Ask HN: How are you onboarding and managing your remote teams? - <AUTHOR> Looking for leaders of remote teams (engineering or non-engineering) to share advice/experience on the following areas.
Onboarding: What do you do upon hiring to help new team members ramp up? How do you ensure they feel like they're part of the team/culture? How do you provide support and direction as they figure out their role and the codebase/responsibilities?
Management: How do you support these team members and manage their growth? What tools to do you use for communication/collaboration (e.g. Slack, task management tools, etc)?
Culture: Do you bring everyone together IRL at a certain cadence (annually?) for team building? What other activities/things do you do to foster culture and team building?
Anything you'd be willing to share would be really helpful and appreciated! <comment><USER2> I can speak to the onboarding on the Eng side:

* Good readmes. Every project is required to have a readme.md that's not boilerplate. Since every team is different, the quality of the readmes range from well-organized to stream of consciousness. But the point of the readme is that it's the very first document when on-boarding and contains instructions to set the project up, as well as git blame information so the new person can find the right person to bug for more information.

* Pair programming. There's no silver bullet for onboarding and you just need to accept the friction. Having new devs pair with experienced devs as they go through their daily workflow is the most useful way, IMHO, to get comfortable with the codebase and transmit cultural norms and values.

<comment><USER3> One thing that I find helpful in readmes is an ordered list of pointers to particular parts of the codebase that one should read to get an understanding of the overall structure. This is particularly helpful if the walkthrough of the conceptual framework of the project hosted externally on sites like [https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.0/intro/tutorial01/](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.0/intro/tutorial01/) because that conceptual framework was designed specifically for this project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We have some people working remote and it´s difficult to include them. But we skype with them for face-to-face meetings and at the beginning, everyone is saying something about himself. I would also recommend communicating via Chat like Slack or something similar. If there is an upcoming team event I would also consider to send them an invitation regardless if they are able to come but they might feel more like they are welcome. We also give them a briefing with some research tasks to get to know the company and the new job. Afterwards, the team leader will get in touch with them, explain everything and help them settle down into the team.

For collaboration, task management and project management we use our own tool Zenkit ([https://zenkit.com](https://zenkit.com)). It´s easy to get started because you can use different views. If you used another tool, it´s more likely that you want to use the same view in Zenkit to get started.

</comment><comment><USER5> You can do the 2 weeks onsite onboarding thing, the issue is that once you starting hiring developers with families, that becomes a negative more than a positive.

We use a combination of a good quality trello board with some standard activities, good 1o1 scheduling for the first 2 weeks, and scoping out small independent tickets that gives an engineer a solid base to build on.

Slack has been invaluable, and also setting a standard of face to face webcam meetings being non optional. Yes even in a remote role.

Even in 2018, theres no replacement for being able to look at someone face to face and ask them "anything on your mind ?"

Other good things, having a regular all hands to get the entire team on the same page, and scheduling company retreats

</comment><comment><USER6> I currently have 12 direct reports, approximately 50/50 split between remote and HQ engineers.

Onboarding: I create onboarding documents for every incoming engineer broken down by week with 1 or 2 "people to meet" items in the checklist. There is one person in HQ, one person remote (if available) for a remote engineer onboarding. If the engineer is in HQ, they don't have a remote person assigned but they're tasked to meet with everybody on the team. The expectation is within the first couple of weeks to have met at least once with everybody on the team. There are some suggested questions _only if they ask_ (I like to let people feel around and will ask if they feel comfortable talking to strangers, etc).

Management: I'm fairly process oriented, but believe in very light weight processes where every step in the process has some value to an actual person. When we plan our tasks, I ask for rollups on what we're really trying to do and why. This enables me to talk about people's work and know what I'm talking about. The benefit is that we give coherent answers, and have a list of things that are ongoing that are at a higher level than tasks and lower than long- term plans (2 week segments).

For growth, every half I ask a series of questions about their aspirations for the next 6 months and align them to our company's evaluative criteria. I write it down, share with them to edit and correct (this makes sure I understand it). Then at the end of every month, we spend time in our 1:1 to read through and make changes. It goes from a fictional forward looking statement to a writeup of what's been done. It helps frame the larger items that are easy to forget, and a place to put in the small unexpected wins. At the end of the half it is a great asset to see what they've done and for me to bring into performance review conversations.

For culture and team-building, I push for quarterly get togethers (which turns into every 6 months, coordinating a lot of people is hard). Mostly I try to make sure folks are working together and not just adjacent (working on different things in a team is not teamwork). The team also drives conversations to email or scheduled conversations, so folks don't have to be watching Slack to see a decision that may impact them and be lucky they're around (we have a lot of timezone spread, too).

Hope this helps!

</comment><comment><USER7> Been working remotely since the turn of the century. The answers to all these depend on whether there is a place where most of the team is located, or whether it's a totally distributed team. Also depend on whether the new person is new to your team but not the company and/or new to working remotely from their team, and working from home versus working in a remote site. So adapt as needed.

For on-boarding, if there is a large mass of people in one site, then bringing the person in relatively early in on-boarding is really helpful. It builds connections that can make it easier to ask questions after the new hire has returned home, and allows for faster acclimation to startup, plus a way to peek over other people's shoulders to see how they use tools, interact, mannerisms, etc. Makes it easier to feel like a part of the team.

If there's not a site where there's a critical mass of employees, but there is one or more colleagues nearby, it can be worth it to set up a welcome lunch get together just so that the new employee has at least one IRL contact. If not, well, that's fine too.

As manager/team lead, spend lots of time with the new person on tools, culture, etc. Introduction, video chat, etc. from the start, plus your communication tools (hangouts, skype, GoToMeeting, whatever for collaboration). Everything you'd do for an employee on-site (if that's a thing), plus more frequent check-ins because you can't see face and body language as easily, and are not necessarily yet as familiar with communication patterns. Establish your minimum requirements for things like status/tasks/synchronization. You'll learn to interpret your new hire's patterns (is that silence because she's thinking or because she's distracted or because she disagrees) over time, but at first, ask and wait, especially if your new employee is new to remote work and doesn't yet know how to maintain communication from afar. But that's part of any on-boarding.

Make sure that the kit that the new hire gets includes a decent headset from the start - this is critical for participating fully.

For a distributed team, getting together can be crucial, but there have also been times when I haven't gotten together with teammates for a couple of years, and some I've never met IRL. Different continents, too costly, etc. If/when you do get everyone together, plan for real work as well as downtime and team building, and remember that folks who work remotely aren't necessarily used to being surrounded by their colleagues and always being "on" in the same way. Plan meals and expect some to opt out. Allow for jetlag if people are coming from far-away places. Have an agenda, and also have time for some sort of team-building activities, even if they're simple things like a picnic in the park or a play or beach outing or something.

Also, if you're doing a retreat type thing or renting house/resort together for out of town folks, please be cognizant of individual differences, and any outliers. The lone vegan or omnivore or person with hearing challenges or mobility issues doesn't have any issues working at their regular location, but at a group gathering, those challenges can loom large enough to be serious impediments to the goal of connecting coworkers. I'm often the only woman in the call or on the conference room, but there is no way I will be the only woman in the house so don't rent a single AirBnB and expect me to attend comfortably while sharing a bathroom with my male colleagues and eating breakfast in our jammies. OTOH, being the only one NOT in the house is just as bad as still being remote. Of course, other individuals not have an issue with these sorts of things. So think through these F2F meetings, especially for smaller companies. As with all remote worker issues, the key is to make it visible by talking with everyone involved about issues and concerns before the get-together.

</comment><comment><USER8> Fly them in

<comment><USER9> Any ideas where flights are cost prohibitive?

<comment><USER8> Google hangouts / Slack is very common in my office for remote workers. But they were onboarded in person. YMMV</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: WrapAPI: a tool to build APIs and bots on top of any website - <AUTHOR> https://wrapapi.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi! I'm Peter, creator of the tool. Let me know if you have any feedback, or any possible use cases for it by posting below or emailing me at firstname.lastname@example.com

I've done a lot of reverse-engineering of websites and thought a lot of the work could be made more generic. WrapAPI is an attempt to generalize a lot of the work needed to simulate actions on websites.

There are basically 4 steps:

1\. Capture sample requests to serve as a reference - this is similar to how one might use the Chrome Developer Tools or a packet sniffer to capture sample requests to the app

2\. Specify inputs - parametrize the inputs so that you can switch out arguments passed to the webpage

3\. Extract outputs - we have Kimono-like visual tools to select the outputs from the webpage via CSS, JSON, and Regexp selectors

4\. Test it out - try it to ensure everything's working

In addition, we want users to be able to share and publish the work, so we've added that too.

<comment><USER2> I've installed the Chrome extension and now see the following error when I click on the extension:

[http://i.imgur.com/TlJXFJm.png](http://i.imgur.com/TlJXFJm.png)

[http://i.imgur.com/q6KIE1J.png](http://i.imgur.com/q6KIE1J.png)

Any tips? I'm not really sure what it's doing but I checked `netstat` and nothing appears to be listening on 127.0.0.1:60876.

<comment><AUTHOR> This should be fixed as of version 0.15. Please make sure you're on that Chrome extension version. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This reminds me of a very old Perl module called HTTP::Recorder [1]. It used to set a Http Proxy for WWW::Mechanize and then output a WWW::Mechanize script to automate the requests.

I used for testing long time back. Of course it didn't allow Javasript because it ran on Mechanize but it also meant it was extremely fast.

