Life is fractal, but markets are square - <AUTHOR> https://invertedpassion.com/life-is-fractal-markets-are-square/ <comment><USER3> Markets are the opposite of top-down linear design. Markets are full of feed- back loops and chaotic behavior.

Markets are the way for people to cease top-down planning and still get things done.

If we understood markets like we understand a chair there would be no economic crises.

As for suburbs - give them 500 years and then we can talk. You need time to accumulate all the changing pressures into something that looks organic - visit any old city in Europe :) All trees of particular species look the same when they start - after 100 years they usually look different because of the interplay between environment and them. Same with snowflakes and other traditional examples of fractals - including mountains and coast.

Suburbs are just starting, in a few centuries they will be as organic as old cities are.

Oh and regarding "linearity" of human inventions - it's much easier to make a mess than to make a good orthogonal design. If you don't limit yourself and write a code adding features as you need them you will end up with something that is very much organic, and that's not a positive - we call it "spaghetti- code" because when you try to change anything - it changes stuff in 100 different places.

Orthogonality in design isn't a byproduct of human limitations, it's a thing we constantly fight for, and we do that because it has advantages. You can easily optimize it and modify it for various purposes.

<comment><USER4> Markets are _a_ way of getting things done without planning. Or rather, it depends on how widely you like to use the term "market." Languages aren't planned, but they still constantly evolve and develop to suit our needs... You can _call_ that a market (some do) but I think that's a bad choice of words. A literal market is a _very_ abstract metaphor for the process that creates language and calling it a "market" creates a tendency to think that quid-quo- pro relations between buyers and sellers are the canonical building blocks of emergent systems. That's dangerously limiting.

Suburbs though, and built environments generally are an example of how "markets" are the extremely different from eachother depending on what they're made of.

Suburbs are generally an example (imo) of markets grafting on economic branches (the houses, mostly) onto a (mostly) centrally planned trunk, roads, infrastructures, schools, parks, etc. Suburbs take a lot of infrastructure, and at least historically it's had been a push mechanism. Planners plan/build the services required to create demand for housing rather than pre-existing residents creating demand for services.

Big city real estate markets are very often characterized by (a) land scarcity making them attractive long term investment markets and (b) a basically stationary supply side. Supply reacts so slowly/weakly to price changes that the only thing way to equilibrium is prices... usually upward. The price of housing becomes the maximum people can pay, often the maximum a bank is willing to loan.

This is completely different to the market for services, the market for manufactured goods and such.

We do a lot of planning, whether deliberately or not. Even under the most ardent anti-matket systems (eg Maoist China in the 50s-60s) we do a lot of "market." It's basically unavoidable.

However, we are absolutely terrible at intentionally planning for emergence. Creating the planned infrastructure onto which unplanned emergence can occur. We don't even have the right terms to discuss it.

Whether we like that ideologically/politically or not, or whether we're good at it... it's a big part of how society and economy evolve.

The fairly arbitrary and made up^ corporate laws, IP laws and such are a very good example. Change them and we totally change the shape of the economy. They weren't planned though, they're designed by historical arbitrariness.

Philosophically, imo, a whole lot boils down to our inability to grapple with "not sure." Hard science can. We don't know if string theory is true. This is one of the great cultural achievements of science _because_ it isn't part of human nature.

^In the sense that if we re-ran history, we'd expect totally different outcomes.

<comment><USER5> Intentionally planning for emergence is sort of a lost art these days. The most famous example is the Manhattan grid, where at its conception there were no zoning limits and it was lines on a map with no infrastructure built, it just kind of filled in by itself and constantly changed over the years (Midtown, for example, was originally a low-slung wealthy neighborhood for people escaping the crowded downtown area)

Part of the "problem" is that we demand so much in modern services which need to be placed ahead of time; this is not the 1800s where you could hoist up a tenement with no plumbing and electricity, no fire, police, hospital or schools to be seen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > 8/ A revolutionary idea is that governments should leave people alone so > they could pursue their well-being in a bottom-up fashion via social > interactions in their local area. In fact, that's how the world was before > the advent of nation-state.

That depends on how you define "people". In much of mediaeval Europe, for example, it was the heavily armed aristocracy who were left alone "so they could pursue their well-being": the lightly armed or unarmed peasantry that they ruled over, not so much. (And when the latter did attempt to pursue it in an unapproved manner, they were put down with violence: see Wat Tyler's Revolt, for example.)

> 9/ Nation-state was inevitable because humans reasoned they could > efficiently defend against enemies if they pooled their resources. Notice > what got lost in this optimization of defense: the complex, local web of > interactions that everybody was a part of, and yet nobody understood.

That suggests that a nation-state was a collaborative exercise of its people as a whole, rather than the result of the consolidation of power by its monarchs over time. That sounds more like a "Just So" story than history.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree that interpretations about history are subjective. I was indicating that the legitimacy of monarchs in the general populace came from their protection against aggressors. In fact, one of the main functions of a nation- state is to put up defence against other nation-states.

This book is full of examples of people coming together: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonzero:_The_Logic_of_Human_De...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonzero:_The_Logic_of_Human_Destiny)

<comment><USER6> > I was indicating that the legitimacy of monarchs in the general populace > came from their protection against aggressors.

To a point. But as jacobush points out in a sibling comment to yours, those aggressors could be local as well as foreign: the myth of the benevolent king protecting the poor from rapacious nobles. Think of Richard II rallying the revolting peasants in the wake of Wat Tyler's death (ultimately to those peasants' detriment, alas). And arguably the main source of a monarch's legitimacy was religious: he (or she) was seen as ordained by God.

> In fact, one of the main functions of a nation-state is to put up defence > against other nation-states.

Well, yes. But providing a social safety-net for its most vulnerable people is also one of the main functions of a nation-state: it doesn't thus follow that nation-states formed for that reason.

A nation-state will likely be more able to defend itself than a looser, more heterogeneous polity, but it will also provide a better vehicle for aggression, and that aggression will typically be employed in pursuit of the interests of the powerful. When the Tudors laid the foundations of a nation- state in 16th century England, was it as a defensive measure, or to pursue dynastic interests in France and Scotland?

With a few exceptions (Switzerland comes to mind), the idea that a nation- state represents the conscious union of a people as a whole for defence against outsiders seems more like propaganda and national myth-making than an accurate recounting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm afraid this article is faux-profound gibberish.

What is linear, one-dimensional thinking? Doesn't say, and it's not a common term, either.

What is the difference between top-down and bottom-up? Or rather, what is top and bottom?

I wonder if this is AI generated. Lots of interesting buzzwords, glued together in sentences that don't create a whole. Like that picture that looks familiar but you can't recognise any object in it.

Nature and markets are almost the same thing when you look closely. Evolution is a kind of algorithm that operates in many ways. You need just imperfect memory and selection to generate all sorts of patterns, in biological life, as in the economy.

<comment><USER4> The author of the referenced post, Venkatesh Rao is a unique cat. The terms/concepts are from him and he's been building up a lexicon for years.

He deals in abstract concepts, and it's semi-humourous by intention. The most widely read but is a long series on a "nature of the firm" concept developed by analysing "The Office."

