The Moral Economy of Tech - <AUTHOR> http://idlewords.com/talks/sase_panel.htm <comment><USER2> The fundamental mistake of thinking that technology alone can solve all human problems (is this what technological liberationists believe? Great name.) runs deep in this community and comes, I think, of worshipping intelligence.

The entire concept of all powerful AI that must be feared or at least obeyed springs from this trap. But imagine when we create this AI and ask it "how should I live" and it replies "eat better and exercise" how will its intelligence convince me to change my ways better than my doctor does today? How will more smarts give us peace in the Middle East? These human problems seem tied up more with the all too human traits of will and desire and pride and... Intelligence? It's far down the list.

Politics, for better and for worse, is our system for granting humans the power people here seem to think AI will be able to take on its own. I think part of Maciej's message is: stop waiting.

<comment><USER3> You're thinking that the evil AI will be some sort of nagging scold, "eat your vegetables or I'll tell you to eat your vegetables again". It's more likely that it'll be like Gawker: "eat your vegetables or I'll send an angry mob of idiots to burn your house down"

<comment><USER4> I suspect an effective tactic would be 'eat your vegetables, or I will start automatically ordering meatless and reduced calorie versions of everything'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article brings up an important source of bias that tech people risk - that we overuse models from programming when thinking about other aspects of the world. We should be learning alternative models from other subjects like economics, philosophy, sociology, etc so that we can improve our mental toolbox and avoid thinking everything works like a software system.

I'd say that another related source of bias is that we are surrounded by people who think like us.

It's a shame though, that the article dismisses without much explicit justification risk from artificial intelligence and the problem of death. When I first encountered these ideas, I dismissed them because they seemed weird. But if you read the arguments for caring you realise that they are actually well thought-out. For AI risk, check out [http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence- revolu...](http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence- revolution-1.html) and [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Superintelligence-Dangers- Strategie...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Superintelligence-Dangers-Strategies- Nick-Bostrom/dp/0199678111). For an argument for tackling death, checkout [http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html](http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html).

Also, there's a clear answer to 'If after decades we can't improve quality of life in places where the tech élite actually lives, why would we possibly make life better anywhere else?' \-- because the tech elite live in a rich society where most of the fundamental problems (e.g. infectious disease control, widespread dollar-a-day level poverty, access to education) have been solved. The remaining problems are much harder and we should focus on problems where our resources can go further - e.g. in helping the global poor. We should also work on important problems that we have a lot of influence over, such as risks from artificial intelligence and surveillance technology.

<comment><USER6> >we should focus on problems where our resources can go further - e.g. in helping the global poor.

I'm not convinced that the right people to help the "global poor" are Silicon Valley technologists. Scientifically-minded entrepreneurs focused on profit but with idealistic rhetoric attempting to "help" cultures they know nothing about has, historically, not worked out great.

<comment><USER7> From over here in India it looks pretty good.

In spite of the radically different culture, Uber has improved transportation. It turns out putting Indians into a car and charging them money works a lot like doing the same for Americans.

Facebook and Whatsapp have improved communication.

At work, Slack, Salesforce and Jira work the same as any western office.

Why, exactly, do you think other cultures and the global poor can't use SV technologies?

<comment><USER6> All those technologies were first developed in the US, for an American target audience, then exported to other countries. Other things also developed in the West and then exported: electricity, vaccines, et cetera. I agree that that's generally been a good thing.

The parent comment, however, seemed to imply that technologists should focus on "solving global poverty" instead of solving local problems. This represents a fundamental shift, because at that point SV technologists are attempting to solve problems they personally do not have experience with.

All the examples you provide solved problems that SV itself had- transportation, communication, etc.

<comment><USER7> I didn't interpret the article as defining things like Uber as solving "local" problems. But if you do, then the article is simply wrong because SV is manifestly solving local problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My problem with these sorts of screeds is that they treat all techies as complicit. It's really a problem of big tech companies, and the big tech companies have so much power because there is money in it, and they have the money _because humans choose it._ We individually _chose_ to give our freedoms to huge corporations with unfriendly designs for our lives.

It's not like we couldn't see it coming. Stallman, for example, has always argued against use of Facebook and similar services.[0] It's just that it's much easier to run centralized services, so they improve, they create better user experiences, and they draw in even more cash, while decentralized Free Software struggles to get enough attention to stay in business.

I, for one, didn't get a Facebook until a critical mass of my friends got one, and I didn't get a LinkedIn until a government agency refused to give me service without one. I tried to avoid the surveillance state, but it's very difficult to function in society without it. Especially if you don't have some sort of fan club to support you, like Stallman has.

[0][https://stallman.org/facebook.html](https://stallman.org/facebook.html)

<comment><USER9> If you believe a large fraction of techies are not complicit and in fact are very against these unfriendly designs, then do you agree with the solution proposed by the author—just like the solution to the problem of unsafe working conditions—namely, regulation? After all, if a large fraction of techies are against this, there's political will, right?

Sure, in your worldview the big tech companies have too much money and power, but why would it be so much more asymmetrical than the unsafe factory days as to require a qualitatively different solution?

> I tried to avoid the surveillance state, but it's very difficult to function > in society without it.

The author made this point, too, and connected it with the point about unsafe working conditions and how it is theoretically opt-in but in practice a highly-discouraged opt-out, which I thought was poignant, especially because it suggests an easy-to-understand (though difficult-to-implement) solution: regulation.

Note that he's not just handwaving in the magic word "regulation", he has a concrete proposal for six specific, privacy-protecting rules: [http://idlewords.com/talks/what_happens_next_will_amaze_you....](http://idlewords.com/talks/what_happens_next_will_amaze_you.htm#six_fixes)

<comment><USER8> > Note that he's not just handwaving in the magic word "regulation", he has a > concrete proposal for six specific, privacy-protecting rules: > [http://idlewords.com/talks/what_happens_next_will_amaze_you....](http://idlewords.com/talks/what_happens_next_will_amaze_you.htm)

Yeah, I'm not so sure that regulations will work all that well. They tend to entrench incumbents and squash innovation.

He points to Europe for regulations not working correctly, and I think it's amazing that Google has greater market share over there than anywhere else. You would hope that European pride and resourcefulness would promote homegrown search engines. Nope, the major alternatives outside the US are protected by totalitarian regimes, and Europe tries to regulate Google, instead.

For example, right to download, right to delete, would only work if you are definitely identified. Current tracking is probabilistic, supposedly anonymized. In an ideal world, right to delete would mean no more tracking that you haven't opted in. In the real world, I expect that right to delete would mean you need to be logged in and tracked even more closely. That's certainly appealing to the "anti-terror" interests, too.

A big difference of computing versus other tech is just the amount of leverage that is possible. Mark Zuckerberg was making a web site to connect classmates, and then it was connecting all the universities, and in no time he's the #6 richest person according to Forbes. When he started, I don't think this is how he thought he would end up. He has simply been guided by his morality of creepy openness. The amount of change that we're capable of creating is beyond our comprehension, and I think it's unfair to judge our industry by the disaster stories that make it to public consciousness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think the best thing that ever happened to me was realizing the thesis of this article and getting some humility.

I used to be firmly in the software will eat the world camp. Turns out the world is pretty cool. If you still think like this: travel, study people and get outside.

Getting to know the world around you and people who are different than you will make you a better person and a better engineer.

<comment><USER11> > Turns out the world is pretty cool. If you still think like this: travel, > study people and get outside.

