How We Learned to Kill - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/01/opinion/sunday/how-we-learned-to-kill.html <comment><USER2> I find it very strange that people talk about soldiers as if they had some special moral responsibility for what happens during a war.

Sure, they should be thinking about the implications and ethics of their actions, as we all should, and yet they also signed up to serve the nation, and to do what their nation thought necessary and just. Do people think that democratic nations should not have armies, and it is an ethical imperative for Americans, English and others to refuse to serve? If not, then it is all of our responsibilities, as voters and citizens, to ensure that only just wars are fought, and using ethical means. If not, then we are all responsible, not just the soldiers.

Instead of asking "how could you kill someone" we should be asking "how can you live in a political system that causes people to be ordered to kill people, in which you have the ability to change this fact".

I'm not a pacifist myself, I just don't see how in a democracy, the buck stops with the soldiers.

<comment><USER3> When you volunteer as a soldier to be deployed to a war zone and kill people (or directly support other soldiers killing), you have a special moral responsibility for what happens during a war.

 _and to do what their nation thought necessary and just._

The US did not think that invading Iraq was 'just'. Iraq was a defeatable foe, and the war in Afghanistan wasn't producing results. There was nothing 'just' about the invasion of Iraq by the US - if the US did invade places because the dictator is nasty, they'd be a _lot_ more militarily involved in Africa.

I don't understand why Americans don't hold people who volunteer to go fight overseas to a stricter moral questioning. It's a total cop-out to say "well, I was doing it for my country, and my country wanted to go do it". The comments you make about refusing to serve are not appropriate; there was no conscription.

 _it is all of our responsibilities, as voters and citizens_

In a four-year election cycle, how does a voter have an effect on a war late in year 3 started because of an unrelated-but-significant event in year 1?

Basically the buck stops with the soldiers for the same reason that soldiers should decline to follow an immoral order. Otherwise you absolve them morally of anything their nation requires of them: hello Auschwitz guards. It's also an oversimplification, a false binary choice, to say that the buck can't stop in multiple places. It stops with the soldiers. It also stops with the politicians. It's not like there's only one entity responsible for something like this.

<comment><USER4> > When you volunteer ... you have a special moral responsibility for what > happens during a war.

A responsibility for your actions, or everything that happens during the war? What if your voluntary enlistment was due to false information, or steady conditioning by the state since childhood? Does intent play no role? Do you extend that line of thinking to the justice system where manslaughter and murder are treated differently?

> The US did not think that invading Iraq was 'just'.

Opinion polls were pretty high at the time. The righteousness of the invasion, from a legal perspective, was pretty firm - UN buy-in, Saddam later admitting that he was intentionally trying to make his possession of WMDs uncertain, continuous violation of no fly zones, etc. From a strict moral perspective that observes principles of nonaggression, no - it was not just.

> I don't understand why Americans don't hold people who volunteer to go fight > overseas to a stricter moral questioning.

Because the majority of people, not just Americans, don't deeply consider the morality of things like that. Consider the logical conclusion of this line of thinking. Your position is essentially that the state does not have the authority to define righteousness kills. If one were to accept that position, then the state would not have a monopoly on violence - which is pretty much the yardstick for state sovereignty. This is a position that is morally and logically consistent, but obviously not widely held.

> ... how does a voter have an effect ...

How about not reelecting a president to a second term when he started the war in the first term?

> ... soldiers should decline to follow an immoral order.

There is an obligation to refuse _illegal_ orders, this gets back to my point about the majority of people not deeply considering the morality of actions, and deferring to the state.

<comment><USER5> You can't really push that sort of responsibility up. You own it.

I'm a conscientious objector because of that, not because I'm a pacifist (far from it). Reduced to the simplest of arguments: if everybody thought that way the only people that would end up pushing for a fight would be the politicians but they never ever want to get their hands dirty, problem solved. Don't be someone else's tool.

As for the 'righteousness of the invasion': I'm not sure if we lived in the same world at the time but from a legal perspective it was - and is - a total sham and UN buy-in hinged on the UN not being lied to which is something that we know for a fact happened.

Colin Powell's stature never recovered after that ill fated speech.

> Because the majority of people, not just Americans, don't deeply consider > the morality of things like that.

That's not entirely true either. Flag worshipping, supporting the troops and other nationalistic elements are not equally present in all countries, America has these in spades. Very few countries in the world are so gung-ho about going to war as the US is.

> How about not reelecting a president to a second term when he started the > war in the first term?

That's one of the problems right there, America likes to see itself at war against overseas foes, _nothing_ brings out support for the sitting president as a war does. See the Bush quote: "I'm a war president". That made all the difference in getting him re-elected in the first place, critical thinking does not enter into it.

> There is an obligation to refuse illegal orders, this gets back to my point > about the majority of people not deeply considering the morality of actions, > and deferring to the state.

I've decided that the buck stops with _me_.

If someone ever invades the country where I live I'll be more than happy to do my bit _but_ in the meantime I won't allow myself to be used as a tool for political ends whose murky origins (business, empire building, posturing, political careerism) are purposefully obscured.

<comment><USER4> > You can't really push that sort of responsibility up. You own it.

That is pretty unrealistic. I agree with you about ignoring intent, but I also recognize the fact that at present this sort of philosophy would not work in a world dominated by states.

> ... the only people that would end up pushing for a fight would be the > politicians ...

Or defense contractors. In a world where the majority of people believe in ghosts, it is not likely that things will work out in the way you think they would. I'm pretty confident that the US would start exercising its legal authority in drafting military aged males. I can already hear you saying "But they'd refuse!", but that would require you to ignore history.

> I'm not sure if we lived in the same world at the time but from a legal > perspective...

I'm guessing not, because you seem to have forgotten all the games played with UN weapons inspectors and violation of no fly zones.

> That's not entirely true either. Flag worshipping...

Actually, the same logic that dismantles the moral authority of the state's power to wage war, dismantles the moral authority of every other state power. So obviously this sort of moral analysis is not occurring regularly, because the world is full of states. I have no doubt that there are a lot of countries full of people who are less predisposed to military expeditions than Americans, but my point is that it isn't due to deep moral reflection.

> That made all the difference in getting him re-elected in the first place, > critical thinking does not enter into it.

And yet you are expecting widespread moral reflection from the very same people.

> I've decided that the buck stops with me.

That is great and all, but not every effective in terms of systemic change. If you really want war to go away, then you need to get rid of the state. That is the reason I got involved with development in the bitcoin ecosystem several years ago, popularization would likely deal a killing stroke to the state.

<comment><USER5> Bitcoin has nothing to do with waging war or the end of the state.

As for me being unrealistic: it's my life, I'll be happy to live it without ever having to say that I allowed myself to be used whatever the consequences, and yes, I would refuse.

Defense contractors can't wage war without people willing to operate the weapons, the circle of concern/circle of influence nicely overlaps if you simply say 'I refuse'.

That's where you exert maximum pressure. Developing bitcoin to stop wars is about as relevant as invading Iraq was as a response to 9/11.

As for the no-fly zones and the UN weapon inspectors:

(1) the no-fly zone was a unilateral arrangement, how do you think the US would respond if some entity declared a no-fly zone over the US?

(2) the UN weapons inspectors were in agreement that Saddam did _not_ possess a credible threat of WMDs.

It's all just dumb wars over resources no more, no less.

<comment><USER4> > Bitcoin has nothing to do with waging war or the end of the state.

Cash is just as important in war as bodies to throw into the meat grinder. If the state loses its control over the money supply, it isn't going to be able to finance war... or exert much influence otherwise.

> As for me being unrealistic: it's my life, I'll be happy...

Cool, I thought you were interested in solving a problem outside of yourself - carry on.

> Defense contractors can't wage war without people willing to operate the > weapons...

There will always be people to operate the weapons, offer more money or tell them that their god demands it.

> As for the no-fly zones and the UN weapon inspectors:

Yeah, I'm not going to argue about facts - first result in google: [http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/30/world/meast/iraq-weapons- inspe...](http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/30/world/meast/iraq-weapons-inspections- fast-facts/)

> It's all just dumb wars over resources no more, no less.

Agreed, but the original point was about legal justification, not actual agenda.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Imagine if we took the commandment "Thou shall not kill" to heart. Imagine if instead of killing those men on the roadside, it was the job to the soldiers to incapacitate them but take them alive. Is it possible? Of course it is possible. Perhaps harder, but possible.

Here's the funny thing about killing. Somehow we continually find excuses for doing it. And the easiest excuse of all is that the other guy did it first. And so it goes round and round and never stops, forever escalating. And it won't stop, until we stop making excuses.

<comment><USER7> Well, when it comes to firearms, incapacitation doesn't work quite like the movies show. You can't just hit someone in the arm/leg every time (aiming is harder than that), and even if you do it will fairly likely kill them anyway. If you really want to priorize incapacitating enemy soldiers, you're going to have to use different weapons than firearms, weapons that are probably shorter range and slower. That isn't a practical option when the enemy soldiers have guns themselves.

I'm all for peace but telling your own soldiers not to kill could be a very good way to get many of your own soldiers killed.

<comment><USER8> We could use some serious development in non-lethal weapons, but I'm afraid it might not solve anything - non-lethal weaponry is by definition more complicated by lethal, and thus any technology designed to stun could be repurposed to kill with more effectiveness than the bloodless variant. We'd probably need to reach the level when there would be no practical difference of effectiveness between the two types.

