The Million Dollar Question - <AUTHOR> http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/the-million-dollar-question <comment><USER2> This is a fantastic post, very thought-provoking. But also very sad to me. I disagree with the underlying premise that success and happiness are somehow negatively correlated. There's this idea in the post that if you want to be uber-successful, you can't have a "normal" life.

I know very successful people who are miserable, stressed-out workaholics. And I know very successful people who could have been one of the people strolling around Sebastian when he was writing this post. I know people who run startups from their home office and take their kids to school in the morning. Hell, look at Sebastian's own situation: he apparently has enough time to sit and pontificate for a couple hours on a train platform in Japan, in the middle of the day. He can't be working THAT hard :) Maybe what he's trying to say is that you can't have the idyllic suburban family life if you want to float around the world living off of random consulting gigs? But there are probably quite a few very successful people here on HN that live relatively idyllic family lives in cities and suburbs all over the world.

I think the idea of feeling isolated for being very ambitious is true, but I would caution Sebastian and others against the idea that you have to sacrifice your connection to a community, your face-to-face relationships, your health, and your overall happiness on the alter of amassing $40m for an amorphous purpose like being able to build a shrine with 5% of your wealth or less. You certainly can sacrifice all those things, but most people will never amass $40m no matter what they sacrifice. Better to find something (and someone) that you love, work hard at it, and enjoy life. Yes, you should take chances, yes you should push yourself and be ambitious. But this is the only life you get; don't squander it living a life you don't enjoy because you're hoping for the big payoff down the road. It probably won't come.

<comment><USER3> I think you might be misunderstanding the post - or at least interpreting it differently than me.

I dont' think it's so much about success as it's about being different. Once you step over the cliff into the unknown there aren't that many people that will follow you. You become a loner, a misfit and a stranger to many people. Your desires, goals and interests drift away from normality, and thus you will eventually find yourself in a state of loneliness because there's noone else like you.

I think that's what it's about.

I wrote something similar, albeit on a more positive note, some time back: <http://www.maximise.dk/blog/2009/04/moving-boat.html>

<comment><USER2> That's one of the ideas presented, and one that I agree with. That's part of why I think it's important to have people around you who are supportive in general, but also people who have similar goals and dreams. No matter how abnormal you are, there are probably many out there who can relate.

But that's only part of the post, and Sebastian seems to indicate that "being different" means not living the idyllic suburban family life. And not because he doesn't want it, but because he's driven and wants to succeed (like where he talks about $40m as being his number). And this is what I disagree with; you can be driven and successful and still have a happy family life. You can even live in suburbia! There are literally millions of millionaires in the world. There are almost a million households in the US with net worth of more than $5m. Most of those people live normal family lives. They don't all float around continents writing blog posts and attempting to win the lottery by trying to start a bank one month and sell a $2m government contract the next.

In fact, now that I'm thinking through this, I think what bums me out about this post is the idea that it doesn't really matter what you do as long as you get rich. I doubt Sebastian has any real interest in starting a bank or fulfilling a huge government contract. He just wants money, and it's not even clear why. I don't think that's a healthy way to live, that's all.

<comment><USER4> _He just wants money, and it's not even clear why. I don't think that's a healthy way to live, that's all._

Reminds me of Ecclesiastes... "Whoever loves money never has money enough..." The entire book is full of wisdom on chasing the vanity of material goods and all that is "under the sun".

By all accounts, Solomon was a man who had everything the American dream could ever hope for - money, possessions, women, power, prestige... And yet from his position on high, he realized it was all meaningless. Pretty powerful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Almost every millionaire I know is married with kids and living in the suburbs. Unless you win the lottery or are a professional skateboarder, becoming rich is more like boring suburban reality than being an international flaneur. (Interestingly, the rich pro skaters I know all live in the suburbs with their kids, too)

As someone who has also floated around a lot, even through Japan, it's an interesting lifestyle but sort of the opposite of how to get rich.

<comment><USER6> I don't think he's talking about being rich, although he does reference money a lot. I interpreted the money references as a simple way to keep score (and one deeply ingrained in many cultures).

I think he's talking about the modern entrepreneur. Specifically, the people who are creating new markets, or are disrupting old markets. In order to do that, you need to be different than other people. I think he's saying that separates him from others because the drive for being fundamentally different (not the "color your hair" type, but the "visionary entrepreneur") is at odds with the human need for commiseration or comparability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm not sure I buy it. I've met plenty of wealthy people who were happy to come home to a pretty normal family because their jobs are a constant source of novelty, stress and challenges. If one feels the need to stick out as part of one's identity, great, but it's just one way of living. I kind of like sticking out as a foreigner over here in Italy sometimes; it has its positive aspects. I certainly chose a road less traveled, but whatever, to each his own. For other things I'm happy to be pretty ordinary: I have a wife and two fantastic children and live in what passes for burbs over here.

Also, being a bit of a skeptic and contrarian, perhaps some of these people had other good reasons to say no to his plans. Without knowing their point of view, more about his proposals, and other particulars, maybe their inaction _was_ sensible.

</comment><comment><USER8> There are lots of bugs in peoples' brains that prevent them from doing things that seem like good ideas, and I don't think the fear of becoming illegible ([http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2011/07/31/on-being-an- illegible-p...](http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2011/07/31/on-being-an-illegible- person/)) is anywhere near the most important one.

My vote for the most important bug is as follows.

It looks as though human brains were architected to think in two modes: "near" mode and "far" mode. The reason for this is that early human tribes had important rules that directly impacted survival and reproduction (for example, "don't take more than your share of the food", "don't sleep with another man's wife"). It was critical for us to tell others that we were going to uphold these rules or we would get kicked out of the tribe. At the same, time our genetic fitness would increase massively if we could find a way to covertly break those rules while still upholding them verbally (more food and more descendents for successful rule breakers).

The upshot of this is that even if something looks good when processed using far mode it's not necessarily easy to translate it into near mode where it actually gets done.

In my view, this is an explanatory factor for procrastination as well. For example, the popular Google Chrome extension Chrome Nanny ([https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gpdgmmdbbbchchonpf...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gpdgmmdbbbchchonpfanphofpplhmcmn)) requires the user to enter 64 random alphanumeric characters before visiting a distracting site--which moves the idea of visiting this site from near mode (where it might actually happen) to far mode (where it won't).

For more on near and far modes you can read <http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/06/near-far-summary.html>. Note that novel tasks and desirable risky acts are both associated with far mode.

<comment><USER9> Chrome Nanny link seems to be correct (Google Search suggests the same), but it actually doesn't work. Has it been removed from the Chrome Store just recently?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Why won't you?" Indeed. I created this HN user almost two years ago, before I applied to YC. In these two years I did pretty much nothing towards my goal, except reading HN, nodding in agreement over good posts, and bookmarking stuff on Delicious, adding to the hundreds I already have. What stops me? Fear? No, I just _know_ I can be successful with my idea. Laziness? Maybe, but I've worked 18 hr days on projects I liked. So what? I don't know.

Meanwhile I will upvote this article and bookmark it.

<comment><USER11> This is exactly what I feel too! I'm generally lazy when there is no goal and no pressure, but I do work hard on things when there is a need, interest, deadline or even peer pressure. But when it comes to the big dreams, I procrastinate, and I don't know why.

I just up-voted and bookmarked this article.

<comment><USER12> > when it comes to the big dreams, I procrastinate, and I don't know why.

It's difficult to break down big goals into a series of attainable steps. Faced with this challenge, it becomes easier to maintain the status quo and not do anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Very powerful - thanks for sharing.

 _But the more you do, the further away you get from being understood, from the joys of normal life, from being understood by your neighbors and backing each other up and living together harmoniously.

I cried for the first time in three years when I realized it.

The million dollar question… why don't people take the large opportunities in front of them? Why don't they allow their dreams to become realities?

Become it means you won't be understood. And we need to be understood, fundamentally, it's so important to us._

Wow.

<comment><USER14> I think this is really where YC shines and becomes such a magnet for success: you have guys who are willing to try out ideas that most people probably don't understand yet. Since many of the YC candidates are in a similar situation, they can begin to feel comfortable, and even understood among their peers.. giving them the confidence to be boldly different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I really enjoyed this article. I'm not actually convinced that the answer is a fear of not being understood by others, but it's very close or the writing wouldn't resonate the way it does. The problem is that I know lots of people who couldn't give the slightest damn about fitting in, or who are already occupied in a field far enough from societal norms that their job description takes a whiteboard and a venn diagram on a good day.

I wish I could remember who said this; I think it was M. Scott Peck, but I can't find the reference: we are attached to our own mental model of ourselves. So attached that we will fight to maintain that model even if it's useless or actively harmful.

An example: have you ever noticed that if someone's depressed, complimenting them doesn't work? Have you noticed that you yourself feel awkward when others compliment you? That might seem obvious, but only because you've absorbed it through repeated exposure. Think about it: why in the world would someone saying good things about you feel uncomfortable? Shouldn't it be basically the best thing you can get?

The answer is that when you're thinking "I'm average looking at best" and someone says "you're beautiful!" it's like someone just tried to rip your left brain from your right. How can you possibly reconcile these two things? You have to either destroy your own sense of self or reject the person's compliment.

I suspect that in this case what looks like fear that the world will misunderstand you is actually fear that you misunderstand yourself. Jumping head-first into a crazy idea isn't just changing what you do; it's changing who you are, and that's goddamn terrifying.