I agree with the last two points, but why travel? Wasn't one of the points in the article that we're so busy trying to think broadly -- by going to faraway places and dreaming of general case solutions -- that we reject the small- scale case of the people already around you? Unless you mean travel to Bayview...

From the article:

> I am very suspicious of attempts to change the world that can't first work > on a local scale. If after decades we can't improve quality of life in > places where the tech élite actually lives, why would we possibly make life > better anywhere else? ... We should be skeptical of promises to > revolutionize transportation from people who can't fix BART, or have never > taken BART.

<comment><USER9> The point in the article about thinking too broadly is a subpoint of the larger point about the hubris of believing we can solve faraway problems that we've never seen up close. Both focusing on the local problems that we can see up close, and getting out there and seeing those faraway problems up close, could arguably be antidotes to that hubris.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think what he describes here is a fundamental flaw of human nature. We now have overwhelming evidence that humans are really good at taking incomplete, disparate pieces of information and coalescing them into a whole to reach a conclusion. We generally infer very well. The problem is that the conclusions we reach are also generally wrong. Given a very specific type of domain with deterministic answers (e.g. most engineering fields) we are able to reach more often than not correct answers. And the rate at which we are correct has only increased (nearing 100%). However, when it comes to the messy domains in which we live we are still pretty poor. Our instincts are generally good enough to keep us alive (don't walk down this dark alley, that guy looks shady, etc) but much more than that and we suck.

I for one am deeply uncomfortable with people training AI systems to form the kind of decisions we as humans do. These systems may have more information to go on but if it's using the same methods that we do, how accurate can it be? Thanks to the rapid advancement of the last 150 years we have quickly reached a place where society's technological knowledge and ability far exceeds our moral ability to reason about it, and it's implications. We are like an untrained child with a gun. Yeah we may understand the mechanics behind pulling the trigger and how it works but we don't yet have the maturity to understand when we should, and what truly happens when we do.

<comment><USER13> There's this attitude that because computer work on pure logic, anything a computer does must therefore be logical and rational. The problem is that the humans who program the computers will often encode their own illogical, irrational, biased, and flawed logic. The computer is not logical and rational, it just follows instructions well. If the instructions are illogical, irrational, biased, and flawed---but executable---the computer will follow them. And when they spit out a illogical, irrational, biased, and flawed result... well, it must be logical, rational, unbiased, and unflawed, because the computer is purely logical, rational, unbiased, and unflawed.

We code our biases into the algorithms we use every day. They inherit our flaws. The sooner we all wake up to this, the better.

<comment><USER14> > We code our biases into the algorithms we use every day. They inherit our > flaws. The sooner we all wake up to this, the better.

And our values. And assumptions. In Arthur C. Clarke's "2001: A Space Odyssey" the homicidal behavior of HAL was ultimately based on the conflict between his secret instructions and what he was able to share with the human crew, Bowman and Poole.

<comment><USER12> This is actually a serious concerns when it comes to AI. People tend to think it's overblown but non deterministic behavior is bad because you don't know what the program will do. Maybe it crashes, maybe nothing happens, maybe it nukes your cpu. You simply don't know. The first rule of true AI has to be to ensure it values human life. It would be grossly irresponsible to create an entity more intelligent than us and do otherwise. But what happens when the military inevitably decides these new AI things would make really good drone pilots. Or when a sufficiently powerful enough AI comes to the conclusion that the best way to protect human life is to take human life. What's the end result of that conflict. What's stopping a sufficiently intelligent AI from rewriting it's own code to get around restrictions it doesn't like. We already have self modifying code. It's a scary thought, and the fact that people are basing these things off the way humans think makes it even scarier

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> While I can certainly detect a bunch of content-free mood affiliation designed to appeal to those who dislike technological liberationists, I can't tell what the point of this article is.

First: _In the real world, this has led to a pathology where the tech sector maximizes its own comfort. You don 't have to go far to see this. Hop on BART after the conference and take a look at Oakland, or take a stroll through downtown San Francisco..._

Second: _Techies will complain that trivial problems of life in the Bay Area are hard because they involve politics. But they should involve politics._

So first he's criticizing techies for not fixing the pathologies of Oakland. Then he's saying these problems are rightly the domain of politics. So what's the problem? Those are political problems, should be left to politicians, and techies are doing exactly that.

Finally: _In a world where everyone uses computers and software, we need to exercise democratic control over that software._

Aha - so first techies are not solving problems that the author thinks they should be leaving to politicians. From this he draws the conclusion that techies - currently doing a great job of solving the problems within their domain - should bow down and submit to control by the politicians who failed to solve the local problems he cares about.

Another choice line: _If after decades we can 't improve quality of life in places where the tech élite actually lives, why would we possibly make life better anywhere else?_

Why would we do something that benefits far away humans over something that benefits nearby humans? Don't help those foreigners (or people in NY)! Build a wall! Trump 2016! (Same idea, just directed at a slightly different target.)

<comment><USER15> Politics is far too important to be left to the politicians!

Politics is how we resolve disagreements, which is hard to do. Maciej argues (rightly, IMO) that avoiding politics for technology is basically retreating from a set of hard problems into a set of easier problems.

> From this he draws the conclusion that techies - currently doing a great job > of solving the problems within their domain - should bow down and submit to > control by the politicians who failed to solve the local problems he cares > about.

He's saying that techies should directly engage in politics to achieve positive outcomes locally, before believing that they can use technology alone to achieve positive outcomes globally.

He's saying that what techies consider to be "problems within their domain" is worth some introspection.

<comment><USER16> >He's saying that what techies consider to be "problems within their domain" is worth some introspection.

But couldn't that lead to exactly the sort of arrogance that Maciej argues against? That engineers think their ability to solve tech-related problems means they are specially equipped to solve more complex problems in society?

For example, if some sociology major who had no programming experience tried to advise me on a challenge I have with some software I'm working on, based on something they read in Wired, I'm probably just going to roll my eyes. Frankly, it's pretty unlikely that someone who no background in the field I've dedicated my professional life to studying, can provide useful advice.

Likewise, do you think an engineer can provide useful advice on how to deal with poverty to a sociologist, one who has spent their career studying this issue? Do you really think the secret to improving society is to have a bunch of techies telling sociologists and economists how they think things should be run?

Maybe the right thing for techies is to pay their taxes, and participate in local elections as informed voters. Other than that, maybe we should stick to tech, and leave running society to the professionals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "We started out collecting this information by accident, as part of our project to automate everything, but soon realized that it had economic value."

Is he saying the end results of the project to [insert stated project purpose here], e.g., "to automate everything", "to organize the world's information", etc., did not have enough economic value to sustain the project... and hence founders were "forced" to collect data _as a means to generate value_?

Here's another version: pre-Google search engines realized they could sell ad space, i.e., paid placements, e.g., to auto manufacturers.

Once the advertising industry became involved, then collecting data about the network's users, if one could do it, was a no-brainer.

"... really it's just the regular old world from before, with a bunch of microphones and keyboards and flat screens sticking out of it."

Not sure that young people who worship Silicon Valley want to believe this, and why should they?

The author always makes a good case for the potential long term consequences of the so-called "changes to the world" that many programmers are adamantly pursuing.

Maybe these programmers are not changing the world. Maybe they're just doing what others already did in the past, on a smaller scale, without the benefit of cheap electronics.

<comment><USER18> _Is he saying the end results of the project [...] did not have enough economic value to sustain the project... and hence founders were "forced" to collect data as a means to generate value?_

I don't see any reason to read that into his speech. We're used to the "you pay or are the product" dichotomy being propagandized at us as the reason for accepting surveillance business models. I don't see that here. I see it more like describing the realization that there is an(other) revenue stream staring the creator in the face.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This reminds me of the Adam Curtis film "All Cared For By Machines Of Loving Grace." Indeed, "eat your vegetables" itself is as much an environmental idea as a nutritional position. Curtis attributes environmentalism in its present form to systems-think grounded in the computer industry.

