The Black Box of Product Management - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@brandonmchu/the-black-box-of-product-management-3feb65db6ddb <comment><USER2> I don't see why people think of a Software Product Manager's job as amorphous or poorly defined. The job description is straightforward: you manage features. You gather information from users/customers and/or sales & marketing about what new features and feature enhancements are wanted, define what criteria satisfy the features, get estimates on what the features will cost to build, and you make decisions about how to prioritize and schedule the development of features, to make the product as successful as possible.

<comment><USER3> Creating value != managing features. In many cases the opposite is actually true.

<comment><USER4> Creating value != _creating_ features, but it might equal _managing_ them. Determining which ones to not create or to remove is also "managing".

<comment><USER3> Fair point, I should have left out the second part. My point is that creating value shouldn't be associated at all with features. Creating value might be 1) striking a deal with a partner, 2) tweaking an operational process, 3) improving a customer support script, etc etc etc.

<comment><USER2> _1) striking a deal with a partner, 2) tweaking an operational process, 3) improving a customer support script, etc etc etc._

Yes these tasks add value, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are, or should be, part of the Product Manager's job description. They may get done by Product Managers in some cases, but they could also be done by people in various other roles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _> One day, there may be graduate degrees and definite career paths to product management, but not today._

What he has described is a multi disciplinary generalist with knowledge of each business sector and training in how to manage organizational goals and people. There is actually a current post graduate degree for that exact task - the MBA.

<comment><USER6> Unfortunately, many MBAs are still looking at the world through a manufacturing lens. Software sector is fairly different in that you don't have a conveyor belt and "plant size" is only marginally useful in that you cannot replicate productiveness exactly.

For product marketing aspects of that job, an MBA is useful, but again, one needs very solid grounding in the subject matter itself. MBA is more of a way of thinking, as opposed to a blueprint in how to do X.

<comment><USER7> I go to Wharton, and can weigh in from an inside perspective. There's a lot of interest for tech generally, and PM role is probably the most coveted one. This is because most companies favor people with a background in technology (or at the very least a passion for technology). You might be able to get a job/internship in a tech company in Ops, BizDev, Corporate Strategy or Finance with a whole lot of background in tech, but PM roles definitely require one.

<comment><USER8> Also went to Wharton, and I'm a PM. My background was only a CS minor as an undergrad (8 years ago) and that I taught myself Rails in order to attempt a startup. This demonstrated a propensity for software but is completely useless practically. I've learned almost everything on the job.

I use my MBA for: statistics (I'm stronger here than most SWEs), marketing, communication skills, and understanding business use cases. Watching very effective PMs, I think soft skills (leadership, communications) are more highly correlated with success than "technical prowess." The ability to grok technical concepts is kind of table stakes, but being very technically talented isn't necessary (and such talent would probably be wasted).

<comment><USER6> Great perspective! From my own experience, having a strong grasp of the overall architecture and implications thereof is very important, however, thinking that you can do better than the Engineering team or that you know how that system should be designed is a liability. Collaboration is the name of the game.

<comment><USER8> Right, I don't mean to imply that technical knowledge isn't central to the job. It is. But it can be learned.

A lot of engineers on this thread might not realize that within MBA programs, the word is out -- "don't even try to be a PM, you need a technical background." As if "coding" is something ultra-intimidating and therefore if you can't already do it, you can't be a PM.

My company has a reputation for this constraint, like we only hire people who were full-time SWEs in a past life. It's simply not true.

Once you get here, though, you have to understand the technical architecture, for sure. But being a PM isn't alone among careers, here -- most careers have a steep learning curve when you're starting out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's a really long article explaining and justifying what "Product" is.

I think a much simpler explanation is that product management is the hub that connects all of the other groups together in a unified and consistent fashion.

Is marketing up to speed on exactly what is launching a month before it launches, so they can prep content and PR people? Do sales people understand exactly how we should or should not be selling a new feature? Do finance and legal know how we're going to sunset that old piece of functionality without violating contractual agreeements with customers?

Thats' all product management. And then you get into the roadmap side of things, but even that is largely in service of the above goal.

I'm not one of those product people who thinks that all companies _need_ product managers. But I think in the end, someone ends up filling that need, whether they have a formal title or not. It could be a sales exec, or a presales engineer, or a head of engineering with good business sense, but that's the job function they're stepping in to fulfill.

<comment><USER10> _It 's a really long article explaining and justifying what "Product" is._

TBH, I didn't think the article was justifying the role so much as justifying the ambiguity that surrounds it.

The fact that PM touches so many areas without specializing in any one, and ultimately involves mostly leadership and coordination, means it can be really tough to put a finger on what, exactly, someone with that title is doing.

* But I think in the end, someone ends up filling that need, whether they have a formal title or not.*

And that really is the key.

In small organizations, it's not unusual for the lead of the technical group to own these functions. That can be good, or it can be very very bad, depending on the person and the market the company is operating in.

But as the organization scales, the complexity of the work grows substantially. Often that means a few folks help pick up the ball in an ad hoc fashion until someone realizes that maybe one person should own the responsibility, and voila, a product manager is born.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting piece...

As a relatively newly minted Product Manager, I struggle, every day, to figure out what, exactly, my job is, other than to abuse commas (I'm in a rather odd spot in that I have no mentor and weak senior leadership, so I'm largely responsible for defining my own role in an organization that doesn't really grok what product management involves).

One thing I've found is that I can't easily put my finger on what exactly I do... "leadership + coordinator/facilitator" is the best I can come up with. It's something that's troubled me for a while now, but this post makes me realize that maybe that's just normal, which is rather nice to see.

Still doesn't mean I know what the hell I'm doing, but that's a different problem...

<comment><USER11> Honestly, your job is to get yourself into a product management role where you'll be properly mentored by someone more experienced. I'd persuade your company that they need to hire someone senior for you to learn from or move to another company where there's already a bigger PM organization.

<comment><USER10> Unfortunately, you're 100% right about all of that...

This is getting afield, but I'm in a rather tough spot: late stage startup that continues to grow, and one I've been involved with for a very long time, so I've invested a lot of my career here. I want to see it succeed (not the least because I have a not insubstantial option pool), and it seems we probably will, though perhaps in spite of ourselves. :) Customer engagement is high, we're seeing steadily growing revenues, and we've largely pushed aside any competition in our space.

 _But_ , senior management is only borderline functional and business focus is primarily customer acquisition rather than strategic product initiatives. Some recent changes in that area have been positive, but not transformative, and we continue to build a business on an original concept invented over a decade ago, while failing to keep up with changes in the industry.

Meanwhile, my direct report is essentially absent (which means product has no representation at the VP level), and the only other VP-level individual (who, notably, is _not_ my direct report) with a strong product background is likely on their way out for various political reasons.

Tricky.

Anyway, barring a career change, at minimum, I really need to reach out to my network to find other folks in the role with whom I can share war stories and coaching/advice...

<comment><USER12> IMO: once you grok how PM is viewed by a management team, you need to make a stay-or-bail decision. Don't waffle. It sounds like you've already made the evaluation.

My 30 yrs of experience says that an idiotic mgmt team is going to stay that way until they fail and/or are replaced. PM's squishy nature just makes it a easy target for "oh, they're just marketing." And your particular direct report circumstances just make the decision that much easier.

Do it. To stay just invites an ulcer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wouldn't necessarily agree with the part about "why product management exists".

Product management exists because customers need a clearly and concisely communicated path to their benefits today and in the future. Product developers need a clearly and concisely communicated path on what to build to create value for customers.

Successfully marrying those two is not an easy endeavor, and the way at which you do it isn't a one size fits all orchestration. Hence, why product management is seen as something of a dark art.

Here's what I do know. Companies without strong product management risks themselves to higher customer churn and longer development-to-value timelines.

<comment><USER9> One exception that i'll say is that a lot of platform-y products where the developers are relatively closer to the target audience tend to do better without product management.

Not that it gets you out from some of the challenges I list elsewhere, but at least from a persona/use case perspective it's comparatively easy to grok why and how someone wants to use the tool if that "someone" is close to the person who is writing the code.

On the flip side, anything with sophisticated non-technical business users or niche industries absolutely depends on having product management to rep the voice of the customer to R&D.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> From an engineer's perspective, the problem with product management is often lack of a definable process. How do the PM's priorities correlate to actual _user_ priorities? I've never had a PM who showed actual names and numbers or anything quantitative to show this relationship. If I could see that, it might be easier to understand why they're willing to tie up half of engineering for a year to implement a feature that not one of those engineers believes will actually matter, while other apparently low-hanging fruit have to go unpicked. It's OK if they're wrong, so long as there seems to be a rational process involved. I've worked with some pretty good PMs, but even they seemed to be good primarily because they had good gut instincts and not because they applied a rigorous process. In other cases, PM decisions seemed to be based on pure personal bias unchangeable by facts. Anyone who has lost a year of their life because of a PM's ten-second decision is going to be less keen on PMs as a species for a long time.

<comment><USER10> _I 've worked with some pretty good PMs, but even they seemed to be good primarily because they had good gut instincts and not because they applied a rigorous process._

So have you provided a rigorous, data-driven defense of every decision you've made as an engineer?

'cuz I've met a _lot_ of great engineers whio made great decisions primarily because they had good gut instincts and not because they applied a rigorous process.