Top down, in this context, means something like Canberra. A city that was built from comprehensive designs created a priori and a formalized (legible, in Venkat's terms) decision making processes.

Bottom-up means something like language, which is created by people using an illegible (more or less meaning impossible to describe mechanically) and distributed decision making processes.

Personally, I think bits of it are quite brilliant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Markets are very much fractal too. One should notice that there are companies of every size presumably distributed according to a power law. Pretty much the definition of a fractal. Seems like an ideologically motivated piece to badmouth markets which is popular. And if one is from the other side of the spectrum one would say that in many instances these big companies get incentivized by government regulation. On both sides there is too much of a knee-jerk reaction and too less appreciation that things vary greatly per sector and per case and in some cases one side of the opinion spectrum is correct and in other cases the other side.

<comment><AUTHOR> My point is that the transactions in a market are always on a few dimensions (price, packaging, utility, etc.) while our daily experience isn't like that.

I agree with you that on a higher-level there's an emergent richness within the markets too (as captured by power laws) but it's less rich than the lived experience.

<comment><USER3> > price, packaging, utility

these are abstractions, you can invent similar abstractions for "our living experience" and reduce it to a few variables as well.

I don't get what's your point other than "markets bad, life good".

<comment><AUTHOR> The point is that even reducing our lives experience to few abstractions like happiness makes them a limited view of what's going on (via millions of years of our evolution)

If abstractions were successful at addressing issues, the self-help industry would have eliminated unhappiness.

Our thinking is linear, we abstract rich phenomena into few categories that we can verbalise our understand. In that process, richness is lost.

<comment><USER3> Abstractions are leaky, both these about markets and these about lives. It's ok, we know they leak details, we use them to get results faster.

Markets are part of living, so it's not surprising that life as a whole is more complex than small part of it. But I don't see any qualitative differences, just a difference in degree.

And millions of years of evolution isn't a very good argument - because rate of evolution is much quicker for culture than for biology. Nature was stuck on unicellular life and in oceans for billions of years. We got from walking to driving, flying and interplanetary travel in a few thousand years.

What's going on behind all that richness in the universe might be very simple. We think it is actually very simple - a bunch of numeric fields and a few simple rules of how they interact.

> Our thinking is linear, we abstract rich phenomena into few categories that > we can verbalise our understand.

I'm not sure what you mean by linear. People are certainly capable of thinking nonlinearly - for example people can understand recurrence.

Abstraction also isn't the only kind of thinking we can do. We can be exhaustive as well, it's just slow and often doesn't contribute much to the result so why do it.

> In that process, richness is lost.

What do you exactly mean by that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Two months ago I wrote this comment in a thread about the healing power of gardens/nature:

I've had a theory for some time now based on my own observations: A big part of why nature is so calming is the absence of repeating patterns. In our artificial life everything follows standardized forms and patterns. It's a sterile world. The most obvious example being rectangles and perfect 90 degree angles everywhere. But I would also count things like uniform colors, evenly spread (artificial) light, predictable sounds etc. That makes me think that somehow something like this absence of patterns - and the knowledge/assumption for our brain that they are not to be expected in nature - helps us. The beauty in this is that nature _is_ full of patterns. But on a different level, no two patterns are ever the same. When you look at a green tree you simply won't assume to find two leaves with the same color and shape

-> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19693343](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19693343)

A comment by patcon linked the following article:

[http://nautil.us/issue/47/consciousness/is-consciousness- fra...](http://nautil.us/issue/47/consciousness/is-consciousness-fractal)

A fascinating read about fractal patterns in nature and how they feel "just right" to us

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for linking the article and the comment. Both were fantastic reads.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone.

Author here. There are multiple comments criticising the choice of word 'markets' so I'll explain my motivation here.

Yes, both biology and free-market economy are unplanned. However, just because life had a billion years of headstart, biology is much more complex with several levels of emergent structure (ATP, mitochondria, cell, organ, organism, family, tribe). All such systems interact and influence each other in ways that we don't fully understand (or perhaps can even hope to understand). This richness came about by a blind process of natural selection.

Markets, relative to biology, are much simpler because products and services are designed not by a blind process but motivated individuals. Perhaps, as someone else pointed out, I could have called it 'abstractions'. But the point is that what we produce in markets (like a chair) is limited by the human mind's ability to understand and design for the complex system that's a human. In that sense, I call markets square. Because they only address the richness of nature bluntly, the subtlety of nature is necessarily lost in market transactions because it is human mind that's doing transactions.

If we give markets millions of years, yes, perhaps the "invisible hand" will create the same richness and subtlety in offerings and transactions that we see in nature. But I'm not so sure about this. Maybe our mind will prove to be a limitation in our ability to design solutions for complex systems.

The overall point of the essay is to do with our inability to comprehend complex systems, but our tendency to act as if we do.

Hope this clarifies.

<comment><USER4> In some senses, I think it might be worth avoiding "markets" as a canonical example.. for two reasons.

One is that the ground is not just well covered, it's been a major ideological battleground for at least the last 150 years. The invisible hand of the market has had countless brain cycles, books, and political sermons dedicated to exposing it. We're hyper-aware (and paranoid) of it. We've basically been inventing invisible hand detection devices, and everyone is sure that _their_ device is the accurate one.

The second reason is that it's inevitably unclean as an example. Governments are usually taken as non-participants in markets, alternatives to markets and such. Reality is much messier. Governments are simultaneously participants, regulators and alternatives.

More importantly, there's a tendency to think of markets as being made of people, where in fact they're largely made of companies. Companies are institutions made of people, like (sometimes very like) governments... but they aren't people. They're another thing, another(aside from markets) way of organising economic activity.. Ronald Coase started his nobel-winning line of enquiry with the question "if markets are so great, why are companies run like totalitarian regimes?" As you say, markets are both top down and bottom up.. in a mesh of ways.

Most importantly... fresh examples help with fresh thinking. How about "languages" instead of markets. They're made by people, evolve in organic-like ways, are undirected.... The invisible hand is far less visible here. Most people have barely noticed its existence.

<comment><USER3> Some languages have institutions overseeing their development and doing top- down reforms.

For example Polish has [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Language_Council](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Language_Council) and it had 2 reforms in last 100 years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> 'Markets' was a poor choice for the right hand side, as they are in fact bottom up. 'Naturally occurring structures are fractal, but human abstractions about them are square' would be much closer to the point, though not as catchy.

</comment><comment><USER11> I do wish the author had gone with 'complex' and 'simple' instead of 'fractal' and 'linear'. I don't see anything particularly 'linear' about a chair, for example.

Regarding the 'top-down' vs 'bottom-up' dichotomy - I don't really see why one is better than the other. I agree that humans tend to begin with a concrete idea and iterate on their designs from there (a 'top-down' approach). The article seems to be driving at the notion that nature's emergent, bottom-up approach is somehow better. But beyond the observation that the amazon rainforest is more diverse than a monocultural man-made forest, I don't think they really substantiate why that is so.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I used the words in the title somewhat liberally.

I don't think there's anything universally good or bad about top-down planning. It boils down to context. Recognition of contexts where top down planning might fail is a desirable thing.