</comment><comment><USER16> Sebastian identifies a key problem that underlies a lot of how society works: lots of people effectively have motives to avoid things they want. But I'm not sure he's right about his reading of why the problem exists. As nice as it is to think of this as some kind of trade-off, I'm not sure that most people gain any normalcy or understanding, at least not in any positive way.

Think about his friend, the one who's big goal is financial independence. It's his primary first-order objective, and he's being shown a plan to pursue it. He's not afraid to pursue it because he thinks it's going to cause him to be less understood (at least one of his friends, Sebastian, will probably relate to him more). He just flinches at the thought of really going after what he wants.

The million dollar question is the right one: why do people get anxious and self-sabotage when a path to success is put in front of them?

Unfortunately I think the answer is that most people have a lot of psychological conflicts around being happy/getting what they want. Why this happens is probably some complicated mixture of neurology of and pain acquired in childhood, and how to fix the problem is one of the central aims of psychology and psychiatry. The behavior Sebastian describes in his friend is a great example of one's ability to function being impaired by his psychology.

Hopefully we'll get even better at fixing these sort of problems, but in the mean time, hopefully more people will understand that these problems aren't inherent to living life, that there's no sad tradeoff to going after the life you want, and thus be comfortable seeking treatment. You don't have to be crazy to pursue psychological help, you just have to notice that your feelings sometimes get in the way of you functioning the way you want to.

</comment><comment><USER17> Man, what a memorable post.

I like to think about his main point of "people won't understand you" a little differently. Humans were originally pack animals, and it shows. You are nothing without your pack, but together the pack is strong. Modern life isn't nearly so simplistic, but we still have our packs, albeit a little more nuanced. The place we work. The neighborhood we live in. Our family. Our friends (who are probably drawn from work, neighborhood, and family).

Doing what Sebastian does seems to be a lonely path. You get to be the alpha, but only of a pack of one. I get this feeling when seeing a lot of executives interviewed - men and women who are supposedly at the helm of enormous packs, but in practice seem a lot more alone than one might imagine.

</comment><comment><USER18> Thanks, I enjoyed this post. I don't resonate with everything he says, but it was worth reading. The more philosophical points of his post were an interesting contrast to this piece I read yesterday: [http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/08/21/the-illusion-of- asymm...](http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/08/21/the-illusion-of-asymmetric- insight/)

Reading the OP I was actually a bit put off by what seems like vague braggadocio, but then I turned it around on myself - maybe that's me suffering from the same illusion as a mask for my own jealousy?

</comment><comment><USER19> When I decided to embark on a new project this summer, I was at first held back by fear of failure. When I looked closer at the fear I realized that I could hack it by redefining my terms of success. Instead of defining success as making it big, I defined it as climbing up a steep learning curve. To do something new and learn from it, that's my definition of success.

And like that, the fear was gone. I'm now one month into my project, and I'm crushing it. Never been happier.

</comment><comment><USER20> I really liked this post. Sebastian continues to develop his conversational style. Very nice.

Asshole consultant inside of me kept nodding early on: "You just don't get it, Sebastian! Charge more!"

You see, there's a very sad truth consultants learn early on: it doesn't matter how much you know that can help somebody. All that matters is how much influence you can have.

The reason some consultants charge ten times what others do for the same information? It's not that they are ten times as smart; it's that they don't want to waste their life giving great advice to people who aren't going to value it. If you walk in the door at 10K per day, bet your bottom dollar people are going to listen to you. And that means you can help. Walk in the same door for free, just to help out a friend? Your advice, by definition, is worthless. You'd be lucky getting them to accept just a tiny piece of advice.

But then I got to the key of the piece: when you do finally "get it", it changes your relationship with "normal" folks.

I think Sebastian's being a bit over-dramatic here, but I firmly agree. There is something very crazy about making money from thin air. Especially how it's done today, with some keystrokes and a bunch of virtual magic. At least in the old days if you met a millionaire he could take you down to his factory or something. Maybe told you about all the hard work he's done.

Nowadays the same type of guy made much more money that than that _and there's not even an office._ For most people, it just doesn't compute. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that to most people, there's something just _wrong_ about making money the way it's made today on the net. Something shady. If you're lucky you get the "odd weirdo" label. If you're unlucky you attract attention from people you would rather not.

Because of that, I think I'm giving up on the $40Mil dream. I'm happy just to make enough to free up my time to work on things I love doing. I'll let the other guys be the really extreme weirdos. :)

Short side story: I sold a piece of land a year or so ago. It wasn't much, but it was in the tens of thousands of dollars. The guy who bought it paid cash. He was a contractor. Over the past decade he had been saving here and there, scrimping up enough in cash to make his dream come true. He kept it all in hundred-dollar bills in a large ziplock bag. It wouldn't have been my choice but it worked for him.

As he paid me, he told me he had gotten stopped for a bad taillight by the police a few months back. Once they saw his money that he had been saving, he had a hell of a time convincing them he wasn't a drug dealer. While I understand that carrying large amounts of cash is suspicious, to hear him tell it the police went far beyond suspicious and started thinking there was definitely something wrong going on. You see, to those small-town cops, you just don't carry that amount of money around. Somebody who looked like that should not have the amount of money like this. Just having the money was an indication of something really bad, even if it could all be explained.

He almost lost all of it.

You can only stand out so much -- the forces of society will gently (or not so gently) pull you back into line. You either have to conform or move to some place where the definition of "normal" is different.

<comment><USER21> "If you walk in the door at 10K per day, bet your bottom dollar people are going to listen to you."

Maybe. Or maybe they're just executives with enough clout and lack of scruples that they'll spend 10k per day of the company's money to have someone make pretty powerpoint slides in which carefully massaged data "proves" that a certain course of action (that will help the executive's career) is best for the company. And another 10k per day to have someone to take the blame if it has disastrous consequences or involves firing lots of people.

<comment><USER20> You're absolutely correct. I had to generalize to make the point, but you have identified one of the flaws in my generalization.

The other flaw is that the amount doesn't really matter. What matters is the pain that it causes the client. Many large corporations can and do write large checks for consulting that they never intend to follow -- for various reasons. Just because the amount seems big to you doesn't mean it's even noticeable by the client.

But still, rates are a signaling mechanism. Even with higher rates, there's still a lot of careful screening you should do before accepting a client. Assuming you're in that position, of course.

There's a whole school of thought that says that even when clients are playing political games with consultants, it's still possible to have positive influence. But that's completely off the track from the simple point about people accepting advice. People are more likely to accept advice if it is done as part of some reciprocal arrangement or trade. Free advice is mostly worthless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Fantastic insight that people tend to say "no" when offered a chance to pursue their dreams. But I disagree about the reason. I don't think it's that they don't want to be different; having an interesting dream is _already_ being a bit different. I think it's that once you can have something, it's no longer a dream.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is awesome, and I totally agree-

"It's like everyone fantasizes about… whatever… but once their fantasies start to become reality, they piss their pants and self-sabotage."

</comment><comment><USER24> Very inspirational. If you're a startup founder/entrepreneur, worth your time to read fully.

Reading from beginning to end, I found the last paragraph powerfully moving. (Skipping to the end won't work - that last short para builds on everything before.)

</comment><comment><USER25> Change in financial situations creates lot of stress. When your stress level is high, the typical path you are going to take is the one that alleviates your stress and not increase it.

Sebastian is suggesting x10 higher wages for his clients. This is a financial breakthrough in the life of the client. It creates enormous amount of stress. The stress pushes you back, for a less stressful zone.

I say this because I was there, and I'm sure I'll be there again. I see this differently than the OP. I don't think that people don't understand you, especially when they are smart. The simple fact of thinking of it generate stress and they hide from hard/stressful situation.

</comment><comment><USER26> It proves, once again, that extrinsic motivation does not work.

If you help someone achieve a goal, they will owe you some of their success, lessening their own merit.

On the opposite, as this story shows, the intrinsic motivation can make you do stuff that you thought impossible: <http://www.maximise.dk/blog/2009/04/moving-boat.html>

So maybe to help people achieve their dream, you have to tell them that it can't be done, that it's impossible.

This would be a truly altruistic way to help people, since you can't claim any part of their success in that case. All they will tell you will be "I told you it can be done!".

</comment><comment><USER27> This is a great post, but what I really want to know is how to make a million bucks without Sebastian Marshall mentoring you and no real connections. Actually, maybe I start by trying harder to make connections.

<comment><USER28> _how to make a million bucks without Sebastian Marshall mentoring you_

I think it's exactly his point -- why don't you just take his advice? He seems like he's perfectly happy to help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Holy shit, yes. But you don't even have to talk about the kind of skywalking he's engaged in. Anyone from a blue-collar or lower-class background who does non-manual labor is automatically alienated from everyone and everything they knew. See Limbo: Blue-Collar Roots, White-Collar Dreams by Alfred Lubrano. [http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-047126376...](http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0471263761,descCd- reviews.html)

</comment><comment><USER30> Amazing post. I read every word of it (as opposed to just scanning it).

What type of work does he do* and where can I meet/read more people like him?

He strikes me as a kind of mentor...something which I find is lacking in the IT industry. Mentors don't always need to be the smartest person in the room, they just need to have experience and patience to see the things that you are blind to.

* He says he's a strategist, but that's awfully vague.

<comment><USER31> From his about page:

"I'm consulting on increasing LVOC numbers (lifetime value of a customer – usually selling additional valuable things to customers you've already got, but also conversion rates, price points, referrals, etc), doing some light real estate development, and some professional writing."

