When will we see "ball cams" in sports? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER3> This would be the exact opposite of "making something people want". Ask your average sports fan how high they are on the NBA's below-the-basket floor cam or (even worse) the wavering camera that floats down the center of the court over the action.

Thanks, but no thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it would make a sport like golf a lot more fun to watch.

Also, pitch movements in baseball would become more obvious.

<comment><USER4> In theory, it would be a good idea.

However in most sports, the ball spins rapidly, anywhere from one rotation every few seconds to 50+ times / second.

Personally, seeing that on camera would probably make me barf.

Also, it would be almost impossible to compensate for this, since they usually rotate around more than one axis.

<comment><AUTHOR> How do you know it would be almost impossible to compensate for this?

Could you elaborate?

<comment><USER4> Well, theoretically, if a ball was spinning around only one axis for the entire trajectory of the flight, then you could have a camera at the center of the axis and use some combination of gyroscopes / image processing to stabilize the image.

However, the axis on which the ball spins may change during the flight. The ball can also spin on more than one axis at the same time.

The combination of (1) the difficulty associated with determining which axis the ball will spin on, and (2) preventing the ball from spinning on another axis, along with (3) putting all this hardware in the ball without changing the physical performance of the ball, would make this idea difficult to pull off.

However, your idea might work if we're talking about still images. Then you only have to worry about creating a ball that performs the same as traditional air-inflated balls, but has a camera inside.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't see why software can't handle such spins, particularly if we assume that the spin pattern does not change quickly.

<comment><USER4> Think of it this way:

You would think that at the north pole the sky above you won't actually change, and that it would only rotate around you. However, if you stand there long enough (several thousand years), you'll notice that the earth rotates more slowly along a second axis. This is why the "true" north star changes over time.

See: <http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~imamura/121/lecture-2/precession.html>

Apply this to sports balls, and if there's more than one axis, it would probably be hard to stabilize the image with software. One second you're looking at the ground, then the crowd, then the sky, then the foot of the player, etc.

You could put several cameras in the ball, but since most balls are inflated with air - you'd probably significantly change the ball's weight by doing so. My guess is that there are very few situations where a league would be willing to play with a heavier ball.

You could also have one camera with just an extremely high frame rate, and then use image processing to select the few frames every second where the camera's actually pointing in the right direction. However, you'd still want the camera along the major axis, which would be very hard to predict before- hand.

My guess is that if you did this (with only one camera), you might get a few good frames, but not enough to create an actual video. Maybe that's OK - <USER2> could see you getting some stellar shots.

<comment> daniel-cussen You might partially compensate for the weight of the camera by using lightweight materials (and paying the monetary cost) and by filling the ball with hydrogen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The only sport I think this would be interesting in would be (American) football. It would be a neat perspective to watch the quarterback get blitzed and chuck a hail mary, looking down on the WR right before the ball gets a view of the grass.

If you put a camera on both ends, you get a forward/backward view for the most part. Then write something that takes the video and orients the field to the bottom of the screen or something like that.

This reminds me of a post on reddit a loong time ago. Camera software for use with blurry surveillance video that sharpened the image by adjusting it with frames seen immediately before/after. Anyone by chance remember that?

</comment><comment><USER6> Thats a great idea - but boy could that be disorienting unless they included some sort of amazing stabilization mechanism. (Think spinning balls). One way to pull it off would be to make a clear ball with a camera mounted on a gyroscope on the inside so the camera could move independent of the ball. On second thought, maybe the value added here doesn't warrant the expense?

<comment><USER7> Just use a software solution. Put 6 or or so cameras pointing out radially and then stitch the views together for a full 4pi view. No need for a fancy gyroscope. There's an idea for a startup...

<comment><USER8> As long as you're going to use a software solution, you might be able to get the number of cameras on the ball down to zero: have a bunch of cameras in the stadium, and reconstruct from them what the ball would be seeing.

(I suspect you'd want the view of wherever the ball was projected to land.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You may not see an IPO, but a good chance of becoming profitable or getting bought out. Think of SportVision, who make the "1st & Ten" first down line on televised football games, and glowing hockey pucks.

</comment><comment><USER9> How about a football? I can't think of a way to mount a camera on one of the ends, but a camera inside could work if it could be stabilized.

<comment><USER10> Real leather footballs aren't perfectly pointy on the ends. You could introduce a thin tube running through the primary ball axis containing all the imaging and transmission electronics, without throwing of the balance. Think endoscope.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> A "glove" cam for boxing would be easy to implement and would give boxing fans exactly what they want.

</comment><comment><USER12> A camera from every player's POV seems way more interesting to me.

</comment><comment><USER13> I predict it will be easy in 10 years (and sooner with a large enough budget). High-res cameras will be no larger than a tiny segment of football lacing, or basketball inflation pins/pumps -- as are built into retail balls today with little effect on playability. Advanced optics will allow extremely wide-angle views in multiple directions. Fast computers will compensate for any rotations.

As others note, though, placing cameras in balls may not be as interesting to fans as other options, like player cams. (Beyond Justin.tv, what about LeBron.tv or Peyton.tv?)</comment>


The Rise of the $8 Ice Cube - <AUTHOR> http://priceonomics.com/the-rise-of-the-s8-ice-cube/ <comment><USER2> As stupid as this sounds, there is actually a difference between these ice cubes and the standard variety. And that's the appearance.

Just look:

[http://www.glaceice.net/uploads/3/9/6/9/3969825/3969289_orig...](http://www.glaceice.net/uploads/3/9/6/9/3969825/3969289_orig.jpg)

Because there's no air bubbles, the ice is perfectly clear. That's not a trivial fact. Humans innately like clear stuff! Just think how unappealing cloudy water is in comparison to clear water. The only exceptions arise from cases where we've learnt from experience that cloudiness is good (e.g. cloudy looking cider has more flavour)

What this means, is that without considering price, almost any person would rather use one of these ice cubes over a normal ice cube. So the potential market is measured in billions of people. Even if (for example) only 0.01% of the population would ever consider spending $325 for 50 ice cubes, that 0.01% is guaranteed to want these ice cubes.

It seems stupid, but it's actually brilliant. The weakness with this sort of model is that it's very easy for competitors to dominate the market. Gläce has established the demand and made ice sexy, but they have no hold on their customers. Someone could come in and sell a perfect ice maker for $200 and crush the pre-made high end ice market completely.

<comment><USER3> Can't you get the same thing out of a Kold-Draft machine? Isn't that what high-end bars already do? What reputable high-end cocktail bar --- Pegu, Booker & Dax, PDT, Aviary, &c --- uses this stuff?

<comment><USER4> The article indicates that this is an end-consumer product. If I were an amateur craft cocktail maker, I might consider buying a small amount versus a commercial machine.

<comment><USER5> -> tptacek This has all the hallmarks of a Veblen Good. Cutting the price of the ices could well backfire if the key attraction is in signalling to all how much you're willing to spend for quality pre-melted water.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The joke is that for very nice liquor (whiskey especially) you should definitely not be adding ice, no matter how "deserving" the ice is. If you want the drink cold, chill the liquor itself or even the glass.

In hindsight, fuck it. There is no point in dissecting this, it is what it is. It's ice for people who want to spend money just to spend it.

<comment><USER7> Adding a bit of water brings out flavors you don't experience neat. It's a personal preference.

[http://youtu.be/ajqd62fE73E?t=6m23s](http://youtu.be/ajqd62fE73E?t=6m23s)

<comment><USER8> I've heard this, but I don't really buy it. The whisky is already diluted at bottling time, unless it's "cask strength".

<comment><USER9> Try it! The first whiskey I've tried it with was Glenfiddich 12, and I was amazed at how it sweetened/changed the flavor profile with just a tiny splash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks like I'm branding and pricing my services wrong.

"For just $50k per hour, you get painstakingly crafted, premium server code. Every character is hand-typed on a perfectly resonant keyboard, entering the world with a pleasing 'plink'..."

<comment><USER11> Need a technical co-founder?

<comment><USER12> Sounds like he needs an MBA-type.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So now we have aisles full of water in bottles, you can buy air in cans in China, and gourmet ice. I'm waiting for bottles of vacuum, but I am sure they will suck.

<comment><USER14> Here ya go: [http://www.thermos.com/products/vacuum-insulated-14-oz- stain...](http://www.thermos.com/products/vacuum-insulated-14-oz-stainless- travel-mug.aspx)

The price per ounce of vacuum makes cocaine look like water.

<comment><USER15> Kind of funny. It is impossible to make perfect vacuum (a few particles per cubic inch) down on earth. One has to lunch stuff into space.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is, of course, ridiculous. Still, there's logic to it: find some mass- market component that is used in a luxury service, and provide a high-end alternative. The kind of idio^H^H^H^Hcustomers who want luxury certainly don't want it contaminiated by something from Walmart, regardless of the actual quality. It's the same reason as for those gold-plated cables for audiophiles.

<comment><USER17> Gold plated cables actually serve a purpose, although the average consumer does not have a need for them. In a studio environment, where cables are frequently plugged and unplugged, the gold plating protects the contacting surfaces, extending their lives.

<comment><USER18> I'm not an expert, and absolutely willing to be proven incorrect here. But I thought that gold was a better conductor, and that's why they're better for audio cables (less resistance). Surely the fact that gold is a soft metal would be a reason to _not_ use it for reasons of 'extending lives'?

<comment><USER19> Gold isn't the best conductor. Silver is better, followed by copper, but they oxidize, and gold does not. It's the oxide that forms the insulator. There are both hard and soft gold platings is electronics. Hard gold is for wearing contact surfaces such as connectors and relays. Soft gold for solderable and wire bondable surfaces.

<comment><USER20> I assume that 'hard gold' is some sort of alloy, as gold itself is known for being soft (hence the idea of someone biting down on a gold coin to test if it's really gold).