<comment><USER11> So is recognition of the limitations of bottom-up 'planning'. For all its impressive biochemistry, nature never managed to invent the wheel :)

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Rolling_animals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Rolling_animals)

<comment><USER11> There's a difference between a wheel and a ball. A wheel has an axle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This reads like a design manifesto. Reminds me of texts from the early 20th century (post-WWI, pre-WWII).

The logic seems cohesive up to about #7 philosophy and government. Maybe the digression to the authors other works is better made in a footnote?

I can take the conceit of 'markets are square', but only to the point where you show us something new that solves the problems described. Othesrwise, I feel the same as another commenter, the article descends into 'faux-profound gibberish'.

I don't believe the narrative thrust gets past it's shortcomings,

\- the author's facile contradiction 'governments should leave people alone' AND 'nation-state was inevitable'

\- the author's assumptions about fractals as complex and sophisticated. It's been demonstrated that surprisingly few rules can lead to great diversity. Fractals are exactly this phenomena, but at a conceptually large scale. Makes the fractal argument seem like a McGuffin

\- I don't believe the Amazon org-chart is the best we can do ('the map is not the territory ').

</comment><comment><USER13> I really enjoyed this.

That said, The Godfather of fractal theory, Benoit Mandelbrot, wrote a book entitled "the Misbehavior of Markets" which is a deep dive into why markets exhibit fractal behavior (he even goes so far as to do the coastline zoom for stock market data).

</comment><comment><USER14> Markets are as complicated as nature itself, and that complexity comes from scarcity. If you open a floodgate, there is a market for which water molecules will make it through first. Those nearest, those not in a grid lock, those in a solid vs liquid vs gaseous state, etc. If you add conscious decision making to processes bounded by scarcity, you get immeasurable complexity. The markets of the natural world brought the animal kingdom from amino acids. Natural selection is a market for gene participants to access scarce resources and propagate, and look what's come of it. Human language and slang is a shifting market for utility and signaling. Who you associate yourself with is a market bounded by extreme scarcity. Who makes you laugh, who listens, who you've known longest, who is physically nearest.

Freedom is markets and markets are complicated.

</comment><comment><USER15> I think "Reality has a surprising amount of detail" [0] is a better restatement of this same basic idea.

Also, I don't think it's true that humans are "incapable of grasping non- linear, complex interactions" \-- it's just that hard things are hard. If you can save yourself a huge amount of effort by using a first-order approximation, you should absolutely do that if you can get away with it. There's a reason civil engineers don't typically concern themselves with relativistic effects.

[0] [http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a- surprising-...](http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising- amount-of-detail)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I love the essay you mention.

Well, not understanding complex systems is ok when you are designing bridges. But first order approximation fails horribly while designing policies.

As a simple example, Indian subcontinent where people aggregated in clusters over many thousand years got divided into India and Pakistan via a simple almost linear boundary. Result: hundreds of thousands of people displaced and died during ensuing mass migrations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think about squares often, well rectangles really. Practically everything I see is a rectangle. I go to a rectangular building and poke little rectangles to fill my rectangular screen with glyphs bounded by rectangles and tesselating on the screen like rectangles would--and I see it all through my rectangular glasses. Why?

Well, recycles tesselate--so that's one property that rules out pentagons, say, as our shape of choice, but why not triangles? Or hexagons?

This question, I think, is similar to another one: why was euclidean geometry developed more than a thousand years earlier than the non-euclidean ones? Is there something more human about right angles than some other one? (look up the playfair's axiom, you'll see the angles I'm taking about)

It's everywhere. Prime numbers are those special ones that can't be expressed as a rectangle of dots on the page. Why do we define multiplication this way?

Is there something perhaps arbitrary and anthropocentric in our preference for right angles? If so it would explain why the distribution of the primes is so unpredictable.

I think it is because we live at the bottom of a gravity well and have an adaptation (building things) which makes that matter.

I also think that if we could rid our mathematics of that bias, it would sort of trickle up into other domains and allow our constructs to take on more richness, like you see in the fractal side of the fractal vs rectangle images presented in the article.

<comment><USER17> > why was euclidean geometry developed more than a thousand years earlier than > the non-euclidean ones?

Because euclidean geometry is the geometry we experience at a human scale.

> Why do we define multiplication this way?

It's not actually multiplication though, it's just a convenient representation of the repetitive addition that is actually multiplication. It's a clear way to show to children that we've taking 9 dots 3 times to get 27. It's a tool to teach and interface to a mathematical concept.

Much the same as why we use rectangular screens instead of hexagons or anything else. It's the most convenient to manufacture and address because of how repetitive and similar each row is when you think about the arrays of pixels that make up the screen. Desks are mostly rectangles because it's easy to cut straight lines and they match well. Then when you have a lot of rectangular items it makes sense for the containers of those items (ie buildings) to be rectangular too so they fit and pack well without any weird gaps and wasted space.

Also I'm not sure where you're coming from with the "bias in our mathematics" most higher level math (as early as Calc3 when you start dealing with multivariate integrals one of the most important skills is converting from cartesian coordinates to spherical or cylindrical because it often drastically simplifies the problem) includes a lot of different coordinate switching to simplify representations to simplify the math of solving a particular equation or reasoning about a system.

<comment><USER16> I'm not convinced that it's solely our scale that makes euclidean geometry the preferred one. I think it also has to do with the fact the the ancient Greeks did their math with pointy sticks in beds of sand--beds that took on a certain shape due to environmental factors beyond just scale.

This caused us to associate the concept of orthogonality with a 90 degree angle, which is (in most cases) a property of the representations we use--not a property of the underlying mathematical objects. It's not a bias of the coordinate systems, it's a bias of how we conceive of the space, uh, coordinated by those systems.

And it's a convenient one--it evolved in our environment for a reason--it works well here. But so did the idea that the Earth was in the center of the universe.

I realize that it's a kooky theory, but it takes time to turn a kooky theory into a serious one, and so far I think it has some merits so I'm going to keep working on it.

Particularly, it would explain the seemingly arbitrary values of certain mathematical constants. If our concept of "straight line" or "flat surface" were to be not special at all, but just some weird quirk of how humans do things, then constants like pi would tell us less about circles and more about our own habits of perception, and I think that would be a much more satisfying way of framing things.

Or think about how the derivative of e^x is e^x. That's a cool property, but if you look at how the difference quotient is constructed you'll see that it implies axes on a flat surface set at 90 degrees to each other. So maybe what's special about e says more about the spaces implied by the coordinate system.

I realize that e is not _defined_ this way. That's where the theory needs work. Somehow our concept of the natural numbers is bound up with our perspective on flatness, and of how independent things ought to be represented and compared. I've yet to be able to construct something number-like that I can map to alternative values of e and pi for different geometries, but I think it can be done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> And now we are using these top-down developed computers to try and simulate bottom-up phenomena (like pattern recognition) and call it AI (well Neural Networks to be specific)

<comment><USER19> What would a bottom-up developed computer be like? Can you elaborate on top- down/bottom-up in this context?

<comment><USER20> I don't think the question you posed makes sense.

