How the rise of finance has warped our values - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2016/04/22/how-the-rise-of-finance-has-warped-our-values/ <comment><USER2> Imprecise thinking abound. The author starts with talking about the problem of big banks (fair enough) and then descends into longing for a command economy [1].

The author laments borrowing money to pay dividends, but the two are net-zero activities (investors are just shuffling their investment from stocks to bonds).

The author finally argues that real investment has fallen since the mid- century. This is not true in a real dollar sense [2]. As a share of GDP though, investment has fallen from the 1950s because we are no longer rushing to build up capital destroyed in WWII. As noted by Paul Graham [3] and more technically by economist Robert Solow [4], it was the decades surrounding WWII that was the exception and not the rule.

Finally, the finance sector has already been retreating as of circa 2005 [5]. The predicate of the article may then no longer be true. If it is, would the author agree we're seeing less issues and more social justice now than in 2005?

There are many precise, carefully thought-out treatments of inequality or the problems of financialization out there. I count Philippon's and Piketty's research among them. But this article seems to move in fuzzy concept space between "finance has gone up" and "we don't have a caring command economy".

I wish the author spelled out his thinking more clearly. It sounds like it would be an interesting argument if made well.

[1] "The state becomes submerged and hidden from our everyday lives, working through elaborate and blunted market mechanisms rather than helping citizens directly."

[2] [https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/GPDIC96](https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/GPDIC96)

[3] [http://paulgraham.com/ineq.html](http://paulgraham.com/ineq.html)

[4] [https://newrepublic.com/article/117429/capital-twenty- first-...](https://newrepublic.com/article/117429/capital-twenty-first- century-thomas-piketty-reviewed)

[5] Figure 5 of [http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~tphilipp/papers/Finance_Efficien...](http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~tphilipp/papers/Finance_Efficiency.pdf) Incidentially, Philippon's graph is used by the Wikipedia article on "financialization" but cut off at the 2005 peak to make it look like an unrestrained explosion upwards.

</comment><comment><USER3> I agree with the premise of the article, but what is a practical solution? The financial industry arises naturally from the time-value of money combined with human greed. Every time something like Dodd-Frank comes along to try and put a damper on things, people find a way around it or else redirect profiteering in another direction (like the stock buybacks we've been seeing).

<comment><USER4> > The financial industry arises naturally from the time-value of money > combined with human greed.

Well, no. There are very definite regulatory changes that _allowed_ bigger banks to eat smaller banks, for instance. I still remember how my parents opened my first savings bank at a bank that was regional to Northern New Jersey, which was then later eaten by something I don't remember, than by Bank of America. Likewise, the whole "mortgage tranche" fiasco happened because we _allowed_ loan originators to sell off the ownership of loans to other parties, rather than having to eat the lunch they'd made for themselves with their own levels of risk-taking.

<comment><USER5> selling loans wasn't ever a problem, and I'm not aware of any time in recent history it wasn't allowed.

the problem was that companies were allowed to buy insurance against bad loans they didnt even make, and insurers were allowed to sell more of that insurance than they had capital to back them up.

so when a person defaulted on their home, the homeowner lost, the bank lost, the insurer lost, and the company who bought the near garentee win insurance also lost. capital flows froze, then companies who needed liquidity lost, and losses just kept chaining.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think this reverses causality; our values were carefully eroded by right wing think tanks and so on pushing free market ideology. Deregulation resulted, along with financialization.

<comment><USER7> Generalized claptrap. You merely use cliches like 'free market ideology' which unless you give a specific example could mean just about anything. By the way, which right wing think tanks advised governments to take on borrowing to the insane levels that some have? The house will come tumbling down one day. As for 'financialization'. What does that mean? It certainly sounds terrible and we should stop it immediately.

<comment><USER6> Financialization means the fraction of GDP in the finance sector. You can graph it. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financialization](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financialization)

Free market ideology means stuff peddled by CEI, Heritage, Grover Norquist - tax the rich less, deregulate, fight unions. This doesn't seem especially nonspecific to me.

Also, spending as fraction of GDP hasn't changed that much over time. What has changed is interest rates, which leads to debt accumulation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Buyback mania isn't necessarily good for shareholders. Paying too much for share buybacks is as bad as paying too much for anything else.* And, empirically, buyback mania tends to be strongest when share prices are high. By contrast in early 2009, when the US stock market was a great deal, buybacks were rare.

To be fair, though, overpriced buybacks do benefit investors who have warrants or options.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

*Unless you happen to get lucky and time the market. Very few people can do that repeatably.

<comment><USER5> i happen to despise stock buybacks. if the company cant think of anything left in the world to invest in, i'd much rather have it as a one time dividend - even if less tax advantaged.

<comment><USER8> I tend to agree right now. In the past when stocks have traded at 24 times earnings, it hasn't ended well.

But when shares are cheap, you're missing out if they don't do a buyback. Late 2008/early 2009 was an easy time to make good buyback purchases.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The answer is not a command economy or giving more control to a state that has a monopoly on force.

The big issue is centralization. Technologies that facilitate decentralization can help combat the negative effects of centralization. Better technology integration into society in general is also necessary.

Look at things like Bitcoin or Ethereum, decentralized autonomous organizations, etc. We have and can continue to develop better ways to cooperatively regulate our society while avoiding concentration of power and allowing systems to evolve freely.

Money is very powerful but it's a type of technology that needs to be updated.

</comment><comment><USER10> Money itself warps our sense of value.

</comment><comment><USER11> The article is arguing for more government intervention in the economy which I would argue is exactly what has led to this form of crony capitalism. What is the answer to 'to big to fail'? Failure. But the problem is that the government made a decision decades ago to bail out Chrysler, and the Fed cut rates in 98 and after to bail out the markets. The we had QE1, QE2, ZIRP, etc...All of these GOVERNMENT policies have created a massive excessive of capital in the system and creates all kinds of temptations to do share buybacks and boost dividends. Verizon workers are covered by unions, which are supposed to ensure their workers get a fair wage.

This article is paint by numbers economics designed to whitewash all the problems caused by the gov't and demonize corporations for taking advantage of a situation the gov't created.

<comment><USER12> Your comment started appropriately in that it acknowledges crony capitalism. Then it strangely diverts to decrying the government as if it alone created problems that corporations simply (and innocently) exploit.

You had it right at the beginning. It's the fusion of government with corporations that's the problem. Corporations manipulate and influence government for their benefit, not the other way around.

<comment><USER11> What standard would you hold corporations to?

<comment><USER12> Well, that's my point: corporations and government are inseparable. It's useless to treat them otherwise, which makes questions such as yours misleading.

Likewise, treating corporations as hapless beneficiaries of some sort of bumbling government largesse is disingenuous. It's the deliberate co-opting of government by corporate interests that is the problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Which country has an economy that most closely resembles the ideals of this article would you say?

I would want to move there.

</comment><comment><USER14> Summary: Some people have different values from me and I don't like it. They should be forced to change their values so that I am not challenged.

<comment><USER15> Additionally, if we hand over all our earnings to the government, they'll always spread wealth equally and eliminate scarcity from the planet.</comment></comment>


The Postmodern Family Clan - <AUTHOR> https://macroaffairs.com/postmodern-family-clan/social/ <comment><USER2> Interesting read. I think this idea underestimated the challenges posed by having more adults in a family unit, especially when major decisions are made. Life events like moving to a new city, finding new employment, etc can be very difficult even for two people. Add in a few more and it seems that every major decision is being made by a committee—I imagine this could be very frustrating and problematic.

Jim + Sally create a family clan with Dan + Steve. Amongst them there are 5 children. Dan loses his job and the finances get tight. Steve is supportive of Dan taking a new job, but it is a two hr commute each way. That means that his duties taking the kids to school on tues and thurs will have to be shifted to Sally or Jim (Steve can't drive due to a vision issue). Both Jim and Sally are already working long days and would prefer for Dan to just keep looking for another job closer to home. Many meetings and many arguments ensue.

In this way, a PMFC just seems to create more entanglement between adults who would otherwise be free to make independent decisions.

<comment><USER3> Entertainment instantiation of the multi-parent idea... Have you ever watched Futureman (M rated comedy)? In season 2 in a post apocalyptic world family units are composed of 5 parents. Each parent has a role to play.

Your proposal made me think of that family setup. How would a multi parent family unit deal with personal relationships? In the show, every parent was "married" to each other and they collectively engaged intercourse as a group. In reality I bet people would have favorites and that would collapse the parental dynamic.