I've also seen engineering teams suffer because of a ten-second decision made by someone a year previously.

We're more similar than you think. :)

The sad reality is PM is fundamentally a dark art, even more so than engineering, which is, let's face it, driven as much by instinct as true engineering principles.

Now, that doesn't excuse a PM from not doing market research, not doing cost/benefit analysis, not tracking KPIs, etc, etc. PMs should view themselves like an entrepreneur, and should always be looking to back their decisions with data like any other business owner.

But ultimately, good instincts have to be part of the skillset. And just like an engineer, sometimes decisions are made based on a gut reaction, particularly when decisions have to be made very quickly (which happens more often than we'd all like).

<comment><USER14> > So have you provided a rigorous, data-driven defense of every decision > you've made as an engineer?

Not every one, no, but most of the time. What you're engaging in here is _tu quoque_ , as if an occasional behavior in one group justifies a continual behavior in another. Ain't so.

> I've met a lot of great engineers whio made great decisions primarily > because they had good gut instinct

As have I. I've also met some PMs who were likewise, and said as much. All I'm saying is that relying on that _all the time_ can cause resentment.

> The sad reality is PM is fundamentally a dark art

That's OK, though I believe it's probably less true than you or the OP seem to believe. What's most injurious to the PM/engineering relationship is not the lack of rigor but the lack of transparency that goes with it. Often PMs don't even _try_ to explain where their priorities came from, and don't admit when they're just guessing. We engineers can deal with guesses. As you point out, we make them ourselves all the time, but we _acknowledge_ that they're guesses and therefore inferior to any data that might come along. "Because I'm the PM" is too often the only reason given, and _of course_ that leads to animosity.

<comment><USER10> _" Because I'm the PM" is too often the only reason given, and of course that leads to animosity._

Ah, well, that's a different problem: PM arrogance.

Confidence + Humility is not contradictory to Leadership, but unfortunately not everyone understands that.

'course, many also don't understand that Manager and Leader are two different things... and a Product Manager has to be both.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I find here in the valley companies value engineers who want a say in product direction. So we have companies filled with engineers who don't want to just be shoved a task and relegated to coding monkey status. I think that's where most of the ambiguity exists.

As I see it, a PM should be your team's CEO and the lead engineer should be the CTO. Together the pair of you are delivering on a single vision, one person outwardly and the other inwardly. Yet for the magic to work, the entire team needs to be on the same page. No one person should be setting the goals for everyone else. Simple put, the PM isn't the engineers bitch and engineering is the PM's bitch.

<comment><USER16> The problem is with closed-minded PMs who refuse to accept reasonable input from external stakeholders & experts. Not saying this is the rule, but it is common.

<comment><USER10> Well, to be blunt: a closed-minded PM is, by definition, a crappy PM. Listening to experts and external stakeholders is literally one of the core parts of the job.

That's not to say a PM has to take their advice. But if they choose not to, it should be for clearly defined reasons based on strong reasoning backed by data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think the author missed a biggie: In many companies, the Product Management team owns P&L's and makes sure products are profitable. They have direct delegation from the CEO for the "business side" of the product. If you're charging for your product, that's super important!

<comment><USER10> Incidentally, if you wanted to identify one of the major pain points of a company transitioning from no PM to having PM, this is one of them.

In a small company sans PM, this work is done by the CEO or CTO. Deferring that to even a VP-level PM... that's no easy transition!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I work for a company with many product. This post explains why it is so hard for the company to move forward in our fast moving tech world. It also explains why so many startups today are "single trick ponies" that learn to expand their from only one product.

</comment><comment><USER19> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAY27NU1Jog](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAY27NU1Jog) I have people skills - I am good at dealing with people!</comment>


What to make of a bizarre interview - <AUTHOR> https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/120059/what-to-make-of-a-bizarre-interview <comment><USER2> Most likely it's a fake interview.</comment>


How to validate your startup idea quickly - <AUTHOR> https://amanjain.substack.com/p/how-to-validate-your-startup-idea <comment><USER2> With all due respect, a Facebook person's thoughts on validating a startup idea are pretty much irrelevant.

Whatever thing you are building at Facebook starts out with 10 hurricanes of wind behind it.

Startups begin with all the wind of a baby blowing a raspberry.

<comment><USER3> Yup. The author made a poll of fellow FB employees. As if that is even remotely representative of the overall market of the 25 to 44 year olds. Just consider the average salary of the polled population vs the general population.

<comment><AUTHOR> Poll of "fellow FB employees" could be replaced with spending ~$100 on Google Ads and using a certain targeting criteria.

<comment><USER4> but its not

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A number of the comments are saying this is bad because from Facebook, numbers are unrealistic ($100mm?!), signs tell you nothing.

Personally, I've done startups longer than I want to admit (10+ yrs). If I was to start another one, the play book would look basically like this article.

Idea/Thesis, Hypothesis, Target, Test and some where later - build.

The problem I had when I started and why so many founders get it wrong is the steps usually look like - Idea => Build or just ... Build.

There is a lot of good advice here. Sure the numbers might appear insane (just replace, $1m, $300k, $300), but don't let that stop this from being a good framework. The goal is to remove as many assumptions about what you're supposed to build as fast as possible because chances are, more than not, the assumptions are wrong from Idea => Build. This is a good way to validate a number of assumptions and it's only just the beginning

The only thing I would have added is - ask for Money.

Ideas will iterate very quickly (or die) once money is involved.

<comment><USER6> _Idea /Thesis, Hypothesis, Target, Test and some where later - build._

This is a common strategy if you just want to 'do a startup' but it misses the _need_. Every successful business I can think of started with a founder needing a product to exist. All the startups I've been involved in have been products I wanted to exist because I needed them myself, or I had a close relationship with someone who needed them. Turning them in to something that could make money was a key goal, but I'd have built _some form of them_ anyway even if it wasn't.

If you're just thinking up things people might want and throwing up a landing page to see if people claim they're interested I suspect you're going to get bored quickly, and you'll move on to the next _even better_ idea very quickly.

That's not to say it _can 't_ work if you're making something just because 300 people signed up to your Launchrock page, but I think the motivation to succeed won't weather the storms that your startup will face if that's the _only_ reason you have to build something.

<comment><USER7> the whole Lean Startup methodology is snake oil IMO. it is used primarily by consultants to lure big corps into "innovation methodologies".* While its certainly an improvement over status quo, results were mostly meh anyway. you just cant force good ideas

the best startups are the ones mentioned by OP. visionary founder who needs that stuff himself.

* i was director at a small 7mm/yr consultancy and did precisely that

<comment><USER8> The main point of lean startup isn't to have better ideas, it is to identify _and discard_ bad ones faster, and focus your limited resources on the wheat among the chaff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Maybe it is because I'm older, but whenever I see this advice to build a fake landing page and see if people sign up... I recall that selling vaporware was reviled in the 90s, but somehow now it is considered a wise business tool. It still feels scammy to me. If you have a market in mind, but don't have people in that market to talk to directly to validate your idea, you are aiming at the wrong market. Otherwise all these techniques prove is that you can collect emails, not that those emails will actually become paying customers.

<comment><USER10> You're not alone. This has always felt scammy. It's a little more gray-area than some of the traditional vapor-ware which was more about driving competition out of business by large players, but still something I try to avoid.

<comment><USER11> I'm older too. Maybe the issue is if the central premise is vapourware or components/add-on features So maybe if the author automated the metadata collection, ran some filtering on it and then had a fitness pro sanity check the results? I agree that this oft-recommended "idea validation" process sounds a lot like this scene from Silicon Valley, without the clarification at the end:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1QPXyebhiY&t=8m26s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1QPXyebhiY&t=8m26s)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Even if slightly unrealistic, I actually think the nicest part is the back of the napkin math and derivation of the numbers to give you context for how big a market is and what you'd need to attack to meet your goals.

I do however have an issue with the wizard of oz method of validating your product. It's not because of the perceived ethics and I totally understand too many people today build something before ever knowing anything about whether anyone will use or pay for it. Hopefully I didn't miss it but nowhere does the author discuss the amount of time/people/money it would take to build a working MVP, not to mention how much of your time will be tied up from working on said MVP if you're oz (i.e. the man or woman behind the curtain until the MVP is built). This is important since it drives how you (or at least I) would move forward: Do you need to quit a full time job and spend 3-6 months 60+ hr/week building your MVP, can you build an MVP in a few weekends, would you need outside help/money to build an MVP, etc etc.

The example in this post mentions a recommendation engine of sorts for individualized fitness programs. This sounds like a fairly high amount of expertise in the field of fitness, some possible AI with trained models sprinkled in and a good amount of curated fitness routine info or I guess individual exercises based on the equipment the user enters that they have. So a lot of time getting with experts (or becoming an expert) AND building a new machine learned model possibly with a nice, usable UI. This sounds like a full time job for 5+ people for 6+ months at least to get any sort of real prototype.

</comment><comment><USER13> I started reading the post but the moment I saw big numbers in hypothesis I felt like the author has no clue how hard reality is. Facebook is a great cocoon to try random numbers. Outside that founders take months to even find the right set of people who fit your need space.

Just __talk __, generally, about pains you are trying to solve. Everything else is quite unnecessary.

