Ask HN: Realizing Your Idea Isn't Original - <AUTHOR> I recently came up with an idea for a web app that I've been getting pretty excited about. I've been spending the last couple of weeks doing research and today discovered that another company is already executing the idea. Not only are they executing it, but they're doing a pretty good job of it.<p>How important do you consider the originality of an idea to be? I have decided to embrace my variations on the idea, the size of the market,  and go ahead with developing it. <comment><USER2> The general idea doesn't need to be original at all. There was search before Google, social networks before facebook, video before YouTube, etc.

Sometimes the specifics of the idea can be important though. For example, take Google: _lets use hyperlink data to rank websites_

What's your idea?

<comment><USER3> "social networks before facebook"

You are saying that like the world uses only fb. You should do a reality check

<comment><USER3> downvote me more I enjoy down votes when I am right

<comment><USER4> Happy to oblige!

<comment><USER3> :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Idea is nothing without execution. So, it's glad that you are determined to continue working on your idea. And, you should be happy that at least you are now working on an idea that already has its market.

If you are working on a totally new idea, it means you are trying to explore a totally new market. And, thing tends to become even worse if your web app are trying to shape new habits among people.

And, if I were you, instead of spending time working on the research, I would rather spend the time start working on the idea. You may already a prototype right now if you started working on it the last couple weeks.

But, I do not mean that research is bad. But, I will try to keep the research time as short as possible. And, I agree with aneesh, try to keep your idea as specific as possible.

Besides, I assume that you are working on your idea alone, so, it is always good to target a niche market.

</comment><comment><USER6> Truly original ideas are terrible things to base products on. It takes people a vary long time to accept things that are actually revolutionary.

Instead, its often better to just take something familiar and make it better or adapt it for a certain niche. Make an ipod, not a segway.

</comment><comment><USER7> We like to believe in creation, but what's actually happening is evolution, not creation. Original ideas are like genetic mutations of old ideas and are not strong enough to survive and win.

I think that the strongest ideas are never really original, they are just better implementations of the existing ones.

<comment><USER8> In other words: you can't create in a vacuum.

<comment><USER9> True. Something copyright law should realize.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As you're coding you'll definitely do things differently. You can even learn from your competitors mistakes, because you can regard their product as your "prototype". And because you have a competitor you can be pretty sure there is a market and (potential) customers. This is a good thing.

There are always a million reasons to not go through with something. If you're excited about the idea, and if you're pretty sure you can turn it into something profitable there's no reason not to go ahead.

</comment><comment><USER11> We had the same problem. We had a 50% original idea, and our competitor was the rest of the idea that we knew could be better.

We used it as a basis for solving disagreements. Whenever we couldn't agree or decide what to do, we just say "what is our competitor doing?" It isn't about copying per se, it's about keeping momentum and getting past decision problems.

</comment><comment><USER12> Go down a street and you'll see McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, In-N-Out, Jack In the Box...

<comment><USER13> And one of them is surely doing better business than the rest. ;)

the recent t-mobile offer for customers also proves this: its the same phone call but just with a different operator whom you'll hate when tmobile gives such offers :)

<comment><USER14> I wouldn't mind owning any of them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If they're doing a good job of it more or less the way you'd be doing it, bail. You want to be crusading for your future users, saving them from the crap they would have to put up with if you weren't helping them. If you don't think you are making a big difference for your users, you won't have the necessarily inner fire to win.

Ideally you do a startup where other companies are doing something badly, their users hate them, and they still make money.

</comment><comment><USER16> I would postulate that some details of the potential competitor's execution is different from what you envisioned for your app. This difference may be what makes one app more successful than the other.

Try to figure our what the core perspective of the other app is; perhaps it is subtly different from your vision - assess whether you believe your core concept is "better" than theirs.

</comment><comment><USER17> If someone else has already executed it and made a pretty decent job of it be happy. Now you know there's a market, and that there's someone you can learn from.

It is very rarely the unique idea that wins. It's the implementation and execution.

<comment><USER18> That being said, being able to do something differently matters. Especially if you are in a niche market, it is much more difficult to get and keep traction without first-mover advantage.

Innovation in the way you will get traffic is one of the ways to distinguish yourself. If you are a paid service, consider integrating better commission/affiliate systems. They work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Palish has some useful advice:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=365962>

 _Also, consider that if that German hadn't invented the automobile, Ford still would have. i.e. Ford wasn't inspired by that German, because he was already working on an automobile. His autobiography is very good:<http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/hnfrd10.txt*>

</comment><comment><USER20> _I have decided to embrace my variations on the idea_

Yes. It's not the "same" precise idea - maybe, the same concept. And you'll see more as you go along:

I find my creativity is very local. I have to _be_ at a new vantage point, to see new things. That is, to have a prototype, to play with it, to hear what problems people have - just to know more.

My experience: I began with one concept that seemed really cool to me, I did a little research and saw things vaguely similar, but they didn't get "my" idea (fortunately for me, I didn't find the several attempts that _did_ get my idea). But as I began executing, I hit a roadblock - something that really spoiled my idea, made it impossible to realize the cool vision properly. I asked around, dejectedly, and someone suggested I look at how an unrelated project solved that particular problem - I did that and found the solution! But then bizarre twist 1: through doing this, I came to realize that the "unrelated project" was really doing exactly the same thing as me - just in a different sense. I would not have seen this connection (and did not) until I was intimidate with the details (i.e. was at a new vantage point). Bizarre twist 2: the title of my project perfectly described both my old conception and my new conception, although I could not see this ambiguity til _after_ the journey.

Take the journey. You are surrounded by opportunities you cannot see.

Also: "What do you understand about your business that other companies in it just don't get?" <http://ycombinator.com/app.txt> (is there access to a more recent application form?)

</comment><comment><USER21> Write a list of all of the companies/products that you admire. How many of them attacked a new market or idea? Ipod? Google Search? Google Adwords? WordPress? Facebook? Microsoft? Starbucks? Walmart? Ebay? Craigslist? YouTube? HackerNews (!)? None were the first to try what they eventually succeeded at.

Seriously, unless the other folks are literally owning the market, keep chasing it. Most markets have plenty of room for multiple successful players.

</comment><comment><USER4> _How important do you consider the originality of an idea to be?_

Incredibly, emphatically, overwhelmingly unimportant. In fact, I would say that if your idea was truly original, that would be extremely worrying from a business standpoint.

In fact, I wrote an article on that topic:

[http://inter-sections.net/2008/08/26/bad-bloggers-copy- great...](http://inter-sections.net/2008/08/26/bad-bloggers-copy-great- bloggers-steal)

</comment><comment><USER22> I'd be careful with some of the advice in this thread.

Your idea doesn't need to be original, but your execution of it needs to be better. In at least some small way that will gain you customers, it needs to be better on day 1.

</comment><comment><USER23> Ideas = worthless. Execution is everything. I have come across that statement in numerous articles and books by successful people. If you need proof, go to Marc Andreeson's blog and read his body of work. Multi-billionaires tend to know their stuff, and he is way more convincing than me.

Some argue that being the 5th or 6th entrant into a market is optimal. The first few entrants make all the mistakes with product development and marketing in the early months. They then make changes after learning from the mistakes they have made over time, and you benefit from their painful trial and error.

Originality goes way beyond product ideas though. If you truly want to build a business, you have to create a company behind the product. That consists of many, many systems, a founding team with business instincts and vision, and the panache to bring ideas to life and build a company culture with flair. Everything has to be built from scratch. For my company, I see the products as one small part of who we are and what we do. Zappos calls themselves a customer-service company that just happens to sell shoes. If the shoe market goes to hell one day then they can take the business system they have built and pursue other markets. The value is in systems and top talent to run the systems, not inventions. Ideas are a dime-a-dozen, and we all have too many interesting ideas that we can't get to for lack of time. Systematic, consistent execution will make you that million bucks. If you have made it this far in the post, I highly recommend Michael Gerber's book called "the E-myth". It addresses why most small businesses do not succeed, and it has probably been the most valuable knowledge I have ever acquired. Also, check out sequoia capital's idea page, and see if your idea passes their test.

Now go out and execute!

Take your best idea, run with it, and make everything up as you go along.

is defined as having a unique spin on a product/service with a proven market, stunning marketing materials, and silver-tongued salesmanship

</comment><comment><USER24> Wow, you've got a ton of great and positive advice here. I agree with almost all of it, but would add this...

There are no shortage of ideas, and no shortage of businesses to build if you have the ideas. If the company/market you are looking at has a good implementation with market penetration and barriers to entry, and if you can't SIGNIFICANTLY make a difference, then maybe keep looking. Take a read of Rick Segal's current post (and my comment there). [http://ricksegal.typepad.com/pmv/2008/11/features-of-the- wor...](http://ricksegal.typepad.com/pmv/2008/11/features-of-the-world- unite.html)

So, your final sentence says it all... go develop, you'll learn a ton going through that process and maybe find more ways to differentiate and improve on the market.

Don't forget to let us know when you launch.

<comment><USER20> pg also says that many ycom startups have changed businesses completely as they go along - and for applications, the initial idea isn't really evaluated as itself, but as a measure of your ability to formulate/recognize good ideas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I agree with everyone here who says its possible if done with variations and served better.

But I am stuck in a similar situation. The worse part is to get the users of the competitor's service switch to mine. Coz the competitor has a huge chunk of data that's of value to the user. How do i urge the users to switch when the competitor doesn't have an API to access the user's data? If he had it then i could've built an app to import user data from the competitor's service.

