Persuade xor Discover - <AUTHOR> http://paulgraham.com/discover.html

<comment><USER3> I've never met Arrington, so whether he's nice or not doesn't really apply to me. I also don't own a startup, so there's no conflict there. My personal beef is that TechCrunch is a 'serious journalistic entity' when they get documents leaked to them, but the second people start trying to hold them to the standard of real journalism suddenly it a blog. It's difficult to pinpoint, but there's something two-faced about TechCrunch that I don't like. It's some combination of the sensationalism, exaggeration, and in some cases outright fabrication that really get to me. Since Arrington is the founder and figurehead of TechCrunch, my feelings about the blog naturally extend to him.

The fact that page views and advertising revenue are the ultimate goals is fine. I applaud TechCrunch and Arrington for being successful. That doesn't mean I have to like their methods. Google was successful through technical merit. They never did anything flashy and eventually won because they were better. I'd like to see a startup blog succeed because of journalistic merit, instead of link-bait headlines and baseless speculation. TechCrunch has its gems to be sure, but there's too much garbage there for me.

An example for your consideration:

[http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/22/the-secret- strategies-b...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/22/the-secret-strategies- behind-many-viral-videos)

For those too lazy to read, it's an article about making viral videos. Some choice advice: _"Content is NOT King, Make it short, Make it shocking, Use fake headlines, Appeal to sex"_. It also goes on to tell you how to spam yourself to the Most Viewed page on Youtube. Arrington is the founder and an editor, so either himself or someone he appointed approved this article for publication. That's why I don't like Arrington.

Perhaps the reason why people don't hate Paul like they hate Arrington is because Paul has produced things of value? Hell, having the PDF of _On Lisp_ online available for free is more valuable than the aggregate of TechCrunch's entire publication history.

EDIT: Hate is a strong word. If you hate anyone over the internet for any reason, that's pretty stupid. Dislike is what I was getting at.

<comment><USER4> "I've never met Arrington, so whether he's nice or not doesn't really apply to me."

Sure it does, if you've read his articles. Obviously most of the people who complain about him in comment threads have not met him in person. The reason they dislike him is that he uses the same un-ingratiating style in his articles.

When he reports something he's heard, he just reports it, without the usual boilerplate disclaimers that it's just a rumor, or pro forma protestations about how he hopes it's not true, or most dishonest of all, waiting for someone else to cover it, and then covering that coverage. This sort of sanctimoniousness is so universal in established media that it seems shocking when someone just skips it.

Speaking of intellectual honesty, it seems hypocritical to me that you're willing to accuse TechCrunch of "outright fabrication" and "baseless speculation" and the best evidence you can produce is a 2 year old guest post by a Stanford student.

If you have any examples of "outright fabrication," let's see them.

<comment><USER3> _Sure it does, if you've read his articles. Obviously most of the people who complain about him in comment threads have not met him in person. The reason they dislike him is that he uses the same un-ingratiating style in his articles._

I don't care if he appears to be a nice or a mean guy. I don't judge people by that criteria. My experience working in the academic research community has taught me that intelligent and busy people sometimes come across as mean, but it's nothing personal. I'm totally used to un-ingratiating people and I work with them every day; it doesn't affect me at all.

 _When he reports something he's heard, he just reports it, without the usual boilerplate disclaimers that it's just a rumor, or pro forma protestations about how he hopes it's not true, or most dishonest of all, waiting for someone else to cover it, and then covering that coverage. This sort of sanctimoniousness is so universal in established media that it seems shocking when someone just skips it._

I'm going to call bullshit on this one. How about you being reprimanded for asking "mean" questions at TechCrunch 50? Apparently Arrington wanted the boilerplate. I suppose it probably has something to do with the fact that it was TechCrunch's reputation on the line, not a company he was writing about.

 _Speaking of intellectual honesty, it seems hypocritical to me that you're willing to accuse TechCrunch of "outright fabrication" and "baseless speculation" and the best evidence you can produce is a 2 year old guest post by a Stanford student._

That's a fair point, but I don't really feel like wasting an hour of my evening digging through TechCrunch archives. I'll pull a TechCrunch and say that an anonymous source close to the TechCrunch editorial board told me. My original comment is about as well sourced as their average article. ;) Also, it's not hypocritical since I'm not earning advertising dollars from my words. I don't claim that journalism is my profession. If I was making money off of the words I posted to HN, I would keep track of my sources. As it stands right now, I'm simply offering an opinion.

EDIT: dfranke has some examples though: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=838197>

EDIT2:

 _If you have any examples of "outright fabrication," let's see them._

Those words were chosen in haste and I wont defend them. You're right to call me out on them. I don't actually believe that TechCrunch is in the business of outright fabrication. If I wrote a popular and influential tech blog I would have deleted those words during the editing phase. :)

<comment><USER4> You don't have to make money from what you say to be a hypocrite.

What Michael told me at TCC50 wasn't dishonest. If it had been, I'd have been upset. At an event like that, you're not going to ask exactly the same things you'd ask if a startup were actually pitching you. It's inevitably going to be somewhere between that and mere encouragement. _Where_ between the two is simply a matter of convention. I had no idea what the convention was; I didn't mind being told.

<comment><USER3> _You don't have to make money from what you say to be a hypocrite._

Why? I'm criticizing him because he's a public figure and his words affect the daily lives and well-being of many people. My arguments in my original comment do not apply to the words of individuals in casual conversation, like the one we are having here. In fact, if we held ourselves to the same standards I'm demanding of Arrington, we'd hardly be able to have a conversation. I like to assume good faith for interactions among individuals. I'm not demanding proof about your interactions with Arrington am I?

However, I did edit my previous post with a link to proof mentioned by other posters.

 _What Michael told me at TCC50 wasn't dishonest. If it had been, I'd have been upset. At an event like that, you're not going to ask exactly the same things you'd ask if a startup were actually pitching you. It's inevitably going to be somewhere between that and mere encouragement. Where between the two is simply a matter of convention. I had no idea what the convention was; I didn't mind being told._

Ah, so we've established that the standards one should hold oneself to in discourse is a matter of context. I argue that Arrington holds himself to the standards of a blogger when the context he operates in demands that he hold himself to the standards of a journalist. TechCrunch likes to fire shots quickly and in large quantities and it doesn't really matter if a good number don't hit their mark. I know it makes the most business sense, but I don't deal out my respect based on business savvy.

<comment><USER5> Just needed to point out, risking being seen as a hypocrite is of greater value to shaking out the truth through varied perspectives than being paralyzed.

Valid points on TCs double faceted appearance (reminds me of nature vs demeanor). I still enjoy the heck out much of their articles. Specific authors usually mean more to me than the "brand".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a strawman defence. PG is defending Arrington's curtness when you meet him in person and accepting the facts as presented (since I have no personal knowledge), the defense sounds reasonable.

However, as many others mention below, most people dislike Arrington because Techcrunch has no journalistic scruples. The way they attacked Last.fm without even bothering to properly check into facts was yet another example of this.

<comment><USER4> When people dislike something intensely, the reason is not always what they claim, or even believe themselves. Try this thought experiment: if Arrington seemed like the nicest, most self-deprecating guy in the world-- like Father Mulcahy, for anyone who remembers MASH-- would people be so angry about his supposed lack of journalistic scruples?

<comment><USER7> Angry? No, because anger isn't the appropriate emotional response to such a person.

But that doesn't mean that people would react _positively_ , either. The response would simply be altered: people would likely try to work with him, try to correct his behavior as they saw fit, or dismiss him altogether.

> _When people dislike something intensely, the reason is not always what they > claim, or even believe themselves._

This is stunningly arrogant, and I'm speaking as someone that's constantly accused of arrogance. If you're going to tell people that you understand their motivations or behaviors better than they do, you should trot out some better evidence than mere conjecture.

<comment><USER8> _< < When people dislike something intensely, the reason is not always what they claim, or even believe themselves. >>

This is stunningly arrogant_

No it's not. It's an obvious fact of human nature. One way to know this is by self-observation. That may seem oxymoronic (how can I observe something I am denying?) but with a bit of honesty it works well.

One tell-tale sign is when the emotional charge around something is incommensurate with the reason someone is giving. I think this may be going on here. The most common stated criticism of Arrington is that his journalistic standards are poor. But is everyone who says that really so passionate about journalistic standards in general? I kind of doubt it.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, "journalistic standards" is rather like "legal ethics" and politicians' honesty, good for bashing the opposition, but not much in view otherwise. Does anyone actually trust anything they see in the NYT or WaPo? Really?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It rubs me the wrong way when people make this sort claim about why others criticise them. Sort of a sophisticated version of a 13 year old girl's mother telling her that the other girls are mean to her because they're jealous. Richard Dawkins makes the same claim when he is confornted: "I realise that I might convince more people by being more strategic or diplomatic. I accept that criticism." (paraphrased) I don't really believe that.