If it was bottom up developed, it would be adaptive, and therefore not a computer as such. Adaptive systems manage to handle new input (or fail). The computer is only going to do what it's been programmed (however poorly) to do.

One of the things required for computation is predictable repetition - <USER2> inputs, same outputs. This is why error recognition/correction is so important for things like physical ram and ethernet packets - it's effectively trying to filter out any bottom up behaviour that could affect the environment of the computation/information transmission.

An ever so slightly different environment would affect the same inputs in a bottom up system - think along the lines of butterflies affecting weather systems by flapping their wings.

You could claim everything that happens is a result of 'some computation' but then you end up in semantic arguments how to define 'life' (or how to define what's 'computable', which is it's own entire problem). A couple of books from back in the day in my life relevant to this were these two, and they're still probably a good place to consider things from even today.

[https://www.stevenlevy.com/index.php/books/artificial- life](https://www.stevenlevy.com/index.php/books/artificial-life)

[https://kk.org/outofcontrol/](https://kk.org/outofcontrol/)

<comment><USER17> The Ur example of a bottom up computer would be the brain. It works on disparate unformatted inputs and can translate to a context appropriate output and while there's no programming language for the mind (unless you want to stretch a bit and say speech) you can instruct one in the particular ways you want input manipulated into outputs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The essay does not support the summary (or conclusion). Markets are just as bottom-up as anything.

</comment><comment><USER22> our emotional response to seeing two wolves is probably about twice that of seeing one wolf. but response to seeing 100 wolves and 200 wolves is probably about the same. point being - there's plenty of logarithmic thinking in our brains, so we're not that linear.

i fail to come up with similar example for exponential thinking, we probably really can't comprehend that.

Edit: typo

<comment><USER23> > our emotional response to seeing two wolves is probably about twice that of > seeing one wolf.

I think it's closer to equal. One wolf is a danger, two wolves is a danger.

Especially when one wolf causes maximal fear, two wolves can't appear any more dangerous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> > 1/ When humans wield their power in the world, they are limited by the > linear nature of their thinking. The best example of this linearization is > the top-down planning of modern suburbs. Contrast this with how nations and > states emerged in a bottom-up fashion.

Gardens and gardeners are one challenge to this assertion. A gardener can plan things and yet also be aware that much of what will happen is beyond their control and even sometimes their understanding.

</comment><comment><USER25> The author has the right idea, but the wrong target. The problem is not that we have top-down planning; as he notes, that goes back as far as the beginnings of civilization itself. The problem is that, due to technology and the increasing concentration of wealth, top-down can now encompass vast scales that it could not in the past. A human-planted forest isn't a big deal when it's a handful of people planting a few acres. The tree mono-culture in the small patch gets absorbed over time in to the greater, more heterogeneous whole. But now one corporate entity can transform _millions_ of acres in a short time. Corporations can blanket thousands of cities with scooters, release a new food product that instantly appears in millions of stores, or pepper the landscape with identical franchises virtually overnight. It this kind of massive centralization of power that should be drawing the author's criticism, not the mere notion of top-down planning.

</comment><comment><USER26> Where exactly are markets mentioned? Look up the definition of laissez faire in relation to free markets.

</comment><comment><USER27> The author confuses government with markets multiple times

</comment><comment><USER28> Nice article, a few comments I would like to add

>If philosophers can't answer what makes the life meaningful

Philosophers fail here because it is beyond thinking and experience based, so one can not file a paper saying I found it - even if it is correct, it will not have any impact on others.

>how can governments maximize it?

Governments need not maximize it, they just need to create fair conditions for everyone, people inevitably will get there themselves, exactly as it's stated later:

>A revolutionary idea is that governments should leave people alone so they could pursue their well-being

>because the human mind is incapable of grasping non-linear, complex interactions

The word "mind" is not specific enough, what mentioned here is intellect. There are other dimensions to mind which are capable of much more than we can imagine.

<comment><USER19> > >If philosophers can't answer what makes the life meaningful

I think the question is answered, in that it's shown that the question is misguided. It's the problem-solving aspect of our minds that earns to find meaning, even in things that don't inherently have it, which is most things. What is the meaning of this geopolitical event? What is the meaning of the big bang? If that little problem-solver inside us can't distinguish the validity of these questions, then you experience compulsive meaning seeking. So I agree with you, it's beyond "thinking".

<comment><USER29> The question has been answered over and over again. People asking this question don't want answers, they want a mystery to be in awe of.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This this a lot of r/iam14andthisisdeep buzzword bingo.

</comment><comment><USER31> The significance between top-down vs. bottom-up has been compiled and showcased by Matt Ridley, in his book, "The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge." It says most of human beings are incapable of comprehending evolutionary design like free market. It's true. OP labeled markets as an example of top-down phenomenon.

</comment><comment><USER32> This reminds me a lot of the book The Evolution of Everything by Matt Ridley (author of the Red Queen). It's effectively an anthropological study that goes over how bottom-up self organizing systems occur even in human sub-cultures

</comment><comment><USER33> This was a fantastically straightforward explanation of something that is very elusive to explain. It reminds me of Christopher Alexander's "The Timeless Way of Building", but 500 pages shorter and less meandering.

</comment><comment><USER34> Nice article. But I don't understand from where the 'markets' came in picture. Probably 'Life is fractal, but human understanding about it is square' btw Markets can also be bottom up...

</comment><comment><USER35> No, the length of the coastline doesn't change depending on scale. The map is not the territory.

Also, you can have forests growing thanks to a conservationist top to bottom approach that do not look like a grid.

</comment><comment><USER36> Whereas this may be useful for a social science class, I don't think it is useful for a more precise discussion.

PS: Why call this bottom up vs. top down? That terminology sounds imprecise and confusing to me.

<comment><USER37> it wouldn't be useful for a social science class because it is not precise enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Is "our inability to think fractally and nonlinearly" a linear or a nonlinear idea?

</comment><comment><USER38> "And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery" \- Whitman

</comment><comment><USER39> This is littered with bland assertions

"4/ Because our mind can only accommodate thinking in one dimension (time) or at best two dimensions (map),"

Really? And a chair, a 3D object, is your illustration of this?

</comment><comment><USER23> > 1/ When humans wield their power in the world, they are limited by the > linear nature of their thinking. The best example of this linearization is > the top-down planning of modern suburbs.

You can't demonstrate that humans cannot think linearly by showing an example where they didn't.

> Contrast this with how nations and states emerged in a bottom-up fashion.

Except in the Americas, Africa, the Middle East (European colonization) and Europe (Congress of Vienna, changes after the world wars). Australia is a special case (with only one souvereign state), I don't know enough about Asia.

> 2/ This transformation of what looks like random, irregular structure into > more orderly structure is because the human mind is incapable of grasping > non-linear, complex interactions. We comprehend information linearly and > hence our planning of the world around us is linear too.

Would you please stop insulting my species?

> 3/ This tendency of making sense of the world dooms apparently well- > intentioned projects. When we plant a new forest to "save" our earth, we > transform an earthly, fractal landscape into a two dimensional monoculture.

