TinySeed – A Startup Accelerator Designed for Bootstrappers - <AUTHOR> https://robwalling.com/2018/10/12/my-next-act-the-first-startup-accelerator-designed-for-bootstrappers/ <comment><USER3> This is awesome! I been wanting to see something like this for the last few years, and was even thinking about starting it in the future if I had the resources. I would have definitely applied last year, but I'm a bit too far along now so I don't know if it makes sense. I've also realized that I prefer being independent and having 100% control, and I don't really feel too much need for accountability or community. I think I probably have enough between Stripe Atlas, Indie Hackers, Nomad List, Hacker News, Reddit, and local meetups and events.

I haven't had a great experience with YC Startup School, to be honest. I quit when I found out that I had to be aiming for a billion dollar company in order to qualify for the $10k. The phone calls were really long and I had to get up early. I would stay on the call for over an hour every week while people talked about their startups. It wasn't very interesting and I didn't get much out of it (no offense to the people in my group.) I think it would be better if I was part of more conversations, but I was just on mute most of the time. I also watched a few talks, and they were fine, but I don't think I learned anything that I was able to put into practice.

<comment><USER4> Not sure what "a bit too far along" is, but TinySeed's intent seems to be to help those on the lower rungs of profitability (even no profitability) to grow revenues more quickly. I see their mentorship as invaluable to anyone who hasn't reached a point in their revenue trajectory that they're earning a full-time income, with enough extra to invest in the growth they want/need.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Stoked to see someone finally doing this. Hugely underserved problem... couple questions:

\- Are you planning on taking equity? And if so, how will you ensure your incentives are aligned with founders who don't want to drive towards an exit? How will you make returns otherwise? (Are you looking at alt models like indie.vc or how Sparktoro set up its recent llc funding?) \- What's your timeline starting? Are you planning on batches or rolling?

Best of luck!

<comment><USER6> Hi there - co-horts of teams for sure (hello friendly competition and emotional support).

Finalizing terms, most likely a combo of equity and cash dividends.

<comment><USER7> The combo is a great idea. As a founder who has contemplated both paths, pure equity would be a potential deterrent because it could require a level of dilution that might make it harder to raise capital later on. But that could be tempered by the cash flow piece.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As a bootstrapper of 6 years who's ramen profitable, the main selling point for me would be the mentoring and the community. I think these are some of the things that make YC so strong. Because of this, TinySeed would actually be more appealing to me if it did require (or at least allowed) me to relocate for 1-3 months, to spend time very close to other founders and our mentors. I feel I could both learn more and create stronger connections that way.

<comment><USER9> Why would you need investor money for a niche desktop app like yours? And why would an investor see that as a valuable investment?

<comment><USER8> I don't see what precludes niche desktop apps (software companies) from applying, in principle. Are only SaaS allowed? But no, I do not plan to apply with fman.

<comment><USER10> I've been meaning to try out the build system, and I suspect it's worth paying for. I shipped a PyQt based app a few years ago and definitely lost a few weeks getting it to work.

<comment><USER8> Yeah. That's exactly the motivation why I created it. It simply cannot be that in 2018 we waste weeks - if not months - on things as fundamental as packaging, creating installers, code signing and automatic updates. It's unreal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Rob Walling also wrote a great book on the subject, called "Start small, stay small". I recommend it even you don't join the fund; it helped me in my current startup.

<comment><USER12> I appreciate that, thanks gents.

~~scribbles down note to update and release a 2nd edition of book~~

<comment><USER13> Yeah I'll second that request. I'd buy an updated 2nd edition for sure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What does a "year of runway" look like? Do you mean a year of the founders' living expenses?

Is it scaled to the founders' local cost of living? Does it assume a 20-something founder with few family commitments?

Or is some of it also intended to cover operational expenditures (at least at MVP-scale)?

What if the founder has a potentially 100x idea, but still wants to go the bootstrap route because... well, let's just say they find Craig Newmark more worthy of emulation[0] than Mark Zuckerberg or the PayPal mafia, and leave it at that.

[0] Although it's worth noting that only the most recent of the competing VC- funded classified ad startups are still around, but craigslist.org is a unicorn.

<comment><USER15> Re the point about the 100x idea - there seems to be no such thing - <USER2> common ideas and 100 or 1000 decisions to grow the business 1.1x to 10x. Each of those decisions demand a cost, effort or sacrifice of some form or another - and the difference between a startup and a regular business is that these decisions are made differently.