<comment><USER21> I believe "bright hard gold" (as it's referred to) contains about 0.2% cobalt and/or nickel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This brand is ridiculous, but…

Crystal clear ice cubes look great in a drink, and are far more difficult to make than "filling a 50-cent plastic tray with tap water and throwing it in the freezer". The author of the article seems to avoid pointing this out.

See [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/danprovost/neat-ice- kit](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/danprovost/neat-ice-kit) and [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wintersmiths/the-ice- ba...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wintersmiths/the-ice-baller-makes- clear-slow-melting-ice-sphere)

<comment><USER23> I make clear ice cubes two ways.

1\. Boil water twice beforehand

2\. Strap a vibrating "toy" to the tray and put it on a solid flat surface in the freezer.

Neither of these solutions ended up costing me more than $20 to make as many ice cubes as I can fit. The hardest part is finding ice cube trays that don't suck.

<comment><USER24> You can even use a silicone molded ice tray to make crystal clear ice in interesting shapes. I recall seeing Death Star shaped ice somewhere out there on the Internet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't think this is ridiculous. I remember watching this one scene in Star Trek Into Darkness where Kirk was sitting in a bar enjoying a drink. The drink that he was enjoying had this perfect spherical ice in it. I remember talking to myself at that moment that this is a very nice business idea.

Retail price aside, I do believe premium ice is a viable business.

<comment><USER26> You can buy presses to turn ice into a sphere.

Is this an affiliate link? How do I turn it back into a regular link?

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00A1TMFSU?pc_redir=1401253883...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00A1TMFSU?pc_redir=1401253883&robot_redir=1)

<comment><USER27> Or just buy a $9 mold: [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007ACTN54](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007ACTN54)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilded_age](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilded_age)

</comment><comment><USER29> I actually thought about this when a read an article a couple of years ago about a company that sells "designer" bottles of water for $80 EACH. There are many wealthy people on the planet who don't have a clue on how to spend their money. They are a brilliant target audience to sell overpriced everyday products to.

<comment><USER30> It's not just the ultra-wealthy that fall for this crap. Consider SF's $4 toast. Cheap enough that anyone can buy it but still way overpriced.

<comment><USER31> I believe it typically won't be the ultra-wealthy, but people who are just barely wealthy enough to afford it. (Which isn't all that high of a bar. An $80 bottle of water could be afforded as an occasional purchase by your average software engineer.)

As Bill Gates fictionally said on The Simpsons, "I didn't get rich by writing a lot of checks!" Someone who has accumulated that much money probably has more sense about what they spend it on.

<comment><USER32> Well, yeah; obviously the dude getting rich on this isn't spending that much on ice. I'd guess he gets a pretty good employee discount on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> My guess before reading the article was that the ice cubes were made with heavy water.

I'd pay $8 an ice cube that sinks[1].

1\. [http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2006-07/ice- capades](http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2006-07/ice-capades)

<comment><USER34> I'd hesitate to drink heavy water. Probably won't do much to you, but why find out.

<comment><USER35> There's 2 (stable) kinds of heavy water : deuterium and tritium. Deuterium is perfectly safe, and it's heavier. Nobody's ever drunk it in even tiny quantities though, so there could be surprises.

Tritium is only arguably stable though, and you definitely should not drink it. It's perfectly safe to swim in it though, just keep it outside your skin.

Drinking deuterium is going to be very expensive though, given the effort necessary to separate it. Poisoning someone with tritium is going to be more expensive than pouring molten platina over them though.

Any preference for the oxygen in the cubes ? O16, O17, or O18 ? O16 would be the "common man" oxygen. All three are safe. None of the other isotopes are stable enough to be produced in significant quantities.

Making heavy ice cubes out of H2O with the O17 is probably the cheapest "nuclear" way to produce heavy ice.

Order here: [http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog/product/aldrich/151882](http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog/product/aldrich/151882)

Cheaper than I would have thought.

<comment><USER36> Unknown Internet Source: "Despite the fact the light water and heavy water are chemically identical, heavy water is mildly toxic. How can this be? Since heavy water is heavier than normal water, the speed of chemical reactions involving it is altered somewhat, as is the strength of some types of bonds it forms. This affects certain cellular processes, notably mitosis, or cell division, due to the difference in binding energy in the hydrogen bonds needed to make certain proteins. Mouse studies have shown that drinking only heavy water along with normal feed eventually causes degeneration of tissues that need to replenish themselves frequently, and leads to cumulative damage from injuries that don't heal as quickly. One study likens the effects to those suffered by chemotherapy patients. Heavy water toxicity manifests itself when about 50% of the water in the body has been replaced by D2O. Prolonged heavy water consumption can cause death."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Reminded me of the Priceonomics article on diamonds, some business guy literally created a market for something found in nature

<comment><USER38> "Okay, okay, you figured us out. I'll give you a free bag of diamonds if you'll go away and keep quiet."

"Great...now I'm a party to this ugly little secret."

[http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1992-07-12/](http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1992-07-12/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Gah, why doesn't Priceonomics have an RSS feed? :(

Edit: Oh, they do! Thanks! I'll amend my comment to "why doesn't Priceonomics advertise their RSS feed in their site's header for easy discovery?" ;)

<comment><USER40> Is this a sarcastic comment on all Priceonomics posts being semi-automatically posted on HN? :-)

In case this is not a joke: [http://priceonomics.com/latest.rss](http://priceonomics.com/latest.rss)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'm just amazed anyone is willing to pay that much for an ice cube.

<comment><USER42> They're not. They're actually paying for the del... illusion it brings.

Just further proof that marketing doesn't actually need a product to succeed.

<comment><USER41> Maybe I should start selling Läce Oxygen, the better breathing experience certified to be fresh as it was extracted directly from a sealed room filled with plants.

Don't breathe secondhand air from the mouths of peasants! Get Läce Oxygen!

:/

EDIT: I was kidding, folks. ^^;

<comment><USER43> What kind of plants? I can see that idea working.

<comment><USER44> He'll use my line of high-end oxygen-producers. I can start him off with some Bambü, which produces a very nice texture, or we can skip directly to Alø, which has some very nice medicinal properties as well.

<comment><USER26> You need to tweak the phrasing to avoid regulatory scrutiny by FDA but beneficial properties of oxygen of different plants would sell.

I don't know how depressed I am by this.

<comment><USER43> I have a bamboo floor in my home office, and generally like things made out of bamboo. _Not even knowing_ the actual oxygen-producing properties of bamboo, I can imagine myself trying some bamboo oxygen. And I usually don't like seemingly overpriced stunts like this. I seriously think it could sell big. Oxygen made by your favorite plants! Amazing idea.

<comment><USER41> Why not buy a bamboo plant and put it in the corner?

It is the same effect. :)

<comment><USER26> There are articles online about the useful effect of certain plants on the atmosphere of offices.

That's for regular punters. Now we need a bit of price discrimination to get the high value customers. No mere "place a bamboo plant in the corner". You need to specify the obscure region of China that the original plant comes from (leave out the fact that you took a million cutting from that plant in an industrial unit somewhere) and describe the _quality of the oxygen and other harmonious gases_ produced by these plants.

[http://www.mnn.com/health/healthy- spaces/photos/15-houseplan...](http://www.mnn.com/health/healthy- spaces/photos/15-houseplants-for-improving-indoor-air-quality/a-breath-of- fresh-air)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> My wife's cousin is a chef and knows his guy: [http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/youngandhungry/2013...](http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/youngandhungry/2013/02/20/the- ice-is-right-is-artisan-ice-the-final-frontier-for-craft-cocktails). He bartends by day, and sells artisan ice to restaurants by night. It looks pretty and melts slower than regular ice cubes.

BTW: If you're in D.C., check out Range (mentioned in the above article; serves artisan ice in drinks).

<comment><USER46> after day of hard public service our public servants need their artisan ice. $400 space toilet seat starts to look like a bargain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> While perhaps there is some form of utility here for those more familiar with high end cocktails (I'm more of a dollar beer kind of guy, sometimes I'll splurge on a 22oz), this reminds me a lot of that "wealth badge [1]" or whatever it was -

"Yeah, I've got money, I spend $8 on ice cubes"

[1][http://www.vocativ.com/money/business/size-quarter-made- meta...](http://www.vocativ.com/money/business/size-quarter-made-metal- costs-5000/)

<comment><USER48> True ,it could be a wealth badge. But how many such badges does a person needs ? is there any additional value to the new ones?

<comment><USER49> There is value to society in providing additional noncoercive ways to transfer money from rich people who don't need it to non-rich people who do, which is what this company is doing.

<comment><USER50> Except the owners and/or shareholders are likely already wealthy (or will be from the obscene profit margin on this).

<comment><USER49> The employees probably aren't, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> This is the über demonstråtion that marketing is everything and product is... maybe not nothing, but in any case vastly overrated.

Marketing rules because the only thing that matters is perception. While we mere mortals find this story ridiculous, if we had all the money in the world and some guy convinced us that he had made the perfect ice cube, why would we settle for less?

It's arguably irrationnal to buy an inferior product if you can afford a better one.

That said, Tovolo trays are great :-)

</comment><comment><USER52> One supposed virtue of this ice is that it's clear, if you want to make perfectly clear ice yourself, this instructable has instructions on how you can build an insulated ice maker that will do that for a few bucks (in addition to the instructions on making a good iceball maker):

[http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-an-ice-ball- make...](http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-an-ice-ball-maker/)

</comment><comment><USER53> Related: [http://thesweethome.com/reviews/the-best-ice-cube- tray/](http://thesweethome.com/reviews/the-best-ice-cube-tray/)

*I am not the author and am no way affiliated ... just read it a while back and found it relevant/interesting.