I don't really believe pg when he writes: _"I'd rather offend people needlessly than use needless words, and you have to choose one or the other"_ or _". If you want to please people who are mistaken, you can't simply tell the truth."_ Actually, it's not that I totally disbelieve him but I think its rationalising in a way that is not entirely intellectually honest. Maybe he rationally agrees with the former. The latter is probably true. But the reasons that we choose our words, our "style" is a lot less rational. In any case, claiming that 'my style is the honest one while the anaemic version that "everyone else" uses and want me to use would be the right one from a persuasion or self promotion perspective,' that is bogus. PG, Arrington & Dawkins have all been successful with their styles. It is doubtful they would have been with the style they describe. Perhaps it is because of the abrasiveness, perhaps not. That's up to discussion.

 _I understand pg is not defending himself, but he does seem to be defending Arrington in solidarity.

_ edit:* Something has been bothering me about this comment. I don't disagree with the premise of this essay. I agree with it. Arrington is disliked for reasons unarticulated and possibly unknown to his haters. I'm not even absolutely convinced that this conclusion is wrong. I would be very surprised if the effect it is describing explains everything. A few other explanations seem more likely to me. I am just suspicious of the class of argument put forward in the same way pg is suspicious of the 'heroic generation' arguments.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think a lot of hackers, myself included, have a hard time with persuasion. I've found that my first instinct is often to respond to a coworker's proposal with something like, "Here are 10 reasons why that's a horrible idea." That ends up being counter-productive, so I'm trying to learn how to suppress that instinct.

Unfortunately, people's egos get hurt easily. You can't tell them what you think. You can't disagree with them blatantly. You have to slowly and carefully guide them from a place where they're 100% correct to a new place where they're still 100% correct even though they now think completely differently about the problem. It's not easy, and the hacker in me always considers it a huge waste of time and effort. Why can't people just accept that their first idea was wrong and move on?

One method I've found effective is to just link to a few articles on the subject. The hope is that 1) the author of the articles is better at persuasion than I am, and 2) my peer's ego is more open to taking advice from an expert than from me.

If you're Steve Jobs (or Mike Arrington or pg), then you are fortunate enough to have little need for this persuasive cruft in your life. If the rest of us want any chance of influencing people higher in the pecking order, however, we need to cradle their fragile egos.

<comment><USER12> "Learn how to tell them to go to hell in such a way they'll want to go." - heard in the 61st Emmy Awards, forgot who said it though !

<comment><USER7> I've done this, and it's fun. It was also a bit of business judo -- I recommended an exceptionally difficult client to one of my competitors. Gave 'em the phone number and everything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Well, this is a turning point. I'm pretty sure I've read all of pg's essays, and this is the first one that I unambiguously disagree with. I think he has completely overlooked the _real_ reasons Arrington is unpopular, and taken the topic off into the weeds. I guess it's good to have some evidence that I am capable of thinking for myself after all. (Heh.)

</comment><comment><USER14> _Because I'd rather offend people needlessly than use needless words, and you have to choose one or the other._

Reminds me of a quote from Robert Heinlein

"Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untravelled, the naive, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as 'empty,' 'meaningless,' or 'dishonest,' and scorn to use them. No matter how pure their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best."

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm fairly sure it's the comment thread that I started (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=831461>) which set off this essay, so I guess I'm the archetype of "ordinarily calm people who go berserk when [Arrington's] name comes up in comment threads". But if your explanation of my psychology is correct, then why don't I go berserk at you as well? I've disagreed with a few of your essays, and by and large pointed out those disagreements in these comment threads, but I've never disagreed _violently_ with any of them. My beef with Arrington is that he writes a gossip tabloid. Nothing more, nothing less.

<comment><USER16> The essay is less about arrington berserkers than it is about why pg writes the way he does, even though the discovery started off as a question about arrington berserkers.

<comment><USER17> I agree. One of the common traits of a 'discovery' essay is you don't end up answering the question you asked.

And I should mention that the reason I don't like Mike involves a very poor way he treated someone I know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is a very interesting observation. It might be amusing if PG rewrote some of his more controversial essays in the second style, then made both versions available. Think of it as "skinning". Since the discovery version was written before the persuasive version, the persuasion needn't interfere with the discovery.

<comment><USER4> Intriguing idea, at least as a sort of practical joke. The problem is, it would change the ideas. For example, when I rewrote the paragraph about labor unions, I had to ditch the point about fallen civilizations overrating past eras; though I didn't make the link explicitly, the comparison to medieval history would be obvious to anyone who'd studied much of it. (People in medieval Europe felt inferior to the ancients long after it ceased to be true.) I didn't like tossing this point, but there was no convenient way to get it into the new version.

<comment><USER19> How about a program to re-write for persuasion once you have written for discovery. I bet it wouldn't be to hard to program one that could make an essay sound more timid and nice. That is a fairly simple process that I usually go through before communicating electronically. However, as you stated you would still have to add the extra content.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> _"Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people."_ \-- Eleanor Roosevelt

That neatly explains my personal affinity towards pg, and my disinterest towards Arrington and many other "journalists" out there today.

Techcrunch is the Entertainment Tonight of Silicon Valley, and I don't find the gossip produced by either medium adds a lot to my life.

That isn't to judge him, and certainly not to "hate" the man, but it is to say that the content is not appealing.

</comment><comment><USER21> I disagree on the orthogonality of being ingratiating and discovering things.

Sometimes discovery must be done collaboratively. When this is the case, it can be more _effective_ to mind one's social graces. Otherwise, productivity relies on other people ignoring negative social cues. I wouldn't take that bet.

<comment><USER9> Discovery like creation is the act of a single mind; the discovery or creation often needs to be fleshed out to be really useful, which is often done collaboratively. But without that initial lonely insight collaboration is worthless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> _People who think the labor movement was the creation of heroic union organizers have a problem to explain_

This is a standard formulation that implies that you disagree with the statement "the labor movement was the creation of heroic union organizers."

That isn't the statement with which you want to disagree. You want to disagree with the person who thinks that we could return to the old days, if we were only more heroic.

Try something like this:

 _Some people think that the reason for the loss of the high-paying union job is a lack of moral courage in the modern age. Our ancestors were giants, and if we were more like them we could return to the golden age.

In fact the truth is simpler than the "fallen civilization" explanation . . ._

</comment><comment><USER4> I wrote a new version that addresses the problem embodied in the comments here: <http://paulgraham.com/pxdremix.html>

<comment><USER23> Reading the article the biggest thing that hit me is that the two versions of the union paragraph are not equivalent at all.

The first one says that the labor movement was not founded by heros. It insinuates that anyone who claims otherwise must despise current labor unions by contrast. And it leaves open the possibility that you're setting the reader up for a sudden about face where you come up with some non-obvious reasoning for why labor unions were founded by heros after all.

The second eulogizes the heros who founded labor unions. Then makes it clear that there is no reason to think that current union leaders would be capable of less if asked. And concludes that the shrinking of unions must be due to external circumstances.

With that in mind I can draw up version 3 that says what version 2 does but not at length.

"Why are labor unions shrinking today? Some say that we have lesser leaders today. Admittedly today's leaders do not regularly face hired thugs, etc like their predecessors did. But there is no reason to believe that they would be any less capable of heroism at need. The cause must be external."

I made the same major points as #3, without causing offense, with fewer words than your short version. The secret is to avoid offense by figuring out what could be offensive and not saying it, rather than figuring out what could be offensive and elaborating on how you're not trying to offend.

<comment><USER4> You know, as I was cutting out the stuff about Arrington, I was thinking to myself, what is the second biggest bicycle shed? What controversial but peripheral issue are people going to seize on now? Labor unions, probably.

Ugh. After spending so much of yesterday arguing about whether people's dislike of Arrington was due purely to their high standards for journalistic integrity, or whether (this being the whole point of a disarming manner) they were also influenced by his manner, I just can't face the prospect of spending any of today arguing about labor unions.

I did not say that the labor movement wasn't founded by heroes, but that is the last I have to say about it.

<comment><USER24> I don't think btilly is bike-shedding here. He's not arguing about whether you're right or wrong about labor unions. He's talking about whether or not your (new) first example actually supports your thesis (part of your thesis being that you have to choose between inoffensive writing and clear/concise writing).

You give two versions of the "labor union" paragraph. One of them does not say whether early union leaders were heroes or not (but might carelessly be read to imply that they aren't). The second states that they definitely were.