<comment><USER4> It would seem that throughout history and across the world, societies with at least a pretense of long term monogamous relationships have survived longer than polyamorous ones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> All of the benefits described by the author's proposed "postmodern family" are already enjoyed by much of the world's population, a large portion of which lives in extended family compounds. From India to the Middle East, and S. America to much Africa, families live together in multigenerational housing.

Indeed, even many Americans lived in this type of arrangement up until the WWII era. And the benefits to this living arrangement are significant: multiple income streams provide resiliency against sudden sickness and death, better living quarters, available childcare instead of having to pay someone outside the family to do so, etc.

Unfortunately, modern Western society has decided that living in multigenerational living arrangements is shameful, and indicates failure.

I support the idea of this author's "postmodern family clan" (although I don't like the name). Particularly for those people who don't have extended family, suffer from abuse from family members, or are estranged from their extended family. However, we should also consider the advantages of the living arrangements enjoyed by much (most?) of the world's population -- the extended, multigenerational family unit.

<comment><USER4> The likelihood of 6 adult individuals meeting and having sufficient overlap in goals and interests and habits to create a cohesive home is laughable. It's hard enough to do with just 2 financially independent individuals, not to mention navigating relationships when the value of one individual drops relative to the other(s).

<comment><USER5> > The likelihood of 6 adult individuals meeting and having sufficient overlap > in goals and interests and habits to create a cohesive home is laughable.

I disagree. Already, there's a significant movement underway in the US called "co-living", which shares a lot of the features described by the author:

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

<comment><USER6> Are there numbers? The trend from what I understand is exactly the opposite. The US has passed 40% of births to unmarried mothers [1], so we're approaching a default family of 1 adult. (Possibly 1 adult present + some percentage of another's earning power, enforced by the courts, but still.)

[1] [https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/~/media/images/...](https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/~/media/images/reports/2012/09/sr117/chart3.jpg)

<comment><USER7> > The US has passed 40% of births to unmarried mothers [1], so we're > approaching a default family of 1 adult.

The parents being unmarried doesn't mean that the father is out of the picture.

<comment><USER6> Of course, nor does having been married on day one imply that he is still in the picture. But what I described is the trend. And the right order of magnitude.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Funnily the postmodern family clan looks quite similar to the old fashioned non-nuclear family: The grandfather would have multiple children, which all live in the same household. Each of the marrying sons will bring their wives (and then children) to the main household. The whole family will help each other and the responsibility of children will be shared between everyone.

<comment><USER6> Where such families existed, they had ties of blood to bind them. The brother who loses his job will be supported by first-degree relatives, not by people he met on Tinder-for-couples. (And even better for stability if his wife is also related to the clan.)

But it's worth knowing that such families were not common everywhere. Nuclear families have certainly been the rule in England for at least 500 years (we have good data) and likely much longer. France is the same, but Russia is different, IIRC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I see these types of stories as propaganda aiming to placate younger generations into accepting a lower standard of living than their predecessors. The ones I really get a kick out of are all the Tiny Home shows popping up.

I know, I know, some people really are embracing simplicity and being unencumbered by the responsibilities past generations faced. However, what these types of stories are really saying is; sorry but because of inflation and the ponzi scheme that is our financial system you young folks are just not going to have what your parents and grandparents had so you'd better start embracing things like family cohabitation and tiny homes.

Instead of accepting this drivel I'd really like to see the gen Zers call bullshit and start demanding that they can be plumbers, electricians, nurses etc. AND still have single, detached family dwellings in Palo Alto.

<comment><USER10> That's not mainstream and won't ever be. It's kinda sensationalism. I thinks such low-effort "ideas" are republished once in 10 years. This maybe happens somewhere, but in general it's just noise. Average household size decreases in the US and in other developed countries. [https://www.statista.com/statistics/183648/average-size- of-h...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/183648/average-size-of- households-in-the-us/) Speaking about "tiny home", it's not a trend as well. Median and Average Square Feet of Floor Area in New Single-Family Houses Completed by Location: [https://web.archive.org/web/20190105112830/http://www.census...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190105112830/http://www.census.gov/const/C25Ann/sftotalmedavgsqft.pdf)

<comment><USER6> Totally agree about these articles.

Note that the trends in the sizes of new homes completed are a little misleading, I think, as they reflect boom suburbs, rather than the occupied stock. Not an expert, but here's an attempt to track the floor area of occupied housing, and it's much closer to flat (US, 20th C): [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4532357/figure/...](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4532357/figure/pone.0134135.g007/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This concept really appeals to me, but I'm disappointed the article failed to talk at all about what could go wrong. Another comment here discussed the difficulty in decision making for big life choices, but in addition to that what happens when one of the couples falls out of love and wants to divorce? Suddenly the other couple might be expected to "choose sides" and the messiness of a normal divorce is compounded by semi-related children and communal responsibilities.

<comment><USER4> It's basically reinventing an LLP business. Operating a home or family has a business aspect to it, and a single spouse is great for providing a backup income, labor, and obviously to help procreate. However, even a single spouse comes at a cost of adding politics to the business, just like adding a business partner would. And the more business partners you add, the more politics you get.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The claim that the changes outlined in the first paragraph are good for the individual and society could use some proof. Either way, the fact that the article speculates about a revolutionary new family concept shows that there are a few unsolved issues.

The ideas proposed in the article seem completely delusional to me. I would consider staying on good terms with a former partner a success, and being cool with their new partner a nice bonus. Moving in with those guys, even shouldering that other dude's unemployment, as the article suggests? An unfair, possibly disrespectful proposal.

Stereotypically, it could be the idea of someone who likes to have both the earning power and stability of the former, and the curious attractiveness of the new parter, conveniently combined in one household?

Fundamentally, the idea of a 'clan' goes contrary to the overarching trend of Individualism, which has brought us so many individual freedoms but dismantled so many formal and informal social constructs. Individualists will not submit to an artificial 'clan' unless forced by massive external pressure. A struggle to survive that has created those social constructs in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER13> I loved Robert Heinlein's books. Though I disagreed with his philosophies about women, his predictions about the future were amazing.

He predicted something similar to this, and called it S-Groups.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> As explained in the article, postmodern family clans have a lot of (financial) benefits over single-couple families. But it would be very sad if financial reasons (such as expensive housing) would be what drives people to live in such clans.

<comment><USER14> Well, material limitations always determinated societal structures. I don't see why it should be different or more sad now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> "...and they probably met online." That's _really_ gonna need some citation. Given the rise of online dating to cultural acceptance is only within the last decade or so (sorry no source, I'm not a journalist :p), I find it incredibly unlikely that those family units have surpassed offline meets in number so as to make "probably" accurate.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm sorry but i just find the idea quite horrifying for the children involved. On paper everything is just daises but I just don't see this turning out well if this were to start becoming a common trend.

Or maybe the human race can transcend the nuclear family, I guess we will find out soon enough.

<comment><USER17> What kind of problems do you envision?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Everything old is new again

</comment><comment><USER19> Heinlein speculated about this in the book, "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress". Except they were family corporations that were multi-generational as well.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is straight out of Walker Percy's _Lost in the Cosmos_.

</comment><comment><USER21> It's as if Lennart Poettering redesigned the family.

<comment><USER22> Complete with feature creep.

<comment><USER15> I love this so much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> gjsman-1000 Overall... great way to cover up the lower living standards. What next? 5 parents? 6 parents? In fact, could the entire society be parents together?

Completely idiotic.

</comment><comment><USER23> They call that a cluster in the NAG :P

</comment><comment><USER24> is the concept of clan by definition pre-modern?

</comment><comment><USER25> _Together, the couples can purchase a large home..._

Yes, of course!

</comment><comment><USER26> Congratulations, you have invented the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communal_apartment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communal_apartment)

</comment><comment><USER27> Cults are good at this.</comment>


Intel wants to charge $50 to unlock stuff your CPU can already do - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/18/intel-wants-to-charge-50-to-unlock-stuff-your-cpu-can-already-d/

<comment><USER2> This is how the industry has always worked. The 486SX was a 486DX with the FPU burned off with a laser. Initially this was to make use of parts with a defective FPU, but parts with perfectly good FPUs were often disabled to fulfil demand.

CPUs are produced to a single design within a processor series. The ones with no faults are clocked the fastest and have all their features enabled. Parts with lots of flaws are sold off as crippled budget processors. AMD's triple- core processors seem a bit strange until you realise that they're a quad-core part with one faulty core.