<comment><USER9> One of the fascinating things to come out of the widespread distribution of non-lethal weapons to police has been two effects:

1 - police are more likely to use non-lethal weapons, even in cases where no weapon at all would work fine, because the long-term consequences of using a non-lethal are minimal

2 - in cases where people _do_ die due to being attacked by a non-lethal weapon, there's generally quite a bit of moral outrage that the weapon was used at all, even if it was well warranted

I suspect if soldiers were issued stun weapons tomorrow, we'd see both of these come true and people would still cry foul when some percentage of targets inevitably died as the result of the use of the non-lethal weapon, and rules of engagement would be vastly changed to virtually eliminate the idea of escalation of force, just go in shooting and sort it out later.

<comment><USER10> There's a difference between an army and a police force. Police are there to enforce the law and neutralize criminals.

Generally speaking, the police don't want to kill anyone. They want to capture the suspect and move on. Back in the day, non-lethal force meant beating the guy with a big stick, but liability became an issue. So now we pull guns on dumb kids, and a jumpy cop results in a dead dum kid instead of a broken arm.

Armies are different. Since the US Civil War, total annihilation of the enemy's ability to make war has been the rule of the day. You err on the side of killing, becuase a stunned enemy lives to fight another day.

<comment><USER11> So, on your last point, you're sort of missing an important part of absolute war:

Against a fair enemy, the "ability to make war" becomes the problem of destroying capital of the enemy (factories, railroads, etc.). Against an enemy that doesn't have any sort of indigenous weapons production or roads to speak of, the "ability to make war" consists of the problem of destroying the manpower of the enemy.

So, we notice that while we bombed Germany and Japan, less than three decades later they were banging along--and we notice that when we spend a decade in Iraq and Afghanistan, we end up just playing whack-a-mole with hapless militia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It is always an interesting experience when you recognize a little of your old self in somebody else, projection is really tempting. My head was in the same place almost ten years ago, after Fallujah - the end justifies the means. That is pretty much what the final two paragraphs say - yeah it is shitty, but the end justifies the means. This is a big step beyond "They hate us for our freedoms!", but still falls short of acknowledging the fact that a universally preferable end state isn't likely to be reached through violence or threats of violence. I wouldn't be surprised if the Captain Kudo eventually arrives at that conclusion.

</comment><comment><USER8> A very good and honest article.

Here's one gem I noticed, right at the end:

> _I don't blame Presidents George W. Bush or Barack Obama for these wars. Our > elected leaders, after all, are just following orders, no different from the > Marine who asks if he can kill a man digging by the side of the road._

Exactly. Some people seem to think that the President is the one with the most power, and that he can wield it arbitrarily. It's not true. You _don 't get to be a President_ of a country if you're not up to your eyeballs with connections and mutual favour-based relationships. Nobody is going to let you become President if you're the type of person that could seriously endanger the entrenched status quo based on your whims. Such people are filtered out earlier in the process. I suspect that, in a way, the office of President is one of the least real power in actual politics.

<comment><USER12> While I agree that the President is not really able to shake things up any more than his political allies will allow, the quoted statement does beg the question: Who is handing out the orders?

Who is it that we blame for putting soldiers in a position to kill innocents for reasons of such dubious morality?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> There was a BBC doc about Sandhurst a few years ago where they showed how they train recruits to kill people.

Basically it involves the delightfully low-tech method of having recruits charge towards a bag of grass cuttings and stabbing it in the gut with their bayonet while chanting "KILL!"

One of the recruits was so freaked out by the whole thing that he quit soon afterwards.

Here it is: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LITY6RT1nmo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LITY6RT1nmo)

(46:11) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LITY6RT1nmo#t=2771](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LITY6RT1nmo#t=2771)

</comment><comment><USER14> Life as an Afghani farmer:

> Be farming your land in peace

> Some Saudis blow up shit

> US attacks Afghanistan

> Try to keep out of trouble

> See clear skies one night and want to irrigate land

> Carry tools in a package, start digging

> Get shot by highly trained killer cuz you are potentially a terrorist

> WTF.gif

</comment><comment><USER15> It's ok to kill because it is an order. I bet the other side feels the same way. Just an order

</comment><comment><USER16> War is the institutionalization of selective sociopathy.

This is quite illustrative:

"For a while after I ordered the Marine to take that first shot, everything we did seemed acceptable. It revealed that killing could be banal. Each day would bring a new threat that needed to be eliminated"

</comment><comment><USER17> >I focused on lessons I had learned reading Lt. Col. Dave Grossman's book "On Killing,"

Dave Grossman reportedly cites someone named S. L. A. Marshall who made the claim that only a small percentage of infantry ever fired their weapons, to support the idea that most people have some natural reluctance to kill in battle. I just want to point out that there is zero evidence for this claim: [https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2014/12/28/shoot-to- kill/](https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2014/12/28/shoot-to-kill/)

<comment><USER18> This link is annecdotal gibberish.

<comment><USER17> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.L.A._Marshall#Controversy_af...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.L.A._Marshall#Controversy_after_death)

People have looked for the evidence for his claim but can't find it. I've had people repeat the claim to me and cite Grossman or Marshall, but when I asked them to give a specific source for it they couldn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So when are we going to learn to bridge the gap, forgive and flourish with our enemies-become-friends? Or, is that just too darn hard?

<comment><USER20> It's very hard to do if the other side won't agree to sing campfire songs with us too. Especially if they'd rather violently impose Sharia through a worldwide caliphate, to use one contemporary example. Gotta pay the Dhimmi before we can forgive and flourish.

Yes, there are a lot of reasonable people on the other side of the line. But the leadership of those reasonable people can, depending on who you're talking about, be very, very unreasonable.

<comment><USER3> _Especially if they 'd rather violently impose Sharia through a worldwide caliphate, to use one contemporary example._

What a weird example. ISIS wouldn't exist today if it weren't for the US destroying Iraq as a regional power.

<comment><USER21> But maybe something else would. You don't know that. And there were and are people who want to impose Sharia violently even without ISIS.

<comment><USER3> Since we're playing the "you don't know that" game, you don't know that it wouldn't have gone the other way. Maybe the Arab Spring might have taken hold in Iraq. Maybe the UN might have found a better diplomatic solution if the US hadn't pre-empted them by invading.

One of the criticisms against the US invading was that the US had no plan for what to do after the military victory, and that Hussein was a stabilising power in the region; remove him and chaos would ensue if things weren't handled carefully.

 _And there were and are people who want to impose Sharia violently_

And instead they got people who wanted to impose Freedom(tm) violently... quite violently. I wonder if it matters to the average Kurd if their loved ones get beheaded, gassed, or "collateral damage"'d.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's highly "subjective"

</comment><comment><USER23> This story is accurate to a fault.

</comment><comment><USER24> No, you didn't learn to kill. You were selected because of your trust in authority and lack of responsibility. Soldiers shouldn't ask for permission to shoot, especially not "snipers". The whole thing is just a charade to enable diffusion of responsibility.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_responsibility](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_responsibility)

<comment><USER25> This is ridiculous. Soldiers aren't 'selected' for their trust in authority and lack of responsibility. And they _are_ supposed to ask for permission to shoot. _Especially_ snipers.

I don't know where you got your information, but it wasn't from any experience with military.

Hey, lets look at some US Marine Corps ROE documentation:

"We must review all aspects of the fight, from weaponeering to the understanding of proportionate force. Training needs to be discussion and scenario based, thus forcing Marines to articulate their perceptions of and responses to the situations. "Wrong" answers should not be reprimanded but need to be explored further. This will take time, but we cannot allow wallflowers to escape participation. We must further empower subordinate unit leaders to continue the training at their levels."

Virtually everything the US military teaches is contrary to what you've stated.

<comment><USER24> "I don't know where you got your information, but it wasn't from any experience with military."

I spent 15 months of conscription in one of those "small team, heavy backpack, green beret"-type units.

A sniper operates as part of a self-sustaining team to take down high value targets, often trough infiltration. It's self explanatory why a real sniper wouldn't ask for permission nor why no one would ever, despite what the movies tell you, tell them to "take the shot". Like in any high risk activity you are the one who is going to have to deal with the consequences of your actions and should therefor operate, as much as possible, at your own discretion.

These guys aren't snipers, they are sharpshooters on guard duty. They might as well be outsourced to some guy with a playstation controller in the future.

"Virtually everything the US military teaches is contrary to what you've stated."

I doubt that. On the other hand the US military isn't exactly known for being competent.

<comment><USER25> Is there any military that is known for being competent?

<comment><USER24> It's relative, but yes. Spend some time with people who served under the UN and you'll hear all about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> He ordered the killing of humans because of an assumption? What the shit. Just walk over there and ask the bloke what he's doing, or investigate after they left, or throw in a flash grenade and disable, shoot the legs not the heads. Anything but kill. What are they thinking? That their chances of survival are higher if they kill the enemy combatants before they can kill them? Is this really what it boils down to? This sort of behavior is not acceptable for a human being, heck its not acceptable for an animal being or a plant. Amazing how these "soldiers" are _multiple magnitudes_ less civilized than any insect I can think of right now.

What kind of demented questions is "can we shoot them?" anyways. Don't shoot unless shot upon. No you can never just shoot somebody.

And that he has the balls to try to justify his mass murders after the fact is way beyond me.

Edit: Deleting my sub comments because the discussion has gone completely off topic. Guys write your own top level comment and describe your view in one coherent piece. This piecemeal snowball-fight leads nowhere and nobody can be asked to get into a pitiful mud fight with 100 different people at the same time. I realize its my own mistake I should never have replied to any of them, especially the sub-thread about cats. Seriously guys?