The second version is less offensive to people with pro-union biases. But it is _more_ offensive to people with anti-union biases. If you wanted to avoid offending a particular person or group, your rewriting approach would work. But to avoid offending a diverse population you should instead remove _any_ claims (express or implied) about unrelated controversial topics, or simply choose less divisive topics for your examples.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> _I'd rather offend people needlessly than use needless words_

Just out of curiosity, have you ever discovered something that you thought would offend enough of your audience that there was no point publishing it?

<comment><USER4> Yes, whole essays.

<comment><USER26> Is that what lead to "What You Can't Say"?

Can you hint at some of those ideas?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> There's another reason people "dislike" Arrington: they love participatory righteous indignation, and Arrington is willing to play sink to it. The ability to bear that, and even revel in it, is something many great people share, and makes me think TC isn't the biggest thing he'll accomplish.

</comment><comment><USER28> Do you think there might be another category of writing, that fits in an essay: story telling?

Some of the most compelling talks I've been to are stories winding through a narrative. Conciseness doesn't really fit it, and it is certainly designed for discovery more than persuasion. But it's a bit of both, characterized perhaps by discovery of the audience - though not necessarily of an intended idea, which would make it persuasion.

</comment><comment><USER29> Good piece but it neglects another category of writing to its own detriment, that on the opposite end of the spectrum of "pleasing everyone", namely, writing which exists for no other reason than to provoke a response (aka the Ann Coulter school of writing).

My personal experience is that this sort of writing is far more common than the ingratiating kind when you get out of the school/professional environment.

</comment><comment><USER30> _I could write that way if I had to [...] It makes the same point [...] But written this way it seems like a defense of present-day union organizers rather than an attack on early ones. [...] If I believe everything I said in the second version, why didn't I write it that way? Why offend people needlessly?_

I disagree that it makes the same point. I'm sure it's intended to make the same point, but it doesn't - "written this way it seems like" == "it makes a different point", as far as I'm concerned.

The code example isn't a perfect parallel: you can cut down code but still have it perform the exact same functionality - it either follows a certain execution path or it doesn't. That's not so easy to do with writing, since there is no "hypothetical perfectly unbiased reader".

I don't think it's about offending people or not, it's about whether or not the reader walks away with the point you're actually trying to make. It should usually be possible to avoid both "offensive" and "fawning", and settle on "neutral".

Of course, the problem is that "neutral" is often the most boring to read.

</comment><comment><USER31> I've met Michael Arrington once & talked to him on several occasions. He was never short or rude, only seemingly, endlessly occupied.

In fact, all of the staff @ TechCrunch seem to be nice, people of the few I've met.

</comment><comment><USER32> Reading this reminded me of Ellis and Harper's concept of Core Irrational Beliefs, from their book " _A Guide to Rational Living_ " ([http://books.google.com/books?id=3JB9sLEV- SoC&dq=isbn:08...](http://books.google.com/books?id=3JB9sLEV- SoC&dq=isbn:0879800429)):

" _Everyone I meet must treat me just the way I like; otherwise, they are completely worthless!_ "

The key, of course, is to recognize when you're reacting to those kinds of mental triggers and change your attitude and manner accordingly (which is easier said than done).

</comment><comment><USER33> I am charming; you are respectful; _he_ is _ingratiating_. It's a loaded term, not a neutral one befitting the dispassionate pursuit of truth, aka _discovery_.

I found the second example of unions (the "ingratiating" one) easier to understand, because it was concrete, and therefore allowed me into the author's point of view, and had redundancy so I could easily confirm what I thought he meant.

Also, the fact that he admires courage makes me think we have similar values, and therefore, _he is worth listening to_. There exist extremely intelligent people who lack compassion and wisdom, i.e. foolish villains. I don't think their advice is going to be very helpful.

 _But the conventional behavior when meeting someone new is to act extra friendly_

And now I show what sort of person I am: I read the above line and thought.. ohhhhhh... _that's_ what I've been doing wrong (no, not sarcastic). I've also thought that people who act extra friendly on first meeting are really insincere. But sounds like it's standard communication protocol, and communication is improved by speaking a common language, so I really should start doing this. Thanks pg!

</comment><comment><USER5> "Most writers do. Most writers write to persuade, if only out of habit or politeness. But I don't write to persuade; I write to figure out. I write to persuade a hypothetical perfectly unbiased reader."

This is one of those pearls that makes reading Paul very satisfying. This inside view is vital when it comes to understanding people.

Why we write is essential to crafting the best version of a post/essay/article. I write for the most biased observer, myself. If I can respect the point and style of one of my posts, it gets published and the yardstick I measure content by does fluctuate daily.

When I cover a topic well, I can easily link back to that thought process within other posts to convey my ideas in a well thought out manner. Modularized web commenting if you like the concept allows for more rapid responses of higher quality to ongoing discussions.

The great part is, I can go back and update older concepts with a fresh perspective by writing follow on posts.

</comment><comment><USER34> Interesting read, but somehow I sensed there's a touch of persuasion in this a lot more than other pg's essays. Maybe persuasion isn't the thing... explanation? It sounded like pg's trying to explain really hard why his essay was in that style, rendering the outcome slightly verbose than his usual essays.

Maybe this is just a false impression. But it may indicate that it is more difficult to talk about oneself than about something/someone else.

[EDIT]: I found why I felt it verbose. The latter part, about pg's essays' attitude to mention facts plainly and succinctly, hence they tended to offend some people, was obvious. So I felt it was unnecessary explanation. Probably it is necessary for different audience.

</comment><comment><USER35> I dislike Arrington primarily because of his attitude and verbal tactics I've heard when he's been on various podcasts - largely Gillmor Gang, IIRC.

He reminded me strongly of a salesman, in that he used simple yet insidious verbal tricks to "wind people up", as we say in these parts, though less self- serving - more in an idly sadistic and demeaning way. He was a negative and arrogant force in the conversations, and they improved when he left.

Techcrunch just seals the deal - it's not a site I have in my reader, I just see it occasionally here or other links.

</comment><comment><USER36> I really like th idea of writing to discover. Learning by discovery and exploration has been my education. It is also the way that I write - <USER2> explore, not to convince.

I hadn't been able to articulate this to myself coherently until I came across this on the Khosla Ventures site (complete with Vinod Khosla's notes such as "this is commie horse shit" and "MBA bullshit" (!).

[http://www.khoslaventures.com/presentations/What_makes_entre...](http://www.khoslaventures.com/presentations/What_makes_entrepreneurs_entrepreneurial.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER37> An exercise from the essay:

...And present union leaders probably would rise to the occasion if necessary. People tend to; I'm skeptical about the idea of "the greatest generation." [2]

Footnote:

[2] Oops, offended another constituency. Exercise for the reader: rephrase that thought to please the same people the first version would offend.

Please submit your solutions below.

<comment><USER26> And present union leaders probably would rise to the occasion if necessary. People tend to; all generations have the potential to be as great as the (Greatest Generation, GI Generation) when faced with sufficient external challenges.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I was glad to read this, as it addresses questions I've had for some time. There is nothing wrong with writing to figure things out, so long as you don't expect it to persuade or interest many others (although hacker news is obviously a congenial audience for many of them).

</comment><comment><USER39> This doesn't help either:

<http://www.blogpi.net/wp-content/uploads/arrington-cigar.jpg>

</comment><comment><USER40> I've met him. Plus a bunch more Valley personalities. I've been underwhelmed by their openness to non-fawning unknowns. Which is amusing me. A couple of years ago I sold my unknown european startup in a private (and NDA'd) transaction for around 45m dollars. After the handcuffs expired I moved to silicon valley last year and since then I've been lurking in the community. I've been talking to everyone and not playing up my background. The arrogance and name-dropping is hilarious. The importance of being in the right circles. I actually have a day job working on a fun project so that I could meet and work with people. Immerse myself in the culture so to speak. I find it there as well. Newly minted Stanford PhDs sure are full of "confidence" shall we say :-)

I'm small fry - don't get me wrong - but the 'personalities' certainly want you to do the running and love the attention. I'm actually pondering starting my next company somewhere else because, frankly, I'm not convinced that the valley echo chamber is the best place to be (unless you are flipping fad companies of dubious long term value).

Let the flames begin ;-)

<comment><USER41> come to Cambridge, UK. Nice city, people and startups.

<comment><USER40> Nice place and people but awful weather IMHO. I'm rather partial to the warmer climes.

I've heard the traffic is a hassle there? Can you comment?

<comment><USER42> The traffic is a hassle only in the rush hour. Most tech companies here operate on flexitime specifically so their employees can avoid it, which works pretty well.

Having said that, I haven't worked anywhere else. The perspective of someone who had would be useful.

<comment><USER41> where do you work? :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> If we want to nit-pick about semantics, I don't think it's a true dichotomy, because discovery persuades rationalist readers. In fact, in psychology this is called the Central Route of Persuasion.