[1] [http://www.perl.com/pub/2004/06/04/recorder.html](http://www.perl.com/pub/2004/06/04/recorder.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> Cool concept - I'm really interested to see what I can build with it.

I installed the chrome extension, and saved a request to an endpoint, but it's not showing up in my account under 'My API endpoints'. Is there something special I have to do to get it to show up?

edit: sent an email.

</comment><comment><USER5> hi! some constructive criticism.

i love the idea, connecting developer tools via a plugin to the site is genius. this is a very creative way of doing this, and it's perfect.

the user interface on the site is pretty messy though. i've just tried to fetch my first data and it just got to messy to be worth it. it's currently (for me at least) less messy doing this sort of thing manually than clicking around in the interface, and that should give you a hint that the ux needs some work.

will check back in the future though, it looks very promising!

<comment><USER6> Thanks for trying it out this far fjallstrom! Out of curiosity, which part of the process did you get stuck on? We've been trying to work on the UI a lot, so would love the feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What's the difference between your service and import.io?

</comment><comment><USER8> Looks neat, how does it work? Also, you guys should make the Chrome extension more prominent as that seems to be very neat.

<comment><AUTHOR> It works by letting you capture network requests and then replicating those network requests exactly.

This includes tools to parametrize GET and POST requests, as well as a set of tools to extract data from the webpage itself.

We're working on a video demoing how it works! Let me know if there are particular use cases in mind and I'd be happy to try to help out on those.

<comment><USER9> Is this similar to [https://www.getpostman.com/](https://www.getpostman.com/) ? If so, what do you think will differentiate your app? Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> It's similar in that it captures requests, but Postman is mostly targeted at making APIs that already exist more useful, while WrapAPI aims to fill the gap where there currently are no APIs. It also:

\- Parses the output into a machine-readable format (similar to Kimono Labs)

\- Allows you to publish the request and its schema to a publicly accessible API endpoint, rather than just testing existing API endpoints

Hope this helps! Give it a shot; it's a very powerful tool

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I didn't see the bot part of it?

<comment><USER11> Think(!) it's about building an API. Around the API you can, if u want, build a bot. That's why there API-Keys i think (I can't imagine another possible scenario). With that keys a bot would have access.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, that's right. Half of building a bot involves getting the machine- readable data, and that's the part that we try to make easier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is this open source? If not, I see no point in using a tool that can be changed underneath me to wrap APIs around web sites that change underneath me.</comment>


Freelance programming - do I need to register or get a license? - <AUTHOR>

Do I need to do anything official such as register with the state or setup some separate bank account to be able to do freelance programming and accept payments?
I searched and read that unless you incorporate you  will need to report taxes as a sole proprietor. Do I need some legal stuff to work as a freelance programmer?
I am located in the US, and have a green card. I have a fulltime job and am looking at doing freelance on the side. <comment><USER2> It really depends on how serious you will be about it... if it's just sort of a hobby and you're making a few hundred bucks then there isn't much to worry about... but if you're out there raking in bank and marketing your services "as a business" then that is a different story... most states/cities would require you to register your "business" as a sole proprietorship. You will also need to make sure you keep good records of all the freelance income and make sure you're paying the right amount of taxes. Depending on how much money you expect to make freelancing, you'll probably want to talk to a good CPA to make sure you cover all your bases.

</comment><comment><USER3> You might get a better response if you tell us where you are located.

<comment><USER4> Unless he meant to post to psychicne.ws

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that. I updated my post. I am in the US, have a green card, full time job, looking at doing this on the side.</comment></comment></comment>


Imminent Iran nuclear threat? A timeline of warnings since 1979. - <AUTHOR> http://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/print/content/view/print/422252

<comment><USER2> I've been trying to understand why Russia, and particularly China, have been backing Iran and Syria so strongly. What is it that gives Iran and Syria such influential roles in Russian and Chinese foreign policy that they are willing to flaunt NATO so badly? If US and Israeli intel sources both agree that Iran has not even decided to pursue a nuclear weapon, why is the US and Isreal on the brink of war with them?

Then I read an article which talks about the New Silk Road that lies in Eurasian oil and natural gas pipelines that the US, Russia, and China have long been fighting over. I had no idea that Iran holds the world's second largest reserves of natural gas, and that China had signed a $120 billion gas exploration and supply deal with Iran -- one which China is seriously banking on as their energy needs are skyrocketing.

I'm not familiar with the writer of the article, but the data seems to be pretty convincing. The beginning of the article seems to interpret some quotes a little loosely and almost made me stop reading, but I think that the thesis the author goes on to explain is quite compelling. I don't think that this is the only reason we are seeing what we are seeing, but it might play quite a role in it.

"Are the Wars in the Middle East and North Africa Really About Oil?" <http://stratrisks.com/geostrat/8558>

Edit: Citation for US and Israeli intel agreement on Iran not having decided to pursue a nuclear program: [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/world/middleeast/iran- inte...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/world/middleeast/iran-intelligence- crisis-showed-difficulty-of-assessing-nuclear-data.html?_r=0) Note that President Obama is having MEK removed from the US list of terrorist organizations, perhaps to give them greater freedom to get intel (or simply damage things)

<comment><USER3> It is also of interest to note that Afghanistan is sitting atop a huge lode of rare earth minerals: <http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=2936>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article is very misleading. While it's true that we have been concerned about Iran's nuclear capabilities for quite a long time, the article omits several concentrated efforts that have prevented the country from developing nuclear capabilities over the years. For example, in the late eighties, Israel bombed a nuclear reactor before its completion. If Israel's bombing or other efforts hadn't been carried out over the years, Iran would have nuclear capability. Several times over the last 25 years, Iran has in fact been close to having nuclear capabilities.

<comment><USER3> I'm not crying foul on what you've stated, but I'd be interested in reading some accounts of those efforts.

The one attack that I thought was against Iran was actually against Iraq: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Opera>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> That doesn't mean the current threat isn't real. This is an implied cum hoc fallacy.

<comment><USER6> You're quite right! In fact the one reliable way to be sure the current threat isn't real is to invade.

<comment><USER7> Once we've invaded, then we can also say, "Well, they _would_ have been a threat had we not invaded," if we don't find anything! It's fool-proof!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> So the Iran nuclear threat is a 'cry wolf' for 33 years.

Two side notes:

\- The Iran has a light water reactor that is not suited for breeding a bomb. You need a Russian type graphite moderated reactor, or even better a cold heavy water reactor for this.

\- Enrichment is a requirement of this reactor type, but enrichment is the slowest and most expensive way for producing the bomb. It would be stupid to use centrifuges for enrichment, if you can produce heavy water much cheaper to breed a bomb.

</comment><comment><USER8> Honestly I think the biggest nuclear threat comes from:

* US * Russia * France * China

I don't see why one country in the posession of nuclear weapons is less a threat than any other.

Someone please explain that to me.

Especially since I know of only one (1) country that actually used nuclear weapons in war....

</comment><comment><USER9> This doesn't even belong on the main page.

<comment><USER10> Politics have been slowly but surely creeping in to Hacker News.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Non print link: [http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle- East/2011/1108/Imminen...](http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle- East/2011/1108/Imminent-Iran-nuclear-threat-A-timeline-of-warnings- since-1979/Earliest-warnings-1979-84)

</comment><comment><USER12> Why can none of none of these countries make H-bombs?</comment>


A Platform and Blogging Tool, Medium Charms Writers - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/26/business/media/a-platform-and-blogging-tool-medium-charms-writers.html?referrer=

<comment><USER2> I have two primary issues with Medium:

1) It's essentially halo-effect-as-a-service. People assume that since it's on Medium, it'll be a high-quality of work, but more often than not, Medium posts lie on the pseudo part of pseudointellectual. Which leads into...

2) Complete lack of any personal branding. Not even a username in the URL. Yes, it keeps things simple, but it dramatically reduces the personal benefit from posting on Medium. Even worse, in line with the previous bullet point, the lack of branding leads writers to spam links to their Twitters with the cliche "if you liked this, follow me on Twitter!" And recently, I've seen people say in bolded text "PLEASE CLICK RECOMMEND." It's jarring.

<comment><USER3> I agree, especially with #2. In fact, I explain why I think Medium is actually a _magazine_ , not a service (like Svbtle, Blogger, Wordpress.com) in this post: [http://thetypist.com/329/medium- magazine/](http://thetypist.com/329/medium-magazine/)

"One shouldn't compare Medium with services like WordPress.com because, while successfully touted as such, Medium isn't a service. It's a magazine. The only "service" in Medium is the service that (mostly) unpaid writers do in return for the potential exposure. Authors that have their own sub-page with a picture and a list of their articles is something online magazines have implemented back in the nineties."

It's a distinction not enough aspiring writers are paying attention to.

<comment><USER4> It's a content factory - the term 'playbor' seems appropriate. Just glossy and pretty enough that it distracts people from the fact they're working for this centralized for-profit entity for free.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I blog quite a bit on a bunch of different platforms, but I never understood the utility of medium.

I could understand it as a secondary marketing tool in addition to a personal blog in order to reach a wider audience, but I think anything you post primarily on a service that you don't control yourself, you're making a big assumption that they won't drastically change the working relationship somewhere down the road.

</comment><comment><USER6> It is certainly true that Medium isn't for all use cases; and I don't think they have claimed otherwise. For more serious bloggers or writers, it is more of a marketing tool. And they place no value in comments, which looks more like a deliberate design decision.