<comment><USER30> Understood. But you misunderstand me. I read that section of his About page, but it's not succinct enough.

If I were to walk into a crowded room and say, "For my business to succeed, I need an %X", what would be the value of X for it to apply to Sebastian's role? I can't just say "consultant".

<comment><USER32> There's not a word for it, but I'm pretty every business ever anywhere would benefit from someone who "increases LVOC numbers". And the best business won't be stopped by the lack of a buzzword.

<comment><USER33> I took that as part of his point -- there isn't a convenient buzzword or easy label to describe what he does, which leads to fear and "people won't understand".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Great writing, but here is a quibble regarding the "...pretty girl, maybe 23 years old. She's not beautiful... she'll... be a very good wife for someone."

Ouch. I know he's just day-dreaming there, and his point is that she is a "normal" person. But why define her success in terms of being a "wife for someone"? She could -already- be an incredibly successful, independent person living life on her own terms, making her own rules.

And for all we know, she may be just as alienated from normalcy as the author. Sorry to nitpick but this hit home for me.

</comment><comment><USER35> I'll be fair with him: I would also decline because I would not like to be like him. For me it has nothing to do with being understood. I read his 'who am I' and all I thought was "man, his life is so empty". But I can't say why.

Sometimes people just want a simple life. Making a lot of money or working less hours does not mean your life will be better or more enjoyable.

</comment><comment><USER36> The call to action on this post seems to be stop worrying about the fact that you will not be understood and go ahead with your plans.

I am curious. Does the fear of not fitting in outweigh the benefits of financial freedom?

I dont know the answer to this question since I have never been in that situation, so I thought I would ask.

<comment><USER37> (Bear in mind I'm going into biomedical research, which is a very different field than CS or Entrepreneurship, which seem to make up the majority of HN users)

For me it's not the fear of not fitting in, per se, but the loneliness that comes with being misunderstood by those around you.

I find that the point he made of not being understood when I started to pursue my career aspirations rings very true. I wouldn't blame others' inability to understand on ignorance so much as lack of experience, in that not that many people have experienced the biomedical research field for themselves, so therefore have no way of understanding the nuances or the lifestyle of it all beyond hearsay.

That lack of understanding in turn leads to an inability to connect with me, or conversely, an inability for me to connect with most people. My career takes up the majority of my time and thoughts, and as a result is one of the most important aspects of my own life. When people are unable to understand that, they in effect do not understand me as a person.

Furthermore, there's the fact that I and other people who want very badly to accomplish their dreams are often very hardworking. A bit anecdotal, but I've also found that the people who are physically in my life are by far not driven to work as hard as I do. I find a sense of happiness working 12 hours in a research lab and coming in on weekends. The "average" person in my life, however, is the sort of person who looks at a career as a means to make money; a commitment they only have to fulfill between the hours of 9AM and 5PM on weekdays. Anything beyond that (time after work, weekends, etc.) should be dedicated to partying and the like.

Going back to the point I was making before: these differences in personalities between myself and almost everyone in my life makes it almost impossible for me to truly connect with someone.

And for reasons I can't really explain beyond "human nature", even though it makes perfectly logical sense to focus on my work and be as efficient as possible, I find that interpersonal connections to be something I cannot live without. For me, there is immense comfort to be had in being able to talk to people about your life (which again for me mostly revolves around work) and have a true understanding of it all.

I'm very lucky enough to have a small yet very close group of friends who are like that (although mostly online due to college; thank you internet). However in the past two years I've already fell out of contact with most of my friends because of my shift from (and I do apologize as I can't think of a better term) a commonplace life to one that is unorthodox to most people. So a big lingering fear of mine is, "If I continue on with my goals, will I still have anyone in my life I can connect with?" While so far the answer has been "yes", the past two years still leave a very strong, lingering fear in the back of my mind. And while it's very true that I've come into contact with and maintain a personal relationship with many people above me and have gone through the same path as me, for me it's no replacement for having people in your life that are going through the same life challenges that you're experiencing yourself. As the saying goes, "Misery loves company".

On a more minor note unrelated to the article, another sort of fear I've felt (and am still feeling) is really fear of the unknown. I was the sort of person who did just enough in my life. I'd go so far as to say I was complacent with myself. This whole lifestyle of being ambitious, proactive, and actively and constantly working towards a dream that once felt unobtainable to you is all a new experience. Others above me/more experienced than me have told me stories about their own lives but in the end actually going through with the life yourself is completely different than hearing stories about it. For me, everything I'm doing now is new, unfamiliar, unknown, and as a result it's nerve wracking and scary.

While I know that everything above is not universal and there will be others on HN that have different experiences/viewpoints, these are my honest viewpoints shaped by my own experiences in my life. I hope this helped with your question.

<comment><USER36> First of all, thanks for taking the time to write up the detailed answer to my question. While reading it, I realized that the OP was talking about fear of not fitting in DURING the process of achieving success, not after. That makes more sense and your position made me aware of that.

Regarding your fear of the unknown, I would say (as would anybody) that this is only natural. The best thing we can do is constantly remind ourselves of something that encourages us. I look to Frost's beautiful poem "The Road Not Taken", especially the ending stanza:

      I shall be telling this with a sigh
      Somewhere ages and ages hence:
      Two roads diverged in a wood and I -
      I took the one less traveled by,
      And that has made all the difference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I just want to say.. this is 1 of the most insightful, and meaningful posts I've read in my entire life. Thank you so much for sharing this. I resonated with every single bit. Thanks for not making feel alone in my thoughts.

</comment><comment><USER39> Way too wordy, not nearly as insightful as he thinks it is.

This guy is clearly so full of it on so many levels. All hat, no cattle.

</comment><comment><USER40> What.

A prolix.

Douchebag.

<comment><USER7> The post was not my cup of tea, but being rude about it is for other sites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> When the headline is meaningless it doesn't make me want to click off.</comment>


A canvas app that you can play with explained using jsfiddle - <AUTHOR> http://jsfiddle.net/5evBx/14/

<comment><AUTHOR> I ran across this fiddle last night when I (accidentally) checked JSFiddle's Twitter account:

<http://jsfiddle.net/zalun/5evBx/8/>

I've recently been noticing that people who make experimental canvas apps often don't add significant comments that would help other people understand what they're doing. So here I added comments for every major action and I also added a bunch of stat trackers (like the current absolute x and y velocities) that I thought some stats people would like. If you want to add more, you can adjust it and hit "update", or you can just fork it to a new fiddle and start from scratch.

Have fun...</comment>


Ask HN: How important is progressive enhancement for websites?  - <AUTHOR>

I'm building something that uses a lot of javascript on the client (backbone, GClosure, etc)... Making sure the content is accessible without JS has turned into a big time sink.<p>How important is progressive enhancement today? Is it a "must-do" item, or can it be relegated as a to-do item for a later date? <comment><USER2> Well, it depends wether you care about the market share you are leaving out.

<http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp>

<http://caniuse.com/>

I think that for most applications, it's not worth the trouble...</comment>


Proposal: consider scientific research papers like open source software - <AUTHOR> http://lemire.me/blog/archives/2011/02/11/taking-scientific-publishing-to-the-next-level/

<comment><USER2> Nothing wrong with the idea per se. But, as usual, no explanation for how the incentives and cultural changes needed to induce people would be implemented. Sorry, but no one is going to reward a grad student, career-wise, for rewriting other scientist's papers and catching bugs. Heck, the only reason scientists proofread their stuff _at all_ is to avoid embarrassment. If there were an army of students eager to fix your mistakes, scientists would be even _less_ careful.

<comment><USER3> I think the subtext here is that academic culture should become more like OSS culture, where your reputation is built on the content of your commits rather than just having your name on a project somewhere.

<comment><USER4> I fail to see how it changes things in a fundamental way. Having your name on a paper is supposed to mean that you contributed to the results of that paper. This is how you build up your reputation: you publish lots of relevant results.

This is only possible if you continue to work and publish, which in turn makes you a more sought after partner for collaboration. In the same vein, if your contributions are consistently minimal, then you will be less sought after which will lower your frequency of publication. In essence, the current system already correlates rewards with the quality of one's contributions.

Thus, the proposed changes do not affect how one garners reputation. Instead, I think the subtext is that the current body of research papers could be significantly improved, but isn't because there is no system in place to revise them in a distributed manner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Along related lines, Tim Gowers (a Fields medalist in mathematics) has started the Polymath Project, which has produced several excellent, massively collaborative, research papers in math.

<http://polymathprojects.org/>

</comment><comment><USER6> as a researcher I am completely on board with this idea-but to work it has to be built into the culture, the grants, and the way hiring is done. even demanding code be open source is an uphill battle, no major grants in my field provide any money for support, maintenance, hosting etc. or demand code be open-sourced for funding.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is a wonderful idea, particularly since even a partial implementation would do good. Just having a license for derivative works and the latex source would do wonders.

A typical situation is that you notice an obvious extension to a result in a paper, which does not warrant publication. Being able to make an updated version of a paper with that easily would be a good thing.

</comment><comment><USER8> I can't even access half the published papers I want to read, so I suspect the scientific community will need to solve that problem (ie how to throttle the publishers) before any thought of allowing versioning and revisions to papers.

As well, how would references work? Citations would have to reference a specific version of every paper, which could potentially create a huge mess.