<comment><USER9> That seems hard, but aiming for getting new users to sign up with you instead of them is probably easier. (Unless you are close to market saturation.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Sorry for the self-link but I provided a list a while back of about 20 successful products that were not based on original ideas: [http://firewatching.com/ambient/2008/06/06/products-that- wou...](http://firewatching.com/ambient/2008/06/06/products-that-wouldnt- exist-if-their-creators-listened-to-hasnt-someone-done-that-already/)

</comment><comment><USER26> I don't really think ideas are worth that much. Anybody can come up with an idea. What is, "I have an idea to build a fusion power plan to supply all of the World's energy," worth? Not much.

The value of any idea is the _execution_ of that idea. In the world of software its the implementation of that idea. If your competitor has done a kick ass job implementing the idea you thought of and you really don't think you could do a much better job, I would probably look for other ideas that you feel you could do better.

Another thing to look at is the capability, velocity, and momentum of the competitors idea; you may be able to out maneuver them if it took them a long time to get to the point they did and they suck at software development. If they are kicking ass _and_ getting funding to add more resources and move faster, this could make your life harder.

That said, don't do a feature-by-feature copy of the competition. That adds absolutely no value to the world and you're going to have a hell of a time escaping their shadow. Plus it would make you a slimy person its just really bad PR.

One of our competitors is copying us feature-by-feature and it actually puts us to an advantage because they don't understand _why_ we did what we did and our software development delivery is much faster and higher quality than theirs.

How do we know this? Just by looking at their web page source. They have all of this test javascript code and fixtures mixed in with their production javascript, they use tables to control their page formatting, left /phpinfo.php on their root web server, use Dreamweaver to code their PHP and image roll-overs, and push everything out via FTP on port 21. Who the hell does that? On top of that they haven't delivered any new features in the past 4 months.

At the end of the day, very rarely are ideas original. You're better off focusing on the _execution_ of an idea and out-delivering the competition.

</comment><comment><USER27> It's 99% perspiration, 1% inspiration.

If you sweat harder and sweat smarter than the other guy, you'll clean house.

</comment><comment><USER28> I consider it a kind of validation of an idea to see that other people are working on the same thing, but I know how you feel. It depends on your product and market, but I think there's pretty much always room for more than one success story.

</comment><comment><USER29> Having another company doing successful business with your idea means that there is a market, which is a very good sign. There is no shame in not being #1 in a niche. Success does not have to mean overtaking the world.

</comment><comment><USER30> There are virtually no totally original ideas. Its one of the reasons for the "ideas are worthless" mantra around here. Execution is the key.

You will never think of something totally unique. Just do it first, better, or cheaper.

</comment><comment><USER31> If you don't have competition, your idea has no industry.

<comment><USER32> yet...

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> One advantage is you need not validate your idea because it being implemented successfully by another company.

</comment><comment><USER34> The World is big, the market too.</comment>


Why the Greatest Advertiser of All Time Would Have Embraced Piracy - <AUTHOR> http://www.byrnehobart.com/blog/claude-hopkins-would-have-loved-bittorrent/

<comment><USER2> Agreed. Hopkins' book is a classic and an excellent read. I had the same reaction when I read it: the way this guy ran his campaigns seems more like the internet than anything you'd expect from a century ago. Another thing that struck me was how many of the brands he created are still household names today (Palmolive, Goodyear).

<comment><AUTHOR> It's also possible that the economy got more "Hopkinsian" over time: most growth industries fit the low-marginal-cost, numbers-over-notions focus that direct mail had.</comment></comment>


Avoiding a JavaScript Monoculture - <AUTHOR> http://www.sitepoint.com/javascript-monoculture <comment><AUTHOR> Found this article interesting. Though I don't necessarily agree with Rasmus, he makes some good points.

Monoculture definition: "a culture dominated by a single element"</comment>


Freak waves spotted from space (2004) - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/3917539.stm

<comment><USER2> I always find it amusing how little we know about most of our planet. Then I get sad at the vast amount of scientists losing their jobs or having to work for large-company-for-profit since they can't get enough funding to research what they want.

Maybe we need to start getting scientists to use Kickstarter? "For $400,000 I can make some serious headway into rogue wave research and will publish all of my data in real time!" I'd toss a couple hundred at projects like this.

On a side note we need a website and very simple API for scientists to publish research in real time... with a not-horrible interface like most science websites have.

<comment><USER3> This exists. Petridish.org lets people help fund projects that wouldn't otherwise get off the ground, Kickstarter style

<comment><USER2> Indeed, this does cover the first part, they need to work on getting their name out there cause I've never seen this website before... Now for the 2nd part!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Results of the MAXWAVE Project

W. Rosenthal

Institute of Coastal Research, Geesthacht, Germany

[http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/PubServices/2005pdfs/Rosenthal.p...](http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/PubServices/2005pdfs/Rosenthal.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER5> On an average two large ships sink every week? Really? That's way too high than what I had expected. Can anyone cite a source for this info?

<comment><USER6> It's hard to get to the data but have a look at the latest vessel casualties in the right hand column:

<http://www.lloydslistintelligence.com/>

Also, the project site leeds to <http://coast.gkss.de/projects/maxwave/workp/wp4/wp4.html> where you can find a map of ship casualties for a 4 year period [http://coast.gkss.de/projects/maxwave/workp/wp4/casualties.j...](http://coast.gkss.de/projects/maxwave/workp/wp4/casualties.jpg)

I am surprised myself, but 2 a week actually seems low!

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the links. Googling some of the ships listed as casualties led me to this page <http://www.vesseltracker.com/en/News/Home.html>

So it looks like the ships are not necessarily lost, and some of them aren't all that big...

<comment><USER6> Yeah true - I think gravitystorm's comment is quite accurate when it comes down to big vessels.

I did a bit more googling and found this site:

<http://www.cargolaw.com/presentations_cas.index.html>

Even though it looks this site is hosted on geocities, there are links to current vessel casualties with details to damage, human casualties, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This article is from 2004. For more information on the project as well as the ugliest site you could possibly imagine, visit <http://coast.gkss.de/projects/maxwave/>

Edit: Apparently parts of their server have sunk as well.

<comment><USER9> I highly recommend visiting the site. It made me laugh. But then it made me sad. It's like visiting a house after it has been abandoned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Statistics about ship losses in this article are utterly wrong. The Wikipedia article below explicitly calls out the press release this article appears to be based upon.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_wave#Loss_estimates>

</comment><comment><USER11> Summary of ocean surface topography measurement using satellite altimetry:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_surface_topography>

<comment><USER12> Not really related to wave size.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Out of curiosity, I went looking to see if this data has translated into thinking about ship design:

<http://126.96.36.199/pdf/2007symp09.pdf>

[http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/PubServices/2005pdfs/Rosenthal.p...](http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/PubServices/2005pdfs/Rosenthal.pdf)

<http://www.ifremer.fr/web-com/molagnon/bv/Faulkner_w.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER14> Article about the follow-up study from the German Space Agency, including some kind of map.

<http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/18245/>

</comment><comment><USER15> Freak waves and 2004 - thought it was about the 2004 tsunami.</comment>


Preference for Authoritarianism Predicts Support for Trump - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2016/3/1/11127424/trump-authoritarianism <comment><AUTHOR> tl/dr:

"MacWilliams studies authoritarianism... a psychological profile of individual voters that is characterized by a desire for order and a fear of outsiders. People who score high in authoritarianism, when they feel threatened, look for strong leaders who promise to take whatever action necessary to protect them from outsiders and prevent the changes they fear... He polled a large sample of likely voters... Not only did authoritarianism correlate, but it seemed to predict support for Trump more reliably than virtually any other indicator."</comment>


Penthouse Snags AdultFriendFinder for $500 Million - <AUTHOR> http://www.thealarmclock.com/mt/archives/2007/12/penthouse_seduc.html

<comment><USER2> I've been to the site a few times, and I don't understand what Penthouse sees in it. All of the "personals" on the main page are clearly fake, only there to sucker people in to join the site. I suppose it could make money, but I doubt it actually does what you expect it to do -- get you laid.

</comment><comment><USER3> wow I didn't even know Penthouse even had money left... the last news I heard some years back what that they were on the edge of bankruptcy; I guess they too got acquired?

</comment><comment><USER4> Wow. I guess that's the biggest adult oriented Internet acquisition? That guy (Conru) is pretty damned impressive, as getting acquired in the adult online business is very rare. (Of course, it sounds like he sold at a significant discount. The article indicates revenues of $340M in 2007...which either means they have an awful lot of expenses, or Penthouse got a great deal.)

<comment><USER5> There was actually a short interview with him on IT Conversations a few years ago. Kind of fascinating:

<http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail310.html>

<comment><USER6> Don't forget to check out his site <http://conru.com/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Pornotube is sure to go for a billy now.</comment>


HelloFresh Aims for $1.8B IPO Valuation - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-22/hellofresh-aims-for-1-8-billion-ipo-valuation-amid-food-wars <comment><USER2> I don't understand the lofty valuation of these food startups - Most of them are running huge losses, their customer acquisition/marketing cost is so high - Look at Blue Apron.</comment>


Basic Chessboard with Angular Material CDK - <AUTHOR> https://chess-ec7ad.firebaseapp.com/
and the github repository
https://github.com/ezracode/grandmaster <comment><AUTHOR> The code is on the following path

[https://github.com/ezracode/grandmaster/tree/master/chessboa...](https://github.com/ezracode/grandmaster/tree/master/chessboard/chess/chess)</comment>


College Students: Pass Up That "Free" iPod - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/roi/2008/09/02/college-students-pass-up-that-free-ipod/?mod=rss_WSJBlog?mod=marketsColBlog

<comment><USER2> I honestly don't understand when people say a credit card is expensive. Most credit cards are free. Interest is expensive, but interest is optional. The issue is not about credit cards; it's about buying things you can't afford. That's a bad idea no matter how you do it. Even with cash.