</comment><comment><USER54> At what point do we reach maximum decadence? How far can we go I wonder? But you won't ever see me complaining about this. It's not my place to question other's choices that don't hurt me. But it sure is funny to sit back and watch sometimes.

</comment><comment><USER55> I have an even better idea... I'll sell luxury air for $995 a bottle. I'll call it æïr!

</comment><comment><USER56> This is one blog that always comes up with a variety of stories on different topics, _and_ makes them interesting. Some are serious, some are ridiculous (like this article), but all of them always interesting.

</comment><comment><USER57> Sometimes dilution & cooling liquor _is_ appropriate. For those learning to refine their taste buds, a shot approaching 100 proof is too concentrated to appreciate - but adding a little water and chilling make it much easier to savor. I have to pipe up about this because a few months back I had the delightful experience of savoring _1911_ apple vodka poured over rare fresh Georgia snow (something a tap water ice cube just doesn't replicate properly).

Yeah, an $8 ice cube is rather nuts, but if you _are_ going to chill & thin an otherwise fine expensive liquor, taking effort to use good water and careful freezing (avoiding "freezer burn") is worthwhile. Or wait for a good snowfall.

</comment><comment><USER58> Just Wow. So I once had an idea that I could sell mineral water by selling packets of trace minerals. Just add water and voila... mineral water

Thanks for the article, maybe I will pursue this idea after all

</comment><comment><USER59> Great example of creating a market for your product...

</comment><comment><USER60> I can't wait to buy premium hydrogen when fuel cell cars become more popular

</comment><comment><USER61> I should start a company selling $9 ice spheres.

</comment><comment><USER62> If you put ice in Macallan 18, you suck. Sorry for the light epithet, but it deserves worse.

and as I read more: "Gläce states that the cubes are ideal for high-end cocktails -- those that employ splashes of $38,000-per-bottle liquors, and must not be diluted or contaminated by mere tap ice." ... ICE NUMBS YOUR TASTE BUDS. Fancy water or not.

edit: Downvoted to -1? I'll double down. If you are going to drink a nice scotch on the rocks, do yourself a favor and buy cheap scotch instead. Go enjoy a Johnnie Walker Red or Cutty Sark. There are aldehydes and esters from the peating of the grain and the oak cask aging that you are not appreciating when it's chilled. If it's cask strength (around 125 proof) then by all means dilute with spring water so you don't burn out your palate. But if you drink it on the rocks, try not doing that and see if you enjoy it differently.

<comment><USER63> Heaven forbid someone enjoy a product in the manner of their choosing.

<comment><USER62> To each their own. I'll still call them a Philistine as if they'd ordered Kobe filet well-done. There's a perfectly serviceable Macallan 12 if someone wants to ice it. I can have a polite discussion about spring water for cask strength bottles, but the 12 & 18 are both diluted to just over 80 proof already.

Look, you are just not going to fully appreciate a fine whisky that way. This is chemistry & biology, not only me being an ass.

edit: and as an olive branch, I probably wouldn't have been as strident if we were talking standard (ie, free) ice instead of some $8 monstrosity.</comment></comment></comment>


Alien radio signals detected repeating with a regular 16-day cycle - <AUTHOR> https://news.sky.com/story/alien-radio-signals-detected-repeating-with-a-regular-16-day-cycle-11931306 <comment><USER2> clickbait title</comment>


Practical Recursion Schemes - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jaredtobin/practical-recursion-schemes-c10648ec1c29 <comment><USER2> OMG, I think my head explodes. I wish I were capable of grokking these things.</comment>


Gitlab Attachments Stopped Working After System Upgrade - <AUTHOR> https://forum.gitlab.com/t/bug-gitlab-com-issues-image-attachments-missing/29484 <comment><USER2> This bug should be fixed with the release 12.2.4. More info at [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/issues/66803](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/66803)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Video attachments and text files don't work too, if I remember correctly.</comment></comment>


Which of well known startups are using Microsoft Azure? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I did a programmatic hosting survey of 300+ startups funded by Y Combinator just a few months ago. Of those, unless they're one of the 7-8 whose main site was being served entirely from a CDN, none are hosted on Microsoft Azure. Amazon EC2, Rackspace, Softlayer and Linode together hosted about 3/4 of the companies.

<comment><USER3> What were some of the other hosting options for the other 1/4?

<comment><USER3> Never mind I found your blog post.

[http://www.dangrossman.info/2012/09/24/who-hosts-the-y- combi...](http://www.dangrossman.info/2012/09/24/who-hosts-the-y-combinator- startups/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> <http://trends.builtwith.com/cdn/Microsoft-Azure-CDN>

<http://trends.builtwith.com/cdn/Microsoft-Azure-Blob-Storage></comment>


Ask HN: Do you like pair programming? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking for a new job and most of the time, one stage of the interview processes is pair programming. I'm not used to pair programming and don't feel comfortable. Do you use it in your job? <comment><USER2> Most teams that require pair programming during the interview process don't actually pair on the job. They just use it as a convenient way to assess the candidate in conditions as similar to the real job as possible, and see how they solve problems and collaborate with others.

I suggest to ask your contact at the company about their practices if you're concerned about pairing. They should be happy to answer and would probably appreciate your interest.</comment>


Just Clojure - <AUTHOR> http://clojure.org/ <comment><USER2> flagging for no context for the submission</comment>


PHP Dark Arts: Sockets - <AUTHOR> http://www.re-cycledair.com/php-dark-arts-sockets

<comment><USER2> I don't mean to be snide, but in what universe is basic socket programming considered a 'dark art'? Has programming as a whole really fallen that far? Socket programming isn't deep or complicated, it is pretty straightforward and most anyone with a vaguely decent amount of programming experience ( 1 year at most from my experience ) should be able to pick up the basic right away.

<comment><USER3> a: it's in PHP

b: the overall skill level of programmers ranges across several orders of magnitude, amongst the group of folks who are "programmers" or software engineers by job description only a small fraction of them are capable of socket programming without getting well in over their head quickly.

<comment><USER2> If b is true then I've apparently lead a sheltered life. Every programmer I've worked with, even the ones I could call 'not so good' where able to do socket programming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> PHP Dark Arts: doing something beyond
hi there <?php echo $username ?>

<comment><USER5> I know I'll get flamed for this, but that's actually beautifully elegant.

<comment><USER6> and insecure. Correct version is:

      <?php echo htmlspecialchars($username); ?>

<comment><USER5> That's so incorrect I don't even know where to start.

<comment><USER6> I'd like to hear what's incorrect about it.

Do you think values should be escaped before output? Or that usernames don't include chars that need escaping in HTML? Or perhaps you'd add extra filtering to ensure that page cannot become ill-formed due to encoding error? Or perhaps it's incorrect to use PHP at all? ;)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why do some paperbacks cost less than their ebook versions? - <AUTHOR>

This doesn't make any sense to me at all.  It is very frustrating to see paper backs cost less (sometimes upto 20% or more) than kindle versions.  There is so much cost involved in printing, transporting, stocking paperbacks, but ebooks cost next to nothing.<p>What am I missing? <comment><USER2> High ebooks prices are mostly due to the 'agency pricing' model adopted by publishers specifically for ebooks. In a nutshell, publishers do not want retailers like Amazon to discount ebooks too heavily and ultimately force publishers to accept lower profits.

In the agency model, publishers force retailers to sell ebooks at pre-defined (and usually unjustifiably high) prices. All the large publishing houses are quite uncomfortable with the rise of ebooks because consumers expect ebooks to cost less and increased ebook adoption would mean lower profits for publishers.

This article goes into more detail: [http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/why- smashwords-moved-to-ag...](http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/why-smashwords- moved-to-agency-pricing-explained-by-mark-coker/)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is pure speculation, but I wonder if production cost is the driving factor. Rather, I think it is a question of what a potential buyer is willing to pay. If a person with a Kindle is looking to read, say, Atlas Shrugged ($19 Kindle, $10 Paperback) I don't think they are going to buy the paperback just to save money. They are probably willing to eat the extra $9 for the immediate gratification. Amazon knows that, so they'll charge more.

Also, its interesting to note (from an unscientific random survey) that they are charging less for the Kindle Edition when it comes to bestsellers (which are probably in hardback). I wonder if this is in an effort to hook potential buyers and then increase margins when Kindle owners buy older titles?

</comment><comment><USER4> Two factors I can think of:

First, price has less to do with production cost than with the perceived value of the product. The value of the Kindle version is increased by the utility of the Kindle itself.

Second, the production cost has to be covered (of course) so the cost per unit depends on how many units you sell. In other words, a popular paperback may well have a much lower production cost per unit than the ebook will ever have.

</comment><comment><USER5> What transporting? What Stocking? Amazon is capable of print on demand. Second the primary cost of books is not the physical it is the human effort(writer, editor, layout). Perhaps people who do E-book layout are more costly than their paper counter parts making those books more expensive.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, Amazon is capable of PoD. But most books are not printed by Amazon, they come from big name publishers. And big bookstores even charge a "stock" fee. All these quickly drive up the price of a paperbacks (or hardcovers). None of these apply for ebooks though.

I don't know how much "book layouts" cost, but I doubt they are such a big factor to drive up the ebooks cost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Authors of books on niche topics prefer to sell paperbacks just so that they can reduce piracy. E-books are often easier to pirate, and niche-topic authors don't fancy losing huge chunks of their sales to pirates.

</comment><comment><USER7> Ebook editions typically include all future updates. With paperbacks, you're stuck with whatever is current at the time of printing.</comment>


Buy Domains from the CLI - <AUTHOR> https://zeit.co/blog/buy-domains <comment><USER2> > We offer pre-built binaries of `now(1)` for 64 bit systems (v5.2.3). They > even work on devices without Node installed!

I wanted to install the now CLI for Linux and then realized it's over 40M in size. Can someone explain why a CLI tool needs to be the size of a browser.