Overclockers have known about this for years, identifying countless 'good batches' of processors and GPUs that were perfectly capable of being clocked faster, but were sold as cheap parts to fulfil demand.

If this seems like a con, then the whole IC fabrication industry is a con - artificially crippling ICs has been standard practice for decades.

<comment><USER3> This is different. In order to be upgraded via software, the chip has to be able to function at the upgraded specs. So Intel can't take a broken batch and sell them in this type of machine anymore; they have to put the good one in no matter what.

That's what makes it seem arbitrary and annoying. When you buy a low-spec chip, you get it cheap because it could be defective. But when you buy this, it's perfectly functional, just artificially limited. You aren't helping Intel increase their yield and getting some savings for helping them -- you are just being fucked because they feel like fucking you.

I hated Intel for a long time, but then they started making good products and contributing drivers to Linux... but if they keep this sort of thing up, that goodwill is all going to erode and AMD will have to opportunity to get the enthusiast market again. (Their "we'll sue you for using the HDCP crack" is similarly goodwill-eroding, especially because there is nobody they can even sue.)

<comment><USER4> I'm genuinely curious - why do you find this to be a problem? Isn't the decision to upgrade (or not) completely up to you? How is this any different than enabling a feature set on a cisco router with a license key, or adding users to an exchange server. In both of those cases the systems are already capable of performing the function. Are you opposed to all of these classes of 'pay to enable' functionality?

<comment><USER3> Because it implies that I'm "licensing" the blob of engraved silicon sitting in my computer. How long until we're just "licensing" everything?

<comment><USER5> No, you're buying in installments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Don't get me wrong- I get why people are mad. It comes off as racketeering. And I certainly wouldn't want to drop $50 on this. But how is this all that different from software companies that do the same thing?

Your basic subscription to Basecamp, your Photoshop trial, your Windows 7 Home Edition, the Keynote trial that comes with your Mac, your iPhone... they're all capable of doing a lot more (for no extra cost to the company behind it), and you can upgrade for a cost. Another good example that the article mentions is upgrades in video games. This is a pretty common practice for software, so why not hardware?

<comment><USER7> Because you own the physical hardware, not simply a "license" to use the hardware.

Unless processors are coming with EULAs now?

This could set a dangerous precedent for automobiles or any other physical good.

EDIT: I'm speaking of consumer, not business purchases.

<comment><USER8> If you buy a crippled processor and hack it, I'd guess that Intel has no cause to sue you, precisely because you own that processor. But they don't have to make it easy to hack.

<comment><USER9> Until Intel distributes a EULA with the processor. If the courts will hold up the validity of a software EULA, why not one that applies to hardware?

...not that I think that this is an agreeable situation. But I am hardly surprised to see things evolve in that direction.

<comment><USER10> >Until Intel distributes a EULA with the processor. ... written with a _very_ tiny font in silicon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is quite normal in high-end kit; If you buy an HP SuperDome for example with half the CPUs they'll probably actually ship you a fully loaded one with half the chips turned off (still for the price of exactly what you ordered). Then when you want to upgrade you don't have to take any downtime, you just pay them the difference and they supply you with the codes to unlock it. IBM do this with mainframes all the time.

First time I've seen this on consumer kit tho'.

<comment><USER11> It seems a little clearer in that case, because mainframe purchases are often pretty explicitly "licenses" rather than "purchases", with an actual contract negotiated between the two companies. IBM used to even come and take back the machine if you stopped paying the annual fees, because you didn't really own it. Consumer hardware is more typically a "sale", though, with no real contract-negotiation phase, and both parties' obligations completed after the sale, except for any warranties.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Couldn't someone theoretically figure out how to enable these features without paying intel? I suspect if intel starts doing this people are going to figure out ways around this.

<comment><USER13> Practically guaranteed someone will, in no time flat, figure out how to unlock these, and that knowledge will be spread far and wide. There will be a run on the stores for the cheap versions of the chips for this reason, mostly for the home/small shop busines, and then Intel won't do it anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This actually sounds pretty good to me, at least in theory.

Upgrading the CPU is quite costly - you have to take out the old CPU and replace it altogether with a new one. With HDDs you can put the old one in an external enclosure and get some use from it (if the reason you're replacing it isn't failure), and with RAM you might have slots free, so you can keep using the old stuff in addition to the new.

Replaced CPUs tend to be pretty useless. The socket type changes _all the time_ , so you have to eBay it off. Laptops are worse, the CPUs are often soldered on or you can't find replacements.

The only real problem I foresee is that the upgrades are likely going to be of limited use. Hyperthreading gives you a modest boost, anything more than that (clock speed, disabled cores, cache) will drive up power consumption and therefore thermal dissipation. Computers upgradeable in this way will have to contain cooling systems that can cope with the extra heat, even if 90% of people will never upgrade. Might still be feasible for the very low end (Atoms - especially as they're so slow even "normal" people might upgrade) or as CPUs become increasingly modular (either double your CPU _or_ GPU cores in the same package, but not both).

</comment><comment><USER15> I ♥ AMD when it comes to pricing. Their pricing ratios seem to reflect the realities of production yields rather than market segmentation, and seem more closely correlated with performance. (Desktops; haven't looked at server CPUs lately).

</comment><comment><USER16> This already happens with cars. For example, the difference between the BMW Mini One and Cooper versions is basically just a different engine map on the CPU, with the former restricted in power and the latter sold at a higher price <http://www.newmini.org/content/mini_jan02.htm>.

<comment><USER17> This seem to happen with mice [animals] too:

 _Deleting a certain gene in mice can make them smarter by unlocking a mysterious region of the brain considered to be relatively inflexible, scientists at Emory University School of Medicine have found._

[http://www.medicaldaily.com/news/20100918/2064/gene- limits-l...](http://www.medicaldaily.com/news/20100918/2064/gene-limits- learning-and-memory-in-mice.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Can't wait to go to The Pirate Bay for upgrades to my hardware.

</comment><comment><USER18> We already do this in several industries, so it's nothing to get that upset about. However my larger worry here is that the end-users will now think that software can upgrade their hardware. That alone opens up huge doors in security - users will inadvertently download some tracking program that claims to "upgrade their processor" under the assumption that it does the same thing that intel is doing. Good for computer repair companies and spyware companies, bad for the end user.

<comment><USER8> You're about 15 years late; IIRC there was malware that claimed to upgrade your modem to 56k and your CD-ROM drive to a CD-R drive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Two more examples:

* Nvidia intentionally capping floating point precision on 1/8th on their GTX 480 cards, since they cost a fraction of their Tesla cards. Both based on latest Fermi architecture.

* In automotive industry: two otherwise identical cars, but with different versions of engine microcontroller driver, can have many thousands of dollars difference in price.

</comment><comment><USER20> 1-2 months tops before someone breaks their security.

<comment><USER21> well, that risk is exactly why they're testing the idea out in low-end markets first - so the people who would break the security for this probably don't even care for this laptop anyways.

<comment><USER8> You don't have to scratch your own itch. An entrepreneurial hacker could start selling "$50 value" unlocks for, say, $25.

<comment><USER2> Last time I checked, that would constitute illegal circumvention under the DMCA.

<comment><USER22> Did you actually check at all?

[http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/usc_sec_17_0...](http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/usc_sec_17_00000102 ----000-.html)

Doesn't look to me like it covers CPU features.

<comment><USER23> They'd probably argue you're circumventing the copyright protections on the portion of the chip you didn't pay to access, just as circumventing DRM for pre-installed DLC for a game would be a DMCA violation. Anybody's guess what the courts would say about that, that is to say, I'm not saying I agree with this argument, just that I think it would be good enough to get someone selling $25 unlocks into court with a decent chance of serious losses.

<comment><USER24> Since when do you make a _copy_ of those parts of the chip to use them?

Copyright is about the right to restrict copying - the clue is in the name. The software case is fundamentally different, because your computer must make a (temporary) copy of the software in order to use it.

<comment><USER23> You don't _make_ a copy, you _have_ a copy. The DMCA applies to such works as well, at least as far as the law is concerned. This is part of why the DMCA is so offensive, the "anticircumvention" clause grotesquely expanded copyright law well beyond the act of mere copying. The _act of circumvention_ becomes illegal, regardless of whether it even involves you "making a copy" in the eyes of the law. The act of playing a DVD on Linux by hacking past the encryption is illegal, even though that is not usually considered "making a copy" in the eyes of the law. (That's also something that has been fought over but I'm not convinced has been settled.)