<comment><USER8> This is war. A place of snap decisions, unfortunately. Sure, I personally would like US soldiers, or for that matter my own country's soldiers, to wage war like United Federation of Planets - diplomacy, diplomacy, and if that fails, set phasers to stun. But we don't have phasers. Nowdays, if you run at your enemy with a taser, you'll get shot to death before you're halfway there.

I'm not defending the atrocities many a soldier committed on purpose. There are many unforgivable things that happen during war. But in the current shape of warfare, you can't blame soldiers for using lethal force against a perceived lethal threat. Let's develop phasers with stun settings that are as effective as guns, and then we can go back to this conversation.

EDIT: Come on. Off-topic or not, you're breaking the conversation flow by deleting your responses. Those comments are useful for context even if some of us disagree with them.

<comment><USER16> "you can't blame soldiers for using lethal force against a perceived lethal threat."

Did you realise how that phrase is incredibly dangerously close to this other one:

"You can't blame a Government for preventively imprison or kill someone because some of its bureaucrat has perceived threat" ?

You bliss the first one and you have nothing left to contain the other one from happening

Unless you are a believer of the capability to self-refrain of an ever expanding Government.

<comment><USER8> > _Did you realise how that phrase is incredibly dangerously close to this > other one_

It's not. Because soldiers are thrown into battle and forced to make snap decisions that determine whether they'll live or die the very next second, while the Government has both more time for deliberation and much, much wider range of possible actions to take.

> _You bliss the first one and you have nothing left to contain the other one > from happening_

This does not follow. My point was - if they're shooting at you and you're not allowed to run, what can you do except shoot back? The problem is with those who put you in a position where you're getting shot at.

> _Unless you are a believer of the capability to self-refrain of an ever > expanding Government._

Of course I don't. I just feel that focusing on front-line soldiers is the wrong place to start solving this problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I want to ask Timothy Kudo if there was anything else he knew about the men digging by the side of the road that indicated to him that they were planting a bomb. Because if not, he's just a murderer. By the description in that article, he did not have nearly enough information to decide that those men should die.

America was founded on the principle of "innocent until proven guilty". Timothy Kudo was acting as judge and jury for these men and found them guilty with almost no evidence. There are numerous reasons why someone might be digging next to the road at night.

It's only by chance that he happened to be right. He uses the phrase "good shoot, bad result", but if that is the standard he's using for "good shoot", I wonder how many of his kills were "bad shoot, good result".

And it's ridiculous to isolate the responsibility for this kind of action to the soldiers. This is on everyone who accept this as okay--the voters who vote for warmongering politicians, the politicians who start wars and create decision policies that say a shot like this is okay, the officers who give the orders, and the troops on the ground that follow them.

<comment><USER28> The concept of "innocent until proven guilty" is generally not used in warfare. This isn't an American thing; it's long been part of the customary / traditional rules governing lawful conflict.

To provide an easy to understand example why; you would not have to have a legal proceeding to determine that someone wearing a grey uniform with an iron cross on it was in fact a German soldier during WWI. Visual recognition, even from a distance (of the kind that would cause serious cross-examination in a domestic court), is sufficient to make the call that he is an enemy combatant.

Soldiers are absolutely empowered to act as judge, juror, and executioner, and are given significant latitude in determining who is and is not a lawful combatant.

It is worth noting that this Marine officer was acting under not just US rules of engagement, but also NATO ROEs. Those ROEs would have been vetted by the lawyers of all the NATO members, who already abide by some of the most historically rigorous applications of the laws of war.

As for whether Kudo knew anything else about the men digging on the side of the road. The answer is probably not. But, he also knew a lot about the cultural context in which they were operating, and leveraged that to make an informed judgment call about how to proceed. Regardless of whether you personally think that was moral or not, the fact is that it was legally permissible under internationally agreed upon laws of warfare.

<comment><USER27> > The concept of "innocent until proven guilty" is generally not used in > warfare. This isn't an American thing; it's long been part of the customary > / traditional rules governing lawful conflict.

You don't get to just stop doing the right thing because a war started. Customs/traditions aren't an excuse for murder.

> To provide an easy to understand example why; you would not have to have a > legal proceeding to determine that someone wearing a grey uniform with an > iron cross on it was in fact a German soldier during WWI. Visual > recognition, even from a distance (of the kind that would cause serious > cross-examination in a domestic court), is sufficient to make the call that > he is an enemy combatant.

Surely you can see how this is much clearer than people digging next to a road.

> It is worth noting that this Marine officer was acting under not just US > rules of engagement, but also NATO ROEs. Those ROEs would have been vetted > by the lawyers of all the NATO members, who already abide by some of the > most historically rigorous applications of the laws of war.

And Nazis were "just taking orders". What's your point? Just because the authorities say it's okay to murder someone doesn't mean it's okay to murder someone.

> Regardless of whether you personally think that was moral or not, the fact > is that it was legally permissible under internationally agreed upon laws of > warfare.

And it shouldn't be.

Your defense of Kudo's actions is basically: "Law made by Western powers says that what Western powers do is okay, so it's okay!" Fuck that noise. This is just murder.

If you're killing someone, you'd better have a damn good reason, and you'd better be damn sure you're right. Kudo wasn't, but he killed those men anyway.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What must-listen podcasts do you subscribe to? - <AUTHOR>

We just did this for newsletters (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9476097) and the topic of podcasts arose.<p>So, which podcasts do you follow religiously? <comment><AUTHOR> I'll start:

This Week in Startups

Startups for the Rest of Us

The Rocketship Podcast

Serial (one off)

Joe Rogan Experience

Bulletproof Executive

Tim Ferriss Show

A16z

Product Hunt

Kalzumeus

Product People</comment>


Long-time Googler will head Silicon Valley patent office - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/11/long-time-googler-will-head-silicon-valley-patent-office/

<comment><USER2> A first step in the right direction. I don't think the fact that she formerly worked for Google is an issue though. The fact that she has sane views on patents is what matters.

I'd love to see the USPTO review some of the more silly patents they have granted, and start applying both the innovative and inventive criteria.</comment>


A 64-year-old engineer is suing Google for age discrimination - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/390835/google-age-discrimination/ <comment><USER2> While age discrimination may exist at Google, and the legal case may have merit, the article does a horrible job of communicating where.

It makes it sounds like the guy had a bad interview (perhaps because of the interviewer) and didn't move on. That happens all the time, every day, to every sort of candidate. Often it's because of legitimate issues with candidate, and many times because of incidental circumstances surrounding the interviewer.

It would have been interesting to see something more suggestive of discrimination.

</comment><comment><USER3> Um. That's the standard Google interview process. Everyone goes through it. Contacted by an overzealous recruiter who gushes about qualifications but has no real understanding of what it would mean to be qualified. Annoying and frustrating phone interview with someone who doesn't actually understand the questions or answers (and who is hard to hear and understand). The phone interviewer just has a list of questions and correct answers. Slightly different answer? Sorry. Better answer than the one on the list? Sorry, I don't understand what these mean, your answer doesn't match.

The false positives come with staggering frequency. If you were to put the same candidate through the process twice you'd get two different results.

Google is terrible at interviewing, but the good thing for their legal case is that they are uniformly terrible without regard to age, race, ethnic origin or sexual preference.

Google employees go through mandatory annual diversity and anti-discrimination training. Hiring managers have an additional managing within the law training. Google also hosts optional classes to help employees identify and overcome unconscious bias. They're about the least discriminatory company I've ever heard of and actively encourage diversity in the company and the world.

They just suck at hiring.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't know if the poor interview can really prove discrimination. Yes the conditions sound like they were awful (I mean, coding exercise over the phone? wtf), but based on my experience interviewing at Google is pretty terrible, regardless of your age. How is he gonna prove that he was treated unfairly when it is well known that Google interviewers are terrible?

To be clear, I do believe that there is a significant bias against older folks in tech. I have witnessed it when I was trying to hire a 50+ year old guy and encountered strong resistance from my supervisor.

<comment><USER5> Maybe it's possible he has a case if the same awful interview is more awful because of his age. I think it will be interesting to see how it unfolds, regardless.</comment></comment>


Jet-Type safe SQL Builder for Go with automatic scan to desired object structure - go-jet https://github.com/go-jet/jet <comment> go-jet Writing SQL queries is easier and faster, because the developers have help of SQL code completion and SQL type safety directly from Go.

While ORM libararies can introduce significant performance penalties due too number of round-trips to the database, Jet will allways perform much better, because of the single database call.

Automatic scan to arbitrary structure removes a lot of headache and boilerplate code needed to structure database query result into complex object composition.</comment>


IT departments just as much a stumbling block for banks as regulators - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/node/16646044?story_id=16646044&fsrc=scn/tw/te/rss/pe <comment><USER2> I was informed in a Microsoft Training Class just a few months ago that the problem with banking is that most still run in Windows NT. Microsoft has a special team of developers that provide support for NT and the banks pay an inordinately large amount of money to have that support.

Anyone developing for NT?

Disclaimer: I have not researched this information, but assumed the instructor was not full of it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I particularly enjoyed the quotation at the end of the article, from the guy who thinks that programmers "only cause trouble." I'm sure he'd be much happier with a room full of clerks doing the accounts, and transactions taking a few days.

