Mastered for iTunes: how audio engineers tweak tunes for the iPod age - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2012/02/mastered-for-itunes-how-audio-engineers-tweak-tunes-for-the-ipod-age.ars <comment><USER2> When I saw this headline on HN I thought to myself "Wow, Apple is finally implementing ReplayGain in iTunes and on iDevices?". Sadly this is not the case. It could do more for the quality of music on iTunes than any increases in bit depth or sample rate.

A quick word on bit depth: 16 bit audio gives us a potential signal to noise ratio of 96dB, which is plenty. The reason why we record in 24 bits is for increased headroom. If I make a 24 bit recording (potential S/N ratio of 144dB, but 124dB with current converters), but my loudest peak is at -18dB, I still have a S/N ratio of 106dB. I can then bring it into a DAW, give it 18dB of digital gain, and my S/N ratio of the 16 bit output file will still be 96dB.

Having a higher fidelity acquisition format than delivery format is not unique to audio. This is why photographers may shoot in RAW, but output to jpeg or tiff and why HD video is edited in 145Mbit/s, but delivered on blu-ray in 40 Mbit/s. It allows for some tweaking in post-production that doesn't come at the expense of not maximizing the potential of the delivery format.

As for bit rates, I think most of the negative perceptions about digital audio come from back when iTunes's default encoding was 128 kbps and ADC technology was still maturing as well as a knee-jerk reaction to lossy compression in general. When I make classical recordings available for web release I use LAME at the V2 setting. Obviously, what bit rate is "good enough" is dependent on program material, but for me that's a reasonably small file size where I don't hear compression artifacts. I know they take some crap for it, but I think Apple choosing 256kbps VBR AAC to be their iTunes plus setting was a good choice.

I don't attempt to fully understand the business implications of these decisions, but "mastered for iTunes" appears to be more gimmick than substance. It may be that Apple is holding on to the high resolution master files for future ALAC release. The engineers quoted in the article talking about having to compensate for AAC's losses are almost certainly talking about 128kbps. A great-sounding recording mastered at 16bit/44.1khz, will still sound great when properly encoded.

Also, Apple's "Mastered for iTunes" technology brief seems to be written with hobbyist engineers in mind. I can't imagine any competent mastering engineer finding it useful. Just further evidence that audio mastering as a craft is on its way out.

<comment><USER3> _When I saw this headline on HN I thought to myself "Wow, Apple is finally implementing ReplayGain in iTunes and on iDevices?"._

Isn't that what Apple calls 'Sound Check'?

<comment><USER4> Apparently, it does the same thing, but is not the same field. Explains why I was getting volume differences on my iPhone even though I had Sound Check turned on (and ReplayGain'd files - made via conversion in Foobar2k from FLAC to AAC using the Nero encoder - need to investigate more)

<http://www.vdberg.org/~richard/rg2sc.html> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReplayGain>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> having done a decent number of mp3/vorbis listening tests, the curve of diminishing returns in audio quality is very steep...as well as the price of the equipment and hearing ability needed to detect it. 85% of users will be unable to discern a well-encoded 192kbps VBR from 320kbps CBR from the original (no matter how high the quality).

a lot of difference which CAN be noticed results from bad encoders and the generic settings used - not strictly related to compression but to other aspects of the psychoacoustic model. classical music encodes better with one set of params, heavy metal with another. there were times when 160kbps has been transparent for me from the original using hi-fi, DACs and headphones. on recording, 24 bit makes a difference vs 16 bit, on output not so much in today's nil-dynamic range records.

telling the difference often requires constantly comparing to the original master where certain aspects sound just slightly different (not necessarily worse), and do not justify a 3x increase in compressed size to get perfect.

the biggest disappointment with a lot of lossy music is bad encoders, encoder settings, poorly (re)mastered originals and non-existent dynamic range at the source rather than a limited quality distribution format.

<comment><USER6> Do you have any links to 'mp3/vorbis listening tests', or were you rolling your own from your local media?

The reason I ask is because I bought the WAV version of the most recent Radiohead album and tried to blindly discern a difference between them and the MP3s and failed. I've been to plenty of loud concerts, so probably have degraded hearing, but I'd love to try some more tests.

<comment><USER5> unfortunately it's been quite some time. most of the tests done were to compare different encoders and settings for different types of music. some i did encode myself from CDs. search around online, it might take a bit of digging, but there's some stuff around still.

here's a quicky: [http://www.noiseaddicts.com/2009/03/mp3-sound-quality- test-1...](http://www.noiseaddicts.com/2009/03/mp3-sound-quality- test-128-320/)

i was surprised that more than 50% got this one wrong. i got it correct even on my single shitty LCD-attached speaker at work at safe-for-work volume levels. the difference between 128 and 320 can be discerned pretty much 97% of the time in all but the quietest, gentlest of music.

128 sounds flat, like you're listening through a wall, but unless you have the higher quality version for reference, even this can be hard to tell. kind of like "perfect pitch" <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_pitch>

<comment><USER6> Thanks! I guessed wrong for your link.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _"It was my quest to make the AAC files sound as close to the CD as possible..."_

 _"I can see that it has the potential for making the AAC encoded masters sound truer to the CD and LP versions..."_

This is nonsense. If encoding the same data that's on the CD doesn't produce the AAC file that sounds the closest possible to how the CD sounds, it would obviously be the encoder that needs to be fixed, not the source data that needs to change.

</comment><comment><USER8> I refuse to buy music off iTunes and generally end up having to pirate artists' music if it's not available to buy in a lossless format.

I don't understand how bandcamp can offer me a choice of whatever format I want, yet apple still expect me to pay the cost of a CD for an inferior substitute. The galling bit will be when they do start selling in ALAC, they'll probably charge more for it - at which point I'll still refuse to pay for anything from iTunes..

EDIT: Downvoted why? Because I buy music off places where it's offered in good quality and not from places where it's not? This is not a hard problem to solve, hell bandcamp solved it ages ago - as did what.cd....

<comment><USER9> Minus the pirating bit, this; _a thousand times this!_

This is one of the reasons that I'm actually sad to see the CD go. When producers mastered for CD, you got the best quality that they could produce or that the CD could hold. (Whichever came first.) Now that the CD is fading into irrelevance, theres the worry that digital distribution will make the average quality of a track _worse_ instead of what it should be, better than CD. (Though at this point I'd take parity with CD quality.) Yeah, I get it, lossless tracks take up a lot of memory. They should still be an _option_ to purchase though. Lossless is the default state for recordings anyway.

I don't even have the equipment required to hear the difference. It just doesn't sit right with me to support a business that blatantly panders to the LCD at the expense of everyone else.

"Mastered for Itunes" Just reaffirms this for me.

<comment><USER10> I can't tell the difference. I really can't. Why do you think you would be able to?

<comment><USER11> How much have you tried? At lower bitrates (160 and under, mp3) I wouldn't notice a sound quality issue so much as I noticed that I consistently became fatigued faster than when I listened to CDs. I honestly don't know if the same holds true of higher bitrates, since by the time I started encoding those, I was listening less and the convenience outweighed potential irritation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For reference, here's the Wikipedia article for the Loudness War (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war>). In my opinion, hip hop producers like Timbaland and Dr. Dre really ratcheted up the effective loudness of songs by introducing heavy compression.

It's the (sad) reason why the Beatles' albums have been "re-mastered" and re- released so many times over the years -- our 21st century ears are so _used_ to compressed music that old Beatles albums sound too quiet to us.

<comment><USER13> > our 21st century ears are so used to compressed music that old Beatles > albums sound too quiet to us.

I wouldn't mind so much that an album is quiet, if any MP3 player actually _allowed_ me to turn it up to a reasonable level (letting me sacrifice the listening experience on my own terms, when and if applicable.) Why is VLC the only* piece of software to combine volume level and compression-gain into a single output slider?

* Amusingly, the iPod's software _knows how_ to apply compression just-in-time--but it only does it if you've applied a "volume adjustment" pragma to the song in iTunes. And then whenever the song comes up, you have to turn down your volume slider from 80% to 30% to avoid having your ears fall off, because "loud" on desktop speakers is a very different thing than "loud" on in-ear headphones.

<comment><USER8> That's because music listening has traditionally been about source reproduction and I hope this remains the case. Sure you can apply compression or whatever if you want, but you're going to destroy the sonic quality of the recording even more, and, as an audio engineer, I hope software manufacturers keep "limiting" your freedom in this regard (sorry for the pun...).

<comment><USER14> Reproducing source audio level doesn't help when you're e.g. listening to something on a plane, with a large amount of background noise, and you want to actually hear the damn thing. Users' opinions count for something too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In my understanding, 44.1 kHz was chosen because it's twice the maximum of human hearing (22 kHz), and thus you can reproduce all audible sounds without worrying about aliasing (as per the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theory). What is the point of going higher?

<comment><USER16> When downsampling or recording, and when playing back 44.1 kHz audio, the data must be low-pass filtered to eliminate aliasing effects.

But filters aren't perfect. Even a decent low-pass filter (say 3rd order Butterworth) requires an order of magnitude of bandwidth to drop the output 60 dB (practically inaudible). This means that with a Nyquist limit of 22 kHz, you're either attenuating everything above 2.2 kHz (the "knee"), or you're letting some aliasing noise through.

With a 192 kHz sampling rate, the filter's knee can rise to 9.6 kHz, and the stuff between 9.6 kHz and 20 kHz won't be appreciably attenuated.

It's important to note also that this attenuation can't be fixed by simply boosting the high end -- filters are linear, so such an adjustment (with an equivalent order filter) would merely cancel out the low pass filtering and reintroduce aliasing noise.

(Edit: I am not an audio engineer but I have a strong signal theory background. So actual audio engineers please feel free to correct me.)