<comment><USER24> The DMCA bans circumventing effective technological measures intended to prevent copying. The technological measure you'd be circumventing here is one intended to prevent you from using a feature of the hardware, not prevent you from copying a copyrighted work. The DMCA does not appear to apply.

(On the other hand, if they designed it such that you needed to upload a piece of (copyrighted) microcode to the CPU on each boot, then that could well bring it within the remit of copyright law. In that case, if you wanted to produce a third-party version, you'd have to write your own "clean room" version of the necessary microcode, which seems like a pretty high hurdle).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> DEC used to do this with their hardware, they would cripple an otherwise perfectly functional machine to a cheaper model in order to segment the market.

Of course DEC field engineers did not feel like waiting for the diagnostics to complete so they usually temporarily upgraded the machine to full spec to run their tools, then revert the changes before they left.

This was a funny little dance because some of their customers had clued in to the trick and would do the same thing after the engineers have left, upgrading the machine, only to downgrade it just before a field engineer would arrive.

On the plus side, if this is a software thing I fully expect it to be hacked.

</comment><comment><USER26> It seems most of the commenters here are overestimating the average consumer.

Excluding the friends I have in the tech industry, not a single one of my friends or family would be able to tell you the different between the CPU and software on their computer.

Besides, which is a better value proposition to the consumer (even if it is not a better value in reality)? Paying $50 for an online CPU upgrade that makes their processor appear 10% faster, or dropping $500+ on a brand new computer to get 40% faster?

</comment><comment><USER27> My question is, how do you unlock/lock things on the processor via software? Does the CPU have a special instruction that the software triggers? I can't wrap my mind around it.

<comment><USER28> I would guess it uses some of these: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model- specific_register>

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> IBM and Sun Microsystems (one of the first workstation vendors, then seller of servers, especially to finance; now an obscure division of Oracle, a commercial database company) used to do something similar with their biggest machines -- ship a fully populated high-end server, and then sell activation of CPU and memory resources after the fact. I don't know how this was enforced; I think it was mainly done at the OS or firmware level, not at the CPU level.

</comment><comment><USER30> Intel has been doing this for years with 100% flawless chips. Crippling a chip is part of their business. Their yield management is fantastic such that they run entire wafers at the higher spec then choose what % to sell as lower-end SKUs purely based on demand. Perhaps 10 years ago this was driven by yield quality, but nowadays the number of chips out of a batch that can't pass the test for the top-of-the-line product in that batch are < 1%.

</comment><comment><USER31> This seems like a great idea to me - sell the slower processor cheaply to the customer with the promise that they can upgrade it later via a simple code with no hardware changes necessary. The customer can get a performance boost later down the line when they have the need/money for it.

Intel gets the opportunity to make a little more money and the customer has a little future proofing - like I said seems like a great idea to me....

</comment><comment><USER32> Funny related sidenote: the Chinese government was at one point so paranoid about buying processors from western companies that they initiated the creation of their own CPU architecture and began fabrication. They had a fear that outside CPUs could be programmed to be disabled (either remotely or under certain scenarios).

In any case, the processors were reportedly quite bad and the whole thing was eventually dropped.

<comment><USER24> That would be the Loongson.

It's a reasonably performing MIPS clone, and the project is still active.

<comment><USER32> You're right, it's still active. I just remember it having terrible performance 4-5 years ago and interest in it being less than stellar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Well, if it was SAAS (software as a service), no one would have complain about that, right?

With every paid service, one can get a list of features for a fixed price, and then pay more to "unlock" features that that very software can already do.

I wonder why is it easier for people to pay extra for extra in software but not in hardware.

Does anyone have an idea?

</comment><comment><USER34> How does this business model even make sense? I just can't wrap my head around why you would produce a product, cripple it, and then sell it.

Edit: My point is that Intel is intentionally reducing the value of their product. How can they afford to do that and remain competitive?

<comment><USER35> So you don't have to produce lots of different products? Mass producing the same good version is cheap.

<comment><USER5> It's like region locked DVD players. It's all the same kit off the same assembly line, just with one jumper lead attached. If you're Sony or whoever you want to be able to shift your inventory from country to country if that's where the demand is.

<comment><USER24> It's not even a physical jumper, most DVD players can be switched region by means of codes sent to the IR port.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> What worries me more is that if software can enable parts of a chip, software could, also, cripple the processor by enabling conflicting parts.

<comment><USER13> IIRC, intel chips have had software modifiable microcode (or some portion thereof) that could render them useless for a good 10 years or more.

<comment><USER37> Intel microcode lives in SRAM. It can't survive a power cycle, and so has to be loaded on every boot.

<comment><USER36> Interesting. Can it be written during normal operation? Like giving up a couple opcodes for a better implementation of an important one?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Popular Remington 700 rifle linked to potentially deadly defect (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbsnews.com/news/popular-remington-700-rifle-linked-to-potentially-deadly-defects/ <comment><USER2> A defect like that is definitely a serious issue, and if at all prevalent in the series with the walker trigger, there should be a recall, regardless of cost to Remmington. It looks like they did the correct recall for the later model.

What happene is horrendous, and sadly could have been prevented despite the malfunction.

1\. Always keep a firearm pointed in a safe direction.(Never point a gun at something you don't intend to shoot/kill)*

2\. Always treat every firearm as if it is loaded, and could fire, even after you have unloaded it.

3\. Keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to fire.

4\. Don't let anyone near a gun who doesn't understand and comply with the above rules.

Those were the rules I was taught. some further explanation can and should be provided for each of those, but if you follow them, it protects against almost all accidental discharges, and keeps the intentional ones safer.

* Understanding what a safe direction means is critical.

<comment><USER3> IIUC, there is a saying in Russian theater: "Every ten years, an unloaded gun will fire. Every hundred years, a broomstick will fire." I think it means, be careful where you point everything, no matter how sure you are that it's unloaded.</comment></comment>


YC is One of Fast Company's 50 Most Innovative Companies  - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/most-innovative-companies/2012/y-combinator

<comment><USER2> Congrats also to Bump, Reddit, Airbnb, Dropbox, and Disqus!

<comment><USER3> I'm really curious what Bump brings to the table, at all, let alone what makes them worth the same breath as the rest of these companies.

It feels more like a trivial app put together on a hack weekend or Man Month than actual innovation.

<comment><USER2> Have you used it?

<comment><USER4> That's a pretty poor response to a valid question. While the tone of the question was harsher than I think was warranted, the question of "why is this something I should care about?" is something that should be at the forefront of every product developer and investor's mind.

<comment><USER2> Not at all. Surely the obvious first step in talking to someone about an app is to figure out how much they already know about it.

<comment><USER5> While you may have intended your question as a question, that's not the impression it gave. My first reading of it was as a rudely sarcastic dismissal -- "obviously you don't know what you're talking about" -- and I was about to downvote it on grounds of incivility until I noticed that you were the author and realized that was probably not how you intended it to be read.

<comment><USER6> He was just asking an honest question and wanted to know if the person actually used it, since that would probably provide a deeper explanation of the utility of Bump than any personal opinion of his would. Let's not get too uptight around here people.

<comment><USER5> I know what he meant. My point was that what he meant isn't what it _sounded like_ at first glance (yay mixed metaphors!) and that's probably why daeken responded as he did.

<comment><USER6> Yea, don't sweat it. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The Occupy Movement is ranked #7. This article seems very linkbait-y.

<comment><USER8> Since when is the Occupy Movement a company?

To quote the article: _Occupy's initial public offering, if you will, puts it in very good company._

If I will? No, actually, I think I will not.

<comment><USER9> Occupy has lots of things in common with startups, which we talk specifically about in the story. "Disruptive. Small-d democratic. Transparent. Tech savvy. Design savvy. Local and global."

The IPO part is a joke, sorry the humor was lost on you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This list seems like an odd mix of pandering, genuinely exciting companies, and companies that did something interesting years ago and rank for still existing.

<comment><USER9> Companies that have existed for years can still do innovative things. We've highlighted those new efforts in the entries. Jawbone, for example, has been around for ages but last year had a huge hit with the Jambox. In that entry Farhad Manjoo also writes about the Up, which was flying off shelves until they found a defect and pulled it.