Foresters are perfectly capable of planting a mixed forest. When they didn't, it's either because the forest was planted a long time ago when monocultures appeared to be a good idea or for economic reasons.

> 4/ Because our mind can only accommodate thinking in one dimension (time) or > at best two dimensions (map),

I'm pretty sure my mind manages 3 dimensions. We also can deal with problems that have more dimensions, just not using spatial thinking.

> our designed objects ignore the messy intricacies of the real world.

Our designed objects ignore _some_ messy intriaces because there are a lot of them.

> It's apparent in all objects designed by humans, including the humble chair.

That humble chair is not excatly state of the ergonomic art.

> 7/ [...] Governments optimize what they understand and wellbeing, being a > product of evolution, is a mix of factors is that cannot be intervened into > in a top-down manner.

Doctors optimize what they understand and health, being a product of evolution, is a mix of factors that cannot be intervened into in a top-down manner.

> 8/ A revolutionary idea is that governments should leave people alone so > they could pursue their well-being in a bottom-up fashion via social > interactions in their local area. In fact, that's how the world was before > the advent of nation-state.

The modern concept of a "nation" is relatively recent, it has only been invented in the 19th century. Governments that do things other than leaving people alone have existed for millenia. In fact, "not leaving people (completely) alone" is kind of what governments do.

The idea that governments should leave people alone is called "liberty" which is derived from a latin word with the same meaning. So if it's a revolutionary idea, that revolution must have a long time ago.

Organizing the state in a bottom-up manner, giving the lower levels of government more power than the upper ones, isn't a new idea either. The Holy Roman Emperors didn't really rule their empire, at least in modern history.

Also, the absence of a state is perfectly compatible with top-down government. The chief of your tribe won't leave you alone. Chance are you cannot even elect them, making the tribe _more_ top-down than a democratic state.

> 9/ Nation-state was inevitable because humans reasoned they could > efficiently defend against enemies if they pooled their resources.

Maybe the state was, this is not really specific to nation states in particular. However defense from enemies is far from the only role of the state. Even hardcore classical liberals agree that it should keep the peace, major infrastructure projects require a major organization and sometimes eminent domain, Robin Hoods and charities cannot replace a welfare state.

> Notice what got lost in this optimization of defense: the complex, local web > of interactions that everybody was a part of, and yet nobody understood.

If you don't have any social life beyond interacting with the state, you probably should get help.

> 12/ [...] Perhaps nature is able to do it because it has no foresight.

No one forces you to use your foresight. Forsight isn't incompatible with bottom-up design/emergence either.

</comment><comment><USER40> I really liked this post :)

</comment><comment><USER41> This was neat, good job!

</comment><comment><USER42> Maybe markets were once a useful way of communicating supply and demand for the greater good, but nowadays the way they're often used perverts that communication via exploitative usary.

<comment><USER42> Downvote me all you want but it's said that vacant homes outnumber homeless people by 6 to 1. That's a complete and utter failure of "the market" to communicate actual supply and demand.

([https://www.mintpressnews.com/empty-homes-outnumber-the- home...](https://www.mintpressnews.com/empty-homes-outnumber-the- homeless-6-to-1-so-why-not-give-them-homes/207194/))</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How does Apple and other companies prevent leaks? - <AUTHOR> Obviously leaks occur, but how can companies like Apple prevent that their designs and features are leaked?
Do they have some special water marking system or other security system to prevent files and pictures from being leaked? I can imagine that during the development phase developers must come and go. Some leave on their own and some leave angry maybe with a potential intent to leak images, files or other information. So how would they protect themselves against this?
I cannot imagine it is only by contract. <comment><USER2> Game development companies do not allow cell phones. Email encryption and monitoring. Disabling USB ports and other means of transmitting digital content. Strict compartmentalization with a rigid organization structure.

</comment><comment><USER3> Strict compartmentalization.

In Apple's case, this is well-documented in several public articles and books, such as the Jobs biographies and any of the "expose" articles that come out the week of a new iPhone release.

<comment><USER4> ZDNet had an article about Apple's secrecy in 2009 [0]. Of note:

> Apple closely monitors all communication on its corporate network and > routinely plants false information with employees in an effort to track > leaks.

[0] [http://www.zdnet.com/article/apples-secret- society/](http://www.zdnet.com/article/apples-secret-society/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Compartmentalization, as runjake mentioned below, is key.

I worked at Microsoft during the development of Windows 8 (disclaimer: I no longer work there, and only speak for myself here). Certain "secret" features were not available in the "default" OS configuration until shortly before they were announced. Access was restricted only to those who needed it, and only then with manager (or, I believe at one point, director) approval. If you had access, you were under strict instructions to only enable the features when nobody else was around.

Artifacts from this process are probably what resulted in the "workaround" in the Developer Preview build [0] to revert back to the classic start menu.

Similarly, with the Surface, much of the company was in the dark until the official announcement. Some of the lengths they went to in order to keep it secret, included only a few executives knowing and trying to avoid ordering multiple parts from the same vendor [1]. The team worked in a vault-style building where one door had to close before the other would open [2].

There's also the giant "fear of being sued or prosecuted" thing. Big companies can afford good lawyers, your average employee probably cannot. Hell, Win8 was released over 3 years ago, I no longer work at Microsoft, yet I've still gone back and triple-checked this post to make sure I'm not disclosing anything about it that's not well-known to the public.

[0] [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/balsharfi/archive/2011/11/04/metro-s...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/balsharfi/archive/2011/11/04/metro- style-toggle-for-windows-8-developer-preview.aspx)

[1] [http://money.cnn.com/2012/10/28/technology/mobile/microsoft-...](http://money.cnn.com/2012/10/28/technology/mobile/microsoft- surface/index.html)

[2] [http://www.techradar.com/news/mobile- computing/tablets/how-m...](http://www.techradar.com/news/mobile- computing/tablets/how-microsoft-kept-surface-tablet-a-secret-1086116)

</comment><comment><USER5> Google Mao's works on cells and guerilla warfare and Manhattan project secrecy.

In short, you don't give anyone the big picture, have a vote cadre of leaders committed to the cause, have enforcers watching/misdirecting/culling the herd.

<comment><USER5> s/vote/core/</comment></comment>


Two spaces after a period: Why you should never, ever do it - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2011/01/space_invaders.html

<comment><USER2> Must be interesting to have enough spare time to scribble that many words devoted to something so monumentally trivial.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sometimes I think it looks better. Don't tell me what to do.

<comment><USER4> I'm inclined to do the opposite of whatever Slate tells me I ought to do.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do I meet people in an industry - <AUTHOR>

Me and a friend have an idea to change the television industry.  Personally I'm a web developer.  I have many connections to many industries, but none to television.  However to be successful I feel as if I need one.  In addition I live in Boston, which is on the opposite side of where I want to be.  I want to execute my plan, but I can't imagine trying to get funding with my current team.  Any suggestions? <comment><USER2> Only the obvious: Fire your team, move house, then go to every event related to the TV industry that you can find out about.