<comment><USER3> Because node and all of the CLIs dependencies are bundled within.

<comment><USER2> Thanks.

<comment><USER4> 40MB seems a little excessive? An entire mail application I created in Electron was 30MB which included the Node binaries. Not to mention it also had all of Chromium.

<comment><USER5> compressed or uncompressed?

femto looks cool (i work at nylas)

<comment><USER4> Compressed as an executable, using `electron-builder`. And thanks, femto is cool, but Nylas is awesome! It's the mail client I currently use and will almost certainly use for the foreseeable future.

Just thought I might toy with a minimalist email client, the thing that gets me about Nylas is it takes a while to synchronize emails.

<comment><USER5> yep we can always make it faster! it's always a tradeoff to whether folks want to use CPU or not. The faster you sync the more people complain about hurting battery life. Downloading >100k items over an archaic protocol just takes lots of processing.

<comment><USER4> Have you considered downloading just the envelope of each email very quickly at the start (takes 2-3 seconds for me with 3,000 emails) and then lazy loading the rest either when they're loaded by the user or slowly over time? Even downloading hundreds of thousands of items would take only a minute of high CPU usage.

<comment><USER5> Yep we've thought of that but it turns out to not make the experience much better. (Local search won't work, you don't get snippets, etc.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Sorry for being off-topic, but this site repeatedly crashes Mobile Safari's renderer for me :/

<comment><USER6> Same. I am not super hip on modern web dev, but why are they calling 19 uncompressed, external JS resources and a 6k line index.html for a single page with 2 gifs on it?</comment></comment>


Show HN: KnowYourWorth – Find out if you're being paid fairly - <AUTHOR> https://knowyourworth.site/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi,

A few months ago a friend of mine got a job in a big company from the USA. She was suspected that because she was from Uruguay and a woman she was underpaid. After talking with some colleagues they created a spreadsheet where everyone from that company could share their salaries, sector, years of experience and gender. So everyone could see if they were being paid fairly.

When she told me that I thought it was a really great idea, everyone should have that in their company, salary transparency helps all of us, to get an idea of how much earn people in similar situations than me.

A few weeks ago, the hashtag #knowyourworth wen viral. So I finally decided to build a site where everyone could easily share their salaries in an anonymous way.

I know there are some similar tools over there but there are most of them for the USA or they just have data from big companies. Sometimes they are more complex than we would like.

I hope it helps.

<comment><USER2> > salaries, sector, years of experience and gender.

I'm fairly sure the biggest factor influencing wages is market value of your labour which is for the most part unrelated to years of experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah sure. But I believe that years of experience are useful to compare for the same level/title. For example, is not the same being a junior Backend Developer than a Senior one. Also, a big factor influencing wages is country. I think is useless to compare your salary with another one of a different country, and that's the reason why I ask for it.</comment></comment></comment>


Myspace sneaking into Google search results?  - <AUTHOR>

I was doing some research on the music website Bandcamp and decided to search for information on how many users it had. Upon searching for "Bandcamp million users" a funny thing happened... Every single result was one for Myspace, and none even mentioned Bandcamp. What's going on here??<p>https://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&sugexp=les%3B&gs_nf=3&tok=Q888851u8rs5UZpBz8fSiQ&cp=22&gs_id=2e&xhr=t&q=bandcamp+million+users&pf=p&sclient=psy-ab&oq=bandcamp+million+users&gs_l=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&fp=d68bae7275fecda7&bpcl=38897761&biw=1345&bih=1314 <comment><USER2> 71,600 results for that query but add in -myspace and you get over 200,000 - double weird [https://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&spell=1&q=bandcamp+m...](https://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&spell=1&q=bandcamp+million+users+-myspace&sa=X&ei=jR- tUPbnFtS5hAfX2YDwAg&ved=0CBwQvwUoAA&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&fp=aa4e9656384d9063&bpcl=38897761&biw=1587&bih=783)

</comment><comment><USER3> How strange. Google even highlights the term MySpace in the results as if it was one of the search terms.

<comment><USER4> Could be that Bandcamp or MySpace has become a synonym of the other (in Google's index)? As far as I'm aware, this sort of paring is done automatically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yea very strange - why is MySpace highlighted as a keyword, something going on here!

</comment><comment><USER6> Because the enemy (MySpace) of your enemy (Facebook) is your friend.</comment>


The Apple Watch: What we don't know - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/356577/the-apple-watch-what-we-dont-know-2/

<comment><USER2> There's a great TED Talk by Simon Sinek where he explains the golden circle, and says "people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it." This author plays the neutral card unlike many others who buy in (literally and figuratively) to Apple's "innovation", which is already widely available. Moto 360 anyone?

I think it's interesting how Apple omits key details, including price and battery life, if favor of spectacular displays and forged examples of everyday use.

I think as a society, we aren't ready for a smart watch yet, but if we are, I'd imagine the Apple Watch success would stem from the brand more so than the product itself.</comment>


Why I Stuck With Perl - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.perl.org/users/jeffrey_kegler/2011/01/why-i-stuck-with-perl.html

<comment><USER2> My reason for using Perl is to escape from OOP. All of the modern mainstream programming languages, C++, Java, C#, Python, Ruby, JavaScript, etc are all strongly OOP.

On the other hand, Perl is very much a procedural langauge. Besides Perl code that is written in a procedural style, many Perl modules are written in C which is a strictly procedural language.

There is Moose for OOP stuff, but that is just added onto the language as an afterthought, and many libraries don't use it so we can at least say that Perl is less OOP then all of the other mainstream languages.

I don't know what it is, I just hate OOP. It seems absolutely revolting to me, so I stuck with procedural languages. Now I have found something I like even better: functional programming, so now I use languages like Lisp and Haskell.

As for Python, the only good features in that language: lambda, map, reduce, and filter were added by a Lisp hacker. Everything else in the language is inefficient scripting crap.

<comment><USER3> > As for Python... Everything else in the language is inefficient scripting > crap.

Would you elaborate on how this applies to Python and not Perl?

<comment><USER2> The difference is that Perl got its good features from non-Lisp hackers that copied Lisp. Python got its good features directly from Lisp hackers.

I am quite certain of this because I doubt there are any Lisp hackers out there that would contribute to a language that has a periodic table of unreadable operators

[http://glyphic.s3.amazonaws.com/ozone/mark/periodic/Periodic...](http://glyphic.s3.amazonaws.com/ozone/mark/periodic/Periodic%20Table%20of%20the%20Operators%20A4%20300dpi.jpg)

<comment><USER4> Sigh, another language war troll that don't know that table is for Perl 6 and not for Perl 5... :-(

Can't you guys at least vary your garbage? (Assuming it isn't one guy with multiple accounts everywhere.)

<comment><USER2> I am very aware of the differences between Perl 5 and Perl 6. Perl 5 was a tool that was very useful for obfscuated code contests such as this one:

<http://perl.plover.com/obfuscated/>

The new version of Perl, Perl 6, introduces new features to Perl 5 that will make it an invaluable tool for obfuscated code contests such as unicode characters (you thought you had to decipher the meaning of only 256 characters? Think again) and meta-operators. Perl 6 obsoletes Perl 5 for these contests, even brainfuck is no longer a useful tool for obfuscated code contests, because it is no match for Perl 6.

Lisp isn't very useful for these obfuscated code contests, but if you are interested in actually writing computer programs then its worth looking into.

<comment><USER4> And now this new account claim, that if you can misuse a tool, it is bad (please hand over all your kitchen knives).

>>Lisp isn't very useful for these obfuscated code contests

I quite like Lisp. I still am quite certain that nice macro system can be used in many very interesting ways...

I have no problem with language war trolls either, as long as they stay at 4chan, or where ever they come from...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When I first got back into the CPAN game last year, uploading my first module in years, it failed testing first off, and Andreas emailed me to tell me not only that it had failed, but why.

I'll give up Perl when I'm dead - and even then, CPAN will carry on my name unto eternity.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't know.. the article basically comes down to "i use perl because someone helped me at some point, when using it"... I don't think i would base such a decision on that..

<comment><USER7> I think the article was really about how useful the CPAN testing ecosystem was (and still is) to the author.

 _Someone_ (in the community) being helpful was just an added bonus :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Offtopic question: this article links to [http://everythingsysadmin.com/2011/01/python-is-better- than-...](http://everythingsysadmin.com/2011/01/python-is-better-than- perl6.html) where author writes that google have official UI language. Anyone knows what is the name of that language? Is it something like XUL but for web?

<comment><USER9> Not sure what he's referring to. Might be Closure, which is compiler of javascript that compiles to javascript (just smaller & faster JS)

<http://code.google.com/closure/compiler/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This might be relevant, if you don't know what CPAN Testers is:

<http://wiki.cpantesters.org/wiki/WhatIsCPANTesters>

The best part is that there is a cool link from the pages at CPAN module pages to an overview of the results. Including of the modules used.

Here is the CPAN testers results for Moose, with results for all its dependencies:

<http://deps.cpantesters.org/?module=Moose;perl=latest>

(Note the links for every module, including a link back to CPAN. Btw, I like the D link, which shows what CPAN modules use Moose)

<comment><USER10> Thanks for that pointer. Without it I might have just guessed that you may well get guru-like test coverage and aid from other communities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why I didn't stick with Perl (although if you did that's OK with me):

\- I discovered that a more modern language allowed me to do more with less, more elegantly

\- Rails

\- metaprogramming

\- fun

<comment><USER7> Why I stuck with Perl (just some of my reasons!):

\- I discovered more about the Perl language which allowed me to do more with less, more elegantly

\- Moose

\- metaprogramming

\- fun (which is one thing Perl has always been IMHO).

<comment><USER12> Now you know you can't claim it does those things _elegantly_ ;)

<comment><USER13> Why not? It's a matter of taste.