<comment><USER11> Would you mind explaining Reddit's inclusion in the same way? Certainly the write-up of Reddit in this piece doesn't seem to highlight anything new or innovative (unless campaigning against SOPA counts).

Cheers

(I feel slightly bad for picking upon Reddit, they were just the first example that came to mind when glancing at the list.)

<comment><USER9> The first thing to note is that Reddit was not on the main list of the 50 Most Innovative. It was included in list of top 10 for Media, which is where we recognize innovators in a more general way within different industries. The main focus of Reddit's entry, after explaining the site to someone who might never have heard of it before, were the "Ask Me Anything" Q&As. Those interviews were far more social and newsworthy than most Q&As that appeared in msm. Although the series didn't start last year, it began gaining traction and became more newsworthy during 2011. Many innovations are slow to mature, or even fail despite their unique approach. The Reddit entry recognized that those Q&As have come into their own.

<comment><USER10> Here's a better example, and it does suck to single anyone out, especially one that I use and like:

Dropbox - the only thing they've done recently was take small evolutionary steps on the innovation they showed _5 years ago when they launched_.

There was so little to say about what _else_ they've done that you basically just mention they're growing and making money. Which is great, but does growth and revenue make them the 22nd most innovative company in the world?

<comment><USER9> I see your point. My question: Who in the cloud space is doing more innovative work that is targeted to consumers?

<comment><USER10> Why are cloud and consumers criteria at all? That's why this list feels like such an odd mix - there shouldn't _have_ to be anyone from the cloud, if they don't make the cut weighed against _everything else in the entire world_ then do a separate list on innovation in the cloud where they can be recognized for their achievements without compromise.

<comment><USER9> Those aren't criteria, but the fact that they have designed so-called cloud storage in a useful way that is accessible to the masses is why they were included on the list. I also think that it _is_ important that a cloud company be included in the list. So I wonder why you think there shouldn't have been anyone from the cloud?

<comment><USER10> I don't think the cloud specifically should be excluded or even a factor in and of itself, I think the most innovative companies in the world are by definition the ones who _are_ innovating the most, cloud or otherwise.

Twitter belongs on the suspect list too, how can they still be one of the most innovative companies in the world for a product largely unchanged in 5 years, during which time a jaw bone was _printed_ and transplanted into a person?

This _is_ innovative: <http://news.discovery.com/tech/printed- jawbone-120207.html>

This _was_ innovative: "It was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> No mention of KhanAcademy under education?

<comment><USER9> Sal Khan is #7 on our Most Creative People In Business List from June: [http://www.fastcompany.com/most-creative-people/2011/sal- kha...](http://www.fastcompany.com/most-creative-people/2011/sal-khan-khan- academy)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> YC is pretty remarkable and it starts at the top with PG. I also feel YC wouldn't be what it is today without HN as it extends the YC community just enough to make a huge difference... setting itself apart from the other accelerators. Congrats to all involved.

</comment><comment><USER14> My repost from FC.

Congrats and Thank you Paul - for helping out the passionate inventors push their ideas to the next level - what Paul has done to the startup community in the Bay Area, is what Jim Harbaugh did to the bay area for football :)</comment>


Ask HN: Making vs. Learning -- what should be my ratio? - <AUTHOR>

I'm always one engaging conversation away from starting a new programming/writing/music/film project, despite the inconvenient fact that I'm almost never learned enough to actualize an idea to its fullest.
I got ideas; I don't got skills.
There's also this insidious tendency that I have, where I finally sit down to do some solid learnin'. Once I grasp something novel, the implications of how I can use it fill my mind. Then the temptation to shift from learn-mode to create-mode gets so distracting that I stop learning effectively.
I encounter variations of this balancing act in many areas of my life. I'm in high school, so there's always a vague hope that college will change things, but from what I've read online and heard from friends, college isn't a problem-fixer as much as it is a momentum-machine for those who want to learn and apply skills. I'm afraid I'll be faced with these same problems 5 years from now. I'm afraid I'll be half-good at a lot of things. <comment><USER2> It really depends on your ambitions. My opinion is that if you are "one engaging conversation away from starting a new programming/writing/music/film project" you ultimately have something entrepreneurial inside you and you want to MAKE something.

In this case, my humble advice is to not care if you don't have the skills. Start doing and you will learn. By "doing" I mean even the smallest thing: start a blog about what you want to do (I am sure you can do that), create a Facebook group to involve people and then evolve from there. If you are really excited about what you want to do you will find people ready to help you along the way. So don't worry if you don't have the skills to create something. You can still be good at engaging other people, the ones with the skills you need.

I personally think that being aware of your own strenghts and weaknesses is very important for every entrepreneur.

Howard Schultz, founder of Startbucks, many years ago said the best advice he got was to "Hire the skills you don't have" ([http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2005/...](http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2005/03/21/8254830/index.htm))

Add the learning part when you are already making. You will understand much more. When Facebook was getting bigger young Zuck started to read Peter Drucker's essays. And I am sure those pages where really teaching him a lot because he already did some much. They were not theoretical notions.

Hope I am answer your question.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's important to learn your whole life long but as far as making vs. learning goes this is an easy one: you should be far more heavily slanted toward "making".

I used to read voraciously about everything because I wanted to do things the "right way." You don't learn much at all by just reading. It's when you learn the thing while you're doing it that it matters even if you're making lots of mistakes.

Be more disposed toward doing. It's the better route to success.</comment>


Solitude and Leadership (2010) - <AUTHOR> https://theamericanscholar.org/solitude-and-leadership/ <comment><USER2> _Now that's the third time I've used that word, concentrating. Concentrating, focusing. You can just as easily consider this lecture to be about concentration as about solitude. Think about what the word means. It means gathering yourself together into a single point rather than letting yourself be dispersed everywhere into a cloud of electronic and social input. It seems to me that Facebook and Twitter and YouTube—and just so you don't think this is a generational thing, TV and radio and magazines and even newspapers, too—are all ultimately just an elaborate excuse to run away from yourself. To avoid the difficult and troubling questions that being human throws in your way. Am I doing the right thing with my life? Do I believe the things I was taught as a child? What do the words I live by—words like duty, honor, and country—really mean? Am I happy?_

What an excellent speech. It certainly resonates with me as a recent graduate who can confirm many of the author's careful observations of my generation.

</comment><comment><USER3> Overall a nice meditation and certainly all round good advice. I keep coming across this idea of the loneliness of leadership though. Perhaps necessary to the mood, I submit he skipped over the hard part.

The loneliness of leadership, to me, is quite different from solitude. I have felt most lonely when I'm most busy. It's a sense that there's no one left to help. You've delegated everything you can, you've set aside everything you can, and still the work keeps coming in, often from people who depend on you, not necessarily outside sources. This is where you realize maybe you overcommitted on a few things and you start wondering if maybe the straights got it right: maybe pursuing that new idea wasn't worth it. Just keep things going.

That's when you realize this leadership gig is harder than it looks. In your office at 1 am on Sunday when there's no one else. Maybe Steve Jobs wasn't so crazy calling people at oh-dark-thirty.

By comparison, solitude has come to me almost as a reward, a gift from others who commit to letting me be alone long enough to get some thinking done.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is one of my most favorite essays and I think about it daily. I increasingly believe that modern workplace, with its emphasis on open space plans and team work, gradually develops groupthink that can be potentially destructive. [1]

It is not only the absorption of others' opinions. It is impossible to pause and critically evaluate thoughts for several minutes when not alone. Mistakes remain unidentified mainly because no one had a moment to discover them; conversely, they might get dismissed if their understanding requires larger amount of time. It is difficult to think for oneself. I work in a management/economic consultancy and see this every day.

How can "solitude" enter work?

[1] The Organization Man by William Whyte, a classic management book from the 50s, is a relevant resource for a critical analysis of a workplace along these lines.

</comment><comment><USER5> _That's really the great mystery about bureaucracies. Why is it so often that the best people are stuck in the middle and the people who are running things—the leaders—are the mediocrities? Because excellence isn't usually what gets you up the greasy pole. What gets you up is a talent for maneuvering. Kissing up to the people above you, kicking down to the people below you. Pleasing your teachers, pleasing your superiors, picking a powerful mentor and riding his coattails until it's time to stab him in the back. Jumping through hoops. Getting along by going along. Being whatever other people want you to be, so that it finally comes to seem that, like the manager of the Central Station, you have nothing inside you at all. Not taking stupid risks like trying to change how things are done or question why they're done. Just keeping the routine going._

What great writing.