</comment><comment><USER4> We can write code that doesn't suffer from any of these problems. All you have to do is pay for it and realize that it takes time. Deal?</comment>


Peewee, a lightweight python ORM - <AUTHOR> http://charlesleifer.com/blog/peewee-a-lightweight-python-orm/

<comment><USER2> I haven't used Django ORM before but it would be interesting to see how Peewee compares to SQLAlchemy: <http://www.sqlalchemy.org/>

I love SQLAlchemy: it is easy to use, rock solid, well documented, and fully- featured without trying to do everything at once (for example, it explicitly doesn't do caching).

The author and principal maintainer, Michael Bayer, does a fantastic job developing the project at a sensible pace and answering any questions on the mailing list quickly and patiently.

It is hands down one of the most well-run open source projects that I know of, and a fantastic ORM.

Again, it would be interesting to see how Peewee stacks up against it (performance-wise, since it obviously doesn't compete for features.)

<comment><USER3> A tiny one-file ORM (I checked, the full ORM itself is ultimately one file "peewee.py") like Peewee that loads objects with a super-shallow stack depth will have very low method call overhead for the things it does do, and in Python method calls are everything. So an ORM like SQLA will appear slower on simplistic benches which compare database sequences on a near one-to-one basis. Where we try to be the most performant in the real world is that we try to make it extremely easy to cut down the number of SQL calls in a complex graph dramatically via collections, eager loading, stateful sessions, delayed flush, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> You couldn't be more correct.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Only support for SQLite (at the moment)"

This makes me skeptical. There's _always_ some stupid, niggling little thing that each database does probably for no other reason than to be different for anyone else. ORMs can be challenging to write, and you never _really_ get into one until you support 3 or 4 different databases. I'd be willing to bet that the code is a _lot_ bigger than 1kloc by the time more databases get added.

<comment><USER5> Fortunately there is a standard Python database API: <http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0249/> . Although it does take more effort to target the API than any single database adapter module.

<comment><USER6> The API isn't all that matters, though. You have to deal with differences in types, differences in the way foreign keys are dealt with (e.g. in SQLite you can have a foreign key 0, but in Postgres you have to make it nullable and use null), differences in stored procedures. The API alone is minimal compared to the actual functional differences in RDBMS engines.

<comment><USER7> The API also allows a number of different syntaxes for query parameters: question marks, %-style format codes and one or two others as well and support for any particular style is optional. Last time I checked - a few years ago now - the styles supported by MySQLdb and psycopg were disjoint sets.

Another wart: there is (or was) different named parameters to use when creating a database connection. One driver would use passwd, another would use password, for example.

Those issues aside - and they only bite you if you're using several different databases - I really liked the simplicity of the DB API. Coming from the boilerplate hell that was Java's API it was a godsend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Unless it contains auto-magical admin interface (like Django's ORM), why would you ever use it over battle-tested SQLAlchemy?

<comment><USER4> Some people will say that SQLAlchemy is complex, and there's a grain of truth to that. But I personally think the maturity and featureset makes up for the complexity.

<comment><USER9> I would also say that SQLAlchemy with the declarative extension is actually incredibly easy to use.

And once you want to start doing the more complex stuff, SQLAlchemy handles it all just fine, whereas other ORMs tend to fall short rather quickly.

<comment><USER4> I agree, but easy to use != simple. For instance, I consider rails to be easy to use, but not simple. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Someone has Sequel/Arel envy :)

<https://github.com/rails/arel> <https://github.com/jeremyevans/sequel></comment>


Hitchhiker's Guide to the Boston Tech Community - <AUTHOR> http://www.robgo.org/post/1525018376/the-hitchhikers-guide-to-the-boston-tech-community

<comment><USER2> Is there any interest in a Boston/Cambridge HN meetup sometime? It'd be great to chat with some of you fine folks and put faces to names.

<comment><USER3> <http://hfboston.com>

* fixed, thanks hsuresh, can't even spell my own site's name.

<comment><USER4> You probably meant <http://hfboston.com> ?

<comment><USER3> Whoops, yeah. My bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great resource!

I'm a Boston guy and fairly plugged in, but this had several tidbits I wasn't aware of.

Thanks for putting it together and keeping it updated. As news.yc becomes more and more of a startup communications hub it would be great to have a curated resources link to pages like this.

</comment><comment><USER6> There was a similar post on the 500 Startups blog last week: [http://blog.500startups.com/2010/11/03/livin-la-vida- startup...](http://blog.500startups.com/2010/11/03/livin-la-vida-startup-in- beantown/)</comment>


More Lenovo woes: security flaws, website clerical errors, maybe layoffs - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/article/2920983/malware-vulnerabilities/more-lenovo-woes-3-security-flaws-website-clerical-errors-maybe-layoffs.html#tk.rss_all <comment><USER2> This isn't a Lenovo issue, its a larger Windows OEM issue. HP, Dell, and the rest are guilty of the same sins. When is Microsoft finally going to reign these guys in? I'd love an Apple-like experience of just booting up into a standard OS and not worrying about various faddish and profit seeking applications pre-installed on my machine. If MS wants to make Win10 the next XP, they need to control these OEM's.

Chinese acquisitions of US tech companies rarely works out. They just two very different business cultures. Sadly, Lenovo also bought Motorola's mobile division, so we can expect more of this treatment with the next batch of Motorola phones. The same way they ruined the thinkpad brand - they'll ruin the Moto brand.

<comment><USER3> "control these OEM's?" it was Microsoft who created this mess. they were executing everybody's favorite business maxim, "commoditize your complements." Microsoft is the only company providing the operating system, which runs on an army of undifferentiated PCs, where the manufacturers can only compete on price. of COURSE they're reduced to shady behavior like this. they have no other way to make money, because Microsoft thinks all the profit in the entire ecosystem should be theirs.

if they try to "reign in the OEMs," then there will be no profit left at all for them. at that point, they might as well get into some other line of products altogether: netbooks, android phones, etc

<comment><USER2> >where the manufacturers can only compete on price.

I find this hard to believe and seems to be an excuse for modifications like these (this excuse is quite common in Android). Quality of components, design, battery life/capacity, screen size/dpi, brand, reputation, support quality, etc mean a lot more to Jane Computerbuyer than a slew of Lenovo shit apps she has no idea how to use and probably never will.

>it was Microsoft who created this mess.

Actually it was the Department of Justice that created this mess.

<comment><USER3> ... and yet, here we are! if there was this huge market that you are positing that exists, anxious to buy PCs and laptops based on battery life, screen quality, etc, then there would be companies building products to soak up their money. but there is _not_ such a market, apart from a few people like you who hang out on technical message boards, not nearly numerous enough to support such a thing.

<comment><USER4> This is bizarre. PCs and laptops are very much differentiated on quality and specs - it's just that the margin is competed away. The only way to maintain margin is to de-commodify, either by market differentiation (brand building) or barriers to entry. Apple have done extremely well at both.

<comment><USER3> ... so apparently we are in rabid agreement? i was speaking specifically about the _microsoft_ ecosystem, not about anything capable of running a general- purpose operating system. i am myself typing this on an apple laptop. i haven't participated in the microsoft ecosystem for decades, and this is one of the reasons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I miss the old IBM Thinkpad quality....

<comment><USER6> How does the current Lenovo Thinkpad line fares? I've seen a couple of devices recently and they look solidly built with above-average quality overall. But I didn't own any recently (my last Thinkpad was from IBM), so I cannot comment about details.

<comment><USER5> The plastic has a lower quality feel to it compared with the old IBMs.

For example, in some areas close to the keyboard you can make it bend by applying a little pressure.

On the T440p you can somehow notice the screen matrix.

<comment><USER7> I disagree that the flexing is an issue. According to several computer techs the flexing is good, since it means the material is less likely to crack under stress.

I certainly feel the Thinkpads of yore had a more visually attractive material, but I've recently bought a Thinkpad x250 and frankly the quality is as good as always. Better, in fact, than the x240, in which several very bad decisions were taken.

<comment><USER8> How do you like the chiclet keyboard?

I'm still holding onto my x220 for dear life.

<comment><USER7> Surprisingly, I'm not hating it. Considering that the x250 is pretty small, they have less displacement than other keyboards (coming from a T410), but it's full size, the grip is good, and the feedback is better than prior versions. The Trackpoint is laid deeper and lower than the T series, but I adjusted in the day. The click buttons don't protrude as much as older versions and I still haven't adjusted.

There are minor changes in keyboard coming from the T series. Insert has been bound to Fn + End (which is alright; I've never really used it), and the upper row is now Home/End/Delete. It's a different layout but I can't say it's worse. The light from above has been changed to an illuminated keyboard, which I find just as good and pretty spiffy.

The new trackpad feels, to me, perfectly sized very usable, and a decent replacement for the trackpoint if you're just browsing the web and not typing.

I bought a refurbished machine that has the HD IPS touchscreen, and it's been nice. It responds very well to touch and is much brighter than I would ever need. Certainly the touch functionality is not something you use every day, but for some occasions it's useful, and I'm already looking at some alternative skins in some DJing software to work from there in some situations and replace an external controller with just an additional sound card.

As a person that's been lugging around a T series on his backpack practically every day for the past 10 years, the lighter weight is a very welcome addition, the processor performance is satisfying, and the screen very readable despite the compromise in space. I'm really enjoying the lower weight and I personally think it's a gorgeous machine. I think there's less visible external parts and reminds me more of the first Thinkpads, with a very minimalist blocky feel.