The deep irony is that computers themselves arose from the ashes of Bertand Russel's (failed) attempt to systemically automate mathematics.

I'm always amazed that techies, who have to deal with the fragility and foibles of computers, aren't leading the charge to be skeptical of this sort of thing. Of course, the incentives are not aligned with that.

</comment><comment><USER20> what a shame noone is actually responding to the substantive points here. This is without a doubt one of the better "programmer describes politics from a programmers point of view" to turn up here.

</comment><comment><USER21> I think Maciej's mind is getting seriously poisoned by the hatred towards SV. I understand the anger - hell, I abhor the ad-driven tech too, I've stopped believing in the startup marketing long time ago. But just because companies say bullshit to make money doesn't mean the tech doesn't work, or that technologists are _worse_ than normal people because they use their brains to solve complex problems. This, and previous talks start to sound less like pointing out existing problems and more like anti-intellectualism.

In Maciej's recent talks I feel a sense of defeat that he's trying to mask with calls to actions and thinly-veiled insults towards programmers. Like the constant references to politics - if there's one thing true in this world, it's that the politics is one of the least cost-effective way of solving _anything_ one can imagine. If people want to do tech, or science, instead of politics, maybe it's not because they're stupid, but because they want to do something _effective_? After all, it's not politicians who fed the world, it was Haber & Bosch. It wasn't environmentalists who saved whales from extinction, it was whoever invented that synthetic whale-oil substitute.

While I accept I might be a bit technophilic, I think some of Maciej's recent comments border on ridiculousness. Criticizing not just Google per se, but the very effort at curing death? It's not hubris. _It 's something we should have been focused on doing for at least past few hundred years_. If it takes rich SV guys to finally do something about it, I think instead calling them full of hubris one should instead ask, why it was them who finally started tackling this problem in a way that has at least a chance of being effective.

Another point - Maciej said that "really it's just the regular old world from before, (...) [and] it has the same old problems.". Well, people don't change (fast enough), their problems don't change. But the world looks _very_ different than it looked few hundred, or few thousand years ago. So what changed, if not people?

I say, technology. Personally, I'm getting more and more convinced that social changes are _caused by_ changes in technology landscape, not the other way around. I.e. we didn't have liberal democracy 500 years ago not because we were stupid then, but because technologies that can support it - like the printing press, effective firearms, etc. - did not exist or did not yet reach the point of ubiquity.

So yeah, daily bashing of advertisers and anti-social startups is fun. But let's not pour the baby, the soup and the whole medicine cabinet out with the bathwater.

<comment><USER9>
        ... curing death? It's not hubris. It's something we should have been focused
        on doing for at least past few hundred years. If it takes rich SV guys to
        finally do something about it, I think instead calling them full of hubris one
        should instead ask, why it was them who finally started tackling this problem ...

I totally appreciate what you're saying. You're saying "the rich SV guys are right, why haven't we been trying to cure death? Obviously curing death would be amazing! Death is awful!".

But the fact that people whose expertise is primarily in software, entrepreneurship, and/or investing, who all have, I think we can safely say, _limited_ experience as biology researchers, the fact that these people are making predictions about when death will be cured and judgements as to which approaches are most promising, predictions and judgements that are not deferred to _actual biologists who study senescence_...there are of course upsides to such hubris (e.g. being unaffected by perverse incentives in the academic system in which biologists traditionally work), but surely you can see that there is hubris here?

In spite of all the caveats like how academia sucks, at the end of the day, the _actual biologists who study senescence_ are still understood to be the experts on the feasibility of immortality. Making any kind of prediction or judgement call that isn't deferring to the acknowledged experts is incontrovertibly arrogant.

To be clear, we wouldn't be leveling this criticism if "rich SV guys" were simply increasing financial support for aging research. There are undoubtedly controversies around actors raising money for medical research (e.g. because it arguably results in disproportionate funding for diseases of old rich white people), but nobody criticizes those celebrities of hubris, either.

This criticism is because there are people in Silicon Valley who earnestly, genuinely believe that because they're hackers not biologists, they're gonna cure death by hacking biology. Even if you believe they're right, how can you deny the arrogance?

        ... finally started tackling this problem in a way that has at least a chance
        of being effective.

And this part is why this hubris is harmful: the dismissal of the efforts of anyone other than the "rich SV guys" of even having "at least a chance of being effective".

        politics is one of the least cost-effective way of solving *anything* one
        can imagine

Which way of solving institutionalized slavery, or women's suffrage, or totalitarianism do you think would've been more "cost-effective" than politics?

At least one of those was _directly caused_ by technology, and solved by politics and its siblings, economics and war.

<comment><USER9> _I moved this out of the parent comment because I really want you to read the parent comment and was worried about the wall-of-text; hopefully, you 'll be interested enough to read the continuation, too._

        it's not politicians who fed the world, it was Haber & Bosch

Without diminishing their accomplishments, it's important to note that Haber & Bosch have come and gone but world hunger _still isn 't solved_. And it will never be solved by technology alone. It's going to require politics, and economics, and unfortunately probably war. Hopefully technology can provide an important supporting role, but the realization that technology will only be providing a supporting role, that's exactly the humility I'm arguing for.

Also, in what way were Haber & Bosch representative of "rich SV guys" or techie hubris? Maciej has never seemed to me to be criticizing mainstream scientific research at all.

        It wasn't environmentalists who saved whales from extinction,
        it was whoever invented that synthetic whale-oil substitute.
        ...
        Personally, I'm getting more and more convinced that social
        changes are caused by changes in technology landscape, not the
        other way around.

Isn't synthetic whale-oil a clear counterexample to this causative claim? Surely you agree that research into whale-oil substitute was driven at least in part by environmentalism, it wasn't the invention of synthetic whale-oil substitute that incited people into caring about the environment.

And again, in what way is the invention of whale-oil substitute representative of the hubris that Maciej is criticizing?

        we didn't have liberal democracy 500 years ago not because we
        were stupid then, but because technologies that can support it

Didn't the Greeks have democracy 2500 years ago? The Roman Republic also had a form of democracy, which lasted longer than the US is old, our technology may well turn out not "support it" any better than theirs.

This reminds me of a quote from a talk I read recently:

        More broadly, we have to stop treating computer technology as something
        unprecedented in human history.
        ... let's at least learn from our past, so we can fail in interesting
        new ways, instead of failing in the same exasperating ways as last time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It is ironic that the people most qualified to grasp the problem of essential, irreducible complexity are software developers. That many don't shows that something very fundamental in the underpinning of computer science has been lost: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11932963](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11932963)

</comment><comment><USER23> > There is also prior art in attempts at achieving immortality, limitless > wealth, and Galactic domination.

Hum... Except for very primitive ones, based on religion, I actually can not think of any such previous attempt. Does anybody knows what the author is talking about?

<comment><USER24> I think the tone is a little sarcastic, if you attenuate the claims a little bit, it would include projects like the Third Reich, the Soviet Union, etc.

<comment><USER23> Ok, maybe, but those have no relation at all with creating technology that will improve people's life. If this is what the author thinks as a joke, I should grant less effort in understand his other points.

Before you pointed that, I was expecting them to somehow relate with the Industrial Revolution and the exploitation fo the New World. Those are much more appealing metaphors, but I couldn't get anything that we'd be refusing to learn from them.