</comment><comment><USER6> _" what I saw around me were great kids who had been trained to be world-class hoop jumpers. Any goal you set them, they could achieve. Any test you gave them, they could pass with flying colors. They were, as one of them put it herself, "excellent sheep.""_

Sound observation. Hoop-jumping has it's place, yet leadership starts when the hoop isn't a hoop, but a flaming hole you have to climb. Leadership is demonstrating your understanding of risk, creating a plan others can follow and providing the necessary motivation to successfully execute.

</comment><comment><USER7> Thank you for introducing me to this hitherto unknown.</comment>


Survey of CPU Caches - <AUTHOR> https://meribold.github.io/2017/10/20/survey-of-cpu-caches/ <comment><USER2> I liked the benchmarks, numbers and graphs this article included. I already knew about cache levels and prefetching, but what I didn't know was exactly how strong the effects were, especially about prefetching.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thank you for this. This is amazing. I can use this to benchmark different clusters available to me through compute canada.</comment>


The Formula That Killed Wall Street (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2009/02/wp-quant/ <comment><USER2> The movie version of this: "The Big Short", now playing in selected theaters. General release on December 23.</comment>


A culture that attracts quality candidates - <AUTHOR> http://radianttiger.com/2015/04/20/a-culture-that-attracts-quality-candidates/ <comment><USER2> Here's what I want as a software engineer. I want to be respected for my opinion.

If I say that a customer change is a complicated task, I think it's great if my manager engages me and takes me to task on why I think that is -- as long as this is done from a position of respect and not from a position of disbelief.

When I say "We are likely going to have to implement X, because the customer won't give us an answer on it and just like the last feature, they said it was fine not to have right up until the last minute when it suddenly wasn't", I DON'T want the response to be "So, if we don't have to do X, it should only take a few days, right?".

In case it's not obvious, what I'm dealing with right now in my job is management that expects me to be up front with them but can never seem to believe what I say when I am. It's like they take the most blindly optimistic interpretation of what you say, even though that's not what you said, then hold you accountable for what you didn't say when the shit hits the fan.

If I went to my doctor and he said "You need to take this medication or it's 90% likely you'll get sick", most people would think I was an idiot if I decided to decline the doctor's advice, then complained that the doctor didn't know what he was talking about because I got sick.

So yeah, as a software engineer I want to be respected as an expert in my domain in the same way that people generally don't think it's okay to second- guess their lawyers/doctors/basically any other profession it seems than software engineering.

/Vent is now over :)

<comment><USER3> I guess it's time to stop calling engineering estimates an "opinion!"

But yeah, I see the same thing all the time. We say "this isn't going to work unless we do X,Y,Z," which of course aren't done, and then of course things don't work out, and it's our fault. I blame it on a lack of intuitive understanding (and pressure to cut costs, resulting in a RDF).

Most people would understand that a bridge won't hold if you left out all the rebar from the structure, even if it wasn't visible from the outside. With software, though, people's eyes just go blank at some point, and they simply ignore everything and piece together what they want to hear. "X dollars in Y days, got it."

<comment><USER2> You phrased that way better than I did. That's exactly the kind of thing I was talking about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm surprised so many companies fail at this - companies should invest in their employees, unless they want their company to become a revolving door, in which case, I'll be sure to stay far away.

If you're not trying to develop employees and create a culture of making everyone better at their craft, you're not a manager I want anything to do with because you're likely to be a strong cause of failure.

<comment><USER5> I know generally what I'm looking for in a company, but unless I personally know someone who works there and I'm tight enough with them to get real information, I'm stuck with whatever they tell me plus hopefully glassdoor, at best. And many companies actively lie on glassdoor: I know of two personally.

During the interview process, the company is selling themselves just as much as you are selling yourself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is an "agile" operation. A few years of "agile", and they'll be burned- out husks. Then you fire them and hire the next round of naive kids.

Another article cited today on HN, from the Paris Review, says it better:

 _" When you begin programming, one of the attractions is the certainty that you will never run out of things to learn. But after a few years of working in a corporate cubicle under exploitive managers, after one deadline too many, after family and age and a tiring body, learning the ins and outs of the latest library can feel like another desperate sprint on a nonstop treadmill."_

<comment><USER7> With the Paris Review printing such things no wonder there is rampant ageism in the tech industry.

<comment><USER8> Political correctness is a dangerous tightrope.

You try to uncover X'ism in tech by pointing out ways in which common industry practice Y disadvantage people in group X. But to do this, you had to claim that people in group X would perform worse when practice Y was in effect. Oops! You're an X'ist yourself!

E.g. X = age, Y = working to deadlines/long hours, X = women, Y = speaking up in meetings, etc.

<comment><USER7> Agile and learning continuously is not something that only programmers out of college can do. You can still do it while having a family, even.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The thing about this kind of thinking is that it not only attracts good candidates but you also get the most out of whatever people you have (or will get)</comment>


Noun Project – Icons for Everything - <AUTHOR> https://thenounproject.com/ <comment><USER2> I put up a couple of hundred icons that I'd drawn previously up with a public domain license. Here are the download counts and royalties from the last 10 months for reference: [http://i.imgur.com/clNZWUk.png](http://i.imgur.com/clNZWUk.png)

<comment><USER3> Are you saying creating and sharing icon sets is not a get-rich-quick-scheme? ;)

<comment><USER2> Ah the halcyon days of September last year when I made nearly $40.

Still, it's free beer money, and a good enough way to distribute work to the public domain.

It feels good as a designer who's not able to easily contribute to the open source community.

<comment><USER4> > It feels good as a designer who's not able to easily contribute to the open > source community.

You would be surprised how helpful it is to simply offer design insights for free. A lot of projects are maintainted by programmers who have zero design notions and who are not even aware of the little things.

Offering a free mockup to an open-source project is also very valuable.

<comment><USER2> I've tried with mixed results. Some OS projects have been super grateful for tiny things such as favicons and logo vectorisation, but in my experience most tend to acknowledge but not implement work sent on spec.

After a quick search I've just discovered opensourcedesign.net which I'll definitely look at contributing to. This would be great for designers portfolios [http://opensourcedesign.net/jobs](http://opensourcedesign.net/jobs)

<comment><USER5> It's a tough nut to crack. Open source contributors tend to want to dive in and make the one patch they want without engaging in any design or feedback process. Installing that process means someone has to take up managerial duties. Most projects stumble along with a "one coder army" who expedites these processes by assuming anything they can't do on their lonesome is out of scope, and all feedback, patches or design ideas are strictly suggestion. Switching to a team management approach when a project gets big is a big source of friction since it's rare to have a strong solo dev who is equally capable at giving up direct control and delegating. Usage of a project is often mismatched with development energy, creating unbalanced workloads.

So the tendency ends up being that a lot of projects just stay small and go out of their way not to grow, even when they address a problem that demands more scope than they have.

My suggestion given all of that is to not give up, but focus your design energies on the inspirational: if you produce mockups and prototypes that are hugely compelling, someone will come out of the woodwork to realize some of them: you may not know which ones or when, but you're giving them footholds in approaching the problem.

<comment><USER2> Yes, I've not tried submitting pull requests or forking code so I don't have any experience of the etiquette or protocols needed like developers must have in spades.

Very interesting point about inspirational mockups, definitely food for thought!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Little pictograms for buttons are often extremely vague and open to interpretation.

Eg. Heres a random game where upon opening it I was immediately confused [http://mobile.cdn.softpedia.com/apk/images/color- switch_1.jp...](http://mobile.cdn.softpedia.com/apk/images/color-switch_1.jpg) (also the icons are all animated / rotating, making it even more confusing, made this game menu stick out in my memory as an egregious example)

Some designers seems to love the minimalism of if though, from an aesthetic reason, I assume.

Imo Text is the clearest thing you can put on a button to tell the user what that button does 'save' 'load' 'new game' etc. Yes, it will need to be translated, but thats simply putting in more work for a better product.

<comment> yoz-y That really depends. Can you imagine photoshop's interface if it were all text? This is an extreme example but more generally I think text is better for discoverability but icons are better for visual memory and thus better suited for buttons in applications you use often.

On desktop there are always tool tips. On touch interfaces this was not yet figured out.

<comment><USER7> I did a workup of the iphone with no icons and just text:

[http://justinvincent.com/page/2387/if-the-iphone-used- text-l...](http://justinvincent.com/page/2387/if-the-iphone-used-text-labels- instead-of-icons)

It shows just how stark an interface can look without them.

