Ask HN: How do you deal with social media pressure on your GitHub project? - <AUTHOR> Lately a number of open source projects has faced tremendous pressure from people coming from Twitter and Reddit to have issues resolved a certain way. Even when you agree with the social media crowd it seems wrong to let it direct your project's decisions though the sheer volume of its comments, especially so if many of the people commenting aren't involved with the project even as users.
From what I have seen so far I can deduce that the technical side of the problem is essentially this:
* Limiting the issues to only the contributors excludes the actual users along with the strangers and encourages the more angry strangers to spam you with duplicate issues.
* Allowing everyone to comment drowns out thoughtful discussion with "plus ones" and "thumbs up" icons, as well as purposefully uncivil comments.
* GitHub's moderation tools are too weak to moderate the individual comments.
When your project faces this pressure how do you act to ensure that meaningful discussion happens and decisions are made that are the best for your actual users and contributors in the long run? <comment><USER2> This was basically my life with building Ansible for three years. Given, I loved many aspects of it, but it was really hard and it took a major toll. (clarification: this has post has absolutely nothing to do why I am not working on it anymore)

I've been considering a bit of a blog post on this (particularly the unknown parts of wide scale OSS projects), but basically open source projects get harder as you have more contributors.

Time to review code properly (and to be overly friendly and helpful in doing so) often can completely eat into the ability for you to write and architect code properly, which strips out the ability to do the design that needs to be done. (and as you're doing this - taking maybe 15 minutes per patch, the odds of someone fixing the submission are I would guess about 25% - and you might need to do a couple dozens of these a day).

People can get annoyed at filtering out of decisions unless you overcommunicate at a rate that is probably 5-10x times what is normally expected in normal business conversation. (I was already communicating at a rate that was probably 3-5x what most developers do on the lists, and generally got crucified for it, with myths building up about my character, etc).

Often decisions have no right answer, there's a good and a bad, and either decision will irk someone, and you'll get negative blog posts about what you are doing in either direction. You optimize for the thing that will help the most people, and the one guy who doesn't have his obscure itch scratched will assume you are deliberately ignoring him. You eliminate a problem user so you can concentrate on 1000 people and doing real work, and then others jump all over you after the micro-incident (that they only saw part of).

GitHub makes some things harder -- the issue tracker doesn't have issue templates, so you have to overcommunicate the need to fill out proper templates, and people also throw code at projects prior to asking what the code should be. I love GitHub for the OSS explosion it has enabled, but it is a chaotic way of managing a project as that project gets big.

It also makes it very obvious when a project is buried behind a lot of incomplete contributions, but similarly doesn't provide good tools to sort and manage large numbers of incoming tickets. It makes it very obvious when those ticket numbers build up, and arguments happen on closed tickets.

Twitter is probably one of the worst things, as there's a lot of passive aggressiveness on it. Twitter is an "argument machine". It doesn't provide context, but it does provide a place to rally a mob with pitchforks over the slightest percieved offense, that often should not have been an offense.

Often you don't want people leaving trash on your lawn, but if you edit out the offensive things, the same people claim you are censoring them.

My advice is dont try to acquire users too fast. The "Go" project recently said something like "we had to open source this once it was a certain way along". My conditioning from Red Hat was "do everything in the open", but that was not really something Red Hat always did, as they had a lot of projects with low contribution numbers.

My ultimate feeling is that good projects have good central direction. Contributions can be good, and making a project around a base that encourages lots of shallow contributions can be a very successful strategy for making a successful project, if you do that, you end up doing a lot of custodial work and can't always hit the goals you want to hit.

While it wasn't true in the last 5 years, now I feel the code is more important than the contribution process, and focusing on that allows the users to get a better experience. Users matter a lot - and folks trying to contribute matter a lot - but I don't like the way the inherant focus of contribution turns the creator of a thing into a project manager and a PR manager, and takes away their ability to innovate on the thing.

Being able to work on code is great, but I'd still want to see contribution structured around a mailing list. Strongly encourage talking about code/ideas before submission, but most people will not read it and will submit directly anyway.

I think part of my problem was the barrier to contribution was really low (and that was great) because it was pretty modular at the smaller ends, and we quickly got overwhelmed. I like to thrash very complex codebases for not being contributor friendly, but the breathing room would have been nice.

I guess there's no clear answer - holding things longer before open sourcing them might help. Making sure you have very high coding standards helps. But eventually you're just going to have that very large number of people.

Most of everyone (95%) are awesome, it's just that the virtue of something being so open exposes you to everyone that might not be - and even those people are probably awesome, the nature of low-bandwidth communication on the internet probably just exposes you to misunderstandings and you end up stressing out over things vs being the friends you normally would.

Ignore what you can - it's a problem when others don't understand this and bug you about every single comment and interaction, and judge you on it. The ratio of complaints to thank you's is not always worth the pay at times, so just make sure you're doing it because you care about it, and find the best way to make it work for you, even if that's moving something to redmine and bitbucket :)

<comment><USER3> I think parent referred more to contentious issues (e.g. sexism, systemd hate) rather than uncontrollable growth of a project. That said, excellent post, thank you!

The opposite of course are projects with too few contributors that accept any patch out of desperation, be it reasonable or not. (ZFS on Linux comes to mind, it's a super nice community and Brian Behlendorf does a great job as project lead but sometimes features and patches creep in of which I'm wondering why nobody dared saying "no".)

The Linux kernel community solved growth by delegating responsibility to subsystem maintainers. Such a hierarchical model is not supported by GitHub. Also, the kernel community's process of submitting and discussing patches on mailing lists, while somewhat arcane, raises the barrier of entry and keeps at least a portion of the Twitter mob out.

<comment><USER2> Yeah we'd had contentious issues on the various feature lines (systemd- analogous), absolutely no issues (that I was made aware of) on the -ism lines. The points about various feature items totally hit home though :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You (or they, depending on how you consider things) have a simple tool to solve the problem: let them fork and do what they want.

It sounds like I'm trivializing the issue but I"m not (see below). Take a kindly approach: "Clearly I have a disagreement as to the right way to proceed so let's stop arguing and both go down our respective paths." Don't worry about the obnoxious folks: be kind and take them at their word. If they pick up the ball, perhaps they will be proven right and you'll switch, perhaps they'll be proven wrong and that experiment won't have hurt your project, or perhaps they'll be proven trolls (by not picking up the ball), in which case you can saefly ignore them.

And when I say this is a simple tool: it took me months to arrange the first "legitimate" (in the sense that it was accepted as a mainstream activiy) open source fork, which was GCC back in 1997. Until then forking a project while done (often companies would hack something unsupportable into, say, gdb), was considered grossly dangerous. It took literally months of discussion to split egcs off from mainline gcc (and to become, in fact, mainline gcc). I had to write a really long, careful message ([https://gcc.gnu.org/news/announcement.html](https://gcc.gnu.org/news/announcement.html)) to justify it. Nowadays you can fork away with abandon. Take advantage of it.

</comment><comment><USER5> > Lately a number of open source projects has faced tremendous pressure from > people coming from Twitter and Reddit to have issues resolved a certain way.

Can you point to a specific example? the only things I have seen is some brigading and cabal to pressure a project owner to remove a contributor from a project, but it was akin to a lynch mob, not related with programming in any way.

<comment><USER6> The recent witch hunt against projects that don't have Code of Conducts.

'meh' did a masterful job with those:

[https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941](https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941) [https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/942](https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/942) [https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/945](https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/945)

<comment><USER7> My god those comments are a shitshow

<comment><USER6> Meh is a genius in handling those people, you do have to admit that.

<comment><USER8> I don't know that I would go that far. He was very abrasive, whereas his core message could've been plenty to stop the nonsense he always added a little bit of aggression to keep the drama going.

If he was a genius, you probably wouldn't ever have known the issue existed. At least it seems that way to me.

<comment><USER9> But the people who started the attacks researched his profiles and publicized the entire thing. Their entire goal was public ridicule and getting him denounced.

If this group of thugs is good at anything, it's getting the word out and the twitter mobs mobilized.

<comment><USER6> Bingo.

And this is what makes the way he handled it -genius- :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think GitHub needs a "+1" button for issues. It'll give maintainers some insight as to what priority to give an issue, without spamming them with e-mails. Asking users not to comment with comments such as "+1", or even turning off comments, hides this information.

This will solve the issue partly.

<comment><USER6> > This will solve the issue partly.

On the contrary; it will turn the whole thing into something that can be gamed even better by those who are good at rallying, organizing mobs, and shaming people into doing what the mob organizers can't do on their own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> You can temporarily close comments on an issue that's getting a lot of outside traffic. Usually social media traffic is very bursty like that.

<comment><USER12> Exactly. It's an outrage machine, people who participate mostly want to get their daily fix of feeling that they're fighting for a good cause - and if you lay low for a few days or a couple of weeks, few if any will be persistent enough to bug you after that, as the focus will shift elsewhere.