Also, your essay reminded me of the caterpillar from alice in wonderland. (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgbntWU7pG8> \- 47 seconds in). What's the isness in yo bizness!

</comment><comment><USER44> I like Michael Arrington because he's pro-Israel and sees the evil in Holocaust deniers, and calls them out on it. That takes balls and brains, especially if you're not Jewish.

-discovery version

edit: I'd better tack on my favourite quote from the essay:

"I'd rather offend people needlessly than use needless words"</comment>


Experimental music notation resources (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://llllllll.co/t/experimental-music-notation-resources/149 <comment><USER2> Slightly related, but I've always wondered if there are similar (preferably successful) explorations in maths. "Mainstream" notations are clearly optimized for handwriting, but there's just so much room with current tech for optimizing for e.g. visual intuitiveness. And let's not even talk about all the historical burden that's made these notations the convoluted mess they are today.

(Uncreative, probably very bad) examples: Replace brackets with boxes, use colors (think syntax highlighting), icons, or even basic text-like formatting. And that's still being very conservative in relation to what could be done, as exemplified by the OP.

Any pointers/ideas?

<comment><USER3> I have always wondered how professional mathematicians work day to day. It depends on their field of course, but I guess most still use pen and paper (or a digital version, i.e iPad Pro + Apple Pencil / Wacom). I have at least never seen any tools for "explorative" manipulation of symbolic expressions. TeX etc works great for final type setting, but when going from mind to _something_ I guess that something is still paper, or an equivalent. Would be really interesting to see the equivalent of an IDE / good text editor for math, perhaps with pen input for speed.

<comment><USER4> I'm a Ph.D. student in a pure math field, and just coming from personal experience, the overall relationship with TeX is a pretty strained one. The overwhelming majority of working out is done by hand on paper or a chalk board.

That said, as an experiment, I did about half of my Master's thesis work in TeX. Without quick feedback on the rendered formulae, I had a much harder time reasoning through things, so having a comfortable text editing environment seems crucial.

That said, I wouldn't recommend using TeX as a scratchpad. It just doesn't map well to the sets of tools that we tend to use: mini diagrams, arrows between parts of the page, strikeout and circling text, etc.

What might work is something like e-paper that renders a handwritten document into text. Ideally, we could turn letters into Unicode and diagrams into vector graphics, providing tools to edit and embellish the rendered versions if desired.

It's extremely common to edit equations and diagrams on the fly, so I would probably feel friction with anything other that doesn't seem to just magically "prettify" whatever I handwrite at it. Seems like a really tall order though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Some alternative/experimental music notation systems look very impressive, and even beautiful, on paper, but with some of them I wonder if that's due to the system itself, or the complexity of particular piece being rendered.

In the coding world, we have "Hello World" and Fizzbuzz. It would be nice if alternative music notation systems had something similar: A simple, familiar melody (candidates that come to mind are "Happy Birthday to You," and "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star") that, by rendering it in the new notation system, demonstrated the fundamental features of that system, and could be easily understood by someone knowledgeable in the traditional system.

<comment><USER6> It would be nice if people on HN didn't try to turn everything into a coding analogy.

<comment><USER7> But it's fairly fitting since musical notation is /supposed/ to be instructions for making a machine behave in a certain way. It's an early example of write-once-run-everywhere since the sheet music is relatively unchanged from instrument to instrument.

<comment><USER8> Sheet music contains instructions for making human musicians behave a certain way. There is no sense in which it's a complete description of a musical performance. Timing variations and dynamics are all controlled by the player.

If the score is figured bass, the player will improvise/create a complete accompaniment from a sketch of the bass line and some hints about the harmony.

And it's not necessarily unchanged. The layout of a piano score and a transposed brass line are only distantly related. The notation will be common, more or less, with the limitation that a horn line is monophonic while a piano can play chords.

But the key won't be the same, which means the pitches won't be the same. And many of the expressive markings will be different too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If anyone is interested by this topic, feel free to check on the software I'm working on : a visual notation for art & multimedia installations which embeds traditional programming constructs (conditions, loops) but at the temporal level. The software is called Ossia Score ([https://ossia.io](https://ossia.io)).

<comment><USER10> Is this in anyway based on the Tiled Media papers? (Tuiles Musicales)

<comment><USER9> not really, but I did my thesis in the same lab than one of the authors (David Janin (ping Simon si tu passes par là!)) so there has been a lot of discussions about the various models for representing musical time :p

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm sorry if my layman's perspective is off here, but notation that impedes the musician's ability to actually perform a piece, and be it only for visual pleasure, seems like not a very useful idea to me. It kind of reminds me of this: [https://imgur.com/gallery/XOT47](https://imgur.com/gallery/XOT47)

<comment><USER12> Not everything in art has to be useful

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Snowforms by R Murray Schafer: [https://goo.gl/images/1FHHXo](https://goo.gl/images/1FHHXo)

I performed this in France with my treble choir in 1990. Schafer sat in the audience looking grumpy. It's a beautiful piece, and Schafer is odd.

</comment><comment><USER14> If you find yourself inspired by wild notations I recommend this coffee table book: "Notations 21" by Theresa Sauer.

</comment><comment><USER15> Requisite link to my product Soundslice: [https://www.soundslice.com/](https://www.soundslice.com/)

We make web-based interactive music notation. Nothing "experimental" as in the original link, but it may be interesting to the HN crowd as a boundary-pushing web app.</comment>


Business of Coding Podcast: Ryan King of Twitter's Flight School - <AUTHOR> http://quickleft.com/blog/business-of-coding-business-of-coding-with-ryan-king

<comment><USER2> Did SoundCloud do away with their RSS feeds or is there just not one for this podcast? I'm in classic view and can't find a link.</comment>


Ask HN: Whats your reporting pipeline? - <AUTHOR>

1) How do you use reporting on top of analytics and create a pipeline to generate reports that can be exported to different formats and emailed. 2) Any relevant SAAS providers 3) Is Jasper a good fit for use in a python/ruby/javascript stack? <comment><USER2> I have used splunkstorm.com which is a SaaS and that can allow you to generate distributable reports.</comment>


Show HN: Wiki:Translator – Translate using Wikipedia titles - <AUTHOR> http://adamhwang.github.io/wikitranslator/ <comment><USER2> Is there a repository or more information about the underlying process?

<comment><AUTHOR> The repo is here: [http://github.com/adamhwang/wikitranslator](http://github.com/adamhwang/wikitranslator)

However theres not much more to see other than what's in the source. It uses the Wikipedia API to get a list of the same article in other languages and returns all the titles as "translations".

I needed to translate a bunch of company names and found it works pretty well for proper nouns. It's still best to reconcile the results with another source, but it's been pretty accurate thus far.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Consulting work on the weekends -- what should I know to protect myself? - <AUTHOR>

An old coworker has asked for help in an area I have an expertise in. I've told them I can only work on the weekends and evenings, so that it does not interfere with my current job. We'll be signing a contract -- what should I look out for? How do I properly measure time worked? How do I handle emails (do I time myself when I read and respond to emails to bill?).<p>Any advice is helpful, thank you. <comment><USER2> Personally I just keep a log (as a text file) of date and hours worked, and a one or two line description. When I do the monthly invoices, I use that log.

In 10+ years of consulting, I've never gotten a complaint about the detail of my invoices.

Don't nickle and dime your clients with emails. If you're writing a document or something that needs to be emailed, sure, bill for the documentation work.

I also don't bill for anything that takes less than 5 minutes, like one line text updates, etc. It's not worth my time to track that stuff.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am doing the same thing right now. I had a lot of trouble billing. I'm just horrible at recording everything.

Now I have something like a retainer. The idea being that I get paid X dollars per month that includes 15 hours of work. If I end up working more than that, I bill $150 per hour. Because this customer is very low maintenance, I've never done anything near 15 hours in a month.

I think I actually get paid slightly less but it's more predictable for both parties.</comment>


Ask HN: Best open source event tracking software? - <AUTHOR> Hey HNers,
I have a client that for various reasons wants to be able to track events from all their internal apps by posting to a rest api application. These events are things like PurchaseMade with associated data such as price, customer, product_id, etc, or UserLoggedIn with the user_id and some extra contextual data, everything should be timestamped. These are not monitoring/performance metrics.
Anyway, I've been googling for open source tools/apps/software that already do this, but I can't seem to find anything that's applicable to this use case.
Could someone point me in the right direction or does anyone have any suggestions?
I'd be open software that could be purchases/licensed, the main thing is the collected data needs to hosted and controlled inside the company (i.e. no cloud provider/services).
Thanks in advance :) <comment><USER2> Prometheus is an interesting option, more of a pull model by default, but can be made to post iirc.