Did you know that even founder of Zapier had to get on a call to explain their first adopter how the product actually worked? Yeah these are early days. Listen to their podcast of IndieHackers.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm trying to understand your feedback. Perhaps I'm missing something.

The point of the big numbers in my post is not to look at them in absolute terms. But to look at the ratio A/B. And then apply it to a much smaller audience. Because that tells helps validate that your idea will meet your expectations (whatever they may be).

<comment><USER14> I read the comments first, and then eagerly read your post - because I hate Facebook and wanted to scorn you, but having read it I see that it's not really Facebook-centric at all, containing only a glancing reference.

That said, I do think there are problems with your use of statistics and you kind of do need to consider the numbers in absolute terms. If I check my idea out with ten people I know in my target demographic, and five of them like it, I probably shouldn't expect 50% of the target market will be interested in my idea. My sample size is too small and also not really representative of the demographic because there is a selection bias at play - they're people I know, so maybe I know the only five people in the world who have the same problem I'm trying to sovle.

Likewise, in your example, you talk about showing a concept to people on a Facebook social group, but people on a Facebook social group aren't really representative of your target demographic either. "Only 20 bucks a month? Sounds great, I love interacting with apps!" may be something a Facebook engineer would say, but that may be less likely from the mouth of the average 25-44 year old.

I do think testing your ideas out and seeing how users respond to them is a good practice but there is inherently danger to doing tests and coming up with statistics if you believe your own tests. You might run the experiments you describe and feel good about your numbers and invest time and money to go to a wider audience only to find out that a lot of people think 20 dollars a month is too expensive for an app that gives workout advice (which, I predict, I could find on the current app store for free) or that they don't like working out at home or from an app, etc.

If you know you don't know what's ahead you'll proceed cautiously. If you falsely believe you know what is ahead due to biased statistics or insufficient sample sizes, you may blunder painfully.

I also caught a few references to Thiel's "Zero to one" in there, but I feel the approach you're describing, at least the hypothetical example, is somewhat contradictory to the advice in that book. I'd characterize your approach as:

1\. figure out the market - (Big number, everyone interested in fitness)

2\. guess what piece you can serve - (small number - only 2% need to try!)

3\. figure out if you can serve them - (small number - maybe 10% retention)

In other words, "We just need a small piece of this big market!"

From Zero to One:

>Now I think the opposite version of this is always where you have super big markets and there is so many different things that went wrong with all the clean tech companies in the last decade. But the one theme than ran through almost all of them is that they all started with massive markets. Every clean tech powerpoint presentation that one saw in the years 2005 to 2008, which is the clean tech bubble in Silicon Valley, started with where the energy market, where the market was measured in hundreds and billions of trillions of dollars. And then once you're sort of like a minnow in a vast ocean, that is not a good place to be. That means you have tons of competitors and you don't even know who all the competitors are.

>You want to be a one of a kind company. You want to be the only player in a small ecosystem. You don't want to be the fourth online pet food company. You don't want to be the tenth solar panel company. You don't want to be the hundredth restaurant in Palo Alto. Your restaurant industry is a trillion dollar industry. So if you do a market size analysis, you conclude restaurants are fantastic business to go into. And often large existing markets typically means that you have tons of competitions so it's very very hard to differentiate. The first very counterintuitive idea is to go after small markets, markets that are so small people often don't even think that they make sense. That's where you get a foothold and then if those markets are able expand, you can scale into a big monopoly business.

In other words, if I looked at "2% of people who saw my Facebook post left their email" I'd probably think the same thing I'd think prior to doing any experiment, which is "There is a lot of fitness stuff, including apps and gyms, this probably won't work". But, I'm also a pessimist, so maybe that's just me.

Anywho - sorry if I've been too negative. I did enjoy reading your post, and I hope you hit the target numbers you want on your substack subscriptions from this post! :)

<comment><USER15> I thought the same thing. These kind of analysis will point you towards already flooded markets (how many fitness apps there are already? My local gym has one..), when you'd be way more interested in going after markets unknown to most people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is a neat idea, and there may be some enlightening bits of feedback, but it won't tell you what matters, and that is if people, in a specific audience will like the product.

Sign ups and likes are very noisy singals.

There's just nothing that can take the place of market validation, so the 'new standard' model of 'release early' is probably the best way.

Sometimes it takes a while to find the right user base and to get fit.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree different levels of "skin in the game" mean different signal.

Simple link click is pretty lousy signal and I would ignore it.

I think email is okay. Phone number is probably better. Somebody putting their credit card is really good.

I didn't mention all of that for brevity. But you could device a point based grading system based on what signal you get.

<comment><USER17> I've done ok with a link to a calendly on the email marketing campaign - you'd be surprised how many people we up for a chat! And as a bonus it solves the awkward timezone issues for me and im not tempted to take 2am calls to be nice!

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a really interesting idea!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The last step where you manually do what the product is meant to do really works in 1% of products. Think of all the successful products today: Docusign, Snowflake, Wix, yeah.. not going to happen.

It's 2020. All the low hanging fruit ideas are gone. Any meaningful product idea requires a bit more complexity in implementing it.

<comment><USER19> I know several people who would pay good money to have lengthy and repetitive forms (school permission slips for field trips) filled in 'automatically' and doing this manually should be a cinch!

So I'm not sure I agree with your hypothesis.

<comment><USER18> Really? Paying for someone to fill in forms? If it's trivial like a field trip, I don't see anyone paying for that. If it's important like a legal document, you _dont_ want someone to fill it in for you.

<comment><USER19> I thought the same, but I saw the size of the form for the field trip and the detail they were asking for (most liability issues to absolve the school of responsibilities) - though, I don't think it would bother me personally enough to want to do it.

And important legal documents... Wouldn't you hire a lawyer or a solicitor to deal with them?

I think even a will - I would probably pay a nominal fee to have one generated for me, on the assumption that I can modify the final version before I personally sign it off on it.

Though the point wasn't really the forms, the point was more that there is a near infinite level of low hanging fruit, it's just not always apparent based on your own situation (and to an extent country!) and set of tasks/frustrations.

Another example that came to mind would be automatically updating all my stuff when I change address (banking details, car registration, driving license etc etc) sure there is a huge trust issue with this but with care, probably not totally insurmountable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Not sure I can add anything more to this discussion than any more that has already been said, but the real problem about validating ones idea is," you start out with an extreme bias" towards your idea. Conversely, if you are validating an idea, you the only true and tried and tested way is to Mom test it. It's not enough you run a statistical poll and use that to run a product development program. You have to actually talk to people. In this case, OP needs to actually talk to the people in his demographics and validate the idea that they would like to get a personalized email from his trainer with a custom plan. If not it's all shadow dancing with no real validation. Mom test is an excellent book to drive this point home.

<comment><USER20> Was on the phone and am not good with touch typing. But, I actually did what I mentioned above. Being stuck at home like the OP, I actually had a lot of time on hand. So, I started calling Coffee shops that had recently pivoted to Shopify model(that change is happening in a massive scale) to try and see if they would be interested in a subscription model for their coffee beans and grinds. The outcome is for a different day, but the moral is "Always try to Invalidate your idea". Your ideas are innately biased. And that's why Starting with a clearly defined pinpoint is way easier than to apply Lean Startup methodology to Your "ideas". Hope that helps. Cant recommend Ryan Fitzpatrick's Mom Test enough. Guy even has a YT channel where he expands on some of the things he talks about in his book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Don't want to sound too negative but this article is basically:

\- Build a landing page with analytics on it

\- Early on, just do whatever automation manually

</comment><comment><USER22> Something I am starting to learn about myself: I don't care if nobody wants it, I still want to build it. Not a great trait for making money as a startup, but it's an itch I just have to keep scratching...

<comment><USER12> I have the same itch and keep scratching it almost daily. I can say scratching this itch over the last several years has absolutely been +EV overall. Maybe not in a "I made $XXXX in sales over the last month/year/whatever" kind of way but in that I've learned an incredible amount, have been able to use a lot of the things I've learned at my job and have definitely improved my overall market value as an engineer (validated with data I should say, not just an opinionated, arrogant rant).

That said, I would keep scratching that itch if you still have the motivation and drive to keep learning/building without seeing immediate material value like money right away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Read the comments first and thought this was going to be crap. Instead it's great! Good read. Also read _The Mom Test_.

<comment><USER24> The Mom Test is a must read! Only when you read it, do you realize how wrong your previous approaches to business validation were.

<comment><AUTHOR> I love that book. Such a tiny book but so much wisdom.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've done this before, it also appears clearly described in the "Start small stay small book" which I recommend a lot. However after running it I found myself a little lost, conversion was not as expected and it's very hard to realize what failed. Is it the idea? or the design? or the speed of the website? or the wrong target audience? or the wrong keywords?.

More importantly should I jump to my next idea? or should I invest more time pivoting this one and pushing until I get where I want to be.

What happens when you're building an improved version of something that already exist? Would you skip this kind of validation assuming that if people pay for the big product they would pay for a small one? Specially if you're not aiming for a venture backed monster but just a bootstrapped small business.

<comment><AUTHOR> RE: What failed?

Agreed this is a problem that your product needs to solve either way. This idea validation playbook allows you to face the problem early on as opposed to later.

RE: What happens when you're building an improved version?