You may or may not want to issue a polite and carefully-worded statement, but don't cave in - something like "we've heard you and understand your position, thanks for letting us know".

It might be different when the issue is used in intra-project political fight (like two companies competing for control over the project), but for your average Twitter raid that should be enough.

Do not engage further, do not fight them, they are just self-righteous trolls - so, just don't feed them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Delete/hide the comments and a public announcement on the bug what types of comments are acceptable/unacceptable.

As someone else said, it is usually very obvious. Many comments within 24 hours on a bug that is usually bike shed worthy.

Bugs comments should be technical in nature. Basically no (endless) discussion _if_ something should (not) be done. It should be about _how_ to do something (implement/fix bug/etc).

The deleting (hiding for anyone but admins) is usually pretty effective. Once they understand that you have way too much time on your hands, then they'll stop pretty quickly.

What's important is not to get aggressive though. Try turning the attention into something positive and give some tips (how things work and how to get something done). E.g. sometimes bugs do get forgotten and some attention will get them fixed. But that doesn't need 10-15 comments after eachother.

My experience is with Bugzilla btw.

</comment><comment><USER14> Maybe what Github needs is a way to put an issue or all issues for a project into Review Mode where every comment posted to the issue by a non-contributor must be reviewed and accepted by project members before it is posted. This would allow non-contributors to post comments of value (as decided by the contributors), and would make it harder for trolls to spam the discussion.

This would place additional overhead on the project maintainers, but IMO this is more ideal because emails from trolls and people not contributing to the conversation can easily be ignored by filtering out messages from that Github user.

It would not be perfect but it might be better than what we currently have?

</comment><comment><USER15> Developing a thick skin and not feeling like every request is a life-or-death situation - this is what you need to have. You have to take the input and make adjustments as necessary, but continue to steer the project toward your vision. You also should decide how much time you will devote to the project and then not go over to avoid burnout or interfering with your life/work.

My most popular product at the moment has maybe 150k installs and I could spend the rest of my life trying to appease every request. I can only imagine a massively successful software project must be a deluge of requests.

</comment><comment><USER16> If it's a hobbyist project you can ignore the "social media pressure". If you have commercial interests it's probably better to set up your own issue/feature/bug-tracking system independent of GitHub.

<comment><USER17> what are some nice ones?

<comment><USER18> Gitlab is an excellent self-hostable alternative to github.

[https://about.gitlab.com/](https://about.gitlab.com/)

<comment><USER6> Maybe relevant:

We're bringing GitLab to FreeBSD. :-)

Check the ruby@ list for current status, things left to do, etc.

[https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd- ruby/2015-July/t...](https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd- ruby/2015-July/thread.html)

<comment><USER19> Thanks for that effort! Please let us know if we can help in any way.

<comment><USER6> It's all stated on the list ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Too bad GitHub can't weight comments/issues by quality of contributor/user instead of only providing a binary choice of "only the contributors" vs "allowing everyone".

<comment><USER21> But how do you measure that quality? Based on amount of contributions? Based on +1's they've received on comments?

<comment><USER6> Based on lines changed, merge requests accepted/rejected, etc etc.

You know, GitHub developers are quite smart.

They could just write their own weighting algorithm if they wanted to. :-)

<comment><USER22> Those are absolutely awful metrics to use when measuring a developer's ability and talent, or the quality of this developer's contributions. They are also extremely easy to game, too.

<comment><USER6> Yes, that's why I trust GitHub to come up with a (proprietary, unreleased) algorithm a la PageRank that won't easily be game-able.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> At GitLab we're considering a feature that will reduce the noise of +1's and other emoji's, we're been planning it for a while but you could compare it to Slack's function: leaving an emoji doesn't generate a comment.

</comment><comment><USER23> Depending on the issues effected, I'd shut off comments/issues until the social media storm is over.

If it's a longer term issue, then throw up a Discourse/forum instance somewhere and close any effected issues with a comment along the lines of "go talk about it here, where you won't negatively effect development work."

You could also just turn off GitHub issues and move to a different system. Maybe make all new issues go into a forum/google group, and then when a valid issue comes along, allow a contributor to create a issue on GitHub.

Off topic: I think there's a huge opportunity for someone to shake up how support requests/bug reports/issues/tickets/etc. work. Part of that would be building tools that help developers manage support requests while still being newbie friendly. As well as issues like social media pressure. If anyone's working on something like that, I'd love to give feedback. I've had ideas on the subject, but haven't had the time to pursue it myself.

</comment><comment><USER24> I have always felt that the "uncivil" parts are typically coming from people who have to depend on others to accomplish what they want. There has to be a certain amount of anxiety that comes from being asked to do something that you may not know how to do yourself. e.g. Someone who is not a developer themselves.

On the other hand, if you notice alot of developers complaining, my first thought would be that the code may not be modular enough that the developer feels they can comfortably make changes themselves without knowing what it will do to the overall code base.

Wherever there is reasonable dissent, it seems it would be a perfect opportunity to reorganize that part of the code so that many different opinions can be happy about the end result.

</comment><comment><USER6> > When your project faces this pressure how do you act to ensure that > meaningful discussion happens and decisions are made that are the best for > your actual users and contributors in the long run?

Make sure you know who your users are.

Keep in touch with them, reach out, do "community building". They will tell you things about your product/software/system you would otherwise never hear.

That way, you can also filter out issues from known troublestarters as noise, and, much like in Casablanca, it's a "round up the usual suspects" thing.

You could probably write a bot to filter them out, very similar to the ggautoblocker whose perl sources *are on GitHub, just, the other way 'round.

<comment><USER6> > You could probably write a bot to filter them out, very similar to the > ggautoblocker whose perl sources *are on GitHub, just, the other way 'round.

I just did that, actually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> "you got the source, feel free to send a merge request, thanks!"

Problem sorted?

<comment><USER26> Sometimes the issue is that somebody's merge request has been rejected, so not necessarily.

<comment><USER25> I'm the author/maintainer of simavr: [https://github.com/buserror/simavr](https://github.com/buserror/simavr)

I've had to refuse some merge requests, I did it by mostly ignoring them, or explaining that it looks like a very large patch for a something that isn't necessarily wanted... Also I factor in the fact /I/ will have to maintain that patch in the future, as the contributor will likely disappear to other interests sooner or later, so if I don't like it, ultimately it's /my/ choice, even if it doesn't come down to a technical point...

A good 'test' of a merge request is to see if the author is willing to make changes that you request.. It is a very good filter for 'motivation'; if the author doesn't reply, well, that's a merge request I'll close it 6 month next time I go down the list...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Managing scale is managing scale. There are numerous business books written on this subject. In a nutshell: build a scalable org structure (delegate, get yourself out of the loop when possible), explicitly define policies and processes, establish quality controls and do NOT compromise on quality, invest in communication and training...

</comment><comment><USER28> I saw this as a possible helpful tool. They actually sent some un-solicited emails to folks running large projects (which they definitely should not have done but seem to feel bad about) so it got a lot of bad will off the bat, but it seems helpful.

[https://githelp.io/](https://githelp.io/)

<comment><USER29> Thank you for mentioning it, and yes we've done this mistake and we've apologized for everyone. And GitHelp is about open source support, where we encourage users to take of all thier support request from GitHub and have them on GitHelp where they can have a better more professinal support services than just a simple Q&A

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Ignore it.

</comment><comment><USER31> This sure smells fishy...

If you're running an open source project and users are pouring into the cracks to say that they don't like something, it's an obvious sign of what they want. Open-source is supposed to be about the community, maybe you should try listening harder to them.

Users aren't just sheep that use your product, they're an integral part of the entire process, equal in value to the developers.

edit: Who woulda thought that HN devs didn't give a shit about users? As if we didn't know that already...

<comment><USER32> Open source is about the idea that information should be free -- That wondrous things can be built when we are free to build upon the work of others.

Users are people who benefit from the fact that we've generously offered the results of our work without expectation of pay.

It has been my experience that those customers/clients who pay the most are the least demanding. Which is the primary reason that I generally only work on proprietary systems now.

Because as renumeration approaches zero, hassle approaches infinity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Maybe this is crazy but you could listen to them, treat their comments as valid, give a clear indication that you understand what they are saying, and then seriously consider their concerns?

Too often I see people shut down and go into a kind of "you can't tell me what to do" coma and lash out. That doesn't solve anything.

<comment><USER34> What if their comments are not "valid"? What if their agenda is stirring up shit, not the health of your project at all? To take an extreme but existing example (urbit), what if they want your project to die because they (think) they don't like _you_ , a person working on the project?

<comment><USER22> A bad thing to do is to start thinking such things to begin with. Just because somebody expresses an idea that you personally disagree with it does not mean that they are "trolling", it does not mean that the idea is "invalid", it does not mean that they're trying to "stir up shit", and it does not mean that they're trying to "kill" an open source project.

Always respond to their concerns with professionalism, courtesy, and tact.