But I totally agree that change needs to come to the way scientific papers are published and accessed, and this is one of the better ideas I've seen out there.

</comment><comment><USER9> >We spend much time perfecting irrelevant papers to get them through peer review.

Maybe stop publishing irrelevant papers? Admitted, academia has serious problems. The solution isn't open source though.

Building a collaborative framework around research would be great, but solidarity and small group research will continue to be the primary drivers of innovative research.

<comment><USER10> Academics can't stop publishing irrelevant papers, since funding is granted based on publication history. To get really novel things done researchers must keep a steady stream of publications. This is easiest achieved by making somewhat easy, incremental research to a large part. This incentive, or even rather selection, problem is, I think the core reason for this ancient publishing model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Good idea but why make thing so complicated? Research papers isn't code -- they don't have to "compile". Just write what you want in your blog/site/etc and link. If you want it all in one place, set up a wiki.

</comment><comment><USER12> I know of one existing journal that is pretty close to this, the insight journal: <http://www.insight-journal.org/></comment>


Getting Organized with Org Mode - <AUTHOR> http://correl.phoenixinquis.net/2014/11/25/getting-organized-with-org-mode.html <comment><USER2> With a very little bit of tinkering, org-mode is pretty great for code auditing. I have a keybinding set to add bookmarks to code, and some simple tools for easily adding out-of-band notes/comments. That, plus org-mode's native todo/prioritization.

<comment><USER3> Any chance that you can write a little bit more about this? I've dug my old Emacs config files some time ago and now when evil-mode gives such an awesome alternative to Vim (at least at my skill level), I'm using Emacs for most of my daily text editing.

I've used org-mode previously and even though I didn't had a chance to dig into it, I've seen a lot of potential there.

<comment><USER2> I'm working on a blog post about it now (unfortunately, I've been doing that for about 3 months now).

<comment><USER4> In that case, how about throwing here just a quick list of features/tools you're using for this?

<comment><USER5> Seconded, as this sounds very interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I use org-mode rather extensively in my own day-to-day work. I really like the table support! I create my time-sheets from my task lists and format it for HTML export.

I even publish books with it.

It's really powerful.

<comment><USER7> I've written articles and scripts with it.

In grad school, its support for LaTeX was clutch in Algorithms class where all the assignments were laden with mathematical symbols.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's not nearly as powerful as Org itself, but I've knocked up an org-a-like at [http://yipgo.com](http://yipgo.com) that might interest people.

<comment><USER9> I like the design. I'm working on a similar service to bring org-mode to more people other than Emacs geeks (similar to how Slack brought IRC to a wider audience).

Current productivity tools fall quite short in comparison.

<comment><USER8> To give you a kick start; things I would consider for Yipgo 2.0:

* Lots of people understandably don't trust an unknown company/person with their potentially secret TODO lists - add dropbox/drive support from the offset. Also means emacs/vim users can hack the files directly.

* "Normal" people like the agenda and wish they could interact with the items from it - defeats the point, but after yipgo was on lifehacker, I picked up a new type of non-technical user who now make up the majority of my users.

* Make sure it's mobile friendly (turns out the editor I chose doesn't work properly on Android, or at all on IOS).

* Possibly a Yipgo 3.0 thing, but people editing at the same time, ala docs, would be great (something I've wanted).

Actually, if you want to get in touch to see if we can combine forces drop me a mail, phil at apiaxle.com. I'd quite like to monetize the service if possible.

<comment><USER10> IMO if you don't trust an unknown person with your potentially secret TODO list, then you shouldn't trust Dropbox, Google, Amazon or Microsoft either.

My secrets are on an air-gaped fully encrypted PC. Apart keeping everything in my head this is the best I can come with, but it's still not secure enough for my liking, especially since the whole Truecrypt debacle the doubts are killing me.

<comment><USER8> I would have thought that the case too, but it really is my number one request from people. I guess Dropbox and co. put a lot of effort, money and people into security making them the better of the two options.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have always wanted to use org mode, but it comes down to that I use more than one computer and might want to share my todos with people who are not emacs geeks: how do you guys handle these things?

<comment><USER12> You can export org mode files as HTML, PDF, LaTex, even iCalendar. Try C-c C-e to see options.

<comment><USER11> Ah but I would have to manually copy them between computers, right?

<comment><USER13> I have two approaches to this: for my own use on different computers, I have scripts that sync the files using git (really I should be using git-annex or dropbox or similar); for sharing to-dos and so on with other people, I use org-trello, and they use trello.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I do exactly the same. Trying to replace Hansoft with Org-mode. And I'm super happy with my progress

</comment><comment><USER15> I also use org-mode, mostly for writing documents. Customizing embedded code, referencing the lines and in the end publishing to beautiful pdf, html, markdown is really awesome.

</comment><comment><USER16> Question: is it worth learning Emacs in order to use Org mode?

<comment><USER17> Learning is emacs is not a destination it is a journey.

The good news is you don't have to learn emacs to benefit from org-mode, give it a try. Print yourself the reference cards for emacs[1] and org-mode[2], go through the tutorial that shows up when you first launch emacs and you'll know enough to start using org-mode and make your own opinion.

[1]: [https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/refcards/pdf/refcard.pdf](https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/refcards/pdf/refcard.pdf) [2]: [http://orgmode.org/orgcard.pdf](http://orgmode.org/orgcard.pdf)

PS: if you have vi/vim experience/preference you can put some evil in your emacs: [http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Evil](http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Evil)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've had my eye on OrgMode for awhile - it looks awesome. But I use Vim. Is there anything on Vim that compares to OrgMode?

<comment><USER19> There is a clone ([https://github.com/hsitz/VimOrganizer](https://github.com/hsitz/VimOrganizer)) but it seems a little abandoned to me right now.

<comment><USER7> VimOrganizer also REQUIRES a Emacs install for most interesting things.

[https://github.com/hsitz/VimOrganizer/blob/master/INSTALL.tx...](https://github.com/hsitz/VimOrganizer/blob/master/INSTALL.txt#L51)</comment></comment></comment>


A novel method for the removal of earwax (2005) - <AUTHOR> http://www.cmaj.ca/content/173/12/1496.full <comment><USER2> Well done. I had a nasty ear infection misdiagnosed as an impacted cerumen once (no pain at the time). If your doctor can't remove the impaction, I'd recommend anybody with no history of them to request antibiotics as well as the standard wax removal treatment. The pain was nearly unbearable by the time I received antibiotics.

</comment><comment><USER3> Another, more effective way, is to use a dental water jet flosser. The pulses of water are much finer, easier to control, and don't make such a mess. Also, pulsed water may be better at displacing hardened wax than a continuous stream.

Yet another advantage: this can be done by the patient alone - no need to involve anyone else!

</comment><comment><USER4> I usually use alcohol or H2O2... But, really? Why is this here?

<comment><USER5> It describes an if not very exiting then at least somewhat interesting hack. Besides that the writeup is actually a fine piece of art for which, as usual, the beauty in in the eye of the beholder.

<comment><USER6> I guess the value of satire is lost, even on hn audience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Did I land on 9gag or what?</comment>


Robot that autonomously folds a pile of towels - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gy5g33S0Gzo

<comment><USER3> I just want to point out that the robot's operating system is open-source and runs on heaps of different robot platforms:

<http://www.ros.org/>

The software is primary developed by Willow Garage, a start-up created by an ex-Googler that also has Larry Page on its board:

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

You can actually simulate this specific robot and even write algorithms (in Python and C++ AFIAK) without having one:

<http://www.ros.org/wiki/pr2_simulator>

As you can probably tell, I really love how they're lowering the entry barrier for robotics programming!

<comment><USER4> That's pretty frickin' awesome... ideal for algorithm experimenting, and it could even help create a better-designed 'bot because you can experiment with different placements of tools.

Many thanks for the links! I'm definitely keeping those around...

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> When I was briefly involved in doing research as an undergrad, Pieter Abbeel (the Berkeley professor behind this robot) was my grad student advisor. Back then I was just trying to pick up dry-erase markers off a table, and even that was extraordinarily difficult to do. To me, this video is nothing short of mind-blowing.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's so astonishing that what takes this robot over an hour and a half to do can be processed by our brains in a fraction of a second. I am looking forward to being witness to the tightening of that gap.

<comment><USER6> They are using just a single GPU (from the paper). So the robot can actually be sped up even today. Still nowhere near human pattern recognition though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This illustrates an important way of staying competitive globally:

You don't want to be the country where people fold towels.

You want to be the country that designs & builds robots that fold towels.

<comment><USER8> Yes. In 20 or 30 years when a robot can actually fold a towel as quickly as a human, those towel-folding economies are going to be in trouble. ;)

<comment><USER9> More like 2 or 3 years. The singularity is at hand.

<comment><USER8> The singularity has been due Real Soon Now for a looooong time.

<comment><USER9> Well, let's revisit the state of the art in towel folding in 5 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's the published paper [PDF]: [http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~pabbeel/papers/Maitin- ShepardCus...](http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~pabbeel/papers/Maitin- ShepardCusumano-TownerLeiAbbeel_ICRA2010.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER7> A brain the size of a planet and all you people have me doing is folding towels. - <USER2>

</comment><comment><USER10> Anyone who's ever worked retail on the fitting-room -> shelf/hanger treadmill is now thinking feverish thoughts...