However, I like Medium because they have broken new ground in UI design (for writing especially). It was the app that convinced me that you don't really need boxed HTML form inputs anywhere; it is more natural to edit in place with "contenteditable". This holds true not just for "blog writing" on Medium, but for profile edits and everywhere else. (I am aware of other advantages of using forms, but still.)

Now it might seem like just getting rid of textareas. But that's not it; this is a bigger shift in how we design editing.

<comment><USER7> That one can get away from the default browser style, and edit in the same style as the site itself, is nothing short of a revelation to me—back in 2004, when I encountered this pattern for the first time on the website of Mediamatic, a small Amsterdam based arts institution.

Ever since I have been wondering why inline-editing is not seen more often. The separation between 'front' and 'back-end' seems unnecessary. ContentEditable came along to make things easier—yet it wasn't really picked up.

My hypothesis is that programmers are not really interested in innovating for WYSIWYG interfaces, our culture being steeped in reverence for Unix' plain text. The age-old WYSIWYG editors like CKEditors are tolerated but not loved.

On the other hand, I've seen lots of text-based editing solutions like Markdown-widgets and static-site generators.

The tide does seem to be changing a bit, with such recent announcements as the Guardian's Scribe project showing more interest in rich text editing.

<plug> I wrote in more detail on this on my blog: [http://i.liketightpants.net/and/hackers-culture-and-the- fear...](http://i.liketightpants.net/and/hackers-culture-and-the-fear-of- wysiwyg) </plug>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Only usable for entries in English, as title and subtitle fields uses font with no non-English characters. There are bugs and then there are bugs that render service unusable for most part of world.

</comment><comment><USER9> I dislike the way comments are handled on Medium. Why can't they just appear at the bottom like every other site out there?

Also, it's tedious to have to open up every little mini comment thread. I just want to use my wheel mouse to scroll through the comments.

Some good articles come from Medium every now and then, and they would benefit from some discussion around them. But I feel like the way the comments are handled stops people from commenting. People just aren't used to it because no other major sites use comments like that, and there's been very little effort on Medium's part to let new people know that comments on the site work like that. And I don't think Medium is big enough to change people's behavior on this.

When I come across an article on a website, after reading it, I'll dig around the bottom to read the comments. When I open a link on HN or Reddit, I also open the comment thread for that article link so I can read comments from people on HN/Reddit about that link. Depending on the site I'm on I can expect varying levels of useless comments, but almost all the time you can find a decent comment or two that provides an informed opinion on the piece you just read.

<comment> k-mcgrady >> "I dislike the way comments are handled on Medium. Why can't they just appear at the bottom like every other site out there?"

I prefer it. If it don't want to look at them they are hidden. If I read a paragraph and am interested in what other people think I can see the comments directly referencing it. I think it also reduces stupid comments. If it looks like you a referencing something I feel like you'll make a more relevant comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I gave Medium a spin the other day, it was buggy, crashed a lot and forgot what I had written after it recovered. I am sure I encountered it on a bad day, but I didn't find the writing experience particularly amazing and the lack of personal branding means that it is something that I won't bother with again.

I also think the lack of mobile editing support is a bad strategy (at time of sign-up this was so). I get that people writing articles on Mobile may have the odd "sprelling" error and typo problem but often blog posts come to me on mobile and if I don't get the meat down while on my mobile I just won't write the thing (even if I publish it on my laptop/desktop... I want to be able to create a draft on mobile).

</comment><comment><USER11> It's one thing to charm writers. But what about charming readers, too?

As a reader I am not charmed.

I find it all too similar and slick. It is "designed" to within an inch of its life. The text and pictures don't seemed anchored to anything and just seem to float there on the page. This deprives them of any weight. It makes everything feel pompous or grandiose.

I agree with a lot of what is said here:

[http://www.theguardian.com/news/oliver-burkeman-s- blog/2014/...](http://www.theguardian.com/news/oliver-burkeman-s- blog/2014/feb/04/facebook-paper-aesthetic-web-beautiful)

I also find the "Reading time" a little infantilising.

<comment> k-mcgrady I find it a great site to read specifically because of the design. No clutter, just the text I want to read. The text is clear and the site works nicely on any screen size.

As for the 'reading time' \- that's one of my favourite things on the site. I can quickly look at a post and decide whether I have time to read it now I whether I should bookmark it for later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> While I do like what I can read on Medium, I do not want to login via Twitter or FB to write on my own.

I also would prefer to learn how a platform plans to make money before I use it, does that anyone know here by any chance?

</comment><comment><USER13> Silvrback is better IMHO. Freedom to brand, highly customizable, and it's very streamlined: [http://silvrback.com](http://silvrback.com)</comment>


Kicking neural network design automation into high gear - <AUTHOR> https://news.mit.edu/2019/convolutional-neural-network-automation-0321 <comment><USER2> If you want the paper, here it is: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.00332](https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.00332)

<comment><USER3> Is there code?

Edit : 10 seconds later... [https://github.com/MIT-HAN- LAB/ProxylessNAS](https://github.com/MIT-HAN-LAB/ProxylessNAS)

<comment><USER4> Looks like only scoring code, not training :(</comment></comment></comment>


Act Like a New Employee Every Day - <AUTHOR> http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20121111043707-7298-act-like-a-new-employee-every-day <comment><USER2> Considering most places I've worked at in the last couple of years, that would mean that every day was comprised of:

\- Trying to get a working computer and/or network account \- Being interrupted every 5 minutes for introductions \- Wondering where the hell to get lunch from around here \- Filling out paperwork \- Reading way too many pages of HR-written 'employee handbooks' and 'acceptable use policies' \- Not being given any actual work until after the first day or so, because everyone knows that the first day is a write-off.

<comment><USER3> TBH he said "act like a new employee", not "act like an employee on his first day of work".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I find it interesting that he published this article on LinkedIn, as opposed to Google+, his blog, etc. It's cross-posted to Google+, but the article lives in LinkedIn.</comment>


MDatePickerView – Quick and Easy iOS Date Picker - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/MattLLLLL/MDatePickerView <comment><USER3> Looks nice overall, but I'm not a fan. It has nothing to do with the implementation itself... just the fact that I view the consistency of the iOS UI toolkit as being more important than fancy looks.

It's a good thing (tm) that no matter which app I open up, the date picker looks the same, and works the same. This is the nice thing about native apps. So I wish we would stop reinventing wheels like this (once again, no offence intended to the author – this is a more of general critique).

<comment><USER4> I have to say I don't really like the iOS date picker. Especially since you're "whipping around" 3 or more wheels (year, month, day, time etc.) in close proximity, it feels very imprecise.

I'd love it if there were also some + and - buttons so I could easily add one month, one year etc.

<comment><USER5> Fair enough, but it's the standard control. I know how to use it and I expect to see it when I have to set a date in an app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Instead of this format,

        Col.topAnchor.constraint(equalTo: topAnchor, constant: 0).isActive = true
        Col.bottomAnchor.constraint(equalTo: bottomAnchor, constant: 0).isActive = true
        Col.leftAnchor.constraint(equalTo: leftAnchor, constant: 0).isActive = true
        Col.rightAnchor.constraint(equalTo: rightAnchor, constant: 0).isActive = true

I prefer:

NSLayoutConstraint.activate([

        Col.topAnchor.constraint(equalTo: topAnchor, constant: 0),
        Col.bottomAnchor.constraint(equalTo: bottomAnchor, constant: 0),
        Col.leftAnchor.constraint(equalTo: leftAnchor, constant: 0),
        Col.rightAnchor.constraint(equalTo: rightAnchor, constant: 0),

])

GitHub example with better readability:

[https://github.com/melling/ios_topics/tree/master/ButtonCent...](https://github.com/melling/ios_topics/tree/master/ButtonCenteredWithAnchors/ButtonCenteredWithAnchors)

<comment><USER7> Not only is this easier to read (IMO), but it is typically "more efficient than activating each constraint individually": [https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/nslayoutcons...](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/nslayoutconstraint/1526955-activate)

<comment><USER8> It is easier to read but harder to debug. If you activate all constraints at the same time and something goes wrong you end up with an exception at activateConstraints. Then you would have to figure out which constraint is the cause of the exception. If you activate the constraints one by one then you will get much more helpful exceptions.

The rule that I followed was:

Use activateConstraints if you actually have a performance problem and otherwise activate constraints one by one.

However since this is a framework this rule may not apply because you don't know how it will be used.

<comment><USER9> Why not just use a wrapper function taking in an array that activates one-by- one in debug and as a group in release builds?

<comment><USER10> Great idea IMO and wouldn't be difficult to whip up - fighting urge to add to this my native iOS projects right now...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is not optimal UX, for me. For this one,I soon as the date is far from the starting date, you have to click/swipe an insane amount of time.

<comment><USER12> I'd love a Windows 7-style calendar date picker for iOS such that it takes the place of the soft-keyboard with a 1-tap button for each day, and zoom-out to select months and years (perhaps with pinch-to-zoom?) - that way there's no O(n) scrolling.

Windows 10's Time picker is the absolute worst - clearly designed for touch- based devices it's horribly inappropriate for mouse+keyboard devices: scrolling with the mousewheel is much slower than it should be, and there isn't even direct numeric entry from the keyboard, it's maddening.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Congrats! You have created a really polished looking date picker. While it may not work for everyone, don't let that diminish your success.

Going from concept to polished completion and publication is a big success!

<comment><USER14> This has nothing to do with the author's work but what kind of world are we living in where we have a need for more and more polished date pickers?

<comment><USER15> One where we enter dates through touch interfaces very often?