My only critiques are that I wish it had an additional USB port (it has 2; 3 would be really nice), that the trackpoint were laid a couple millimeters higher (I know it's impossible because there's barely any room for the screen, but a man can dream), that modern software was better with HiDPI displays, and that the aspect ratio were taller, but the tradeoffs are easily justify the lighter weight, extra comfort, and screen quality, without sacrificing the input methods, which are the real reason why I buy and have used Thinkpads for the past 18 years. I'm a strong believer that Thinkpad + Trackpoint + Vim is the most productive input method for coding man has ever invented, and no trackpad will ever be a satisfactory replacement.

<comment><USER9> > Considering that the x250 is pretty small, they have less displacement than > other keyboards (coming from a T410)

The irony is that until the 40/50, X and T series had the same keyboards – an X201 and T400 used the same keyboard, as did the X220/T410/T420 and X230/T430. The form factor (which also didn't change from the X220/X230, i.e. same space available for the keyboard as on a T410) is _not_ a justification for crippling the keyboard.

> There are minor changes in keyboard coming from the T series.

The new T series has almost the same layout, it merely retains the Insert key (while its usefulness for most users is debatable, Lenovo ties it to the Fn switch on the X250 – it's either End + ACPI hotkeys or Insert+Function keys, annoying).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> it's popular to bash Lenovo, but isn't all of Windows crappy like that?

</comment><comment><USER11> Theres a certain irony about complaining about issues in past version of an update software.</comment>


If employers offer 100% WFH, how will those in high COL areas compete? - <AUTHOR> Twitter, for example: why would they pay $200K for a software engineer in San Francisco, when they can pay $150K for the same talent in another city?<p>How will those living in high COL areas compete with that? <comment><USER2> Yeah this is why being stuck in LA I can't find work to save my life I have to compete with cheap it basically means many of us will die from poverty if we can't move and I can't also got no ubemplpy and no food stamps so it's literally a race with starvation but looks like starvation will win.

</comment><comment><USER3> Some companies offer salary adjustments based on where you live.

<comment><USER4> I think OP is saying that's the problem, companies like Twitter may prefer paying a salary adjusted rate of $150k to someone in a cheaper city than $200k to someone in SF who's not going to come into the office anyway.</comment></comment>


George Zimmerman was just kicked off another dating app - <AUTHOR> https://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article229455604.html <comment><USER2> He was kicked off another dating app, not for his behavior, but because he created a fake profile (most likely because twitter anger mobs found him and keep getting him kicked off) and more so, because the owners of these sites don't personally agree with his acquittal.

We are living in scary times. Even if US courts find you innocent, it seems you can be found guilty by mob justice and banned from society by new-age fascism.

<comment><USER3> > He was kicked off another dating app, not for his behavior, but because he > created a fake profile

How is creating a fake profile _not_ a behavior, and the kind of behavior dating apps are generally inclined against?

<comment><USER2> He was forced to create a fake profile, because when he created a real one, mobs of people found it online and started a crusade against him and put pressure on the dating sites to remove him.</comment></comment></comment>


Where can I find a directory of machine learning consultants? - <AUTHOR> Googling "Machine Learning Consultants" turns up only a few websites ... there must be many more ? <comment><USER2> yes us! [http://www.af-engineering.it](http://www.af-engineering.it)

</comment><comment><USER3> We do it: gregarious.com.au</comment>


Blackberry is still going strong against apple in sales - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/17/technology/17rimm.html

<comment><USER2> So I don't know about this. One day an article showing falling numbers and predicting the demise of the blackberry and another day another article showing excellent sales numbers and predicting...well, nothing really.

It's only logical that the blackberry will reach a market limit within the already mature markets but will expand in international ones where its presence is relatively new.

Blackberry does have the money and R&D chops to innovate before its demise(if that will ever happen). People have been saying the same thing about Microsoft for the past 15 years.

</comment><comment><USER3> Anecdotally, here in Colombia, the Blackberry is very, very popular, even with schoolkids etc. It's much cheaper than an iPhone (the plan is much cheaper too), and it still has some brand power that the LG's etc. don't have.

The main features people look for are not so much apps and stuff, it's more: is there an affordable prepaid plan for this, and can I get on Facebook/Twitter/email?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I am a ex-blackberry user and now have an android phone. The nay sayers were predicting the demise of the blackberry (er.. including me), but looks like that is not anytime too soon. Good for RIM.

</comment><comment><USER4> Article behind paywall. Flagged

<comment><USER2> Works for me. Maybe clearing your cookies would do the trick?</comment></comment>


Why Founders Fail To Market Their Products - <AUTHOR> https://medium.dave-bailey.com/why-founders-fail-to-market-their-products-f7c15935c81#.urisgaht0 <comment><USER3> I built a desktop app (Poker Copilot) in 2008. I figured if I did it well, I'd have my own one-person software company supplying a steady stream of income with little ongoing effort. My product would be so intuitive that it wouldn't need a user guide. It certainly wouldn't need marketing because everyone in my target audience would spread the word that my product was what they needed!

Ha, what a fool 2008 me was. What I didn't realise was that my two main tasks for years would be marketing and customer support.

Coding new features (of which many were requested) and fixing bugs (of which there were many) had to be scheduled around the twice-daily customer support windows and the marketing efforts.

Nine years later, and still the stream of customer support requests has not relented! Nine years and still I'm focusing on marketing one day a week!

And of course, there are still bugs.

<comment><USER4> >Nine years later, and still the stream of customer support requests has not relented!

You gave me an idea for a business model - Let's say you offer a pingdom-like service (to monitor your site availability and reliablity) -

You can just do the following:

1\. Offer the service 100% Free, at your own risk

2\. Offer a $x/month subscription . if you don't pay - you won't get any customer support.

Or, you can will still offer free support for non-paying customers, but without any priority (their tickets will be handled only after the paying customer's tickets)

Does anyone know of a company that is offering this type of model ?

(edit: added missing words and spacing)

<comment><USER5> A lot of SaaS businesses offer priority support for paying customers.

As a SaaS founder — I've always felt it's a bit of an odd value proposition — "pay me more, and I'll fix my flawed, buggy software".

<comment><USER6> It works better with the Red Hat model: "Here's some flawed buggy software I wrote. Pay me and I'll make it work for your use case."

There's a small incentive to write deliberately obscured code, but I think it gets outweighed by maintainability concerns.

<comment><USER7> And the Apache Model: Write awful, placeholder documentation, then get an O'Reilly book deal to finally explain yourself and your code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's almost pathos at this point in the hacker community that if you do any marketing or promotion you're a shill and wantrepreneur at best and a charlatan and huckster at a minimum.

I know I used to feel this way before I really tried to launch a product. Now I know that there is no such thing as a product that is so good that it sells itself. In fact the best technical solutions I've seen have failed because the market doesn't care about perfection, it cares about mind share.

There is still a stallmanesque anarchist quality to some engineers that view commercial success as tainted. I think I can appreciate that in some philosophical senses, but let's not get too high on our horses.

<comment><USER9> While this is almost always true, there are exceptions to this rule. If you're working on something that is inherently press friendly, you don't really need to market it. You have the first real self-driving car and you just drove from New York City to Los Angeles? I'm pretty sure that will get you whatever press you want. And then of course there's WhatsApp, which was so focused on solely their product that they had no address or phone number for investors/media to find them. Yes yes, the exception does not make the rule, but they are still important data points.

That aside, 99.??% of startups will need to market heavily to compete successfully.

Edit: And I just noticed the (Software) parentheses in the title. I guess you can replace self-driving cars with advanced AI, say the first AI to pass the Turing Test.

<comment><USER10> Like you said though, it is limited to a very few exceptions. Not every company that receives press grows as desired.

I was co-founder at a project that has received 10+ newspaper articles (progressively better placed) and growth kept declining over the months only to become negative.

However, I obviously understand that one can never look at these factors in isolation and that there are multiple variables on which growth depends. I would also not consider press to be a part of marketing really.

<comment><USER9> I guess an important caveat for the exception to the rule is the product has to be so good that it just automatically makes money. A true self-driving car has an obvious path to profitability. A social media platform that is an existential threat to Facebook is an obvious target for an acquisition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There are other myths.

 _6) What if someone steals my idea and beats me to the market?_

Due to the culture of secrecy propagated by big companies like Apple we too believe our ideas are unique and need to be secret.

If anything, the best ideas are usually incremental changes to already existing ideas but I digress. The point is being first to the market means squat but if you have a solid marketing plan and a consistent supply of leads (+ good relationship with your list) then you will make money. period.

 _7) A big launch is the end goal_

Even a big launch is only 1% of your total traffic put leniently. So many people put all their hopes on a big launch.. So you're on Techcrunch, big deal. I've had many sites on TC, Mashable, etc but the traffic usually means nothing. You get a burst of signups (probably 1k+ in a week IIRC) but that is like a drop in the ocean and just like posting on a Forum, the moment your post drops from homepage - it's history. On the other hand, good SEO, and consistent supply of leads (say 100 leads a day = your big launch on TC in 10 days) is what will keep you in the game and make you money everyday.

 _8) If I have more traffic my site will grow_

Getting traffic is half the job. Converting that traffic into paying leads is where the money is. If you think your lead will buy from you the moment it lands on your site, you're being naive. You have to romance your subscribers, give them free bonuses, educate them and then one day when you have something they need, they will buy from you - even if you're last to the market or are charging them more. When people trust you, you will get more repeat business than the new orders. I bet people with iPhones are the biggest consumers of the next iPhones too. Never ever underestimate the power of up-selling (though this one I think you only learn from experience).