Edit: Oh. Swing and miss! Feverish was the wrong word. I was not at all implying that this is a "teh robots took our yooobbss" scenario, rather, as someone who has folded and restocked many shirts, I'm excited about the prospect that this kind of drudgework could be spared us by robots.

Philosophically, I think this is a very good thing. Sure robots do more important things than fold shirts, but this kind of AI is an important baby step to a much better world for people.

<comment><USER11> People have had to fold their own textiles for as long as they have had shame. The more abundant technology is, and indeed any resource, the more we can free up the greatest of all resources--the human mind. Great comments noonespecial.

btw: "mahmud," the robot can do whatever it's programmed to do, not just fold clothing ;)

<comment><USER12> Every afternoon, I 'waste' 15 minutes of company time, leaving my desk as a highly paid software developer to do the dishes in the sink. No one told me to do it, we have a cleaning crew that comes at night, but I do it because it frees my mind -- the greatest of all resources.

Not all chores are "chores". Sometimes we just enjoy doing boring stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The robot is, true to its species description to date, robotic. It is performing the exact same sequence of operations - almost like first trying to generate a 3D model of the towel (the spin) followed by some cross checks (the twists) and then proceeds to fold it. It looks like there is no learning apparent from one towel fold to the next, which would be thoroughly fascinating if it were done in even the littlest of tasks simpler than towel folding.

<comment><USER13> For comparison, checkout Rodney Brook's robot "Domo" - <http://people.csail.mit.edu/brooks/currentrobots.html>

<comment><USER14> Wow that is incredible

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If it just looked a little better I would marry it. I guess this will be replacing women sooner that we can imagine.

</comment><comment><USER16> My first reaction: How much time and money did this cost? How is this benefiting anything? Is this a test of some operating system that will be used on other, more useful things, or just a science project?

<comment><USER16> I'm just saying, I don't see how this is efficient outside of "can we make a robot that folds towels?" Sure, it's pretty cool, even putting aside its slowness, but it seems like a lot of effort towards something with little application. When you're just /learning/ robotics you're supposed to experiment and make useless stuff, but this seems like a professional project.

I guess I'm not familiar with the whole world of robots-- maybe this stuff is normal and fine I'm thinking too much at 3 AM..

<comment><USER17> The robot is picking up an object with a deformable geometry, analyzing that geometry, and then using that data to manipulate that geometry in a desired fashion. It does this with a series of objects of different sizes, shapes, and colorations. It was presumably not familiar with these particular objects ahead of time.

There's a lot going on here, and it's valuable to have done it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1235994>

<comment><USER19> thanks for this link to another HN page involving the exact same video with zero discussion on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Since this was a male CS Phd student presumably the real research was discovering that towels:

a, needed folding

b, needed washing occasionally so they could be folded</comment>


Ask HN: Review our app, typd.in (a web-based Japanese IME) - <AUTHOR> http://typd.in

<comment><AUTHOR> Before kicking off work together on a startup, my cofounder and I have built two test projects to make sure that we have a good technical fit.

If there are any Japanese typers out there, we'd love you to check out our first project: typd.in. It's an unobtrusive bookmarklet that enables Japanese input on any textarea/input on the web, even on platforms without a native input method editor.

Any and all feedback appreciated!

</comment><comment><USER2> Pretty damn cool.

I only used it for about 30 seconds, but two things stood out. One, when I press space (I assume it's henkan like usual), I assume it's doing a dictionary search. The wait is pretty significant for something that needs to be near-instant. Second, triggering the henkan seems to prevent any further input.

Minorly, my phrase didn't henkan: koreha, yamanotesendesuka.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very cute idea, but it's way too slow. Nobody wants to wait several seconds for the server to return a composition.

I guess this might be nice if you are a Japanese person at a kiosk in the US (etc.), but you probably can't install a bookmarklet in that case anyway.

<comment><USER4> Funny thing is, this is how Japanese people type in every day life. This is an amazingly useful tool that could potentially make a lot of money from companies looking to internationalize their web apps for Japanese typers who are not using Japanese typing software support.

<comment><USER5> You missed his point. Normal IMEs do not have the huge latency that this one does.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> you should license this to Rosetta Stone immediately. not kidding.

<comment><USER7> This sort of thing is not that complex to develop to be suitable for licensing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I never wanted to type Japanese but if I ever needed to... now there is a handy web service - good idea and work!

How about adding Chinese too?

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't really know much about Japanese, but this is awesome! I know there's a song called "Kaze Wo Atsumete" that I like, so I just typed that in and the various symbols came up.. I copied and pasted it, and bam.. I was finding music videos on YouTube I wouldn't have seen otherwise - and it was the right song! Big thumbs up.

</comment><comment><USER10> いいですね。このこんぴゅたあは日本語のIMEがありませんが今私はTYPD。INでしますよ。

すごいよ

でも私は少し日本語をできません。一年ぐらい大学に日本語を勉強しましたけど五年前でした。

<comment><USER11> Did you have trouble converting the characters for "computer" to katakana, or was that just an oversight?

<comment><AUTHOR> Technically, it's a misspelling for こんぴゅーたー (konpyu-ta-), which converts correctly into katakana.

But I really got a kick out of seeing someone use the tool itself to give us feedback...

<comment><USER10> Ah, you caught me. I'm way out of practice ^^;;

"コンピューター"

Sure enough, it's my spelling which was at fault.

Some documentation on the key commands available would be handy - I was able to figure out a bit about the space bar and arrow keys but I'm sure I'm missing some features. I'm on my Ubuntu/Firefox box at work currently so that's the environment I'm working in. I don't currently have an IME set up here. I did have difficulty trying to type romaji, such as "typd.in" in the midst of the kana. A shortcut key to transpose directly to katakana would be handy. Trailing 'n's didn't convert directly to hiragana while typing in most cases - I had to follow with another character to get it to take, which was kind of jarring.

The bookmarklet is very clever. I'm going to post it to a message board I frequent which has lots of aspiring Japanese students, if that's ok. I'm sure you can get some good feedback from them.

One thing that would be a killer-app to someone like me whose writing is atrocious would be a feature to display definitions of kana in both english and japanese when displaying possible readings. Sort of like an on-the-fly rikaichan.

Anyway, very cool app. Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is pretty cool. I can even see using it on Linux, because I still haven't figured out how to get the Japanese input method to work there decently.

My one issue is that selection is a bit odd. If you type a word, the whole word looks selected, even though it doesn't act that way. If you hold down the delete key, it deletes one character and stops. It works really well if you already know what you're typing and make no mistakes, but slightly less well otherwise.

I really like what the Mac does here: use underline to indicate "still working on this word", so selection still means selection. But that might not be feasible (portably) in an HTML textfield.

<comment><AUTHOR> One of the trade-offs of using an unobtrusive approach (no DOM insertion) to maximize compatibility is that we're limited to the decoration offered by a vanilla text control. Otherwise, the flow of insertion/deletion/selection was based on OS X, so I think you'll find it familiar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> A bug report. Bookmarklet doesn't work correctly in a textarea with a vertical scroll bar.

Just fill a textarea with lots of text and click on bookmarklet. First, the indicator will be hidden by the scroll bar. Second, try adding anything at the bottom of the text and you'll see the problem.

You may want to have a look at <http://translit.ru> for some ideas on how to overcome the scrolling issue.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the good feedback. I think we'll need to move the indicator to the left side and pad the input to offset it, so that it's more visible.

Correcting scrolling is less trivial, and will have to wait for v2.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hey the idea is cool! I recalled a similar tool for Chinese. It's actually a Firefox extension, allowing ones without a native IME to input Chinese chars in text fields. However, both typd.in and that plugin share a similar limitation: it's unusable OUTSIDE the browser :|

Plus, what's your target audience? Anyone serious enough to type Japanese should have some native IME installed, right?

<comment><USER14> I'm guessing it would be great for anyone using a computer on which they don't have administrative access, like people in internet cafes, jobs, or schools. It would also be good for people who want to enter some text but don't want to go through the hassle of setting up the operating system's IME, like a first- time language student eager to jump in or a person who just needs to reproduce a few characters of foreign text. I suppose it may also be useful in contexts where an IME isn't available (some mobile devices?) or where cross-platform IME instructions are needed.

Great idea, btw. I have found myself looking for something like this in the past.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is exactly what we had in mind. The latency of hitting the server for each kanji conversion would make it difficult to compete with a native implementation, but this is just a hack to fill in the holes when no such implementation exists.

Aside from other language support, we're thinking of eventually implementing a passive feedback mechanism that would tell the back end about conversion preferences, so that users could teach the system merely by correcting suggestions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> [http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/10/yamli-makes-it-easy- to-...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/10/yamli-makes-it-easy-to-use- arabic-on-the-web/)

If you come out with this web application first, then, you may be featured on Techcrunch before Yamli.

Yamli enables you to type arabic on the net.

</comment><comment><USER16> Why is this better than me right-clicking in any GTK text widget and selecting the appropriate input method from the drop down menu? (note that Firefox doesn't have that because it's not an actual GTK app -- it's only pretending. I'd say it's a better idea to fix Firefox though...)

</comment><comment><USER17> The app was neat, but I think anyone that has a need to type Japanese already has an IME. The latency of the app was irritating enough to make me not want to use it for anything more than typing a couple of characters. If it was faster, it would be much more useful. Nice job.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is brilliant. I _hate_ switching my OS IME when I need to type in Japanese.

I don't know how you'll monetize this particular implementation but you've come with a fantastic technology. I'm sure you'll do very well. Congrats.