The absolute worst thing to do is to start censoring them. I've seen this happen with a number of GitHub projects in the past. People occasionally come along with ideas that some, or sometimes even just one, of the core contributors does not agree with. Even when the newcomers are participating in good faith, I've seen intolerant GitHub project leaders start deleting perfectly good comments, closing perfectly valid issues, rejecting perfectly good pull requests, deleting perfectly good wiki content, and otherwise engaging in behavior that is much more harmful than anything the newcomer could managed to have engaged in.

When I see that happening to new contributors, especially when it's a small project involved, then I know it's time to move on from that project, both as a user and contributor. I refuse to be associated with such nonsense.</comment></comment></comment>


TCP in California's Drinking Water - <AUTHOR> https://www.cleanwateraction.org/features/tcp-californias-drinking-water <comment><USER2> Well, at least they kept the UDP out. Not clear if ICMP is in the water, though.</comment>


Ask HN: is finding an idea a major bottleneck for you? - <AUTHOR>

Just thought this would be a neat topic for HN since my recent research shows that there are surprisingly many programmers out there (two thirds of responders in my survey) who want to start a side project for profit, but their main problem is just finding the initial idea.<p>Full disclosure: I am working on a book on how to find and test Software-as-a-Service ideas. <comment><USER2> No, I have very many ideas. I have neither the time nor skill to do anything with them. I write them down and I'll put them on a bit of WWW space sometime.

EDIT: Some of the more sensible are around behaviour modification. They're all a bit UK-centric, but modifiable.

EG

1) drink diaries. People aren't aware of how much they actually drink, so an easy way of keeping track and then converting that into the UK standard "units" would be good.

2) Budgeting for poor people claiming benefits. Benefits might be changing to monthly payments (from fortnightly). People say this is going to be very hard to adjust to. A simple app to help people keep track of money in and out is handy. What makes this "fun" is the need to make it work on not-smart phones and non-data plans.

<comment><USER3> I have skills, I have ideas, I might even have time. It's just I am not sure which one will give me money

<comment><AUTHOR> Shameless plug: sign up for my book here: [http://howtofindsaasideas.com/](http://howtofindsaasideas.com/)

I'll give you an additional $5 discount if you also complete my survey: [https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1UAHE1ifh81JyPhmEhpIPy7Ee0pH...](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1UAHE1ifh81JyPhmEhpIPy7Ee0pH_Y_1VkoeYjuxvVlc/viewform?pli=1)

Helps me create a better book FWIW :)

<comment><USER4> sign up doesn't work in Firefox22/Ubuntu

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Finding a (good) idea is challenging, but I feel there's lots of good advice (especially from some of HN's more prolific posters) on how to vet good ideas with some rigor.

I feel the bottleneck is in the validation phase. You can be brainstorming dozens of ideas, but to go anywhere with them, I feel you should research, talk to people, look at stats/trends, maybe build a brochure site/MVP and capture some leads, etc. These all take time, effort, (some) cost, and of course require the dreaded act of communicating with other human beings.

Idea work comes naturally to hackers, but communication doesn't. Plus, once you're considering communicate an idea to others, subconsciously you acknowledge that it might not be well-received or fail to take off. I believe that (in my case at least) this causes a big bottleneck. I'm always happy to ponder ideas, but seem to have less enthusiasm to do the legwork to validate them!

<comment><AUTHOR> How do you usually go about communicating with people when validating the idea? Emails? Cold calling? Something else?

To whom do you reach out?

I hope to provide the reader with a good arsenal of tips and tricks on communication in my upcoming book, might be worth signing up for updates :) /shamelessplug

<comment><USER5> If I could completely answer this question, it would not be my bottleneck! ;)

What I have done: post a brochure site, promising more to come, and offering a free whitepaper/guidebook in exchange for an email subscription. Use free $100 Adwords coupon to send traffic there. Count email signups. Send out a newsletter to them, try to gauge engagement.

Other tactics I know of:

      - Offer pre-sales
      - Talk to business owners casually
      - Go to trade shows and chat
      - Offer surveys
      - Ask mechanical turk for feedback
      - Lurk in forums to see what people are discussing
      - Surf Amazon reviews to gauge how people feel about X

<comment><AUTHOR> Can I do an interview with you for my book?

firstname.lastname@example.com :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My situation is like this:

1- I have 3 good ideas. 2\. I've researched a lot and worked hard on specs, UX, UI, pitch, branding 3\. Started to bootstrap as much as I can do (i'm not 100% engineer) 4\. Looking for angel investment and vc.

My problemas are not the ideas, I ditch every single idea I can't validate it, my single problems are: finding a good co-founder, heavy coder so we can venture both in the ways of nerdism with the proyect and capital. I can't do code + capital search + company administration, etc. etc.

Every time I pitch my 2 biggest ideas people get shock but they're too ambitious and requiere, maybe 10 people working full time on it. After we validate the model with real people, the lean way, ofc.

<comment><AUTHOR> What ways have you tried to find a co-founder?

Not trying to be snarky, I honestly want to know.

<comment><USER6> Well, because you need a partner who believe and want to sail in the same ship. Because that partner will suffer the same penalties you can suffer, like working for free for some time, having a low salary at the start, working extra hours, etc. Hiring someone to do the job is simply a problem because you can't afford paying one if you want quality.

But also, the few investors I've been talking in the past they want a formal team with a commitment thinking, and by saying you will just hire someone to do something is not enough, at least even on leaning.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yes. That is my biggest hurdle in software development. I can't ever seem to come up with an idea that I feel will be worth the time and resources to bring to life.

</comment><comment><USER8> Some excellent ideas, but not enough time to develop them, and too risky or not obviously profitable enough for me to be able to quit full-time agency work (which would obviously be the goal). Ideas come easy, the kind that intersect with "potentially profitable within 6-12 months" are much rarer.

<comment><AUTHOR> So you'd be interested in various tactics for testing if an idea is potentially profitable before you start developing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Yes! I definitely have that entrepreneurial burn inside of me but I haven't had any idea that I feel strongly about yet. I think I'm going to start trying to opening up my mind more and engaging in new things, reading about topics that maybe I wouldn't have before, etc.

</comment><comment><USER10> I have a few solid ideas that I believe I could execute well, in a wide variety of industries. Mind you this is after purging many ideas that fail vetting. However, my limitation is lack of capital. I'm not well connected and wouldn't know where to begin to look for funds.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why would you need a lot of funds?

(Honest question, I want to know).

<comment><USER10> I don't need a lot. I'm talking $50-$100k here, not millions in VC. I am pretty resourceful. Only one idea is solely web-based and could be bootstrapped. The others are B&M and require signing retail leases and building out storefront, etc. I also have to pay my own bare living expenses in the meantime.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair enough!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have a few ideas but none I'm passionate enough about to work on. I don't want to go down the rabbit hole of building something people don't want again.

Btw, I'm not able to fill in the email field on your website. (Firefox on Windows)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the heads-up :)

If it still doesn't work then email me at firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Yes. I'm looking for a subtle idea, that doesn't necessarily make me millions, but keeps occupied and pays the rent. I have many ideas but they are too hard or need too much money to bootstrap.

<comment><AUTHOR> Have you looked at any existing find-an-idea courses like Dane Maxwell's The Foundation, Amy Hoy's 30x500, Ramit Sethi's Earn1k, etc?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> My problem is too many ideas. They overwhelm me. I have started 18 companies. Most of them fail to take off. As I get older I have succeeded in fighting the idea-a-day syndrome.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe post them on Firespotting.com then, clear out the gunk from your psychic RAM :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Yes, because I'd prefer an idea that can be bootstrapped into a profitable company. No dependency on ad revenue. No stupid consumer app that goes big or bust.

<comment><AUTHOR> What's your financial goal? Lifestyle business?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Yes, it isn't something about actually ideas, it's that somehow I don't think there is a market for them, they seem to be just dumb ideas.

</comment><comment><USER16> Can I suggest you use this forum as a way to test your ideas, publicise the book and get tons of real life examples

in short - how do I, with an idea, test it? How do I use AdWords, keyword search, mailchimp etc etc

Got a process - validate it here

(As I suspect you are)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I am :)

Book link: [http://howtofindsaasideas.com/](http://howtofindsaasideas.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> yes

</comment><comment><USER18> No, but finding the right idea is.

<comment><USER19> My situation as well. There are some beautiful, and often little known, business models/ideas out there. Sometimes in industries which few have interest in. I focus on long term, sustainable, profitable business models. But they must scale. It works out well.

No lottery odds type instagram ideas which couldn't be a thriving business without being bought out. I also favor long term revenue models over ones that peak and have a very quick decline for all but the top 1% (e.g. app stores). That isn't to say I don't have app store apps, but they compliment the primary offering to expand the audience rather than being a revenue driver.

You see many going for the billion dollar ideas, which is cool. I'll stick with the "easily" attainable and interesting models/ideas that make six to seven figures a year. With the scalability that I require, I can do two or three (via having world-class talent on retainer from time-to-time). There you go, set for life. Do what you want and truly help people.