<comment><USER8> As a counterpoint, here are Zendesk's icons with no text: [http://imgur.com/a/wzCO0](http://imgur.com/a/wzCO0) \-- can you guess what those do?

Of course, this is about the worst example of iconography I've ever seen so here's the same with the labels left in: [http://imgur.com/a/CyqA6](http://imgur.com/a/CyqA6) and I'd even go so far as to suggest that given their choice of icons they should just get rid of them and make it text-only.

<comment><USER9> But those are product logo, not icons [https://imgur.com/a/4kAKt](https://imgur.com/a/4kAKt). They don't serve the same purpose - logos are brand assets and are suppose to be distinct, otherwise they can't be trademarked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> They also have a cool API: [http://api.thenounproject.com/](http://api.thenounproject.com/), which is used by automated logo services logojoy[0] and Tailor Brands[1].

I think Google's autodraw[2] + noun project would make an excellent pairing.

[0] [https://www.logojoy.com/](https://www.logojoy.com/) [1] [https://www.tailorbrands.com/](https://www.tailorbrands.com/) [2] [https://aiexperiments.withgoogle.com/autodraw](https://aiexperiments.withgoogle.com/autodraw)

<comment><USER11> API also used by Teespring.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This has been around for years. I was thankful for them when I was building my now failed company. I didn't end up licensing anything, but had I got to revenue, I certainly would have. Thank you to your team.

</comment><comment><USER13> Previously, for ref:

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2843728](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2843728) [2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3498929](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3498929)

</comment><comment><USER14> Nice service but HUGE WARNING: Do not sign up to E-Mails, as they are super- spammy.

</comment><comment><USER15> I think $40/yr or $2/icon is too far out of reach for me to use these icons as a proof of concept, blog, or early website launches. I have a website idea which would use about 100 of these icons, but I can't justify the cost yet since it brings in no revenue.

<comment><USER16> $40/yr isn't that expensive for "artwork". Domain names and hosting can be more expensive.

Hiring a graphical artist for an hour will probably be a lot more expensive

<comment><USER17> hiring a graphic designer usually means you get exclusive rights to their output, which is a tremendous difference.

<comment><USER18> But who needs exclusivity for proof of concepts?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> TOS acceptance box and "you can send me emails" box combined. Classy.

All I wanted was a bacon egg and cheese icon...

<comment><USER20> The icons are embedded SVG so you can just copy and paste it from the page source. The icons are Creative Commons licensed so you don't even need to accept their TOS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This really reminds my of the glory days of clip art :) I for one really liked those so no harm meant :) The next thing is clippy coming back (oh wait that's all those chat bots) :)

<comment><USER22> Getting hit with the nostalgia of flipping through a giant book and locating the corresponding disc with the icon I wanted!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> What I really need is a quality Verb Project

<comment><USER24> What are you thinking? They call it the Noun Project, but they seem to cover verbs pretty well from the few examples I tried.

Ex. "Bat" [https://thenounproject.com/search/?q=bat&i=660766](https://thenounproject.com/search/?q=bat&i=660766)

"Swim" [https://thenounproject.com/search/?q=swim&i=912051](https://thenounproject.com/search/?q=swim&i=912051)

"Eat" [https://thenounproject.com/search/?q=eat&i=946933](https://thenounproject.com/search/?q=eat&i=946933)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> There are about a million words in the English language. The site has a long way to go to get to "everything". Me, I'll stick with phonetic alphabets, which have long displaced icons.

Interestingly, iconic languages usually wound up assigning sounds to the icons and were transformed into phonetic alphabets. Icons just aren't practical.

<comment><USER26> Of course not. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Valuable resource with many uses beyond putting icons on buttons. For example:

\- source graphics for figures in books and articles

\- inspiration for new ways of expressing an idea graphically

\- gauging variation in visual representation of a concept

\- learning how to make a particular shape with vector graphics

\- logo ideas

<comment><USER28> Not to mention points of interest on maps!

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I read some designers discussing the filter icon usually being a funnel which doesn't do much filtering. It does funnel something into something. [https://thenounproject.com/search/?q=filter](https://thenounproject.com/search/?q=filter) interesting to see the other options that show up.

<comment><USER30> Here's an idea; four arrows moving right, towards a line. The line has a hole in it, only allowing one of the arrows to pass through. Demonstrates filtering and doesn't have any accidental significance from symmetry.

<comment><USER31> There's a somewhat more simplistic version of that on the above-linked results, which is four centered, horizontal lines, each decreasing in width from top to bottom, which I think communicates basically the right idea: you have a much of this thing up here, but you can get less of that thing down here by clicking this (maybe). Conceptually speaking I like it more than a funnel, but it still needs a text label to convey the right thing.

There's also a literal filter icon, which could only ever work at somewhat larger sizes due to the mesh. Without knowing that the context of the search results is that of "filter", however, you probably wouldn't know what it was by simply looking at it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> They even have icons for "Fuck", e.g.

[https://thenounproject.com/search/?q=Fuck&i=54850](https://thenounproject.com/search/?q=Fuck&i=54850)

Iconic karma sutra here:

[https://thenounproject.com/term/sex/](https://thenounproject.com/term/sex/)

<comment><USER33> Which mysteriously includes icons like this one: [https://thenounproject.com/term/sex/164447/](https://thenounproject.com/term/sex/164447/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I can certainly see how this is useful, but is there also a complementary site that provides the opposite? I try to avoid using icons that resemble everyday items (the 3.5 inch floppy for 'save' is a good example).

Edit: there's actually a ton of good abstract stuff in here. Should have looked more closely.

</comment><comment><USER35> Cool, but I can't see the footer when infinite scroll is enabled to check the pricing when viewing an icon.

<comment><USER36> What's the point of having a footer when you can't get to it? I see links for about and pricing that I wanted to click on, but I can't get to it. Super frustrating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I would be using this service if they offer all possible resolutions with one click. I assume this is service which should be used by non-designers to quickly get icons for some proof of concept or similar.

Am I missing something?

<comment><USER38> You can download SVG versions of the icons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I always look for the icons with multiple gears. Have not found one which would actually work: Gears not touching, size difference blocks, or three gears in deadlock. :)

<comment><USER2> Hey only one of my gear icons wouldn't work :)

[https://thenounproject.com/blackspike/collection/gears/](https://thenounproject.com/blackspike/collection/gears/)

<comment><USER39> Great work! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> It would be nice if they implemented machine learning to cluster icons with similar style together. Then your queries could return only icons in the stlye youve selected!

</comment><comment><USER41> Don't submit them to the Unicode Consortium. Please. Do not want.

There are now over 2600 emoji. Enough already.

<comment><USER42> The point of modern emoji is that their look is standardized though. (past the original goal of Japanese cell phone communication, the consortium seems to be concerned with filling in gaps and making sure cultures are properly represented) So emoji should (ideally) be a common set of pictograms that people can send to each other and which can be displayed interchangeable by each IME. The Unicode Consortium also has more stringent standards for inclusion. [0] UI icons are excluded. 2.6K isn't a lot, [1] Unicode has tons of room, and no one is forcing you to use them. People have obviously found use for them and it has made them enthusiastic about interacting with their tech overlords. [2] I used to irrationally hate anything popular too, until I made an effort to try to understands people's motivations for liking it and tried it myself. Emoji are the missing expressive layer of our text that express nuance like sarcasm and mirth. Sure we have emoticons, but those were limited and emoji are much more diverse and versatile. [3] Maybe you should give them a try before being so quick to write them off. I don't exactly pepper my texts with them, but I do respect people's motivations for using them and I always make sure to send a popper [4] to my friends on their birthdays.

[0]: [http://unicode.org/emoji/selection.html](http://unicode.org/emoji/selection.html)

[1]: Just look at how many Chinese characters there are...

[2]: Campaigns to get certain emoji into unicode are quite popular, such as with the taco emoji ([https://www.tacobell.com/feed/tacoemoji](https://www.tacobell.com/feed/tacoemoji)) and the dumping emoji ([http://www.dumplingemoji.org/](http://www.dumplingemoji.org/)).

[3]: Eggplant emoji anyone?

[4]: [http://emojipedia.org/party-popper/](http://emojipedia.org/party- popper/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Searched for "anything" \- got asked:

      Did you mean "anyhting"?

I wonder what's going on there...