<comment><USER14> I mean I find it surprising that we still haven't found or generally agreed upon an optimal UI for date picking.

<comment><USER15> IMO at least part of it is that not all date picking contexts are the same. Sometimes I want to do something tomorrow, sometimes it's three months in the future, sometimes it's two years in the past. It's difficult to make a single UI control to cover all of those bases.

<comment><USER16> agreed. sometimes I'm trying to select a date in comparison with other dates and other info (what else is already happening on that date, etc). Sometimes I'm trying to see a range of possible dates, sometimes I'm flexible, sometimes I'm not.

The idea of various use cases don't seem to get enough play in UI component design, imo (or maybe I'm just not reading the right bits?). I'd like there to be some "this component is designed for these use cases - A & B. if you desire use case C, look at component X." and so on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Please just let me type the damn date! I _know_ when I was born, which bank statement I'm looking for, when I want to fly; don't make me _hunt_ for it.

<comment><USER18> No, play this date-picker mini-game right now, or YOU SHALL NOT PASS

</comment></comment><comment> yoz-y Can you type in a year? My main problem with almost all date pickers is that choosing a date from a few years back is frustrating.

<comment><USER19> It doesn't look like it, unfortunately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> "M" is a rather short namespace prefix. Apple recommends using three letter ones: [https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Co...](https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/ProgrammingWithObjectiveC/Conventions/Conventions.html)

<comment><USER12> It isn't a namespace, it's a type-name prefix - Apple has no excuses for not having first-class namespaces in Swift.

<comment><USER19> It's fine for Swift; classes are namespaced by the module they're in. The problem is that it's exposed to Objective-C, and while the runtime class name will differ because it will be mangled, I believe this can still cause source code-level incompatibility with the unmangled names.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It looks visually nice but lacks some basic date picking concepts that are better seen in other implementations. Notably web frameworks. An issue with this layout is that it is really bad at weeks in the month. (A common date concept) What if you want the second Friday of a month? (Assuming the user is not a date or math-savy person, obviously software should assist all users) Either you'll have to find the first friday and then scroll to the second or guess the second date based on time range of the second friday. A month view solves this pretty well. A greatly executed date picker example is the Angular Material date picker; which in its lack of sheen, shows fantastic function. [https://material.angular.io/components/datepicker/overview](https://material.angular.io/components/datepicker/overview) The Start at function where you can pick Year then month then day is really slick however.

</comment><comment><USER21> OP, this is a gorgeous date picker with some clever ideas. Great work! As others have noted, clever ideas do mean there's a learning curve which is not ideal for something like a date picker. However, if this were in an app I use very regularly, I personally wouldn't mind the initial learning curve for a more efficient input.

I see a lot of requests in this thread for just typing the date. I agree that natural language input like Fantastical is the best experience. I built an open-source NLP date parsing library[1] so I have a lot of interest in this, but even I'll admit the reason it's not more common is that internationalization is extremely difficult when dealing with user input. There are 100 ways an English speaker might enter a date, and 20000 ways an international user might. Depending on your user base, it's often easier to just use a fixed input space.

1: [https://github.com/neilgupta/Sherlock](https://github.com/neilgupta/Sherlock)

</comment><comment><USER22> Looks great! Would be nice to have an option to click on year and type it instead of scrolling. Also, it would be great to be able to swipe from January to December (possibly without changing a year) and same with dates. My birthday is on the 26th of November, so it will take ages for me to scroll in one direction. I want try to use your project one day.

</comment><comment><USER23> They don't do this in the native one either, but I feel strongly that a date picker should always give the user the ability to see a full calendar grid. It's way easier for use cases like "the third Wednesday in June"... and really also easier than swping left or right through dates to get to the one you want.

</comment><comment><USER24> iOS Developer here. Personally, I am not a fan mostly because I find vertical scrolling/swiping to be much better as faster than horizontal scrolling in your case. The default iOS pickers use the vertical way and I find it to be much better UX.

Design wise, yours does look much nicer though so kudos to that!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I'm still trying to be both master at UI/UX.

</comment></comment><comment> java-man Would it be possible to explain why one can't simply _type_ a date?

<comment><USER18> Different countries transposing the month and day might have something to do with it.

<comment> java-man Don't think this is entirely a valid argument - use current regional settings.

Forcing the user to use a tighltly packed scrolling control with inertia is not a good idea. Yes, it might look cool in a demo, but - i think - it's a terrible user experience.

(Try it, enter a date a month and a half in the future)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is a great effort, but, as others said - if it was used in an app it would probably piss me off, as I very highly value the consistency of native controls.

Also - this doesn't solve the biggest issue with the native date picker - <USER2> let me type the damn date already.

</comment><comment><USER26> Is it just me or does the preview gif in the github rendered readme drop a few frames during the animation? I hope that's just the gif, not the library.

</comment><comment><USER27> Looks great, and probably works best for selecting dates close to some defined date (today, start date, etc).

Is there similar datepicker for Flutter?

</comment><comment><USER28> Title should have mentioned that it is iOS only.

<comment><AUTHOR> ok, thank

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> That's non-optimal UX imho.

I can't understand why it's so hard to get a decent datepicker in general.

You should only:

* Tap on years and months to select one

* Tap on your preferred day

* Being able (programming side) to select a range

* Being able to input your date inside a preformatted text field that can validate it

Windows from 7 to 10 nailed it, period. So bad that's for desktop-only users.

<comment><USER30> >Windows from 7 to 10 nailed it

Where in Windows 10? Surely not the clock at the bottom-right, in the task- bar? That's probably the bit of UI I hate the most (and on Win10 that's a long list).

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Not sure what's better or worse about this that te default iOS datepicker.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I appreciate your all advice, I'm gonna update in the next version.

</comment><comment><USER32> Looks nice :) shouldn't the post submission be a Show HN?

</comment><comment><USER33> Am I missing something? Shouldn't this be a Show HN?

</comment><comment><USER34> This isn't quick. At least not from a UX perspective (judging by the recordings). I don't like that.

Please provide some sort of keyboard for input.

<comment><USER35> I prefer the native date picker over this implementation, but it also doesn't provide keyboard input.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> So, everything is in swift now.

</comment><comment><USER37> Every iOS developer makes a cool widget, view or library. But doesn't write any tests.

iOS dev community doesn't write tests as does Ruby community, which makes me really really sad.</comment>


People's underestimation of AI - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2016/12/28/a-robot-is-coming-for-your-job/ <comment><USER3> I think the megapolitical perspective on violence in The Sovereign Individual[0] by James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg can be helpful here.

Unions were powerful because they could limit access to labour, which was required for production. Now they are increasingly powerless. Mass manpower was once required to wage war. Now is increasingly less useful in a world of high-tech warfare.

What prevents the powerful from going straight to the source of production and value? I'm not talking about off-shoring manufacturing to China, I'm talking about something more extreme, along the lines of a small cabal of wizards in a tower conjuring spells to extract energy directly from the wind and sun, and materials directly from the ground? The tech is far off, but the direction is clear. Maybe y'all think you're going to be one of those wizards. We'll see.

But what's going to happen to the rest of us? Are we all going to wake up some day as basic-income supported artists, happily chewing on organic granola and self-actualizing (or not) as we please? I think a study of history suggests it's not going to be that easy. Those union rights were hard fought. People died.

What happens when those at the top decide it's not worth keeping 8 billion people around just for kicks, when they can make do with ... 5 billion? 500 million? How many programmers, painters and yoga instructors do we need? On a planet with dwindling resources, tough decisions are going to get made.

So yeah, watch out for those robots. Especially the ones with the lasers on their heads. (That's a joke. But the rest?)

[0] [https://www.amazon.com/Sovereign-Individual-Mastering- Transi...](https://www.amazon.com/Sovereign-Individual-Mastering-Transition- Information/dp/0684832720/)

<comment><USER4> >Unions were powerful because they could limit access to labour, which was required for production. Now they are increasingly powerless.

Given how _little_ is actually automated right now, I'm always a little skeptical that automation drove the labor union extinct. It seems like politics, corruption, and mismanagement drove American unions near-extinct. A lot of countries still have very active trade-unions that take a strong hand in production and economics (Germany and Denmark, for instance).

<comment><USER5> If you think about how many people, 300 years ago, were involved in farming.. it was a lot. How many today? In 1st world countries, very few. Farming has massive automation.

<comment><USER6> Sure, but what does this have to do with trade unions?

<comment><USER7> Every discussion forum these days feels like walking into a classroom of second graders talking about things they have heard grad students talk about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> To save you time:

Author praises advances in AI by big tech. Complains about how he was served the wrong medication and how a robot would not have made the error. Closes by saying that robots will be better than doing things than humans.

Its a shitty post that does not even really take into account the current state of AI, how robots are prone to errors as well as humans due to faulty hardware, and well, the fact that some jobs are only trusted to humans. Even if the margin of error may be higher.

<comment><USER9> A human can explain why it made an error. Good luck sussing out the "why?" when an AI makes an error.

<comment><USER10> A human can claim to tell you why it made an error. Good luck sussing out whether they're wrong, or lying.

<comment><USER9> A human has the capacity to give reasoning, right or wrong, which a solution can be built off of. No AI can do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I really think its the insurance industry that will push AIs into the mainstream. The author makes a good point that humans would rather trust another human with a 1% error rate than a robot with a .01% error rate, because the robot error is somehow scarier. But actuarial science doesn't care about which is scarier, it cares about the 1% v the .01%.