OP: Good luck on the book!

<comment><AUTHOR> _My situation as well. There are some beautiful, and often little known, business models /ideas out there. Sometimes in industries which few have interest in. I focus on long term, sustainable, profitable business models. But they must scale. It works out well._

Mind telling us more? Sounds interesting :)

 _OP: Good luck on the book!_

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


Intel vs GlobalFoundries at the leading edge - <AUTHOR> https://www.semiwiki.com/forum/content/7191-iedm-2017-intel-versus-globalfoundries-leading-edge.html <comment><USER2> >It is also surprising to me to see how far Intel has fallen from the process lead they had. First with HKMG by several years, first with FinFet by several year, I suppose they are still first to do cobalt interconnect but in terms of process density the foundries have caught them and appear poised to take a substantial lead over the next several years.

>With Intel offering foundry processes and GF, Samung and TSMC all offering leading edge processes the industry now has four viable leading edge process options.

Exciting times.

<comment><USER3> Indeed. Intel finally having some really competitive competitors (as it were) is great to see.

I was going to mutter about this great competition coming from overseas and being an example of the Decline Of The West, but Global Foundries appears to be a mainly US+Europe based thing. (I know it span out of AMD a while back but had assumed until just now that it did all its manufacturing in China).

Exciting times indeed.

<comment><USER4> I think fabs are a business where capital rules vs labor cost. GlobalFoundies built a fab in New York, but got megabucks in aid to do so.

<comment><USER5> GlobalFoundries is getting massive incentives to expand in New York State. The initial Saratoga Springs is just the first fab Cuomo has built for them. Currently, they're building another fab in Utica that's intended to rehabilitate it after its Rust Belt woes.

Similarly, Tesla/Solar City received a huge number of economic incentives to build a factory in Buffalo.

Naturally, since this is NYS there's also been a fair bit of corruption:

[1] [http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Kaloyeros-in- fight-t...](http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Kaloyeros-in-fight-to-get- charges-tossed-11160539.php)

I fully expect the state government to throw a bunch of incentives at Amazon as well for HQ2- there's a push in Rochester for someone to take over all of the Kodak/Xerox buildings after those two companies royally messed up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've heard it claimed that the delays in Intel's new process node were mostly due to problems debugging the cobalt metal layers. If that's true I wonder if other players will avoid it for a bit? But the problems it solves will only get more pressing as feature sizes shrink so that might not be feasible.

My impression of Intel's process compared to most foundries is that they tend to have higher drive currents at a given node leading to faster switching speeds but also more restrictive design rules leading to lower practical densities then the standard cell size would predict. And making it hard for them to act as a foundry, though it's still possible. But my understanding at this level is tenuous and don't place too much weight on it.

And overall the general slowdown in Moore's law means that Intel's technology lead has less of a performance/price ramification.

<comment><USER7> The problem is that none of the other players so far has been able to produce chips with the size and power envelope of modern CPUs or GPUs.

Intel will release some 10nm in mid 2018 but these would be the Core M ultra low power parts.

AMD isn't going for 7nm in 2018 just yet, the Ryzen refresh slated for March of 2018 is going to be on 12nm which is a rebrand of GF14 NM process rather than a true node shrink.

I'm not entirely sure if GF or any other foundry would actually come out with large power hungry dies on 7nm any time soon.

TSMC seems not to be able to produce them even on 10nm, which is why they introduced their 12nm process which is back of the line node improvement of their 16nm node primarily so NVIDIA could produce their GPUs on it.

So far the only parts which are made on 10nm are mobile SoCs.

<comment><USER8> TSMC never intended to use 10nm. They planned to skip it to get to 7nm faster. Samsung planned for 10nm on the other hand, because it thought 10nm will be a "long node" (it won't be).

Also Samsung's first 7nm node will use EUV lithography, which may be a bit too costly for most chip makers, and that may have played a role in developing the stop-gap 10nm process, too. We'll likely see most of the 7nm users switch to GloFo and TSMC until Samsung lowers costs/increases yield for its 7nm process.

<comment><USER7> Intended or not both of them adopted 10nm which is closer to Intel's 14nm not counting the fact that they neither can produce large or power hungry chips on either process.

GF is skipping EUV for the initial 7nm process and based on the issues they and Intel have been having with masks and patterning under EUV I'm not sure if they'll be on track for EUV in 2019.

In either case it would be very interesting to see what Intel is going to end up releasing it might be in lithography hell with 10nm or it might be overblown.

Intel's 14nm++ and +++ processes atm do not have competition and it's not clear just how much it would matter if GF moves to 7nm before Intel atm.

Intel's biggest problem is less with their process and more with their roadmap as it seems that they want to launch 14nm+++, 10nm and 10nm+ products all within a similar time window with a huge overlap. If I was an OEM atm it would be rather confused.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "EUV in mass production" is something akin to commercial fusion power. Every few years, a big fab comes forward and says that they will get EUV in production in yet another few years.

Except this time, there is a genuine need for it. There is only that much free area they can get by squeezing cell sizes.

After compact SRAMs (there are a few 4T and 3d SRAM designs that fabs will be introducing next year to compensate for missed node shrink [https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1332734](https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1332734)), they will not have many things left to shrink.

EUV was thought to be a way to avoid multipatterning at 65/45 transition, but now we will have to do quad patterning with both 10nm and with EUV at 7nm, and this makes the main reason for EUV use (avoiding multipatterning) not that all important.

<comment><USER10> EUV is a crazy technology, but comparing it to fusion makes no sense. ASML has already demonstrated near 250W brightness sources, their plan appears to be brute forcing away the brightness issue.

<comment><USER11> The comparison IMO makes perfect sense: there are promises but nothing actually works. Even you state something about plans.

<comment><USER9> Better to say, when one blocker issue is solved with EUV, 2 or more new ones are discovered. And further you go, more people question "whether it all worth it?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm waiting for Intel to divest of either the arch/micro-arch business or the fab business. They can invest in one or the other, but what is crippling them is having to invest in both simultaneously. I can definitely see them doing something like HP and split off into Intel-Fab and just Intel. Would enable the arch/micro-arch to use all the fabs and allow the fab to focus on what it does best, processes research and development. Intel already fabs chips for other people ([https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeanbaptiste/2013/10/29/exclusi...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeanbaptiste/2013/10/29/exclusive- intel-opens-fabs-to-arm-chips/#6c0129fb3078)) why not expand that relationship to maximize their profits/capacity.

<comment> old-gregg I am not an expert, but based on what I've read about this (my interest got sparked by the resurgence of AMD with Ryzen), Intel's vertical integration may actually even grow in importance.

The processes developed by Samsung, GloFo and TSMC are all optimized for low- power designs required by mobile applications. There are far more phones out there and they're on a much faster upgrade cycle than desktops/servers, that's why foundries optimizing for mobile.

This creates a problem for AMD because high power/freq Ryzen CPUs can't compete with Intel's if they're made on a node optimized for low power ARM cores.

<comment><USER13> GloFos new 12LP is perf optimisied, is it not?

<comment><USER14> LP = low power = not performance

<comment><USER13> LP is leading Performance

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A future with ARM in server CPUs seems more plausible when Intel doesn't have a manufacturing advantage.

Also it is likely that Intel's loss of lead in process is one of the reasons that AMD (e.g. Ryzen) is actually competitive again.

<comment><USER7> Ryzen is competitive despite being on an inferior process. Ryzen is competitive because AMD stopped playing in the mud and decided to catch up, that said it's sad/scary just how much core seem to be a head of it's time Intel has been riding the same uarch for over a decade.

<comment><USER16> The only problem with Ryzen is that it doesn't clock as high as comparable Intel chips, but then again, it runs cooler and uses less power - both of those are because the process GF are using is targeted at lower power mobile CPU's.

<comment><USER7> It really doesn't run cooler nor does it consumes less power at the same performance envelope.

Intel calculates the peak max draw TDP AMD uses sustainable average over 2 min.

Zen is built on 14nm LLP it's not a ulv/ulp process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is great. GlobalFoundries has joined the RISC-V community and they are seeing it as one of they ways that can help them compete with Intel.

Its really quite a clever move by them and I hope it works out.

See slides and videos:

[https://content.riscv.org/wp- content/uploads/2017/12/Tue1236...](https://content.riscv.org/wp- content/uploads/2017/12/Tue1236-Revolutionizing_RISC-V_GlobalFoundries- Bartlett.pdf)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKwbFbFLkS0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKwbFbFLkS0)

</comment><comment><USER18> It's weird how the sub-14nm date keeps getting pushed back. The end of 2018 is going to make it 4 years between chip generations. They still might fail though. Could this be the start of the great silicon stagnation?

</comment><comment><USER19> Super excited to see what 2018-2019 looks like. If we have 3-4 high yield ~7nm nodes and the dram/nand markets start clearing again I think we'll see some pretty crazy prices for hardware especially with AMD/ARM pressuring Intel.