<comment><USER5> Really? Usually I have to do on Windows is push Alt+` to switch between English and Japanese. Sometimes I might have to press Shift+Alt first. It isn't very intuitive but it is very quick to do.

<comment><USER18> Yup. I'm on the Mac and it's one of the things I haven't found a good keyboard shortcut. Drives me up a wall.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Awesome idea! One criticism: You should provide a button that allows people to select hiragana they already typed and have it processed into kanji. You might want to include a pure text mode and allow a non-realtime "compilation"

</comment><comment><USER20> 日本語ユーザーです。 変換のするときにIMEみたいに変換候補が出てこないのが不思議ですが、それを除けば使い勝手はとても良いと思います。 頑張ってください。応援しています!

</comment><comment><USER21> I like how the UI is very clean and straight forward. Not sure if this technology will be used by the masses in the US. It would be a lot cooler if you allowed your users to type in special symbols like copyright or emoticons.

</comment><comment><USER22> That's pretty excellent. I was in a Japanese class and wondered why the systems for typing were so app-centric. This seems like it could work anywhere (though, out of curiosity, does it work on IE6?). Well done.

</comment><comment><USER23> Perhaps you could use HTML5 client-side storage to speed up the conversion to kanji. Cache the most common right off the bat and every one after that.

</comment><comment><USER24> Love it! My only suggestion is to check the hoverstate style for the bookmarklet. A normally resized browser window completely hides the arrow.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm pretty sure I'll find a use for this at some point.

Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER6> this is pretty fantastic. のほんごああかりません、いごねがいします。

that it can be turned on and off with the same click is great. double-plus good.

</comment><comment><USER25> This would be amazing as a Chinese IME.

</comment><comment><USER26> i can't type japanese, but i think this is a great ... thing you have here ^_^

seems to fill a needed role

<comment><USER27> I agree. From a technology perspective, it is very clever.</comment></comment>


Super Metroid and a Link to the Past crossover item randomizer - <AUTHOR> https://smalttp.speedga.me/ <comment><AUTHOR> Here is a video about that: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1lsAKbw91I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1lsAKbw91I)</comment>


I can style a whole app with only four hex values and SASS. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.12spokes.com/web-design-development/simple-css-color-management-with-sass/ <comment><USER2> Personally, I have recently come to love SASS after using it for the past five months on a very large project. What I hate about it, though, is the implementation, which is currently (AFAIK) available only in Ruby, and I just can't stand all the issues with dependencies, fickle behaviour of support apps and the like.

I'm yearning for a good Python-based implementation, ideally a drop-in with Django so I could use SASS files directly instead of Django templates, but nothing fully satisfactory has been produced yet (and I don't have the time to do it myself).

Please note: this is not intended as Ruby bashing, it's a perfectly fine language; it's just that I've practically never had a smooth experience with it.

Edit: Ah, and yes -- the author's job could be even easier if you used the Compass framework (specifically, it has a predefined helper for those gradients, and other stuff that are currently in a browser-prefix-hell): <http://compass-style.org>

<comment><USER3> Uh... what about this one? <https://github.com/Kronuz/pyScss> It seems to support compass. Could you report whether it's good, because I would like to get into SASS as well and I'm a python-guy.

edit: in the readme there is even a django example.

<comment><USER2> Hmm this seems interesting, thanks, I'll check it out! :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This stuff is kind of old news for Sass/SCSS/etc users, but it's no less breathtaking when you do it the first time.

CSS preprocessors sell themselves.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. We did this with LESS for the brand palettes on <http://www.evanta.com> (ignore the awful homepage/logos) and it saved us a lot of time that let me experiment with other techniques and tweaks that I wouldn't have been able to get to otherwise.

It's a pretty beastly stylesheet in the end, but it's a great method to learn/optimize for future projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I believe the author is missing out on one other feature of Sass: browser- prefix values are generated automatically, so no more (-webkit- _, -ms-_ , etc.). This would make his Sass gradient code more succinct.

<comment><USER7> That's a feature of Compass, not Sass.

<http://compass-style.org/>

<comment><USER8> More accurately, SASS includes the ability to create functions to build out prefixes, and Compass includes default functions to do this.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, we do this with SASS without using compass.

<comment><USER7> I stand corrected. I think though that Compass is the most common way people do this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In my opinion, this is one of the most important features of CSS preprocessors. Wether you're doing rapid prototyping and working on the real deal, having a set of variables for colors, fonts and whatnot helps you a lot controlling the look and feel of your site and avoid mistakes that even Facebook did [1]

This is one of the main reasons why foundations like Twitter Bootstrap or Compass are awesome but unfortunately people are so lazy they don't even change the color variables in Bootrstrap, hence the "yet another Twitter Bootstrap" site.

[1] Facebook had 706 CSS files, they declared the Facebook blue color 261 times, used 548 unique hex values for colors, had 6498 declarations of color. <http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1379>

<comment><USER11> If Facebook used SASS they may _still_ appear to have the Facebook blue defined 261 times and have 548 unique hex values. The redundancy is only removed in the preprocessed files, when the files are processed the values are transformed and inserted back into the document

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a large part of why I love SASS. I frequently work with a base color + some combination of lighten/darken/saturate/desaturate/opacify/transparentize for a given widget or whatnot. Changing the entire widget is as easy as changing the base color. It makes tweaking and theming super easy.

It's a lot easier when you think of colors as derivatives of a base color, rather than a collection of 7 different colors that have to be kept in sync.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'd like for people to try to push the envelope with this, by creating a live- tweakable theme (would need a ruby backend for Sass) and a nice overlay widget for editing the settings like dat.gui and seeing how much flexibility they can get with a small number of variables.

[http://workshop.chromeexperiments.com/examples/gui/#1-- Basic...](http://workshop.chromeexperiments.com/examples/gui/#1--Basic-Usage)

That's what I was hoping to see when I saw this title, but it's just a proof- of-concept of styling a whole app.

</comment><comment><USER14> Serious question - am I the only one who has looked at SASS and all its whizbang features, and decided that plain old CSS is just fine?

<comment><USER15> I agree. Though, I would love if someone responded and convinced me otherwise. What am I missing?

<comment><USER16> If you've ever had to go back to your CSS and redo the colors (client wanted red instead of blue) then you'll find yourself thinking "I wish I could just store these redundant values in one place". At that point you'll start looking at css preprocessors. A simple find/replace doesn't always cut it (I want these things red, keep these other things blue), especially if your design also has derivative values (used in gradients, shadows).

Personally, while I do try to take advantage of all the features of LESS, I think the biggest thing is the ability to define macros (utilizing mixins or functions). Never again do I need to write multiple rules for one style (-moz- foo, -webkit-foo, and foo) or need to remember the complicated argument order (defining gradients is vastly different between all of them).

The cost is in introducing a compile step, but the benefit is that your stylesheet becomes easy to write, easy to read, easy to modify.

<comment><USER14> Just curious - is there a reason CSS can't incorporate variables/macros and basic math without having to resort to a preprocessor? When CSS 5 or whatever is released, will all of this just be known as CSS?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Actually what I liked most about SASS was the nesting of CSS rules. Since CSS has no inherent structure is can quickly become a mess. SASS stylesheets can mimic the HTML document's structure - which in turn makes finding a rule in a stylesheet so much easier.

The colours and mixins are a total winner too :)

<comment><USER18> Be careful not to nest too deeply, as you can end up with huge CSS selectors in your output.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Alright, I have to ask:

Why use a preprocessor for HTML but not styles? Intentionally breaking development tools seems like a dead end, the only use-case I can imagine is client side manipulation; and then javascript has you covered by a huge legacy.

<comment><USER20> Hey, not trying to be a jerk here, but I am an experienced web developer who loves Compass and CoffeeScript and spends hours in dev tools daily, so I feel like I should understand your comment, but I simply cannot understand what you are asking. At all. Consider re-phrasing?

<comment><USER21> Maybe he means writing css in PHP and serving it as text/css.

That does give you pretty good flexibility.. you have to pay a little more attention to caching compared to static (/compiled) .css files though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The word you're looking for is "motherfucking".

</comment><comment><USER23> out of curiosity, what is the purpose of the function color?

<comment><USER24> The function color is (probably a pretty poor) way of describing a color I often see in UIs that prompts for a "secondary" action - examples would be a Close or Cancel button, or administrative functions like "Edit your account", etc. The action color, on the other hand, is something that the app or site's creator wants to the user to do - "Sign up now!", etc.</comment></comment>


Supremacy is for racists – use quantum advantage - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03781-0 <comment><USER2> > _In our view, 'supremacy' has overtones of violence, neocolonialism and > racism_

The NSA has a large collection of encrypted data intercepted from the citizens of the world. In terms of being able to crack most public key encryption systems today by a quantum computer in the future, "supremacy" is an accurate description of what it is - violence and neocolonialism, and it's better to call it out, so I propose the following solution.

If a powerful state/regime (and possibly corporation) has access to a powerful quantum computer, it's "quantum supremacy". If a scientific institution has access to a powerful quantum computer and uses it exclusively for civilian purposes and basic research programs, it's "quantum advantage".

</comment><comment><USER3> I think we should eliminate all references to "excellence" too. If we can't all be excellent no one should be acknowledged to be such.