<comment><USER3> well, why do you think they call it a tax on the stupid? credit card companies don't stay in business because of prudent fiscal practices. the exist to enable your bad habits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _raises hand_ College student that somehow resists the apparently insatiable urge to purchase crap I can't afford reporting in.</comment>


Microsoft Sells U.S. Defense Dept. On Windows 10 - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2016/02/17/microsoft-sells-u-s-defense-dept-on-windows-10/?mod=trending_now_3 <comment><USER2> Windows 10 adds a lot of value to the DoD. Better 2F authentication, better biometrics, stronger centralised control (e.g. Device Guard, all this[0]), VBS[1], and all of the improvements they missed in 8 & 8.1 (e.g. secure boot, improved Bitlocker, improved GPO/AD integration, improved security focused compiler technology, etc).

Plus the Enterprise LTSB branch is almost DESIGNED for the DoD (in fact I'd put money on governments being the primary target for even having a LTSB branch).

A lot of the complaints/criticism of Windows 10 doesn't apply to the LTSB as it has most of Microsoft's services stripped out from the get-go.

[0] [https://blogs.windows.com/business/2014/10/22/windows-10-sec...](https://blogs.windows.com/business/2014/10/22/windows-10-security- and-identity-protection-for-the-modern-world/)

[1] [https://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/library/mt601297(v=vs.85...](https://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/library/mt601297\(v=vs.85\).aspx)</comment>


Show HN: Free Dividend Watchlist/Portfolio - <AUTHOR> https://waves.saplingsolutions.com <comment><AUTHOR> So, a few weeks ago I asked here for some feedback on a portfolio tracker I've been working on, and I just wanted to announce that I've made some changes, and now I am able to provide it completely for free. So, feel free to use it!

Have Fun!

<comment><USER2> I like this, it suits my needs.

I noticed that VOO (Vanguard S&P 500 ETF) has a -10.56% dividend percentage listed (although it is the YTD performance) which causes the expected annual dividend to go negative. The yield is currently listed at 1.98% on Yahoo Finance.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, there's a bug with etfs right now, I'm working on fixing it though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for sharing. Do I assume correctly that this tool takes in dividend expectations and not only announced dividends?

Building a portfolio around dividend expectations is definitely useful for many reasons. But predicting dividends is hard. I imagine the dividend payouts for upcoming seasons will be far off previous seasons, and way short of previous analyst forecasts. How do you build or source your forecast levels for this tool, and how do you adjust expectation levels in the light the current economic context?

</comment><comment><USER4> Cool. Where do you source your financial data from?</comment>


The New York Times Makes 17k Recipes Available Online - <AUTHOR> http://www.openculture.com/2015/08/the-new-york-times-makes-17000-tasty-recipes-available-online.html <comment><USER2> Needs community tagging of recipes. The recipe of the day is vegan and vegetarian, but has neither tag (both of which already exist: [http://cooking.nytimes.com/tag/vegan](http://cooking.nytimes.com/tag/vegan)). No doubt this problem exists for other tags and other recipies in the database.

Edit: A cursory search through the BBC's recipe database shows their tags to be notably more thorough, though at times mistaken (butter labeled vegan in [http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/sugar_and_spice_67172](http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/sugar_and_spice_67172)) and unfortunately just as immutable at the NYT site.

</comment><comment><USER3> They also have great write-up detailing their use of CRFs to extract structured data from recipes.

[http://open.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/09/extracting- structur...](http://open.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/09/extracting-structured- data-from-recipes-using-conditional-random-fields/)

<comment><USER4> I've often thought recipes could benefit from a more structured representation. One idea I had was to recursively define a recipe as either:

A) a raw ingredient

B) a procedure (measurement [4 cups, 2 stalks, 3 pinches], reduction [slicing, dicing, julienne], combination [folding, mixing, blending], heating [sautee, fry, bake, roast]) on one or more _recipes_

It would be interesting to compare the resulting recipe "trees" across region, cuisine, chef, etc.

<comment><USER5> Another interesting variation is recipes presented as Gantt charts, or especially a sequence of courses presented as such so you know what to prepare in advance, what to do just before serving, etc.

<comment><USER6> I quite like the chart representation used in cookingforengineers.com, showing the parallelism in a recipe, eg

[http://www.cookingforengineers.com/recipe/87/Carrot-Pulp- Cak...](http://www.cookingforengineers.com/recipe/87/Carrot-Pulp-Cake-Part-I)

<comment><USER7> Came here to post this as well. Essentially, he's using the Nassi–Shneiderman diagrams for food recipes (instead of software recipes).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Direct link : [http://cooking.nytimes.com/](http://cooking.nytimes.com/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Mark Bittman (NYT Food columnist) has had an iOS app [1] out for a while, "How to Cook Everything". I can't remember why but this app was put on sale some time ago for $0.99 and I snapped it up. It's great--I've never had a bad meal from a Bittman recipe.

[1] [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/how-to-cook- everything/id409...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/how-to-cook- everything/id409936319?mt=8)

<comment><USER7> That's probably derived from his great book "How to Cook Everything", [http://www.amazon.com/Everything-Completely-Revised- Annivers...](http://www.amazon.com/Everything-Completely-Revised-Anniversary- Edition/dp/0764578650).

Often, when I see some complicated recipe in a magazine, I turn to this book for the basic essentials of the recipe (and a great list of recipe variations and ingredient tips).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Their 53 videos on cooking techniques is nice too (the landing page only lists a few):

[http://www.nytimes.com/video/cooking- techniques](http://www.nytimes.com/video/cooking-techniques)

<comment><USER11> Nice, just watched all of them. One thing I know for sure now is I need a sharper kitchen knife.

<comment><USER12> You got through all of them in an hour?

p.s. go to ' __ _Sur La Table_ __' and get a good sharpening stone for your knives. Also, I prefer 'Global' kitchen knives... but you'd be astounded what some people make if you checkout /r/knives...

<comment><USER13> And now I have a new hobby.

<comment><USER12> Check out /r/throwing too if you're inclined..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've enjoyed digging out older recipes from the 1700's and 1800's from "The Whole Duty of a Woman": [https://archive.org/details/wholedutyawoman00unkngoog](https://archive.org/details/wholedutyawoman00unkngoog)

Everything from main courses, soups, side dishes, pies, desserts is in it.

I might add that since there are no ovens back then, you have to improvise to the instructions of "hold over fire", and "bake 'till brown", ect.

</comment><comment><USER15> Serious hats off to whomever designed and built this site. Fast, beautiful, and predictable.

The only thing missing is search recipe by ingredients I have on hand.

<comment><USER16> Really? Middle clicks (to open in a new tab) don't work.

 _Edit:_ turns out ordinary clicks don't work either, unless I enable some Javascript. I've not worked out which of the 10 or so JS sources need to be whitelisted.

 _Edit #2:_ middle clicks on the main page still don't work even with all JS enabled.

 _Edit for downvoters:_ Recipes should be the perfect example of the web as documents. We literally have books of recipes going back for 1000s of years - what more of an example of documents could you need? You can enhance these documents with interactivity, sure, but the basic recipes can be presented as plain text and images just fine.

The BBC's cooking website works very well without JS.

<comment><USER17> I don't think there is a way to ask this without sounding rude, but it isn't my intent, please don't interpret it that way:

Do you really have an expectation of anything on todays internet to work without JS running?

<comment><USER18> I do, and you should too. Enabling JavaScript for _all_ sites is a security risk (drive-by downloads, etc.), and makes far too much tracking crap possible. Since a huge number of sites are user-hostile with JavaScript enabled (loading huge amounts of JS for tracking purposes, that not only slows down load times and uses up precious bandwidth (especially important in countries where ISPs have overage charges for going over bandwidth limits), but also bogs down my computer when it's still running in the background a minute after the page has loaded. Frankly, if websites are going to be so hostile to the user, the user should have no issues with returning the sentiment; I block JavaScript on all sites by default, and only enable it for certain types of content (like web apps, which you can't expect to do anything useful without it) or sites that I trust. Otherwise, if I can't even read a page's textual content without JavaScript, I just don't bother… it's not worth my time.

<comment><USER19> You're free to want sites to work without JS, but to be realistic about it, that battle was lost loooong ago. Sort of like the old definition of "hacker" vs the one the media has used for the last 20 years.

It's probably more useful to figure out how to make the all-sites-require-js world more secure and less trackable than to try to turn back the clock 20 years.

(Of course you're free to block all JS, insist on how it should ok, etc etc etc.)

<comment><USER18> _"You 're free to want sites to work without JS, but to be realistic about it, that battle was lost loooong ago."_

Sites _should_ at least _work_ without JavaScript. Or are you saying we should just throw accessibility under the bus?

 _"It 's probably more useful to figure out how to make the all-sites-require- js world more secure and less trackable than to try to turn back the clock 20 years."_

Blocking JavaScript _works right now_. Or are you saying end users should just patiently wait until these issues affecting them right now are fixed? It's not like it isn't happening… consider how many people have been tricked even by something like this¹. My parents are actually pretty new to the Internet, and I've made sure that I have them using something like NoScript. Of course, it breaks some sites for them, but that's far preferable to them accidentally infecting their computer and putting their financial info at risk.

――――――

¹ — [https://blog.malwarebytes.org/fraud-scam/2013/07/fbi- ransomw...](https://blog.malwarebytes.org/fraud-scam/2013/07/fbi-ransomware- now-targeting-apples-mac-os-x-users/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I always fail at converting measurements from US recipes because it looks like there are many different varieties of "cups" :) What is the best known conversion table fore recipes? (I live in Europe, usually ingredients are measured in grams and millilitres depending if they are dry or liquid).