Hopefully Openstack will be a bit more mature then too. With lower hardware costs and an open source software stack cloud computing might get pretty competitive.

<comment><USER20> Alas, it seems OpenStack is still in the gutter. :(

It's a mindboggingly strange mess. Yeah, it works, when it works, but it's so undebuggable and unmaintainable. Well, if you have in house committers from the core projects, then you can afford to run custom forks/branches. Oh and a few dedicated Infrastructure Wizards deploying it, upgrading the components as patches land, managing outages and simple gotchas.

It's almost easier to roll a new non-multi-tenant instance for each tenant than to try to make it multi-tenant as both Horizon and Neutron are bad at handling domains.

And it [one of the neutron linuxbridge agents] sometimes randomly eats IP addresses from host interfaces :o

Oh, and the docs and release notes are still generally useless on compatibility changes, upgrade procedure and so on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> _Actual logic design is done using standard cells so metrics describing standard cell size are more useful._

Is it really the case that all logic designs use standard cells? I would have expected full custom designs to maybe use a standard design for the transistor but the placement and sizing of the gates is completely custom (e.g. not on a grid).

</comment><comment><USER22> It would be interesting to see first x64 only (only 64-bit) CPU from either Intel or AMD ...</comment>


Practical Reverse Engineering Part 5 – Digging Through the Firmware - <AUTHOR> http://jcjc-dev.com/2016/12/14/reversing-huawei-5-reversing-firmware/ <comment><USER2> The link for deciding whether to be nasty or nice when enforcing open source licences is fascinating: [https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/ksummit- discuss/...](https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/ksummit- discuss/2016-August/003580.html)

Linus talks about the loss of trust, community, and developers that plagued Busybox after their GPL enforcement lawsuit. I hadn't realized the consequences were so dire. That lawsuit is still sometimes held up as the GPL working as intended.

<comment><USER3> This is excellent. Thank you so much for posting that mail.

I definitely agree when he says threatening lawsuits just makes you look like a bully. Violence can be defined¹ as a measure taken to force an unwilling person to change their behavior. Based on this understanding, I think lawsuits are a form of violence: legal violence.

It takes real maturity to deal with the company the way they did. "Yeah, we're infringing your license, what you gonna do about it?" is a direct challenge that invites litigation. Clearly unacceptable behavior from a company that knows and admits its own guilt and uses its own impunity to make the developers look weak. Instead of taking them on, they worked with the company and convinced them to cooperate. I think that is a major example of constructive behavior.

"Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?" — Abraham Lincoln

¹ [http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/violencetypesBC.htm](http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/violencetypesBC.htm)

<comment><USER4> The convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we intend toward each other. Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. You have done violence to him, consumed his energy. Elaborate euphemisms may conceal your intent to kill, but behind any use of power over another the ultimate assumption remains: "I feed on your energy."

\- Addenda to Orders in Council The Emperor Paul Muad'dib

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow, this article reminds of the early days of browsing the web. Interesting content written by someone with knowledge.

A rare thing these days.</comment>


Post Mortem of Ludum Dare 38 and Bullet Surfing - <AUTHOR> http://www.andy-rambles.com/post/LD38-one-week-later/ <comment><USER2> I am the author of this article (and game).

It's been a while since I participated in a game jam, but I highly recommend doing it at least once or twice.

<comment><USER3> What technologies do you recommend for getting a game going as quickly as possible?

There's so much to do, art, sounds, music.

<comment><USER2> It depends, to be honest.

For me, Love2d, Pyxel Edit and Bosca Ceol have worked well.

There are things like music generators to help if you're super slow at music composition like me.

Also, having a small scope helps.

<comment><USER3> I have zero experience in music composition and would be super slow and terrible, what are some good music generators?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love Ludum Dare (I've done about 12 of them - they are great fun) - ANNNND, I love reading people's post-mortems... but I gotta ask - how did this post mortem from from LD38 in 2017 make it to the front page? Seems like some black magic!

Anyhoo, the write up is great - and weird timing - I just went to see when the next Ludum Dare was this morning, and was surprised to see it's in 117 days... they've reduced it to twice a year now.

<comment><USER2> It's a mystery to me as well. I didn't post it. I still don't know how it got surfaced. I've not been actively promoting that blog.

<comment><USER5> I had the same thing happen to me recently. A blog I use to anonymously rant against ridiculous things in my industry went from 2, maybe 3 visits per day to over 200,000 when someone randomly posted an article to HN and Reddit. I didn't notice until 24 hours later. No idea how that person found me or why they decided to post that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> (2017)</comment>


Malcolm Gladwell: How David Beats Goliath - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/11/090511fa_fact_gladwell

<comment><USER3> What he's talking about is changing the rules of the game so they favor you rather than your opponent.

I worked for three summers as a counselor at a military summer camp in Northern Indiana. It's a 6-week program for about 1000 teenagers, boys and girls from around the world. The kids wear uniforms 24/7, compete in sports every afternoon, march to all their meals and prepare for exacting room inspections twice a day. While this may sound like a drag, once the kids figure out the rules of the place and realize that they're treated like responsible adults, they tend to open up and thrive. Sure, you have a lot to cram into every day, but you're also given more freedom than you'd get living at home.

Anyway, on the boys side, the kids are divided up into Companies of about 60 kids. These companies compete against one another all summer long in rowing, basketball, swimming, code flags, softball, track, sailing etc. It's intense and taken very seriously. When I was a kid, I loved every minute of it. Lots of opportunities for someone with a hacker mindset to boost his team's efficiency.

During my first summer as a counselor right out of college, I was given a group of kids who'd had a different counselor every summer for the previous two years. They didn't work very hard and there was no precedent for success in the organization. They lost just about everything that summer. We had fun, but that was rough.

My second summer, I assumed my kids would do better just because I knew more about how the camp worked and would have better relationships with the returning campers. Yes, they had more success in intramurals and military competitions, but still they were middle of the pack. Fun summer, but not as fun as it could have been.

A few days after that summer, knowing I was coming back one more time, I made a list of crucial factors in having a successful company.

1\. Retention: The more older boys you had, the better you were at everything. You had more kids to keep the youngins' in line, stronger boys to run the football etc.

2\. Building relationships with the event officials: The sailing and rowing races were always poorly officiated. The boat that appeared to win wasn't necessarily the boat that would be given first place points after the officials looked over the protests and complaints filed by counselors. I realized the counselors who'd been there longest consistently came out ahead in these squabbles. It's harder to screw over someone you see every day.

3\. A structured approach to competition. The weekly and end-of-summer awards carried mystery with them. You had a sense of who would win, but no one ever knew, because no one but the judges was actively tracking point totals. We were competing in the dark oftentimes.

So during the "offseason" I started up a message board for my kids, so they could keep in touch and sent Christmas cards to every family. I helped low income families find scholarships so they could send their kids back.

That last summer, my kids became fixtures around the naval building, helping with odd jobs, litter clean-up etc. They got to know all the directors there really well.

And I created a massive spreadsheet that let us keep a running tally of how every unit was doing day by day.

That last summer we had 13 third-summer-campers while most of the other companies had 5-6. We came out ahead in several key naval event adjudications. We knew when we needed to win and when we could afford to lose or work for a tie. My "Bad News Bears" wound up winning just about everything.

So I can relate a bit. While other units had counselors with high school sports coaching experience (and they were bringing their best athletes to the camp with them), I was able to bring more kids back, leverage their likability and keep them more informed. I changed the rules of the camp from favoring the group with the best athletes to favoring the group that worked smarter.

Fallout: My kids had a great summer. My relationships with the other counselors were pretty much destroyed as they realized we had changed the rule son them.

But the camp directors loved that I was bringing more kids back through the doors.

<comment><USER4> I went to that camp and to the Military Academy where it is located. Where the frak were _you_ , man!? My counselors were all like bad caricatures from a Will Farrel movie.

Then again, if I hadn't been so traumatized, I wouldn't be the person I am now.

(Division 7. Cabin 54.)

EDIT: I've been thinking about this more -- figuring out "the rules of the game" and changing or subverting them _is the game_. Or, the metagame, at least. It's the essence of the power of evolution and of intelligence. Once you have a process that can subvert "the rules of the game" you have a _transcendent_ process!

EDIT: Another example of what was mentioned in the article: Julis Caesar vs. Vercingetorix at Alesia. Vercingetorix commanded superior numbers situated on the huge plateau/hill-fortress of Alesia. The fortress and its terrain would give a huge advantage to the defenders who already outnumbered Caesar's legions. Common wisdom was that Alesia was simply too large to be besieged. So what does Julis Caesar do? He does exactly that!

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Alesia>

The roman legions there built 18 km (11 miles) of fortifications in just 3 weeks. Then they went and did it again for another set of outward-facing fortifications.