Ideas are all the same. Social network, payments, search, e-commerce, software, hardware - none of these ideas intrinsic value. Even the iPhone wasn't a breakthrough - I had full touchscreen phones running modded Linux before that.

Think of every growth curve as a series of choices - YC chooses and teaches founders to make one category of choices, solo / lifestyle founders make a different, often incompatible set of choices. Ideas don't come into play. Even YC, which invests more than this program, doesn't care about ideas that much.

<comment><USER16> > _Even YC, which invests more than this program, doesn't care about ideas > that much._

that's incorrect - YC tried a batch for founders without ideas and the results were very bad.

For someone like me, who is overwhelmed with the ideas, I can't even understand how an engineer or a power user can't have any ideas for a large or growing TAM.

EDIT: they're probably have ideas, but think that their ideas are not good enough, or afraid to sound stupid.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, I think no idea is a negative signal. Too many ideas seems more indicative of a good founder. And YC does still follow the invest in teams, ideas may change motto, I think.

<comment><USER15> My biggest problem with bootstrapping while still holding a full time job, not to mention a baby, is spreading myself thin on too many ideas, eventually not grinding enough at any of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> YC has always sound to me like something very odd and very wrong (invest on a few to get a lottery winner). It is also so much boilerplate mumbo-jumbo startup lingo. I like to talk about business, not unicorns, valuation, lean startup, etc. This approach is much better and sounds right. Every startup counts for a healthy ecosystem. Looking forward to the next steps.

<comment><USER18> I believe it's because YC is more looking for startups in the vein of traditional silicon valley VCs and the like: high-risk high reward ventures. With general VC math, they're operating on the power law where essentially the biggest winner is going to return more than the rest of the fund combined and the high failure rate necessitates the huge winners. I definitely agree with your point and the value prop of TinySeed - those types of companies are great but it misses out on such a huge swath of companies that are important for a healthy ecosystem; I hope we see more support for the companies currently left out of the current ecosystem moving forward.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Are you really considered "bootstrapped" if you take on funding? Even if it's a year's runway, still seems odd to call it "bootstrapped." But then again, maybe I just have a narrow view of what bootstrapping is. I view it as using your own money (often from the business if possible) to fund your company's growth. Would love to hear others thoughts?

<comment><USER20> Maybe some terms need to be changed. I've watched some bootstrappers once they've reached product market fit raise a single seed round and that's it. Maybe bootstrapped+ ?

Likewise I hate the condescending term lifestyle business. That might fit a barbershop but does it also define a $100 million dollar software business?

<comment><USER14> _> [...] but does it also define a $100 million dollar software business?_

It depends on the type of software business.

Technically, a lifestyle business is just one that is not expected to ever go through a high growth phase. So a $100M SaaS is probably not a lifestyle business (high growth is at least potentially possible, unless the TAM is too small), but a $100M enterprise software VAR probably _is_ a lifestyle business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Bravo Rob & Einar. So many founders are consuming their nights and weekends trying to get their side business off the ground with enough traction to be able to leave their day out. I'm glad to see someone finally tackling "funding for the rest of us" ;)

<comment><USER12> Appreciate it, sir!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Would be curious to hear more about how the investors plan to get their money back for the investments. I can think of a few ways like the company selling and owning a piece of the pie, but oftentimes bootstrapped companies want to operate independently indefinitely (e.g. Basecamp, Mailchimp, etc). Is there a plan for cash dividends similar to Indie.vc to align expectations?

<comment><USER6> Hi Andy, this is not finalized yet, but we're imagining some combination of cash dividends and convertible equity if someone sells.

<comment><USER22> Makes sense. Thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> A few comments over here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18201789](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18201789)

That was marked as a Dupe - perhaps the mods can move the comments to this submission instead.

<comment><USER24> Ok, done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This seems really interesting. I was a part of several funded companies and the push for non-sustainable growth frequently contributed to a culture of lies, egos and unrealistic expectations. I'm working for a non-profit right now that has stable finances and it's an amazing difference.

Yet, I like the idea of building for-profit products too; just with sustainable and real growth. I've been kicking around an idea in the credit card space that could make for a nice revenue stream, but will never be the next Unicorn.

<comment><USER6> "could make for a nice revenue stream, but will never be the next Unicorn"

That's exactly what we're looking for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Interesting. An accelerator designed for bootstrappers, but once you go through it, you're no longer a bootstrapper.