\-- Trindaz on Fedang</comment>


A Bogus Cancer Cure That Doctors Say Could Poison You - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeed.com/stephaniemlee/apricot-seeds-cancer <comment><USER2> I have no opinion and should not have one as I am not a doctor but I did a quick search on Pubmed, and what I read seems to tell that the story might be more complex that the article suggests. Some Pubmed articles titles:

\- Amygdalin-mediated inhibition of non-small cell lung cancer cell invasion in vitro Liyu Qian, Bo Xie, Yaguo Wang, Jun Qian (contains this sentence "These results strongly suggested that amygdalin was likely to have anti- metastatic NSCLC effect")

\- Amygdalin Influences Bladder Cancer Cell Adhesion and Invasion In Vitro Jasmina Makarević, Jochen Rutz, Eva Juengel, Silke Kaulfuss, Igor Tsaur, Karen Nelson, Jesco Pfitzenmaier, Axel Haferkamp, and Roman A. Blaheta (contains "Since the different actions of amygdalin on the different cell lines was mirrored by β1 or β4 knock down, it is postulated that amygdalin influences adhesion and migratory properties of bladder cancer cells by modulating β1 or β4 integrin expression."

\- Amygdalin Blocks Bladder Cancer Cell Growth In Vitro by Diminishing Cyclin A and cdk2 Jasmina Makarević, Jochen Rutz, Eva Juengel, Silke Kaulfuss, Michael Reiter, Igor Tsaur, Georg Bartsch, Axel Haferkamp, Roman A. Blaheta

\- Amygdalin inhibits genes related to cell cycle in SNU-C4 human colon cancer cells Hae-Jeong Park, Seo-Hyun Yoon, Long-Shan Han, Long-Tai Zheng, Kyung-Hee Jung, Yoon-Kyung Uhm, Je-Hyun Lee, Ji-Seon Jeong, Woo-Sang Joo, Sung-Vin Yim, Joo-Ho Chung, Seon-Pyo Hong World J Gastroenterol. 2005

</comment><comment><USER3> When "real" cancer cures do poison you why the "faux" concern?

The story will be much more complex than this, including that for some people the process works. In like manner to chemo-therapy works in some and does nothing for others.</comment>


Chat is Google's next big fix for Android's messaging mess - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/19/17252486/google-android-messages-chat-rcs-anil-sabharwal-imessage-texting <comment><USER2> Fool me twice google! I won't get fooled again?

In all seriousness, how can anyone advocate for the adoption of this new chat app? After Chat/Buzz/Hangouts/Messenger/Duo/Allo and probably more, I can't with a straight face convince anyone I know to adopt yet another Google messaging product, despite whatever problem it sets out to rectify this time around.

At this point, I have zero trust that the application will continue to get long term support or will even still exist in a few years time. Remember when Google said Hangouts was going to consolidate and fix problems in all these disparate applications as well? Google has lost 100% of the benefit of the doubt with me in regards to trying out new messaging applications and it's not worth putting in the hassle to convince others to use it with me.

<comment><USER3> > Chat/Buzz/Hangouts/Messenger/Duo/Allo and probably more

Too bad Google dropped XMPP federation; they could have used it between their own apps. Just imagine a world where Google users could talk to other Google users!

<comment><USER4> And all my friends list could be shared with third parties with abandon!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> After all of these years, I'm surprised that Google hasn't just made their own clone of iMessage and called it a day.

iMessage (being an SMS / chat system with a native desktop client) is the only reason I went back to iOS. As much as I miss and android community, my top priority is avoiding the physical use of my phone whenever possible.

So while this is on the right track, its still not there. Leaving encryption off the table, at least to me, doesn't make a lick of sense.

Combining Google Voice and an iMessage-like service would have been closer to the game-changer they keep marketing their chat apps as... but it looks like we're still going to wait.

A BGR article [1] is assuming that they'll use a browser extension for the desktop client, which is good for cross-platform work, but the ones I've tried in the past (PushBullet, MightyText, etc) all fell short.

Long story short, its a shame to see someone as big and powerful as Google struggle with something as seemingly simple as a good SMS / RCS client to properly compete in the space.

[1] [http://bgr.com/2018/02/09/imessage-vs-android-messages- sms-t...](http://bgr.com/2018/02/09/imessage-vs-android-messages-sms-texting- pc/)

<comment><USER6> Seems like the article offers a pretty clear explanation for why they haven't:

> Though Google won't say so, I think that road is fundamentally too dangerous > for the company. One would think that Google has more than enough leverage > to simply create something that the carriers would have to accept whether > they like it or not. What are Verizon and Deutsche Telecom and all the rest > going to do, switch to Tizen in protest? Please.

> But the truth is that these carriers have points of leverage over Google > that go beyond choosing to sell Android phones. Android is, after all, open > source. And though Google can (and does) dictate some requirements in order > to include Google services, it can't dictate them all. A carrier could set > Bing as the default search, for example, or set up its own RCS client as the > default texting app.

> Perhaps Google could have gotten away with a proprietary, baked-in messaging > protocol back in 2011 when iMessage launched. But in 2018, carriers aren't > fond of iMessage, and they aren't going to take kindly to a similar service > acting as the default, especially on Android, the globally dominant > operating system.

<comment><USER7> If it's true that Google was prevented from making a good iMessage-type service by pressure from the carriers, it seems like a market failure. If Google was actually willing to build something and users wanted it, but some third party had leverage to prevent Google from doing that, it seems like the market is broken.

I don't know if this actually happened (obviously), but it really bothers me if it did. It makes me want to boycott RCS and the carriers somehow. I don't want to reward them for winning the battle to make my Android phone less useful, less encrypted, and easier to toll.

<comment><USER6> One fun fact I have heard is that the Android Messages app did not receive updates through the play store because carriers wanted to retain control.

If you're in the US, you could switch to Project Fi.

I think the crypto thing is less about carriers own opinions and more about the regulation that carrier provided services face. Hopefully it will at least have an encrypted OTT mode the same way that Allo does.

Let's also not forget how carriers have hampered Android updates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I give it two years before Google tries something else.

Honestly, as soon as Google Voice (and its integration with the languishing Hangouts app) support breaks, which I fully expect to eventually happen, I'm jumping off the last of the Google boat. The inertia of "all my friends can at least contact me on this number that follows me around carrier-to-carrier" is the only reason I haven't stopped using Google services almost entirely:

My searches are DuckDuckGo. It's even more useful than Google for image searches because it still has a "View Image" link.

My primary email is now a private provider. The old Gmail account is kept to not miss old contacts reaching out and as a dumping ground for "sign up with your email so we can spam you forever!"

My online storage and backup is private, paid, and encrypted. There are still a few public links in my Google Drive, but I no longer use it day-to-day.

I can't remember the last time I actually needed live collaborative editing for work. I still use Google Docs/Spreadsheets occasionally, but I'm mostly collaborating with people elsewhere in the world and I wake up to see their edits/comments the next day. I'm not sure this bit even needs a replacement.

The last holdout is that sticky Google Voice number. I woke up one day a year and a half back and thought to myself, "you make real money now. You signed up for Google's free services all the way back in high school (when you had to have an invite for Gmail). _You can afford paid services for these things, and the paid services are just as good_. Why are you still giving Google more of your info than they would otherwise vacuum up?"