</comment><comment><USER4> Classical suckage.</comment>


Show HN: TablePlus Windows – a native tool for database management - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/tableplus/a-native-database-management-tool-for-windows-864ecee171a0 <comment><USER2> TablePlus user on macOS - great tool for ad-hoc query work and data exploration. Would recommend

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot for your support!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi guys,

TL;DR: We are back again with the Windows version of TablePlus:

\- A native build.

\- Multiple drivers support MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server… and the others are coming soon.

\- Built-in SSH, no need for PuTTY.

\- It's the fastest DB tool with streaming results row by row and async loading.

\- Intuitive UX/UI with the high-resolution display.

\- Active development and lifetime support.

\- It's 100% compatible with macOS version, you can share data from macOS to Windows (connections, history, favorites, license…).

This is the initial release, more features from the macOS version are coming to this Windows version in the next few weeks, including indexes support, import CSV,...

Download: [https://tableplus.io/windows](https://tableplus.io/windows)

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow!!! Finally it comes to Windows. Love the macOS version so much <3

</comment><comment><USER4> Just a curious question: What is the tech stack behind the scene?

<comment><USER5> TablePlus is a native application (WPF), it's written with C#, C/C++.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What are the limitations of the free version?

<comment><AUTHOR> All the functions are presented in the free version. It only limits the number of active tabs/connections at a time (3 right now), and you can not change themes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Good app</comment>


For the U.S. and China, it's not a trade war anymore – it's something worse - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-us-china-trade-stalemate-20190531-story.html <comment><USER2> The graph I found most interesting was:

 _Instead, a member of the Chinese Politburo harangued them for almost an hour, describing the U.S.-China relationship as a "clash of civilizations" and boasting that China's government-controlled system was far superior to the "Mediterranean culture" of the West, with its internal divisions and aggressive foreign policy._

Specifically the "Mediterranean culture", which I assume refers to the Romans, and their careening from one leadership extreme to another, civil wars, warmongering, alternating between competence/incompetence and morality/corruption, etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> The 'Thucydides Trap' strikes again.

Things are going to get very much worse before they start to get better.(If they ever do get better, that is.)

Several years ago, I calculated that Spring-Summer 2020 was the latest date that the US could initiate and hope to prevail in a Big War against China.

At that time I had no idea how the US would manage to bring that about. Things seemed so friendly back then. Over the last year or so, I am finding more and more that I was almost prescient about the time-line.

</comment><comment><USER4> Basically they won't commit to forced technology transfers and IP protections and finally there is a president who holds them accountable.</comment>


Tern – Intelligent JavaScript editing - <AUTHOR> http://ternjs.net/

<comment><USER2> To be clear the author of this IS the author of code mirror! That should be in large bold letters on that first page (it is on the crowd sourcing page). My first thought was "really? this is just code mirror with added cleverness, sort of lame to profit from it" - totally different story when it's the author adding value to something he has already contributed to the community. In that case this is the "premium" plan for code mirror.

<comment><USER3> Note that Tern's core is editor-independent. I made the demo on top of CodeMirror, obviously, since I know it very well. But the meat of this project does not have anything to with the editor that's used to interact with it.

<comment><USER4> Still, I wouldn't be shy about the fact that you did CodeMirror. It makes a huge difference to me....you are a known quantity and convinces me that this is a solid project.

And I'd think that CodeMirror is the obvious thing to hook this into, for the rest of us as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It might sound like an abomination, but Visual Studio is apart from obv. being excellent in C++/C# also a very pleasant IDE for Javascript, Python or even PHP!

In fact i have been an "texteditor-only" type in the past, but coding C# in Visual Studio has really been a revelation for me.

<comment><USER3> I know. I was blown away by VS when I was researching what others were doing in this space. Their approach is also very clever -- there's an interesting talk about it at [http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2012/DEV...](http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2012/DEV308)

<comment><USER6> Care to mention what you found clever in their approach?

<comment><USER3> They basically _run_ the scripts, instrumenting their Chakra JS engine to automatically abort overlong loops and overdeep recursion, and preventing all side effects outside of the DOM/JS runtime. And then use the actual types that occur in this run to do the completion. Plus, I guess, some added tricks that the talk doesn't go into, but which are necessary to make sure execution actually reaches the part of the program where you are trying to complete something.

<comment><AUTHOR> Does it ever get the types wrong? Just curious, I assume one wouldn't want to see the kind of code where VS gets the types wrong.

<comment><USER3> I was able to create situations where it failed to find any type for a variable, and when you have variables that may contain multiple types it appears to only find one type, but I wasn't able to make it report any actually _wrong_ types. (But I haven't used it very much.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Well, that looks _really_ nice. I am not a IDE type, but I do enjoy nice coding helpers when I write. This, well integrated into say, Vim, would make Javascript programming really comfortable.

<comment><USER8> The cloud9 ide's open source javascript-based editor, [Ace](<http://ace.ajax.org/build/kitchen-sink.html>) can mimic vim mode.

Though ternjs's developer created CodeMirror, the platform would be agnostic of editor and could easily be ported to that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Marijn Haverbeke has a stellar track record of work in this area, so this should be taken more seriously than usual.

<comment><USER9> Just to lend some more credence to this statement, we (LightTable) have actually contracted him to work on CodeMirror and have been nothing but happy with the results. He runs a tight ship and the output is great. CodeMirror is a fantastic editor (I say this as an ex PM on the Visual Studio editor) that continues to get better every day, it has been invaluable to our work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks cool! How do you gauge the difficulty of adding support for CoffeeScript to this?

Re the indiegogo campaign: I think you should consider adding an extra supporter tier between 25 USD and 1000 USD. The 200 USD tier of CoffeeScript Redux [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/michaelficarra/make-a- be...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/michaelficarra/make-a-better- coffeescript-compiler) brought in over 20% of the total amount pledged.

<comment><USER3> Interesting. Their 200 dollar tier is basically my 'all backers' tier (name in a readme file). But I can probably come up with something slightly more valuable to offer at ~250€.

As for CoffeeScript support -- the only major piece missing there is an error- tolerant CoffeeScript parser. Given that, one could simply run the CoffeeScript compiler over code, and analyze the output. There'd be some shuffling with source maps needed to translate source locations in the various representations of the code, but that's a solved problem. Well, and of course you might see some translation artifacts. The CS output code is semantically close to the input, but there are differences.

<comment><USER11> a signed copy of your book? :}

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know Marijn's hourly rate, but perhaps one or two hours face-to-face on Skype?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I find most of these attempts to code-completion in JS to be annoying, like bad speech recognition, if the accuracy is poor, it becomes frustrating. Not to knock their attempt, but I find that if codeassist isn't like 98% accurate, it often becomes more work to step through all of the wrong entries and not find what I want, then to just type it out.

The closest I've seen to something that works well is IntelliJ IDEA 12, when working with ActionScript, Closure annotated JS (JsDoc'ed libraries), or by comparison, the Dart editor.

With IntelliJ 12, if you're looking at a library with enough JsDoc on functions, the type inferencing seems to be a lot more accurate. Find Usages, Go to Definition, code-assist, all seem to be more pleasurable to use.

I don't like Flash, but ActionScript3 in IntelliJ is as close to the Java/C#/et al experience you'll get with respect to accuracy of assist. Probably wouldn't hard to port this over to JSX or Typescript which have similar syntax.

<comment><USER3> If you're using completion to verify that a thing has the type you thought it has, then yes, Tern won't help you much. If you're using it to save keystrokes, it certainly will.

Slightly related, I'm working on a feature where it distinguishes wild guesses from probably correct information by showing a different icon in the completion list.

<comment><USER11> I love autocompletion (even when it is half working, like intellij when the inheritance marking annotations don't always follow through, my cleverly optimized jsdoc markup for backbone and co broke down when switching to idea12). It saves me so much time looking stuff up and APIs, and if it can indicate the number and name of arguments required, i usually don't have to use the docs anymore.

And M-./find usages is very useful too, even when it is not perfect.

I pledged, and hope you will get enough funds together.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think that anybody who works with JS should support this project and its author (Marijn Haverbeke of the Eloquent JavaScript fame.)

P.S. Works fine on Chromium Version 24.0.1312.56 Ubuntu 12.04 x64

</comment><comment><USER14> Backed. Like everybody who touches JavaScript should do. Also. mmmm finally decent vim bindings for javascript?

I do wonder how it will compare to Eclipse Orion's JavaScript content assist which is using Esprima as parser.

[http://contraptionsforprogramming.blogspot.nl/2012/02/better...](http://contraptionsforprogramming.blogspot.nl/2012/02/better- javascript-content-assist-in.html)

<comment><USER3> (I'm the author of Tern -- I'm obviously biased.)

It compares very favorably. The Orion approach, as I understand it (I only did some quick messing around with scripted, am not an expert) is very local, whereas Tern tries to do whole-program analysis. This should allow it to pick up much more information.

<comment><USER15> Is it able to track all dependencies in a web page for autocomplete? I mean, keywords defined in dependent files - do they automagically work?

<comment><USER3> Not magically. That part is, for now, in the scope of the IDE/editor plug-in. You can feed Tern a set of files to analyze, but Tern doesn't, for example, scrape HTML files to determine inclusions.

The one exception is requirejs-style dependencies. Those, if you give Tern some information on where to look, it will resolve and automatically include. I'll do something similar for node.js-style require calls in the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> IntelliJ's WebStorm has pretty JavaScript code completion and related tools. It also has plugins for popular libraries and frameworks, node.js and a variety of other HTML5 / latest-web-coolness stuff. Seems like a lot of folks in the AngularJS community have been using it it as well.

