? (where 'me' is suburb)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I can't believe it :-( I am not sure if Groupon is not actually evil by nature (manipulating consumers).

</comment><comment><USER34> "We buy companies to get excellent people" @ Mark Zuckerberg

May be the same holds true for Google & Groupon?

<comment><USER35> Maybe Google wants to buy a highly salesforce, capable of luring small business owners in very risky deals. They definitely could increase the amount of adwords customers as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Groupon: great name, great consumer awareness, an existing salesforce hitting on all cycles, a growing database of what works and what doesn't -- but fairly easy to copy the basic formula.

Also notable: some of Google's profits come from unsophisticated operators often overbidding for Google ad placement, the "winner's curse" of auctions. Some of Groupon's profits similarly come from unsophisticated small businesses overpaying for a new kind of promotion, in order to be a featured daily deal. Neither company wants this tendency for overpaying to go _too_ crazy, burning out their customer base. But each likes the way these market dynamics drive even savvy operators towards paying more than half of the 'gains from trade' to the promotion-provider.

<comment><USER36> Doesn't Google uses Vickrey auctions (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickrey_auction>) just to avoid this? I recall an article by Hal Varian some time ago about this..

<comment><USER20> The Vickrey/second-price auction helps a sealed bid auction behave more like an iterative escalating bid auction, and helps encourage bidders to reveal their true reserve value.

But, it does _not_ directly address the "winner's curse", which is that whatever the auction mechanism, the winning bidder(s) are especially likely to be those who have overestimated the value of the item at auction (even if paying the next-highest-overestimator's bid).

<comment><USER36> That makes sense.. however winner's curse is more relevant when you have common value auctions (eg: bidding for something with an unknown value that is the same for everyone).

However, in advertisement everyone has a different value derived from the ads, and also since you advertise every day, winner's curse is less likely (you learn).

=)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Wow...better work hard....

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm a bit amazed that something that seems lame and is useless to me personally as a potential enduser is worth $5 billion to Google. Goes to show how "scratching your own itch" is not the only way to build a profitable new business.

</comment><comment><USER38> One billion? You know what's cool? One trillion.</comment>


Google's and others' self-driving cars - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/magazine/2012/01/ff_autonomouscars/all/1

<comment><USER2> > Its signal achievement seemed to be stopping for a stop sign at an otherwise > unoccupied intersection.

That error leapt out at me...</comment>


Researchers at the University of Paris Diderot have built a working hoverboard - <AUTHOR> http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/thinking-tech/a-hoverboard-powered-by-quantum-levitation-video/9065?tag=nl.e660

<comment><USER2> Everyone is dying to know, does it work over water?

<comment><USER3> Nice! Only with the help of a track of magnets. Still, this is pretty slick.</comment></comment>