<comment><USER11> It truly is a matter of taste. The fact that you write something one way in Perl and a different way in Ruby mostly boils down to preference.

Metaprogramming in Perl? True metaprogramming?

<comment><USER7> _Metaprogramming in Perl? True metaprogramming?_

Yep. While it is generally easier todo in Ruby I find that you often hit limitations sooner than with Perl.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best book to learn about the JVM? - <AUTHOR> I want to learn more about garbage collection tuning, common bottlenecks, how to use threads properly, the underlying implementation of the JVM and how it affects performance.  I write mostly Clojure and some Java, trying to increase throughput of APIs.  Looking for a more systematic learning method than trial and error through endless load tests. <comment><USER2> [https://www.amazon.com/Java-Performance-Charlie- Hunt/dp/0137...](https://www.amazon.com/Java-Performance-Charlie- Hunt/dp/0137142528)

[https://www.amazon.com/Java-Performance-Companion-Charlie- Hu...](https://www.amazon.com/Java-Performance-Companion-Charlie- Hunt/dp/0133796825)

[https://www.amazon.com/Java-Performance-Definitive-Guide- Get...](https://www.amazon.com/Java-Performance-Definitive-Guide- Getting/dp/1449358454/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=DMVVTVNP4VS1ZM050JW1)

</comment><comment> le-mark "Inside the Java Virtual Machine" old but good book about JVM impl by Bill Veneers with some chapters online:

[https://www.artima.com/insidejvm/ed2/](https://www.artima.com/insidejvm/ed2/)

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we_enrM7TSY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we_enrM7TSY) this is one of the best talks on jvm and gc</comment>


What Is Topology? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/cantors-paradise/what-is-topology-963ef4cc6365 <comment><USER2> I've always found how topology and algebra treat the differences between integers and rational numbers to be instructive at developing an intuition for each.

As sets the integers and rational numbers are identical. They can be put in one-to-one correspondence with each other.

To distinguish them further we must impose additional structure and examine their differences.

Algebra is the study of operators over sets. This means from an algebraic perspective the difference between the rational numbers and the integers are the operators supported. The integers support addition, subtraction, and multiplication. The rationals are formed by adding division.

On the other hand, topology is the study of how to formalize the intuitive notions of "close" and "far." From a topological perspective, the distinguishing feature of the integers is that each integer is very far from the other, or equivalently that the integers are very sparse. Every integer has two other integers between which there are no other integers. On the other hand the rational numbers are very dense. They are the result of taking the integers and "squishing" them together. Between and two rational numbers there are an infinite number of other rational numbers.

<comment><USER3> The act of "squishing" wouldn't affect order, so each squished integer would still have two closest neighbors.

The set of rationals, Q, is homeomorphic to their Cartesian product, Q x Q. So any analogy needs to work for that set, too.

<comment><USER2> That's fair. "Squishing the integers" was a poor choice of words. "Squishing" an undistinguished countable set is perhaps a better analogy.

In particular I was thinking of undistinguished countable sets (although I was confusingly throwing in ordering of the integers to try to make my point more accessible) that you then add topological structure on top of.

In that world the integers are simply the discrete topology on a countable set. Or more explicitly (to contrast with the next definition), where all singleton sets are open.

The rationals then are formed by any metric whose induced topology does not include singleton sets.

That is, any attempt to uniformly bring elements "closer" than the world where single points are open gives rise to a topology homeomorphic to the rational numbers.

<comment><USER3> The thing that surprised me yesterday (since I don't know much about topology) is that every metrizable countable set without isolated points is the same.

So the numbers k/2^n, the points on the unit circle with rational y/x, or the set Q \ Z, are homeomorphic.

The fact that you can slice and dice the rationals is counterintuitive.

<comment><USER3> Update: it's not counterintuitive any more.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft infographic encouraging working while on vacation - <AUTHOR> http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2013/nov13/11-06getitdone.aspx

<comment><USER2> What if the reason you get to have a nice vacation at a particular time of year is that you are able to join important meetings from wherever?

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't see the word vacation anywhere in the article.

<comment><USER4> Yes, vacation (or even non-working hours) would be implied in this case? Sunrise to sunset.... is that what we really want? Sure we want to be connected, but not necessarily "working".

<comment><USER3> I think they're saying that people work when they want to work. Not imploring people to work on their vacations.</comment></comment></comment>


Proxmox Backup Server Beta Announced - Deduplication, Incremental backups, ... - <AUTHOR> https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/proxmox-backup-server-beta.72676/ <comment><AUTHOR>
      Main Features

      Support for Proxmox VE
      The Proxmox Virtual Environment is fully supported and you can easily backup
      virtual machines (supporting QEMU dirty bitmaps) and containers.

      Performance
      The whole software stack is written in Rust, to provide high speed and memory
      efficiency.

      Deduplication
      Periodic backups produce large amounts of duplicate data. The deduplication
      layer avoids redundancy and minimizes the used storage space.

      Incremental backups
      Changes between backups are typically low. Reading and sending only the delta
      reduces storage and network impact of backups.

      Data Integrity
      The built in SHA-256 checksum algorithm assures the accuracy and consistency of
      your backups.

      Remote Sync
      It is possible to efficiently synchronize data to remote sites. Only deltas
      containing new data are transferred.

      Compression
      The ultra fast Zstandard compression is able to compress several gigabytes of
      data per second.

      Encryption
      Backups can be encrypted on the client-side using AES-256 in Galois/Counter
      Mode. This authenticated encryption mode provides very high performance on
      modern hardware.

      Web interface
      Manage Proxmox backups with the integrated web-based user interface.

      Open Source
      No secrets. Proxmox Backup Server is free and open-source software. The source
      code is licensed under AGPL, v3.

      Support
      Enterprise support will be available from Proxmox.

\-- [https://pbs.proxmox.com/docs/introduction.html#main- features](https://pbs.proxmox.com/docs/introduction.html#main-features)</comment>


Ask HN: What would you do with a Billion dollars? - <AUTHOR>

I love this question. For several years now I've been asking strangers what would they do with a Billion dollars if they had it. I keep asking it because I've discovered several instant friends along the way. It turns brief interactions where you get little time to get to know the other person into high-quality conversations that surface interests and passions you might have never known about. Some of my favorite ones:<p>- "If it was a million, I'd have fun with it, but a Billion is a job - a responsibility." - "I'd build a way for researchers to store negative outcome experiments and make those public and easily searchable - it would save tremendous time for the scientific community."<p>What would you do? <comment><USER2> Wow, last thing I figured is my answer would be given by someone else. I love the negative results answer.

I'd also:

Endow a non-partisan original-reporting only, no-pr, news site with no sponsors to bias results, ever. Now that all news is corporate sponsored in various ways, we need alternatives.

Use part to endow a rationalist organization dedicated entirely to the spreading of rationality as determined by the results of research on how to most effectively spread rationality.

Create a cost-effective ethically acceptable platform for testing drugs and theories on a human-ish system. Basically this would be an attempt to strap a rocket to modern day testing and drug discovery by making it as effortless as it would be if you could put humans in various conditions without ethics or harm considerations.

See if there's a way to use my money to undo the corrupting supreme court Citizens United decisions and decisions about Super PACs.

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately, if you wanted your new "liberal" news network to affect a larger audience you'd need a think-tank to help "propagandize", else you'd be discredited by other motivated interests.

<comment><USER4> I'm extremely curious to know exactly what about the comment you're replying to sparked the "liberal" label. I don't want to create a political discussion here, but it seemed like the reply was taking pains to suggest it would be neutral.

<comment><USER3> 1\. What is the political leaning of the national news network who stands to lose the most viewers if you were to take a percentage of everyone's audience? Fox [1]. Will they call your network neutral?

2\. There seems to be an inordinate amount of money pouring into campaigns to discredit the sort of thing you might focus on (e.g., climate change[2], which is seen as a liberal idea[3]).

3\. Less seriously, it was sub-text'd from Colbert's "Reality has a well-known liberal bias." [4]

_______

[1] [http://stateofthemedia.org/2013/cable-a-growing-medium- reach...](http://stateofthemedia.org/2013/cable-a-growing-medium-reaching-its- ceiling/4_cable_only_msnbc_grows_in_prime_time/) (2012)

[2] [http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/14/funding-c...](http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/14/funding- climate-change-denial-thinktanks-network)

[3] [http://www.conservapedia.com/Global_warming](http://www.conservapedia.com/Global_warming)

[4] [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Liberal_bias](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Liberal_bias)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I can't edit the question anymore, but if I could, I'd add a sub-question for the founders who have already created things worth a Billion: "Did your answer to this question change between the time you were starting and the time you had the money?"

</comment><comment><USER5> I would create a scientific research group composed of the best physicists to work on 1) a functional quantum computer and 2) practical room temperature superconductivity. Both of these would have a huge impact on the world. Solving (1) would also increase the chances of solving (2) since a quantum computer would allow polynomial time quantum simulations that would assist in ascertaining which kind of materials might be superconducting at room temperature.

3) I would found a cancer research group. I think everyone is immensely sick of this disease and the fact that it hasn't been cured yet. It wouldn't hurt to direct even more research toward it.

4) I would buy 10 boxes of raspberries from the grocery store and eat them all in one sitting. Those things are freaking expensive, but they're delicious.

<comment><USER6> How about sponsoring some alternative fusion research ? Aside from ITER, nothing seems to have even basic sponsorship, and ITER makes no business sense (price/reward). Same thing with battery research. Or try to find a better Fisher-Tropsch process (that would solve global warming, energy storage and energy transport without requiring us to change cars or power plants. It would literally make a 30-year old beater green, so it wouldn't require punishing all the poor by either taking their cars away like all other green initiatives do)

If you're going to do high-risk high-reward research, you should probably be prepared to spend tens of millions on it though.