Disclaimer: I liked it enough to buy a personal license :), but am not affiliated with the folks who make and sell it.

</comment><comment><USER17> Just contributed, as I'm intrigued. Have you seen Chris Granger's LightTable? (<http://www.lighttable.com/>) I think there's some overlap, although his vision is much broader.

<comment><USER18> Chris commented above that Marijn is working on LightTable.

<comment><USER3> Not on LightTable itself, but on the editor component they use (<http://codemirror.net>)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Backed, I really love to see this working on SublimeText. I tired it with my own code and it managed to bring correct return types and object properties from all functions. I hope you release it soon. Thanks for the effort

</comment><comment><USER20> On my Mac (10.6.8), using Firefox 19.0 I get the right mouse contextual menu when I use CTRL-SPACE in the first example with the Tern selections displaying behind it. I don't see this behavior in Chrome or Safari.

</comment><comment><USER18> Curious how this compares to Brackets. I haven't played with their latest sprint yet, but they also seem to be working on adding auto-complete to JS in CodeMirror.

</comment><comment><USER21> I typed "[[[[" and the script became unresponsive (hung).

Repeated by reloading the page. Same result.

FireFox / MacOS.

<comment><USER3> That's bad. I'll look into it right away.

<comment><USER7> Working fine on Chrome 24 on Linux/x64.

<comment><USER22> The browser tab hangs on Chromium 24.0.1312.56 on Kubuntu 12.10 (when typing [[[[).

<comment><USER7> Weird, I'm on almost the exact same version (24.0.1312.57) and it does nothing when typing any number of '['. I have the branded version of Chrome, though, but still, weird!

<comment><USER3> The problem is fixed now, so the fact that it works shouldn't come as a surprise.

<comment><USER23> The demo doesn't seem to work on Chrome 25.0.1364.152 m. I'm getting this error whenever I try any of the shortcuts (or when I select a command from the drop down):

Uncaught TypeError: Cannot set property 'curOrigin' of undefined (infer.js:489)

Looks interesting though!

<comment><USER3> That was another quick update that broke things. I fixed it ~20 minutes after I pushed it, but I guess you exactly hit the window where it was broken.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Amazing, but it could be even more awesome if you could provide API that could be integrated with other editors.

<comment><USER3> As NuZZ noted, this is the plan. It is already written as a library with a server-like architecture (you send requests and get JSON responses). The vision is to wrap it in a stand-alone HTTP server shim that understands .tern- project files that you can drop in your project directory, and then write editor plug-ins that talk to this server (and automatically start it up if it's not already running).

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is really great work. I'd love to see it for VIM.

<comment><USER26> Looks like VIM is one of his first priorities. From the indiegogo page:

> _The funding goal is computed to allow me to work for three months at about > half the income I make with my usual consulting work. (The other half is > made up in the satisfaction of building the thing I want to build.) In > addition, I'll spend some of it to engage a Vim expert to help me build the > Vim plug-in in a way that fits the culture for that editor._

Definitely chipping in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> "Tern is not currently open source. I'd like it to be, but I have to pay my bills. So I'm running a crowd-funder where interested parties can pledge money. If successful, Tern will be released under an MIT license."

Very odd model... take your code.

<comment><USER5> Your development of Redis is sponsored by VMWare afaik (which is awesome and so is redis), so whats wrong with crowd-sponsoring this guy ?

Sure it might be a trust issue, and it might be better to release the code first and then ask for money, but as it looks this guy has a good reputation in the community so i dont see too much of a problem.

<comment><USER27> I talk from a general point of view of my ideas, not as the Redis developer. Anyway for 1 year I worked at Redis for free, and it was open source since day 0.</comment></comment></comment>


Why are gambling markets organised so differently from financial markets [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/LevittHowDoMarketsFunction2004.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> Html version (doesn't show up very well): <http://is.gd/6ej7></comment>


Adobe CS5 to be unveiled April 12th, 11am EDT - <AUTHOR> http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/adobe-cs5-to-be-unveiled-april-12th-11am-edt-20100323/

<comment><USER2> I'm sure PS CS5 will be great. Illustrator and Dreamweaver CS4 are massive failures. Unless Adobe strips out features and dramatically improves performance... There is no hope. As of CS4 I have started migrating to other applications for my development needs.

<comment><USER3> I'm considering going back to CS2 or CS3 if CS 5 doesn't do something magical.

<comment><USER4> Would content-aware fill be enough? <http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2010/03/caf_in_ps.html>

That's so amazing my brain won't stop screaming "FAKE!". :)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How can I reach people in a industry I don't have any contacts? - <AUTHOR> After starting to do some customer development for my own software to sell to self-driving car companies I was stuck on how to actually reach someone and find if they are interested in such solution.<p>I'm quite sure cold-emailing Tesla or Waymo would just go to support... <comment><USER2> 1\. Join Industry Association and attend their meetings.

2\. Attend and/or exhibit at Tradeshows and events related to the industry.

3\. Trade Publications, their mailing lists and advertising.

4\. Find contacts through LinkedIn and reach out to them individually.

5\. Go to your target audience hangout places.

6\. Research publications related to your industry. Find appropriate papers and connect with research groups and authors that get you introduction to industry participants.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm pretty sure from own experience that supplying solutions to business customers at scale is not easy without being a proven business yourself. The other way round is doing contract work for them, essentially selling your solutions very cheap. In the middle, you may want to become an r&d employee in order to achieve financial security while working on your own project for a single customer aka your employer. In the latter case, bonuses and intellectual rights exploitation may be agreed, if the interest is mutual and your solution is big.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm reading answers on this thread and having a strange feeling of some disconnect between the question - or rather a possible interpretation of the question - and answers. Maybe it's just a feeling that answers make some assumptions which could be substantially wrong?

For example, if the question author is a yesterday graduate, he may use the internship route. But then he may not know "the old route" \- and mentioning "going past the gate keeper" without elaborating may leave a puzzled look. At least before some figuring out (a.k.a. googling) what's that.

Or if the author had a career in another industry, then the idea of internship may look odd, but LinkedIn contacts could be more promising venue. Unless, that is, the industry doesn't use LinkedIn that much.

Or if the author is from outside of America. Then advice like "join an association and attend meetings" could be harder to follow. Regarding advice "networking is also a possible venue" \- for some this could sound both as too long/boring and to vague of advice. Advice "hire a professional" requires finding one, paying him - which may be problematic for some - and those also look like taking time longer than one weekend or even one month.

I don't know, may be some recommendations will be spot on and successfully used. May be the question need to be phrased more specifically.

<comment><AUTHOR> I feel the problem was definitely on my question being too vague actually. Anyway I got some interesting thoughts I never considered before so this was successful.

The gatekeeper one I have to admit that I had to Google it.

<comment><USER5> > The gatekeeper one I have to admit that I had to Google it.

I hadn't realized this wasn't a recognizable term. Thanks for the input, though. I'll have to preface my usage of it from now on.

<comment><AUTHOR> No problem, I managed to learn something new!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The traditional way to reach people in an industry where one doesn't have any contacts is to do an internship in one of the companies, or to perform well in a competition setup within the industry. That's how it goes for graduates in most industries, anyway. One could also look for any awards shared by industry participants. A group of industry participants might setup an award for "best supplier" for a particular good the industry needs. Try to get in one of those gatherings and do some networking.

I even did a google search for you and found something interesting:

[http://www.autonews.com/article/20161008/OEM10/310109988/30-...](http://www.autonews.com/article/20161008/OEM10/310109988/30-finalists- vie-for-pace-awards)

"Innovations from 30 automotive suppliers representing seven countries have been named finalists for the 2017 Automotive News PACE Awards.

The 34 innovations -- ranging from short-range radar to a direct fuel- injection system to an _in-car artificial intelligence supercomputer_ \-- underscore the auto industry's commitment to improving fuel economy, emissions and safety, among other goals."

Can you get a ticket to one of these events?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the thoughtful reply. There is some good information there! I'm from Portugal so actually going to one of those events can be very pricey but definitely something on my to-do list

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Attempt to hire them.

In the best case - you see value in their connections & insider info and you actually offer what you can and they join you.

In the worst case - you get to understand the market, have a friend who respects you, and possibly references or as in your case - perhaps become your customer.

Worked for me across new verticals i had to break into. (banking, logistics)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is interesting. You're awesome

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > I'm quite sure cold-emailing Tesla or Waymo would just go to support...

Have you heard about getting past the gate keeper? It's an old technique and I don't know how relevant it is in this era, but it's something to look into.

Networking is also a possible avenue.

This question is googable, are you sure there's nothing else to this?

</comment><comment><USER8> Hire a sales person with ties to the industry. Find them on Linked In. Sales people are always networking.

</comment><comment><USER9> Cold emailing and calling doesn't work for _me_. I'm terrible at cold calling.

\- Go to events, meetups, and conferences for the topic. \- Connect via LinkedIn to persons of interest. \- Network, network, network.

</comment><comment><USER10> The fewer the players in an industry the harder it will be. Online forums can be a good way to casually meet people or promote your technology. I'd try posting to Reddit or LinkedIn and develop some relationships.

</comment><comment><USER11> I work in this industry, can you elaborate on your software and it's capabilities a little more? I will be able to point you in the right direction.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reply! Feel free to contact me via email: moura at oko.ai We are monetizing car traffic using smart contracts between the car owners.</comment></comment>