<comment><USER21> There aren't really different varieties of "cups". 1 cup is 8 fluid ounces, or ~237 mL.

<comment><USER22> When I lived in Canada, my mother's cup set had a 250ml "1 cup" and my grandmother had a 284ml one.

I just bought a measuring cup set here in Japan and the 1 cup measure is 255ml.

If that's not bad enough, a "cup" is 150ml when measuring coffee and 180ml when measuring rice.

Unfortunately, "cup" is not a standard measurement. :)

<comment><USER23> I think GP meant that in the U.S. it's pretty standard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It is generally excellent. We've been using NYT recipes for many years, and only very rarely had misses from it. It does sometimes ask for things that are a bit unreasonable, though - the one we made last night asked us to whip 4 tablespoons of heavy cream before folding it in, as well as making our own "corn broth".

<comment><USER25> What's unreasonable about the heavy cream? I don't know what's involved in the corn broth so I can't comment on that.

<comment><USER24> It's just a really small amount of cream to whip, the whipping isn't really necessary (we didn't whip, turned out great).

</comment></comment></comment><comment> bmir-alum-007 This is cool as another resource to get seemingly curated recipes, but there's not really a place comment, sort/filter/search recipes, make changes or see user reviews _before_ viewing an individual recipe.

Usually, I use allrecipes.com and pick only 4.5+ star recipes. It's pretty good overall considering the zillion of recipes available of widely-varying quality, though it requires some filtering to find something near to what you want. The major limitation to allrecipes is it's hard to modify a recipe to make your own variant, which should be effortless as "forking" (pun intended) on github.

I've also looked at recipe APIs-as-service like Yummly, but it's ridiculously expensive for anything other than massive, establish projects, so it's basically unusable. Most shops would be better off scraping from a bunch of AWS small instances for cheaper.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'd love to see a similar thing for repairs for cars.

Many of the procedures detailed in the service manual for my car are useless because the manual has too many variants merged together, and omit mine.

</comment><comment><USER27> I highly recommend "The Silver Spoon", a compendium of 4000 Italian recipes and in Italy it has been popular from the 1950s. After 11 years of translating efforts, it was released in English a few years ago.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Il_cucchiaio_d%27argento](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Il_cucchiaio_d%27argento)

</comment><comment><USER28> Is the dataset available for download?

</comment><comment><USER29> Sounds like bad news for operators of other recipe websites, likely to be pushed down one spot in the results across a range of searches. But nice for readers.

</comment><comment><USER30> Somebody go train a recurrent neural net to generate some random recipes for us =)

<comment><USER31> [https://www.ibmchefwatson.com/](https://www.ibmchefwatson.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Can someone explain to me why this is such a big deal? Does the NYT have exceptional cooking recipes? Because there are a million other recipe sites.

</comment><comment><USER33> Great news if you're going to be scraping for recipes - the recipes have Schema.org microdata with nutritional information.

</comment><comment><USER34> The NYT's backends (for saving recipes etc) appear to be 503ing right now...

</comment><comment><USER35> recipes suck. They have no life in them. They're technology, man using memory in place of spirit to copy, not create.

there may come a time when I use recipes, but I prefer building pyramids to buying them.

<comment><USER36> Recipes are like algorithms. Learning the classics is a good way to get started.

I can't remember the last time I followed a recipe to the letter, but I often use them as a jumping off point.

<comment><USER25> Exactly.

Maybe it's easier to think of them as apps -- a complete thought as a point of inspiration.

<comment><USER35> well, like most apps, I'd rather use a webbrowser, than something specific than something that takes memory to run it's own instance of. lol</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple and Samsung both get South Korea bans - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19364875

<comment><USER2> I'll likely get downvoted so far I pop up in New Zealand for this - but zzzzz.

These expensive spats between huge companies just aren't interesting, or in any way relevant, to my life or business. They're just billion-dollar corporations flexing their muscles and making lawyers a bit richer every day.

Every other day now, it seems like we get a story about some shiny flashing trinket or other being 'banned' by some judge in $country, or one massive corporation suing another over three lines of code, or something.

It just feels like irrelevant corporate politicking between super-rich corporations, and doesn't have any grounding in the real world.

<comment><USER3> Downvoted for breaking guidelines.

From <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

"Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downmod you."

<comment><USER4> I read it that he's saying he expects people are going to disagree and down vote rather than encouraging it - the difference between "I expect this is doing to go down badly" and "I don't care what you all think".

<comment><USER5> "I know I'm going to get downvoted for this" is not appropriate on HN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting judgement and certainly not the one I expected, in the sense of South Korea punishing its own.

If the US lawsuit had the same result, you might see Apple's stance on patent- trolling reversing quite, quite quickly.

Their only (significant) market these days is iOS-related, and if they got iOS devices banned left and right as a punishment for playing the patent-trolling game, they might learn that patent reform would be beneficial to them as well.

Not that I see _that_ happening, but then again I never saw this coming either. You never know. A man is allowed to dream. Etc.

</comment><comment><USER7> Odd - I haven't seen anywhere else what the "limited ban" constitutes or entails.

Are the no-longer-sold Samsung phones "banned" in any meaningful way, or just until they pay $22k?

<comment><USER8> Samsung has a wider product range than Apple. If the same number of presently- sold products of both companies are banned, it will have a bigger effect on Apple.

This is South Korea, owned by Samsung. Samsung are absolutely not going to be punished in any meaningful way in South Korea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is this simply an attempt to affect the outcome of the US trial?

</comment><comment><USER10> Apple, Samsung, THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS!

</comment><comment><USER11> IDIOTS. This only hurts the potential buyers.

</comment><comment><USER12> Apple, Samsung: You have been banned from r/pyongyang.

<comment><USER13> Pyongyang is in North Korea. Here we are talking about South Korea. It's not like United States where California and Minnesota are under the same govt. These are really two countries, like USA and Canada.</comment></comment>


The Reasons I Move My Site from WordPress to Netlify - <AUTHOR> https://kevinhq.com/why-i-move-from-wordpress-to-netlify.html <comment><USER2> +1 for Netlify.

I created my website using Hugo and was looking at different options to host. Tried Netlify. It is very easy to follow step-by-step process. Have the continuous deployment integration with git. Along with free SSL, the performance is also very good due to caching. So far happy with them on free tier.

</comment><comment><USER3> Then just use GitHub or GitLab pages and you're done</comment>


Driverless taxis' human problem - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/autos/story/20160829-driverless-taxis-human-problem <comment><USER2> People regularly left their stuff in my cab. At first I wasn't so good about checking, but eventually looking in the back seat became a habit. One fellow was going to give a business presentation. After he got out, I looked in the back seat and saw his ipad. He was very appreciative.</comment>


'How Much Suffering Can You Take?' - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/06/sports/virginia-quintuple-anvil-triathlon.html <comment><USER2> In my experience, there's a difference between "how much suffering are you willing to take", and "how much suffering can you take".

This race is interesting because participants can stop whenever they want to -- and they know it. So there's a meta-contest happening for each participant. I have, on very long bicycle rides, found myself spending a lot of mental energy on knowing that I could stop any time.

This is not always true, even in recreational activities or endurance sports. I have been on climbs where there is no reasonable option for retreat and getting off the rock wall is actually a worse option than finishing the climb. Similarly, I've been on backpacking trips where weather and terrain dictate that the only reasonable course of action is to (for example) get off that ridge _now_.

In situations where I don't have the option of choice, I find I'm capable of a lot more.

<comment><USER3> A friend from my Navy days told me the only way he survived BUD/S hell week was to mentally accept that he would either pass the course or freeze to death in the water.

<comment><USER4> For anyone else curious, BUD/S = Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL, part of the US Navy's special forces training.

Considering the crazy life-threatening things special forces soldiers might be commanded to do in a real mission, weeding out anyone who doesn't think like your friend is likely one of the main goals.

<comment><USER5> Actually SEAL's are Special Operations, US Army has the Special Forces designation. They are completely different in the context of the military.

<comment><USER4> Wikipedia: _Special forces and special operations forces are military units trained to conduct special operations.[1][2][3] NATO defines special operations as "military activities conducted by specially designated, organized, trained, and equipped forces, manned with selected personnel, using unconventional tactics, techniques, and modes of employment".[4][1]_ [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_forces](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_forces) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_special_force...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_special_forces_units#United_States)

> _They are completely different_

From what I can tell "special operations" and "special forces" mean the same thing, as far as lay definitions of the generic terms are concerned.

Here's what Collins Dictionary says: "special forces: élite, highly trained military forces, specially selected to work on difficult missions"

<comment><USER5> I'm just telling you how the military designates the branches.

<comment><USER6> Sure, and it's useful as far as it goes (I didn't know precisely), but this isn't the military.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Pete Kostelnick just ran across the US in 42 days breaking the prior record by 3 days. I guarantee you he tolerated a lot of suffering:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/26/well/move/how-to-run- acros...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/26/well/move/how-to-run-across-the- country-faster-than-anyone.html)

Then there are events like the Badwater 135 and the Vol State which seem surgically designed to inflict suffering:

[https://ultrasignup.com/register.aspx?did=34762](https://ultrasignup.com/register.aspx?did=34762)

Or the Marathon de Sables:

[http://marathondessables.co.uk/](http://marathondessables.co.uk/)

Or how about the 52 day Sri Chinmoy Self-Transcendence 3100 Mile Race in Queens, New York City:

[http://3100.srichinmoyraces.org/](http://3100.srichinmoyraces.org/)

I recently participated in my first 24h foot race, completing 105 miles. Nearly 400 of us running a 1.5 mi loop around a lake for hours on end. Why do we do these things? I had a whole day on my feet to contemplate that question and I never came up with a satisfactory answer. I finally decided there is no why. We do it because it's there. And maybe because we have a bit too much time on our hands. Nonetheless, I find this text from the Vol State link poetic:

 _Many will fail. But, for those who find the steely will and muster the sheer dogged tenacity to overcome the impossible obstacles, and reach the rock on foot, the Vol-State can be a transcendental experience. No words can adequately describe the sense of combined relief and amazement to be experienced at the Rock. No one can explain the regret that this incredible journey has actually come to an end. Former King, Barry Crumrine probably summed up the Vol-State experience as well as it can be put into words: "I found in myself something that I never knew was there."_

Suffer well my friends.