Really any SQL DB, Casandra, or similar, with a simple API in front of it, could get the job done.</comment>


Embedding the Python Interpreter in a Qt Application - <AUTHOR> https://ubuverse.com/embedding-the-python-interpreter-in-a-qt-application/ <comment><USER2> I looked at doing this several years ago on Windows and I seem to recall that Python had a lot of global state. So you could only have one instance of the Python VM and therefore only Python script running at once. Is this still the case?

In the end, for me, it was easier to share file formats between the C++ and Python and run the Python scripts out of process.

<comment><USER3> There are sub-interpreters: [https://docs.python.org/3/c-api/init.html#sub- interpreter-su...](https://docs.python.org/3/c-api/init.html#sub-interpreter- support)

<comment><USER4> Subinterpreters still share a lock and suffer from compatibility issues with C extension modules as the module interface only exports a very primitive notion of per-subinterpreter state, they're pretty much not all that safe to use unless you have a very constrained environment

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you have the luxury of using .NET, embedding IronPython is considerably easier, in my experience. A while back I was fooling around writing a game engine with python scripting support, and it was pretty slick to get going with.

<comment><USER6> In .NET you can also embed CPython using pythonnet:

[https://github.com/pythonnet/pythonnet](https://github.com/pythonnet/pythonnet)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Piggy backing off this a little, in a similar vain I recently embedded Python in a macOS app (approved by the store) which was a bit of a pain to do. I documented the process as well since I couldn't find a full fledged tutorial on it.

[https://medium.com/python-pandemonium/embedding-a-python- app...](https://medium.com/python-pandemonium/embedding-a-python-application- in-macos-d866adfcaf94#.1396ywujo)

</comment><comment><USER8> Something like this can be (could be?) done with a BlackBerry 10 application. I developed a hackernews client with a python backend and Qt QML frontend. Didn't involve embedding the interpreter as BB10 shipped with python3.2

[https://bitbucket.org/microcode/blackberry- py/](https://bitbucket.org/microcode/blackberry-py/) [http://blackberry- py.microcode.ca/](http://blackberry-py.microcode.ca/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Has the embedding story improved for Python 3.* ? Whereas extending Python is easy enough, embedding has not been that convenient. Tcl, Guile, Lua do a far better job.

If anyone has drops of wisdom on how to run an embedded Python as a filter or an iterator I would be super interested to know.

</comment><comment><USER10> What'r the choice points between doing this, and building a Qt app using PyQt (or PySide)? Again all the logic is in Python, no C++ whatever. And use PyInstaller or cxFreeze to make a standalone app for distribution.</comment>


Marissa Mayer to speak in NYC - <AUTHOR> http://www.92y.org/Uptown/Event/Marissa-Mayer.aspx

<comment><USER2> Sadly, the same night as NY Tech Meetup :(</comment>


Annie Baby Monitor - <AUTHOR> https://www.anniebabymonitor.com <comment><AUTHOR> Annie Baby Monitor is a mobile app that will help you watch your sleeping baby. You only need mobile phones and an internet connection. Stay close to your baby whenever you are.

Soothe your baby right away. Turn your phones and tablets into perfect video baby monitor. Place one device near your baby and connect it with the other device that stays with you. And we all have phones, don't we?

Sometimes the baby monitor is too bulky, sometimes they don't even work properly. With Annie Baby Monitor app we bring you the features that we missed the most while monitoring our own children.</comment>


NextBug: a next-good-bug recommender for Bugzilla - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/aserg-ufmg/NextBug <comment><USER2> This is great. I find debugging a large system to be easiest when I clean out a related area instead of going bug by bug down a prioritized list. Switching around the code causes a waste of time relearning each area.</comment>


Basil Zaharoff - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basil_Zaharoff

<comment><USER2> This is a low-quality article. "Zaharoff has his own evil skills to operate.", "In spite of it, Zaharoff used perverted methods, well-known later on".

That's not the kind of language one expects from an encyclopedia, even if you give the poor quality of the writing a pass. That said, I'm not convinced the international arms industry has grown more honest and open since the days of Zaharoff.

<comment><USER3> A low quality article from Wikipedia? Poorly written? Dubiously sourced? That's unpossible!

<comment><USER2> More to the point, a low quality wikipedia article on HN's front page.

<comment><USER4> I think that's because 1) it was submitted by gwern and 2) it's weekend

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What's the point of posting non-descriptive link text? The ridiculousness of this policy is demonstrated here.

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't look at me, my original title got edited.

<comment><USER5> :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> Dorian-Marie

        Zaharoff was known for his crafty, aggressive and
        corrupt business tactics. These included selling
        arms to both sides of conflicts, selling fake or
        faulty machinery to clients, and sabotaging
        demonstrations.</comment>


Show HN: Hiring DevOps and SREs – testing troubleshooting live - <AUTHOR> Hi HN
We are launching our 3rd startup. Our 1st was a PhD project turned into a startup which simulated public cloud costs before adoption - an example use-case was Disney trying to figure out how much it would cost to render their new movie on AWS and Google, using different configs, RIs vs on-demand, different services. That was PlanForCloud and was acquired by RightScale.
Our 2nd startup was even more interesting - we built a public Container-as-a-Service cloud, but in a place where Amazon/Google could not enter - Iran! This grew fast, and was acquired by the Uber of Iran - the world's 5th largest ride hailing app by rides. That was AbarCloud and was acquired by Snapp. If anyone is interested in how you design a public cloud with minimal external dependencies, and continues to function when the underlying internet connections to outside of the country are cut, ask in the questions :)
Back to our current idea. When scaling AbarCloud, we needed to hire DevOps & SREs. When hiring developers, to assess their skillsets, we'd use something like HackerRank or Codility. But when hiring DevOps and SREs, where troubleshooting, scaling and failover etc, are important, these assessment tools don't help.
CircuitOps spins up live environments with broken things in it, drops the candidate in, and asks them to troubleshoot, diagnose and fix the issues. All their working is recorded, and (future feature) auto-marked. Try it here: www.CircuitOps.com
I'd love your feedback, specifically about: 1 - What is the hardest part of hiring? For anyone who has stopped hiring due to Covid-19, has this impacted DevOps/SRE roles?
2 - What do you think about this style of testing candidates by doing real life scenarios? Have you done a DIY approach to this at all?
3 - If you are a hiring manager, would you use this tool during a live interview, or as a pre-interview filter? How else would you use this tool?
Cheers from Scotland, Hassan, Ali & Alistair <comment><USER2> Does it provide automated grading, and if so, how strict is it? For example, whereas Warmup instructs the user to create a script with .sh file extension, Find The Logs does not. If the user creates a working script but includes the file extension, will it break? Does it require them to set the executable bit?

If this is all just recorded and the hiring manager can review it and decide for themselves, moot point.

1\. Not a hiring manager in my current role; previously when I was, it wasn't in software, but I'll give some thoughts that may be transferable: the hardest part, especially for younger candidates, is trying to ascertain their ability to learn. You may not hire someone who already knows your entire stack, but if they are self-motivated and have a good baseline, they'll do well.

2\. I like it quite a bit, especially that it's not a simulated terminal with limited commands.

3\. N/A

<comment><AUTHOR> hey! We currently don't auto-mark and you are spot on, the hiring manager can see exactly what the candidate ran and judge for themself (e.g. some scenarios you can just re-start the machine, but that doesn't solve the root cause). But I think we will need to create a report on how well the candidate did. Based on what we've seen, it seems better to award lots of little points vs a few big points for the "right answer". What would you expect/want to see in a results report? Cheers, Hassan

<comment><USER2> Agree on granular points. While a large chunk should certainly be "was it successful," points for effort and/or general knowledge are good.

1\. Did they use man pages? While Google and Stackoverflow have the answers to everything, being able to use built-in help is useful. Obviously if they just know how to structure a command, don't detract points here.

2\. How clever are they with bash? This one is hard to objectively measure, but for example, someone using awk to a large extent rather than chaining together calls to grep and sed may know more Linux. Again, I don't know that you should lose points if you're following the Linux philosophy of "Each Program Does One Thing Well," but it's an interesting datapoint.

3\. Are they aware of the limitations of tools? I didn't do all the exercises so I'm not sure if you have this, but having to find log entries in multi-GB files can quickly demonstrate knowledge. If you blindly pass `grep -i foo` to a giant file, it's going to take quite a while - even more so if the file is compressed, as would be expected for a production system with logrotate. Knowing that the -i flag slows down grep, and that passing a limited charset (e.g. LC_ALL=C) to grep can speed things up is good.

3a. Make them / lead them to using find with xargs or exec. Once again, understanding system calls and how your command string creation can drastically alter performance is a good indicator of skill.