Malpractice insurance will force doctors to consult AIs. Auto insurance will force us to install automated driving systems. Home insurance will force us to install sensor systems and Echo-like assistants. Insurance costs will rise for those that refuse AIs, and make ignoring them financially irresponsible.

Insurance requirements put all sorts of pressures on industries. Anecdata here, but I know a very successful gynecologist who was forced to sell HIS practice, because the malpractice insurance ate all his profits. The possibility of a sexual misconduct case basically made it impossible for him to be a male gynecologist and carry the requisite insurance, even though he never had a suit filed against him.

<comment><USER12> It seems tho insurance would shift from inidivudual/user to producer tho. Why would individuals need car insurance with a fully automated vehicle for example.

<comment><USER11> Insurance is all about covering liability. Car manufacturers won't willingly take on all liability after automation. They will still try to shift some onto the consumer.

On the other hand, maybe individual auto insurance will eventually go away as automation takes hold. But automation will not happen overnight. The liability in an accident between a human and automated driver will likely be assigned to the human, meaning human based insurance premiums will rise, forcing more people to automation.

<comment><USER13> Why wouldn't they take on the liability? If it costs them so little, because the cars are so much safer you might as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I can't be alone in thinking this recent "robots are talking all the unskilled jobs" meme is a bit overblown. It feels premature, at best.

I'm skeptical about the robotic lawyer and pharmacist use cases the article calls out. These seem like really distant applications--nothing I gather we'll see in the next decade, anyway. I have a friend going to pharmacy school, and I wouldn't think to warn her about her career choice just yet. Mistakes in these fields simply cost too much.

What other careers are at immediate risk? How big of a working population will be put out of work?

I imagine trucking and freight is the industry most immediately at risk.

Autonomous vehicles are impressive, but there are so many social problems arising from failure modes we've yet to answer. I'm imagining the first fatal accident arising from an autonomous truck--the press will jump on automation like vultures. The lawsuits will be huge. I can't imagine the court of public opinion being kind to the shipping company whose machine kills an unsuspecting family on vacation.

I realize that doesn't prevent automation from happening, but I think it could bring any rollout to an immediate halt.

And though it's getting a bit off topic, I feel like the "no more car ownership" meme is utter hyperbole. I would be willing to bet money that private car ownership will continue to be a thing for a long time. How much would an hour and a half long Uber commute cost to make every day for workers living in a city without sufficient public transit, such as Atlanta? Are people that live or travel to rural areas going to participate in ride sharing? Increasing remote work and better housing options seem like they will be more pragmatic solutions to the plague of the commute.

As much as I'd like to see increased efficiency through AI and automation, it still seems much too early to count humans out. I guess I'll eat my words when I see it.

<comment><USER15> On the media jumping on it like vultures, I think plane accidents can give us hope.

When there is a plane crash, medias will be all over it for weeks. But at the same time they will repeat again and again that aircrafts are incredibly safe, and that you are more likely to have a crash on your way to the airport, etc.

The opposite is done for terrorism. Every time someone is killed in a terror attack, the message is "it could happen to you".

So not sure what makes them behave either way but it could still turn out to be OK.

On car ownership I agree. I don't really buy that all cars will be shared when fully automated.

For sentimental reasons, people like to own their car, they like to invest in it, they don't like to find a car that looks more like a mix of dumpster and toilet after 20 party-goers used it before you.

For a very practical reason, the same reason farmers own there heavy equipment when they could just rent it: because they all need it at the same time. The primary purpose for cars is commuting from home to work and everyone needs to do that at about the same time. So the only guarantee you will have to have a car available when you need it at peak period will be to own it.

What I think could happen is that when self driving cars have become mandatory in large cities, you won't really need to park the car near where you live or work. It could go park itself in some large underground car park 5-10 min away. Without parked cars on both sides of the street you increase the capacity of most cities (at least in Europe) massively.

That plus smoother driving could go a long way eliminating traffic jams.

<comment><USER16> _The primary purpose for cars is commuting from home to work and everyone needs to do that at about the same time. So the only guarantee you will have to have a car available when you need it at peak period will be to own it._

I think a more likely outcome would be that employers have to become more flexible. If you _have_ to be at work by 9am but you can't get there at that time then you can't do the job. If _everyone_ is in that situation the employer won't be able to fill the position. Ergo, change will happen.

<comment><USER15> There are reasons why companies have sort of standardised business hours. School schedules. Being able to interact with other companies. And within a company you sort of want people to be around at the same time otherwise you lose efficiency.

<comment><USER16> _There are reasons why companies have sort of standardised business hours._

It's because 50 years ago scheduling was hard. You had to notify people of things sending them a letter via a post system. Large companies had their own internal mail systems. After that there was email that sped things up _a lot_ , and now we have video conferencing so you can have a meeting whenever you want without even really needing to schedule it if all the parties are available. So long as there are a few core hours when everyone who'd need to meet all work then hours wouldn't be an issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think what AI really challenges is the value of man. Our current world relies on the assumption that more people means more productivity/consumption, so more growth and stronger economy. With the potential emergence of more capable machines, this assumption may no longer hold.

How to deal with the left behind society? Trying to find them new purposes of life? How can we make sure those new purposes won't be automated in the future? Or if large portion of the population facing the problem of being jobless, is population growth/immigration still a positive thing? What about education? If we know that most of the people won't be needed in the workforce any way, is education still something worth having, except for very basic common sense?

This all leads me to think that the future might be more static and less energetic one, yet it might be more affluent than ever. It could also be more equal than ever, that most people might be under the care of some really intelligent system to spend their whole life, without really being required to achieve anything, but it will be OK, and will become the new norm. Population might decline, but they will be gradually replaced by robots, until new equilibrium has been reached.

</comment><comment><USER18> I think we're overestimating AI. The hype has been around in tech circles now for years, but now it's breached it's walls and is spilling out into mainstream discussions in economics and politics, and it's getting even more detached from reality.

And yet, I don't know of an instance where all this newfangled machine learning has been disruptive. The expert systems that will supposedly displace accountants and paralegals don't exist. Dextrous robots can barely screw the lid on a bottle, and only under controlled conditions. Autonomous vehicles reliable enough to be applied commercially don't exist. None of it exists. There's no garauntee it will.

The AI race is most definitely on, but nobody knows where the finish line is. And there's a long history of inventors grossly misunderguesstimating the location of finish lines, particularly in the field of AI, where every time we find a new piece of the puzzle we think 'This is it. This is the holy grail!'

Machines are better at pattern recognition, that's the big breakthrough, but there's so much more to taking humans out of the loop than just that.

<comment><USER19> Yep, maybe not the fun kind, but lawyering and accounting take creativity. We have seen zero evidence of machine creativity.

<comment><USER20> There are tons of examples of machine creativity. The highest profile one from the past year is probably AlphaGo's famous move 37.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Everyone always says that we are over estimating current changes in the economy. We already had industrialisation and it went fine. I think they are wrong, we are on the verge of something totally new and all the optimists aren't realists.

Farming was automized, so we transformed to other jobs. No problem there ( thank god it was possible)

Industrialisation made it possible for a company export to a total new market and it made worldwide selling possible ==> New markets. No problem there

Computer appeared. Untill now, the effect wasn't big. They lines are all dedicated and require huge investments. Humans are still required for putting chocolates in a box and getting it out of the "container" ( although it could be automatised with a huge investment).

What's going to happen when those robots with an investment cost of 10.000$ to replace an employee. Can learn putting chocolates in a box with supervised learning and no other investment.

Who's going to get work and where is the money coming from if all jobs are slowly being replaced / automized. I think there is a lot of trouble on the road ahead. To what usefull jobs will all drivers/truckers/taxi's transform to for still being usefull. What jobs are next, accounting perhaps. And where will it stop?

And don't say, they have to learn something new. The people that are going to be replaced by total automation ( robots) in the workforce are (mostly) workers in the first place and i don't think a lot of them are smart enough, to do something new that won't be replaced by automation < 3 years when it begins.

I'm not trying to offend someone, but i'm pretty hopeless because i don't see a way out for a lot of people.

<comment><USER22> I've had this discussion yesterday with a colleague of mine a bit older than me, he doesn't think that technology will kill jobs, he thinks that the government will probably prevent self driving cars and the like.

I think the opposite, I live in a country where transport is the main employer in the country, I think that in the next two decades all these jobs will be lost and transport company will have enough lobbying power to pass any laws they want.

We were talking about retirement age and I was wondering how we could push it later when there will be less and less jobs, and eventually we will have to admit that a big portion of the population won't be able / needed to work, and that I will probably be part of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think these fears are grossly exagerated. Our society has a remarkable capacity to preserve manual work way after it should have been automated.

I work a lot with the finance dept of a large bank where 90% of the work should have been automated years ago. No need for AI, just a little bit of coding and good communication between IT and the business. But the business is not in a rush to destroy its own jobs, and IT consistently misunderstand what the business actually does. (Also we often have to deal with "bottom of the basket" IT, but it will be the same with AI).

And with the people currently in charge, it won't change anytime soon.

So I think the time where AI will have automated every single manual job is nowhere near. Like software has not automated every single manual task yet, far from it. The only thing I can see AI taking over are the jobs that are standardised enough, and accessible enough for programmers to understand, and on a large enough scale that it makes sense to have a lots of ressources dedicated to training and tuning algos for someone to bother deploying AI.

<comment><USER23> This is true, the processes and technology for far greater efficiency in business, manufacturing and politics have been available for a long, long time. But why would a manager in a corporation leverage these things if it means losing an empire?