<comment><USER8> > Why do we do these things?

This sounds terrible, but quite often, it's to say you did.

A joke posted in my gym: Q: How do you know someone has run a marathon? A: They'll tell you.

<comment><USER7> There's lots of variations on that joke. People are proud of their accomplishments. I've heard it about people who Crossfit, people who run Boston. I've seen folks with Ironman tattoos. And I'm sure you've seen plenty of 13.1 and 26.2 stickers, and all the triathlon mileages too. Shrug.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Sorely disappointed. I have a chronic illness. I don't get to sign up for five limited days of torment, prep for it, then be done. Every single day involves trying to just not give up.

I hate that people with chronic illness get written up like pathetic losers while people who choose to do stuff like this as a hobby are lauded for it.

Wimps, every last one of them.

<comment><USER10> I think the difference is that they are willingly trading suffering for some personal benefit, whereas you don't actively choose to suffer. While that's unfortunate, you are unfairly writing them off because you arbitrarily have to suffer. Sure, it's commendable that you don't give up, but that doesn't negate the testament to the human will that these individuals are going out of their way to test. It seems to me that you believe anyone who doesn't endure a chronic illness is a wimp.. well guess what, some sufferers don't get to choose to live and have to die in front of their friends and illness due to terminal disease. Does that make you a wimp relative to them?

<comment><USER9> Eh, _choosing to live_ in my case has been an incredibly long, hard journey. I would rather have died. Annoyingly, I was too competent and the beat goes on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think many HNers would enjoy the Australian version of this:

[http://worldrogainingchamps.com.au/](http://worldrogainingchamps.com.au/)

A rogaine only lasts 24 hours—no one has been tempted to organise a longer one. On the other hand, the requirement to keep staggering along a running track is replaced by a stricter one: you need to keep navigating precisely, in the dark, away from tracks, using only map and compass. The need to stay alert and keep thinking makes for a more subtle contest, and in some ways a more interesting one.

Then there's the aesthetic part. Instead of a marquee full of used bandages, you get the McDonnell Ranges by moonlight, and the feeling of autonomy that comes when you're running through the middle of nowhere at 3 a.m. with a water bottle, a snakebite bandage and a few muesli bars.

</comment><comment><USER12> Saw it mentioned below, but if you're interested in this stuff, I'd wholly recommend watching a documentary called "The Barkley Marathons" on Netflix.

It's a 100-mile race through the woods in Tennessee, with a 16,500m climb and a time limit of 60 hours. Only 14 people have ever finished.

The documentary does a good job of interviewing the participants and the founder to get at what drives people to enter the race. Most believe (myself included) that overcoming truly challenging obstacles is an enriching experience.

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

</comment><comment><USER13> My immediate thought was "this is pathological" \-- some artifact of modern malaise. But on further thought it doesn't seem all that different from the sort of punishing rituals that people have undertaken for the majority of human history: mortification of the flesh is a consistent theme. However, these rituals have almost always been spiritual in nature, with the goal seemingly transcendence (of the flesh, the self, what have you). It's not entirely clear that this parallel holds for the event described in the article -- but maybe I'm missing the point. Is it, ultimately, about transcending those limitations that "hold the self back"? Is the spiritual height being reached really just "your best self"?

<comment><USER14> > Is it, ultimately, about transcending those limitations that "hold the self > back"? Is the spiritual height being reached really just "your best self"?

I suppose that's the purpose of life too.

<comment><USER13> Well, that's certainly the ethos of American modernity -- but there seems (to me, at least) to be little reason to believe that it's actually true.

And, even if we were to assume the difficult-to-justify proposition that the purpose of life is to be your best self, it's hard to buy that this sort of behavior actually brings you closer to that goal -- any more than the Skoptsy were actually better able to commune with God after castration.

(It probably sure felt like it worked at the time, though.)

<comment><USER15> >the purpose of life is to be your best self

That is a tautology if I've ever seen one. "Best" is meaningless without some preexisting standard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This article smacks of hubris. While it's impressive that these everyday people ran, biked, and swam some distance...it can get much worse. The link below is about as "tame" as special operations training gets, and it's not "tame" at all.

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

</comment><comment><USER17> _'How Much Suffering Can You Take?'_

State of mind.

Turn this question around. Ask yourself _" How much suffering can you take to stop others being hurt?"_ This in my view is a better question to know the answer. Put this way I define it as being able to stick an arm in a fire, hold it there until the job is done.

If you think about this way, you realise the real challenge is mental than physical.

</comment><comment><USER18> Am I the only one being taken to a login page when clicking this link? Since when do I need to create a facebook account to read an article on the new york times?

</comment><comment><USER19> Seems comparable to my undergrad experience /s

<comment><USER20> ditto! French CPGE for me though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Oh, from the title, I thought it was going to be about patch releases...</comment>


The Trouble with "Finding Your People" Online - <AUTHOR> https://tinyletter.com/lmsacasas/letters/the-convivial-society-no-17-arduous-interfaces <comment><USER2> Is it still possible to "find your people online", though? Maybe I've missed a few steps by now but I don't feel there's any place online that I would still call "my people".

The old places where we met when we were 15-20 are almost empty. The new place, HN being one of them, have been willingly sacrificed to the making of money. And then there are places like FB, Instagram that aren't really places of finding, more the spam mailbox turned into a feature.

Last but not least there are these isolated group meetings in whatsapp, slack etc. But there I've only found ones that are mostly open and therefore lack the finding part. You really need to know what you are looking for to have any chance of finding such hidden places.

So where's that "finding your people online" place nowadays?

<comment><USER3> Don't forget Reddit. The depths of specialized subreddits there is mind boggling.

<comment><USER4> I'd say the upvoting nature of reddit makes sure it's always about the posts (and only posts that are favourable towards a like/dislike binary metric) and pretty much never about the people behind them.

Old forums would force you to understand the various characters in the place; Reddit, by design, goes out of its way to hide them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a little reminiscent of those who say childhood bullying is good because it teaches people how to deal with bullies. Yes, if we are forced to rub shoulders with people we don't have much in common with, we will get better at doing it. I probably am less sociable with my physical neighbours than I would be in a world where I didn't have any alternatives. But so what? I would rather spend my limited time with those I choose to. The article glosses over this idea that we all need to participate in something with our local neighbours without really justifying it. Yes, we will occasionally need to reach a political consensus about issues that affect the neighbourhood. That doesn't mean we have to be friends, and I'm not sure that tighter community ties would make for better politics - much of the nastiest, dirtiest politics happens among close-knit groups.

If communities define themselves adversarially then that's a problem in itself, and I'd stay away from platforms and environments that create that football-match feeling (that is, twitter). But that's not at all inherent to the notion of one's people. Taking an interest in trains (for example) is something most people won't do, but being part of a community with that interest is never about how much you're not one of the non-train-interested public.

<comment><USER6> > I would rather spend my limited time with those I choose to.

I think his point is that you _have_ to spend time with people not of your choosing, whether you like it or not, by way of existing.

<comment><USER7> I think two issues are being mixed up here. I think you're completely right that we do have to spend time with people not of our choosing, and further, I think that it's a very valuable skill to be comfortable around basically everyone.

On the other hand, I think the parent is correct that having to spend time with people not of our choosing does not entail having to subject ourselves to anyone's crappy behavior.

Keeping with bullying as an example, during the time the author was talking about, with boys sitting on the fence waiting to talk to someone, from what I've heard from my elders, that was a time when people who acted innappropriately enough got punched in the mouth.

Mouth punching isn't really an acceptable way to deal with most innappropriate behavior anymore, especially somewhere like school. But we should at least retain the ability to remove ourselves from the company of jerks. We shouldn't extend the definition of jerk to include everyone who isn't like us, but we also should be able to draw lines in the sand if need be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> fish-bowls Oh, I dunno. There's another angle of this business of relating to some and not to others, bonding with birds of a feather, and fighting like cats and dogs, separating like oil and water.

The premise requires discussing centralized media in the form of (sometimes radio but mostly) television, a period which this article skips and ignores.

It goes like this: On TV, there were people you could watch and love and adore and idolize. They seemed wonderful and perfect because the persona you were exposed to was staged, rehearsed, pre-recorded. Call it the fish bowl effect.

The fish seem perfect as long as they stay on the other side of the glass. They can't eat you if you don't swim with them. Sharks and piranhas can be safely admired as long as you stay in your world, and they stay in theirs.

With the internet, this boundary is crossed, as soon as you adopt the perspective of the internet as telephone calls. If the internet is always a telephone call, the network is neutral, agnostic to the content of the call, and thus dialed with the expectation of confidential conversations and implicit privacy, then the fish bowl effect disappears.

But even the telephone call is an abstraction, because it ignored the one-to- many or many-to-many relationships. Telephone calls are mostly one on ones.

So compartmentalized concepts no longer serve us. All options are on the table now. None of this is democratizing. It's not enough to just shrug and say " _It's the Internet_ " anymore. It's not going to bring us together. Not by default. It's hasn't made things worse than the worst it's ever been. It does make some things easier, even if sometimes things shouldn't be easy at all.