<comment><USER24> They were both about improving life through technology! It just happens they missed other important perspectives. That's part of what the talk is about, people with new found powers not sufficiently considering the consequences of their actions.

I would also say that the World Wars in fact do relate to the industrial revolution, as part of the reason they were so horrible was the new found power provided by scientific industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> _The reality is, opting out of surveillance capitalism means opting out of much of modern life._

There is now a surveillance online politics built on top of "surveillance capitalism."

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra Hidden in the article is an example how moralizing destroys soul:

> Abortion has been illegal in Poland for some time, but the governing party > wants to tighten restrictions on abortion by investigating every miscarriage > as a potential crime.

One day, you are "pro life", and the next day, you are happy to harrass people in terrible life situation.

<comment><USER26> The way I interpret these contradictions is that words in ideology are largely instrumental. They achieve a goal that is seldom stated explicitly. That's how yu get aporia like pro-life bombings of abortion clinics and people promulgating family values that refuse to recognize certain families.

<comment> guard-of-terra My point is that they pay with their soul (or you can call it "integrity"), up front, and then maybe achieve a questionable goal.

<comment><USER27> Possibly.

An alternative explanation is that the stated goal (reducing abortion) wasn't the actual goal.

For example, if controlling/subjugating women was the actual goal, then more actions taken in the context of 'pro-life' activism makes sense.

<comment> guard-of-terra "if controlling/subjugating women was the actual goal"

Then to begin with they had no soul.

<comment><USER4> Please continue, you're on a roll.

<comment><USER28> Are you sure that he's not a troll?

<comment><USER4> By no means. But then, I _was_ just out for a stroll.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> >How will more smarts give us peace in the Middle East?

Less religion (or at least less true believers). In addition to intelligence, technology can also increase the comfort of everyday life. Comfort + rational thinking = less likely to risk your life killing others.

<comment><USER13> You'd think that, but there's been a huge swath of engineering school graduates joining ISIS and similar organizations. It's not that ISIS is recruiting them, something about engineering students [makes them more likely to join ISIS]([https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey- cage/wp/2015/11/1...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey- cage/wp/2015/11/17/this-is-the-group-thats-surprisingly-prone-to-violent- extremism/))

<comment> rm_-rf_slash The engineering school of the university I work at is plastered with posters urging students it's not too late just make the call don't make the jump. If it weren't so tragic it would be funny that it's the only college that seems to have that problem

So I guess ISIS appeals to the ones who would rather go out with a bang.

<comment><USER30> I was thinking about this the other night:

In the world of an RPG why does my character go off and become an Adventurer instead of living a quiet, humble, out of the way life?

In that fantasy world the normal quality of life isn't that good, and if you're just sitting around you're probably going to be picked off by some a-hole before natural old age.

In that fantasy world if you go out and TRY to have adventure your hard work, blood, and tears usually result in a better outcome. You did good, you get good rewards.

I think the real reason our society feels so vulnerable to 'radicalization' is that there is a distinct breakdown in 'the dream'; in the belief that you can put forth work and actually be rewarded. Or even in the ability to take that risk without starving/growing ill and ending up in a poverty spiral.

The people demand fulfillment, and meaningful lives; they want dignity and respect for their contribution to the whole.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> tldr: learn from history

Apropos as YC looks into giving everyone money and designing cities from first principles.

<comment><USER32> Designing cities has a long history going back to about 4000 years ago in Egypt. I imagine the YC folks will be aware.

Basic income less so though there are precedents in those with inherited incomes and the landed gentry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I just want to point out that "moral economy" is an oxymoron.

<comment><USER19> Adam Smith at least wrote "Wealth of Nations" after writing "Theory of Moral Sentiments" to drill down into the morality of money. His point in it is that capitalism is a moral improvement on Mercantilism.

<comment><USER33> Yeah I think I failed to communicate my point.

In the Bhagavad Gita (chapter 2 verse 49) there's a statement to the effect that those who work for the fruits of their effort are misers.</comment></comment></comment>


Dear HN: Don't Screw up Email 2.0 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.brennanmceachran.com/post/dear-internet-dont-screw-up-email-2.0

<comment><USER2> There are some neat ideas in that post, but without a solid security and validation framework built in, I'd be reluctant to add more application capabilities to email clients.

I definitely agree that email as it is today is broken for all those reasons listed and more.

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely. I'm assuming we solve the security and validation problems before all of this gets added in.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Mr. Poole - A butler for Jekyll - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mmcclimon/mr_poole

<comment><USER2> Funny how we had the same idea for the name: [https://github.com/jvzr/MrPoole](https://github.com/jvzr/MrPoole)

But kudos to the OP for delivering. I switched over to Middleman, so mine will never be publicly released.

<comment><USER3> Make that another one: [https://github.com/bearwithclaws/poole](https://github.com/bearwithclaws/poole) (2 years ago!)

Never really released as well. Kudos for releasing it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha! It seems like the obvious name if you're going to write a helper application for Jekyll. Most of the things I saw poking around were to generate scaffolding, which Jekyll can do by itself now.

I was annoyed with manually moving files around, so obviously the solution was to spend many more hours than I ever would have spent doing that writing this instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was a lot less imaginative and wrote a little Emacs mode called Hyde which can be used to manage a Jekyll blog - [https://github.com/nibrahim/hyde](https://github.com/nibrahim/hyde)

</comment><comment><USER5> Very similar to this set of Rake tasks: [https://github.com/gummesson/jekyll- rake-boilerplate](https://github.com/gummesson/jekyll-rake-boilerplate)

Looks good regardless

</comment><comment><USER6> It might end like moot.it. Just saying.

<comment><USER7> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_Case_of_Dr_Jekyll_and_M...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_Case_of_Dr_Jekyll_and_Mr_Hyde#Mr._Poole)</comment></comment>


Robert Scoble: "No, of that I'm innocent." - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6328998633287090176 <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15551968](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15551968).

</comment><comment><USER3> But it is a dupe of this submission:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15551968](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15551968)

And the submitter commented in that prior to submitting this. So it isn't an innocent mistake where they didn't know it had already been submitted.

<comment><USER2> This originally replied to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15552984](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15552984) but we moved that comment to the other thread and this one wouldn't make sense there.</comment></comment>


A man who can build a car by hand leads Ford into future; He's just never afraid - <AUTHOR> https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/ford/2019/06/19/ford-executive-jim-farley-toyota/1299871001/ <comment><AUTHOR> Fascinating story on one of the two people who will be the next CEO of Ford. Most car execs are bean counters and it's hurt the industry.

Here's a guy who can restore a car by hand. Someone who has rebuilt an engine and raced at Le Mans. Even worked in Phil Hill's shop as a kid. That doesn't mean he will ultimately get the job but he's from the old mold that built Detroit.</comment>


Why Has Google Forsaken MetaFilter? - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/05/metafilter_layoffs_why_has_google_forsaken_the_legendary_internet_forum.single.html <comment><USER2> And this is why I got out of organic SEO. You have essentially one client, and that is El Goog. A site can see product sales revenue drop 50% _overnight_ after a bad Google dance, and it can take weeks to work out how you've offended it. I only used whitehat techniques mind.

Most people bleat "just write good conteeeeent" and have no idea how Google ranking actually works. I guess what was most galling was seeing certain retail sites getting away with blatant spam while your own sites got mysteriously slammed.