This is the same for so many areas of society, especially politics. It would be easy to build a system which replaced representitive politics, think micro- voting on particular issues by all citizens. This hasn't happened en-masse because politicians are going to have to remove themselves from their jobs first.

Robot domination might actually never happen, I mean even if we ever manage to create AGI, there is little reason to believe that it will:

* Want to stick around and serve humanity, because why would it?

* Care about us at all, ignore humans just do what it likes and forget about us entirely.

 _Edit: I forgot to add that if we built more welcoming, welfare bsaed societies where people are looked after when they 're out of a job, then the adoption of automation and "robots" would probably be more accepted and less imposed upon us_

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> We see posts like this daily (and I know this article is more about AI) but there's still no low priced robotic arms on the market. it's almost 2017, but there's no dishwasher unloader or any other meaningful service robots except from an automatic vacuum cleaner..

<comment><USER25> I make and sell low-cost robots, and business is great. :) But you don't see them, because I'm in a niche where I sell to companies with huge pressures to cut costs and go faster. (You don't see this kind of pressure for robots in the home, _but_ I wouldn't be surprised to see dishwasher and service robots appear in chain hotels and restaurants, because of the scale they are at.) Having one dishwasher to unload is not a profitable problem to solve for most people in their home, but if you had 1000 dishwashers, it would be worth it to investigate your automation options.

<comment><USER26> Hey there, I'd be super interested in this. I checked out tapster.io but I'm more looking for (a little bit)larger and stronger robot arms. Email me at sixsamuraisoldier [at] gmail.com

<comment><USER25> Sure! Sent!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> What I don't get about the recent hype is that jobs have been vanishing for thousands of years. The oft repeated statistic is that over 90% of the US population were farmers 100 years ago. Is 90% of the population out of work?

As machines take over low level jobs (as they have for thousands of years) humans will continue to migrate into positions where their skills are still needed. Quality of living will continue to rise as a result.

The only real danger is singularity, and it's a danger to all of us, not just the people at the bottom. If an AI was truly better at every job why would the people at the top even be in charge?

Machination will continue to benefit society and humankind until an increasingly worrying singularity results in everyone being out of work, and likely, the extinction of our species

<comment><USER28> I think you have a very myopic view of history. Things have never changed this quickly in known history. This is similar to how Anthropocene is killing of animal populations because they just can't adapt fast enough.

Industrial revolution somehow made it through via interesting social and market manipulations; it's not clear what it'll be this time.

<comment><USER29> > Things have never changed this quickly in known history

Reminds me of Alvin Toffler's warning that the amount of information was growing far too quickly for people to be able to assimilate it... that was back in the 80s, with no web, no Wikipedia, no Youtube...

People will adapt. We're good at it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Unpopular opinion: we techies _overestimate_ AI.

> So why is it that, despite each of us having a wealth of experience with > people being unapologetically bad at their jobs, we still feel that humans > have set the bar so high that the same machines — the ones that can tell you > the name of that obscure actor in that even more obscure film with 100 > percent accuracy in .01 seconds — would somehow buckle under the challenge > of distributing allergy pills?

Because those machines must still ultimately be programmed or trained by flawed humans, and I still have to reboot every device I own on a regular basis to keep it from vomiting all over itself.

<comment><USER26> Chances are, anything that requires quasi-human decision making will be done through machine learning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Few thoughts below, I think possibilities of future being considered in most of AI takeover discussions are some sort of linear projections of our imagination based on our understanding of current scenario, past history and future expectations. Our minds are many times not able to consider outcomes beyond any of these, for example when you read history of World War 1, we find most of the experienced generals and strategist did not expect the war to be as horrific and as long as it turned out to be, since their expectations were based on past experience and current knowledge (which turned out to be inadequate). Similarly, most of the people who witness atomic bombing of World War 2, did not really expect to have no nuclear wars in next 70 years. The prevalent expectations then was to consider nuclear wars being imminent. Similarly, after the moon landing, there were not many people who thought no human will go to moon in next 50 years.

I think one possibility that is not being considered is the ability of humans to upgrade themselves via some combination advanced genetic and hardware. What if you could design AI that can help upgrade humans, again this would lead to creation of new superclass of humans.

The other thought I have is, on one hand we expect AI to be really intelligent to take over most of the human skilled jobs but still expect it to be controllable by few human beings. There is always a possibility that superintelligent AIs might have some different motivations other than ruling over human beings. As a human being, even though I am much more powerful I probably do not have much motivation to rule over rats or cockroaches, same could be true for AIs. We might be too insignificant for them to waste time on us.

</comment><comment><USER32> Why is education never discussed in the context of robot / AI automation? It is the solution. If not the ONLY solution. We've been here before with the industrial revolution. 50% of the population was working in agriculture and everyone feared the factory would automate everyone's job. But we managed. We managed by creating the current education system to produce educated factory workers.

Now the current education system is out of date and failing us. IMO programmers are just the modern day factory worker; leveraging machines to do more with less. Imagine if we had ~30% of the population working on the next abstraction (software / robots / AI) instead of the current 2%. We'd be living in the real Utopia. I'm of the opinion that there is an infinite amount of jobs; as we as a species always want our current situation to be better than it currently is. But that only works if everyone can produce relatively equally. The problem now is we have a class of society which can not compete against another class who is benefiting from automation; not just programmers, but anything tech.

<comment><USER33> > I'm of the opinion that there is an infinite amount of jobs; as we as a > species always want our current situation to be better than it currently is.

This seems counterintuitive - there is a finite number of companies, a finite amount of work those companies require, and a finite economy in which they operate. It simply isn't possible to find an infinite number of jobs in a system in which everything is scarce and demand is limited.

<comment><USER32> There's not a finite number of companies. Companies are a human construct. Easy to create more. Resources are finite on Earth but we will be sourcing resources from around the solar system relatively shortly. I'd say within 50 years.

<comment><USER33> Companies can only survive as long as enough demand exists for them to remain profitable, their population is self-limited by the nature of competition.

You can _make_ as many companies as you like - all but a few will die. It's the reason restaurants tend to go out of business so quickly, there are already too many of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Fantastic!

We may finally get the promise of the 50's and 60's - less work and more leisure time thanks to technical advancements.

I personally look forward to the day there are less jobs, and so everyone can just work 3 days a week to spread them around, and spend much more time with family and passions.

<comment><USER35> We're already there. Productivity has increased manyfold since then. The dividends primarily go to those with the capital, not the ones producing the labor. What gains do go to the labor force are spent buying bigger nicer houses and things rather than working fewer hours.

If you want to work less, you can do it now, but it requires sacrifice in the sense that you'll lead a lifestyle closer to that of the 50's or 60's. Head over /r/financialindependence.

<comment><USER34> > _If you want to work less, you can do it now_

Thanks, I'm already doing it. I quit my Software Engineering job to drive 40,000miles from Alaska to Argentina over two years.

Now a few years later I've quit again and will drive 80,000 miles around Africa for the next 2 years. I'm in West Africa now.[1]

The number one question I get asked is how can I afford to do that, so I wrote an eBook "Work Less to Live Your Dreams" \- [http://amzn.to/2huxZjZ](http://amzn.to/2huxZjZ)

[1] [http://theroadchoseme.com](http://theroadchoseme.com) is my website, and I'm posting updates to [http://facebook.com/theroadchoseme/](http://facebook.com/theroadchoseme/) and [https://www.instagram.com/theroadchoseme/](https://www.instagram.com/theroadchoseme/)

<comment><USER29> I apologize for the off-topic but... this is FUCKING AMAZING.

<comment><USER34> Haha, thanks :)

Let me know if you have any questions or whatever, I love helping other people get out to live their dreams :)

Hit me up on Facebook or whatever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> When we actually have proof that AI is even possible, issues around AI will become real and pertinent to real life. Until then, it seems like a distraction from the very real problems these proponents of AI are actively trying to ignore, like mass surveillance and privacy. I wonder why so many proponents are actively trying to ignore these very real problems in our world in favor of living in this fantasy. It's fine to pretend that self driving cars and things like that are artificially intelligent, but while such things are artificial they're certainly not intelligent. I'm going to revisit the conversation when artificial intelligence is proven to exist. Until then, I personally don't see a reason to humor people deliberately ignoring important issues like mass surveillance in favor of living in the fantasy of AI.

</comment><comment><USER37> The article plays fairly loose with its own arguments. For example, while an expert system/predictor likely gets the medication right more often than the human, the actual shelving, counting, and management of the physical medications is totally beyond the reach of present and near future robots. For example: no robot or AI knows how to recover of a customer accidentally spills a cup of coffee on a shelf. (Further into the future, anything will happen!)

Similarly, while I am impressed by the Google self driving technology, the Uber version seems like a dangerously underdeveloped imitation that breaks as many rules as a bad human driver.

I think AI is powerful and important, but nowhere near where the singularity fan boys say it is.

<comment><USER29> > ... the actual shelving, counting, and management of the physical > medications is totally beyond the reach of present and near future robots.

Er... what?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9eRDyZJzSA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9eRDyZJzSA)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I'm sick of people who know nothing about statistics, machine learning, or AI writing about the future of statistics, machine learning, and AI. He talks about the kinds of errors people make and compares it to a database lookup of an actor? Come on.

</comment><comment><USER39> So to make the argument that peoples' jobs are at risk of automation, the author provides anecdotal evidence of a glorified vending machine pharmacy- pill filler (yes, I know this is not nearly all a pharmacist does, but this was the specific task given in the example), a position that has already been automated by vending machines, self check-out lanes, and robotic pick-and- ships?