EDIT: Yet another example, this time from my own life. Foosball. I learned foosball because I wanted to show up this _annoying guy_ I knew. So I developed the conventional foosball skills, learned to pass to my front men, stop the ball, and make a set shot. The _annoying guy_ kept beating me, though. He'd never make a set shot! He _played the game wrong_ , always keeping it in motion, never stopping it to do a set shot. So long as the ball kept bouncing around in the opponent's half, it would eventually go in. Eventually, the two of us became a team, and we could often stymie other players. I could use my conventional skills on defense to keep the ball out of the goal, and to pass the ball up to _annoying guy_. It was very hard to stop our passes because I didn't even have to pass to my teammate. All I'd have to do was get the ball to the enemy's half of the field with enough energy so that _annoying guy_ could keep it bouncing around. We beat so many guys who were _convinced_ they were better players than us. And they were, by those conventional measures. They had more shots, faster shots, better reflexes, better ball handling. But we would beat them.

Then I started applying this to my solo game. Basically, get the ball to the other half, and make a quick shot. taking a shot before the other guy has the time to get settled in gives you a _big_ advantage. It doesn't look as skillful or seem as sporting, though.

<comment><USER3> Sorry, man. I never worked at Woodcraft camp. I went to upper camps during high school and that's where I worked years later. During my three summers working there, I met some great counselors, but a lot of people were just there to have fun. This gave us an advantage. After two summers of getting squashed, my kids and our staff were determined to win. And that was a lot more fun in the end, though I was receiving death threats from other people on the staff by the end of it all. That part wasn't so much fun.

The convention was that the jock-iest group of kids and counselors would win every summer. That's how it was when I was a camper and for my first two summers working there. Turning that on its head, if only for one summer, was one of my proudest moments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This reminds me of a story I recently heard from my friend, a fitness nut. He recently coached a middle school girls soccer team for some odd reason. They weren't the best players in the world to say the least. He said that they tried all sorts of excuses to get out of playing, but he was too quick witted and the girls came to enjoy his sense of humor while simultaneously fearing mild humiliation.

He was upfront with these girls, telling them that they didn't stand a chance against the more experienced teams unless they were better conditioned. Every time any one of them failed, they all ran a punishment lap together. Every time they succeeded, they ran a victory lap together. Every time one of them couldn't keep up, they did another lap to have an opportunity to succeed together. He ran every lap with them. They spent far more time running than playing soccer; they came to enjoy it.

The team won second place in the division. A significant portion of their victories were record comebacks because the opposing teams simply couldn't keep up the momentum. They were beaten only by a team who was both well conditioned and technically strong, but it was a close match.

<comment><USER6> When I returned from Germany as an exchange student where I played soccer in the local town's team, I was amazed at how much my high school soccer team just ran around with no real purpose. In European soccer, even the professional leagues, you see players standing, jogging, or walking, and sprinting only when necessary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Gladwell has isolated the correct reason in his stories but he doesn't present it directly. What really beats Goliath is when Goliath has to face something he isnt used to or prepared for and is put off balance. Pitino nails it when he talks about the "rush moment" or "rush state" Getting them out of their game or off balance is whats effective, outworking them is not as much.

The reason, for example, that every basketball team doesn't press is because if a team is prepared for the press and more talented than the pressing team its relatively easy to beat it. On the same note if two teams both press each other the talent rises to the top.

Look at running for example, how do you beat someone who is faster than you in a distance race? Get them to run your race, throw in surges etc... If you're faster but they have more endurance: box them in, slow the race down, make it come down to a kick where you're favored. Like the press if they simply know they're faster than you and prepared for it they should just take off from the gun but they often dont, especially against someone they've never run against before and surprise often wins out.

So while its nice to write a story about effort and it makes for a good read this article should be more about keeping an opponent off balance than it should have been about effort winning out

</comment><comment><USER8> These lines resonated with me:

"We tell ourselves that skill is the precious resource and effort is the commodity. It's the other way around. Effort can trump ability—legs, in Saxe's formulation, can overpower arms—because relentless effort is in fact something rarer than the ability to engage in some finely tuned act of motor coordination."

I would argue that this holds for many endeavors and should be kept in mind when facing daunting situations.

<comment><USER9> It's best to tell yourself that the precious resource is effort, but in truth, you need skill and effort.

<comment><USER10> Did you read the article?

The primary example in the article is that of a team with no skill destroying all of their opponents (some of whom had a lot of skill) through good strategy and effort.

In other words, Gladwell offers a compelling counter-example to the belief that skill is a requirement.

EDIT: All of their oponents save one. They fielded a four person basketball team that day.

<comment><USER9> Yep, and my point stands. No amount of effort allows you to start, say, github.com if you don't also have skill. Now, you can say that you can acquire skill from effort, and that's certainly true, but someone else who puts in the same effort as you but who has more talent will still do better.

<comment><USER11> In other words, don't let there be somebody out there that puts in the same effort.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> From the article: "Lenat did not give Eurisko any advice or steer the program in any particular strategic direction."

I think this is misleading given other sources, e.g. "In the morning Lenat would cull the designs and help it along. He credits about 60 percent of the results to himself, and about 40 percent to EURISKO." from <http://e-drexler.com/d/06/00/EOC/EOC_Chapter_5.html>

</comment><comment><USER13> '"A two-to-one ratio is understandable, but a ratio of four to one?" Ranadivé shook his head.'

This is very hard to judge without other witnesses to the game. Ranadivé had his girls playing an extremely aggressive brand of defense, which could very easily lead to them committing four times as many fouls, especially if the other team was just sitting back in their defense waiting for his girls to bring the ball up the court.

There is some question, also, as to whether the objective of kids' sports at young ages of competition is to win games, or to develop appropriate skills for higher levels of competition. My son is in his first year of baseball, and I over heard some parents and coaches discussing whether to send a kid from third to home even when the shortstop is holding the ball at the edge of the infield. On one hand, there is a good chance he will not make an accurate throw followed by an accurate catch and tag by the catcher. But that is not good teaching for the next level (Little League) because it will probably be an easy out.

</comment><comment><USER14> What this article describes is mostly Boydian martial philosophy. Though clausewitz, sun tzu and Genghis Kahn comes into play also.

John Boyd was a US air force colonel who essentially reinvented modern warfare. Instead of attacks based on massive force, his philosophy was based on controlling the flow and tempo of battle. Controlling your adversaries ability to understand and react to the ever changing world - <USER2> folding himself inside out as the basketball coach did.

Similarly the wargame scenario is classic boyd too. Change the game, keep adversary off balance, you win.

Everyone should absolutely read "A discourse on winning and losing.". Everything the current dotcom wunderkids/bloggers are saying on blogs is covered in more detail and more clearly in boyd's writings.

Probably the best book on the subject currently. Not an easy read though. [http://www.amazon.com/Science-Strategy-War-Strategic- History...](http://www.amazon.com/Science-Strategy-War-Strategic- History/dp/0415459524/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1241492256&sr=8-1)

<comment><USER15> There is a good collection of free material here on Boyd and maneuver warfare at [http://www.d-n-i.net/dni/strategy-and-force- employment/boyd-...](http://www.d-n-i.net/dni/strategy-and-force- employment/boyd-and-military-strategy/)

A good one page business summary is at <http://ceo-notes.us/boydcycles2.htm>

For some background on the Osinga book see <http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/5555.html> and the thesis at <http://chicagoboyz.net/blogfiles/OsingaBoydThesis.pdf> that was revised into the book.

Boyd didn't invent these concepts--which were certainly part of the principles of blitzkrieg warfare used by the Germans in WW2 and by many others--but he codified them.

<comment><USER14> It is true boyd didn't invent any of this (excepting Energy Maneuverability theory), he just codified it brought vast amounts of knowledge together in the same place and made it accessible. Something that hadn't been done before.

d-n-i is chuck spinney's site, I can spend hours reading stuff on there. He's one of the fighter mafia who brought you the f-16, the A-10 and the f-15.

That ceo notes website is horrible though. As are most "business" reinterpretations of boyd's work it gets it all wrong. The OODA cycle is not a loop. It's very easy to demonstrate this - Have you ever thought "I'm missing something here."? if you have you've gone through observe-orient-decide and decided to go back to observe or orient.

When possible it's usually best to go straight to the source for information rather than some 3rd rate "brief" version. Avoid pseudo-intellectual bloggers/business guru's whenever possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Loopholes. You can win by finding loopholes. Children's stories are full of it - it's a basic part of being human. But no one likes a cheater.

But it might be worth it, for what you win - if the end justifies the means. It can also introduce a new, and better, concept of what the rules should be. I'm a big fan of winning through superior understanding, instead of superior resources. Brains not brawn.

Fantastic article. I didn't pick up that military strategy from watching "Laurence of Arabia".

</comment><comment><USER17> A very similar story is that of college football coach Mike Leach and his extremely unorthodox, extremely successful program.

[http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/12/31/60minutes/main4694...](http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/12/31/60minutes/main4694714.shtml)

</comment><comment><USER18> I think he's a better storyteller than thinker.

<comment><USER19> could you please provide some examples of logical flaws or careless conclusions that the author has made in this particular story? i just read the article, but sorry i still don't quite understand what you mean by that assertion.