I'd ask you why you think yours is an improved version? Is that a sure shot fact or up for the market to decide. If it's sure shot, they yeah skip the idea validation step. Sounds like your idea has more execution risk than market risk.

But if you think its subjective, then that's probably something you could find a creative way of solving using the Painted Door test or something similar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Nice article. Most people make this mistake of building products first and then finding customers for it. By following this approach they build something that nobody wants. Ideally one should validate the idea and market fit first. One shouldn't be building something for which there are no customers at all.

Follow this approach: -> demo \- sell \- build

And not: -> build \- demo \- sell

I bought this e-book recently on Gumroad and loved how it is right on point about how to strategically validate your business and generate sales before you even build it.

Here it is if someone is interested - [https://gumroad.com/a/497906803](https://gumroad.com/a/497906803)

It provides so much value for the small price you have to pay. I highly recommend buying this book.

</comment><comment><USER27> Maybe this is good advice for mass marketed consumer apps, but I don't believe putting up a cheap SquareSpace template and faking automation instead of building the product is a good strategy for getting initial enterprise customers.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a fair point. You need a demo video / sales MVP and need to actually go talk to customers most of the times.

There are certain enterprise specific channels where you could run an ad to test. E.g. [https://appsumo.com/](https://appsumo.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> If the author ends a statement with a question mark, I find it very hard to take them seriously. How can they be insightful but not thorough enough to check a title? Does that make me a bad person? I mean just that, on its own?

<comment><USER29> On the contrary, I have come through some articles / blogs that have delivered insightful answers to the question that led you to it in the first place. Doesn't make you a bad person, but you should definitely clean your judgmental glasses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> When we say 'startup idea', it adds too much noise to the initial validation process as the industry(Successful Entrepreneurs, Investors) almost unanimously agree that the first step is solving the right problem[1].

So shouldn't the first step always be 'How to validate the problem you are trying to solve?'

In my early life as an entrepreneur, I've failed multiple times since I didn't understand this difference between Startup ideas vs Problems. Understanding the importance of solving the right problem i.e. the problem with enough need gap that people are willing to pay for getting it solved and of course the problem which we want ourselves to be solved played a huge role in me building successful products later on.

When I started coaching entrepreneurs a year back, I found this again to be the common theme for failure among early stage startups i.e. building something just because they can and hoping everyone needs it. It became a professional necessity for me to come up with a way to validate problems/need gap.

So, I started building needgap[1] a problem validation platform where problems are the first class citizens. Posts are created by the consumers(incl. entrepreneurs) who have a problem, want to find a solution for their problem, check if others share the same problem, how ever small the problem might be[3]. Builders can post their products in the comments if it solves that particular problem or else discuss with others to create a product to solve that problem(There are couple of products built/being built for problems from needgap).

I'm not saying I've solved the issue of validating problems, far from it. I think I now have a direction towards understanding the 'language, grammar of problems and startup ideas' which might one day result in making validation easier.

[1][http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html)

[2][https://needgap.com](https://needgap.com)

[3][https://needgap.com/problems/12-identifying-letter-o- from-0-...](https://needgap.com/problems/12-identifying-letter-o-from-0-and- vice-versa-typography-web)

</comment><comment><USER31> This looks similar to the logline pitch suggested in _Save The Cat_ by Blake Snyder, or really most books on scriptwriting. Hell, it could even be said for writing your thesis. Always focus _hard_ on your idea, or you _logline,_ as it were, or the premise of your thesis. Once clearly defined, worded and outlined, it can both keep you on track and lead your project, _and_ it may serve as a basis to get early feedback on your idea from the real world.

</comment><comment><USER32> As someone else here asked: What happens when you're building an improved version of something that already exist?

I am currently building an android app that already a lot of competition.

Some of these competitors have in-app purchases and some have a separate paid app version .

so the product idea itself is essentially validated - a nice chunk of people are willing to pay for it.

</comment><comment><USER33> Literally build whatever a cohort of users will pay for and go from there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, the idea talks about ways to figure out if a certain cohort will pay for something before building the thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Give us a concrete & actual example that you have done instead of this theoretical essay nonsense

</comment><comment><USER35> step one: work for facebook

</comment><comment><USER36> TLDR; Famous Painted door test: [https://briandavidhall.com/the-painted-door- test/](https://briandavidhall.com/the-painted-door-test/)

 _A painted door test lets you gauge interest in a new feature, product, page, or piece of functionality … before you've built it. It involves updating your site with a link or callout that promises the new feature, then measuring clicks to see how many visitors would try it if it existed.A painted door test lets you gauge interest in a new feature, product, page, or piece of functionality … before you've built it. It involves updating your site with a link or callout that promises the new feature, then measuring clicks to see how many visitors would try it if it existed.A painted door test lets you gauge interest in a new feature, product, page, or piece of functionality … before you've built it. It involves updating your site with a link or callout that promises the new feature, then measuring clicks to see how many visitors would try it if it existed._

</comment><comment><USER37> Ask for money?

</comment><comment><USER38> it's official. substack is the new medium. a platform mostly for worthless "expert" opinion.</comment>


Dwarf Fortress in 2013 - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/195148/dwarf_fortress_in_2013.php?print=1 <comment><USER2> _" It's not like people see our $50,000 a year and think 'Hey, I want a piece of that pie.' They'd much rather look towards things like Minecraft, where there are hundreds of millions of dollars."_

The brothers have this massive, massive blindspot regarding the importance of the UI. That $50,000 cap they perceive is barely scratching the surface of what would be possible for them if they made the damn thing a bit more accessible to the average person. It's great that their small niche base loves ASCII art and doesn't mind fumbling their way through a hostile interface in order to play the game, but that is the primary reason the game stays confined within a tiny niche corner of the gaming market.

They have the real possibility that if they did that seed work, even just on exposing an API into the game, as opposed to venturing into a full-on UI overhaul, that enough new people would be introduced to the game that they could hire a third developer to focus specifically on the API and UI aspects of the game, leaving them free to keep working on the bits they love.

<comment><USER3> You are, of course, totally right.

But do you know much about dwarf fortress? The brothers have responded to questions about this a number of times (regarding UI) but more importantly than that, it appears that they don't particuarly care about making the big bucks.

They are totally happy just pottering along with a loyal hardcore following, earning a very middle class salary, doing something they are massively passionate about. In fact, it seems that what they have is all they ever want in life. They are in their nirvana.

Good for them!

<comment><USER2> I don't disagree with you. I think I'm just bitter because I hate bad UIs and it stops me from properly exploring the game. I don't understand why they don't care about the fact that so many people will never experience their creation because of the unnecessary barrier they've created.

<comment><USER4> _> I don't understand why they don't care about the fact that so many people will never experience their creation because of the unnecessary barrier they've created._

Would people care to experience it if they could? I've always assumed with this (and a number of other things in life) that _being_ a bit of a niche interest (or in this case a lot of a niche interest) in part _creates_ the niche interest. There have been many rogue-a-likes with more modern interfaces but they have either not attracted or not managed to keep up the interest that this one has. Perhaps it is a nostalgia thing, perhaps it is a "nerd" thing; what-ever it is it works for them and their audience and changing the game to appeal to a larger audience might both fail to do so and make the existing fans wander off (and make it less enjoyable for the developers to work on: they seem to be getting quite a kick out of their baby and its current fans and don't want to lose that).

The comparison some make with minecraft on the "being a bit niche creating a niche" thing is quite fair, and this "if you were more like that you might have a much larger audience" comments perfectly valid, but minecraft's niche being an order of magnitude or few bigger might be in part due to luck (right thing, right time, critical mass didn't hit to early or too late, ...) rather than just the relative prettiness and intuitiveness.

Caveat: I've played neither Dwarf Fortress nor Minecraft, so I may not really have a clue what I'm talking about.

<comment><USER2> You falsely attribute a niche's draw to the fact that it's niche. I find it unlikely that people would base their interest in a game on its popularity, or lack thereof. If the game is fun, people will play it. If it's not, they won't.

<comment><USER5> There might actually be more to the "if it's niche, some people are more interested in it" mentality. It's anecdotal, yes, but I know that I have an odd tendency to prefer games that aren't hyper popular. New Call of Duty or Halo? I don't care how "well made" the game is, I won't play it. A tiny, unknown RPG/Rhythm game hybrid (Sequence)? I gobble it up. All my friends start playing one game? I play another. Etc. I wonder how many people might have some unconscious tendency to gravitate toward those games which are no very popular, or if I'm just an oddball.

Maybe DF being a niche helps in some way. I don't know. But I do know that the UI is, almost objectively, not good. I know it's why I stopped playing. Once you get more than 20 dwarfs or so, managing who does what is ridiculous. (at least without external tools. I think the popularity and almost necessity of some external tools really does show that the UI can be atrocious at some points. (also note this is not a comment on the ASCII nature of the game, that's fine))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For anyone unfamiliar with Dwarf Fortress and wondering what all the fuss is about, I recommend the classic 'Boatmurdered' chronicles:

[http://lparchive.org/Dwarf-Fortress- Boatmurdered/](http://lparchive.org/Dwarf-Fortress-Boatmurdered/)

It's a fairly long read, but as always when Dwarf Fortress is involved, it's well worth the effort.

<comment><USER7> It's also hilariously outdated, to the point that the game had a whole dimension less than it does now.