<comment><USER19> This is exactly what I was thinking... but maybe I have a narrow view of what "bootstrapping" is?

<comment><USER26> Nope, your view is exactly right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This sounds awesome! I just wished there is an equivalent of this for hardware. How awesome would it be if a company had a couple of PnP, CNC, and injection molding machines where they can assist you to turnaround a physical prototype and bring it to market quickly. Sadly for hardware, the downside of hardware is that it requires so much upfront investment and scaling can get stupidly difficult.

<comment><USER28> Just my 2 cents: I run a hardware side business that is ramen profitable. I started selling extra pcbs I had because I only needed one and the fab would only sell me 10. In the last 3 years it has gone from that to about 40k/yr in sales and continues to grow despite no marketing or sales efforts on my part. I simply focus on selling a good product in a really niche market.

That said, these 3 years have felt like the trenches. I hand assemble everything. It takes forever. I work full time at a successful SAAS company and it makes me ache when I see how little effort it takes to just rake in money. Everything I sell has a fixed amount of time and effort associated with it. My advice when people pitch me random hardware ideas is that hardware is hard and if it doesn't already exist you need to think long and hard about why.

But the point of my comment is that is _is_ technically possible to build a profitable hardware business without a significant amount of capital. I borrowed $50 from my checking account to order those first boards and components and since then it's been bootstrapped and profitable. I signed up for their mailing list because I'm at the point where I think this could be my full time thing, but I don't know exactly how to get there. I truly feel that 1 year runway would give me the time I need to really see how far I can take this. Additionally the mentorship and community would be absolutely critical as I have none of that now.

Totally open to answer any questions!

<comment><USER29> Excellent points. Would love to chat some more (enclosure design, CE/FCC certs, etc.). I don't see an email in your profile. If you are open to discussion, please email me (my email is in my profile).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Define Bootstrappers. Just people who don't raise money after your initial investment? Also, what percentage equity do you take?

<comment><USER12> Bootstrappers = people who haven't raised money yet, and don't wish to ever raise venture capital (i.e. institutional money). Typically it's folks who have an idea for a nice "base hit" business that can grow to $1M-$10M in ARR, but could never get traditional VC funding.

Percentage equity => We're working on that now. More info to come.

<comment><USER31> You've probably already thought the following but just in case:

"A year of runway" will vary by individual. Thus part of the infrastructure for your accelerator should be a series of locations where costs are minimized. a.k.a. We know a great hacker house in Kansas, or "we've done the numbers and if you want to work out of Mexico, you still save money even if you need to fly to California once a week."

You might also consider a structure whereby participation also offers health insurance as a bunch of individuals / tiny companies buying market rate care is usually not an efficient use of capital. This will also attract a more mature crowd who (testable hypothesis warning) might be particularly good at building this kind of business.

<comment><USER12> These are good suggestions, thanks! I'm noting them down...

<comment><USER20> People I know who've been through YC tell me that one of the most valuable and continuing pluses is the social network for YC founders, I believe they call it BookFace? Definitely consider doing something similar. Since you don't compete maybe YC would give you the source code?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Is this going to be world-wide or US-only? The former will probably mean a lot of legal hassle, but it would be nice to be able to participate from elsewhere in the world...

</comment><comment><USER33> Great project, hope it will succeed !

What about 1 person business already profitable that want to expand and hire but do not want to deal with VC B.S. ?

<comment><USER6> That would be a good fit potentially.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Very cool. Reminds me of SparkToro's "Very Unusual Round of Funding": [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17256923](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17256923)

I'm very curious to learn more about what kind of stake the investors get in these bootstrapped companies. For these types of companies I always thought it'd be better if investors operated more like a high risk-taking bank, just putting money in and getting money back with no equity involved. The investors can potentially lose all their money so it's not a loan, but if the company is successful the investor will be getting a 2-3x return paid back to them as interest, only payable if the company is achieving a certain level of profitability, e.g. 20+ employees.

</comment><comment><USER35> This is a great idea. The initial runway to get a product off the ground is a huge hurdle for every start up. I've personally been doing lots of contract and side work to fund my start up and it's a big distraction. Any one have any idea when Tiny Seed applications open?

<comment><USER6> Thank you! Probably January.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Is there a way to invest in this? I didn't see a place on the site to invest in these startups.