<comment><USER20> One example is he could have asked any college or NBA coach why more teams don't run the press when they're down. You're likely to give up easy layups, for one. Instead he concludes it's because of social reasons forbidding it.

<comment><USER21> There are also great statistics on offensive/devensive efficiency rates given how quickly a team shoots in the shot clock: <http://82games.com>

The reason there isn't much pressing in the NBA is because of the ball handling ability of an NBA point guard. Teams press at the end of a game to either manage the clock when ahead or as a desperate move when behind. Otherwise, NBA players are good enough to ensure easy baskets against a press.

A great article about the Stat Movement in the NBA was written by Michael Lewis a few weeks back:

<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/magazine/15Battier-t.html>

<comment><USER13> I just love this image of Battier defending Bryant:

<http://www.nba.com/media/lakers/0903mailbag_battierkobe.jpg>

Getting a "hand in the face" of a shooter is rarely more literal than that. It must drive Kobe nuts (though he would never admit it).

Will be interesting to see if Battier can disrupt Kobe in the upcoming series.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is how I play tennis.</comment>


Ask HN: How would you license your software? - <AUTHOR>

I never used any Ask HN credits before, but I really need some help here on a topic that might be of interest to some of you.
We are a software startup. For us, not only pricing is the issue, but the licensing scenario. Overall, the mixture of pricing and different licensing options become a confusing problem. E.g. how much software rights, and for what price?
We have a piece of reasonably complex code that is in prototype-to-product/near product stage. This is an embedded software product.
Normally similar products are licensed by big firms with a royalty-based license. For example, many devices get mass-produced, the software vendor gets a share.
The problem is, this information is kept secret and I don't know how much they charge as royalties. Worse, being clueless about competitors, we might just lose a lot solely on imprecise pricing. Should we charge 300k? Should we charge 70K? Or 1M? 1M for a license might sound a lot, but all are valid possibilities that other firms are charging. Even if I am not going to charge 1M, it would be nice to know if someone else is charging, so that I know how much of a difference I am making to the customer.
Here's another licensing scenario: Whatif another software firm would like to take the software, make a derivation of it and re-license it themselves? Should I charge them a whole lot more? How would we license it in this case, i.e how much rights should we give them...
It takes a geek very naturally to write the good software, but when it comes to selling it, it seems we completely lose the grips. <comment><USER2> As far as access rights: as an engineer I don't want hoops to jump through; not because I'm going to steal your tech tomorrow, but because simple terms make debugging easier and keep the lawyers away (frankly).

Ideally, start with an existing license that your client's lawyers have probably seen already, so that there are no delays in approving it. Also, make sure it has the terms you want; making changes is _also_ a pain for engineering, since it could mean waiting weeks or months for legal to approve new license terms. Such delays could break your client and kill your contract.

As for cost; keep in mind I haven't tried to run a software business, but I've worked with lots of tech, so the following is _just my gut feeling_ , what seems reasonable to me:

I would start by calculating the maximum possible setup cost, and the likely ongoing development cost, under the assumption that your business exists to serve one product for one client (even if it doesn't). This tells you your high end; it's what your client would probably pay to develop their own stuff in-house. They are coming to you because they want to pay much less than this amount.

Then, factor in the rest of your business. Think about expansion. Will you always develop one-shot, highly-specific tools for clients, or will there be a few generic things that give you steady income from lots of sources? If other products will share in repeating costs (e.g. air conditioning, salaries, replacement servers), estimate what percentage will fall to this one project. Consider this your absolute minimum cost, because it still assumes reasonable success in products you may not have developed yet.

Given these two extremes, pick a number. :)</comment>


The Problem with Putting All the World's Code in GitHub - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/06/problem-putting-worlds-code-github/ <comment><USER2> The comparison to the Library of Alexandria is misleading, I think, because even if GitHub goes under, almost no data will be lost. Every bit of code that is hosted on GitHub is being stored locally somewhere by someone and and in many cases by more than one person.

</comment><comment><USER3> This article is really about SourceForge and it's quest for revenue through fake "Download" button-ads as a cautionary possible future for GitHub. However I expect GitHub will avoid such blunders and I think they already have a solid business going with private repos. At any rate, if it becomes a poor environment developers and maintainers will move again...

<comment><USER4> Indeed. The premise that GitHub is "irreplaceable" seemed overstated to me. In fact, if GitHub were really irreplaceable than any project using it should already be looking to break their ties before they get in any deeper!

As for SourceForge, I was a little sad the other day when I went to download a project I've used for years to install on a new machine, found it was still hosted on SF... and then spent 15 minutes downloading the same file from a couple of independent mirrors and checking the SHA1s all matched before I installed it. How the mighty are fallen...</comment></comment>


Errors in the Encyclopædia Britannica that have been corrected in Wikipedia - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Errors_in_the_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica_that_have_been_corrected_in_Wikipedia

<comment><USER2> I'm sure there must be an equal and inverse list for errors in Wikipedia that are correct in Britannica, and lets not even get started on things explained in Britannica with clarity and brevity where Wikipedia doodles on minutiae.

Seriously - I'm not quite sure what the point of this is, other than as a Wikipedia PR exercise.

<comment><USER3> And let's not forget that recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education where Wikipedians were obstinately refusing to allow an authority on the subject to fix some errors in an article on the Haymarket Affair, or even to take his input on how the article should be fixed.

Their official position on the subject was, as I remember, to point out that Wikipedia articles aren't meant to represent the facts; they're meant to represent popular conceptions. (Perhaps that's why their articles on health topics tend to be so bad about parroting pseudoscientific hogwash?)

<comment><USER4> Yup, the standard for inclusion on Wikipedia is "Verifiability, Not Truth", which I feel is a sad reflection on our post-modern age.

<comment><USER3> It's funny, a long time ago the prevailing definition of knowledge among philosophers was "justified _true_ belief". Then Gettier came along in the 60s and rained on everyone's parade, and it became clear that those three criteria were not sufficient.

Meanwhile, Wikipedia's official position is, in essence, that you only need to have two of them to have knowledge. Which is ironically something of a step back to the way scholars were doing it in the Middle Ages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You know, that's a ridiculously short list. I was honestly expecting something much, much longer for a crowdsourced errata-discovery spanning 32 volumes. Kudos to Encyclopedia Britannica on doing a good job.

<comment><USER6> I know, it's impressive.

I am sure I, like many people, have found dozens of errors in Wikipedia. I used to try to correct them, but gave up when my changes would get reverted, even with references.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Most Popular Web Browsers (2002 – 2019) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYxaLbCjkQQ&t=1s <comment><USER2> > _Data Source (2002 - > 2008):[https://www.w3schools.com/browsers/default.asp](https://www.w3schools.com/browsers/default.asp) > _

> _Data Source (2009 - > 2019):[http://gs.statcounter.com](http://gs.statcounter.com) _

www.w3schools.com: _W3Schools has 50 million monthly visits._ => I believe that my father never accessed W3Schools.

gs.statcounter.com: _Our tracking code is installed on more than 2 million sites globally._ => 2M is not a lot and at least in my case "statcounter.com" would be blocked by default together with e.g. "Google analytics".

This is therefore just a representation of some kind of subset of the users and cannot be generalized.

</comment><comment><USER3> made a 6 minute video that could have been a 2d multiline chart</comment>


The Coming Software Apocalypse - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/09/saving-the-world-from-code/540393/ <comment><USER2> > The fail-safe code that Toyota had put in place wasn't enough to stop it.

> "You have software watching the software," Barr testified.

> "If the software malfunctions and the same program or same app that is > crashed

> is supposed to save the day, it can't save the day because it is not > working."

The failure of Toyota was a memory corruption due to a stack overflow, because an IRQ had been triggered at exactly the wrong time (i.e the thread being interrupted is already using almost all of its stack space).

Thus, the probability for the failure to occur was small ; which means rebooting the system, to run again the same erroneous code might actually make sense (and save lives).

I think the real problem with a fail-safe, in the case of Toyota, is _when_ to trigger it. It's not as if we had a memory-corruption handler that gets called everytime something gets overwritten by mistake.</comment>


White Collars Turn Blue (1996) - <AUTHOR> http://mit.edu/krugman/www/BACKWRD2.html

<comment><USER2> This really gives you an idea of how long 100 years has gotten.

Krugman was asked to predict the state of the world in 2096, and and most of his vision is happening right now.

And then there are things he didn't mention, but which have (or will shortly) become technically feasible. I think any of these are potentially more world- shifting than, say, the decline of the American suburb:

\- Real-time neuron-level simulation of human brains (~10 years to go)

\- Design of artificial proteins

\- Machine vision good enough to drive cars/trucks

Personally, 2096 looks further away the closer we get to it.

<comment><USER3> A lot of what you mention was raised in a recent discussion between Paul Krugman and cutting-edge Sci-fi author Charlie Stross.