Still a great read though

<comment><USER8> I loved reading Boatmurdered many months ago; is there anything of similar quality that reflects the current state of affairs in DF?

<comment><USER9> Bravemule ([http://www.bravemule.com](http://www.bravemule.com)) is a great read, and it's a lot more current that Boatmurdered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If the history of Dwarf Fortress interests you, I recommend you check out the history of roguelike games (probably the nerdiest of all my passions.) Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup, for example, is a beautiful illustration of applying open source software development tenets to a massive game, as dozens of contributors have continuously evolved and enhanced it over time (and its massively fun to boot.)

<comment><USER11> Speaking of the history of roguelikes, I've been pretty impressed by Nicolas Casalini, aka Darkgod. I'm not sure exactly how long he's been involved in the scene, but he's been developing since at least Pernband back in the late 90s.

His Tome2, in the early part of the last decade, was arguably the pinnacle of old-school _band style roguelikes (as opposed to the_ hack style popularized by nethack, or more modern, user-friendly ones that have been cropping up the past couple years). The current Tales of Maj'Eyal is one of the most polished, engaging roguelikes I've come across.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I like in this particular article, how the interviewer delves into how it is possible to sustain interest in coding a single game for so long (and potentially for decades). Anyone who has coded games as a single dev probably knows how bogged down you get as the game becomes more complex. Generating graphics yourself is a huge time suck which they have neatly avoided. What's intriguing is that the game design appears to be flexible enough to spend time coding mineralogy and then jumping to say horticulture while still being manageable. It would be interesting to know more about the design to see why it is so extensible.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've been reading articles about this fascinating game for several days now, but haven't had the guts to invest the time into it given its steep learning curve. Kudos to these guys for doing exactly what they want to do and (yet) still making a living by coding.

<comment><USER13> Ever since I read the NY Times article posted here a couple years ago (see below), I have had a similar response. I love reading _about_ Dwarf Fortress, but I'm hesitant to actually try it.

 _[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/magazine/the-brilliance- of...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/magazine/the-brilliance-of-dwarf- fortress.html?pagewanted=all*)

<comment><USER14> You guys should just try the game. There have been a few articles that highlight the difficulty of the game but that is only in comparison to modern console games targeted at soda guzzling teens with a one second attention span.

You can grok the basics of the game in an hour or so by following a beginner tutorial. During your first few hours you will fail your first few fortresses.

After your first session, you should have a grasp of things and the next time you should be able to just pick up the game and get back to it.

I think the time suck aspect of this game is exaggerated a lot. You can pause and save the game at any point and get back to it later.

There's one thing that some of the tutorials and introductions don't make clear: you control the fortress, not the individual dwarfs.

<comment><USER2> _" There have been a few articles that highlight the difficulty of the game but that is only in comparison to modern console games targeted at soda guzzling teens with a one second attention span"_

No. Your assertion is that the only likely improvement to the UI would be a simple gamepad-mashing interface. DF is difficult even compared to programs with a complicated UI and games with a "normal" steep learning curve. Not wanting to battle through an insane UI does not equate one to a "soda guzzling teen".

<comment><USER15> No, his assertion wasn't that the only likely improvement to the UI would be a simple gamepad-mashing interface.

And nowhere was is implied that not wanting to battle through an insane UI does not equate one to a "soda guzzling teen".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > "We've just had our mitts on this one for a long time without passing it > along," he says, "but that's not going to be a forever thing, obviously. > It's only going to stay afloat as long as people keep it afloat, right?"

> "I think the game has actually gotten easier compared to what it was in > 2006," Adams reasons. "It's not really the mechanics that matter so much, > since a lot of the mechanics in DF are under the table. A lot of the updates > don't matter either -- I mean, I spent a month on beekeeping, but you're not > confronted with beekeeping, and you don't need to learn how to do it, but if > you want to make wax crafts and honey, then it's an avenue you can explore."

Perhaps it's the language weenie in me, but I can't help but think they're doing this wrong. If you're going to work on something for 30 years (with the Moore's law that implies), wouldn't it make a heck of a lot of sense to use the highest-level language you can, start building up DSLs for specific things like crafts, and other strategies so you don't spend a month hacking on a sprawling C++ codebase just to add in beekeeping?

</comment><comment><USER17> I literally just got into this game. It's amazing. Was it different in previous years?</comment>


Ask HN: How do CDNs work? - <AUTHOR>

Ok, there is a geographically diverse high speed network. But, how does you browser know which server to go to as there is a single URL? Is there some DNS magic going on? <comment><USER2> The first server you hit does a geographic lookup of your IP address to get a reasonable estimation of where you are, then redirects you to a CDN server that's closest to you on the network.

<http://whatismyipaddress.com/> shows you where in the world the net thinks your IP address is. There are a bunch of geolocation services out there.</comment>


Biohacker: Meet the people 'hacking' their bodies - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-46442519 <comment><USER2> Any biohacking article that fails to mentions transfolks is missing something huge.</comment>


Inferring Status and Competence from Signals of Nonconformity (2013) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/The%20Red%20Sneakers%20Effect%202014_4657b733-84f0-4ed6-a441-d401bbbac19d.pdf <comment><USER2> So, if you're sitting around writing code then make sure you're the best dressed person in the room. Then on the way to the boardroom for an IPO meeting change into the sweat pants and hoodie.

<comment><USER3> The problem with overdressing (as an engineer) is that outside visitors will assume that you're not an engineer.

<comment><USER4> You can overdress in a way that still makes it super obvious you're not being "dressy". Unconventional accessories are always a good pick.

Like, you can be wearing the nicest of tuxedo pants with the nicest of button- down shirts, but adding just the right hat or scarf magically turns it into a casual outfit.

<comment><USER5> I have to say, this advice sounds a bit unsound.

"Unconventional accessories are always a good pick" is playing with fire, as is recommending tuxedo pants, a button down, and a hat or scarf.

Have you seen what nerds do when told it's okay to wear hats?

<comment><USER6> Agreed. As someone who wears a fedora regularly (actually a black Akubra Hampton), it gets a very different reaction depending on the context. I've been stopped on the street once by someone who said "Cool hat! So you're a Bronie right?" You don't want that.

But when I'm travelling overseas, it gets a much more positive and inquisitive reaction. Many times people have used the hat as an ice-breaker to start an interesting conversation with me. And if you're the only person with a hat in a group, it can be helpful branding so people recognize & remember you.

<comment><USER7> Interesting. My experience in the US has very much been the latter. What do you typically wear with it? I definitely think it says different things with slacks and a sport coat then jeans and a hoodie.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Everything rich people do is correct!"

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

</comment><comment><USER9> That's why sometimes wearing a suit and tie to a customer meeting to do technical presentation loses creditability.

</comment><comment><USER10> obligatory on nonconformity, status and dressing in particular - "Office Space"

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BjGA7Qs75g](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BjGA7Qs75g)

</comment><comment><USER11> Yes, and that's one of the reasons why I used to have very long hair (I'm male) and now shave my head. The status marker is a visible sign that I am comfortable in my position, and further that I am comfortable enough with my abilities that I don't think it will be an impediment to getting another job.

(Another reason was that I liked having long hair, and the few months when I was short-haired before shaving made me unhappy.)

</comment><comment><USER12> same phenomena can be observed in gangsta rap:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15z3MU3Zel8](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15z3MU3Zel8)

peace up, a-town down

</comment><comment><USER13> white linen suit, blue t shirt, brutinis with no socks, golang

</comment><comment><USER14> 2013: the academy discovers peacocking.

(If that sounds snarky, most principles of "Game" apply to business. In fact, part of what makes Game so creepy is that it's men applying sales tactics to the early stages of romantic relationships, where that transactional mentality shouldn't apply. Most nerds would do well to develop "work Game".)

<comment><USER15> I find it creepy in the opposite direction. Whenever I meet an over-aggressive networker I feel he's trying to pick me up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is all well and good, but sometimes people dressed like jackasses actually are jackasses.

<comment> bra-ket so true, especially dudes wearing shorts and sandals on every.single.occasion, or the turtleneck people</comment></comment>


The Fallacy of Gray - <AUTHOR> http://lesswrong.com/lw/mm/the_fallacy_of_gray/ <comment><USER2> This article is great, I've always felt the same way but this essay framed it and worded it perfectly. Having my thoughts more organized on the subject will come in handy while discussing politics with certain friends.

"You mock the simplicity of the two-color view, yet you replace it with a one- color view"

I love it!

</comment><comment><USER3> Good article. A thought on the "Science is/isnt based on faith/ a religion" : for people who don't have the capacity to falsify scientific theories, science can be similar to a mysticism. Especially with complex theories, experts are equivalent to augurs reading the sky for the common mortal. That is why it is good to have down-to-earth experiments illustrating scientific principles, like the double-slit experiment showing diffraction. The first time I saw it was a shock because it is a counter-intuitive phenomenon. Epistemology and history give a lot of meaning to science, that is why I think it should be an integral part of the way science is taught.

</comment><comment><USER4> _Likewise the folly of those who say, "Every scientific paradigm imposes some of its assumptions on how it interprets experiments," and then act like they'd proven science to occupy the same level with witchdoctoring. Every worldview imposes some of its structure on its observations, but the point is that there are worldviews which try to minimize that imposition, and worldviews which glory in it._

Er -- except no, you've missed the point entirely here, Eliezer.