</comment><comment><USER12> > _Great products deserve great marketing—Tweet this_

For early-stage founders, this is a misleading suggestion. Yes, it's true that if you could have great marketing without any cost, you'd want to have it.

But this misses the point that if you put $5k into marketing every month, then you're putting $5k _less_ into the product.

So the real question is, would you rather have a good product and great marketing, or a great product and good marketing? I will concede that some founders don't put enough emphasis on marketing, but quotes like this overlook the basic cost-benefit balancing act that early-stage founders live and die by.

Also, I cringe every time I see a "Tweet this" link. Especially in a piece about marketing, it reminds me that this guy wants to build up his personal brand, which is why he's blogging in the first place. I understand that, but this in-your-face reminder (3x in one blog post) makes the piece come across as less of a "I learned some lessons I want to share" post and more of a "I'm trying to build a brand so I blog a bunch, and this is what I came up with for a post."

It kills the authenticity and makes the whole thing suspect (and then when I read trite stuff like the above quote, that confirms that the information contained within isn't thoughtful—it's largely filler).

<comment><USER13> I think a better suggestion for early-stage founders might be to focus on _information coming in_ rather than _information going out_.

You should do as much sales & marketing as you need to generate a reaction from your target users. Then pay careful attention to that reaction and adapt the product. The focus is always about _learning_ rather than _evangelizing_ \- putting a half-baked product out there and then blasting the hell out of Facebook/Twitter/Medium/PR doesn't usually get you very many recurring projects, but putting a half-baked product out there, attempting to sell it to a few engaged potential customers, and then adapting it in response to their feedback might.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I jibe with the article but I disagree that marketing is something that should be pursued from Day 1. As Jessica Livingston has noted umpteen times, the first thing you need is product that delights users. Marketing activities around an idea that might not have a useful market is a bit wasteful.

I don't imply that marketing is pointless at early stage but time-consuming marketing channels (blogging, social media) are best avoided at that time. A detrimental mistake that I made when I was making a product was to think that I need 'marketing' to get more (beta) users. I started writing blog articles without understanding that I needed at least a baseline of users who really desire the product. Reading about some of the SaaS successes, I think that a lot of entrepreneurs get their initial users from people they know / ads / reachout. Strong marketing effort kicks in when the product seems useful for a market and organic growth doesn't feel enough.

<comment><USER15> I think the marketing work that happens early is of a different character than what you'd do if you had a base of customers.

I've been building a search engine for talks ([https://www.findlectures.com](https://www.findlectures.com)), and when I demo it people often give me new language that helps the copy on the site, or ideas for features that communicate the value better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Lately I started to understand more and more about the benefit and importance of marketing and starting to market early. This article summarizes the benefits in a clean and easy-to-read items.

I think, hiring a marketer is a big problem. Let's say you are a group of engineers building a good product and you know you need to hire marketers. The questions are, how do you hire a marketer? What criteria do you seek in a marketer? How do people become marketers? One obvious choice is trying to find someone who marketed a similar product before but it is not always easy. I think this is also the case for hiring sales people.

<comment><USER17> The author's approach is actually quite good: Start learning some marketing yourself, and when it starts to get repetitive pay someone else to do it. Then you also have some skills you can use to evaluate the marketers you're hiring.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Someone with less understanding of how a product actually works is often > better equipped to communicate what it does than someone stuck in the weeds.

This is so true!

Yet, it took me a lot of time to understand this. Maybe because this is not always easy to see that the shift perceived, between what I said about my product and how my interlocutor reworded it, is in fact a move from details to the product's essence.

<comment><USER19> My best takeaway, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> As a founder myself I find it's more about the difficulty in finding a marketing strategy that has an effective ROI without increasing your burn rate to a point of failure.

The article implies that all marketing will be effective, or at least that you can easily have a positive ROI just by hiring a marketer.

This is not necessarily true, especially with the limited capital that many bootstrapped startup may have available.

Experincing negative ROI (or even hearing experiences about that) seem more likely candidates for why it isn't done than the "Myths" listed here.

<comment><USER21> THIS.

The WHAT is driving me nuts. I get the WHY and HOWs of numerous marketing channels and methods.

Pretty much what happens when I start blogging. I put a lot of effort but even the blog post itself must now be marketed.

Put it in on HN, Reddit and it feels like playing lottery...

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> If you have the product on the app marketplace and it's growing and generating money, there's no reason to _bleed_ money. And it's absolutely no reason to shut it down. Make your operations more efficient. That will also help when scaling up.

</comment><comment><USER23> Oddly enough, the only somewhat successful project ($20k/month peak passive income) I've ever had was when I didn't know how to code. I spent all my time on marketing and built the site in Wordpress + Plugins in 1 day.

<comment><USER24> The number of potentially successful businesses that can be built with Wordpress + Plugins (+ maybe Zapier) is crazy.

I have a few SaaS products out in the wild and find myself longing for the days where I just had to worry about maintaining a decent WP site (with various integrations around it).

All the work that goes into just maintaining a SaaS application tires you out - particularly if you're a solo founder - leaving less time available for marketing...

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> >5) Hiring a marketer takes too much time

Is there any recommendations for all in one turnkey service for marketing? So that i just pay money and they do the rest.

<comment><USER26> Yes, for the most part. This is what marketing agencies do.

You still need to provide them with the talking points and value proposition so they have the background for drafting copy for the Marketing collateral, but once they have that they can do a great job at putting together a marketing plan and executing on it, assuming you found a good agency.

<comment><USER27> > assuming you found a good agency.

There's the rub. How do you find a good one? We've spent obscene amounts of money on agencies that said they could get us growth but none made the needle move. Where are all these good agencies?

<comment><USER26> Yes, that's the rub for sure. The same question is also asked by non-technical people when trying to find a developer - how do you find a good one? So, I think you can follow some of the same principles: What projects have they done in the past? What results have they produced? Can you show some examples of your work? Can we speak to your references? etc.

Although it's not "turnkey" as the OP was asking about, you can do a lot of it on your own, or at least put together an overall plan, and then use agencies to fill the gaps. Just as with starting a start-up, there is a lot of great material and thought leadership out there on how to do it, along with a lot of practical advice.

Other than a few courses as part of my business degree, and working with marketing agencies in the past, I don't have a marketing background. However, I took a deep dive into marketing over the past 18 months, and we achieved some solid results. I spent a bit of time doing some research, came up with a strategy and overall plan, and then executed. Specifically, we put a content marketing program in place, along with some lead tracking tools, spoke at a few conferences, did some webinars, etc., all of which led to deals in the six figures. (In the B2B space.)

PM me if you'd like more detail re: resources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I fell very much in to the trap of his second point there. Mind you, I would never hire a marketer (not enough money is involved in my startup), so this "marketer" would of course be "me". I decided there was no point telling people about my web-based startup until I had a working site that they could see for themselves.

So indeed, by the time I was ready to let beta testers in, I had no real network on which to rely on to get it in front of peoples eyes. As a not-for- profit, I don't plan to make money off it (and hence don't plan to spend much on it), and am not interested in the VC side of things.

I remember initially reading BetaList's requirement of submitting to them before you actually launch and I found it ridiculous. Now I realise, if done right, it's the proper way to go about things. And I missed that boat badly.

</comment><comment><USER29> I would say that one of the most common problems is unrealistic expectations placed on Marketers for highly technical products. Successful technical companies realized long ago that they must use teams which combine skills to tackle individual projects in Marketing & Advertising. There is some magic combination of experience, luck, and process - and usually many projects in parallel are required so that ineffective approaches can be quickly discarded and another tried. I've been involved in successful marketing efforts - <USER2> the failed ones were usually doomed from the start by executives with unrealistic expectations - resulting in process and organizations which can't work.

</comment><comment><USER30> I call it the "Build It And They Will Come" Hollywood myth.

</comment><comment><USER31> Marketing is important, however more important is to build in a viral loop into your product, that for every new customer x>1 new customers are contacted.

This is how social networks work, invite your friends systems, etc.

However, even then marketing is still important. But too often marketing is seen as: Spend huge amount of money on ads.

No: marketing is market research, choosing your target audience, branding, image building, tone-of-voice etc.

<comment><USER32> I find this as the struggle as someone who has traditionally worked with large brands. One of the companies I worked with spent millions of dollars on paid advertising while startups and web companies seem to favour inbound marketing a lot more - which big companies aren't really as good at (or pay as much attention too.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Most times there is not a market for a decent ROI and unfortunately there will never be, it would really cost too much terraforming your niche.

</comment><comment><USER34> I always say coding is the easy part of your SaaS. Marketing is hard. Don't forget customer support, which if you are really good at can fuel your sales and act has it's own marketing channel. Let's not even mention all of the other things that come into play with running a business.

Coding is the easy part!

</comment><comment><USER35> It surprises me to see so many comments about this article. I couldn't get past the grammar problems in the first paragraph. The most compelling thing at the beginning of this article is the stock photograph of a pretty girl seemingly praying in a coffee shop.

"Founders predictably underestimate the importance of hiring marketers."

They do? Who are these founders? Founders of what? And who are these people predicting the estimations of these founders? How did you learn of these predictions? Are the predictors publishing their founder predictions somewhere?

"As a result, many startups don't get round to marketing their product until it's too late."

I realize I'm being pedantic now, but "get round" threw me for a moment. It's another break in the flow of reading his message. I wondered what's "get round" mean? Is that like getting fat? Like getting "round about the middle"? Oh. he means "get around to". Googling "get round" returns 400k results. Googling "get around": 55M. I guess some people do say "get round." 1 out of 137 people. Word choice matters.