<comment><USER17> You have the right idea, but the wrong numbers. Terribly, terribly wrong numbers, it's quite clear you're making those numbers up. No filter for an audio ADC would ever have a cutoff as low as 2.2 kHz, not even if it were for a telephone. (You have a strong signal theory background? No offense, but really?)

When you use a 44.1 kHz sampling frequency, any frequency above 22.05 kHz will be "aliased" and recorded as a lower frequency. This sounds _incredibly nasty,_ like the sounds you'd get out of a broken Commodore 64. So you have to remove frequencies above 22.05 kHz in order to get a clean recording. But human ears can hear up to 20 kHz or so depending on age (e.g., NTSC TVs with cathode ray tubes have a 15 kHz horizontal refresh which drives me nuts, but my parents can't hear it at all).

The trick then, is to design a filter that will let the 20 Hz - 20 kHz band through while stopping everything above 22.05 kHz. We call 20 Hz-20 kHz the "pass band" and 22.05 kHz and above the "stop band". We don't really care what happens to the frequencies between the pass band and the stop band: the range from 20 kHz to 22.05 kHz which can't be heard well enough to be worth preserving and doesn't cause aliasing so it doesn't need cutting out. This is difficult because the stop band is only 1.1x the frequency of the pass band -- for you musicians out there, that's less than the difference between C and D on the western scale. (Just think for a minute: design a filter that lets middle C through, but completely filters out the D above.)

Heavens no you wouldn't use a Butterworth filter for such a task. We want an elliptic filter, probably. 3rd order is no good either, it won't give a sharp enough cutoff. 8th order is better. This will get you a cutoff around 20 kHz with something like 60 dB attenuation at 22.05 kHz. People need a lot of these filters, so you can actually go out and buy a 20 kHz low-pass 8th order elliptic filter as a monolithic chip.

Let's suppose you chose a 48 kHz sampling rate instead. Now the stopband starts at 24 kHz instead of 22.05 kHz. It sounds like a small difference (22.05->24 kHz cutoff) but it's actually a factor of 2 (2.05->4 kHz transition band). This means that with the same components, you can get 80 dB or more attenuation in the stop band.

Now go to 96 kHz. You have to design a filter that rolls off between 20 kHz and 48 kHz. That's _easy peasy,_ and you can reduce the ripple, increase the attenuation, maybe reduce the order (affecting noise) and make all sorts of design tradeoffs that are much easier.

Now think about 192 kHz. What's the point? What does 192 kHz get you that 96 kHz doesn't have? It's already easy enough to design a very nice system at 96 kHz. I think 192 kHz is a bunch of bunk as far as audio is concerned.

That's recording. Now let's talk about playback.

Playback is very similar, everything goes in the opposite direction. You start with a digital signal, convert it to analogue, and put it through a low-pass filter. The aliasing noise is still there, except instead of reflecting high frequencies to low ones, it reflects low frequencies to high ones. So you get the same trade-offs.

The difference is that playback requirements are not as difficult as recording requirements. In particular, the required SNR of a playback system is lower than that of a recording system. I think 48 kHz is fine for playback.

The problem is these stupid 192 kHz systems have backers with big names who never bothered to do proper double-blind tests to figure out if the difference is actually perceptible. You can even get a 384 kHz system these days, which would be overengineered for dogs and is more than good enough for bats.

<comment><USER10> If I understand you correctly, going from 44.1kHz to 48kHz would be worth it on the playback side of things?

That wouldn't seem like it would be all that hard to do. CDs are a legacy format now and AAC files don't care about the sampling rate (if you don't want to go beyond 96kHz).

What's stopping that? Have all the audio engineers pipelines that are only capably of outputting 44.1kHz? (I imagine someone at Sony Music sitting in a dark room and ripping CDs all day – probably not true but a funny enough picture.)

Then again, after doing a blind test (256kbps AAC, CD) and being unable to tell the difference (yeah, I know, that's not the same as a difference in sampling rate) I'm skeptical of all supposed small improvements in audio quality on the playback side.

<comment><USER18> Last year I bought a 14 input, 24 bit, 44.1/48/88.2/96kHz audio interface for $100. Granted, it's not _supposed_ to cost so little, no one cares about MSRP but it runs twice that on Amazon, more at Guitar Center, and typically no less than $170 on eBay. I just happened to get a good deal on Craigslist.

Anyway, the issue isn't one of hardware limitations; Call it old guys fearing technology, call it the Red Book cartel, call it whatever you want, it's inertia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> To anyone who thinks they can here the difference between 48 and 96 sample rates, I've got some Monster cables that will make it sound even better. Neil Young probably can't hear anything over 10 kHz, yet he's getting all worked up over 256 Kb ACC? None of this makes any sense.

</comment><comment><USER20> I suppose as I don't have gold coated cables, I can safely ignore these issues for now...

</comment><comment><USER21> Regarding the headline image for that article -- where'd they find a MacBook with bright red keys? Is it even a MacBook?

<comment><USER22> Keyboard cover.

[http://www.amazon.com/IVEA-Keyboard-Silicone-Aluminum- Unibod...](http://www.amazon.com/IVEA-Keyboard-Silicone-Aluminum- Unibody/dp/B002XJN5B2/ref=pd_cp_e_0)

I've got the pink one, and I get groups of them to have on hand for friends - they're generally less than $2 from amazon (the one above is 26 cents, but you've got shipping on that in some cases too).

<comment><USER21> Thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: If you were to rebuild Linkedin,how would you approach it? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Get rid of the spam, run out the life coaches, "health consultants", MLM, SEO, "social media marketing", "business development" kind of people.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice try Linkedin.</comment>


Wall St. Helped to Mask Debt Fueling Europe's Crisis  - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/business/global/14debt.html

<comment><USER2> _Wall Street did not create Europe's debt problem. But bankers enabled Greece and others to borrow beyond their means, in deals that were perfectly legal._

The banks not only enabled these countries to borrow beyond their means, but also loaned them the money. If anyone feels a populist fury that requires retribution against Wall Street then the course is clear: don't bail Greece out. The best way to teach bankers not to engage in this sort of behavior is to show them that their faith in "too big to fail" is not well founded and that moral hazard is really hazardous.

The other important idea in this story is that governments are just as eager as corporations and homeowners to engage in overspending and shadowy accounting, so it's not clear why anyone should expect regulation to be a panacea for any of these problems.

<comment><USER3> _If anyone feels a populist fury that requires retribution against Wall Street then the course is clear: don't bail Greece out_

As a non-Greek European, however, I'd rather Greece _was_ in fact bailed out because if Greece collapses, my own economy, which shares a currency with Greece, goes along with it even though there is not all that much wrong with the financial practices of my own government (I'm Dutch).

This is probably one reason why banks (and Greece itself) got away with what they got away with for so long: if Greece collapses, Germany and France and a whole lot of other economies with which there really isn't all that much wrong, will go along with it.

Which just isn't worth it.

So what will probably happen is that the EU will force Greece to swallow a draconian austerity package that will clean up their government finances but that will bring comparative hardship to 11 million Greeks. This way they avoid causing economic misery for the rest of the 328 million inhabitants of what is known as the Euro zone

<comment><USER4> I question the notion that Greece would collapse if not bailed out; and I question even more strongly, the notion that if Greece did collapse, the Dutch economy would go "along with it" as you say.

I think it is a bit of fear-mongering thrown about to get people to acquiese in massive, questionable government backed financial schemes. It reminds me of George W. Bush asserting "if we don't pass this bill, the whole sucker could go down" or the member of Congress who claimed that if the 700 Billion dollar bailout was not passed, "your ATM machine will not work Tuesday morning."

Let's think through the worse case senario. The Greek government defaults on it's debt, and a variety of people around the world discover that the Greek bonds they hold are worthless. Some investors will have bought funds that are mixtures of all the EU country's debt, and those investors may dump those funds, thus making it expensive for the Dutch government to borrow money for a time - say, a year. Exchange rates will also shift, but that always brings good with bad no matter which direction -- likely the Euro will drop, making it easier for other people to buy Dutch products, and helping Dutch exporters but making it more expensive for you to buy imports.

Perhaps you could take some advantage of the situation by being stingy and saving money, not buying imports, and instead buying high-yeild Dutch bonds, for a year or two. But even if you didn't, by three to five years from now the difference in your personal wealth would be tiny.

A collapse of the market in Greek bonds does not break dikes or light fires in Holland. No "real" wealth will be destroyed in your country.

Now let's consider what happens if you bail out the Greek government, and by extension, whatever unlucky stooges Goldman Sachs saddled with those bonds. The Euro will see some inflation, dropping its value, but the effect is more long term than the "collapse" senario. Goldman will hawk the bonds of Spain, Italy, Portugal, and any other shaky government as having an implicit backing of the hard work of the honest Dutch, and those goverments will borrow more because of it.

So I don't agree with your argument of "comparitive hardship" to 11 million Greeks vs. "economic misery" to 328 Europeans.

In some ways, this is just a preparation for what will happen in the US with the State of California, whose default will be larger than Greece's. Is it in the best interests of the whole USA to assume the obligations that California undertook ? If California defaulted on it's bonds, it would surely cause some financial turmoil and hardship, but it's not clear that financial turmoil and hardship would be avoided by guaranteeing their bonds. Backing those bonds decreases the already shaky credit of the US as a whole. On the other hand, states that need to borrow may not be able to for a period, and many retirement plans and pension funds will suddenly be shrunk.

I'm not in favor of either bailout. The cost is a general undermining of the world financial system as a whole, and I don't think you will get the short term good effects that are hoped for.

<comment><USER3> You're forgetting that if the Euro slides as a result of Greek mismanagement, oil, which is paid in dollars, becomes more expensive, resulting in a lowering of living standards throughout the European union.