The point isn't that you step inside the paradigm and judge one as being somehow "better" than the other. Your choice isn't the false dichotomy of everything either being all the same or there being shades of better or worse. The entire point of paradigms is that, inside of each of them, they conform to those values that create the paradigm. So everybody sitting inside a paradigm, no matter how well educated, is going to be praising that paradigm. This is why the word "science" is way too overloaded for discussions like this. Do you mean reproducible, falsifiable model creation through abdcution, deduction, and induction? Or are you referring to the much more common Bayesian best- guess method of science? Seems like you're talking about the Bayesians, but there's a big difference which you've glossed over.

And from the outside it doesn't look all the same, either. What we can observe about various paradigms is measuring the extent of their vocabulary and measuring the rate of paradigm change.

Epidemiology isn't witch-doctory because epidemiology has a vast system of symbols, models, and data around how people get sick. We can pick up these symbols, models, and data and do useful things with them. Witch-doctory has but a few. Epidemiology has changed many times in the last two hundred years. They pick up the same data, symbols, and models ad rework them into new paradigms, increasing the richness of the field. Witch-doctory has not.

We can't look outside the paradigm, but we can certainly make subjective observations about what's more or less _useful_ to the outside observer. I can be a Zoroastrian and still pick up enough useful information from Physics to walk on the moon -- no matter what the status of the Grand Unified Theory is. At the end of the day, it's always going to be pragmatic distinction, not a epistemological one.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. How is Bayes' theorem not deductive?

Are you talking of the difference between theoretical and experimental science? Because those both operate under the same paradigm: that the universe is causal and consistent.

</comment></comment><comment> Tuna-Fish I just lost 8 hours straight on lesswrong. Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER6> _The Sophisticate: "The world isn't black and white. No one does pure good or pure bad. It's all gray. Therefore, no one is better than anyone else."_

I have often stated and thought that the world to me is not black and white and that indeed no one does pure good or pure bad. But I can't say this view has ever lead me to the conclusion that therefore, no one is better than anyone else.

Turning this issue over in my head, I guess I always just assumed that things being on a grey scale - the operative word being "scale" - that this would surely mean that things existing at different points on that scale could not be considered as all being the same. Interesting to read that apparently this is not the view held by some.

In my personal experience, I find that those whose view is that the world is black and white tend to also be those who wish to impose this view on others. While those who see the world as grey (whether they fall into this trap of the "Fallacy of Gray" or not) tend to be less concerned with converting others to their viewpoint and if anything are more concerned with defending their viewpoint from attacks by the black/white people. I'm not entirely sure what conclusion to reach from this observation... Authoritarians tend to see black and white, while libertarians tend to see grey and sometimes the "Fallacy of Gray" possibly as a defensive overreaction?

</comment><comment><USER7> I thought the first part was great. Loved "You mock the simplicity of the two- color view, yet you replace it with a one-color view".

Then it tanked. I couldn't help but feel that straw man arguments were used for the examples of those who claim science is a faith. Sigh. Ok, how about a few things that make _some_ scientists and especially the media seem like they belong to a religious or evangelical movement rather than one of _discovering_ the truth: * believing in something no matter what the evidence and coming up with bizarre explanations for things because the evidence contradicts the theory. * saying the science is "settled". Seems like a dogmatic view if I ever saw one. * reluctant to share data to someone who disagree * appeals to experts ("Like most scientists agree") to replace the actual need to show that data fits into a coherent theory

Global Warming scientists seems to fit into this camp more often than others.

But really, you look at different disciplines. In archaeology, some guy was just claiming he might have found the _first_ spot that civilization started, and it was from 12000 years ago (if I remember right). How does he know? Why make claims for that? Why not just stick to "oldest known", rather than sensationalize it?

Why also does every show have to talk about either evolution or global warming? I watched a great Bobby McFarrin special on music, and all these scientists involved kept talking about evolution, and "since we know evolution is true then X" and the hilarious part was that all the scientists came to contradictory conclusions. :-) Why not just leave the whole "evolution is true" part out, and just follow the data where it leads?

<comment><USER8> Great post. For some people science is absolutely a religion. These folks don't know enough to try and falsify the theory they believe but they have no issue trashing people who aren't as convinced.

<comment><USER5> > people who aren't as convinced

...but who somehow feel that they _do_ know enough to try and falsify a theory?

> for some people science is absolutely a religion

Quoth the OP: _If science is a religion, it is the religion that heals the sick and reveals the secrets of the stars. It would make sense to say, "The priests of science can blatantly, publicly, verifiably walk on the Moon as a faith-based miracle, and your priests' faith can't do the same." Are you sure you wish to go there, oh faithist? Perhaps, on further reflection, you would prefer to retract this whole business of "Science is a religion too!"_

<comment><USER9> If science gets credit for healing the sick, does it also take the blame for deaths caused by nuclear weapons? Blatant, public, and verifiable. Praise worthy? Not in my book.

<comment><USER5> > does it also take the blame for deaths caused by nuclear weapons?

In my view, yes, it does, and science needs to learn from that (and countless other mistakes). It's certainly not universally praise-worthy. But it does provide a way for ethical people to reliably improve the human condition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This analogy assumes you have a linear scale from black to white, and thus any two values can be objectively compared to each other. You have to be careful, however: Many discrepancies and disagreements cannot be likened to simple shades of gray. I'll take an example from the article:

 _The Sophisticate: "The world isn't black and white. No one does pure good or pure bad. It's all gray. Therefore, no one is better than anyone else."_

Assuming they're talking about moral relativism, it can be argued this is a purely subjective matter. When it comes to morality, it's likely people will disagree on whether ActionX is a darker or lighter shade of gray than ActionY. Although his reasoning is faulty, the Sophisticate's conclusion is correct.

Instead of: "It's all gray. Therefore, no one is better than anyone else."

It should be: "No one can definitively claim one shade of gray is darker than another. Therefore, ..."

<comment><USER11> I don't quite agree. While in some cases, there is certainly subjectivity in morality, almost everyone would agree that certain things are definitively a darker gray than others. Almost no one would argue that murdering random people is morally superior to nursing an injured bird back to health. It is true that some people might, but I think that the vast majority is sometimes right in judging comparisons like that.

<comment><USER10> _> > almost everyone would agree that certain things are definitively a darker gray than others_

Yes, but we must ask ourselves: Does widespread agreement on an opinion turn that opinion into a fact? If 100% of humanity were to suddenly believe that red is better than blue, would that make it _objectively_ true? I think the answer is no. The difference between fact and opinion is not reliant on the number of people who believe one way or the other.

<comment><USER11> "If 100% of humanity were to suddenly believe that red is better than blue, would that make it objectively true?"

No, but it does make it subjectively true for 100% of humanity.

In addition, as a sibling comment pointed out: it is possible to objectively decide which of two actions is better than another for any specific definition of better. For example, one definition of moral "betterness" is the quality of being conducive toward the survival of a given society.

<comment><USER10> I'm suspicious of this vague terminology. Instead of saying something is "better", why not just say "it's more conducive toward the survival of a given society"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> He's exactly right. The answer is to stop looking for certainties and instead look for models - theories that produce results that are as right as you can get them. We don't ever expect to reach perfection, we just expect them to asymptotically approach it.

</comment><comment><USER13> It's the fallacy or relativism, which is a special case of believing too much in syllogism.

</comment><comment><USER14> I was interested at first, but it seemed more and more that the author was referring to a context that he thought was shared but was actually obscure. When using examples from novels I've read or exchanges between bloggers, I find some light introduction (e.g. who's the "they" in this "Player of Games" book?) or footnotes is the best way to avoid the "scary homeless person that yells at me when I get off the subway" vibe.

<comment><USER15> The context is shared on LessWrong, but it's a very large context, touching on multiple subfields of philosophy, mathematics, and biology (to name just the big ones). There's currently no better introduction than reading the major LW posts/essays.

<comment><USER16> > There's currently no better introduction than reading the major LW > posts/essays.

At the present time, that's correct. Eliezer is working on at least one book (maybe more.. I'm not sure anymore) that should stand on its own better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's gray because you don't know where the line is.</comment>


Show HN: Create a PDF resume from your LinkedIn profile - <AUTHOR> http://lonnylot.com/projects/resumebuilder/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is something I put together in a few hours. Does anyone find this useful?</comment>


Startup failure post-mortems - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbinsights.com/blog/trends/startup-failure-post-mortem

<comment><USER2> A really nice read and great snippets of each article/blog post. I have read some in the past, and even though I may not always agree on their reason for failure, I can definitely relate to others. At the end of the day, building a startup is hard, and if you're not willing to "pivot" either incrementally or sometimes completely, you will fail.

I truly commend these founders for writing about their failures. It's hard to admit you failed, rather alone letting the world know you dropped the ball. In return, we can learn from them, as to not repeat the mistakes they did, but to make our own mistakes (a bit cliche but true)

At the end of the day:

1) build something people want

2) features != product; features = bloat

3) keep learning, keep moving

The number of times I was about to give up only to realize, "wait a second, I completely missed x" and fixed it, has paid me dividends in the past.