"This happened to me and I've thought long and hard about why this happens."

What's he referring to? What is "this" that happened? I had to stop and reread the previous sentence to figure out what "this" and "happened" refers to: "startups don't get round to marketing their product until it's too late." So a start up didn't get round to marketing a product. Okay, so I guess that implies that a startup was lazy and irresponsible by not getting around to marketing a product. In short, the problem is that something bad was done to a product. That's what happened to you? Inflicted upon you? David Bailey is a product and a startup didn't market him responsibly.

I stopped reading at this point. He put so little care into editing and proofreading his article, I figured he probably put just as little effort into crafting a meaningful message and formulating logical conclusions.

I guess I'll never find out what the pretty girl is praying for.

</comment><comment><USER36> I think the founders that fail to market their products are those who take marketing as something external to product development. Those who consider marketing as introducing and explaining their product features to the world - are successful.

</comment><comment><USER37> Great write-up. As a marketer (independent consultant for years and now founder of a digital agency), I cannot tell you how many times I have had to tell clients, "If you build it, they will not come" if they do not know your product even exists. Even so, many technical startup founders still place marketing low on the list of things to focus on early on. And I'm saying this as someone who started out on the tech side and moved to the business and marketing side later.

</comment><comment><USER38> Such great insight here. This could have been an article that I wrote since I've gone through nearly everything Dave has gone through. As some have already commented it's something a lot of folks struggle with. You build a great product, perhaps you get a good initial bounce, but struggle to keep the growth going. You really need a lot of stamina and patience to grow a product to critical mass. You can never predict when it'll happen.

</comment><comment><USER39> Read _The Startup Owner 's Manual: The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great Company_ by Steve Blank — it teaches founders how to achieve product-market fit.

Once you have that, marketing is easy and cost effective. Until then, it's usually a waste of money.

</comment><comment><USER40> For me it was always because - they know how the meat is made.

</comment><comment><USER41> i have built products that went to millions of users, zero marketing. If the product is inherently viral, you don't need to market. Othwerwise, you do.

<comment><USER42> Can you describe your product's attributes in a little more detail?

I had a niche product that went "viral" within its small community. We immediately had people trying to imitate us, and most failed so badly that their products didn't work at all and any gains they made were quickly rolled back; ultimately, these copycats only served to promote our _actually working_ product further, so they were net good things.

A few key people who controlled large platforms in this niche spurned us, presumably because they intended to copy our featureset at some point, and actively removed any reference to our product. Despite this, we had continual growth with relatively small marketing budgets.

After about a year, a competitor whose product occasionally worked emerged and despite being much worse than us along every conceivable axis, they cannibalized our niche market within 2 months using spammy marketing tactics (astroturfing, fake followers/likes, SEO link rings (now called "Private Blog Networks" in SEO parlance)). They also forged alliances with some of the niche platforms that refused to allow discussion of our product (though these companies ignored similar offers when I tried to make them). The new competitor eventually spammed so thoroughly that they caused a PR issue for a large company whose data this sector depended on. My company and all others that occasionally functioned in this sector, which at this point included me, the spam company, and 3-4 atrocious copies of the spam company, were all shut down by legal threats from this large company.

The point of this protracted story is that it seems that any business that could go from 0 to millions would be immediately bombarded by imitators, spammers, and copycats, whose superior marketing game would destroy the original company as long as they can imitate 10% of the necessary core functionality. Did you have defenses against this? If so, what were they?

<comment><USER43> Can I ask for some details about the niche or product/ service you were providing? (I'm slightly worried I might be building something similar and the same thing will happen to me)</comment></comment></comment>


Building a toy template engine in Python - <AUTHOR> http://alexmic.net/building-a-template-engine/ <comment><USER2> A nice complement to this article is <http://effbot.org/zone/simple-top-down- parsing.htm> and its earlier piece <http://effbot.org/zone/simple-iterator- parser.htm>

Also, this page maintains links to many python parsing options - <http://nedbatchelder.com/text/python-parsers.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure I like the idea of parsing templates with regular expressions. There is a better way, as demonstrated in Robe Pike's video[1] detailing how the Go template language is implemented.

Edit: which isn't meant to detract from the fact that this is a great article.

[1]<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxaD_trXwRE>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the video – this was my first stub at template engines so I'm all for learning about better approaches.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Try Pyxl

<https://github.com/dropbox/pyxl>

I don't work at Dropbox but I did work at Cove where this was originally developed and it is great. Makes working with HTML in Python so easy.

I also my own version of it that I have rewritten to treat the HTML object more like jQuery does and added more jQuery methods to it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Great blog post! I did something very similar when I was working on an implementation of the Mustache templating language. If you haven't built a simple recursive descent parser already, I highly recommend doing so — it helped me get a lot better at programming.

</comment><comment><USER6> I was particularly interested in building parsers a short while back, and your post rekindled my interest.

So, in the interest of sharing I thought I'd mention a couple of interesting libraries I came across.

In Ruby I think Temple (<https://github.com/judofyr/temple>) is really quite cool. It's designed to make creating templating languages really easy, and constructs ASTs using user-defined parsers.

And even more interesting in my opinion is Haskell's Parsec (<http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Parsec>). It uses combinators to build up parsers, and can produce friendly parse error messages "for free."

Thanks for the intersting read.

</comment><comment><USER7> Interesting extension of this exercise would be to replace your custom AST with the AST exposed by Python, then use the compile() builtin to compile said AST into a PyCodeObject ready for direct execution by the Python VM. :)

Something along these lines: [https://github.com/thomaslee/viking- poc/blob/master/viking#L...](https://github.com/thomaslee/viking- poc/blob/master/viking#L334)

(Disclaimer: I wrote the Python-AST-to-PyObject transformation code for Python 2.6 that made this sort of stuff possible -- fun hack!)

</comment><comment><USER8> Interesting! I just finished writing a very similar engine in C++. <https://github.com/catnapgames/NLTemplate>

</comment><comment><USER9> thanks for sharing this alexmic. I tried to built my own template engine but I think your approach is much better

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks – what was your approach?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> really nice conceptual approach.

</comment><comment><USER11> jinja2 slower than django?</comment>


Ask HN: How could doctors utilize technology more effectively? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Hmm! Most likely in diagnosing patients. Something that can take a look at the patient visually but also based on symptoms. Another option might be better environmental monitoring. Early warning systems that would check for higher levels of pollutants in the environment. This could help in managing patient flow + inform doctors of currently available medication and life style alternatives.</comment>


The Biggest Dinosaur May Never Have Existed - <AUTHOR> https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-biggest-dinosaur-in-history-may-never-have-existed/ <comment><USER2> Does this mean that their size is unbound, or that none of the dinosaurs are of size sup(size)?

<comment><USER3> No, it means that the scientists were incorrect when thet built a model of a dinosaur from fossil, and the actual dinosaurs were smaller than the model predicts.</comment></comment>


Dilution of quality in social aggregators - <AUTHOR> http://www.discerniblepreferences.com/2009/02/dilution-of-quality-in-social-aggregators.html#comments

<comment><USER2> I was wondering how the post and comment values were calculated.

<comment><AUTHOR> I generated two normally distributed samples (10,000 large)for post and comment value. Each of these pairs (or vectors) is considered to instantiate a possible user (PO).

Friend networks for each of these possible users is instantiated by randomly choosing 50 possible users from the set of 10,000 such that the distance between the PO and friend candidates is less than .1 (arbitrarily, but small enough to make a tight cluster of friends).

The initial user set is randomly chosen from the 95% percentile of this 10,000 vector set, and new users are inducted through the networks of these existing users at a small rate.</comment></comment>


BT Content Connect service faces 'two-tier net' claims - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12112389 <comment><USER2> This looks much more like a regular CDN than discrimatory packet handling.</comment>


Why I quit a $500K job at Amazon to work for myself - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiehackers.com/@dvassallo/why-i-quit-a-500k-job-at-amazon-to-work-for-myself-36639e3975 <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19135399](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19135399)

</comment><comment><USER3> "What is out there that I could do that would make me excited waking up every day for the next 45 years that could also earn me enough money to cover my expenses?"

This isn't to diminish what the author says - I'm glad he's found his independence, and I hope he finds the "intrinsic motivation" he's looking for.

For me, I think I've more or less shed the illusion that I'm always going to be excited about work. Or even that I'm normally going to be excited about work. I love my job, and sometimes it's great, but it's usually not "exciting". It's strange to me that people in our industry place such importance on our emotions about work, to the point where not being _thrilled_ by our work is seen as some sort of career failure.

<comment><USER4> Our position is unique where we are able to make a significat amount of money without the large time investment of other professions. Doctors/Lawyers mach our salaries only after a significantly longer time ( school and experience). after investing 10-15 years of their time to such a career its a lot harder to give up and pursue your dreams. This is my explanation why its so easy for people to give up on such high paying jobs in our industry but does not happen across other sectors

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> the same author keeps posting the same content over and over again. [https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=DVassallo](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=DVassallo),

I have seen this many times ... enough!

</comment><comment><USER6> Question for current/previous Amazon employees: How much of that compensation is likely due to stock rewards vs salary?

<comment><USER7> Most of it. Base salary caps out at $160k except for NY/SF where it caps out at $180k. Once you get into the higher levels most of your comp is stock, which historically has worked out very well for Amazon employees.