<comment><USER4> But if the Euro slides, the Arabs selling the oil will then be able to buy more EU products. In the end, it will all balance out - do you think the failure of the Greek national government to honor it's honds will cause a drop in demand for any of the products of the Netherlands, such as electrical parts or refined petroleum products ?

Of course, if one of the main products of the Netherlands (or Europe, or the United States) is itself bonds, similar to how some small governments fund themselves by selling collectors stamps, then you might be screwed by a general fall in demand for bonds. However that situation is unlikely to remedied by selling more bonds to buy back the Greek bonds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wrote a more detailed explanation of what happened in a previous version of this article (explaining the particular derivatives).

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1117719>

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops - I hadn't seen that previous article. Thanks for the summary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> See also: "Goldman Sachs goes Rogue" [http://baselinescenario.com/2010/02/14/goldman-goes- rogue-–-...](http://baselinescenario.com/2010/02/14/goldman-goes- rogue-–-special-european-audit-to-follow/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Greece got about $1b from 85 Broad via a swap.

They had approximately $300b in additional debt.

This article exists because many readers like to pretend that bankers are the root of all evil.

<comment><USER8> Just because bankers are not the root of all evil does not mean they are not evil.

The key message is that bankers do a lot more damage than good with the money and leverage handed to them by the govt. Their positive impact on the economy has been vastly overstated, and the public is increasingly wise to that scam.</comment></comment>


TechCrunch readers thrash reporter after misleading journalism on LG phone - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/05/lg-is-looking-to-buy-some-coverage-for-its-new-phone/

<comment><USER2> I don't see what the title claims.

First of all, too many readers say that "this is what they always do: buy reviews on blogs". Apart from the fact that they don't provide any kind of proof, most of the serious blogs don't get paid by companies for writing reviews.

Second: LG is indeed trying to buy coverage. Of course, John Biggs is being way too harsh (it's TC, what did you expect?) and this isn't the correct way to reply. But the PR company is not offering a device for testing, it's asking for a review/comparative in exchange for money.

And last of all, this article will make me doubt whenever I see a LG G2 review in a blog I don't know as much, so it was helpful for me.

<comment><USER3> The comments section of the TC article seems to be what the title of this thread is referring to.

<comment><USER2> Reporters being thrashed by readers is not uncommon. What it is, however, uncommon, it that those commenters on TC offer any real insight and interesting discussion. So I don't see what the title's claiming or why it's interesting to HN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So TechCrunch doesn't accept payments from companies for product reviews on TechCrunch? I'm genuinely surprised.

Notably, the email doesn't ask for the review to be positive.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't understand why he's getting thrashed, at first glance it seems a rather honourable thing to do?

<comment><USER6> We need more of this in mainstream press. But for a reporter, you could see how this kind of blacklash could have a chilling effect. Easier to go back to rewriting press releases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> LG's PR firm is just some junkie knocking on the door of a guy that doesn't "move product anymore"

He's legit now..

(yeah...)

</comment><comment><USER8> It doesn't seem to be misleading. John Biggs just thinks it's evil to accept payment for stories (even though he admits he did it in the past).

The problem seems to be that LG's PR firm didn't know that techcrunch doesn't accept money for stories.

</comment><comment><USER9> Oh TechCrunch....

The email specifically says "It would be great if you can propose the types of sponsored packages as well as a rough pricing information on them."

Couldn't they just have pointed the LG person to: [http://techcrunch.com/advertise/](http://techcrunch.com/advertise/)</comment>


How I Made $15,000 / Day as a Fresh College Grad - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/how-i-made-15-000-day-as-a-fresh-college-grad-74a87a80c253 <comment><USER2> Looks like it's missing a lot of the details about the "how".

"This was a more complicated operation with tighter spreads, and required a net long position in crypto"

Based on this, it sounds a lot like gambling, and this experience is survivor bias.

<comment><AUTHOR> We were actually bullish on crypto (we do fundamental valuation), and with the crypto we were already holding, was able to create more with arbitrage

<comment><USER3> It's not possible to do fundamental valuation on crypocurrency. You're just fooling yourself. But congratulations on timing the market correctly and identifying an arbitrage opportunity.

<comment><AUTHOR> Everything can be fundamentally valued, my friend. Even if that valuation means 0.

Why don't you start here, and come back when you know what you're talking about :) [https://multicoin.capital/2017/08/24/rep2017/](https://multicoin.capital/2017/08/24/rep2017/)

<comment><USER2> That's cool. What was your fundamental valuation of concurrency? How did you do it? How did you know you were correct?

The link you provided is for a prediction market, and not really useful for fundamental valuation.

<comment><AUTHOR> The link I provided has a link to a pdf that goes through fundamentally valuing augur, including with a discounted cash flow model.

Finance lesson 101 is that all assets are ultimately valued by its cash flow, or as a store of value. P/E, EV/EBITDA, DCFs, etc. You just try to apply those concepts to crypto, which is what Multicoin does

<comment><USER3> I mean you can apply astrology to predicting the future but that doesn't make it any more valid than applying those valuation methodologies to cryptocurrencies. Call it "fundamental" if that makes you happy, but the reality is you're effectively just picking numbers out of a hat.

<comment><AUTHOR> They're frameworks to help you... Don't call it fundamental then. Not about to get in a pointless argument over vernacular

<comment><USER3> Yes just like basic arithmetic also provides a helpful framework for adding random numbers together.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As you mentioned everyone knew about the arbitrage opportunities at that time, the problem was getting a Korean bank account if I remember correctly. How did you do that? Did you have connections in Korea? If so, why are you marketing this article as some sort of self-help piece that anybody can follow?

This just seemed to be all over the place, it started out with a very rare opportunity that you capitalized on and then went into leaving the corporate world, starting a startup and blah blah blah but you haven't done anything substantive. You very clearly claim that you don't know how to code well enough to run a startup without foreign help, maybe if you take a job in the industry and get the mentor-ship you clearly need you'd be able to code well enough to be able to run your startup without delays.

This just all seems like half-assed advice from someone who's probably too young to be giving it.

No offense OP

<comment><AUTHOR> So if everybody knew about it, why didn't they do it? If connections in Korea is all that's needed, I'm sure the opportunity was enticing enough that a foreigner could find that connection.

But appreciate your opinion! You're right, I have yet to prove myself

<comment><USER4> Oh idk, the whole Korean language that most people speak in that country may have had something to do with it. It's not hard to look at two different exchanges and see a gap, it was hard to create an account on those exchanges and execute on the opportunity because it required an understanding of the language and the laws as well as a physical presence if I remember correctly.

And no you can't just "Find a Connection" lol, you have a lot to learn.

I still don't see how any of those skills translate into a viable business, maybe you could explain that?

<comment><AUTHOR> The ability to identify opportunities, sell people on working with you, risk manage, and pure grunt work (talking with lawyers, etc.), moving fast, are just a few of the skills required in business that were all applicable here.

Automating trades with python might be more relatable for you. But the point is, it's not just technical skills like that that "translate to a viable business."

<comment><USER4> Those are fair points but you didn't mention any of that in the article and if you're trying to posit this as a self-help article and not some sort of shameless self-promotion piece then why should I care?

Why wasn't this article more about The ability to identify opportunities, sell people on working with you, risk manage, pure grunt work (talking with lawyers, etc.), and moving fast? I didn't get any of that from the article.

<comment><AUTHOR> Who said this was a self-help article? The title is what it says. It's an interesting story that people found inspirational / fun to read.

And sure, to use your words, it was self-promotion. But why is that bad?

Regardless of your opinion of them as people, Steve Jobs did "shameless" promotion of iPhones, and Donald Trump did so with his brand. And if people found the information valuable, that's all that matters!

Not sure where your preconception that this must be a self-help article is coming from.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I found this worth reading. It features a number of interesting quotations from famous people I was not aware of. (e.g. "Competition is for losers")

Usually a story with a title like this is bullshit, but this one does detail how they guy actually was raking in a load of cash through online arbitrage. I was surprised.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks man! I appreciate it

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You should have known better than to try and impress HN. You could have made $1M/day as an infant and people here will still poo-poo it.

I, for one, enjoyed the article. Wondering if you have any recommendations for discovering opportunities like this in a repeatable/systematic way.

<comment><AUTHOR> haha, I have learned

I think just having a wide network and staying connected will give you opportunities

As I mentioned in the article, I think being an entrepreneur is a huge arb. That crypto fund alumni msgd me after seeing the article and agreed with that as a big arb

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was expecting mediocrity, but this a good share. Thanks.</comment>


How to Be an Expert in a Changing World - <AUTHOR> http://paulgraham.com/ecw.html <comment><USER3> I'm not exactly sure what is the grand insight(s) from this essay that warrants it's rather link-baity lavish title. Does below captures all the tips and techniques pg mentioned?

1\. _Don 't marry to your beliefs._ This is always a delicate balancing act because we do have to have _some_ belief to make a decision, we just don't know if it's a right.

2\. _Don 't predict the future._ Can be derived from #1 so I suppose redundant.

3\. _Bet on people instead of ideas._ I think this is great advice for VCs but have been covered many times by pg.

4\. _Make friends /Surround yourself with smart people._: Not extremely practical unless you are a famous VC but even then not trivial.

It would have been great essay if pg shared some stories and shared non- trivial insights that makes us better at _doing_ above. BTW, I did got tripped at this line:

 _Another trick I 've found to protect myself against obsolete beliefs is to focus initially on people rather than ideas._

Ummm... what was the first trick?

<comment><USER4> >4\. Make friends/Surround yourself with smart people.: Not extremely practical unless you are a famous VC but even then not trivial.