Reflect, correct, and kick ass ;)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> For those interested in trends & hard data on startup failure, this may be of interest - [http://www.cbinsights.com/blog/trends/startup-death- data](http://www.cbinsights.com/blog/trends/startup-death-data)

<comment><USER3> Anand,

What will be great to do if at all possible is to identity common patterns across key sectors. Here are some patterns I have seen:

Lack of marketing/growth -Everpix, Sonar...

Lack of domain expertise - Vitoto...

No coders/programmers in founding teams- standout jobs

Product management / too many product features - intellibank...

No customer validation/didn't get out of the building / product/market fit - groupspaces, hello parking...

Perhaps these patterns could be broken into consumer Internet / SAAS.

Of course some of these patterns are inter-related & drive each other (e.g. No Domain expertise >> lack of customer validation >> Poor product management/wrong features >> No growth)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice. If the list was editable, I'd add mine: [http://gyrovague.com/2012/12/18/wikitravel-press-seven- lesso...](http://gyrovague.com/2012/12/18/wikitravel-press-seven-lessons-from- a-startup-that-failed/)

Interesting how many others have also found "7 lessons" in their failures!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thx. We will add yours. If folks know of other post mortems we missed, leave them in comments and we will add them.

<comment><USER5> You mentioned EventVue's excellent post-mortem already. But for anyone thinking of building a startup in that space, Josh Fraser (EventVue's co- founder)'s follow-up post is also a mandatory read: [http://www.onlineaspect.com/2010/10/26/a-few-words-about- eve...](http://www.onlineaspect.com/2010/10/26/a-few-words-about-eventvue/) \- since he posted that follow-up on his own blog, it would be worth linking both in the article.

And if anyone is thinking of building something in the event space, read both of these posts. And then read them again. Josh is 100% spot-on. Absolutely nothing has changed in this industry since he wrote this (the events industry moves at a glacial pace).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Startups are hard, and failure is really hard, no matter how much you try or how strong you try to be.

I wrote one of the articles on this list. If your startup is going badly, feel free to reach out: paul [at] circleci.com.

</comment><comment><USER7> It always seems so obvious in retrospect but it's hard to think clearly when you're in the gist of doing it and you have a mountain on your shoulders.

Something - how so stupid, I'll admit - that I realized is that even if smart people tell you something, you often need to fail it first to really get it.

Pick the right co-founders? It's one of the most basic rules.. but how many entrepreneurs do you know didn't listen to that.. you?

Focus on product-market fit and only a handful of few features that customers really love..

<comment><USER8> > even if smart people tell you something, you often need to fail it first to > really get it.

That was really emphasized for me after my first startup failed. After we pulled the plug, all the advice I had procured in the previous months suddenly made sense.

I think that when you hear advice, it might make sense but you don't really understand it. It is analogous to reading a textbook and thinking you've got it covered until you actually reproduce what you learned. That's when the real learning happens. You just need to buck up and get your hands dirty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Totally agree - very valuable resource, and in general not nearly enough people out there actively sharing research about startup failure. Thx for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER10> Another interesting read for anyone looking for a VCs view on this topic: [http://pollenizer.com/learn/startup- focus](http://pollenizer.com/learn/startup-focus). A good, easy to read book based on their experiences.

</comment><comment><USER11> Startups are never supposed to be easy, otherwise everyone would have chose the Start up path, regardless of any passions.

</comment><comment><USER12> I doubt these post-mortems are accurate. If you can't create a successful company, what makes you think you know why a company was unsuccessful? It's just more mental masturbation. Even if the failure mode is identified, it doesn't help you with the next startup, as most of the time humans work by trial and error. A failure doesn't teach most how to succeed, just how not to fail in that exact way.

<comment><USER13> Still an outside view is usually quite objective and can pinpoint issues that weren't easily apparent at all to someone inside the project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> So useful, thanks! Plus another item on the list of ideas I should have had. ;)

</comment><comment><USER14> None of them got lucky...

</comment><comment><USER15> Amazing resource - thanks for collating this.

</comment><comment><USER16> really great insight here. thanks for gathering it.</comment>


Ask HN: What's been your experience with AWS Lambda? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I tried it writing a _trivial_ python script that called a webservice every 5 minutes and stored the .json response in S3.

Advantages:

\- Cheaper than having your own micro.t1 server and setting crontab. \- I have information about how much time it takes to actually run the script.

Findings:

\- Test & debug: inside lambda only. Didn't like this, but for trivial stuff like mine it worked.

\- "Crontab-like" granularity: you cannot trigger a lambda function every X seconds. The minumum is a cloudwatch periodical "cron-like" trigger.

\- The script took much more execution time than I thought. It also required less memory, but this is not a problem ;-).

\- Every line you print() to stdout goes to a Cloudwatch log. It's both helpful and something to care about because Cwatch is not free.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've only used Lambda for one thing, a simple website monitoring / alerting setup, but it worked wonderfully. I wrote my Lambda function in Java since I know Java better than the other options, and even in a verbose language like Java the actual code was probably 50-75 lines of meaningful code (not boilerplate). It just reads a file from S3 with a list of URL's, opens a connection to each in turn, and for any entry that experiences an error, it sends an SMS message to my phone using SNS. I probably spent an aggregate 3-4 hours on the whole thing, and it works great. And since I am only checking 4 times a day, it'll take me forever to use enough Lambda to cost anything.

It may not be perfect for all uses, but for this little thing it works out really well.

(Aside: Yes,I could have used an off-the-shelf package like Nagios, or a SaaS monitoring service. I did this in part to learn Lambda anyway, and also because I like the idea of something I control and can customize myself, but which doesn't require maintaining a server, yadda-yadda.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome! Yeah I was thinking of creating a REST endpoint for form submission and get a text alert, just to test out the waters with Lambda.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Currently using it to build a service for image processing/generation from a given HTML template. Relatively simple to do in python and once it's hooked into API Gateway, easy to access and restrict as well.

In addition, I've used it as the backend for an Alexa skill, which works quite nicely[1].

[1] [https://github.com/kkoppenhaver/last- episode](https://github.com/kkoppenhaver/last-episode)

<comment><USER5> Can you share what kind of service is that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't recommend building your API with it unless your engineers' ops skills are on point. I'm currently contracting for an org that is transitioning from java & clojure services hosted in a colo backed by postgres to full on lambdas written in node backed by dynamoDB. They've built a very impressive Rube- Goldberg machine for taking some data from an etl process, inserting it in dynamo, and then retrieving when an endpoint is hit. In the meantime code quality and development speed have taken a nose-dive with a very important deadline looming in the near future.

Lambdas are great for event-driven tasks and cronjobs though.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've been using AWS Lambda for a few weeks now. Mostly for trivial things like tagging and infrastructure automation. I like it as it supports python. For what I'm doing I don't need any external libraries so it's pretty slick. No server to maintain, etc...

I'm struggling a bit to find event patterns that work in cloudwatch to trigger my lambda functions though. For instance when a volume becomes "available" I can't find an event pattern that triggers off of that, etc... If anyone has any tips or documentation you can point me to that would be awesome.

</comment><comment><USER8> The main thing to keep in mind with Lambda is the number of library dependencies you're pulling in and your development workflows. I believe that you're limited to a certain file size per a lambda job, which includes dependencies. Developer workflows, just means that you'll need to come up with a way to sync lambda jobs with your version control (we currently have a deploy script for our workflow). I do have one ex-colleague who's all in on Lambda. His company just uses lambda to do all their backend processing.

</comment><comment><USER9> Lifecycle management of functions needs a better story. That said, I use a number of under-the-hood functions to build and power Last Week in AWS, I've replaced a number of cron jobs with it, and a lot of AWS billing work (transitioning objects, tag propagation, etc) can be efficiently handled at large scale via Lambda.

I'm just not sure I'd put it inline for anything life-critical just yet.

</comment><comment><USER10> It truly depends on what you're feeding the lambda with. I wouldn't recommend it for stream processing, ie reading streaming data from kinesis. If you're going to read streaming data from kinesis, write a KCL application. I can say 99% you will need the flexibility you get.

It may seem like nothing, but not knowing when the lambda context is going to recycle can also be a real pain in the ass.

</comment><comment><USER11> I use it together with DynamoDB and SES to support an email newsletter system that involves verification, unsubscribe, delivery notifications, etc.

Spins like a top and costs very little ro run.

</comment><comment><USER12> Replaced it with Task Tiger ([https://github.com/closeio/tasktiger](https://github.com/closeio/tasktiger))</comment>


Cosmic JS is now 100% Serverless - <AUTHOR> https://www.cosmicjs.com/changelog/infrastructure-upgrade-new-metafields-and-more <comment><AUTHOR> This changelog announcement is a big one for us and includes:

Upgraded infrastructure

New Metafields and

Optimizations to our open source clients.

1\. Infrastructure Upgrade

We're happy to tell you that all Cosmic JS components are now powered 100% by serverless technologies. By running completely even-driven using AWS Lambda functions, the REST API, GraphQL API, Dashboard application, and the website are now infinitely scalable through high traffic loads.

This is huge, because it means you can depend on us to deliver your content through the highest traffic loads with dynamic server capacity on demand. This is also big for the Cosmic JS team, because we are now able to make product improvements at a higher velocity with a more streamlined deployment process.