<comment><USER6> Hi, email me and we can discuss. firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I read initial email and it hit all the issues I might have with YC. YC is fantastic program, if I was younger, I would totally go for it.

BTW I am enrolled in StartupSchool and it helped me push the product development and clarify what it should do. I think TinySeed would be ideal for us.

What I specifically like is that it addresses real problems founders have,

* provide runway for a year (more then enough in my view).

* remote, you can be anywhere, yet I assume they would be fairly involved in mentoring

That is all I need atm. I have full time job, that pays the bills, also it is not draining I can't work on my idea. I am slowly assembling elements to be successful and feel that I am making genuine progress thanks to StarupSchool.

<comment><USER12> I agree with you - I've been a fan of PG since he started writing articles back in 2001? 2002? Bought Hackers and Painters when it first came out and devoured it. And have a ton of respect for YC and the enormous value it's generated.

When YC launched I wasn't in a place to take advantage of what they had to offer (already had a spouse and child + house and couldn't relocate). And I haven't seen anything else step in to do for the rest of us what YC did for VC-backed startups.

So far it seems to be resonating, so fingers crossed.

<comment><USER14> _> When YC launched I wasn't in a place to take advantage of what they had to offer (already had a spouse and child + house and couldn't relocate)._

That describes my situation at the time pretty well, except I had (and have) $SPOUSE with severe asthma instead of $CHILD, which precluded relocating to the SF Bay Area, or anywhere with higher humidity than the southwestern US desert (we relocated from Las Vegas to Albuquerque 10y ago).

BTW rwalling, I hope you'll eventually see my Qs about what the "year of runway" looks like[0], and reply. I am definitely intrigued.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18205579](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18205579)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> We changed the URL from [https://tinyseedfund.com/?__s=xs4uwihtamjwca6hvrxs](https://tinyseedfund.com/?__s=xs4uwihtamjwca6hvrxs) to the blog post which has more information.

</comment><comment><USER38> Exciting news, much needed and you're certainly the team to do it.

One suggestion/request: you'll be privy to an exclusive data set -- not about how to _run_ bootstrapped businesses, but about how to _support_ them. And also, the ways in which the common methods of support/mentoring/etc fail with this category of company. I hope you'll take the extra time to document what you're trying and learning, and share it so that others trying to help elsewhere can leverage what you're learning.

In any case, all the best wishes with it.

</comment><comment><USER39> This is great to see. Pretty tired of hearing about unicorns that have used marketing and buzzwords to create a cult-like following by throwing around an epic conference to blow their own horn.

</comment><comment><USER40> Here's the email announcement Rob Walling just sent out:

\</comment><comment>--

In this email I'm going to answer the most common question I've been asked since I left Drip this past April: what are you going to do next?

The short answer: I'm doubling down on everything I've built in the bootstrapped startup space over the past 13 years.

When you hear the term startup accelerator you likely think of YCombinator, TechStars or 500 Startups. Accelerators traditionally cater to "unicorns" – companies that have the potential to be worth at least a billion dollars.

This focus has made them successful in launching startups like DropBox, AirBnB, Stripe and Instacart.

But what about founders who want to build a profitable software company with annual revenue in the $1M, $10M or $20M range? Are those companies worth a similar level of support and guidance?

These bootstrapped (or mostly bootstrapped) startups are who I come into contact with while running MicroConf, hosting Startups for the Rest of Us, writing books, speaking at conferences, etc.

I first thought of a "YC for bootstrappers" in 2011, but realized the timing wasn't right. In 2014, after hearing an interview Colin from Customer.io, I started embracing the idea of bootstrappers raising a small funding round to get them to profitability without taking institutional money.

And as the focus of my angel investing changed from VC-eligible ideas to smaller, but higher probability "base hits," I've realized there is a serious lack of startup capital and accelerator-type support in my corner of the startup ecosystem.

So I'm trying to fix it…

Partnering with Einar Vollset, I'm starting a remote accelerator designed to take bootstrapped software companies in the idea to $10k/month range, and dramatically accelerate their growth through mentorship, guidance, and a small amount of funding.

We will focus on "real" software companies. These are ideas that won't become unicorns, but could reach $1M-$20M in annual revenue.

If you've been to MicroConf, think of the founders and companies you've encountered.

If you listen to Startups for the Rest of Us, think about the ideas and startups we mention.