Now that we have packet switched networks, there's no _One True Way_ for how to use them. Try to think of it as a system of moving sidewalks and escalators, but some of them drop into unmarked fish bowls.

<comment><USER8> > The fish seem perfect as long as they stay on the other side of the glass. > They can't eat you if you don't swim with them. Sharks and piranhas can be > safely admired as long as you stay in your world, and they stay in theirs.

I think this is a useful analogy, because it serves as a possible explanation as to why there seems to be a 'generation gap' whereby previous generations believe to a certain degree it is possible (and right, even) to separate the artist from the art itself, and why modern progressives are rejecting that (Although this gap is cleaner seen from a political perspective, I believe that to some degree it is also generational).

Previously, culture was seen from mostly a consumptive perspective. The bad people and their actions are 'on the other side of the glass' \-- so to speak. Not only do the 'bad actions/opinions' not directly affect them, but they lack any true meaningful ability to change things. Strongly worded letters can really only achieve so much, and all of the information channels are centralized.

I don't know if this makes much sense, it's 3am...

<comment><USER9> Fascinating. I think I might be one of those of the older generation. Do you have any pointers to get to start to learn more about the modern progressives? I'd really like to learn more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > McLuhan: "The closer you get together, the more you like each other? There > is no evidence of that in any situation that we have ever heard of. When > people get close together, they get more and more savage and impatient with > each other."

To riff on this-- I think we are too close together in a massive news feed ('timeline'). Individual blogs gave us a healthy distance.

</comment><comment><USER11> Good food for thought. A lot to consider there.

I think besides the dichotomy of finding your in-group necessitating more clearly defining the out-groups and the harm that can come with that, there's also an underlying question of whether or not being able to so easily "find your people" is a positive thing in sum. It certainly seems positive for marginalized people and for niche fandoms and geekeries and all the usual ways we think about it, but on the flip side of the coin, the same ease also exists for hate groups and those seeking to cause harm.

<comment><USER12> The KKK and the nazis managed to form and grow without the help of the internet. Also, finding other people who enjoy talking about cars or writing fan fic doesn't have this sort of harmful in-group/out-group dynamic.

So I'm a bit skeptical of the narrative of the piece, especially because there's no actual evidence provided.

My skepticism extends to the broader narrative of this newsletter.

Illich's alternatives -- especially the conviviality stuff -- always struck me as _dangerously_ Utopian: if only we were all the same, then everything would be great.

He's like that well-meaning stoner who asks "why can't we all just get along" and sort of shakes his head and tells you that you don't get it if you ask how, concretely, we're supposed to "just get along" in Gaza or Darfur or Kashmir or any other place where there's a lot of zero-sum resource/power allocation underlying centuries of conflict. The dismissal of real and concrete harms on both sides of conflict is at least unhelpful and possibly harmful.

Conviviality is a nice sentiment, and the world would perhaps be a better place if everyone shared that sentiment. But sentiment is a starting point, not an actual solution. The world's problems are usually too complex to be solved with pure sentiment, and things will go wrong in unexpected ways if you try.

One concrete example: the modern commercial internet's ad-driven information economy elucidates a major flaw with Illich's "Learning Webs" from Deschooling Society: the company that owns the platform just happens to be an ad company. It's a flaw that even the strongest critics of Illich could never have anticipated in the 1970s.

The point is more general: convivial societies only work if everyone is convivial, and there will always be insanely inventive non-convivial people. Even people who are more-or-less decent folks and even people who adopt slogans like "don't be evil" will end up throwing wrenches in your plan.

<comment><USER13> >Also, finding other people who enjoy talking about cars or writing fan fic doesn't have this sort of harmful in-group/out-group dynamic.

Purely anecdotally, but I beg to differ. There is more than a little bit of tribal hostility on e.g. Tumblr around various fandoms.

To me, the real issue is that surrounding yourself with like-minded people only teaches you to interact with people you primarily agree with and are comfortable with, rather than the more valuable skill of interacting (civilly) with people you disagree with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think the author makes an important point.

\----- By contrast, membership in groups of necessity cultivate a rather different set of habits and expectations, certain virtues are inculcated because the group of necessity requires them to function. \-----

Thats really the problem with all these virtual activities "on the computer". They beat the real thing by a mile while not providing the psychological sustenance human beings need. Online porn is a million women at your finger tips that will never reject you so why go talk to woman in real life? Why be funny or interesting or well groomed, that's so hard.

Instagram is full of beautiful vistas you can see without breaking a sweat so why go exploring in your back yard?

Games are full of achivments, ones you are certain to get so why work hard at anything real where it might be for nothing?

The problem is that we need all of that real life friction to lead a full human life and we really need to strive to find meaning. We need to sweat, we need to fail and we need to get rejected every once in a while, too. That's the real reason why if you live a mostly virtual life it feels so empty and bad that you want to kill yourself.

<comment><USER15> Wasn't this premise part of the story in The Matrix where they initially created a perfect work but the humans didn't thrive in that. We needed a world with some pain so we can enjoy living.

In discussions about what you'd change in your past I'm fairly unusual in that I wouldn't change anything, including the bad bits [0] because it's all part of what has formed the person I am now.

In the plant world a forest fire is often good in the long term as it helps with the distribution of nutrients so allows fresh growth.

[0] I appreciate that for some people there will have been possibly devastating events or rabbit holes they've been down from which they haven't been able to recover and they may well have a different view.

<comment><USER16> > _Wasn't this premise part of the story in The Matrix where they initially > created a perfect work but the humans didn't thrive in that. We needed a > world with some pain so we can enjoy living._

Be wary of arguing from fictional evidence. "Suffering is needed to appreciate happiness" is a deep-sounding meme with not much of actual evidence for it. The utopias described in fiction tend to be either purposefully dystopian (because stories thrive on conflict), or mind-dumbingly boring (e.g. visions of heaven in some religions). It's hard to design an utopia.</comment></comment></comment>


What can Wikipedia learn from the Iliad? (The sociology of wiki management) - <AUTHOR> http://alexkrupp.typepad.com/sensemaking/2007/05/what_can_wikipe.html <comment><USER2> I like how you put a historical perspective on a modern day innovation. But a (history) question.

Iliad was a collaboration... have more information? First time I read that. I always thought Iliad was especially amazing because Homer conceived it all in his head and later had it transcribed. Since in that sense Homer's genius is unparalleled it wouldn't make sense to have corrections here and there. Nobody would ever know what brilliance would've been in Bach's Unfinished symphony, so what was present already would've probably been left unaltered.

And in terms of collaboration, wasn't the Bible a better example?</comment>


Change GitBucket user interface to make difference with GitHub - <AUTHOR> https://gitbucket.github.io/gitbucket-news/gitbucket/2016/03/20/change-user-interface.html <comment><USER2> Looking at the screenshot I thought "Wow, I can see why Github would be annoyed at that" before realising that was their proposed not-at-all-like- github-now-honestly new UI.

Their demo looks like they just stole Github's CSS templates.

<comment><USER3> I had exactly the same reaction. There are more screenshots of their previous look in other posts:

[https://gitbucket.github.io/gitbucket- news/images/gitbucket-...](https://gitbucket.github.io/gitbucket- news/images/gitbucket-3.12/new-github-ui.png) (there's even "GitBucket now supports current GitHub UI" in the post?!)

[https://gitbucket.github.io/gitbucket- news/images/gitbucket-...](https://gitbucket.github.io/gitbucket- news/images/gitbucket-3.11/branch-protection.png)

[https://gitbucket.github.io/gitbucket- news/images/gitbucket-...](https://gitbucket.github.io/gitbucket- news/images/gitbucket-3.6/pull_request.png)

<comment><USER4> Not defending the ui aping, but GH css is open source: [http://primercss.io/layout/](http://primercss.io/layout/)

They should have kept it proprietary if their lawyers are touchy about liberal open source licenses.

>Open source Available for use under the MIT license and built with open source projects like SCSS, Jekyll, Grunt, and more.

<comment><USER5> Open source covers the copyright. This is more a trademark issue. The trademark issue is independent of the copyright-openness of their assets, as it is not valid to infringe their trademark either with their assets, or with fully copyright-independent assets.

<comment><USER6> This is correct and highlighted by the fact that Github doesn't focus on the CSS at all -- their claim would have been exactly the same if they did not copy anything and wrote everything from scratch. It's about trademark and user confusion, not copyright.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I want to applaud GitHub for doing this in a peaceful manner. They have every right to ask this. I think having all project develop their own UI style will allow for more innovation to happen. At GitLab we are greatly inspired by GitHub but over time the GitLab became more distinctive. And that allowed a trickle of innovation to flow back, for example protected branches.

<comment><USER8> Not really. I wish most GUIs would be the same if they are offered for pretty much the same functionality, like searching for hotels or flights. Too bad to see the smaller is giving up the good fight. Last thing I would care is someone takes my GUI -- only means I designed something extremely useful in the first place. Go ahead! Duplicate for everyone's benefit.

And notice they said its a good first start. This will get similar to Apple having issues with corner's curve of Samsung devices... never enough curved to actually not remind of Apple's products.

Bad move on Github part, but I'm happy with Btibucket anyways.

<comment><USER9> > Not really. I wish most GUIs would be the same if they are offered for > pretty much the same functionality, like searching for hotels or flights.

Agreed. Remember when one of the complaints about Linux apps was that they used so many different toolkits (e.g. Athena, qt, gtk+ &c.)? Now we use web apps, and every single one looks different, and none of them is as usable as xterm.

'Progress'!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Really Gitbucket should seek to change their UX. Not just the UI. Right now gitbucket looks like a functional clone of github, that's bad.