We have also added a caching service to our website to serve our website resources at the edge. Your team can now get to any resource on cosmicjs.com faster and easier with at least 10x faster page loading from any spot on the globe.

Read more at the changelog link: [https://www.cosmicjs.com/changelog/infrastructure-upgrade- ne...](https://www.cosmicjs.com/changelog/infrastructure-upgrade-new- metafields-and-more)</comment>


Tiny Arduino Project - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kenburns/tinyduino-the-tiny-arduino-compatible-platform-w-s

<comment><USER2> I'm feeling a bit kickstarter-ed out. So many small electronics projects.

Good luck, though.</comment>


Startup Quote: Scott Heiferman, co-founder, Meetup - <AUTHOR> http://startupquote.com/post/3328130909

<comment><AUTHOR> You need a team that's going to care about this thing as much as you do.

\- Scott Heiferman (@heif)

<http://startupquote.com/post/3328130909></comment>


Simple Features that Set Emacs Apart - <AUTHOR> http://www.viget.com/extend/simple-features-that-set-emacs-apart/

<comment><USER2> The kill ring is something I've always meant to figure out, but never bothered to. I can't believe I've been missing out on M-y all this time.</comment>


Microsoft to Require Precision Touchpads in Future Windows 10 Laptops - <AUTHOR> https://www.slashgear.com/microsoft-is-about-to-fix-windows-laptops-biggest-frustration-26468799/ <comment><USER2> Microsoft should release their own multi-touch touchpad with this tech and call it the Surface Touchpad or something along those lines. Basically their equivalent of the Apple Magic Trackpad. It's what I miss when I've got my Surface Book docked, having come from a MBP/Magic Trackpad setup.

<comment><USER3> The trackpads built into the Surface computers are still nowhere near the level of Apple's.

<comment><USER4> the Pro and Book have completely different trackpads.

<comment><USER3> I have used both.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One of the biggest reasons I stopped using PCs, and started using Macs, was the quality of Apple's touchpads. I recently had to work with a new Dell, and was sad to see that things hadn't improved much during the last 10 years. Seriously, what manufacturer could possibly compare a Mac to their PC offering and find that crap acceptable? I hope this push by Microsoft will result in a more Mac-like touchpad experience for PC users.

<comment><USER6> How "new" are we talking here? Dell's XPS line has had precision touchpads since the beginning of 2015.

<comment><USER7> Even Microsoft's own flagship Surface Book has a touch pad which is abysmal compared to what MBP offered on it's debut. I constantly experience issues ranging from jerky movements to completely failing to scroll until rebooted on my Surface Book. It's mind blowing that this still happens in 2016.

<comment><USER8> You probably have a faulty device. Swing by Microsoft store if you have one nearby and show them those issues. I have no problems with mine.

<comment><USER9> Actually I agree with him. The touchpads on the xps and MacBook are similar in optimal conditions, but the XPS one seems way more sensitive to sweat/oils from the hand and then stops working until it is cleaned. I have hyperhydrosis so my hands sweat alot, never caused an issue on my MacBook, but the XPS doesn't handle it as well.

On the software side, the MacBook can also handle finger movements quickly followed by a tap much better, while on the XPS if you do really quick movements followed by a tap the cursor will jump back a little. (Annoyingly enough to accidentally hit the close tab button when trying to switch tabs). I reported this to dell and they said the issue lies in the MS driver.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What is a Precision Touchpad? Is it some sort of Microsoft designed touchpad? Is it a certain bar the laptop manufacturers have to meet in order to call their touchpads "Precision"?

<comment><USER11> >Precision Touchpad made its debut with Windows 8. Co-developed between Microsoft and touchpad company Synaptics, the spec changed how Windows works with touchpads. Traditionally, touchpads masqueraded to Windows as essentially USB- or PS/2-connected mice—simple two-dimension, single-input devices. Features such as multitouch and gestures were handled by a combination of the touchpad firmware and proprietary drivers. This meant that Windows itself had no ability to add new gestures or refine the finger-detection algorithms; it was all an opaque feature of the third-party drivers.

>With Precision Touchpad, the raw touchpad input is exposed to Windows itself, allowing the operating system to choose how it handles the complex multi- finger inputs. The gestures, the disambiguation of taps and swipes—these are all now performed by Windows, not a third-party driver.

[http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/10/pc-oems-ditch-the- cus...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/10/pc-oems-ditch-the-custom- touchpad-drivers-give-us-precision-touchpad/)

<comment><USER12> Wow. I hope this means we can finally have a separate set of sensitivity & acceleration settings for touchpads vs mice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This seems like a great move to me. I started using a 2016 Razer Stealth, and the worst thing about it is the Synaptics Touch crapware they include to configure the touch pad.

<comment><USER14> How is the trackpad otherwise, though?

<comment><USER13> Trackpad is excellent. My only gripe would be the configuration software / drivers they include.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My wife has a brand-new Lenovo ThinkPad with Windows 10, and the touchpad is a total disaster. Now, this shouldn't be interpreted as PC haterade: until fairly recently I was a big ThinkPad guy (but with Linux), and switched to MacBook Pro only after they went Intel. But these touchpads on the new ThinkPads are cheap and tacky. I can't imagine having to use one every day.

So any effort PC/Win laptop makers are taking to improve things is welcome. I doubt they'll ever be as good as the touchpads on Apple hardware, though.

<comment><USER16> FWIW - On the last Thinkpad I bought (the X220) the touchpad was notably worse under than Windows with the official vendor drivers compared with Linux using whatever came out of the box. Two finger scrolling comes to mind - on Linux it worked smoothly, but with Windows, there was a considerable lag between me scrolling on the touchpad, and scrolling actually happening in the application.

<comment><USER17> I've noticed the same thing with my T530. The Windows drivers for the Thinkpad also don't let you set the middle trackpoint button to middle-click. There was a way to get it to work by editing the registry, but that's stopped working in recent versions too. I don't understand why Lenovo keeps putting out user- hostile driver updates for Windows. I don't see how it benefits Lenovo, so I guess it's just total incompetence.

And yeah, just like you, I find the default behavior under both Fedora and Ubuntu to be _perfect_.

<comment><USER18> check out tpmiddle to get the trackpoint middle button to middle click on press, and still scroll when you hold it down and move the trackpoint: [http://users.v-lo.krakow.pl/~mwrobel/programs/tpmiddle.html](http://users.v-lo.krakow.pl/~mwrobel/programs/tpmiddle.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> precision touchpads are useless if the software doesnt support it. the trackpad in the surface pro is not very smooth when scrolling in chrome.

<comment><USER20> In platform-specific matters like this (text rendering, input handling, _& c._), Microsoft has always led the way in IE or now Edge, Mozilla following after a while (admittedly often years) in Firefox, and Chrome typically _years_ later. Firefox and Edge handle precision touch very well; Chrome… well, it's _OK_ these days. But definitely not great.

I'm still waiting for Firefox or Chrome to actually implement the Pointer Events API _properly_. Edge does exactly what I expect, Firefox does _almost_ everything as I expect, Chrome is simply terrible. And only Edge supports pressure sensitivity, so the Surface Pen only has full utility on Edge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I haven't tried the Surface Book, but you're lucky if you can even fit three or more fingers on the trackpads on the Surface Pro. Maybe MS could show some leadership there as well.

<comment><USER22> Are you looking at the original 2012 Surface Pro? The SP4 has a trackpad roughly as large as the Macbook Pro, as does the Surface Book.

<comment><USER23> I don't believe that's correct. Look at a Surface Pro trackpad next to a MacBook Pro trackpad.

[http://i.imgur.com/rynFtJQ.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/rynFtJQ.jpg)

The MacBook Pro Trackpad is 206% of the size of the Surface Pro 4 trackpad. Literally double the size.

<comment><USER24> That's a bit unfair. The MBP you compare it to was almost literally launched last week.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Any word on Linux support for this kind of hardware?

<comment><USER25> They're already out there, such as in the Dell XPS 13. IIRC some of the features work better with libinput.

<comment><USER24> I wonder if I can use gestures like I do on macOS for things like switching desktops.

<comment><USER25> I haven't tried them, but I've come across a few libinput gesture drivers:

[https://github.com/bulletmark/libinput- gestures](https://github.com/bulletmark/libinput-gestures) [https://github.com/iberianpig/fusuma](https://github.com/iberianpig/fusuma)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Well I'm pretty happy with this kind of things, I recently bought an MSI GT72S and the trackpad is a 5/10 for a whopping $2400 notebook, never had one before but used a Macbook for about 2 months and it was beautiful, in that time I never felt the need of a mouse.

</comment><comment><USER27> I am surprised to see the Latitude 14 in the list of laptops with precision touchpads. Fingerprint readers and touchpad aren't a strength of the latitude laptops I owned so far.

<comment><USER28> I was interested too with the Latitudes. The article is vague, but it does mention _latest_ models.

I just picked up an e7440 - new but a few generations old - from the Dell business outlet. The touchpad (along with the battery) is the biggest weak point of the laptop. It works somewhat okay with Win 10, but it is awful on Linux using recent kernels on Fedora 25.

But I tend to use a MBP at work, and the touchpad on it is just so much better. I don't even bother with a mouse with the Mac as OSX really integrates the trackpad well. I am much happier with a decent wireless mouse with the Latitude.</comment></comment>