Companies with real business models. Charging real money. To real customers.

It's still early, but here are some details…

Our accelerator, called TinySeed, will provide you with a year's worth of runway so you can quit your day job and focus on your startup full-time.

No more nights and weekends.

No more trying to navigate the startup landscape alone.

No relocation required.

You'll receive world-class guidance and support from successful founders who have been where you are, and built highly profitable software companies. Founders like Hiten Shah, Patrick McKenzie and myself (to name a few).

You'll be part of a small class of founders challenging and encouraging one another on weekly mentor-led calls.

I'm taking everything I've learned over the past 13 years and going all-in to create startup funding for the other 99%.

Our name is TinySeed. If you're intrigued, click here and sign up for the inside track as we move towards launch.

And if you ever wanted to do me a favor, now would be the time to tweet about this announcement and help spread the word on Hacker News, Product Hunt, Reddit, etc. It's going to take a village...

I'm terrified of what comes next. But I know it's going to be a crazy ride. Wish me luck!

</comment><comment><USER41> Glad to see venture/seed money focused building sustainable companies, not just rocket ships.

</comment><comment><USER42> Seems like it's a pretty good opportunity to get funding and try out a lifestyle business.

</comment><comment><USER43> Love this idea. Quick question - do you have any thoughts on how far along you're looking for the companies to be?

Eg pre revenue, $100/month, $1000, $10k?

<comment><USER6> This will depend for sure, but anything below $10k is probably sweet spot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Congrats Rob and Einar. Well deserved and big fan of the Startups FTROU podcast. Are you going down the indie.vc path?

</comment><comment><USER45> How can you deal with the huge risk of failure without compensating with huge wins?

<comment><USER46> Judging from Rob Walling's thoughts on this topic from his book -- the equation looks different for the kind of company they're looking for. There's no "huge risk of failure"; the focus is on businesses highly likely to succeed that will have (relatively) slower, but consistent, growth. And obviously (relatively) lower final valuations.

<comment><USER12> Bingo. Instead of 1 in 20 becoming a huge success (100x) and the other 19 fail, maybe for us it's 10 in 20 are "base hits" that return 2-5x and the other 10 fail.

Those are contrived numbers for this example, but you get the idea. I expect more of them to be singles/doubles, fewer to fail than the typical VC bets, but we'll have no home runs.

<comment><USER45> What will allow you to get higher % of successes than a typical VC?

<comment><USER47> Have you seen the total returns of VC money? Too lazy to link stuff now but a perfunctory search will reveal that the returns are not what you think they are. They essentially approach 0% outside of the few powerhouses.

Can't really use the Andreessen-Horowitz / Sequoia returns as representative to the entire industry.

<comment><USER45> Your evidence would seem to suggest that the TinySeed venture is very likely to approach 0% as well, no? Which is my concern exactly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> 1m1m ([https://1m1m.sramanamitra.com](https://1m1m.sramanamitra.com)) exits since 2010. Whats new here?

</comment><comment><USER49> Great idea, I love it!</comment>


Airbnb and Miami Beach Are at War. Travelers Are Caught in the Crossfire - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/09/travel/airbnb-miami-beach-war.html <comment><USER2> What I find most disturbing about stories like this is that these companies appear to believe that they have the right to challenge local laws in court. We need to extend sovereign immunity to local governments, at least to the extent that suits brought by non-local corporations can be summarily dismissesd.

</comment><comment><USER3> A lot of new high-density housing in desirable areas would go a long way to alleviating many of these issues, which at their heart seem scarcity-based.</comment>


How to Interact with the Introverted - <AUTHOR> http://themetapicture.com/how-to-interact-with-the-introverted/

<comment><USER2> \- At the end of the day, introverted people are like everyone else.</comment>


Show HN: epistly, hand written notes for busy people - <AUTHOR> http://www.epist.ly

<comment><USER2> Cool. I could see myself using this. I couldn't find what it costs (I looked for a bit). No reason not to put it on the landing/home page.

<comment><USER3> They are charging $14.99. You have to go 2 levels next.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you use coupon code "HACKERNEWS" (need to press ctrl+c) we'll give you $10 off

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is a site my good friend and I just built, because we thought it might be a cool idea. Any feedback you could give us would be very helpful - thanks!

If you press ctrl+c on the payment page and enter coupon code "HACKERNEWS" we'll give you $10 off your order.