It's possible to appear different, but retain feature-set it's just hard. And obvisously -- I think, you could bundle a legacy Github theme as an addon to gitbucket provided by the community if you really wanted to. Just not ship the product out the door as a 100% clone of github, UI and all.

<comment><USER11> But... GitBucket is a project that is trying to be a Scala-based clone of GitHub. That's what their project is about. They're trying to copy the look and feel of GitHub because that's exactly what they're trying to do.

It (to me) would be like Microsoft asking LibreOffice to change their look and feel because it looks too similar to MS Office. LibreOffice is SUPPOSED to look like MS Office so that users can switch without much pain.

Right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Interestingly, Github seems to be in a similar product vs infrastructure quagmire to Twitter.

If Github were an infrastructure company, we'd all want our git repos mirrored there and we'd all want to use the collaboration and reputation APIs.

But viewed through the product lens, Github is a user interface for git which ought to be considered proprietary.

When Github first launched issues, I was hoping that it would be pulled into .git itself, so that we might all manage issues locally using a cli and then sync changes with peer copies of the repo.

Then, when Github launched jobs, I thought the idea was that hiring managers would get a very good sense of a candidate's skills by seeing information surfaced by github about a coder's habits and social network. This would in effect be a big data approach to evaluating a coder as a function of commits, and a meritocratic leader board for the industry.

Then, when Github announced Atom, I was expecting a bunch of Github branded open source tooling, yet the approach seems hesitant and focused on beginners.

All along, Github charges a premium for private repos, which has allowed its competitors to grow.

Now Github has an incentive to become proprietary, because it no longer has a free network effect. With a $100M investment, one needs pretty big numbers to move the needle.

I think a turning point was when Github decided to stop being a rubygems repo. It is exactly that kind of deep integration of hosting, reputation system, and build system that Github offers a unique competitive advantage. Github's search was also broken for years.

This allowed NPM to spring up, but lacking the ability to innovate deeply in the area of reputation the way Github could have.

So now Github has to decide if it can be a trusted platform or if it's going to fight petty battles over producty things like Twitter has done.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think it's kind of funny they start out by saying:

 _At first, we have never copied any materials from GitHub so this is not problem._

But later when you scroll to their footer it says:

 _GitBucket is a GitHub clone powered by Scala._

<comment><USER14> Even the name GitBucket is very confusing. At first, I thought it was referring to BitBucket. But it's not GitHub or BitBucket.

<comment><USER15> It's till comment that I realized it's not talking about Bitbucket

<comment><USER16> You're not the only one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What am I missing here?? I thought look and feel wasn't copyrightable. Didn't we learn that in the 80's?

<comment><USER18> It is a violation of GitHub's ToS. GitBucket is hosted on GitHub.

<comment><USER19> Which would likely be a violation of anti-trust law, as we learned in the 90s.

I hope GitBucket posts the email from Github.

<comment><USER20> I mean this in the kindest tone I can muster in a text medium: go read a Wikipedia page on antitrust, or specifically read the details of the 90s MSFT case (which I assume you are referring to) before using the phrase "anti-trust law" in a sentence again. You'll realize why others view your comment as bordering on non-sequitor.

<comment><USER19> I would welcome a counterpoint in fact (vs personal statements). To me, the argument would be that Github has a dominant market position in public source code hosting, and using their ToS in this way would limit competition by hindering their distribution, and that this is contrary to the public interest (see "Dear Github" etc). I am by no means a lawyer, and would welcome correction and clarification.

<comment><USER21> > I would welcome a counterpoint in fact (vs personal statements)

It would help, to make a counterpoint, if you spelled out exactly what in the 90s this reminds you of.

My wild guess is that this reminds you of the legal agreements Microsoft got in trouble for having computermakers sign that kept BeOS off their computers.

But that's _wildly inapplicable_ here. Nevermind the important fact that a TOS for Github's own service forbidding using it to create a competing service is materially different from signing an agreement with a 3rd part to not do business with a competitor, the simple fact is _Anti-Trust laws only apply to Trusts_.

At the time Microsoft got in trouble, they had previously signed a legal agreement _acknowledging they were a trust_ , in 1994. Github hasn't done that. Microsoft signed a legally binding document that said "We acknowledge we are a Trust, and we agree to play by the rules governing Trusts" and then broke those rules. That's what they got in trouble for. None of that applies here, however much you "think Github has a dominant position". That's not enough to get you slapped with antitrust violations.

If Github were a monopoly in it's market (which it isn't, but let's pretend), that's not illegal! They would first have to be shown to be leveraging that position to enter into other markets, or to in some other way be illegally using that position to prevent 3rd parties from doing business with competitors, which is a violation of the Sherman Act. Simply saying that competitors can't use their free service is not a violation of the Sherman Act.

<comment><USER19> Thank you for the explanation. Can you provide a citation that antitrust law applies only to Trusts?

To answer your question though, I was thinking of the accusation that Microsoft leveraged the Windows market position to promote Internet Explorer.

It still seems that (if a monopoly) Github's behavior could be covered by the "essential facilities" section. However both whether Github is a monopoly and whether their behaviour would be covered seem very fuzzy, and I suggest we leave that discussion to the lawyers!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What I find odd is that, even though they appear to be publicly released, they still develop their own project in GitHub! Anyone know what's holding them back from self-hosting?

<comment><USER23> Well, I believe it's easier to get contributors on GH than to force newcomers to create an account on a new service just to submit a patch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Considering the blatant similarities between the GitBucket and Github UI, I'm really not surprised they were getting upset about it. Surely GitBucket can not be surprised either?

</comment><comment><USER25> This was one of those predictable things. Generally when you start your project on the words "x clone", x is going to take issue with it. Often an application's UI is one of it's greatest assets, and copying it is generally a no-go.

Changing the colors of your theme doesn't really substantially change the UI. They should strive to become something of their own, and go after improving past what GitHub offers.

</comment><comment><USER26> That's their refresh? It looks exactly like GitHub...

<comment><USER27> No no... as you can clearly see, the buttons on Gitbucket have a border-radius of 6px while Github is 5.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Er... it does look an awful lot like GitHub. Like down to the pixel.

Props to both parties for dealing with this like adults versus suing each other, which is how most of these situations usually end.

</comment><comment><USER29> Round of applause for everyone involved for staying level-headed and agreeable.

</comment><comment><USER30> After reading the article and looking at the screenshots I can only say: No shit Sherlock!

</comment><comment><USER31> I've been using GitBucket since about version 0.5.0 and I honestly liked the GitBucket UI better before the push to look just like GitHub.

Feature-wise, it's behind both GitHub and GitLab, but for company internal repositories, it also doesn't me to risk the security of my server by running RoR. I lost a server to hackers (temporarily) due to an RoR vulnerability that was exposed through Redmine, so perhaps I'm a bit sensitive.

<comment><USER32> If it's just for internal use, why not close off external access or put an authentication layer "over" the application? I have my personal services protected with Basic Auth¹, it's just a matter of running a command to create the passwords file and adding two lines to your Nginx config.

¹ With HTTPS, of course, but that should be used anyway, to protect the app's own authentication.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Seems to me that nearly every UI component in the screenshot is stock Bootstrap.

</comment><comment><USER34> GitHub was not wrong to do this. Gitbucket's UI is confusingly similar to GitHub's so I have no qualms with the actions taken. The good thing is that they took a reasonable approach to this.

<comment><USER35> I'm not sure I understand how someone can get confused between a reputed SaaS like GitHub and something called GitBucket. Don't software engineers look at URLs and page titles nowadays?

<comment><USER32> What makes you think only software engineers use Github?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Guys should be bought by Rocket Internet.

</comment><comment><USER37> I don't understant why people think gitbucket should look different then github.

Ofcourse logo, icons, css, js files must be rewrited by project contributors but looks can be same as github.

We love github, we use github, we promote github to companies, friends and community, we help them grow and being great with open letters, whishes, advises, even we publish our codes under gpl or other free/open source projects on github

They change and show how we can interact with other developers.

Github have a great experiences with coding community, resources to explore more ways to do things with rigth way with our help.

Github must be proud them self and its good.

But as a community driven projects doesnt have this experiences and/or knowlage. Copying ui and ux it's not be issue for those projects if they dont go to commertial way.

Its shows what github doing rigth. In this community we have great hackers, they can offer help to gitbucket, but we don't have great ux hackers as code hackers. Until we have ux developers (in general speaking) copying experiences from somewhere and given them to people sould not be issue.

</comment><comment><USER38> It kind of looks like this is a cultural difference. It's an Asian project, and it seems like they simply don't care about IP as much over there.

We don't really care about it here either, but we'll at least try to hide it by changing the UI so it doesn't look like a clone, even if it blatantly is.

There, the _point_ is to be a clone. It's sort of a mark of respect.

It's just a very different mentality around this stuff, I hope it can be resolved amicably.

</comment><comment><USER39> As always, if you're HNs darling, it's fine to send the lawyers.

</comment><comment><USER40> >GitBucket is a GitHub clone powered by Scala.

site footer

</comment><comment><USER41> Note that this is blog post is not from "BitBucket" but "GitBucket", it took my brain longer than it should have to realise this.

<comment><USER42> I didn't realize it until I read your comment and can attest I was extremely confused. "Wait, bitbucket is hosted on github? Wait they redesigned to look like github? Why is the blog post for this major cloud provider written in broken english?"

(to be clear I didn't have a problem understanding the blog post and don't mind that the english isn't perfect, I just thought it was curious).

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> > "It was saying GitHub does not allow to clone..."

One of the things they did not clone from GitHub is well written prose. GitHub's blog posts are always well written and enjoyable to read.