I think it's quite practical to surround yourself with smart people without being a famous VC. I've done it. it might even be easier without being famous, unless by smart, you mean "Smart, tall and well-spoken" or "Smart, tall, and able to hold the right kind of conflicting ideas in your head without emotional distress" \- which is often what VC seem to mean by smart. I mean, don't get me wrong, a lot of the ycombinater kids I've met really seemed pretty smart, but they also had the social bits you need to be good business people, and if you demand those social bits along with the 'smart' \- and you should, if you are looking for business people and not just technical people - those people become dramatically more difficult to find, and when you do find them, they're difficult to be friends with, as you said, unless you are very high status, because they are very high status.

If you just want someone with a high G, though, and are okay with people who are short or shy or fat or who have emotional issues, as you should be if you are looking for people who can become good technical people, G alone does not confer much by way of status in this society. I've hired more than one person who tests two standard deviations better than I do by that measure. hell I've dated a few people who test two standard deviations better than I do.

Now, PG, I imagine, when talking about making investment decisions, probably is talking about "vc smart" \- people who are smart, but also good looking, who have good attitudes and who have the other business person attributes, so in the context of this article, you're probably right. but I'm just saying, smart people usually aren't high status people. It's not hard to get smart friends, if you are willing to skimp on some of the status-granting attributes.

<comment><USER5> What makes you think height is so important? I have not noticed any correlation. One of the nice things about startups vs politics is that appearance is much less important for success. (unless you think Bill Gates is some kind of super model :)

<comment><USER4> The relationship between height and income is very well documented, at least for men.

It's not absolute, certainly, we can all come up with the names of successful short men, just like we can come up with the names of successful black men and successful women. It doesn't mean those things don't put you at a serious disadvantage when talking to VC or trying to get a job.

<comment><USER5> Show me the documentation where tall people get more venture funding.

<comment><USER4> I don't have that documentation.

I started this conversation, a couple messages back, in response to this quote from sytelus:

>4\. Make friends/Surround yourself with smart people.: Not extremely practical unless you are a famous VC but even then not trivial.

Which I read as someone claiming that it is difficult to become friends with high-G individuals, unless you are a high-status individual.

My argument was that G, in and of itself, does not confer status, and thus high-G individuals who aren't high-status aren't going to have any more people competing to be their friends than people of similar status who are more average.

If you want smart friends, go find them. There isn't much competition. That was my point.

I don't think you took issue with any of that. I think the problem was that I said:

>unless by smart, you mean "Smart, tall and well-spoken" or "Smart, tall, and able to hold the right kind of conflicting ideas in your head without emotional distress" \- which is often what VC seem to mean by smart.

And you taking offense to this, really, is pretty reasonable. I'd take it as an insult if someone claimed people like me hired on irrelevant personal biases, too.

One way to make this seem less insulting is to say that I lump in the "tall and well spoken and able to hold the right kind of conflicting ideas in your head" with "social and business skills" \- because in the work world, this has been my experience.

It's possible that things are different in the VC world.

<comment><USER5> Yes, I think tech is one of the few places in society where being awkward and nerdy does not prevent you from being highly successful :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One interesting thing about beliefs in a changing world is how you deal with contradictory beliefs.

I see "beliefs" as an optimisation that avoids having to return to first principles for every single decision.

That speeds things up, but is obviously dangerous.

Sometimes it's possible to have two beliefs that contradict each other. Usually this means they need reevaluating, but sometimes it means there is context in which each is true.

Reasoning in the face of contradictory beliefs is one of the most interesting things about "knowledge", and something that humans can do surprisingly well - at least until we realise we are doing it.

<comment> Dorian-Marie Strangely reminds me of machine learning:

       1. We have some initial beliefs
       2. We use it to make decisions
       3. We receive some new data
       4. Given the new data, we confirm/change the beliefs
       5. We can make different decisions
       6. Go to 3.

The initial beliefs may or not be true, the key to get as much accurate data as fast as possible.

A better algorithm would be to ask other systems beliefs and compare it to ours too (eg: neuronal network).

<comment><USER7> Strangely reminds me of Bayesian statistics and updating of prior probability distributions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Coincidentally went to an effectual entrepreneurship workshop by Prof. Sarasvathy y'day.

Her learnings from talking to 'expert entrepreneurs' are that

1\. they do not believe the future can be predicted, esp in the early stages of a new venture

2\. they prefer to create the future in areas with high uncertainty by forging partnerships with people they know already, and who are also investing in the same areas

3\. they go to the customer at a very low 'acceptable loss' as they can, building as little of the product as they can, investing as little as they can, and getting the first initial set of customers as partners.

4\. they jump in to a fast iteration of execution/sales that helps them discover/create the market, relying on sales as market research.

5\. they find pleasant surprises along the way that shape their execution/market/venture and they change to fit the new reality - and they shape that reality along the way

Finding great parallels with PGs essays here.. See [http://effectuation.org/learn](http://effectuation.org/learn) Read also [http://www.inc.com/magazine/20110201/how-great- entrepreneurs...](http://www.inc.com/magazine/20110201/how-great- entrepreneurs-think.html) and the original paper at [http://www.effectuation.org/sites/default/files/documents/wh...](http://www.effectuation.org/sites/default/files/documents/what- makes-entrepreneurs-entrepreneurial-sarasvathy.pdf)

<comment><USER9> It seems like Prof. Sarasvathy has a clear idea about what entrepreneurship really is.

I understand that it is about a lot of uncertainty, coping with trial and error, and getting information from the business black box as fast as you can.

One thing not addressed here is the importance of your location and your status / credentials. Not everything is about your personal skills.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This reminds me of Arthur C. Clarke's "Hazards of Prophecy"

> When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is > possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is > impossible, he is very probably wrong.

and Asimov

> Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those > of us who do.

beliefs, like stereotypes are shortcuts in cognition. We should always be applying the most powerful tool we have developed in the history of humanity, the scientific method.

<comment><USER11> I've always wondered if Clarke's statement has anything to do with elderly scientists in particular, or if he's just commenting that most things are possible.

<comment><USER12> An elderly scientist is often one who did all his work in an old theoretical paradigm, a paradigm whose death is eagerly awaited by all the young PhDs looking for jobs with a _new_ paradigm in their thesis.

<comment><USER13> A new paradigm that they'll stick to with an ironclad faith. Which is only marginally better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I am noticing a trend in Paul's essays. The last two were about changing paradigms. The first was about how a second read of a book leads to a different understanding, and this essay is about not letting your previous beliefs close your mind about things that can change.

I like though how he circles back to two fundamentals. One, human nature doesn't really change, and Two, betting on people is a better indicator of the future than betting on ideas.

Probably the biggest mistake people make is looking for confirming evidence instead of using evidence to determine the relative likelihood of competing hypotheses.

Even a large body of confirming evidence doesn't prove anything because that same evidence could be consistent with other hypotheses you never considered. You need to evaluate the diagnosticity of that evidence. (i.e. a patients high fever has almost no diagnostic value in determining what is wrong, because so many illnesses are consistent with that evidence.

Whereas, one shred of evidence can disprove a hypothesis completely. Which is why good doctors rule out things to identify the most likely problem.

These ideas PG is talking about are, IMO, some of the most important things for founders to understand.

Don't look to confirm your theories, look to disprove them. Don't accept lore, challenge everything. Most importantly though, always evaluate competing hypothesis to prevent you from just trying to confirm what you are looking for.

<comment><USER15> > Don't look to confirm your theories, look to disprove them.

I use this framework, though learnt it by reading Fenmayn's writings, when there's a debate as to use tool A or tool B to get X. And it's been very effective so far. I have a vague sense that B is better and a colleague is particular about A. Earlier I used to look deeper and deeper into how B is good at doing X. But realized that I wasn't convincing enough. Then I remembered Feynman's saying to the effect "the best way to prove something is to try very hard to disprove it". This has helped quite a lot in coming up with objective comparisons and use right tool for the task at hand; or in general to come up with the right solution the problem at hand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> @pmarca has an interesting thread on this on Twitter [1]. In Peter Thiel's terminology [2], PG's view is optimistic nondeterminate, which might be fine for a VC but might not be the best choice for a founder.

[1] [https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/546533509922160640](https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/546533509922160640)

[2] [http://blakemasters.com/post/23435743973/peter-thiels- cs183-...](http://blakemasters.com/post/23435743973/peter-thiels- cs183-startup-class-13-notes)

<comment><USER17> Unfortunately Thiel's views don't really map to a "hard" 2x2 matrix--the axes should be considered to represent spectra or gradients instead. (I'm not presuming to be smarter than Thiel here, just extrapolating rationally... nobody believes the future to be _entirely_ determinate or _entirely_ indeterminate.)

In light of that, I suspect PG and Thiel actually live in the same quadrant of determinate optimism. I haven't read PG suggest that we should just "wait" for the future to happen--he's merely suggesting that the most common path toward building the future is on a wave. (And Thiel built PayPal that way--he recognized a version of the future that was on the cusp of being realized and took it upon himself to make it happen.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Kahneman attributes a lot to 'luck' of what experts achieve especially when it comes to predicting something. I am a bit surprised that PG does not give 'shear luck' its fair share.

I am assuming that many (most?) of the startup founders, when they are being interviewed by the potential investors, are 'complete strangers'. By focusing objectively on ideas than subjectively or intuitively on people doing them, they believe that they mitigate the so-called risk. I am not convinced that by judging people rather than by judging ideas (in supposedly short amount of time) the chances of succeeding go up, because if we are often wrong judging ideas, what makes us good at judging people who are ever changing too?

Of course, there is an undeniable 'credit history' part wherein if a 'successful' founder comes back with another idea, many investors are ready to 'shower money' on her/him -- I don't find anything majorly wrong with that attitude, but that alone does not guarantee success, I believe.