</comment><comment><USER3> cool idea. May I suggest that you show the preview before we click Next ? This way,we know how it looks like before proceeding.

<comment><AUTHOR> there is a preview screen before you get to the payment page (after entering in the addresses)

<comment><USER3> "after entering in the addresses" Exactly. Why should I enter the address to see a preview. I am interested in knowing how it looks right away. Address is not the key input. You can always collect it during payment time.

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah, that makes sense. Thanks for your feedback</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Facebook's 'Frictionless Sharing' violates HTTP - <AUTHOR> http://andothernoise.blogspot.com/2011/09/why-facebooks-frictionless-sharing.html <comment><USER2> This article is so typically dork-disconnected-from-world that it's a bit sad, really.

Any site that uses SOAP violates HTTP (use POST also for GET-style requests). Any site that has delete links (as opposed to buttons) violate HTTP (barring onclick ajax action, that is). The big mega bucketload of sites violating HTTP this way (GET having severe side effects) is the very reason offline browsing and prefetching never took off much. Every site that uses comet _very much_ violates HTTP.

This is no "message to the future to Mark Zuckerberg". It's just using the available tools for the job to their limits.

Note, I'm just as much against the whole frictionless sharing thing as most people here. But the moment we allow geek nonsense like this to overtake the real arguments is the moment the world will stop taking it seriously. This is what happened to the net neutrality debate ("net neutrality"? who made up that term? how will i ever make my mom care about _that_?), let's not let it happen here.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I can't imagine that any meaningful percentage of Facebook users care about the HTTP spec.

JavaScript in modern web apps has made the distinction between GET and other HTTP methods irrelevant to users. Simply changing these "frictionless sharing" apps to use POST instead of GET doesn't address anyone's concerns.

<comment><USER4> Implementing "frictionless sharing" with POST doesn't look trivial to me, because browsers treat cross-domain POST requests more strictly than GET.

<comment><USER5> The javascript would just have to create a form and submit it. Not a big problem at all. Alternatively, create an iframe in which the form is autosubmitted via javascript.

<comment><USER4> Doesn't that break the back button, making it no longer "frictionless"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sorry, but this really feels like hyperbole to me. For two reasons:

1) Before any action is shared back from the site to Facebook, the user has agreed to authorize that site (application) and add it to their timeline. Part of that dialog shows what's going to happen (<https://developers.facebook.com/docs/beta/authentication/>).

2) There are plenty of other examples around the web where submitting a HTTP GET request results in an action. For example, clicking an up arrow on Hacker News submits a GET request which increases the karma score on another author. What becomes more important is how you protect against XSRF and crawlers not accidentally changing state within your app.

<comment><USER7> _Before any action is shared back from the site to Facebook, the user has agreed to authorize that site (application)..._

That sounds great in theory.

I just looked at my Facebook "App Settings" page and found two applications/sites that I had supposedly authorized to interact with my Facebook profile. I don't know what they do, and I don't recall ever deliberately granting anyone or anything, _especially_ the two sites in question, any permission to interact with Facebook on my behalf.

<comment><USER8> The App Settings page will tell you when last you used it, and when last they accessed information (once you click on "Edit").

If you are truly concerned about this happening behind your back (rather than making a comment about how easy it is to not recall adding something), you can contact me (neilblakeymilner at fb.com) and I will try connect you with someone who might be able to help you find out when you did it and whatever other information might be attached to that event (I don't really know what, if any, we keep on that event type).

<comment><USER4> I just went to my App Settings page and also found multiple apps that I know for certain I didn't authorize.

<comment><USER8> Feel free to contact me as well if you are sure that you didn't authorize them. I am not sure I can help, but I will try.

There are only a select few applications that get authorized automatically when you use them (Instant Personalization - <https://www.facebook.com/instantpersonalization/>), but they only get read access to some basic information that you share with "Public", and they have to follow pretty stringent guidelines in terms of how they store and use the data, and they have to show you how to opt out of the experience when you visit.

This probably is not the case with you, but sometimes people find out that some browser plugins (even ones that do useful things, not just "show who viewed your profile" types) that they are using do malicious things, or discover that their credentials were compromised due to phishing or because of a password dump when they report weird things like this (although the team I'm on do try our best to prevent both of these sorts of things).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _The important distinction here is that the user did not request the side- effects, so therefore cannot be held accountable for them._

But the user _did_ request the side-effects, when he installed the app, and approved the TOS which specifically said that there would be "frictionless sharing".