The fact that Google's "fix" for its own ADHD concerning chat/message platform(s) has no encryption is enough for me to say, "Nope. Done. Get me out of there once and for all."

<comment><USER9> > all my friends can at least contact me on this number that follows me around > carrier-to-carrier

Isn't it possible to migrate phone number between carriers in US?

<comment><USER8> It was somewhat more complicated before the advent of smartphones, and I had Google Voice before I had my first smartphone. The user experience on flip- phones was also not quite user friendly to the person with Google Voice, but it was completely transparent for everyone you were communicating with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hangouts was so close. It had SMS, audio, video, text, desktop clients. It was about to be the android equivalent of imessage. And then they pulled SMS and started pulling other features and pushing duo/allo.

I've switched to telegram at this point and now I have that and SMS. It's a shit show.

<comment><USER11> The bean counters didn't want to pay to be a free SMS gateway.

What Google should do is just build a shared messaging API that can integrate multiple services into one app.

<comment><USER12> > What Google should do is just build a shared messaging API that can > integrate multiple services into one app.

You mean something like XMPP? (On which Google's original chat service was based).

<comment><USER11> No. They should stay out of the backend and do something like a more sophisticated notification API that let's you use whatever service from a unified app. They can slip in their own offering but still support others in parallel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> 'But, like SMS, Chat won't be end-to-end encrypted'

Hey Google? 1992 called, they want their clear text messaging app back...

<comment><USER14> Without encryption, it's dead on arrival.

<comment><USER15> With encryption many countries won't let their carriers implement it. So also dead on arrival.

<comment><USER14> how does iMessage get away with it

<comment><USER13> If the problem is "Nations making rules about SMS encryption" (like India does I believe) - then Apple isn't an interested party because that's all on the cellular carrier to implement and comply with.

Telegram is a current example of the different problem of "how can a nation regulate non SMS messaging app encryption" I suspect Apple _is_ wondering just how long iMessage will "get away with" that...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "As part of that effort, Google says it's "pausing" work on its most recent entry into the messaging space, Allo."

Oh hey look, another app Google is going to neglect and then abandon. What a surprise.

/s

</comment><comment><USER17> What happens to Allo? Abandon it just like hangouts? Google has been playfully abandoning most of their products lately. It's the consumers that has to live with it. I bought a nexus 6p last year, only to find out Google is dropping support with Android P. Oh man I wish I bought an iPhone, atleast it gets support for 5 years.

<comment><USER6> I get that everyone is still mad about Reader, but if all of Allo's features get rolled into Android messages and it retains interop with existing Allo users, does it matter at all? This honestly seems like something pointless to get mad over since every other thread about Google's chat apps was about how they had too many...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's strange to see Americans struggling with problems that are completely solved in other countries. Here, WeChat in China. They somehow aren't getting the network effects like WeChat had and have to resort to getting every carrier to promise to - I suppose - impose it on their customers.

</comment><comment><USER18> what's the point of rcs when it's controlled by the carriers (aka you will be billed for it). at least with imessage it's free to send between apple devices.

<comment><USER19> From [https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207006](https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT207006) (at the bottom of the help article) - "If Wi-Fi is unavailable, iMessages will be sent over cellular data. Cellular data rates might apply." So I'm not sure if it is free over mobile data.

On the other hand, I believe AT&T zero rates their RCS messages if you have an unlimited texting plan. (e.g. [https://www.att.com/shop/wireless/features/advanced- messagin...](https://www.att.com/shop/wireless/features/advanced- messaging.html) > FAQ > how much does advanced messaging cost). Could not find details on TMobile except this article: [https://newsroom.t-mobile.com/news- and-blogs/rcs-messaging-l...](https://newsroom.t-mobile.com/news-and- blogs/rcs-messaging-leadership.htm)

<comment><USER18> >On the other hand, I believe AT&T zero rates their RCS messages if you have an unlimited texting plan

But what if you don't have an unlimited texting plan? Let's say your current plan includes data + modest amounts of talk+text, but you do most of your communication over chat apps, so you never really touch your text allowance, even though you text a lot. now with RCS, you now have to pay extra $ for those texts you're sending out, or pay $ for the unlimited plan. plus with chat apps, you could send free over wifi. so from a customers point of view, RCS is worse in every way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> When everything else fails, we send an SMS.

Google: sms must be broken, let's fix it.

</comment><comment><USER21> Here's the mobile friendly version of the article:

[https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2018/4/19/17252486/goo...](https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2018/4/19/17252486/google- android-messages-chat-rcs-anil-sabharwal-imessage-texting)

</comment><comment><USER22> A data plan will be required on Android according to the video[1].

[1]: [https://youtu.be/PCh-qRYMAKk?t=3m39s](https://youtu.be/PCh- qRYMAKk?t=3m39s)

<comment><USER23> Is that an onerous requirement? Even my 70 year old mother has a data plan these days.

<comment><USER22> Prepaid/GoPhones are what lost of low income people use. Traditionally no data plan. This is even more common abroad in developing nations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is a solved problem. By entities other than google. SMS works fine on every phone. Whatsapp and Messenger also work fine. Choose one or two and use it.

</comment><comment><USER25> Whatsapp has solved this problem as far as I'm concerned. Even my north american friends are getting into it now.

It's the perfect messenger for the average user.

</comment><comment><USER26> Mobile only is sad...

I want to be able to chat from whatever platform I'm on right now, like hangout and xmpp previously.

</comment><comment><USER27> Nevermind that "Hangouts Chat" is already called "Chat" on Android…

</comment><comment><USER28> Everyone I know is on WhatsApp. Why would anyone switch?

</comment><comment><USER29> [https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/)</comment>


Rate my startup: invested.in - <AUTHOR> www.invested.in - leverage your social capital to raise financial capital.  Totally customizable, for any type of project.  Please take a look.  Bootstrapped by two guys.  Launched at DEMO 30 minutes ago.  Using our own site to pay our DEMO bill!  Thanks!!! <comment><USER2> <http://www.invested.in> \- clickable link

</comment><comment><USER3> Ok, let me see.

I really like the idea but it needs to be clear.

What about the other side of the coin? Do the investors become a part of the company?

As an investor, I would like to own even a fraction of the company.

What's there to ensure the startups wouldn't just be irresponsible with the money invested?

What if you don't have enough social capital?

I think you should try to show answers to these questions on your start up page or a how it works page or a video. Not explicitly but implicit thru examples of your service being used. I know that you have raised money for your demo, but how much? who gave? what did you give in return? what steps did you take to ensure you will be responsible?

</comment><comment><USER4> Seems more like a donation site than an investment site, it's very unclear as to what I'm getting for my "investment". Even the invested.in project seems to be more about buying stickers than investing.

Most of the returns seem to be undying gratitude / a thank you note in a small community project, not equity.

If you have social capital why not put a paypal link on your facebook / twitter?

</comment><comment><USER5> Have you considered facebook connect or twitter oauth? I have a hard time justifying signing up for sites anymore because of this. I guess I'm just spoiled/lazy. Looks like an awesome idea. Looking forward to posting up some projects.

</comment><comment><USER6> my first thought is 'how is this different from kickstarter?'