I suppose overall, I'd want to see the output of the script they wrote (you don't have to auto-mark, you can just have the report print expected and actual, so fuzziness is up to the manager), the time they took, what man pages they read if any, and top commands issued.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like this. Interviews are really hard for both parties. It's at least as difficult to evaluate someone's skills and potential as it is for someone to demonstrate them. I can see how this would be useful as a screening tool, but I'm really interested in using it for live interviews to eliminate the power imbalance that happens when one person already knows the answer. I want to spin up a scenario then give it to the candidate and my technical interviewer at the same time, sight unseen and let them work on it together. I think this could get me a lot closer to answering "can you work with this person?" instead of just "can they answer your questions?". Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey! That's a great idea too - testing the candidate in a team / pair with your own team will really help the discussion of thought as well, vs just knowing the commands to run and troubleshoot the system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> hkh - Hackerrank has a well-formed DevOps solution with terminal/remote ssh and deep reporting, library of questions, and automated evaluation.

[https://www.hackerrank.com/products/projects/?h_r=products&h...](https://www.hackerrank.com/products/projects/?h_r=products&h_l=header#role5)

Disclosure: I built it :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Anil, ah this is awesome! Quick question - why was this part of hackerrank in the higher payment section? have you found that only bigger companies would use this tool, or was this more of a pricing decision to have features unlocked when customers pay more? What's been your experience of running this? Would love to hear your thoughts on this space, good and bad! Cheers!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think this is fantastic. I can see your investment pitch being "the HackerRank/LeetCode of devops". I've only tried one scenario (DNS) so far but it seems well done, not too long, not too easy, not too hard. I am excited to try it out further.

First I'll address your questions and then add some comments of my own.

1\. I do a lot of technical interviewing. Many people can _sound_ like they know what they're talking about, but it can be a struggle to get to the nitty gritty to really test their understanding. This product seems to have an angle of "take-home tests as a service", which is cool. Over time I can see how you could come to have a large library of scenarios and use of them would be very helpful in filtering candidates for real, demonstrable competence.

2\. I like it. I once tried a DIY approach involving having candidates talk to a Kafka server I provided, with client certificates. It was cumbersome. There was a 100% overlap of candidates who succeeded and candidates who could be bothered to take the test at all. From this I gathered that the mere existence of the test was a strong filter, but it's also fair to say that judging test difficulty level well is extremely hard. (In other words: "oh no, he wants me to actually understand how to use client certs? Bye.")

3\. Pre-interview. Async hiring process with just-in-time candidate attention means the team does not lose too much productivity (as much as hiring is a valuable use of time, developer time in a small company is at a premium).

Some quick-fire minor comments: consider making it easier to share the test link (I generated it on my phone, wanted to run on my desktop); the password field is before the username; it wasn't super obvious that different VMs were in play between the warmup and real scenario, nor that a scenario could involve _multiple_ VMs itself. Also, you've no doubt thought of this, but have good defences against abuse of your VMs. By the way, have you considered this approach [1] to VMs? More controllable, but less realistic.

Some questions/suggestions:

1\. As the test admin I'd love to to provide "verify.sh" to grade the test using logic I specify. My script would test, for example, "Can this VM now reach host X?" "Is command Y in the bash history?" and dump out a report somewhere. -- What ideas do you have for auto-marking?

2\. What revenue model do you have in mind?

3\. How ready is this for real-life use in a hiring pipeline?

4\. Do you think there is future scope for a customer to specify their own scenarios, or is the idea more that you build up a library of them?

5\. Have an advanced mode where the candidate must supply a public key to you for SSH access, rather than password. Boom, you've filtered for a basic understanding of public key cryptography.

6\. I am not sure the user flow currently has a clear distinction between "recruiter view" and "candidate view" but no doubt that is on the roadmap.

7\. Scenario idea: certificate expiry blocking secure comms between hosts. This happens in K8S clusters often enough. Could be replicated here.

8\. Just from curiosity, any details you can share about how the stack works? What am I talking to, a docker-compose script of Centos containers? You've done a nice job with the SSH user routing; am I being tunnelled through your jumpbox to the target machine/container?

That's a lot, sorry! I think this is an exciting idea and that you guys are on to something.

[1] [https://blog.benjojo.co.uk/post/qemu-monitor-socket-rce- vnc](https://blog.benjojo.co.uk/post/qemu-monitor-socket-rce-vnc)

<comment><AUTHOR> hey! thats awesome feedback! Thanks for taking the time and writing it out for us.

A few followups: 1\. Thats an interesting idea - for the hiring manager to write a test script according to what they want to check. We are thinking more about auto-marking, but there are some basics we could do such as time it took, how long between each command, what 'types' of command were used a lot (is a person circling back and forth between folders, or are they going somewhere) etc, and the obvious 'did they fix it'. Question - what do you think if we let people actually write a terraform script to launch their own scenarios as they want?

2\. Current working idea is either $ per test, or groups of interviews. So <100 interviews is a flat $x a month. Does this make sense to you or would you prefer it a different way?

3\. Ready to go! It has actually been used in real life hiring by a company already.

4\. haha great minds ... just got to this question after I wrote my respond to #1.

5, 6, 7. Yep and Great idea!

8\. We are using Pulumi to launch the scenarios, which are running on VMs. SSH connections are made through a jump box which is recording the sessions.

Thank you so much for the feedback, greatly appreciated! Cheers, Hassan</comment></comment>


The War on Drugs Has Failed - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsk8R_j5zzg

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for posting an hour long video on a subject that looks like it is a libertarian rant. It is not.

Here is a td;lr version.

This is a Google Tech Talk by the executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, Neill Franklin. It makes a clear case that the war on drugs is a very expensive failure. After decades of enforcement we have an unprecedented fraction of our population behind bars (no other country is close, and drug arrests are the vast majority of our prisons), have spent enough to cover health care (1 trillion dollars), have failed to reduce the availability of drugs (judging from price and purity, availability has never been better), have made the drug cartels rich (500 billion/year is likely an underestimate), have killed large numbers of people (tens of thousands per year), have created a tremendous amount of violent crime, and have failed to change the fraction of the population that is addicted. (It is 1.3% today. It was 1.3% 40 years ago. And it was 1.3% in 1914 back when heroin was sold in pharmacies.)

Amusing data point. Before he presented any facts he asked the audience of ~150 people working for Google how many thought that the war on drugs is working. Not one did. The fact that the war is a complete failure is not news. What I found interesting was the presentation of statistics that thoroughly demonstrate this.</comment>


Startup Code Learner Resources - <AUTHOR> http://www.voodooanthology.com/2012/08/startup-code-learners-resources.html

<comment><USER2> I'd also like to recommend <http://www.coursebacon.com> \- it's a small site I run. Btw, any feedback would be more than welcome.

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks good man, I especially like the tutorials. All kinds of stuff I hadn't seen on there. I went ahead and added it to my list. Very cool.

<comment><USER2> Great, glad you liked it :)

Edit: Thanks for the link!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> w3schools.com is a questionable resource, at best. (The most compelling thing they could teach is SEO...)

See: w3fools.com

<comment><USER4> Oh wow, I didn't realize they weren't affiliated with the W3C. Thanks for the heads up.

<comment><USER3> You were far from alone in that misconception. They quite literally bank on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I liked the saylor.org link so much because it offers an entire CS curriculum in sequence,along with General Ed courses.</comment>


With 'thank you' emails polite Britons burn thousands of tonnes of carbon a year - <AUTHOR> http://news.trust.org/item/20191126171236-wwtvc/ <comment><USER2> How the heck does that work out? Wouldn't a single YouTube video, or even viewing a single ad covered javascript infested website completely dwarf the environmental impact of email?

There is something bizarrely surreal about this awareness campaign.

<comment><USER3> It's a puff piece for Ovo Energy. Any old crap to get their name into some news articles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is complete BS, and just a wrong attempt at marketing promotion.

"OVO Energy has created software to identify when a user has sent a potentially unnecessary email and prompt them to be more thoughtful."

Oh really, and how much energy does that app suck up (and the resources to develop it)? A lot more than sending an email I'll wager, which is essentially free, if your computer and the internet is on anyway, given such low resource requirements to send an email.

And how much energy has this non/fake-news press release wasted? Hypocrites.

</comment><comment><USER5> That is actively dumb.

If sending thanks costs too much carbon, running Python, PHP, or Ruby on servers, or generating dynamic pages when a static page would do, costs hundreds of times as much.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is just silly. Assuming their estimate of 16433 t of CO2 per year[0] is correct, a person sending one e-mail less per day, throughout the year, would reduce their annual carbon footprint by:

16433 / 60e6 / 10 * 100% = 0.0027% [1]

See also MacKay's Without Hot Air take on a similar topic.[2]

Since OVO is an energy company, they definitely should know better. Charitably, they're being extraordinarily stupid. Uncharitably they're trying to push their "Carbon Capper" chrome extension which is probably spyware or trying to distract people from more serious issues.