<comment><USER44> To be fair to them they are not native English speakers. I would have an equally hard time (of not impossible) writing well written Japanese prose.

<comment><USER43> It would be impossible for me to write at all in Japanese. Romans would laugh hysterically if they read the blog I wrote in Latin. Which is why any corporate communications to my Roman customers would not come from my stylus. I can't imagine building a brand and or loyal customer base any other way.</comment></comment></comment>


AMD CEO Lisa Su is highest paid CEO in S&P 500 - <AUTHOR> https://fortune.com/2020/05/27/ceo-pay-average-coronavirus-lisa-su-bob-iger-reed-hastings-salary/ <comment><USER2> Great for Lisa. She absolutely deserves it. The AMD she inherited was skating on the edge of irrelevance and bankruptcy, and the company has been totally revitalized during her period there, the point that it's clear that Intel is reacting to AMD, not AMD to Intel.

Now, if they can just really complete with nVida.

<comment><USER3> They're working on it.

AMD and Nvidia both supply to consoles: Lifetime sales, the Switch has sold 52 million, the PS4 almost 110 million, and the XBone almost 45.

Individual count, AMD has done three times the sales that Nvidia did over roughly the same time period; adjusted for silicon size, AMD made more money per sale; adjusted for CPU+GPU performance, AMD made more money per unit of performance. PS5 and XsX numbers are predicted to be in line with existing numbers, second gen Switches are predicted to be less (most users won't replace their Switch for the higher efficiency 12nm SoC versions).

On the other front, enterprise compute, they're about neck and neck.

Nvidia only has an edge because they took over academia with their CUDA library, and due to the lack of education of other APIs in colleges, they have a pretty nice vendor lock-in situation they're making bank on. However, more and more companies are switching to AMD because they get far more bang for their buck.

Nvidia bought Mellanox because they need a cache coherent DMA bus to allow GPUs to rip data straight off SSDs, or send data between GPUs, without involving CPUs at all. They did this in response to AMD.

AMD bought ATI because they already had a solution for that (Hypertransport, which they bought from the DEC sale the same time they bought the unpublished next gen Alpha CPU that became the K7 and K8 family), but they didn't have a GPU for it. They then sat on it for ten years because the previous CEO didn't understand how to capitalize on it, he waffled to shareholder whims too often and refused to allow innovation.

AMD recently has showed off Infinity Fabric-based external transports (IF is HTX protocol over PCI-E PHY, instead of HTX PHY; massively lowering the cost and allowing stuff like lanes switching jobs depending on how the the machine is configured), such as a laptop whose DGPU communicates over the traditional x16 GPU lanes but using IF instead of PCI-E, so it natively blends with the IGPU in the APU, showing one single coherent device to the OS; they also showed off that new super-computer they built that combines IF-native SSD controllers with IF-speaking Arcturus GPUs (they're using off the shelf PCI switches for this with new firmwares; HTX super-computers in the past were using modified Mellanox IB controllers and switches, expensive but it worked, and Nvidia bought Mellanox for the same idea since AMD proved it worked); they _also_ showed off the storage sub-controller in the PS5 and XsX that can load texture pages directly off SSDs into the GPU, thus freeing a lot of CPU resources and lowering the chances of the dreaded texture pop-in issue.

AMD is unlikely to do to Nvidia what they did to Intel, but Intel got completely fucked because Intel's management is where AMD's previous management was: why innovate when rubes keep buying the same old shit with a slap of new paint on it; who needs more than four cores, anyways?

Nvidia's only strong point right now is the desktop experience for gamers. AMD's drivers, right now, are shit. They didn't use to be shit, they used to be just 'plain' and not do any special sort of optimizing for poorly performing games. Ever since the new branch of Adrenalin came out, they're trying to take on the Nvidia driver juggernaut, and they're just tripping all over the place.

Hence, I recently acquired a 1660 Super as a stopgap. Performs like a 2060, but doesn't have the RTX units. Enough for even Doom Eternal with everything on/high for 1080p60. I can't buy a new GPU because Series 30 and RDNA2 are going to be the new bare minimum (due to consoles having RDNA2, and console games leveraging raytracing), neither are out on the PC yet.

I went from drivers being not well optimized to outright buggy and crashy in the span of 3 months. Don't get me wrong, I find it amazing that every single GCN over the past 8 years is still supported and also gets all the new features (something Nvidia doesn't do), such as anti-lag and NN sharpening, but they should have delayed the RDNA1 launch to get the drivers ready instead of effecting all the GCN users too.

Also, that said, on my GCN, performance was starting to improve in badly performing games, so they've also been clearly trying to fix that front to catch up to Nvidia. You wouldn't expect an 8 year old 7970 to improve, but here we are.

<comment><USER4> > However, more and more companies are switching to AMD because they get far > more bang for their buck.

> Nvidia's only strong point right now is the desktop experience for gamers

When using TF with AMD is as easy as nvidia I will belive it, but right now nobody I know is using AMD for machine learning and what I read on HN is that setting it up can be painful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Lisa Su is a genuine role model for all girls. But because she's Asian and on the older side, she doesn't get the credit she deserves here in the U.S., and that's such a shame.

<comment><USER6> She is my role model and I am a 30 year old man with a beard!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> A job well done. I have never in my life seen an execution as slick as she is doing with AMD spanning multiple years.

What a CEO! Respect!

...

Yes, I know that AMD is not one person. But this article mentions her in particular. I really want to congratulate everyone from AMD, a CEO is nothing without a good team!

</comment><comment><USER8> It helps that Intel is rudderless in a sea of one-trick-pony MBA finance schemes and squandered an impressive multiyear technology advantage.

Last time with Netburst Intel still had some talent (Core and successors started in Israel IIRC), but I keep reading about how all the "old guard" engineers that knew their stuff inside and out are retiring, and Intel isn't hiring or rewarding talent, and their corporate culture has collapsed into infighting and backstabbing.

Intel always had the Microsoft problem of launching things outside of the core x86 CPUs, from graphics cards to XPoint to the flash-on-motherboard cache, completely being flatfooted in ARM and mobile CPUs, but at least they always executed on their core moneymaker.

Now, they've not only lost their lead in process, they've fallen behind. I imagine their patent portfolio will be valuable for decades, but Intel just seems like a zombie company stumbling forward on inertia.

But AMD was dead a decade ago, so what do I know. Maybe Intel will hire an engineering CEO again.

</comment><comment><USER9> Well, if social media presence counts for anything I'd say Jensen Huang should be pulling in a pretty decent salary. His keynote [i] from GTC 2020 was really well done.

[i] [https://youtu.be/nurL3N1Etuc](https://youtu.be/nurL3N1Etuc)

</comment><comment><USER10> Worth every penny!

</comment><comment><USER11> Deserved.</comment>


Former Google exec, Android founder accused of having a 'sex ring' in complaint - <AUTHOR> https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2019/07/02/android-creator-andy-rubin-accused-having-sex-ring-ex-wife/1634963001/ <comment><USER2> "Sex ring"? What does that even mean? A company exec liked sex, was likely unfaithful towards his wife and was also likely violating company policy by having sex with subordinates. Why should this matter to anyone beyond his wife and his employer? It's nobody else's business.

<comment><USER3> Let's be clear around the allegations.

Three days before getting married and two weeks before she was going to give birth to his child he asked her to sign a pre-nup. He suggested she use an "independent" lawyer - and recommended the same attorney who had represented HIM in previous divorce proceedings. They then allegedly didn't disclose all his assets (so the decision to waive an interest would be informed) and her attorney they claim was actually working for Rubin and knew of the fact that he had a history of cheating and a bunch of other stuff given his past work on the divorce much less how much the attorney might value his relationship with Rubin (rich guy / senior at google). No conflict waiver was even prepared or signed.

The sex ring claims come from the allegation that Rubin procured the services of women to have sex with other men.

Plenty of other unpleasant claims.

This all in the context of a marriage where he has made promises to someone.

As to who might mind or be interested?

The employees he supervised might mind - especially since he allegedly pressured them into sexual relationships while simultaneously having lots of other sex. Crappy work environment and disease risks.

The public might mind. A poor black guy running a sex ring might end up in significant criminal trouble. A white guy working for google get's paid $80 million by google and no chance of criminal action.

These tech execs are masters of the universe in their areas. The tone at the top of a company absolutely filters down into their product approach and adherence to an ethical framework. Look at decisions around user controls in Android under Andy (terrible) vs iPhone (better). Are these necessarily linked? Maybe not - but you do tend to see a tone filter through a crazy number of places in various ways. So the public might like to know if the folks running the show are total amoral bastards.

The list goes on.

I hope she takes him to the cleaners.

Additional public interest in these situations is the special casing for these guys - behavior that no one else could get away with.

<comment><USER2> We don't know what exactly happened. They can work their problems out between them or in a court room. Reading allegations and passing judgement on people that we don't know should be reserved for tabloid readers.

<comment><USER3> Sure - but let's not pretend we can't even understand the allegations.

"Sex ring"? What does that even mean?

Someone liked sex is not the issue. Someone cheating is not the issue being litigated.

That said, agreed - two sides to the story and I'm sure we'll get another version of what happened.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> She is trying to make the case look as good as possible to get that pre-nup annulled and get some sweet google money.

</comment><comment><USER5> This doesn't belong here.

<comment><USER6> Completely agree

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This page is causing serious death and destruction to Safari on iOS</comment>


GM's Mark Reuss: 'Make no mistake, we're moving to a driverless future - <AUTHOR> https://www.auto-enthusiasts-news.com/2018/08/mark-reuss-gm-driverless-future-coming-soon.html <comment><USER2> Are any of these companies doing anything to improve public transportation?</comment>