Here's a copy of the transcript, which is also well worth a read <http://sites.google.com/site/strosskrugmantranscript/>

_Sample Charlie Stross: It's going to be one of these things where there is going to be a sudden step change. ... When the automatic self-driving vehicles get sufficiently good that they are less likely to be in a collision than a human driver, your premium will go up if you insist on driving manually. Yeah, that's going to go up steeply a few years later. I think we may be seeing the end of human beings allowed to drive the public highways within 30 years_

<comment><USER4> Insurgence companies are profitable with the current level of risk, so some of them would be happy and profitable to keep selling inshurance at the current rate. The only driver for machine drivers is going to be cheaper premiums and boredom. Once machines drivers become really popular we might end up with specific high speed lanes which only they can enter etc. But, it's going to take at least 20 years to really go from mostly human to hardly any human drivers.

<comment><USER5> Insurance is profitable because the risk is spread across a wide base, including risk-averse people. If the default is high-safety automatic vehicles, only the reckless and adrenaline-junkies are likely to drive, forcing up rates disproportionately.

<comment><USER6> There isn't a whole lot of risk spreading in car insurance. They adjust rates heavily based on age and driving record. Most of the reckless adrenaline junkies are young, and have a history of collisions and moving violations, so it's fairly easy to identify them.

<comment><USER5> Without actually being an actuary, and having access to the raw data, it's rather hard to tell IMHO whether the rate adjustments are really sufficient to cover the risk. Since risky customers are "pay big now, maybe payout big later" - and young customers get older and more experienced - it seems to me that there may be a human tendency to slightly underprice the risk of customers who pay large premia.

The analogous situation with health insurance, of course, is even more deeply skewed. Insurance companies love having healthy young people on their plans because they almost never have to pay out - young healthy people overpay by quite a bit on health insurance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Astonishing?

 _Soaring resource prices_ \- he makes no mention of the currency explosion that led to inflated prices. Or that right now oil demand is back to 2005 levels. But in the long term his is obviously right because finite resources are finite. How's that an amazing prediction?

 _The environment as property._ Is he talking about plain old private property? Or pollution regulations, or cap and trade? Those things were all on the table in 1996. And today Obama is still having a lot of trouble with even symbolic cap and trade.

 _The rebirth of the big city_ \- Urbanization is not a new trend, and despite what happened to Detroit, it was never in recess, certainly not outside of America.

 _The devaluation of higher education_ \- This simply has not come true at all. I hope the ivy league bubble bursts at someone point, but I think we're still decades away from that.

 _The celebrity economy._ \- Andy Warhol said it better.

<comment><USER8> _The devaluation of higher education_

This is going to happen sooner rather than later. University education at this point is simply a trend - something that everyone does. You can see this not in the sciences as much as in the standard arts programs that 70% of the graduate population possess. The cost of these programs keep climbing, and the average wage does not.

Eventually, the tipping point will be reached and there will be more people in the middle class that cannot afford university without the promise of the high paying job that it gives - which it doesn't if a degree is commonplace.

Even better, European countries often fund their universities to almost 100%. When tax revenue drops off, these funds will eventually be cut. You can see this happening in Canada today.

Not many people are going to pay $70K for a four year program to become a career receptionist. Even less when it's perfectly clear that a high school educated trades apprentice can make a lot more.

<comment><USER7> _University education at this point is simply a trend - something that everyone does._

I think this makes it _less_ likely to burst. Sure a prestigious university might lose its prestige if it lets in too many commoners. But a persistent trend is more likely to make a required universal ritual.

 _The cost of these programs keep climbing, and the average wage does not._

The cost keeps climbing because people are willing to pay it. When the costs stop climbing that's not the same as a collapse or even a change in the general trend of needing to have a college degree.

 _Even better, European countries often fund their universities to almost 100%. When tax revenue drops off, these funds will eventually be cut. You can see this happening in Canada today._

Tax revenues drop in every recession, government programs are cut, rarely eliminated and I doubt universities will be the first to go anyway.

Look at California, it's probably going to cut the funding to it's public university system, but it won't eliminate it, far from it.

The bottom line is college is already in many ways more like a land cruise then a serious and challenging endeavor. And the non-academic activities which happen in college often have a greater impact on your lifetime earnings then the classes you take. Plus society loves universal rituals and traditions.

While ever rising tuition rates have to stop at some point, college education is not going away any time soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One potential problem with the scenario outlined here by Krugman is the assumption that an economy organised principally around information will precipitate the devaluing of that knowledge. What's true for oil and steel is not necessarily true for information (a generic categorisation if there ever was one), and Krugman draws this analogy far too glibly. If anything, possessing information makes it easier to acquire more and more valuable information; the technological exponentiation we are living through today makes that point clearly. If information does not obey the basic rule of scarcity that physical goods do, it seems unreasonable to assume automatically that the effect of "information abundance" on the economy will be analogous to a glut of oil or grain.

A lot is also made of the outsourcing of "knowledge workers"; hardly a new phenomenon, even in 1996. And it will almost certainly still exist in 2096. But the inequities in living standards and expectations that makes outsourcing practical currently is steadily being eradicated by the gradual improvement in economic conditions which outsourcing itself helps to make possible. In some sense, the condition is probably self-throttling. The presumptive end of all this is a high-entropy state, where there is no strong "potential difference" between economies to make outsourcing worthwhile: it would eventually become pointless for everyone. I don't imagine we'll reach that point by 2096, though :-)

<comment><USER10> "But the inequities in living standards and expectations that makes outsourcing practical currently is steadily being eradicated by the gradual improvement in economic conditions which outsourcing itself helps to make possible."

In effect, it is an arbitrage opportunity where you have a large number of well educated people with a low standard of living, combined with cost of living differences compared to western countries.

Certainly, over the next 100 years such arbitrage opportunities should abate, as people around the world with valued skills have similar standards and costs of living, and thus demand similar wages. We seem to be seeing the beginnings of that process already.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I love that Esther Dyson beat Chris Anderson to "free" by a good 13 years.

</comment><comment><USER12> The implications for journalists from this piece are fun. According to this, the jobs will be shifting more and more back to old-school, face-to-face shoe leather reporting.

Suburban-based newspapers will shrink but stick around and remain profitable once they hit the right size due to having a monopoly. In cities, however, there will be a dozen outlets each going after different tribes of metropolitans with some overlap, similar to how a place like Chicago once had dozens of papers each serving different immigrant communities.

</comment><comment><USER13> Interesting that he completely failed to predict the possibility of political punditry as an economist's day job. (Or, in the closing sentence, did he...?)

<comment><USER14> I think you have it backwards. Being a tenured economics professor is Krugman's day job. Nobody _makes a living_ writing New York Times op-ed pieces, even though Krugman may be more famous now for his op-eds than for his academic work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm glad I did not see the author's name until I got to the bottom. It totally would have changed how I considered the content.

</comment><comment><USER3> Seems to be by Paul Krugman. He's always worth reading.

</comment><comment><USER15> There's nothing particularly astonishing about predicting that history will repeat itself...

</comment><comment><USER16> "Free copies of content are going to be what you use to establish your fame. Then you go out and milk it"

Piracy is your friend.

</comment><comment><USER17> Spot on! Seems like things are happening a little faster though.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the touchscreen/display technology used in ASUS EA800? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> "For starters it uses an ultra-sensitive 2,540 dpi touchscreen (0.01mm dot pitch). That's currently unparalleled in the tablet space, and it needs this level of sensitivity in order to function as a notepad and effectively record the tiniest details in handwritten notes. While handwriting can be slower than typing long reams of text, it gives much greater freedom than a laptop to use personal shorthand and entire document freedom, as well as opens up the possibility to easily add mathematical or scientific formula. This makes business meetings or lecture note taking much easier.

ASUS docs state the touchscreen also has 256 levels of sensitivity so it knows how hard you're pressing, which can mean the difference between a dot, a dash and a stroke, and even though the EA800 only has a monochrome display it features 64 grey levels between black and white for at least some measurable level of contrast. The best example is probably to try reading manga and comics on it, we'd imagine."[1]

[1] [http://techinstyle.tv/products/can-asus-eee-note- ea800-reinv...](http://techinstyle.tv/products/can-asus-eee-note- ea800-reinvent-the-digital-notepad/)

Also see [http://www.mobilityfeeds.com/mobility-feed/2011/02/asus- laun...](http://www.mobilityfeeds.com/mobility-feed/2011/02/asus-launches-the- eee-note-ea800-ereader-tablet-touch-screen-touchscreen.html)

tl;dr; It appears to have a very high DPI for a tablet display along with 256 different levels of pressure detection.

<comment><AUTHOR> What is the best touchscreen technology that can be used for capturing handwritten notes? I am a started in this area, there are variety of displays available, like LCD touchscreens, TFT, Resistive, Capacitative, PixelQi, e-Ink and more... Can you give me a light about these technology? I am interested to develop an note taking gadget. If you can provide me information on which display technology and touch screen to be used. It would be much helpful...</comment></comment>