<comment><USER19> That may be one of the very few context where judging people is easier than ideas.

Ideas that grow huge look completely random, except when you happen to know the one or two details that make them promising. And you can never know if you know all of those details.

Almost all people that make something big share some few treats that most people lack, what makes this a useful filter. Of course people can change, what reduces the effectiveness of the filter, but it's still better than random.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I work with making technology teams deliver faster. It's nothing as complex and tricky as what Paul's doing, but I also get to see lots of teams and make correlations between people and performance.

One of the things I've noticed is that over a long period of time, the more arrogant and certain team members are, the less likely they are to deliver. Folks that are always learning have a tendency to kick ass. Not so much with folks who think they've already arrived. I read in an article on HN a few weeks back that Google calls this "intellectual humility" and looks for it as a hiring trait.

<comment><USER21> The phenomenon you've observed in the arrogant individuals exhibit what Carol Dweck calls a "fixed mindset".

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Dweck#.22Mindset.22](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Dweck#.22Mindset.22)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I hear many startup people talk about "domain expertise"

I wish someone would write about that.

What is an expert?

What is a domain?

How do I become a domain expert?

Am I an expert at something I take for granted?

I love Paul Graham's essays but there's a lot of implied logic and jargon. Maybe he should have a few non-startup, non-business people proof read them too?

<comment><USER23> One of the essential tensions of being a software developer is the fact that software isn't really useful on its own. It has to do something. That thing it's doing is the domain. Whatever very-specific information that the software system is organizing and passing, more specifically.

For example, I maintain an e-commerce system. More specifically, I maintain an e-commerce system built for a cosmetics company. E-commerce is a field, cosmetics is a field, cosmetics e-commerce is specifically the domain I need to become an expert in. The more I can differentiate cosmetics e-commerce from other kinds of e-commerce, the more well-tailored I can make my app. And the more well-tailored I can make this app, the better I'll be able to understand the more general case of making custom e-commerce systems for other industries.

The more I go through this process of understanding the specific needs of the industry, the more domain expertise I'm building. Domains can subdivide as much as industries subdivide. Say the cosmetic industry started to split along product lines, then I might start gaining insight into how lipstick companies operate, and be able to tailor a product offering straight to them.

The domain doesn't have to mean commercial industry. You might have domain expertise, say, in XML parsing. Then you could wax poetic on the differences between Nokogiri and say, Chrome's internal parser.

So, essentially, it just means "expertise". More specifically, the type of expertise that allows you to customize a software system around it. Which can be in practice quite different from normal expertise. The guy who devises our makeup formulas is definitely an expert.

But he can't design the system to actually manufacture it. The guy who writes those systems might not understand the actual formulas, so the two types of experts have to work together.

When startups talk about the need to be a domain expert, it means getting out of just pure programming and into the actual meat. Rather than hire an expert, to become one yourself. This not only allows you to reduce staff, it also makes it easier to make better, more custom solutions. The Soylent guys have to make the system to manufacture their product, but they also must understand nutrition, food, the regulatory environment of the food market.

<comment><USER24> I really feel this. As a founder, my biggest strength is that I'm a domain expert. Right now, I'm doing coding because I don't have money to hire someone else to do it, and I'm perfectly capable of it. But I feel _it 's not a good use of my time_. Any decent programmer could do what I do most of the time right now. What they can't do is understand the domain as intimately as I do.

So as soon as there's money to hire programmers, I'm getting out of the coding biz and hiring others to do it. I want to focus on working with my customers, understanding their needs better than I already do, and guiding programmers to build for those needs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> And yet the truly successful people have gotten to where they are by sticking to their beliefs:

\- Warren Buffet has always believed that companies should be valued based on their profits, not their share price performance. Thus he didn't invest in the tech bubble of the 90s, and was forced to under-perform the market significantly for many years whilst everyone thought he was getting too old for the new way of things. Yet he stuck to his beliefs, and it turned out that he was right - the Nasdaq bubble evaporated and he again out-performed other funds in the long term.

\- Steve Jobs always stuck to his belief that computing devices for consumers should be fully integrated and beautifully designed. After getting kicked out of Apple and loosing the OS war to MS, he could have easily told himself his approach was wrong. But whether he is right or wrong became irrelevant - <USER2> belief was so powerful that it was contagious.

\- Zuck, Brin, and others have succeeded because they stuck to their beliefs instead of selling out early on.

\- Darwin stuck to his unorthodox beliefs until his theories became accepted.

All of these people have/had a belief - a model of the universe which they passionately believed in. Having such a model means that predicting the future becomes possible, even though one can't predict exactly when that future will come, the same way Warren Buffet will never tell you what the market will do tomorrow, yet he certainly has a belief in where things are going long term. Jobs was too early with the Newton, yet his continued belief caused him to strike gold later on with the iPhone.

There is an interesting difference between fundamental beliefs and "expert knowledge". The later constantly needs to adapt to take new information into account, but it is our fundamental beliefs that determine how we interpret that expert knowledge.

For what it's worth, my startup investment belief has always been to: invest in companies that are run by great people that have created the best product in a growing market that has profitable competitors. I'll leave it up to the "experts" to speculate on which markets will grow most, or which competitors will win out. If Warren Buffet can't do it, I won't bother either. All that we can really judge to the best of our ability is the quality of the product and the team.

<comment><USER14> the difference is that all of these beliefs are rooted in change and/or going against the grain...which is exactly PGs point.

<comment><USER26> I think PG's point conflates a whole bunch of unrelated stuff, including:

1\. Experts as people with unusual technical competence in one or more related fields.

2\. Experts as 'big picture' prophets of the future.

3\. Experts as 'small picture' refiners of future tech.

4\. Experts as packagers, innovators, and marketers who create new markets for the work of 2 and 3.

5\. Experts as investors who look for all of the above and try to work out if they can make money from them.

Aren't these mostly unrelated job descriptions? There's no reason why a brilliant academic who understands compiler design would have anything useful to say about the future of consumer electronics.

Likewise, I wouldn't have expected Steve Jobs to contribute much to (say) research into room temperature semiconductors. Steve Jobs was brilliant at packaging and selling stuff, not at theoretical physics.

PG's real point seems to be that if you 'hire' smart, creative, hard-working people, they're more likely to do something useful for you than people who aren't smart, creative, or hard-working.

Which is surely true (if they're not difficult) but doesn't have much to do with expert predictions about the future.

It's kind of a retread of Spolsky's 'smart, gets things done', with a more entrepreneurial twist and an implied 'has original insights'. (Spolsky being an excellent example of all four.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > If you're sufficiently expert in a field, any weird idea or apparently > irrelevant question that occurs to you is ipso facto worth exploring.

My proudest creations all came from these weird ideas. Now I listen to them very carefully and nurture them. They're starting to cohere and turn from random ideas into an ideology. It will be fun to make that real.

</comment><comment><USER27> Updating one's beliefs to get more accurate priors is something we should all strive to do. There is no such thing as having two beliefs of equal weight that contradict each other - that's an illusion created by either applying a different definitions to each belief, or a refusal to admit that you believe one more than the other.

...

> "The winds of change originate in the unconscious minds of domain experts."

I would also add that domain expertise is when one's internal model / map matches the territory. When this happens, one's intuition is accurate and one can notice patterns that other people can't, or one can make predictions that turn out to be right.

<comment><USER28> I wonder if a lack of domain "expertise", but a general understanding of the domain instead, can sometimes be an advantage in generating domain-changing ideas.

<comment><USER29> There's definitely a risk as a domain expert that you'll take things for granted. Henry Ford is a good example of this, he was never an expert in horse-drawn carriages but he changed that domain drastically.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Great read. I would go a bit further and say that the goal is not to be an expert and is not related to start-ups. The goal of being open minded and sceptical as described in this essay, is to make sure one do not embrace sheepishly some ideas that will be considered obviously stupid twenty years in the future. For example in the 50s in Europe most intellectuals were communist or pro communist. Only a very few were neither reactionary nor communist. The goal, for me, is to be of these few. In the US history, it would mean to have been e.g.among the earliest abolitionists.

</comment><comment><USER31> There's a subtle theme in this essay which describes the thought process of how YC (well pg specifically) selects teams for YC. Perhaps in a way, bringing clarity to what is generally seen as a non-scientific and highly complex line of reasoning for hiring and selecting talent with very little limited context. However, I still don't feel like I've still fully grokked it.

> _Within Y Combinator, when an idea is described as crazy, it 's a > compliment—in fact, on average probably a higher compliment than when an > idea is described as good._

Yet, outside the walls of YC, sounding crazy means you don't get in.

> _But we could tell the founders were earnest, energetic, and independent- > minded. (Indeed, almost pathologically so.)_

How is it possible to discern this in a YC application?

This is all reminiscent of the talk Gabe Newell, CEO and founder of Valve, gave on the hiring practices at Valve. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8QEOBgLBQU#t=1291](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8QEOBgLBQU#t=1291) Here he mentions the following: (paraphrased) "One of the first programmers of the company was the manager of a waffle house. He was one of the most and still one of the most creative people in the industry" So what made them take the risk? What makes Valve turn away every waffle house manager that applies today? What made YC take the risk on Chesky, Gebbia, and Blecharczyk?

<comment><USER32> Determination seems to be one decisive trait. If you're determined, people often want to help you succeed or to work with you. Determination also seems to matter more than raw intelligence, and betting on determined people tends to be a good bet.

<comment><USER33> Being willing to work for low payoff seems to be one decisive trait. If you're willing to work for low payoff, people often want to take advantage of you. Being a sucker also seems to matter more than raw intelligence, and betting on suckers tends to be a good bet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The human nature is not static as well. Humans are able to think and act very differently. If I look back what I was thinking and doing 20 years ago, I have to shake my head in astonishment.