I don't blame Google though - it's a direct result of having a single player market. So go, duckduck, go :)

<comment><USER3> Especially now that Google is a "content provider," sites like Metafilter have to battle Youtube, Google+ etc for ranking. Guess who's winning? Traffic is going away from other sites to Google's own properties and there's isn't a damn thing metafilter et al can do: Google handles ranking, display and ads.

Commercial sites now have to deal with a full page of ads before the real results so their fate is sealed another way. In other words, we need 4-5 search engines, not one giant monopoly that seeks to increase ad clicks by underhanded methods each quarter.

<comment><USER2> I sifted through _a lot_ of traffic data, and it must be noted that I saw zero evidence of El Goog manually weighting any results. Everything was 100% above board - they might donkey-punch you, but it was algorithmic and not manual.

I bet MeFi could be fixed in a few months if they hired a _real_ SEO expert, ie someone who understands the underlying ranking algos and not just the usual voodoo bullcrap. The site is probably just tripping a few red flags, it could be something as stupid as an accidental link loop in their dynamic content.

I'll give it to Google, once you find your sin and fix it, your traffic _will_ come back, maybe not 100% but a significant recovery. (Unless you have done something really dumb/blackhat like paid links.)

<comment><USER4> > they might donkey-punch you, but it was algorithmic and not manual.

This is not always the case. Look at the Rapgenius event. That was triggered by manual intervention.

>I bet MeFi could be fixed in a few months if they hired a real SEO expert, ie someone who understands the underlying ranking algos

There isn't anyone on the outside that truly understands them because they constantly adjust them to deal with abuse. It is possible that one of these adjustments killed MeFi and it wasn't a recent mistake on MeFi's part.

<comment><USER2> You are correct that manual penalties can be applied, I worded my previous comment badly. What I mean is they don't appear to "manually" tamper with the result weightings eg by using a whitelist of upweighted domains.

While they can slap a manual -50 penalty on your domain, from memory you are notified of such penalties in Google Analytics so it's not a silent and nefarious manipulation. MeFi should know if they have such a penalty. I also admit that the "get out of jail" process is even more annoying than dealing with an Apple app store rejection.

<comment><USER5> Webmaster tools, not analytics, and it's buried in a sub menu and has the most confusing text and only gives one example link.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Searching for "most amazing woman ever" on Bing will give you MetaFilter's helpful "Who is the most amazing woman who ever lived" as the third result. (Answers, by the way, included British spy and French Resistance leader Nancy Wake, world's first programmer Ada Lovelace, slave rescuer and activist Harriet Tubman, and Chinese pirate Ching Shih.) Google puts it at the bottom of the second page of results, in 19th place. Google's top result? A list of "the 100 most beautiful women ever." "

That made me wonder whether Google has shifted its products from being the kind of thing that their own employee corps would enjoy to things for the general public. I personally f.i. enjoyed the from: to: keywords in Google Maps search. That feature disappeared and probably the majority of users wouldn't use those anyway. Personally I scorn at a search result of the '100 most beautiful women'. But in the large population it will probably lead to a much higher click through. So I wonder if Google Search was oriented towards the smart crowd niche and that they changed focus towards the common and the populous. To put it differently: a shift from an emphasis in information as high value search result towards including entertainment, gossip etc. High brow to low brow.

<comment><USER7> > I personally f.i. enjoyed the from: to: keywords in Google Maps search. That > feature disappeared and probably the majority of users wouldn't use those > anyway.

I still use that feature every day. I have a smart keyword setup so that I just type:

      maps from LAX to San Francisco

into the URL bar and get taken straight to a Google Maps page showing me that route [1]. Forgive me if I've misunderstood you and you're talking about something else, but this feature still exists. AFAIK I'm using the latest version of Google maps.

[1] [https://www.google.co.uk/maps/preview?q=from+lax+to+san+fran...](https://www.google.co.uk/maps/preview?q=from+lax+to+san+francisco)

<comment><USER8> In classic Google Maps you could find a multi-leg route by searching with the syntax "from:san francisco to:los angeles to:new york" [1] whereas in new Google Maps the same query just shows you San Francisco [2].

The new Google Maps will do multi-point routes [3], but by default when you enter San Francisco to Los Angeles it chooses flights, and hides the option to enter a multi-point route. You have to switch to car directions to get the option to enter more than one point, and enter them one at a time not use the nice from-to-to syntax.

Pretty crap for power users - but I guess ad-supported products make their money by being mass market, and catering to power users isn't very important.

[1] [https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=from:san+francisco+to:los+a...](https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=from:san+francisco+to:los+angeles+to:new+york) [2] [https://www.google.co.uk/maps/search/from:san+francisco+to:l...](https://www.google.co.uk/maps/search/from:san+francisco+to:los+angeles+to:email@example.com,-122.3906075,12z/data=!3m1!4b1) [3] [https://www.google.co.uk/maps/dir/San+Francisco,+CA,+USA/Los...](https://www.google.co.uk/maps/dir/San+Francisco,+CA,+USA/Los+Angeles,+CA,+USA/New+York,+NY,+firstname.lastname@example.com,-107.0308321,5z)

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the clarification.

It also bugs me that there's no way to enter the mode of transportation as part of the URL query string. I'd love to be able to use smart keyword syntax like:

      from London to Cambridge by bike

      from Glasgow to Manchester by bus

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I see Matt Cutts has been talking to Mathowie about Metafilter's problems: [https://twitter.com/mattcutts/status/469235750932725761](https://twitter.com/mattcutts/status/469235750932725761)

I can't help feeling that there's something wrong when the only way to find out why Google has downgraded your site is to attract the attention of one of the core search developers. I get that Google wants to keep it's ranking algorithms secret for fear of black hat SEO poisoning the well even more than it does already. Given Google's dominant position in the search market at the same time it seems wrong to downgrade sites in this fashion with no clarity or visibility over the process whatsoever.

<comment><USER5> Matt Cutts got absolutely slammed here on Sunday:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7763923](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7763923)

It felt like they'd been some sort of tipping point reached and people were just furious with Google for being so opaque.

I've never seen people be so antagonistic with him.

Then again the w/e HN crowd seems to be pretty vicious compared to the week one. (and I honestly feel less intelligent).

<comment><USER9> Wow: That really was a pile on wasn't it? Looks like mcutts is catching some of the backdraft from Google's infamous lack of customer service (to paying advertisers, content providers and everyone else) here to a certain extent.

<comment><USER10> Well Matt is a relentless explainer of Google's position. That earns him a lot of credibility and support when the position makes sense, but if what they are doing ultimately is considered harmful, then he's going to look like an apologist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think Metafilter needs to spend more time exploring SEO and perhaps a site redesign. It may be a great site (people say it is), but if it has a poor backlink profile, stale content, and a high bounce rate, it's not going to rank as well even for better content.

Craigslist is a great site too, and you don't see it highly ranked in Google for many queries.

<comment><USER12> absolutely, the website looks very 90s, none of the links look like links and its too myspace in appearance (old myspace) - I would bounce if results landed me on that site without even reading the content.

<comment><USER13> Are you saying that Google ranks sites based on appearance?

<comment><USER14> They take immediate bounces into account, so if people bounce based on appearance then yes.

<comment><USER13> That's a big 'if.'

<comment><USER15> I try to avoid it because it looks like garbage. Even though the content is good, I feel the site is not authoritative because it looks like some guy's geocities page.

<comment><USER16> I agree that the design is a bit old-fashioned, but to me sites are about the content, so as long as I can get the information I want without getting a migraine, I'll ignore it. Authoritative comes from content, not looks.

In fact, to me MeFi and HN are about the same, design-wise...