<comment><USER7> > Or try to find a better Fisher-Tropsch process

One major use of the Fischer-Tropsch process is converting coal (via gasification) into hydrocarbons and eventually fuel/petrol. This is a disaster for global warming because we have very large amounts of easily accessible coal available to turn into petrol. If you make FT easier you'll do more harm than good.

<comment><USER6> FT would also enable CO2 + H2O => Fuel. That would be the perfect solution to global warming. Instead of getting fuel in Saudi Arabia, a tanker just goes out to sea, and with solar power and ocean top layer co2 just slowly fills itself with fuel.

<comment><USER7> Currently FT is only used (see SASOL for example) with coal. Why? Because it's more profitable than CO2 to fuel. Making FT cheaper won't change that. It will just mean more companies will turn coal into fuel. Yes you CAN use CO2 but in practice every for-profit company out there will choose coal instead and maximise their $$$.

<comment><USER6> Given the current energy situation, I'm of the opinion that attempting to prevent most coal from being used for energy is a fight that cannot be won.

We are on the terminal decline of the oil production, since 2005, and it's about to drop off a cliff (for most of the world, prices will rise by the end of this year or so, for the US, end of 2015, maybe mid 2016 if we're lucky). What do you expect to happen ? That people are just going to abandon places where you really need heating ?

<comment><USER7> I agree, coal will be used for heating and electricity and we can't stop that. But if you improve FT we'll also use coal for our cars which just makes things worse!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Found an international organization that should be doing the work the NSA should be doing: making the world more secure by actively helping secure all hardware and software regardless of origin. Basically help close all the holes the NSA is actively exploiting. Once it is humming along nicely and being productive, I would solicit donations from all the nations that see value in the work being done.

Found another international organization that incubates decentralized technologies that put users in control of their data with the goal of competing with all the centralized walled gardens out there. The world needs more technologies like bittorrent.

With both organizations, I don't think it would make sense to have just one location, I would probably found two larger offices in San Francisco and Berlin first, but then open up additional small offices in other regions where there are a dozen or so capable hackers that want to work together on this kind of stuff full-time.

Next, I would put money into open-source hardware for those areas which are still closed-source threats - CPUs, GPUs and the networking stack. By now the world really should have an entire stack from GUI all the way to every piece of hardware that is open-source and auditable.

Lastly, I would secretly buy up all the parking lots in San Francisco. Once I control most of the market for parking lots in the city, I would shut them all down simultaneously and turn half into public parks and convert the rest into whatever type of development that they are zoned for. It wouldn't be an anti- trust issue because I'd be liquidating my market share. i.e. if I owned 90% of the market and shut down 100% of my stock, I now own 0% of the market. My goal would be to decimate the convenience of driving in the city overnight so that people are forced to consider alternative means of transportation like buses and bicycling.

In fact, with the exception of turning some of the land into public parks, I reckon this last idea could form a very decent investment strategy with some smart hedging, such as buying stock in the companies likely to benefit the most from increased spending on public transportation (city bus manufacturers, subway car manufacturers, etc.). I'm certain there is some investment thesis out there that works when you shut down all the private infrastructure that supports selfish city drivers.

</comment><comment><USER9> It's hard to say it would be a battle between immediate versus long-term. And by that of course I mean I would have to share it with poor around the word I think most people would.

Water, food, vaccines, education all important but water is probably the most needed.

But if invested smartly a smaller amount over a longer time but time is the enemy, do I help more people right now and fewer later or a few people over a longer time period?

I don't think I want a billion dollars it's too much responsibility and I'm not even very good at managing my own life.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think Ocean research should be boosted significantly, and some very rich and smart people are already dedicating themselves to space. I'd probably donate some money to Ocean research, and open a museum of dinosaurs (and others from that time period) in a new place somewhere, or perhaps few smaller museums and keep interchanging exhibits between them.

</comment><comment><USER11> Build and manage large sets of apartments, flats, or condos (depending on location) for students. Rented very cheaply, but available only to people who didn't drop out, or fail their courses.

Student accommodation in the UK is frequently nasty, expensive, and hard to find.

Beyond that a new camera, and probably a new house for myself. But nothing too insane.

</comment><comment><USER12> I would create a semantic wiki with domain specific ways of easily inputting information, spend enough cash to incentivize folks, to store all biological knowledge in a way machines can reason about. We're all studying a giant elephant. No one is putting it all together in a crowd-generated, semantic, computable way.

</comment><comment><USER13> Put 100% of it into education in the most economical way possible.

I believe that all problems in this world are caused by a simple lack of education.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'd start a foundation that gives grants to journalists, especially investigative and explanatory journalists. I like to know more about what's going on in the world than what's included in press releases.

</comment><comment><USER15> Promote advanced personal development and cancer treatment approaches based on helping people to eliminate fear from their body/mind systems.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'd buy lots of land near Boston and build a giant pyramid out of granite.

</comment><comment><USER17> Pay off my debts, give some to my family, then basically whatever I wanted.

</comment><comment><USER18> fund research. like space tech, cancer treatment, digital brain preservation after death.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'd give it to the Dimond Brothers.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'll tell you what I'd do, man: two chicks at the same time, man.</comment>


SRI LANKA: Mine clearance could take 10 years or more - <AUTHOR> http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=94798 <comment><AUTHOR> > _"It turns out there aren't any fancy scanners or high-tech mine-removal > gadgets that can compete with old-fashioned sweat, discipline, and patience > when it comes to picking mines out of the ground," US diplomat Emily > Fleckner said during a December site visit to Kilinochchi, where some of > fiercest fighting once took place._

> _But it is the overall issue of funding that has people worried most almost > two years since the war was officially declared over._

> _NMAC estimates it will cost more than US$100 million to demine the last 126 > sqkm._

$100m doesn't seem like a crazy huge amount of money.</comment>


Her Facebook life looked perfect. How social media masks mental illness (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbc.ca/news/trending/her-facebook-life-looked-perfect-madison-holleran-suicide-highlights-how-social-media-masks-mental-illness-1.3071302 <comment><USER2> A useful analogy is to think about social media in terms of steroid use in cycling.

An athlete on the Tour de France knows most winners cheat and the instance of cheaters in the standings clusters densely toward the top.

To even qualify for the game with cheaters, you need to either be a standard deviation better than they are without their cheat, or compromise and also cheat, which in turn legitimizes their tactics.

Social media exacerbates nascent mental illness by creating this same double bind for young people, where to "succeed," in life by getting access to cliques and networks, school placements, job opportunities, and investment opportunities, you need to "play the game," which today means to fabricate an image of performative conventional success and the perception you are a viable centre of attention.

They know it's wrong, everyone else knows it's probably wrong, but the whole exercise is a temporary suspension of disbelief in exchange for lottery style rewards, provided by sponsors.

Good news on both fronts is you can enjoy riding bicycles or any other sport, and indeed life, without the often horrific and spiritually hollow compromises of elite competition, which social media seems to approximate.

The greatest irony is that it is in more humble and private pursuits where most of the real stories of courage, dignity, and personal triumph that people only fake in performances on social media can truly be found.

<comment><USER3> You can just not participate. You are making it sound as a do or die thing.

Facebook does not help you in getting any sucess at all.

<comment><USER4> This is just circumstantial evidence, but from my personal experience of just not participating in "playing the game" it would always result in losing friends and relationships. This was before the time of Facebook and other modern social media, but there are all kinds of social games you are expected to participate in if you want to be part of things. Perhaps I won the game by not participating and never being stressed about these things, but who knows what things would have been like if I didn't close so many doors by not playing along.

I imagine today you would be more isolated than ever before if you decide to not participate. This might not matter much in work life, but for kids in school it is huge.

<comment><USER5> It's certainly a trade-off: by not partaking in social media and/or popular culture, you are bound to come up empty and alone in modern day. I usually like to say, do whatever you like to do, but remember to wear the world like a loose fitting shirt and don't let it bind you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How social media masks mental illness?

More like how people mask mental illness.

It's scary how many people are seething tempests of confused emotion under the hood yet can put on a convincing facade that they are perfectly normal. Just last week one of my co-workers who I've known for years and seemed completely normal on the outside disappeared one day to attempt a Nice-style terrorist attack with a U-haul truck (the FBI nabbed him before anyone was killed).

<comment><USER7> I think a lot of people, me included, have quite a high barrier to things they're willing to discuss or reveal to co-workers regarding their personal life.

<comment><USER8> I think a lot of people, (probably) me included, have quite a high barrier to things they're willing to discuss or reveal to people they've paid to discuss and reveal these things to.

<comment><USER9> Definitely true of me. Even after years of therapy with a practitioner I liked and largely trusted, I still didn't fully open up about my issues unless there was an immediate crisis that I couldn't cope with emotionally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Social media is a slow acting poison. It's extensive damaging effects will only be felt in 10-20 years. For the most part, it amplifies all the negative traits of humanity, twitter encourages ad hominem style debates and substanceless statements from all strata of soceity. Instagram/FB takes the need for human validation and the need to keep pretenses among our peers to a global scale. The next generation will be much more comfortable behind a screen where they can maintain an illusory persona than in real life. This is not taking into accounts the addictive nature of social media in general and how they employ research scientists to work on making their products more addictive.

<comment><USER11> It also lets you stay connected to people in ways that were impossible before.

Chance meetings can become longtime friendships. Great memories that would have faded away no longer have to.

For me, social media has mostly improved my life.

<comment><USER12> The degree with which people compare social media to drugs (with all the baggage that entails) fucking astounds me sometimes. I would fully expect a serious reply to a comment like yours to be "that's just because you're addicted".

It's a fad in some circles to hate on social media. And a particularly tiresome one, since it's doing nothing more than highlighting the pathological ways humans have always behaved, even in its absence. Availability heuristic.