I mean, my knowledge of both this startup and kickstarter is pretty thin, and there is certainly nothing wrong with competing with something similar.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> BTW - this is my younger brother's company (Alon) - I'm sure he'll respond to feedback here.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you manage your cron jobs? - <AUTHOR> Hey people,
I am in the state where people don't know which cron jobs exists or in which machine they run or what they do.
I was thinking about using something like ansible as a central repository for cron jobs. We are a big company and we have no control when someone changes a cronjob or install/delete one.
What do you use for that ? <comment><USER2> I haven't had this problem, but I would consider switching to a task queue like Celery. It'll be more robust/reliable than cron, too.

<comment><USER3> You replace one task scheduler with another. How does this help in managing the tasks?

<comment><USER2> I was imagining you have a single Celery server with a shiny admin frontend, and each node connects to it and looks for tasks assigned to it.</comment></comment></comment>


Did Your City Make the 'High Quality of Life' List? - <AUTHOR> https://www.workandmoney.com/s/quality-of-life-cities-ec09d4e6b0384a73 <comment><USER3> List is a republish of [0] but with ads stuffed into it, and no other information.

[0] [https://mobilityexchange.mercer.com/Insights/quality-of- livi...](https://mobilityexchange.mercer.com/Insights/quality-of-living- rankings)

<comment><USER4> They added a nice set of photos, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm always baffled how Vancouver always makes it to the top of these lists.

I've visited the city several times. It's decent. But there isn't anything special about it other than the view and that it's surrounded by nature. Everything else is bland. No architecture, boring city planning, average transport for a big city, completely unaffordable housing, food is just as generic as everywhere, major homeless issue, weather is gloomy.

</comment><comment><USER6> I can only judge the quality of the list by US cities having never been to these other places. San Francisco is certainly not the best US city in terms of "quality of life" unless maybe you are very rich. Ditto for Honolulu - <USER2> you're cutoff from the mainland. Who made this list? It's crap

</comment><comment><USER7> Any "quality of life" list that includes New York is total bullshit.

This here list was made by an HR consulting firm with an eye towards helping companies select a site for headquarters. Yes, the CEO and other top brass will have a good life here in NYC, while other employees will languish in apartments shared with others who are too poor to afford a place within reasonable distance of work. The hour+ long commute will definitely help catch up on reading. Hope they like train delays.

<comment><USER8> Can't agree on that with regards to a city like Düsseldorf. Living and working in this city is possible if you're working an IT job and you don't need to move out to the suburbs, unless you want to purchase a house to raise kids in.

Other than that, I don't see a lot of use for this list since it doesn't come with any data, as far as I can tell on mobile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Has there been any good analysis of why US cities tend to do so badly on these sorts of lists?

Is it just a matter of not being willing to spend enough money on public infrastructure? Is it related to general inequality? or perhaps that the lists give move value to public transportation than cars?

<comment><USER10> Pretty much. It places emphasis on policies that happen to match the social safety nets of Western Europe. You can ignore it if you have different tastes or needs. There can be no truly objective measure of this stuff.

Obviously the US is a great and wonderful place to live for employed professionals like us. But we aren't the only ones who matter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Vancouver, though it is expensive as hell, really is a great city to live in, I loved my years there (originally from Paris France). Could use some additional sun, but they're great at making grey skies and drizzle bearable those Canadians.

</comment><comment><USER12> High five from #1 ;)</comment>


HN: Review my iPhone sales graphing app - <AUTHOR> http://www.licensekey.net/analytics/

<comment><AUTHOR> I developed this app to graph the sales of iPhone apps in my spare time using python, matplotlib and wxwidgets. It's cross platform, and runs on both Windows and OSX. So far I've only tested on Windows 7 and would appreciate help with any testing.

I believe this is the first such tool for Windows (I may be mistaken). There are a few for OSX already. Help me test it and if you find any bugs or problems, please send to firstname.lastname@example.com.

In the future I may make a pro version that people can pay for, but I first have to come up with some extra ordinary features that people would be willing to pay for, so if you have any such wishes, tell me too!

</comment><comment><USER2> I would appreciate a web based app without a registration requirement to view basic data.

<comment><AUTHOR> You prefer web apps to desktop apps?</comment></comment>


Fragmented Android tablet market can still mean big money for devs - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2011/12/08/fragmented-android-tablet-market-can-still-mean-big-money-for-devs/

<comment><USER2> No statistics about developer revenues, some general thoughts rather. This read more like a PR article for Corona/Ansca Mobile.</comment>


The Kindle DX: Is this the thing Apple is supposed to be working on? - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/mobile-amp-wireless/67548/kindle-dx-thing-apple-supposed-be-working <comment><USER2> No.</comment>


Infographic: Flash vs HTML5 - <AUTHOR> http://www.develop-online.net/news/39680/Infographic-Flash-vs-HTML5

<comment><USER2> It is perfectly possible to have an HTML5 game in one file. While you can link directly to a Flash file, if you want it to appear _on_ a web page you are going to need at least two.

Also,

Is anyone else tired of 'infographics' that are just tables with a few added pictures? What do the graphics add to the info other than a level of cute- ness?

e.g. when presenting a row with two data points, do we gain anything by adding a graph of those same two points?

Tufte is losing the war :(

</comment><comment><USER3> I've got no truck in this fight, but they really should call these things propogandagraphics.

</comment><comment><USER4> There is nothing like the disappointing realization that the web page you're trying to view on your Android phone is completely dysfunctional because the fucking Flash plugin has shit itself again.

Android may have Flash, but I wish it didn't.

<comment><USER5> Just disable it by default and get the best of both worlds. I dislike my browser loading Flash (which is often advertisements) so I only allow it when it's some content worth viewing. Unfortunately there are still worthwhile websites that require Flash for certain content.

On the bright side, it provides an easy way to disable most annoying advertisements! We won't be able to say the same when Flash penetration decreases and HTML5 adverts are the norm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> should mention that Flash won't be available on mobile devices anymore as per Adobe.

looking at the sales figures of smartphones and new tablets (both iOS and Android) - Flash is going away.

as per browser support: IE10 will be plug-in free, didn't MS just say that? Chrome will introduce click-to-play.

the graph shows the past, not the future.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm growing tired of people still trotting out the old trope about "Steve Jobs… prohibiting Flash web players across all iOS devices." Flash isn't _prohibited_ in iOS, it was never enabled in the first place! That phrasing implies that Apple expended developer effort to ensure that Flash wouldn't work on the iPhone, which is an inaccurate characterization of what actually happened.

</comment><comment><USER8> I found the comparison for CPU use kind of confusing. You can't tell which stat belongs to which technology.

</comment><comment><USER9> So uh, what was their benchmark test for the CPU Usage section? There are many things HTML5 is more efficient than at Flash and the reverse is also true.

</comment><comment><USER5> There are definitely advantages to Flash but this reeks of bias. For example, Flash is supported by 99% of web browsers? Guess we're ignoring mobile?

</comment><comment><USER10> "this developer already knows flash and is grasping at justifications for his unwillingness to learn new things? advantage: flash"

</comment><comment><USER11> Is this a joke?</comment>