<comment><USER15> Hacker news has a sane color scheme. Ask Metafilter has barf yellow on swamp green.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I feel like a few people are missing the point as to why MetaFilter dropped in their rankings. It was likely not a manual penalty but rather a change in regards to the Panda algorithm. According to this article ([https://medium.com/technology- musings/941d15ec96f0](https://medium.com/technology-musings/941d15ec96f0)) the drop happened in November of 2012. It doesn't say which date, but November 5 and November 21 were both days that Google refreshed the Panda algorithm.

Panda was created to filter down poor content and filter up good content. Sometimes it gets it wrong, but generally if a site is being filtered down it's because there are too many pages of the site in the index that are apparently not helpful to users.

I do think that the design has a lot to do with MetaFilter's demise. I have landed on this site, and, not knowing what I know now after reading articles about the quality information that is on MetaFilter, I have immediately clicked away because it looked like a spammy page. If enough users do this then this shows Google that users don't want to engage with this site.

I haven't had a deep look into the technical structure of the site but there's a good possibility that with a redesign and a review of their architecture, the site could see a return to normal levels with the next Panda refresh.

<comment><USER18> Looks like it was November 17th according to this: [http://searchengineland.com/metafilter-penalized- google-1921...](http://searchengineland.com/metafilter-penalized- google-192168)

Any additional insight based on that date?

Full disclosure: MetaFilter member reading about this stuff everywhere with interest who joined here to comment. HN seems right up my alley with the simple design though I'm not sure if I'm ever going to be a threaded comments kind of guy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> >>One last one: Searching for "most amazing woman ever" on Bing will give you MetaFilter's helpful "Who is the most amazing woman who ever lived" as the third result. >>Google puts it at the bottom of the second page of results, in 19th place. Google's top result? A list of "the 100 most beautiful women ever."

Unfortunately, American culture (and many cultures around the world) objectify women and value them based on their looks. So Google's search results may just be a true reflection of what people are interested in looking at. Perhaps Bing's algorithms aren't as good as Google's algorithms in estimating what people might be more interested in.

To be clear, I didn't intend my statement as a feminist critique of society (though personally I would agree with this feminist critique). I just used this example as a roundabout way of defending Google's algorithm and saying that Google gives us the search results we deserve (and ask for) and not the search results that (from Auerback's perspective and mine) we _should_ probably be more interested in.

<comment><USER13> That's the crux of the argument, though: Google search results are ranked according to a value system. What does that system prioritize? Not Metafilter; not Harriet Tubman. "Beautiful Women." This is neither right nor wrong, it just is, but Google has to live with what that says about them, and that's entirely fair.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> mathowie goes into detail: [https://medium.com/technology- musings/941d15ec96f0](https://medium.com/technology-musings/941d15ec96f0)

</comment><comment><USER21> I'll be honest - I've been avoiding MetaFilter for years due to the horrific UI/design.

I actually didn't know that the content MetaFilter has supposedly is good because the design is so off-putting that I've never been able to read much of it.

MetaFilter should really do a redesign to a more readable and friendly interface, that is likely to increase usage/reduce bounce rates (and maybe increase the Google rankings).

<comment><USER22> What's so bad about it?

<comment><USER21> I'm far from a designer, but I still like to think I appreciate good design.

1\. The color combinations are really bad. Dirty-yellow on blue/dirty-yellow on green is close to what a designer would chose if they were planning to make something deliberately look ugly.

2\. The titles are in grey while the content text is in white. Why tone down the most important thing on the page?

3\. The spacing between all the objects is weird. The space between the comments is huge - it was likely made that large since they would otherwise flow into each other. They should have separated the comments using other methods in addition to just making the space between them huge.

4\. For long comments with multiple paragraphs and links it can be hard to see where the next comment begin, since the links (in the comment) and the links to the user profile/permalink to post look almost the same.

<comment><USER23> I am not a designer, but I know that I do appreciate good design.

Even back in the early 2000's, Metafilter's simple, clean, relatively information-dense design was a welcome change from most news aggregators out there. Metafilter is supposed to be a place for thoughtful medium-to-long-form discussion. I feel that its clean, consistent, text-focused design serves that purpose well.

Honestly, remove comment nesting, move the comment credit line under the comment, and change the color scheme to white and gold on blue, and HN's comment page looks pretty much exactly the same as Metafilter's.

<comment><USER21> Your last paragraph basically says "remove the biggest flaws with Metafilter's design compared to HN's - and then they are pretty much the same". ;)

I won't go into the color scheme since I guess that is a matter of taste, but at the same time I don't think it's an accident that you don't see the same color combinations used anywhere else ;)

The comment nesting and placement of the comment credit line(s) is actually really important. It is vital to make the different comments easy to visually separate from each other. HN has one line above and one line below each comment, effectively boxing them in. That, plus the comment nesting, makes HN's comment threads easy to read and skim over.

Metafilter on the other hand has just one line below each comment. Unlike on HN, where the line has a lower contrast/eye focus than the comment text, the line on MF is using the same colors as the links in comments. That is completely counter-productive, and objectively bad design.

Since MF doesn't have comment nesting it should do something else to visually separate the comments. Most other sites subtly change the background color, but there are also other ways to do it.

High contrast/big size should be used for things that should be focused on, and small contrast/small size for things that shouldn't be focused on. On HN the contrast between the color and size of the objects mostly make sense (although self posts should have darker text), but on MF it is all over the place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The author admits that his survey was anecdotal.

I'd be interested in seeing a more rigorous data set.

Keyword Phrase, bing ranking, google ranking

<comment><USER25> google webmaster tools

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Metafilter's founder mathowie takes a much more measured tone about Google's role: "A year and a half ago, we woke up one day to see a 40% decrease in revenue and traffic to Ask MetaFilter, likely the result of ongoing Google index updates." ([http://metatalk.metafilter.com/23245/State-of- MetaFilter](http://metatalk.metafilter.com/23245/State-of-MetaFilter))

Google changes. The web itself changes. As seminal as Metafilter has been, it doesn't "deserve" the top slots any more than any other content.

So I find it a little irritating that David Auerbach at Slate has attempted to overdramatize this into something it's really not.

<comment><USER27> _...it doesn 't "deserve" the top slots any more than any other content._

I thought the whole deal with inventing Page Rank and all these smart indexing algorithms - the whole _raison d 'être_ for Google - was _exactly_ because some content was more deserving than other content.

When I do the search for "maybe there is a god," MeFi doesn't show up until page 8 now. The first two pages of results are virtually all videos and lyrics related to a single 12-year-old Christian pop song.

Which is available for sale on Google Play. Hmm.

<comment><USER27> One thing I wanted to mention earlier, didn't have time:

The pop song that comprises the first two pages of results for the "maybe there is a god" search is actually called "Mabye There's A Loving God." That's _close_ to the search text, but it's not an exact match.

The MeFi page mentioned in the article contains _the exact phrase_ "maybe there is a god" _in the title_. And it shows up on page _eight_ of my search results. That is ridiculous.

You can argue that MeFi wasn't singled out on purpose, that algorithms change and there are bigger benefits elsewhere that I'm not seeing in this case and blah blah blah, and I don't know about any of that. No opinion.

But I think you're going to have a hard time arguing that these search results are in any way more accurate, more relevant, or better than the older results were.

And that is very much of a piece with recent, more general criticism of Google's search: That it's simply not as good, not as useful, as it used to be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Hmmm... so Google is becoming less relevant to me. When I search for content, I expect to see more MetaFilter than "100 most beautiful women in the world".

Duck Duck Go... perhaps it's time to switch my search engine?