<comment><USER10> Humans have always fought in wars and killed one another but why are modern weapons so much more dangerous? Technology has the potential to enable the dark aspects of humanity to be more destructive than ever. Make no mistake, the HN crowd is not your average person, how social media applies to you does not reflect how it will apply to the majority in the world.

<comment><USER13> Because modern weapons are designed to enable both sides to lose at the same time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This has very little to do with social media. It helps to read the linked espn article, which goes into far greater detail.

[http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/12833146/instagr...](http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/12833146/instagram- account-university-pennsylvania-runner-showed-only-part-story)

"Everyone now agrees that Madison was depressed, though she had never previously exhibited symptoms. (Depression exists on Jim's side of the family.) Something had changed with her brain chemistry. She was not seeing the world in the same way she had before. She had lost weight too, had become so thin as to appear sick.

The day before Madison returned to Penn for spring semester, she had a session with her therapist that Jim (note her father) also attended. She admitted to having suicidal thoughts. "If you have suicidal thoughts, don't act them out," her doctor said. "Either call me or call someone in your family.""

I don't see how social media can mask anything once this happens. The article mentions Jim din't like to discuss suicide as to encourage it, but he also mentioned transferring, and Madison herself went to her coach with a letter to quit track.

There's no "masking" at this point. The issue is, to be blunt people don't take these kind of things seriously. They want to believe the person will power through it and any signs that they do they seize on. I think maybe the sense of public failure-that she would have to drop out due to the pressure- guides this, as well as the realization of a mental illness.

I know HN has their own memes now, but it's kind of odd to blame social media when the young woman had plenty of real contact with family, friends, and coaches. But people here are invested into "social media= bad" that articles like this really fuel their prejudices.

<comment><USER15> For even more detail, there is a book. [http://www.madisonholleranfoundation.org](http://www.madisonholleranfoundation.org)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> To be honest, there's no reason to portray an authentic lifestyle on Facebook. Because the more accurate or authentic you share on Facebook, the more likely they cut/data mine/analyze it to the point where they (and also everyone else on Facebook) might know about your life than you do - with predictive AI, that's worth a lot of thousands dollars of ad dollars.

I don't have any mental illness but I do a deliberate effort to portray something else on Facebook and Twitter. You can't share anything private. Who knows, border agents, customs or criminals might use it against you in the future.

<comment><USER17> The big thing I've heard is vacation photos in real time means unoccupied dwelling, which means ripe for breaking and entering.

Sort of like "huge pile of empty high end electronics boxes on curb on trash (recycle) day after holidays" is also a signal.

That's just the tip of the iceberg, though.

<comment><USER18> > Sort of like "huge pile of empty high end electronics boxes on curb on trash > (recycle) day after holidays" is also a signal.

But what can be done? Spread the disposal over many months? The signal is still there.

<comment><USER19> Recycle cardboard into pulp for home printing of your manifesto

<comment><USER18> Manifesto ?

<comment><USER19> Oh if you don't have a manifesto you should start

<comment><USER18> Would you please explain what you mean?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The article mentions social stigma to showing that you're unhappy, as if the stigma is wrong. To me, the stigma is natural behavior. Most people don't want to be around people who are deeply depressed. It takes a lot of energy to counteract that. In my opinion, it can be contagious like happiness can be contagious. This is not to say that I don't think depressed people need help and support though.

I guess what I'm getting at is that I don't understand what it would look like if outwardly showing your depression wasn't stigmatized. The only alternative I can come up with is that people would have to be totally apathetic to your happiness or your sadness.

<comment><USER21> I think also there are people who will take advantage if you show any form of weakness. Thus people have a good reason to not come clean about their feelings.

<comment><USER22> Having been depressed, I think the main fear people have is of pushing people away. If you're not "fun", people won't want to spend time with you. Your friends will support you for a bit, but they have limited patience too. Comforting someone who's feeling down takes energy, and you know very well that there's a limit to how much of that you can ask other people to do for you.

There's some kind of balance to be had. I find that I can express my sadness, but I have to be mindful that when I hang out with friends, even when I'm feeling down, I don't make it all about me. I have to still try to be a good friend and listen, etc. Avoid being someone who's emotionally draining to be around. Friendship is an exchange.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This article feels misguided because it seems to start from the assumption that your social media presence is supposed to be a whole representation of your life. It's like saying James Bond movies fail because they don't show him going to the bathroom.

They're not failing, it just isn't their intent. If you're contemplating suicide, perhaps your distant aunts and people you last saw in high school are not the appropriate lifeline.

<comment><USER24> Right, how many hours a day are people exposed to james bond movies versus exposure to social media?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Well, don't all just sit there: tell your children that social media is poison, and act aggressively to root it out. The current generation of young adults is likely beyond salvation, but the one after - the current <17 cohort, perhaps - may still be helped.

I'm around children a lot, especially the 10-12 age group which happens to be my daughter's social circle. I'm amazed to see how many kids are glued to Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and other such apps that I don't even know about. Either we act now, or it'll be too late for that generation, as well.

It's very easy for an adult to lock down which apps can be used on a child's device, which websites can be accessed, etc. Social media _can_ be stopped, but this must happen one tedious step at a time.

</comment><comment><USER26> I knew before I clicked this would be Madison. I didn't know her but I went to Penn and was a student there when she died. It shook the whole school, and then a wave of other student suicides followed. I'm sure all of these other students had happy pictures on their Facebook too, but for whatever reason Madison's story was the one that went national and still seems to echo back. Nothing to say that hasn't been said ... it's beyond tragic and nobody will ever be able to explain it.

I do think the focus on social media here is misguided or at least not productive. Penn and other colleges need more readily available mental health services and programs to reduce the stigma around accessing them. From what I hear, not much has changed on that front.

<comment><USER27> _Penn and other colleges need more readily available mental health services_

Unfortunately, that's actually kind of a bandaid approach. It's a little like saying "We don't really need to make the factory safer so fewer people get hurt. We just need another doctor in our on-site clinic and it should be a free visit if the injury occurred on the job."

You go to a mental health professional because something is wrong. Often, that something _wrong_ is social/environmental.

This trope that depressed people just need better access to mental health professionals is a left-handed way of blaming those individuals and suggesting they are simply randomly defective and washing our hands of trying to make a better world. In most cases, they are more rightly viewed as "the presenting problem" \-- the signifier of something systemic gone wrong.

Family counselors are routinely presented with a situation where, for example, a teenager is acting out and being labeled as The Problem. They never accept that as the actual truth. They know that they need to deal with the family dynamic. Simply blaming the teen as the easy out will not go good places.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This FB example of the social 'stage set' individuals can set up for themselves at no cost to project on the world is arguably a micro example of what the pr machine behind politicians and showbiz personalities push out to us.

It's getting harder and harder to find what's authentic unless you actually manage to physically meet these people in unmanaged and scripted situations...

</comment><comment><USER29> It's sad how often social media has to take the blame for social iinteractions in general. Yes alcoholics, drugadicts, manically depressiv and terrorists all Seem normal to passive observere and sometimes even to passive friends. That has nothing to do with facebook, Instagram, snapchat or any other social media platform.

</comment><comment><USER30> When people don't have a perfect "Facebook life" they are castigated for oversharing and washing dirty linen in public. On a public medium like Facebook, you keep things perfect because everyone from your boss to your juniors and your grandmother is reading.

<comment><USER22> That's true. I started a new job where all my coworkers (including my boss) added me on Facebook. I recently realized that I'm now censoring myself more than I was before. It's a question of status: I don't want to broadcast to my coworkers that I sometimes go to electronic music events. I know they would judge me negatively. My girlfriend recently broke up with me. I didn't say anything on Facebook either, because I don't want to seem like a whiner. Maybe it's not such a bad thing, the net result is that I participate less in public discussions on Facebook, and instead discuss these things privately with close friends instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> What if it was not the fault of social media? What if the platforms were only there for people to express themselves in which ever way they felt comfortable doing publicly? It seems that this woman was not speaking to her father about her mental illness nor to her friends. Social media might have shocked the observer but the mask is only created in the minds of her followers ("I thought she was a one-dimensional happy person. I'm shocked to discover there is more to this person than her public profile!")

Perhaps the real story here is about the audience of this woman's profile. They were naive in thinking that a collection of photos and posts represents a person in its entirety.

<comment><USER32> What if the platforms were only there for people to express themselves in which ever way they felt comfortable doing publicly?

If the social media companies limited themselves to just that, we wouldn't be having this discussion. The fact is, they specifically zero in on stuff that "engages", so if you happened to innocently like a friend's vacation photo, your feed will be modified to show you more of that stuff, because the machine thinks that's what you want to see all the time.

If you're involved in animal rights advocacy, don't be surprised if your feed is full of horrible pictures of overcrowding and abusive conditions on farms. If you're interested in fitness, IG will show you a flood of semi-pornographic "workout routines" of fitness models, but very little about proper form.

These are platforms where the search functionality is intentionally gimped to search for usernames and hashtags as opposed to actual text content, which a lot of IG posts have; it's not all just pics and videos.

<comment><USER31> > which ever way they felt comfortable doing publicly

They are.

Your argument seems to confound the author and the audience. Sure, the audience is shown only what they like. As you correctly point out, that is the engagement social media seeks to maximize. The author, on the other hand, is free to publish what they choose.

<comment><USER32> The first sentence of my post was quoting the OP. I mistyped and didn't include the " >" symbol originally

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Isn't this part of the problem. I mean "facebook life" is an expression I do not use.

I highly recommend others don't also.

<comment><USER34> How does avoiding the term help at all? Will restricting our vocabulary somehow counteract the phenomenon of people portraying different lives on their Facebook profiles?