<comment><USER19> Yes, a person evolves that fast.

But a population is much slower. To the point where "human nature doesn't change" is an extremely useful heuristic. If you look for counter examples, you'll find a few changes that took only a century or two, but in practice you'll probably never see one of those changes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> ASK PG: when you are saying "energetic" people, do you also mean "passionately convinced"?

It's interesting that on one side you try to avoid the pitfalls of your own beliefs (by smartly adopting meta-beliefs and techniques that sidestep the problem, like believing in change and focusing on people) but at the same time you are suggesting that you somehow accept, or decide to trust, the worldview of "energetic" founders.

You might not mean it, but this connection is somehow untold in the classical narrative of the driven founder: there is a fine line between "energetic" and "passionately convinced", which also suggests that they might have and communicate strong beliefs in their success or their idea. Of course I understand that "strong beliefs" aren't forcefully connected with being an expert, which is your main argument.

PG, Where do you stand on this? do you believe in founder's beliefs? Do founders who passionately believe in something convince you?

I feel very sympathetic to the argument of your essay, for many reasons, and have grown to use the same meta-belief of believing in change; however, instead of sidestepping the problem, I tackle it heads on, by incorporating Doubt and Relativism in my decision making. I feel, and strongly believe ;), that Relativism is the cure to many cognitive biases; if you doubt yourself you can't be affected by the Dunning-Kruger effect; I think everybody should train themselves in managing the unavoidable cognitive dissonances of day to day life, it would make the world a better place. Relativism is also an important tool for creativity: the moment you doubt your frame of reference, you start seeing the picture outside of the box, new possibilities open up.

Of course Relativism has it's shortcomings, and beliefs, which are rooted in emotions, command our behaviours more powerfully that the logical reasonings of Relativism. However, I believe, there are ways for us to be both "passionately convinced" and relativistic at the same time; I try to be like Cezanne, who would ask himself: "is this what I see?"

</comment><comment><USER36> I wonder if being open minded is enough. The "winds of change" aren't always very strong, and accordingly new opportunities aren't (at least initially) better alternatives to the status quo, they just happen to have incredible future potential. To fully take advantage of this, the expert would have to move backwards, quite possibly endangering himself, while a new entrant to the field has no risk to assume by doing so. To use the hill-climbing metaphor described by other commenters, a new climber can begin climbing the new potentially tall mountain immediately, while the "expert" will first have to descend his peak.

</comment><comment><USER37> > The winds of change originate in the unconscious minds of domain experts. If > you're sufficiently expert in a field, any weird idea or apparently > irrelevant question that occurs to you is ipso facto worth exploring.

I frequently wrangle with challenges related to finding other people who are open to listening and helping me explore these less-than-complete ideas in an unbiased way. It's always an enjoyable moment when someone listens and then adds to the conversation, instead of immediately trying to negate the kernel of the idea based on the fact it's in a chaotic state at the time.

</comment><comment><USER38> Talking about non-conform ideas, I would like to add that what should be of interest is not what changed but what doesn't. And I would like to offer that this idea of a world of accelerated change might in fact be a self-serving, Ptolemaic fantasy of omnipotence. What counts hasn't changed much in centuries. We're still using steam engines to produce electricity. And society is very similar to what it was in the Bronze Age.

</comment><comment><USER39> The quote I'm adding to my Evernote:

 _" It seems to me that beliefs about the future are so rarely correct that they usually aren't worth the extra rigidity they impose, and that the best strategy is simply to be aggressively open-minded. Instead of trying to point yourself in the right direction, admit you have no idea what the right direction is, and try instead to be super sensitive to the winds of change"_.

</comment><comment><USER40> "Expert Political Judgment", by Tetlock, has a lot to say about this. It adds data to the story about the Fox and the Hedgehog. Basically, the hedgehog knows one big thing and tries to force the world into their mental model. The fox knows many things, allowing him to be more flexible thinking about a messy world.

</comment><comment><USER41> The first paragraph is a gem. It took me few readings understand it in entirety. Great essay, Paul!

> protecting yourself against obsolete beliefs is exactly what you have to do > to succeed as a startup investor

This statement is not only true for startups, but for life in general.

</comment><comment><USER42> I don't agree that this essay is arguing for indeterminate optimism. I think you can consciously and deliberately shape the future while simultaneously being open to the reality that things are constantly changing.

</comment><comment><USER43> What I got out of this essay, which I found to be good, is that you should investigate your hunches, more deliberately before dismissing them. That is hindsightly (From my hindsights :) )a great wisdom from Paul Graham.

</comment><comment><USER44> Expertise is a weird thing. In today's world, one that changes so rapidly, it's very hard to become an expert in something and have the value of that expertise remain valuable. It used to be that expertise in some field or area would last generations, and guild-like systems of master/apprentice developed in response. Now you can't even make it through a degree program before the things you started to learn about at the beginning become virtually obsolete by the end. Watching the front page of HN and you'll see entire frameworks and languages come and go virtually as quickly as the seasons. When I was starting out, it was fully possible and reasonable to consider becoming an expert in COBOL and one or two kinds of mainframes and make a career of it.

Expertise today requires that you start to think and operate at a higher level of abstraction in order to cover what you know, and where your knowledge might go. Or it might require you to make connections between old ideas that are still valid and new ideas as they appear. You might even be able to change career paths entirely, but things you learned as an expert in your old one might make you special and unique in your new one -- somebody with rare and unique talents. Like automating business processes in a non-technical career.

I've been thinking a lot about beliefs and belief systems recently. I'm not quite sure I have any meaningful or concrete conclusions yet, but I'm pretty sure I'm going down the path of thinking that beliefs should generally be treated and handled with extreme caution, that they're some kind of holdover from an earlier evolutionary stage -- a vestigial kind of proto-thought process wedged somewhere between pure animalistic instinct and enlightened reason.

They aren't inherently bad just like instincts aren't inherently bad, the instinct to pull your hand off a hot stove is good for example. Perhaps they some kind of optimized way of thinking that evolved when we had less hardware to compute with. An estimation system that got us through hundreds of thousands of long cold nights, alone in the world of beasts...when we couldn't _quite_ think through everything. But now we can, and this old wetware technical debt kind of gets in the way now and again.

It tends to make us rigid and lazy in our thinking...why think when believing is less work?

Maybe it's possible to hack our beliefs be believing in the right things, by believing in reason, or believing that things _should_ be changing, believing that we should evaluate and challenge ourselves from time to time, believing that we should feel like we're just on the edge of discomfort and force us to use this new better and harder to use equipment we've been gifted with.

<comment><USER45> > it's very hard to become an expert in something and have the value of that > expertise remain valuable.

That may be true in programming, but that's not the only field. Much of my mechanical engineering knowledge dates from the 19th century and earlier and is still valuable. Even my FEA knowledge (which relates heavily to programming) is still good. Practically all my undergraduate knowledge is still valuable, let alone my Master's and PhD knowledge.

It's quite clear that you're approaching this strictly from a single viewpoint. If you really want to think, you need to broaden your view.

Even in programming there's still things that change at a slower pace. Sure there's a lot of things changing in regards to the web, but areas such as numerical methods change more slowly.

<comment><USER46> Even on the web, imo a large portion of the interesting stuff done today is strongly based on decades-old expertise. For example, Google's V8 JS engine was built largely on techniques developed in the late '80s and early '90s for implementing Self and Smalltalk, by people who had developed their expertise in the Smalltalk world. That expertise didn't remain static, of course. But it was highly relevant and formed the basis of the further developments, which is why Google specifically went out and hired those people to develop V8, because having expertise in implementing Smalltalk efficiently is useful if you want to implement Javascript efficiently.

If you approach things very shallowly, learning how-to-set-up-technology- stack-X type bags of tricks, those become obsoleted quickly, but lots of technical expertise is quite durable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> _Life is suffering, change, taxes and death._

The meta of Buddhist philosophy (sans religion, spirituality, etc.) appears to be one of the most honest of the major, religion-derived belief systems.

</comment><comment><USER48> Beliefs like JEE is a good thing? Like object oriented development is a good thing? Like Portal Server is still relevant? Yeah, I hit the wall with those all the time. Lots of ego in the way of changing those beliefs because the big guys have been selling this for the last two decades. How would you like to be the guy trying to convince enterprises that loosely coupled is the way to go when they've been sold on "silos are bad we need integrated systems"? I feel a little bit like Chicken Little at times. :)

</comment><comment><USER49> re this : "if you write about a topic in some fairly durable and public form, you'll find you worry much more about getting things right than most people would in a casual conversation."

i wonder what the bar here is - certainly more than blog posts / self published websites as those are fairly close to casual conversation imho.

glad to see pg picking up the pace on the writing!

<comment><USER50> He said what the bar is in one of the footnotes: something with a title. I guess for him at least, the blog posts count.

<comment><USER49> yeah - I saw that, but seems to me it only barely meets the "fairly durable" test if you assume cache's and other history keeping mechanisms.

I wonder if what is additionally required is : "someone you respect asks you to write on a topic". In PG's case, his audience might substitute, for others an employer or publisher might be what it takes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> The idea that a static world implies monotonically increasing confidence in your beliefs is really shaky, logically. Hill-climbing in a landscape of belief-fitness could easily arrive at a local maximum. To further improve your beliefs you might need to become less certain.

Apart from that, how can something (confidence) increase in a static world? PG has clearly tossed this essay off without serious thought or discussion. A waste of time.

<comment><USER6> _The idea that a static world implies monotonically increasing confidence in your beliefs is really shaky, logically. Hill-climbing in a landscape of belief-fitness could easily arrive at a local maximum._

Exactly, and it's common to see that in many fields. People are persuaded by things that were bad ideas when they were new, and aren't swayed by new evidence to the contrary.