<comment><USER44> Guess: a) their misspelling dictionary is populated with past searches instead on english seed directory without taking into account if they found anything. and b) folks typed "anyhting" more often (maybe even just once) then "anything"

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> This is awesome, I was actually just looking for a set of food icons I could purchase for my side project.

</comment><comment><USER46> How does this work when you purchase a royalty free license and then use it in an open source project?

<comment><USER47> I always credit the artists, as well as the Noun Project itself, in cases like this. [https://chadpaulson.github.io/react-cassette- player/](https://chadpaulson.github.io/react-cassette-player/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> This site is sick.

I mainly use it for finding nice logos for my github projects, and they really do not disappoint.

<comment><USER49> 'sick' ?

<comment><USER50> From Merriam-Webster dictionary:

"outstandingly or amazingly good or impressive"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I love the Noun Project! It will be amazing to have a plugin to get all their icons on WordPress

</comment><comment><USER52> No icons for 'schadenfreude'? Pffft, stop wasting my time.

<comment><USER53> Does that upset you? he he he

<comment><USER52> You'd like that wouldn't you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Icon's are the written language of the digital world.

</comment><comment><USER55> It was inevitable. We are going to hieroglyphics.

<comment><USER56> That's basically what emoji are. Of course, I have a hard time telling what they're supposed to mean most of the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Airbnb logo

[https://thenounproject.com/term/sex/110996/](https://thenounproject.com/term/sex/110996/)

</comment><comment><USER57> searched for "save" .. ten pages of variations on the 3.5" diskette icon all labeled "floppy" even though diskettes aren't floppy. I wonder when a new save icon will emerge?

<comment><USER58> The "floppy disk" always (even with 5.25" and 8" disks) referred to the disk inside the casing, not the casing (which wasn't particularly floppy on the bigger disks, and wasn't a disk on any of them.)

<comment><USER59> I always thought it came from the fact that the old 8-inchers were physically flexible.

<comment><USER58> The storage media was a floppy disk (literally) for all three sizes The casing was either flexible but not really floppy (for the 8- and 5.25-inch versions) or rigid (for the 3.5-inch version) and square (not a disk) for all three versions.

So the only thing that "floppy disk" ever made sense for, even for the 8" ones, is the storage media inside the casing, not the casing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> use them all the time. been around a while though!

</comment><comment><USER61> Let's go back to 1000 BC, and re-invent Chinese.

<comment><USER62> I can just imagine some over-worked scribe attempting to draw one of the more complex shapes like:

[https://thenounproject.com/browse/?i=1037952](https://thenounproject.com/browse/?i=1037952) [https://thenounproject.com/term/keyboard/1018886/](https://thenounproject.com/term/keyboard/1018886/)

I think there was a reason Chinese wasn't based upon the images of the things they were writing about!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Someday, someone will invent this thing called "words" that can be looked up in a dictionary when you don't know what they mean.</comment>


Mozilla Recognized as Most Trusted Internet Company for Privacy - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2013/01/28/privacy-day-2013/

<comment><USER2> Previous discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5128924> (the dupe detector didn't work because of http versus https)</comment>


How Drupal's huge open source community is managed - <AUTHOR> http://codedrop.com.au/blog/how-drupals-huge-open-source-community-managed

<comment><USER2> I'd love to hear others comment on how the Drupal community compares to other Open Source projects?

I've been involved in the Drupal community and it's run very well, the community in general are very patient and always willing to help new users get started.

</comment><comment><USER3> How old is this article? The bit on thresholds? Yeah, they are WAY over thresholds and in fact Dries has admitted the thresholds system doesn't actually work. Also they're about 2 years behind on Drupal 8.

<comment><USER3> June 1st: 31 Critical bugs (D8 + D7) 161 Major bugs (D8 + D7) 47 Critical tasks (D8 + D7) 160 Major tasks (D8 + D7)</comment></comment>


AI-Powered Presentations - <AUTHOR> https://www.beautiful.ai/ <comment><USER2> I'm skeptical. Not because of the AI bit itself, but rather because I find the examples kind of... terrible?

This is just automating the addition of graphical noise to dilute the point of the presentation. This throws in a bunch of graphical structures that mean something, but in a context where that meaning is not intended. It does this to the point of making the slides literally illegible.

Graphical noise never had anything to do in presentation slides to begin with. Slides are supposed to be supportive material, it shouldn't muddy the point. (And it's a shame "presentation" has become synonymous with "presentation slides" as though they were the same thing. Talk about effective marketing by the PowerPoint team.)

Yes, some people spend senseless amount of time adjusting the graphical noise in their slides, but the solution is to stop adding visual noise. The solution is not to automate the process of doing so, offshoring it to an AI.

<comment><USER3> Not only that, but they didn't actually do a good job convincing people of their added value. Maybe if they contrasted two presentation, one without the "AI" and another with it, and if it clearly showed the superiority of the latter, maybe it would convince somehow.

Also, calling something "beautiful" doesn't make it so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This does not appear to be AI driven at all (at least from the demo video). Guess, it's just building off the hype.

<comment><USER5> But does it have blockchain?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Where is the AI-powered component? If there is any, you should consider to explain it well, otherwise IMHO it's better to not mention it at all.

The AI buzzword is fine for fundraising at the moment, but you will have also to create a relantioship of trust with your future users.

The Design AI link([https://www.beautiful.ai/#how-is-this- different](https://www.beautiful.ai/#how-is-this-different)) is broken.

I wish you all the best.

</comment><comment><USER7> Is AI the new 'Web 2.0' or 'Smart'? Years ago this would have been 'Web 2.0 Presentations' a little later 'Smart-presentations', etc.

The product looks fine, but I would never use it, mostly due to the ridiculous 'AI' claim.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is how they're using AI:

[https://blog.beautiful.ai/series-b- announcement](https://blog.beautiful.ai/series-b-announcement)

Slides that design themselves – Developers of the world's first technology of its kind, Beautiful.AI knows the rules of great design and applies heuristic techniques to build beautiful slides that respond to content in real-time, automatically adjusting the layout as needed to ensure visually stunning and consistent results.

Animations - Animations make storytelling more effective, but they're difficult to build, so most people don't bother trying. With Beautiful.AI, animations are automatically applied to the work in a meaningful and impactful way.

Less Is More - Great design requires restraint, and with presentations, less is definitely more. By constraining the amount of content on each slide, Beautiful.AI leaves room for stunning imagery that boosts message impact and keeps the audience engaged.

Images Matter – Beautiful.AI offers a rich assortment of royalty-free images, icons and logos readily available and searchable for users. This keeps slides visually consistent and helps users stay focused on content creation without having to open new tabs; search the web; or resize, cut or paste images.

</comment><comment><USER9> "AI" like a phony product evangelist sees it. State machine at best.

</comment><comment><USER10> Very impressive demo! As a management consultant who has spent plenty of time in macro-enhanced PowerPoint, I think this looks excellent. Too much high-wage time is wasted (either directly or instructing PowerPoint shops) on silly little things like aligning and coloring. My immediate concern with the product is that the automation will add friction to customizing non-template slides. Also concerned that something as simple as a table is Coming Soon. Will watch future development with interest!

</comment><comment><USER11> It looks VERY polished! Warning: it can export to PowerPoint, BUT each slide is an image -_- as if you screenshot each slide and paste it in PPT.

</comment><comment><USER12> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect)

I see a lot of comments mentioning how this doesn't need AI. I'd like to remind everyone that the ability to suggest layouts, modify layouts, and the other features probably aren't built with a bunch of 'if' statements...

<comment><USER13> You sure about that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've worked with the founder at a previous place and I'd give him the benefit of the doubt on the AI thing. I'm positive they will eventually try to do some tricky stuff with machine learning if they aren't already.

</comment><comment><USER15> Good to get clueless investor money or users that think AI really does make it better

</comment><comment><USER16> Looks like the AI bit is matching a template to your query maybe, i.e. a simple classifier.

</comment><comment><USER17> Looks nice tho...you could have just made a nice product with AI gimic

</comment><comment><USER18> Fake. I wouldn't use this even if it was powered by AI.

</comment><comment><USER19> More like a CAD/CAE to me.</comment>


Show HN: Free Read-Only Assessment for AWS Accounts - <AUTHOR> https://www.bluematador.com/aws-assessment <comment><USER2> What differentiates this from Trusted Advisor, past having to inherently trust your company as well as AWS?</comment>