<comment><USER33> Using the term "facebook life" demonstrates a certain mentality

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Blaming "social media" is as dumb as blaming the young adult book "Reconstructing Amelia". Heck, if I was to presume anything, I'd blame her parents before blaming anything else (read: i'm not).

Who has it harder? The jock with the flawless physique, the hottest girlfriend, and the perfectly thrown spiral; or the nerd who get's pushed around and laughed at by all the girls? The answers are not so easy.

</comment><comment><USER36> We live in the society of the spectacle as predicted by Guy Debord, in which he argues that authentic social life has been replaced with its representation.

Relevant quotes:

"All that once was directly lived has become mere representation."

"The spectacle is a social relation between people that is mediated by an accumulation of images that serve to alienate us from a genuinely lived life. The image is thus an historical mutation of the form of commodity fetishism."

"... just as early industrial capitalism moved the focus of existence from being to having [things], post-industrial culture has moved that focus from having to appearing."

<comment><USER24> We have become _Simulacra and Simulation_

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Why would facebook be the place where you choose to publicly portray your mental illness? Most people are going to choose to share some positive aspects of their live. Should they be posting emotional outbursts or breakdowns?

I take plenty of issues with social media but this is just facebook bashing for sport.

</comment><comment><USER38> To me it seems to be caused by the technological imbalance caused by DRM. If people have social media clients that are wholly in their control (to e.g. integrate a bunch of different personas, platforms, and to have total control over the privacy aspects) the double-bind will dissipate, as mastery over your social media is no longer against the law.

IMO law should forbid social media platforms from employing DRM altogether. Their monetization scheme will eventually adapt and Facebook and Google's financial situation is none of my conern.

</comment><comment><USER39> I feel sorry for her and condolence for her family.

BUt, at least in my circle, there are some people who do the total _opposite_. That is, they keeeeep complaining about their life/boss/politics/etc but actually they're a nice person and totally normal in real life.

</comment><comment><USER40> There are forums specially designed for people with mental health problems: no link in the article?

<comment><USER15> [http://suicidepreventionlifeline.org](http://suicidepreventionlifeline.org)

[https://afsp.org](https://afsp.org) [http://www.madisonholleranfoundation.org](http://www.madisonholleranfoundation.org)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which two books were the most influential on you? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman. Should be read by all who wonder how our minds work - and how much happens "behind the scenes", "under the covers".

Darwin's Dangerous Idea, by Daniel Dennett. Should be read by all curious to know the full implications of mechanistic evolution (hint: think about what came before life).

The Mating Mind, by Geoffrey Miller. Must-read for anyone in marketing, or anyone wondering why the other guy got laid and you didn't.

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, by Jared Diamond. Why are we rich and they poor? Why so few domesticated African animals? Why one big China and a many-state Europe?

The Laughter of Triumph: William Hone and the Fight for the Free Press, by Ben Wilson. Great read about an early 19th C. struggle against unjust laws used to gag journalism. Relevant in today's age of bloggers, etc.

</comment><comment> shreyas-satish 1\. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (No pun intended).

This book really turned my head around and made me realize how there are people (especially ones in the Sales & Marketing realm) out there waiting to sneak one past you. Don't be surprised (not if you can help it), if while reading the book you go "Oh my, someone actually used that trick on me!".

2\. The Mindbody Prescription

I understand that some people are skeptical about the theory (TMS) that Dr John Sarno proposes (I was too at first). I'm no neuro-scientist to attest anything in the book, but empirical evidence (experiences of mine and a few others even on HN) seems to suggest the possibility of Dr Sarno getting it right. Anyway, it seemed to help me overcome a problem I had with my wrists and I'm thankful.

</comment><comment><USER3> 1) Diaspora - Greg Egan. Absolutely changed my world view regarding our place in the universe, the nature of conscious minds, and the potential for post- biological life.

2) Paul Wilmott Introduces Quantitative Finance. Pulled this off the shelf at random in a book store 3-4 years ago and found out that modern Finance involves a bunch of mathematics and programming. Started me on a course of learning everything I could learn about the subject and changed my "life arc" very much for the better.

</comment><comment><USER4> 1) Rockets, Missiles and Men in Space - Willy Ley ( side note: I rescued this book from a friend who was using it for target practice with an airgun!)

2) Chaos - James Gleick

(I have to mention this one too) The Armchair Universe : An exploration of Computer Worlds - A. K. Dewdney

</comment><comment><USER5> Untethered Soul. Just finished it but I can already say it has influenced me more than anything spirituality related I have read in the last 10 years.

The power of this book is it's clearity and simplicity. It's not a new age book and not a how-to book. I feel I made a huge leap to a new level of inner tranquility. Maybe it's just the right book at the right time and something I needed to hear but it amazes me how direct the words speak to me.

There's also a short article of the same author on huffington post if you want to get an idea of what is it about.

As the OP asked for two books and we're on HN I'd say SICP

</comment><comment><USER6> This is going to sound like sucking up on hacker news but....

Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham. It is the reason I looked into lisp. A very entertaining read that made me change my opinion on several political issues.

</comment><comment><USER7> Definitely Getting Real (by 37signals). My bossed showed it to me shortly after I started in the tech industry. I remember being inspired by their process for producing products, and running a business.

</comment><comment><USER8> 0) The C++ Programming Language by Bjarne Stroustrup

1) Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs by Abelson and Sussman

2) Kvachi Kvachantiradze by Mikheil Javakhishvili

</comment><comment><USER9> Think & Grow Rich

How to Win Friends & Influence People

</comment><comment><USER10> 1\. Naked economics. This is essentially a primer on Econ, I read it when I was 17 or so and it taught me 90% of what I was taught getting ivy Econ degree. Short, easy, intuitive read, can't recommend it enough. 2\. Innovators dilemma. This is where the now-meaningless-buzzword 'disrupt' comes from.

</comment><comment><USER11> The Startup Owners Manual by Steve Blank and Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable by Seth Godin

</comment><comment><USER12> Atlas Shrugged

The Fountainhead

(both by Ayn Rand)

</comment><comment><USER13> Halmos, 'Finite Dimensional Vector Spaces'

Rudin, 'Real and Complex Analysis'

</comment><comment><USER14> 1) The Burn Collector by All Burian 2) Getting Real by 37 Signals

</comment><comment><USER15> 1\. The Fountainhead

2\. The Power of Habit

3\. Think and Grow Rich

4\. The 4-Hour Workweek

5\. Pragmatic Thinking and Learning</comment>


Elon Musk is not impressed with Leaf, Volt  - <AUTHOR> http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/In-Gear/2013/0830/Elon-Musk-is-not-impressed-with-Leaf-Volt

<comment><USER2> I read an article recently about how Leaf had a range between 22 and 45 miles. I mean, I know it's cheaper, but yikes. This is why a company like Tesla was so important for the electric car adoption. The others would've moved way too slow to improve the mileage of electric cars, or they would've just made them "hybrids" like the Volt, where they don't even care that much how much it lasts on battery, because it has gas to back it up. So no real incentive to improve the "electric" part too fast. Tesla is probably pushing the electric car adoption at least 10 years ahead of time.</comment>


Ask HN: Good Discussion Board for Stocks and Investing? - <AUTHOR> What forums/discussion/websites/blogs do you visit frequently to discuss and learn about stocks, currency and option trading? <comment><USER2> [https://www.elitetrader.com/et/](https://www.elitetrader.com/et/)

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://seekingalpha.com](http://seekingalpha.com)</comment>


Twitter mood predicts the stock market [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1010/1010.3003v1.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> Results from this paper seem to form twitter-driven hedge fund Derwent Capital Markets: [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-22/hedge-fund-will- tra...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-22/hedge-fund-will-track- twitter-to-predict-stockmarket-movements.html)</comment>


Ask HN: Delegation Balance as an IT Manager - <AUTHOR> I've had various roles in IT for over 25 years and currently am CTO in a 15 person startup. I seem to have a reoccurring theme in my career that I am a times 5 employee and can do everything. Development, devops, linux guru, marketing, business analyst, project manager, dba, vendor management, finance (MBA,CFA) etc. Great as a micro startup. Once there is outside money I get blamed by incoming staff for over-control and under delegation and not being available (as I am 120% booked)<p>- When I leave a place normally they need to hire 3-5 people to replace me and I feel like a shitty manager as people say I don't delegate enough<p>- I burn out<p>- There is a lot of technical debt because we moved so fast to hit business goals<p>- I have my finger in many many projects and am the kind of business guru in all of them (understand business better than sales and IT as well)<p>- recruiting is hard because I want to try to find people like myself which are rare and expensive.<p>I have justified this to myself as I am saving the company money.  Any suggestions on how to manage this and avoid getting painted as a poor manager and better balance the whole thing?  Maybe I should get out of IT and just hire people? Maybe I should just run everything like projects  - but if I don't put my head in the weeds I don't fully understand stuff? <comment><USER2> Two areas of possibility, one not about you but the nature of IT:

If you worked at the pace required for the organization to "get it" each step of the way nothing would get done and you would have no evidence of success.

^ This is true to at least some degree IMO. Now on to you:

Can you find a way to be the 5x engineer who also communicates what the organization needs to know each step of the way? This means written and verbal communication, ahead of others having to ask for it.

In this way, you build a trail of documents that can be referenced as those who don't get it can be linked to along the way.

Back to the nature of IT: I see a lot of folks in positions of authority who are willing to drag the organization down into their slow pace by not really understanding what the hell is going on and dictating. (his doesn't sound like you but this person is in a position of authority wherever you are working)

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for your response!

I will try to implement what you said... Perhaps it comes down to

1) hiring better for communication and tech skills 2) getting more senior devs 3) Work on communication

I recently tried to clone myself by hiring a bright young guy to take over some stuff. It ended up as a 3 month disaster. A week to do 30 minutes of work. He worked well in the office but can't seem to handle virtual teams (corona).</comment></comment>