[0] [https://www.ovoenergy.com/ovo-newsroom/press- releases/2019/n...](https://www.ovoenergy.com/ovo-newsroom/press- releases/2019/november/think-before-you-thank-if-every-brit-sent-one-less- thank-you-email-a-day-we-would-save-16433-tonnes-of-carbon-a-year-the-same- as-81152-flights-to-madrid.html)

[1] The UK has a population of about 60 million and the CO2 footprint is about 10 t per person.

[2] [https://www.withouthotair.com/c19/page_114.shtml](https://www.withouthotair.com/c19/page_114.shtml)

<comment><USER3> Probably trying to divert attention away from their pretty poor customer service record [https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/about-us/how-citizens- advi...](https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/about-us/how-citizens-advice- works/citizens-advice-consumer-work/supplier-performance/energy-supplier- performance/compare-domestic-energy-suppliers-customer-service/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does this count as fluff, or fake news?

</comment><comment><USER2> Here's more information from the study:

[https://www.ovoenergy.com/ovo-newsroom/press- releases/2019/n...](https://www.ovoenergy.com/ovo-newsroom/press- releases/2019/november/think-before-you-thank-if-every-brit-sent-one-less- thank-you-email-a-day-we-would-save-16433-tonnes-of-carbon-a-year-the-same- as-81152-flights-to-madrid.html)

Here is an interesting bit:

'64 million unnecessary emails sent every day is contributing 23,475 tonnes of carbon a year' 64,317,204 unnecessary emails sent by Brits every day x1 email = 1g carbon = 0.000001 tonnes CO2e per email (Source: Mike Berners-Lee) 64,317,204 x 0.000001 = 64.317 tonnes CO2e per day 64.317 x 365 = 23,475.779 = 23,476 tonnes CO2e per year _

<comment><USER8> Even if estimates were true, not sending an email still produces the same amount of CO2, or even worse, as people go waste this free time on entertainment, like watching videos, playing games.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am highly skeptical of this conclusion.

I expect this study does not account for economies of scale. If I'm already downloading 100 emails from my provider, one additional email does not have any significant environmental impact.

<comment><USER8> Presumably sitting typing an e-mail on your PC with screen on is where most of the energy consumption comes from.

<comment><USER9> I guess stuff like this is how they must have arrived at these ridiculous numbers. I know my screen would be on whether I was typing an email or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Article doesn't link to any study, so I don't know the method.

However, I wish email had like a feature that's something akin to the Slack reaction emojis, say a thumbs up or something.

Sometimes I've sent emails asking someone to do something, they've replied saying they've done the thing, it seems polite to say thank you but also its extending the chain further for a two word response.

<comment><USER11> Most probable a emoji in Slack uses more resources than a email.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Where's the evidence?

<comment><USER3> It's just marketing bollocks but their attempt to justify it is at the bottom of their press release [https://www.ovoenergy.com/ovo-newsroom/press- releases/2019/n...](https://www.ovoenergy.com/ovo-newsroom/press- releases/2019/november/think-before-you-thank-if-every-brit-sent-one-less- thank-you-email-a-day-we-would-save-16433-tonnes-of-carbon-a-year-the-same- as-81152-flights-to-madrid.html)</comment></comment>


Show HN: New Search Engine based on filters - <AUTHOR> http://www.kdnuggets.com/2016/02/webminer-filter-beta.html <comment><AUTHOR> We are still waiting for feedback :)</comment>


Rap Genius Raises $40M, Changes Name To Genius - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/11/just-genius/ <comment><USER3> Great for Rap Genius, but every time I read something about them, I think of this interview [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NAzQPll7Lo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NAzQPll7Lo)

<comment><USER4> Please tell me this was some kind of parody. A stage full of impossibly lame "bro-schtick" cartoon characters and a live-action anime-style interviewer complete with absurd hair. I wouldn't have trusted these clowns to heat up a can of beans let alone put them in charge of millions of dollars and then "value" their company at an amount of money that could build house and feed a medium sized city for a decade.

I guess that goes to show what I know since they've executed pretty well and can apparently evaluate literature.

Maybe I'm just getting old but man is it depressing.

<comment><USER5> Silicon Valley and general startup culture these days has very little actual substance. If you don't have actual substance you have to substitute something else for it. I can't really think of words to describe what the substitute is but that linked video does a pretty good job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The original Business Insider article, with verified annotations from the Genius co-founders: [http://www.businessinsider.com/the-inside-story-of-how- rap-g...](http://www.businessinsider.com/the-inside-story-of-how-rap-genius- fired-a-cofounder--and-just-raised-40-million-annotated-2014-7)

(and the HN comments page: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8022076](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8022076))

Also, we've been doing embeddable pages for a long time now! For example, see our embed with the Alantic on Google's self-driving cars back in May: [http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/05/google...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/05/google- reveals-more-details-on-its-automotive-vision/371761/)

<comment><USER7> When looking at the article on BI, I feel the annotations take away from the flow of the article, rather than adding to it. I find myself constantly re- reading entire paragraphs to get back to the story.

<comment><USER6> Hm, interesting! I think this might be a function of the annotation size—we try to keep single annotations short to maximize readability, but the author of the article seems to be breaking this rule, and having 3 page+ annotations definitely ends up detracting from the original text. (The one that stands out to me is the one that explains the background of the founders, and then just keeps going... And going... And going...) Its important to remember that this was probably the BI author's first time using the platform though, and I found the annotations from Tom, Ilan and Marc much more readable and concise.

<comment><USER8> Agreed with OP. Wish you guys could come up with a different way to show text is annotated. The highlight just grabs my attention way too much and it tells my brain that "this is important" which isn't necessarily true with Genius annotations. It works well for lyrics on rapgenius, but for content on news and other websites not so much. I hope website owners will be able to pick their own style.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hopefully the quality of the annotations will be better than on rap genius. It's mostly bad attempts at humor and unnecessary slang translations. I don't see the value in it.

<comment><USER10> In all fairness, most pop music is pretty vacuous. The _Wall_ annotations are pretty good, a nice mix of references from the movie and personal anecdotes of the band members, e.g. [http://rock.genius.com/Pink-floyd-nobody-home- lyrics](http://rock.genius.com/Pink-floyd-nobody-home-lyrics)

<comment><USER11> The annotations for "Nobody Home" are weak, pseudo-intellectual warblings with very little added value.

"So far, the majority of the discussion of the song has focused on the discord created by the alternating ideas of artistic yearning and mundane if not altogether oppressive reality. But what of the chorus and its reiterations of nobody home? Just who is Pink trying to reach when I pick up the phone?"

Who indeed. There may be other sectors where the annotations work better, but that kind of "insight" doesn't make me want to go back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Question: is there any out-of-the-box product/technology that isn't Genius that allows me to annotate text on my site? ala Medium, with user login, etc.?

<comment><USER13> LiveFyre Sidenotes let people add comments on a per-paragraph basis, which is similar I guess: [http://web.livefyre.com/streamhub/#liveSidenotes](http://web.livefyre.com/streamhub/#liveSidenotes)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> So basically this:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Sidewiki](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Sidewiki)

<comment><USER15> Almost. The concept was great, the implementation, not so much. Sad that Google didn't improve upon it. (Then again, they're no longer an innovation house, as I see it.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've owned Genieous.com for a number of years and it's been an empty page. Now I know why the number of visits spiked recently :)

</comment><comment><USER17> Is this an April Fool's Day joke, or a case study in failing upwards?

</comment><comment><USER18> Anyone else not like the black design? White would be more welcoming since they are going for a more universal appeal.

<comment><USER19> I wish more sites would adopt dark designs. Easier on the eyes and saves energy. When you spend 8-16 hours in from of a monitor every day those become important factors to consider.

<comment><USER20> > saves energy

As far I understand this is not true. Can anyone smarter than me comment?

<comment><USER21> [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction- bl...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-black-is/)

I think it only saves energy on CRT screens, which is not popular these days.

<comment><USER22> Some of the phone screen technologies such as AMOLED also save power with black.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I thought there were three founders? Did they really just write off the third that got kicked off and no longer even mention him as a founder? Ice cold baby! Ice cold!

<comment><USER24> "It's taken a few stumbles and one less founder to get here, but Genius tells me "we're psyched to pursue our mission of global annotation with newfound vigor.""

Mentioned but hidden...

<comment><USER23> Curious, feel kind of sorry for him.