 _To further improve your beliefs you might need to become less certain._

Isn't that sort of the point of the essay?

 _Apart from that, how can something (confidence) increase in a static world?_

I don't understand. Didn't your previous point argue exactly how hill-climbing could happen, and isn't that a (bad) example of confidence changing?

Or are you _really_ arguing over the semantics changing beliefs in a static world? I hope you aren't; otherwise, like you said: _A waste of time._

<comment><USER51> This is definitely a waste of time but my point is that you don't need to have a changing (dynamic) fitness landscape for monotonicity to be insufficient in the long term - you could get stuck at a local maximum _even_ in a static world.

The second point is that drawing a line between the "world" and your beliefs about it is a pretty dopey dualistic way of thinking. But hey, Graham doesn't care that there might be real knowledge and valid experience of these matters in the accumulated history of philosophy or psychology, he just shoots from the hip with some flaky positivistic analogy with computation... Ridiculous.

<comment><USER52> This assumes you can only hold beliefs that are adjacent to your current beliefs (i.e. the graph of your beliefs over time must be continuous). I disagree with that assumption.

You can explore ideas that you don't hold, and these can be quite varied from your current beliefs. Once you find an idea that you put more confidence into that your current beliefs, then that idea becomes your belief.

The local optimum from high-climbing doesn't constrain you in a world where your beliefs can teleport from one hill to another.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> "Anyway, the thing about progress is that it always seems greater than it really is." Wittgenstein

</comment><comment><USER54> More I read these VC spreading their wisdom, more I find the Silicon Valley barely a caricature.

</comment><comment><USER55> Have strong convictions, but hold on to them loosely.

</comment><comment><USER56> There is an additional attribute that goes a long way in staying an expert in a changing world - humility or acknowledging that you do not or cannot know the future. PG hints at this when he says.. "...admit you have no idea what the right direction is, and try instead to be super sensitive to the winds of change...". It is also paraphrased quite well in the maxim of "Stay hungry, stay foolish" popularized by Jobs.

But humility that stems from ignorance is at odds with popular expectations of an expert. The problem is what worked in the past may not work in the future. Being sensitive to changes in the world around you, requires you to momentarily stop being an expert and look at the world from the eyes of a novice or beginner. This is not only hard but sometimes impossible to do because of how we change as we acquire new knowledge. [2]

So the trick is to be somewhat schizophrenic - being able to simultaneously view the world as an expert with the fresh thinking of a beginner or a novice.

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8754334](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8754334)

<comment><USER57> This assumes that the goal is to be Jobs, and I completely agree with the assessment that you need to be schizophrenic. I would like to point out, the expectation is to be detail oriented(execution/expert) while leading a larger org macro goal (learning/strategy). In the right contexts with appropriate resources, this can & does magnify personalities and outputs!

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> I spotted the following in my usual reading this morning:

> _" Until this point, I have been describing the stereotyping process as a > negative force for individual and team functioning. However, this process > actually stems from an adaptive, often functional psychological process. > Mental heuristics and cognitive shortcuts enable us to process information > without conscious deliberation: they fill in the informational gaps we often > experience when making decisions. In other words, habits of mind help us to > save brain power for more difficult tasks. Joseph Pieper's classic "Leisure, > the Basis of Culture" sets out this theory well. In the 1980s, people > thought we could create expert systems by interviewing experts like brain > surgeons or oil exploration specialists, and creating a rule chaining prolog > environment that would recreate their decision-making ability. The problem > was the experts did not know how they knew what they knew. That is, experts > are creating associations between disparate experiences and pieces of > knowledge, using the subconscious brain."_ [1]

The quote above reminded me a bit of the previous "How You Know" essay by Paul Graham [2,3]. At times it's disheartening to realize the discrepancy between how much I read, and how much of it I can actually remember, but it's nice to know at least some of it manages to stay with me somehow.

In this new essay, pg says:

> _" When experts are wrong, it's often because they're experts on an earlier > version of the world."_

Stereotyping and similar classification are essentially heuristic modeling based on past experience. Some substantial part of our mental models are based on "Unknown Knows," or better said, our mental models are based on experiences we cannot consciously recall but still somehow know unconsciously. Even if we keep the models updated to have a "current version of the world" through seeking new experiences, we are still often incapable of either anticipating or handling new surprises.

Maybe people who regularly succeed as startup investors (i.e. anticipating and handling surprising exceptions) have learned to retain some degree or form of suspended disbelief when applying their models to the world?

It's trivially easy to suspend disbelief for the sake of entertainment like enjoying a fictional story. Intentionally escaping reality for a while is an established habit for most people. On the other hand, intentionally suspending a bias, belief or model in the real world seems to take more effort, but that's possibly due to my own lack of practice.

[1] [http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2014/11/179827-the-data-on- div...](http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2014/11/179827-the-data-on- diversity/fulltext/)

[2] [http://paulgraham.com/know.html](http://paulgraham.com/know.html)

[3] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8753526](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8753526)

<comment><USER59> "... intentionally suspending a bias, belief or model in the real world seems to take more effort, ..."

For most people this seems to be the case, but I have found a way to do it regularly. I evoke empathy before logic.

By being empathetic and transporting yourself into another person's values, you then use your logic to deduce the answers and details from their point of view. This allows you to escape your own details.

I use this often. But I can never start with logic, I have to start with empathy. From there, I can then calculate.

You can do this as a thought experiment, and you'll find it becomes trivially easy.

I work with customers often, and when I work with them I just pretend I work for them. My desires and goals change dramatically from what I would suggest for them if I didn't pretend in my head that they hired me.

I also tend to distance myself from... caring?.. about outcomes. The less I care about what the result is, the better I am at changing my perspective.

This suspension of disbelief, and the practice of it allows you to quickly shift your entire world view. The shifting isn't really the hard part, the allowing yourself to shift is.

I hope this is clear, I feel like this is difficult for me to communicate well. I think a back and forth conversation would make more sense for this topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> "an expert in a previous version of the world" is a good metaphor.

Old people in general are such experts, or some "fundamentalists" or "conservatives" \- those, who are trying to "preserve" the world they grow up in, everyone who follow and worship a "ritual", a "process", stuck up "creationists" or "froidians", "public static void" guys - the list is surprisingly long.

Some "teachers" said millennias ago "be the change", others said that "we are never the same". Perhaps, they have tried to capture this notion of "an ever changing process" \- us (we are processes, not entities, they said) in a "beginningless and endless change" which they call "That" or "Tao", and we call Universe.

</comment><comment><USER61> In the context of this article I think it's important to make a distinction between an expert and a specialist. I think of an expert as someone who almost always gets things right. For example, an expert pianist plays great music but it seems a bit off to think of an expert meteorologist. Weather is so variable it's just not realistic to expect anyone to get forecasts as accurate as pianist at a keyboard. But it makes good sense that a specialist will be able to better than most. I would change "When experts are wrong, it's often because they're experts on an earlier version of the world." to "When specialists get things wrong, it's usually because the world is so complex."

So I agree that it's important to protect against obsolete beliefs it's also important to consider when the belief is really wrong and when it was just overloaded with confounding events.

</comment><comment><USER62> What a dumb assertion that someone can be an expert on changing the world. Paul graham has lived in the startup world bubble for too long and is a bit off his rocker when it comes to having perspective on the larger picture of changing industries and global trends and dynamics. The next big thing is not some social media garbage app for sharing cat pictures. That much is clear. Take a look at the kind of low impact garbage YC specializes and funding to get a clear look at how paul graham views successful startup ideas and teams. It needs no reminder that the vast majority of YC companies, fail, have no impact, dissolve and get aquired by other teams or if they are lucky get a talent aquisition by a bigger fish with a bloated mergers and aquisitions budget. My advice to Paul, write essays about what you KNOW, not what you feel like rambling on about. You have lots of experience in the world of seed staging and getting small teams to make the leap into legitimate hard working business entities with growth potential. You don't have a ton of wisdom to share outside of that domain so stop acting like you do.

<comment><USER63> PG does not in fact talk about being an "expert on changing the world" but of being an "expert IN a changing world". And indeed the essay talks about... well, seed funding, investment etc. Not random "out-of-bubble" assertions.

You seem to have read the title and just spouted your vomit onto your keyboard then hit send. That's not really a good path to constructive criticism there, is it?

<comment><USER64> nor will it keep your keyboard in mint working condition.</comment></comment></comment>


Indonesia's Garuda Airlines cancels order for 49 Boeing 737 Max jets - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/indonesias-garuda-airlines-cancels-order-for-49-boeing-737-max-jets/2019/03/22/d7f7de52-4c63-11e9-9663-00ac73f49662_story.html <comment><USER2> It's hard to trust just a "software update" with your life. I don't believe what Boeing is allegedly trying to do to fix the MCAS problems is sufficient. If they don't read 3 angle of attack sensors, how is this 'software update' going to solve anything. And all they have is 2 sensors (only 1 of which is read now)

<comment><USER3> If they have 2 AoA's and they disagree, they can indicate that with the light AoA disagree, disable MCAS and display on the CDU that MCAS is disabled. So the pilot knows what's happening and take corrective action.

<comment><USER4> That light is an upgrade you need to pay for.

<comment><USER5> Not any more. [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ethiopia- airplane/boeing-...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ethiopia- airplane/boeing-to-offer-safety-feature-as-standard-in-737-max-software- upgrade-sources-idUSKCN1R20CU)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Who would trust Boeing after this? Airbus must be feeling pretty good right now.

<comment><USER7> To be cynical, it probably worked out well for Garuda since their finances aren't strong. And with 5,000+ Max still in the backlog this is 1% of orders, so not much of a hit for Boeing. About $5 billion at list price, probably much less in reality.