<comment><USER8> Base salary of $200K or more is definitely achievable for senior (level 5 or higher) engineers at big name companies in SF. I have friends who recently changed jobs so I know this for certain.

That said, the stock offers were excellent as well, sometimes more than salary.</comment></comment></comment>


5 reasons why I chose Linux over Windows - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@justmilica/5-reasons-why-i-choose-linux-over-windows-1980a0f4fc00 <comment><USER2> If I had to choose between the two, I would also choose Linux, but some of the things mentioned in the "article" are wrong.

2) Updates. Windows updates seem plannable to me.

3) Antivirus. There are malicious programs for Linux and if they are designed well and ask you for root privilege, I believe that the average joe/jane will just type in the root password. (See latest Handbrake hack). And this is my opinion: You probably do not need Antivirus on Windows if you are careful about your system.

5) The default Windows file system is NTFS (since Windows NT 3.1) and not FAT32. And once you equip your PC with an SSD, you do not have to bother about defragging at all.</comment>


Startups and Cultural Optimism - <AUTHOR> http://www.wisdomination.com/startups-and-cultural-optimism/ <comment><USER2> Gripe: Being politically active is beneficial. Sure, you're not making the pie bigger, but the pie is arguably big enough already. In fact, working to slice the pie differently might have a greater effect on the median citizen than working to increase the size of the pie. The US has been making the pie a lot bigger but median wages haven't increased much.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's pretty naive to say that '"changing the world" meant being a communist arsonist', when thousands of activists and organizers have a long, documented history of other methods.

Read a book.

<comment><USER4> While he's lambasting a caricature, it is a caricature that exists for a reason. For example, when is the last time anyone saw a street protest and took anything about it seriously?

Politics is mostly trench warfare and startups are cavalry raids.

<comment><USER3> To answer your ostensibly rhetorical question: after demonstrations in Houston, Whole Foods agreed to pull from their shelves foods produced through prison labor.</comment></comment></comment>


Learning Word Vectors for 157 Languages - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.06893 <comment><USER2> This is great for quick jobs but if you have a good dataset that is in your domain you should retrain using fasttext, doc2vecC, word2vec or starspace to name but a few tools that are excellent. The window size is important as well, depending on your downstream task - one size doesn't fit all. It only takes a few hours on a beefy CPU with enough RAM for a corpus with a size of billions of words.

Word vectors are fascinating representations. There is a huge amount of information and nuance captured in them. You can use them directly for topic retrieval (using annoy or another optimised vector index), or feed them into a classifier such as those in the Sklearn library. All types of neural nets: fully connected, recurrent and convolutional can be applied on word vectors.

<comment><USER3> I argue that you need _both_ domain-general and domain-specific data. Most domains you could apply NLP to don't have billions of words to train on, especially if the language of the data isn't English.

Pre-trained data is valuable, and you really aren't going to re-learn it all from your data, so why throw it out?

<comment><USER4> Yes, recent work on transfer learning [https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.06146](https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.06146) " Fine- tuned Language Models for Text Classification" suggests that training a lstm on a large corpora for language modeling, then using it as sentence encoder after tuning it in specific dataset gives a considerable perfomance.

This is covered in fast.ai 's new course 1.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I guess I can't argue with the results, but the data doesn't look very clean. I downloaded the Esperanto file because I expected it to be small, but it was a 1.1 GB download that expanded to 4.4 GB. A lot of the most popular "words" are punctuation marks, and the first two real words are "la" and "La". Perhaps naively, I expected those to be the same word.

<comment><USER6> We decided to keep the casing, as it is useful for some applications such as named entity recognition.

Regarding the punctuation, as pointed out in another comment, these tokens might also be useful for some applications (and they are easy to filter out if you don't need them).

<comment><USER5> In the Tagalog file, } is near the top but { is over 8,000 lines down. Is there a reason they have such different frequencies? ( and ) are right next to each other.

And yes I realize this is a really odd question :)

<comment><USER6> This is probably due to our preprocessing of Wikipedia that did not get rid of all the '}' from the markup.

<comment><USER5> Oh true. I tried to clean up Wiki markup for ML years ago and it was a huge pain. Next time I think I'll parse the HTML version and pull out the text from the tags explicitly.

<comment><USER7> This is a much better way to do it. It's easier, cleaner, and gets the text which is generated by templates, which there is a surprising amount of (you get weird artifacts from that otherwise).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm always amazed that, although Cantonese is about as commonly spoken as Italian, so little written corpus data exists for it (since most Cantonese write in a form of Mandarin Chinese).

For example, here there are all kinds of useful things we can do with these 157 sets of word vectors, but Cantonese escaped the list because most of its transactions happen off the page.

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

</comment><comment><USER9> There seems to be some interest in learning what word vectors are, so I'll give a basic overview here, then tie it into the research.

"One of the challenges for Natural Language Processing (NLP) systems is the question of how to represent input such that the network runs quickly, but also learns well. It's possible to represent each word as a one hot vector, but that's computationally slow. It's also possible to represent each word as some number, but then lots of words look very similar.

Instead, why not use a mix? Introducing word embeddings. We'll represent each word as a n-dimensional vector, with each dimension representing a trait about the word. For example, "fruit" might be represented as {food: 0.99, gender: -0.05, size: 0.2}, and "king" might be represented as {food: -0.9, gender: 0.92, size: 0.56}." [Quoted from MuffinTech.org] [See v1n337 for caveats. [0]]

Two similar words should have similar word vectors, like "apple" and "peach". If we learn some fact about apples, like "Humans eat apples.", then we can easily generalize that to peaches, pineapples, etc...

Let's tie this back to the research. Since we have word vectors for many languages now, that makes it easier for us to build NLP systems in other languages. For example, if we wanted to build an English->French translator.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16448960](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16448960)

<comment><USER10> If Apple and peach had very similar word vectors, an English apple and a French peach would have the same too. And there is a risk of mistranslatuon. How is that situation handled?

<comment><USER11> It is handled by supervised training with paired translations, so that English apple will be associated with French pomme instead of other fruits. If you don't have a parallel corpus, translation gets significantly harder. I'm actually more amazed that it's possible at all.

<comment><USER12> And what about meanings in various contexts like financial content with words Apple, Orange?

<comment><USER9> That is a slight problem. Disambiguates start to dive into higher contextual meaning where we need to look at nearby words. This means there are likely some word vectors whose meanings are "muddled", per se.

Although, I suppose if we treat "apple" and "Apple" as different words, that would help.

Fun fact: One of the current NLP problems is detecting which words are names. Apparently it's really tough, especially with Twitter data!

<comment><USER13> I suppose that if you're doing multilanguage, this problem partially sorts itself out. E.g. Spanish there will be Apple and manzana, in two different places due to their different semantics. Now for English, say you were trying to place "apple" in that space, you would want to put it next to both of them.

Unfortunately I see a problem in having to specify an exact position per word. If you think of the position of english "Apple" in the Spanish word space as a distribution instead of a specific location, then it ideally should be a two- mode distribution, with one peak next to Apple and one peak next to manzana. If you must use a normal distribution, the variance must be wide enough to cover both words -- a huge problem, since (a) that assigns a lot of probable values to one word and (b) the mean value (expected value) lies between them, not at the semantic location of "apple" at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you are interested in multi-language text analysis, you might be interested in Freeling [1], a full-fledged, open source library for language analysis written in C++ (which also happens to include a simple interface for working with word vectors).

[1] [http://nlp.lsi.upc.edu/freeling/node/1](http://nlp.lsi.upc.edu/freeling/node/1)

</comment><comment><USER15> And corresponding word vectors: [https://fasttext.cc/docs/en/crawl- vectors.html](https://fasttext.cc/docs/en/crawl-vectors.html)

<comment><USER3> Are these the right vectors? The filenames correspond to the fastText vectors I've already tried, which are only in English.

EDIT: Indeed, this is old data from a previous publication. It appears they have not actually made the new data public yet.

<comment><USER3> Update: that link points to the right page now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Online-reader-friendly (no 2-column PDF!) paper link:

[https://www.arxiv-vanity.com/papers/1802.06893/](https://www.arxiv- vanity.com/papers/1802.06893/)

</comment><comment><USER17> Newbie here. Can someone explain what would I use these vectors for?

<comment><USER18> At one level, it's simply a vector of weights. In a simple 1-of-N (or 'one- hot') encoding every element in the vector is associated with a word in the vocabulary. The encoding of a given word is simply the vector in which the corresponding element is set to one, and all other elements are zero. It's all about Natural Language Processing.

If you are interested in more, check out these excellent reviews by Adrian Colyer posted in The Morning Paper.

[https://blog.acolyer.org/2016/04/21/the-amazing-power-of- wor...](https://blog.acolyer.org/2016/04/21/the-amazing-power-of-word- vectors/)

<comment><USER19> that's a nice link but the excerpt you quote is kind of misleading; the word vectors in this case are not one-hot encodings. They are learned, continuous representations. But one-hot representations are also a kind of word vector.

word vectors are vector representations of each word in the vocabulary. Here they are learned by a neural net. the length of the vector is the # of features. Just for intuition, one feature of a word the NN could learn is the gender of a word, and so on.

<comment><USER9> To help with intuition, here are a few example word vectors that we might encounter:

"fruit": {food: 0.99, gender: -0.05, size: 0.2}

"king": {food: -0.9, gender: 0.92, size: 0.56}

Building off of what v1n337 stated, though, axis can easily be skewed and rotated such that they're still interpretable, just not obviously so.</comment></comment></comment></comment>