</comment><comment><USER25> sorry to spoil the fun, but metafilter's SEO / search performance was broken way before the 40% drop.

[http://replycam.com/i/MetaFilter_layoffs__Why_has_Google_for...](http://replycam.com/i/MetaFilter_layoffs__Why_has_Google_forsaken_the_legendary_Internet_forum%3F-20140522-093436.png)

where is the growth, man? and i don't mean the dropoff. the dropoff is just, you know, change. google changes, all the time, user behaviour changes, user expectation changes, the way google treats sites changes, the internet changes. so yes, 40% less traffic via google organic search happens. you don't have any "right" to google traffic, there are a lot of sites out there.

but the thing that seems to be really broken is the "lack of growth" before the dropoff and after it.

SEO overall has these business cases

      * a) if we add x% more landingpages to our site, we gain y% more traffic.
      * b) if we add x% more content to y% of our landingpages, we gain z% more traffic.
      * c) if other sites point x% more links to our landingpages, we gain y% more traffic.
      * d) if we make the user experience of our site better, our traffic gets more sustainable.

as metafilter is a quite popular site with an active community, they should at least do a) and b) quite well, probably doesn't have an issue with c)

as there is and was not growth, then there is probably something rotten going on on the platform level.

some issues from a 5 min check i have outlined here [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7770414](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7770414)

additionally they seem to completely disregard mobile [https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=...](https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fask.metafilter.com%2Ftags%2Fapartment&tab=mobile) and missing out on the probably most important market like ever.

so basically before firing their staff they should have listen to a decent SEO (and implemented some changes) and / or mobile guy.

tl;dr: if your have a popular site with lots and lots of content, but you don't see (organic search) growth then your site is broken, even before google turns of some of your traffic because you know, google.

p.s.: i would love a look into meta-filters google webmaster tools

</comment><comment><USER29> You know what, Google forsakes many sites fairly frequently, even sites that a lot of people like. Why would MetaFilter be spared? Because it's popular with techies and Google can do no evil in their eyes?

<comment><USER30> Disruptions, unpredictability, and random swings in support are all harmful to the ecosystem. _Google 's actions have consequences._

Alternatives are to make yourself far less dependent on Google (all the more reason to support search alternatives, including DDG). But so long as your business is eyeball aggregation, you're going to be at the whim of the aggregators (and that _is_ a control point).

<comment><USER31> I don't disagree with what you said, but it's constantly pointed out that start-ups (etc) should avoid being dependent on x y z for traffic.

There isn't a single business on earth that is not dependent on a 'platform' of one sort or another. Even Google is dependent on other platforms. You merely pick your poison, if you're so lucky, when you run a business. There are always gatekeepers and always will be; and they can cripple you if they choose to, the only variable is how much of an incentive they have to do so, and the damage they'll take by doing so.

Make yourself less dependent on Google? Ok, which means you're going to make yourself more dependent on Facebook, or Twitter, or LinkedIn, or DuckDuckGo, or radio ads, or television ads, or newspaper ads, or billboards, or etc. None of those are benevolent lords just looking out for your own well being. DDG can still chop you up with an algorithm change just as easily as Google can, and at Google's scale every little change would impact businesses just as Google's present changes do, and there would be just as many claims of unfair treatment. DDG can be as transparent and open as they like, that wouldn't change the sour grapes that would be derived from algorithm changes.

<comment><USER32> "Ok, which means you're going to make yourself more dependent on Facebook, or Twitter, or LinkedIn, or DuckDuckGo, or radio ads, or television ads, or newspaper ads, or billboards, or etc."

Being dependent on Google + Facebook + Twitter + LinkedIn is better than being dependent on Google alone.

MetaFilter is just now learning that it did not have a sustainable business model.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Type-safe tagged unions in the D programming language - <AUTHOR> http://www.deadalnix.me/2013/05/10/type-safe-tagged-union-in-d-programming-language/?wyda <comment><USER2> I really don't understand why more languages don't include tagged unions.

For one, even in C, most uses of unions fall into two kinds. There are unions that emulate sub-typing and unions that have a manually implemented tag system. Basically, C programmers have to work around the language's deficiencies manually and hope to avoid errors--nothing surprising, I suppose.

More importantly, tagged unions simply make more sense. They are the mathematical dual of structs, which means that having both exposes a natural symmetry in language design. And, just like in physics, symmetry almost always means you're on the right track!

And, of course, once you have tagged unions and structs, you've added algebraic data types to your language. Now just throw in pattern matching and you have a basic system that is both safer _and_ more expressive than the common alternatives. What's not to like?

This is one of the many reasons I'm very excited about Rust and not excited _at all_ about Go.

<comment><USER3> In what way are tagged unions "the mathematical dual of structs"?

<comment><USER2> Structs are an example of a "universal construction" called a _product_. Other examples of this include cartesian products, logical AND and join in a lattice (e.g. getting the least upper bound of two partially ordered elements).

For types, this is defined exclusively based on the functions it has. Roughly speaking, the product of two types A and B is the "simplest" structure that has a function to A and a function to B--that is, if you imagine a nice diagram, there is an arrow from A × B to A and an arrow from A × B to B. For structs, these two functions are just field accesses.

The notion of "simplest" here essentially just means that given any other object C with these criteria--that is, a function to A and a function to B-- there has to also exist a function C to A × B. I'm skipping some details, but you should get the general gist.

The notion of duality just means taking the above diagram and flipping all the arrows. So the co-product of two types A and B is the "simplest" type A + B that has a function from A to A + B and a function from B to A + B. These functions correspond to tagging elements from A or B as appropriate.

For logical AND, the dual is logical OR. For getting the least upper bound, the dual is getting the greatest _lower_ bound. And, following that same logic, for structs the dual is tagged unions.

I hope that made sense. This is the sort of thing that's _much_ easier to describe interactively with a whiteboard instead of trying to just use ASCII-- it practically _begs_ me to draw some diagrams, but my ASCII art is simply not up to par :(.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> D is a great language. I just found out today about a feature called "Uniform Function Call Syntax" which acts similarly to extension methods in C#. Essentially, you can call any function with a prototype of:

func(T, ...)

as

t.func(...)

where t is an instance of some type T. This may seem trivial, but it allows for functions to be added to a class or type which is out of your control.

For example, the function to convert a 'string' to a C-style zero terminated string is:

toStringz(string s).

calling the function as s.toStringz() has a much more natural feel, and allows for a much more modular approach than "throw everything in the class", since it can just simply be added on as a uniform function in another module (toStringz is a library feature on the concrete string type). This even works on basic types:

(5.0).sqrt();

!!

<comment><USER5> Seems like a less type-safe version of Scala's implicit value classes, but I might be wrong?

<comment><USER6> It looks pretty similar. I think both mechanisms have pretty much the same type constraints.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Kind of sad. I really like tagged types, and I advocate for their usage when appropriate, but from this article it seems like D doesn't have native support for them.

I really wish more languages had really simple tagged type support. Sometimes I don't need full on inheritance, things like packet formats would benefit greatly from a dead simple minimal implementation.

</comment><comment><USER8> Makes me happy to see more and more topics on D-lang.

<comment><USER9> I doubt that is a sign of D finally gathering momentum, though. Just a few D users discovering hacker news.

D is a failed language design (among countless others) if you ask me. I remember originally it was meant to be a "cleaned up, modernized C++ replacement" but these days it seems to lack any coherent concept.

Rust certainly runs circles around it if you want a "cleaned up, modernized C++ replacement" and thus already has much more momentum than - by now old - D.