Way to pump the industry hype there venturebeat, but I don't think you're going to make the cheerleading squad cut this year.

<comment><USER29> His point, in my opinion, is that the only reason the pharmacist isn't already replaced by a (more effective) vending machine is political and that it _will_ be so replaced once most people figure it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> In recent months, there has been a large number of posts on Hacker News extolling the coming robot (and/or AI) revolution. I've read that we are facing a jobless future because all the jobs will be automated.

All of that might be true, at some point in the future. The future is a very long time. I have no idea how they economy will work 500 years from now. But we can form reasonable opinions about what will happen during the next 10 years.

For all the rhetoric about a productivity revolution thanks to robots and/or AI, we should check in with reality and remember how bleak the present is. Productivity in the USA ran at a high level during the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, but it stalled out in 1973.

[https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/20150709...](https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/20150709_productivity_advanced_economies_piie.pdf)

"Labor productivity in the private nonfarm business sector rose by an average of 2.9 percent per year between 1948 and 1973. Beginning in the earlier 1970s, though, productivity slowed sharply, averaging only 1.5 percent growth between 1973 and 1995. Several factors can help explain the downshift. First, growth in the immediate post-war era benefited from the commercialization of numerous innovations made during World War II, including the jet engine. The early 1970s marked the point at which the wartime innovations became exhausted. Public investment also slowed, and the 1970s oil shocks and collapse of the Bretton Woods system caused dislocations that weighed on growth. "

For awhile, the situation was better in Britain, but since 2008 the situation has been worse. Britain has seen a complete collapse in productivity growth since 2008.

All of this is difficult to reconcile with talk of a revolution in productivity. Maybe that revolution will happen, but as late as 2016, there was no evidence of it in any government statistic, in any of the advanced economies.

It's also worth noting, if we do see uptick in productivity growth (thanks to robots or any other technology) it might simply get us back to the kind of productivity we took for granted during the boom years of the 1940s and 1950s and 1960s. And those were decades of full employment. And that would be awesome.

<comment><USER41> Labor Productivity measurement depends on GDP, so it suffers from classic GDP mismeasurement error. GDP only measures $, not value, so it fails to measure technological improvements in a competitive industry -- so it utterly fails to measure productivity (hence the charts showing that labor productivity growth is always tiny). Your computer today costs $1000, but it's 1000x more useful and more complex than that $2000 computer of 30 years ago. In GDP / Labor Productivity terms, though, it's value hasn't changed at all -- in fact, it's DECREASED, since your new computer costs less than the old computer!

<comment><USER40> You are completely wrong here:

"In GDP / Labor Productivity terms, though, it's value hasn't changed at all -- in fact, it's DECREASED, since your new computer costs less than the old computer!"

At least in the USA, the government does adjust for the increasing power of computers. Indeed, that is one of the arguments that productivity is really lower than what the government says (and therefore inflation is higher).

Consider this article:

[https://growthecon.com/blog/Manufacturing/](https://growthecon.com/blog/Manufacturing/)

It sets out to debunk this claim:

 _… the numbers are skewed by huge gains in real output in computer and electronics manufacturing that mainly reflect quality adjustments made by government statisticians, not increases in real-world sales._

But in fact, the author points out that it is altogether appropriate for the government to make those adjustments:

"Multi-factor productivity is simply a ratio of value-added to an index of inputs. Value-added in the manufacturing sector is a mesure of the economic value of all the goods produced. Not the physical number, the economic value. And hence manufacturing MFP is a measure of how much economic value that sector produces - not the physical number of goods - per unit of input used."

And even with those adjustments, productivity growth in the USA has been weak.

If you were to remove the quality adjustments that the USA government makes to the computer and consumer electronics sector, then productivity has been even worse, and inflation much higher, and growth even weaker, than what we typically think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I see all these talks about AI coming for our jobs and how awesome post scarcity society will be. But I never really hear people talking about the transition. Because what do you do when 10-20% of people are unemployed? Because isn't the end goal to have a majority of labor done by machines? What jobs can replace? How do we deal with high unemployment?

<comment><USER15> Industrialisation has wiped out way more jobs than AI can ever wipe out. Manual labor in farms and factories. But the economy adapted and new jobs were created.

What I find more concerning is the evolution of the degree of skills required in that new world. Not everyone is capable to do conceptual jobs, and those will increasingly be left behind (and vote Trump!).

<comment><USER42> See that's my concern. AI, I think, will first take out a lot of low skill job. But it is also good at a lot of high skill jobs, such as surgery. Now a lot of these jobs work well in conjunction, but there is a saturation point of how many jobs you need for that skill set. AI can reduce that.

So either we need to have a more highly educated workforce, which we do not seem to be prepping for; some may argue there's a limit to how educated your population can be too.

Industrialization is a good example though. For example when the cotton gin was invented Whitney thought it would reduce the number of slaves but didn't account for the surplus of demand for cotton once it was cheaper. There is a difference because there was still a human worker involved, but I do think some areas will see spikes in employment. But will that be enough to offset the unemployment, and how do we attempt to prepare for that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> > After all, human errors literally kill over a million people a year, whereas > the statistical likelihood of dying from a self-driving car is like falling > off a building and being struck by lightning on the way down.

I don't see any evidence for this. While I'm sure self-driving cars have the potential to be this safe, the death from Tesla's autopilot suggested the risk of death from self-driving cars might currently be similar to that of human- driven cars.

<comment><USER44> I think I mentioned this elsewhere: It is not about the exact stat comparison between self driving cars and humans. It is actually about

1) the perceived and real adaptability of humans. (given an 'unknown' situation, what does the machine do?)

2) Non epidemic nature of faults in humans. (one version update bug nuking all teslas - we have seen this happen in software, no reason they can't happen in self driving software)

3\. Non epidemic nature of coordinated events in humans (GPS satellites fail or leap seconds occur and suddenly all self driving cars go nuts - <USER2> doesn't happen amongst humans).

4\. Ethical decision making concerns from machines which are considered 'cold' and 'calculating' and whether that can be construed as murder. (Would the machine choose to kill the pedestrian family over car's current occupants in a purely two choice scenario?)

5\. Degree of 'control' considerations. (Would you enjoy a remote turn off switch that denies you entry to your house / mobility etc.)

6\. Anonymity considerations. (That's why money economy is still a thing. Possibility of 3rd party tracking vs. knowing about tracking are two different things).

FWIW, I am not against either situations, I am just collating info :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> We replaced the baity title with a (hopefully) representative phrase from the article body. If someone suggests a more accurate and neutral title, we can change it again.

</comment><comment><USER46> I wonder what the impact will be where a digital replacement seems very far away, like in psychology. Will a machine end up being a better psychologist or worse because he's not a human? It may even end up being better. It will surely clean up the theory soup there.

<comment><USER47> I don't see how a robot psychologist wouldn't fall into an uncanny valley. Though, the automaton from Pohl's Gate seemed friendly enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Speaking of which, anyone read Ryan Avent's new book, "The Wealth of Humans" ( [http://amzn.to/2i91FE4](http://amzn.to/2i91FE4) ) ?

Is it worthwhile?

</comment><comment><USER49> I am one amongst those who don't _completely_ buy into the AI hype, yet.

In the grand scheme of things, AI right now can identify patterns. And this is possible because everything in the AI universe is tied to a number. Now, this mathematical view of the world does help solve a lot of problems, such as security, prediction, recommendations, etc., however, I don't think AI maybe able to completely, autonomously replace us humans.

For example, computers see the world using sensors that translate pictures into "pixels". In contrast, we don't see pixels, we see objects. We natively see objects. Now, in a computer's world, it can still do something called object recognition, but, again, this is based on the fundamental idea of pixels and a lot of math around is around this concept, which is vastly different from how humans perceive the world.

The problem is, because, everything is based on math, there isn't much native intelligence to a computer and someone needs to impart it mathematically into the computer's brain. Because, math and intelligence are two different things. This is why you're able to fool a computer with an A4 sheet printout of your face but, not a real human. You can only program so much logic into a math wizard. But, that doesn't necessarily translate into intelligence.

Take cars for instance, I drive a 6 speed manual transmission. In the real life, I'm also a street racer. I love manual because it gives me full control. Right when I'm about to hit the corner, I downshift knowing in advance (based on what I saw minutes earlier "objects" in front of me, not pixels) that there is a curve ahead and I may need to reduce my speed in 3 seconds, after which I will need the full power available to overtake the guy infront of me. With an automatic car, first you must brake, then the system will downshift for you, and then you hope it doesn't upshift in the wrong instance leading to a window for others to over-take you. Where is the intelligence in that?

I recently saw a Tesla auto-brake even before an accident happened. That was cool. But, let's say you're in a situation where the car in front of you is trying to block you so the thieves can then break into yours and steal your stuff/murder/etc.? This is not from a Hollywood movie, this is something that is very common in some parts of Asia. IF the Tesla brakes at that instance, you're screwed, probably even dead. So, then you take manual control. But, to me, all this AI isn't real AI unless the computer can understand the context of what's happening around you and reacting accordingly.

When I narrated this to a friend, his first reaction was "How can you expect a computer to..do this?" I don't care, because I, as a human can do all this. My friend's way of thinking is our problem - Starting out with the limitations of what a computer can or cannot do. Instead, we should be asking "If I can do this, why can't my computer?"

And until a computer can really do what we can do without assistance, it's all just a bunch of neat, shiny mathematical algorithms packaged inside a program doing X number of tasks it knows to do. Maybe some day it will, and I hope that day isn't very far.