<comment><USER25> I hope that's because you didn't read about how why ended up leaving [http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/26/rap-genius-co-founder- resig...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/26/rap-genius-co-founder-resigns- following-elliot-rodger-manifesto-annotations/)

And frankly, everything I've seen come out of rap-genius suggests that this wasn't culturally aberrant there.

<comment><USER23> I'm aware of why he was fired. I still feel sorry for him. I think a lot of people overreacted over what he said, then again I'm not that familiar with post 9-11 US culture.

<comment><USER26> It was really offensive, and he made the jokes right after people had been _killed_ which was even more offensive, and he didn't even put it on his own blog but injected that crap into the product.

<comment><USER27> So? People make fun of people dying all the time. I didn't feel his comments were offensive. I thought it was actually true, since it seems like Elliot Rodgers was angry at pretty women.

<comment><USER28> People take offense at everything nowadays. Obviously he was an idiot for making jokes that anybody with common sense knows would offend people, but it wasn't any more offensive than jokes other popular figures have said before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> About 5 years ago I submitted a post here asking for comments on an online text discussion/annotation tool: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=821559](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=821559)

Rap Genius looks very similar; glad someone made this work.

</comment><comment><USER30> I think annotations is a powerful idea. Imagine seeing all the annotations of your favourite satirist, or politician. Instead of a thinker writing their own blog, they could just annotate others - attacking, critiquing and defending.

This awesome power has to work with verification and moderation. No one likes trolls, and no one likes those who do not contribute to the discussion - <USER2> no one likes sterile, conformist, one-sided annotations either.

What my ideal annotation service would provide free expansion of ideas rather than at best a kind of directors commentary.

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm still very curious how they plan to make money. I guess we will have to see...

In my opinion urban dictionary actually solves the same problem that Rap Lyrics is solving except instead of explaining a whole sentence urban dictionary explains one-a few words.

</comment><comment><USER32> How much might have they spent on Domain?

<comment><USER18> It must have been a real good offer because the former owner, publicly traded CallidusCloud, just launched a major product using the domain last month: [http://calliduscloud.com/about-us/press-releases/pr- feed/cal...](http://calliduscloud.com/about-us/press-releases/pr- feed/calliduscloud-launches-genius-com-content-store-and-mobile-learning- platform/)

<comment><USER33> Which it acquired itself in February 2014: [http://customerexperiencematrix.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/geniu...](http://customerexperiencematrix.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/genius- and-loopfuse-are-acquired.html)

Interesting timing. I would not be surprised if the May launch of genius.com was just something hacked together over a weekend and launched just to push the domain price up.

There isn't much talk about genius.com around the May launch (apart from a bit of press-release marketing). And the focus in acquisition in February leads with LeadRocket, tacking on the brand Genius as an afterthought.

The domain details of genius.com was only switched to CallidusCloud's details in June: [http://www.thedomains.com/2014/07/11/rapgenius-com- upgrades-...](http://www.thedomains.com/2014/07/11/rapgenius-com-upgrades- rebrand-to-genius-com/) \-- 4 months after acquiring the domain.

Interesting set of coincidences. I wonder when Callidus software knew of RapGenius' interest in the genius.com domain. And their original intentions for it when they acquired it in February.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Great for them. Just a couple suggestions for the website is to change the black colour scheme, possibly a lighter colour scheme.Viewing content can get more challenging overtime because of the colour scheme. "Lit" could be changed to "Literature", it doesn't make sense to name all other titles in full and leave one out. But I guess they are still in beta for the genius.com domain.

</comment><comment><USER35> Has Apple sued yet?

</comment><comment><USER36> I think it's a great idea to consolidate annotations for all kids of genres in one site, but it will surely make their lives much harder trying to keep track of all that. It's just so much more content than a company their size can sustain.

<comment><USER6> Actually, there hasn't been any changes to the amount of content on Genius, we (the community) are just presenting it better! And while Genius has, off the top of my head, about 20 employees (including 9 engineers), they have 150+ community moderators that oversee the site's community and hundreds of community editors that are trusted with accepting and editing the site's annotations. Genius isn't a small project!

<comment><USER37> > _'...they have 150+ community moderators that oversee the site's community > and hundreds of community editors that are trusted with accepting and > editing the site's annotations...'_

Are these people paid anything?

Also, isn't 'project' generally suggestive of something a bit more open than a VC-funded startup?

<comment><USER6> No, no-one except the paid employees are paid. I mean, I suppose you could say that we're all getting duped into providing value to a company, but I truly believe in the strength of the Rap Genius mission, and I don't think that that mission is irreconcilable with a for-profit company either—look at StackOverflow, for example. They too are very heavily community dependent, and have many contributors that don't get paid, but still provide the backbone of the site.

<comment><USER38> what about the "strength of the Rap Genius Mission" makes you believe in giving hours of your time to them for free? When they have some kind of an exit with this product you will get nothing, they will get a fortune.

I don't understand you.

<comment><USER39> there is more to life than money. some people value being part of a community, helping others or creating their identity enough to spend lots of time on it.

money is a simplistic proxy for adding value to the world, try understanding value instead of money and you might get richer yourself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> When do they get sued by Gracenote, like all of the other lyrics sites of the past decade?

</comment><comment><USER41> "embeddable annotations so any website can hover over text and see explanations and background info on what that text means." Doesn't this exist already, and for a while?

<comment><USER42> Don't lots of websites have links and comments? It's not about the capabilities (which are a little more nuanced than "hover over text and see explanations") it's about the quality and community which creates the content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I wonder how much it cost them to get the domain name.

<comment><USER44> Probably under $100k... Location location location, am I right? Even if it was more, that's your brand. As we've seen that search engines can make or break you, this is one of the few things you can control.

<comment><USER45> I'd be very surprised if 100k did the job. I would bet under $500k though. Still worth it.

<comment><USER46> Yes, for all those people that type in domain names... Unless they're doing a print campaign, it's not a huge win. Hopefully they won't screw up the SEO on this one.

<comment><USER47> Considering how Google punished them, moving to a new domain can only help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> "The company also launched an iPhone app earlier this year that also helps ween the startup off of Google's teat."

Wow, really weird word choice.

</comment><comment><USER49> Busy day for Dan Gilbert: [http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nba/cavaliers/2014/07/1...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nba/cavaliers/2014/07/11/lebron- james-cleveland-cavs-return-hometown-hero/12528973/)

</comment><comment><USER50> Anyone remember Third Voice?

<comment><USER51> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Voice](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Voice). The idea was ahead of its time. I remember it as a Singaporean company, but the Wikipedia page is thin on details.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Sounds like a Vox-killer to me. Good riddance to those explainer cards!

</comment><comment><USER53> Another useless service --- here comes the bubble.

<comment><USER28> Obviously useless to you, but it's by far the best lyric site for hip hop. And with all of the subtle references in lyrics, the annotations can be invaluable in helping casual listeners understand an artist's message.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Can't help but be reminded of Entertainment 720 from the photos in this article. Congrats on the funding!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGSIf1KXGHs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGSIf1KXGHs)

For those that miss the reference.

<comment><USER55> It also helps that one of the founders has a passing resemblance to Jean Ralphio.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Waiting for the bubble to burst.

</comment><comment><USER57> Taking a queue from Diddy?

</comment><comment><USER58> Whoever gave this band of clowns 40 million is extremely socially irresponsible in my view.

Either that, or else they have a vested interest in social degradation. I haven't made up my mind which I believe yet.

Yep I'm biased. I can't stand rap genius nor those nappy haired punks that run it.

Some people might think this comment is simply ugly hatred. But it's a small shadow of what I've seen spewing out of rap genius guys. Can't_Stand_Them!

<comment><USER59> Woah I'm taken aback at how hateful this comment is. What did these guys ever do to you? At the bare minimum, Rap Genius is a huuuge step up from all the other lyrics websites out there.</comment></comment>


Slide says no more Facebook applications - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.org/2008/06/09/slide-says-no-more-facebook-applications/

<comment><USER2> Re: "Steven Carroll's Four Point Plan to stop FB from sliding into the pit"

Particularly: _4) Advertising is Queen! Current advertising space is too limited and too complicated for app developers to individually sell. FB need to adopt a proper advertising sharing model with application developers. Advertising should be automatically integrated as part of an application, which is sold by FB and sharing 70% of profits with developers (like Google Adsense)._

I think the problem is that FB hasn't even figured out how to make money from its own advertising, let alone make money for its 3rd party app developers..

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the point. FB are trying to remain clean and stylish, thus their ads are small and not well made.

Magazines understand that 50% of the real estate must be adverts. Online is no different. The ads need to be bigger, better and automatically integrated as part of the apps. Share these profits with the app developers, have tougher, competition for apps and more value will come for all.

btw I'm S.Carroll</comment></comment>