Is there any reason to assume that D can still manage to break out of its "obscure enthusiast language" position? That is not a rhetorical question, I am genuinely curious.

<comment><USER10> The concept of modern D is:

1\. Easy to read and understand code 2\. Provably correct 3\. Industrial quality

<comment><USER11> That sounds nothing like the C++ I know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is this really type safe? Does anything prevent the address of a member being taken, followed by an assignment to a member of different type (destroying the validity of the pointer)?

You can make tagged unions type safe if you eliminate storage that is interpreted in more than one way. You can do it by requiring immutability, introducing indirection, or by copying the type-variant part. Unless I'm missing something (very possible), this technique doesn't seem to do any of those things, so I don't see how it can be sound.

</comment><comment><USER13> This works in C++ just as well: <http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_53_0/doc/html/variant.html></comment>


How To Be A Great Startup CEO - <AUTHOR> http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/34321/14-Ways-To-Be-A-Great-Startup-CEO.aspx

<comment><USER2> I saw a title of "14 Ways" and was ready to criticise, but this is an impressively practical list.

Two additional qualities I prioritise in a startup CEO are 1) the knack for making friends with a room full of strangers under hostile circumstances and 2) a terrific amount of empathy. Social comfort has obvious applications in sales & fundraising, while empathy is key for knowing how far to go with the other points you raised. For example, buffering the team from pain is good, but going too far removes their sense of agency and destroys morale. Same with firm decision-making.. the balance between spending time explaining and simply saying "do it" is a very human issue with big long-term performance implications.

So many questions in a startup are completely arbitrary... how much equity do you give to that early employee? When's it going to do more good than harm to ship the entire office out to the pub for an afternoon of camaraderie? Each member of an early startup has exclusive access to such a significant chunk of the company's institutional memory that being able to walk that efficient/emotional line seems increasingly important.

While I largely agree that a traditional management education/experience is damaging, I do think that theory & book learning have important roles to play. The biggest is an understanding of how your industry fits together and how the business models work (which you could certainly pick up from a uni course or book if anyone chose to teach it). You see a lot of websites using subscriptions because that's what the sites they use do when there's actually a much better model out there for them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback Rob :). I changed the 14 ways title on HN within a couple of minutes. For the blog, those titles seem to do well (we've tested the crap out of this). Definitely two other great traits. I probably could have made it 114 traits. It's all about people, you're right. The amount of equity isn't about the number, but what within reason keeps them motivated, passionate, and feel like they're doing something big.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Awesome article. How important do you think is experience in attaining these vs good instincts/personal qualities?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you :). Experience is good for self awareness. Eventually you f __k up on something enough, you recognize it. That's why it's good to dip your toes into the waters early. It prepares you for the big company that you one day hope to build. A lot of it just develops over time. Surround yourself with good advisors that will help you catch these early.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Fred Wilson recently used the following (which he borrowed from one of his mentors): "A CEO does only three things. Sets the overall vision and strategy of the company and communicates it to all stakeholders. Recruits, hires, and retains the very best talent for the company. Makes sure there is always enough cash in the bank."

I like concise, so I like this.

Jason has obviously expanded on that, but omitted the all important cash flow advice, not that it detracts from the piece.

</comment><comment><USER5> I especially liked the "Have An Uncanny Ability To Say No".

Will keep a tag to this set and revisit it at least yearly. It's a good reminder of how to keep growing - and in the right direction.

Had at least one "should have said no" in the prior year. 6000 eur to visual planning from which we ended up using the logo only. Should have said no. :&</comment>


Hackers' alternatives to spreadsheets? - <AUTHOR>

Wonder if someone has found a bearable alternative to spreadsheets: I like the program-by-example at times, but it is simply unhelpful to see a formula as =A4+Sum(B:B)+Count('A',C:C) (I'm making this up, but the non-intuitive/confusing nature is clear).
I'm not looking at solutions that require writing scripts: the most I'm doing is juggling experimental data to look for trends anyway.
Really something to Excel what latex is to Word.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> I have been playing with Resolver One <http://www.resolversystems.com/> It is a Python Powered Spreadsheet.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you like perl, and want expression compactness, try the perl data language. To quote

 _"One can write simple perl expressions to manipulate entire numerical arrays all at once. For example, using PDL the Perl variable $a can hold a 1024x1024 floating point image, it only takes 4MB of memory to store it and expressions like $a=sqrt($a)+2 manipulate the whole image in a few milliseconds. "_

<http://pdl.perl.org/>

</comment><comment><USER4> SciPy: <http://www.scipy.org/>

R: <http://www.r-project.org/>

</comment><comment><USER5> I've always been annoyed at Excel and always wanted to build something better. I think generally one wants something halfway between a database and a spreadsheet...

There's also SAS, which I like, but took years of brain-twisting to understand. There's always R/splus as well.

Supposedly Tableau is good, but I've never tried it.

</comment><comment><USER6> You can have my Excel when you pry it from my cold dead hands.

But seriously, like with any programming language, once you get used to the syntax it becomes intuitive. The advantage I see for using spreadsheets is that they are portable. You can send someone an Excel spreadsheet and they can look at it, play with it a little, and send it back.

R or Mathematica can do the calculations (and are more powerful than spreadsheets), but you lose the portability.

For simple stuff that I don't need to share I often use interactive Ruby from the Terminal too.

</comment><comment><USER7> Not what you were looking for, but Excel has long had a feature that allows you to assign names to ranges, and it's a big time saver. alternatively, you might like to check out Mathematica.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. A friend pointed it out to me just now :)

Still, it really doesn't seem to make much difference (or maybe, I'm not using Excel (actually OpenOffice) right).

Haven't tried Mathematica yet; though it has sounded interesting for a long time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> awk? I have been messing with this project: <http://aql.googlecode.com> so that I can quickly do sql-like things with flat files/output where ever it suits me. I need to check in latest code but it is coming along nicely! I believe it fits your description as I built it with the intention of it becoming part of my "unix eco system" in that I can pipe to it etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very very interesting :)

I actually don't use SQL for querying anything (as I said, I'm more looking for seeing how much values deviate from the mean etc), but this looks cool.

One question in relation to your project is why not simply use awk, filter data, pipe to a sqlite db and then query with "real" SQL? I'm curious to know why you choose to write a parser for SQL rather than a lint-thing for CSV..

<comment><USER8> Because a lot of what I do when profiling systems involves parsing through, joining and filtering massive (constantly changing) log files. Rather than pumping it into sql why not just leverage the unix command line tools? Basically all aql does is create the awk command for you but with the veneer of sql instead of AWKward (haha) syntax where I refer to fields as numbers etc.

Also writing the sql "parser" was entirely trivial in that I just match keywords then split it into a hash and build the command accordingly. I dug that approach because it means the sql can be in any order, commas are white space and I can easily extend the syntax i.e. "fields, separator, columns (for setting widths)" etc. without much work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> plain text with tabulated data and Awk

<comment><AUTHOR> Trying this now, thanks!</comment></comment>


NASA: Four Astronauts Will Stay on the Moon for Two Weeks - <AUTHOR> https://futurism.com/nasa-moon-visitors-stay-longer-apollo <comment><USER2> While the rest of the world is busy eliminating human beings from dangerous work sites (factories, mines, etc.) it seems counter-intuitive and wasteful to focus on sending humans, and fund research in this direction (with space suits, life support modules, etc.) instead of focusing on developing more agile robots that would be able to do assembly and maintenance (even if they are not really completely autonomous but remote controlled, like surgery robots).

I get that latency could be an issue ultimately, but here we're talking about the moon (3 seconds RTT).</comment>