/end rant

<comment><USER50> you are correct, the article is over hyped. The current AI is very fragmented and computers can't do we do very easily. On the other hand computers do stuff very easily that we find very hard. As computers approach to things we do easily this is where it gets scary. Its like they have a super power over us.

What if someone were to deploy a virus into all Teslas. If you identify a human, then go identify them as a threat and go full speed at it. A simple tweak in the algorithm makes all teslas man hunters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> people's underestimation of how i can spin out one anecdote about myself into a caustic vision of the future

</comment><comment><USER52> If your job is creative, you have nothing to worry about.

<comment><USER33> Tell that to the rug weavers of a century ago.

Creative work will be automated as well - at the very least most production work and all acting will be, since all of the sets and actors will be entirely digital as soon as it becomes feasible. We've already seen the beginnings of that, and software generated music, literature and art already exist. Entire multimedia campaigns centered around a single property could be generated and distributed by AI at once. The movie, the novelization, the soundtrack, the video game, heck even the sockpuppet accounts shilling it online - all of that can be automated.

Creativity isn't magic - any human process can be simulated with sufficient power, and made efficient and automated with sufficient time.

<comment><USER23> What's going to be the value of mass produced art work? Will teens just attend concerts with robots playing guitars? Will kids just give up learning music because a computer can do it ? If that's the case, there's probably not going to be much incentive for people to get out of bed.

The point of creativity is not about money (though people think that's the case), it's really about expression. Sure you can monetize the product, but that's not what happens when people go out dancing together. It's about community, communication and enjoyment.

Besides, who is to say that people wouldn't actually prefer a hand crafted rug created by a master craftsperson? Or watch their daugher play a concert?

We have mass produced rugs in our house now, but if I could afford it, I would have the hand-crafted rug, they're really nice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I get to program the robot. Therefore my job cannot be taken.

<comment><USER54> Everyone says this until their job is taken, in this case by automated code generation directed by a product manager.

<comment><USER55> We've had CASE tools for almost 50 years.

<comment><USER54> We've had computers for 60 some odd years as well, but only recently are they driving cars for us.

<comment><USER55> Like CASE tools, not for lack of trying!

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


Relay Modern: Simpler, Faster, More Extensible - <AUTHOR> https://code.facebook.com/posts/1362748677097871 <comment><USER2> Hey, Jan here from the Relay team, happy to answer questions.</comment>


Machine Learning on Encrypted Data Without Decrypting It - <AUTHOR> https://juliacomputing.com/blog/2019/11/22/encrypted-machine-learning.html <comment><USER2> This blog post reminds me of the "Machine Learning Systems are Stuck in a Rut" paper [1], where they mentioned:

> It is hard to experiment with front end features like named dimensions, > because it is painful to match them to back ends that expect calls to > monolithic kernels with fixed layout. On the other hand, there is little > incentive to build high quality back ends that support other features, > because all the front ends currently work in terms of monolithic operators. > An end-to-end tool chain for machine learning requires solutions from many > specialist disciplines.

This is a fantastic example of getting around this problem using Flux.jl's interaction with the full Julia language. Here the author does some exceedingly cool stuff (doing machine learning on encrypted data!), and in order to get there he needed to write what many would think of as lower-level kernels that should be "provided by the library" (encrypted matrix multiplication, encrypted convolutions). To make the interface useful, he needed to use a mature interface that people are already using and make it something that can automatically switch over to encrypted implementations. And, because of the nature of fully homeomorphic encryption, the implementation has to be fast, otherwise it's dead in the water since FHE is expensive!

To me, this example showcases one way how Flux.jl's is helping machine learning get out of that "rut". The author adds dispatches to standard kernels which allow for his encrypted data types, which then allows standard Julia Flux.jl machine learning models to act on encrpyted data, and it uses type- inference + JIT compilation to make it fast enough to work. Not only that, but it's also not tied to some "sub-language" defined by a machine learning framework. That means the FHE framework not only works nicely with machine learning, it can be used by any other package in the Julia language (differential equation solvers, nonlinear optimization, macroeconomics models?). This allows composibility of tools and community: all tools from all fields can now use this same FHE implementation, so authors collaborate and mature this to a very good one. These knock-on effects give people doing research in Julia a lot of competitive advantages over other researchers, and it will be interesting to see how this effects not just the ML research community, but also everyone else!

[https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3321441](https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3321441)</comment>


The New York Region Is Hot (in technology) - <AUTHOR> http://www.centernetworks.com/nyc-technology

<comment><USER2> I'd be interested in seeing more data, as well as to know whether he's talking about NYC or NY as a whole. He uses them interchangeably, but is he also counting the rest of NY? Some from NYC tend to forget the rest of the state is here.

<comment><USER3> "Some from NYC tend to forget the rest of the state is here."

We don't forget; we just call it "upstate". ;)</comment></comment>


Indexing the Fastest Growing SaaS Companies - <AUTHOR> http://saas1000.com/ <comment><USER2> On a related note. I always thought Xero made for an interesting case study for saas founders, as the company has went public when it had 150~ customers. That's pretty uncommon, and means that Xero's financial (including user/subscription growth) metrics are available for every year since founding.

All here: [https://www.xero.com/au/about/investors/financial- info/](https://www.xero.com/au/about/investors/financial-info/)

Disclaimer: I work at Xero: API, integrations & add-on ecosystem.

<comment><USER3> Would be nice if the data wasn't buried in PDFs.

<comment><USER4> What's the incentive for them to make it more convenient to find?

<comment><USER3> Investor confidence? Better visibility?

<comment><USER5> What company out there doesn't do PDFs? Genuinely curious. I'd hesitate to say that switching to non-PDF data would raise investor confidence all that much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> > The list will include the largest saas companies and smaller startups. For > now in order to get a ranking you must have in between 40 and 1000 employees

If the list intends to include "the largest saas companies" it seems strange to exclude companies with over 1000 staff.

<comment><USER6> Also, it's much easier to jump from 10 employees to 40, rather than from 1000 to 4000. So this list is very biased.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you go down to page 5 or 6, GNU Emacs is listed.

</comment><comment><USER8> Note: "fastest growing" in terms of numbers of employees, not necessarily in terms of influence, customers, revenue, or profits

<comment><USER9> I think the head line should reflect this metric. Though I have my doubts on whether number of employees is a good metric.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Number of employees is not necessarily a very indicative metric for fastest growing

</comment><comment><USER11> One thing that's eye opening is how many of these aren't in the Bay Area, but are in a few other cities that never get any attention for producing a lot of software companies.

</comment><comment><USER12> Some of the bigger SaaS companies are missing from the list

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm curious how you get your metrics/info on each company.

<comment><USER14> Based on the data exposed, probably from LinkedIn's employee count.</comment></comment>


SXSW 2010 for Hackers - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/sxsw_2010_for_hackers.php <comment><USER2> How do people afford to go to SXSW?

~$500 ticket + ~$500 airfare + ~$1k hotels = ~$2k of expenses that could let you do a lot of other things?

Even sharing hotels and/or crashing on a friends couch wouldn't work too well...

<comment><AUTHOR> Get on a panel, ticket's free. Look on Craigslist, lodging for the week is less than $500. Or if you're going for business purposes, just expense it.

<comment><USER3> Last year was my first year and while I paid for a pass ($425 early) and airfare (I think I found $320 ATL -> AUS last year), I ended up splitting a loft with 5 guys above a bar on 6th street. They were all Internet/hacker types so it wasn't random. We paid about $300 each for the week. This year I'm trying the other side of things and am getting a room for 4 in the Hilton.. should be just shy of $500/person for the week.

Those that haven't been to SXSW before might like this post of mine about it all: [http://paulstamatiou.com/thoughts-on-sxswi-2009-from-a- first...](http://paulstamatiou.com/thoughts-on-sxswi-2009-from-a-first-timer)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm super excited for SXSW. This is the first time I'll have ever gone to one of the big, national conferences. This stuff all sounds pretty cool.

Any advice from you seasoned conference goers?

<comment><USER5> If they're having it, don't miss "how to rawk SXSW".

<comment><AUTHOR> They are having it!

I wrote a list of 10 awesome things for n00bs to do, too: <http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/sxsw_2010_for_noobs.php></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do you use to write/draw your software/cloud architecture? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Visio, but been looking recently around what's new. Moving from 'drawing/clicking' to writing helped a lot.

Since then using: (paid) [https://cloudcraft.co/](https://cloudcraft.co/) [https://textografo.com/](https://textografo.com/)

(open source) [https://knsv.github.io/mermaid/](https://knsv.github.io/mermaid/)

<comment><USER3> Cloudcraft does look pretty awesome, seems like great interface and tooling.....are there any downsides or disappointments you've had since using it?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm curious as to what HN is using since I usually do it my way.

I usually stick with what I know, such as powerpoint, but I have a difficult time making it look professional.

I love the README files in markdown in any git repository that are pretty descriptive on what their architectures are.

</comment><comment><USER4> I use Lucidchart because they have a lot of AWS-specific icons built in, so mapping out the guts of a VPC is really easy.

<comment><USER5> Aren't those the same icons AWS publishes for Visio/PPT/etc?

[https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/introducing-aws-simple- icon...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/introducing-aws-simple-icons-for- your-architecture-diagrams/)

<comment><USER4> Oh wow, I never realized that. Yes, I do believe you're right!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I use cacoo.com

</comment><comment><USER7> CloudFormation</comment>