What would really impress would be if they now ordered 49 COMAC C919 narrowbodies from China. That would send a signal that airlines are fed up with the A-B duopoly and that they're not prepared to take recycled designs any longer.

<comment><USER8> "...that they're not prepared to take recycled designs any longer".

I believe that the use of recycled designs is one of the major guarantees for aircraft safety! There is nothing wrong with a gradual development process, where only small modifications are done from one revision to the next. This is a bit like continuous integration principles in software development. Building on former experience as much as possible is an important factor of quality assurance (and also efficient in many other aspects).

I understand your point, though: small modifications can sum up to a point, where they do not blend smoothly in the base design anymore - as is the case with the larger engines of the 737 8 max. At some point, designers have to refactor big.

What went (criminally) wrong with the 737 8 max, in my eyes, is the attempt to treat a large redesign as a small modification, to save (certification) time and money. It went horribly wrong, causing loss of lives and trust in the company.

And obviously Boeing is not able to understand the consequences of the loss of trust. Last week I thought, the worst thing that Boeing could do now, was to offer quick fixes (like hot patches for the software), as this would proof their incapacity to embrace the scale of the problem. But this is exactly what happened.

<comment><USER9> Indeed, I too was shocked to see them come up with a patch solution vs recognizing that perhaps the plane design and the oversized engine are the areas that need attention. Sorry Boeing, some things don't blow over. I think the public took note and the damage is already done. The best thing they can do now is own up to their mistakes. I have a feeling it will take all the lawsuits combined to make any impact though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Would it be fair to say, "all commercial planes should be safely pilotable with no computer systems working whatsoever"?

How realistic is that? Where theoretically a single switch is flipped and your plane flies like they used to.

<comment><USER11> computers are the whole reason why air travel is literally orders of magnitude safer than car travel. airbus is fly by wire, it can't work without computers. boeing at this point is most likely, too - i don't know about them other than i read here.

<comment><USER10> For sure. But the pilots exist for a reason. It sounds like we are making it impossible for them to do their job properly when their intervention is needed.</comment></comment></comment>


VexFlow – HTML5/SVG Music Notation Rendering - <AUTHOR> http://www.vexflow.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> The previous discussion (4 years ago): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1692227](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1692227)

Lots of new features has been added since then: [http://my.vexflow.com/articles/53?source=enabled](http://my.vexflow.com/articles/53?source=enabled)</comment>


Ask HN: Do You Email Yourself? - <AUTHOR> I often do this, since it can be a hassle to retrieve a given piece of information when I am using many different systems during the day. Mostly, my content is solely in the subject line, and is often just a reminder, or personal note to myself.<p>This got me wondering: Is there a product here, or could email providers do something special when they notice you doing this? <comment><USER2> No, but here is a way to WhatsApp yourself.

Create a group with one other member. Delete that member. Now you can send messages (or media) to yourself and only you will receive it. It's useful for storing notes or pictures or whatever...

<comment><USER3> I use Telegram for that. There's a "saved messages" chat where you can upload any type of file.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Personally, no. I try to keep inbox zero as often as I can. For persisted reminders, I lean on other tracking software (which is usually just Notes, my phone alarm, or my calendar).

</comment><comment><USER5> Among many lines, I have the following in my .zshrc:

      alias note='vi +star +'\''normal Go'\'' +'\''r!date +\%F\ \%T'\'' ~/workspace/notes/notes.md +'\''normal Go'\'' +'\''normal Go'\'

      function nupd() {
          git -C ~/workspace/notes commit -a -m "Update notes $(whoami)@$(hostname)"
          git -C ~/workspace/notes push
      }

It allows me to type:

      note

And opens a file, `notes.md`, with vi in insert mode with a timestamp.

When I'm done, I type:

      nupd

It commits the changes and pushes them to a repo. When I go to other machines, I just pull.

I also used to have a todo alias, but now I switched to TaskWarrior. I made the `.task` directory a git repo and have a function

      function tupd() {
          git  -C ~/.task commit -a -m "Update tasks $(whoami)@$(hostname)"
          git  -C ~/.task push
      }

Whenever I use TaskWarrior for creation, etc, I run tupd. I wrote hooks before but became frustrated. When I use other machines, I just pull the repo and have my tasks ready. The commit message contains the username and hostname so I know from which machine I did it.

I have files like these (knowledge base repo that automatically builds a page [https://jhadjar.gitlab.io/kbase/](https://jhadjar.gitlab.io/kbase/) , which reminds me it's been way too long I haven't pushed to it). I also have a file called lessons.md, listing the many times I screwd up (dates, context, why it was a screw up). A function called "learn" does a `bat` (better cat) on that file to review the lessons.

</comment><comment><USER6> Of course not... that's the craziest thing I ever heard.

I text myself.

</comment><comment><USER7> Yes, every day.

A few years ago someone taught me how to structure gmail using a system of multiple inboxes and stars. So when an email comes in I assign it a star and archive, it then shows in its inbox. Whenever I have a task that I want to remember for later I email it to myself and assign it just like I would a normal mail.

Its a phenomenal system. I dont need another app, can email myself from anywhere. Can get people to email me tasks etc.

<comment><USER8> can you elaborate or provide a reference?

<comment><USER7> Sure thing:

1) Login to settings and enable multiple inboxes. This is my setup:

has:red-star URGENT

has:orange-star Important

has:blue-info Pending on someone else

has:purple-question For reference

Panel position: Below the inbox

2) Still in the settings, enable stars in the order above.

3) When you check your mail, send off instant replies, archive or star the rest accordingly. To get the orange star you just click the star icon twice, three times for the blue one etc. The purple ones I use to store things like documents I may reference later etc. In practice, I focus on the red stars every day and try to work through the orange ones maybe once a week. You could proberbly do without the blue, but its handy when your in a project management like role. You can run through them once a week and ping people for updates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is a product here, and I'm a happy customer: [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/captio-email-yourself- with-1-t...](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/captio-email-yourself- with-1-tap/id370899391)

I use it daily.

</comment><comment><USER10> Yes. I email myself almost everyday. I've even made a browser extension for it - [https://www.emailthis.me](https://www.emailthis.me)

</comment><comment><USER11> Yes I write letters to my future self once in a while, maybe a year or two into the future. It's really interesting to read what my life was like when I wrote the letter and I'm always curious if things turned out as expected and if I managed to achieve some of my goals.

[https://www.futureme.org/](https://www.futureme.org/)

</comment><comment><USER12> I forward emails to my OmniFocus mail drop address. It is a fairly effortless way to move actionable email out of the email archive and into something that's built for action tracking.

The service is described here: [https://kas.d.pr/2e0Vsy](https://kas.d.pr/2e0Vsy)

</comment><comment> mike-cardwell I created a Matrix room on my Matrix server with just myself in it. I post notes to it of things I need to remember.

</comment><comment><USER13> I loved the combined view of reminders and email that 'Inbox by Gmail' used to provide, in the lack of a more sophisticated solution by GMail, I just email reminders and Snooze them to the appropriate day.

This little hack works really well and have given me decent mileage.

</comment><comment><USER14> Of course I do, because I am the only one who knows whats important. I then filter the email into a folder. What excitement when I look into the folder and say 'Oh crap I forgot I need to do ...' but glad I now remember.

</comment><comment><USER15> Haha, I remember those times when I would do that to save cool links for later. Good times. :)

Then, they made Pocket [1].

The real question is what comes after Pocket?

[1] [https://getpocket.com/](https://getpocket.com/)

<comment><USER16> jumproot.com

Shameless plug.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Suppose someone does email themselves. What makes you think that there is a product opportunity in that? They may be in that behaviour pattern because it works well for them.

</comment><comment><USER18> All the time. I use my email as a TODO list, so I send myself items. Not aware of any products that enhance it, nor can I think of anything I'd want like that.

</comment><comment><USER19> so, i do the thing you really arent supposed to do, i have a private github repo where i throw _all_ files that i want synched, from notes to full textbooks. i used to email myself, but it was always very annoying to do (and then i would need to email back any changes i would make), so github winds up being a reasonable solution- ive tried dropbox but i prefer the control i have with git/github

</comment><comment><USER20> I email myself sometimes. But most of these emails get lost in the clutter.

What would you expect this product (or the email provider) to do for such cases?

</comment><comment><USER21> I used to use a pocket notebook which I still carry, to write myself to-do items. Now I just send myself a quick email with the to-do item as the subject.

</comment><comment> d--b Yep. I don't really need something special to handle this, though. I do it specifically because I don't want to have something else.

</comment><comment><USER22> Delayed/scheduled email to self is a thing, to answer your product question. Guess mainly for the non-tech crowd.

</comment><comment><USER23> I use Dropbox text files or just save as email drafts when the same email is accessible on both devices.

</comment><comment><USER24> Signal labels the conversation as "Note to Self" when you send yourself something

</comment><comment><USER25> Probably thousands of emails to myself. I had some email tool and the top from/to was myself.

</comment><comment><USER26> I haven't mailed myself in over 3 years. I mostly try to rely on Things for reminders and tasks.

</comment><comment><USER27> Yes, all the time. Almost daily

</comment><comment><USER28> Similarly, sometimes I message myself on Slack or Facebook.

<comment><USER29> > message myself on [...]Facebook.

I didn't even know that was possible!

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Any note while I'm out and about is emailed to myself.

</comment><comment><USER31> I stopped doing that when I got todoist. Less clutter.

</comment><comment><USER32> Rarely, for Very Important TODO items.

</comment><comment><USER33> I email myself from work very frequently

</comment><comment><USER34> I text myself.

</comment><comment><USER35> Constantly

</comment><comment><USER36> Yes</comment>