Personally, I'm not interested in oversharing, so I'll avoid these apps; but, hypothetically speaking, if I were the kind of person who wanted his friends to know what he was listening to on Spotify, it would be a major pain in the ass to have to manually post a separate update to share the title of each song every three minutes. For this use case, it makes much more sense to install an app that will auto-post the songs, giving prior approval up front, and skipping the friction of asking again with each song.

To suggest that this violates HTTP seems more than a bit hyperbolic.

<comment><USER10> using the word 'violates' makes it a bit dramatic but I don't really think hyperbolic. And I believe he's talking about a different definition of the word 'request' than in your comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If it's only a protocol violation, I guess Facebook can use JavaScript to generate a POST request instead. And in fact, they _should_ be doing so.

The permissions and responsibilities of a user should not be associated with the type of request. Although it's true that users should not be responsible for a GET request, but the retrieval is based on the web page itself. The Facebook SDK will generate other requests automatically because the permissions have already granted. The GET request is only the trigger. (Imagine you have already agreed to post everything on ReadWriteWeb to Facebook through their reader app by a POST request, all these are hidden until you read an article. The side effects were already generated.) So I think this is not a protocol violation.

<comment><USER12> You're totally missing the point. The author points the fact that issuing "GET /interesting-article.html" should NOT have any side-effect. This is the GET that should not have any side-effect. The other GET or POST or whatever it is is the side-effect.

The author goes as far as criticizing other side-effects already in place; an example of which is ads. Because you see when you browse an article about Herpes, then you encounter ads about Herpes drugs on every website.

I got hit by this while looking for paid webmails. After a few searches on Google, I started to see ads for atmail on every single page.

There are people who believe it's a violation and I'm one of them.

EDIT: please don't point at Do Not Track or other work-arounds because that's all they are.

<comment><USER11> When you browse the web, you don't GET the pages. Your browser does much more than that.

If you really GET the page and parse the HTML yourself, you won't get these ads, for sure.

If Facebook uses POST in their JavaScript, then what's wrong?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm always happy for another article denouncing frictionless sharing, but I think it's a weak argument.

On one side you have the fact that this is not technically an HTTP violation, because it is not the GET request itself that is triggering anything. It's javascript running in a loaded page after the GET request is completed.

On the other side you have the fact that Facebook does not care about what some tiny group thinks. Even if it were a true technical violation, Facebook doesn't give half a fuck about what web purists think; they will only change their behavior when there is a massive uprising among a significant portion of their user base.

Attempting to make it a technical issue detracts from the social contract argument which is the real issue, and also one that can be explained to anyone: you read a page and Facebook posts it to your newsfeed. Even your mom understands that explanation, and it probably freaks her out. We need more people trumpeting this from the tree tops (outside of geek blogs too) because I think Facebook is ruining it for the rest of us who would like to use some of these techniques to provide actually useful services instead of shitting all over user's privacy to make a quick buck before the government decides to get involve and lock everything down.

</comment><comment><USER14> Let's stop for a moment and consider how the web actually works. Your browser sends an HTTP GET request for a page. The response for this page contains HTML and JavaScript. The browser then executes the JavaScript, often making other requests (GET and/or POST) in order to do its work. In the case of most Facebook operations (I haven't looked at this one specifically), JavaScript executed by your browser makes these requests on your behalf to communicate with and display information from Facebook. Google Analytics works this way too, making additional requests to a different server from the page you directly requested.

Unless the website in question has a back channel directly to Facebook, through which it communicates information about the GET requests you've made, the initial GET request has nothing to do with the data sent to Facebook. Furthermore, because of browser security limitations, this back-channel approach is not always even possible, since the original site does not typically know your Facebook ID (this may not be true for some sites with which Facebook has special partnerships, e.g. Yelp and TripAdvisor). Only requests made to facebook.com would have the cookie information that identifies you.

In summary, the HTTP GET request you make to fetch a web page has nothing to do with the information sent to Facebook, and HTTP's recommendations about GET requests have nothing at all to do with these other requests.

Also, people have been senselessly abusing HTTP for years.

</comment><comment><USER15> So Google Analytics might be the biggest violator of HTTP. Those bastards.

<comment><USER16> This.

"GET requests should have no side-effects" was never supposed to mean "you can't log GET requests". This timeline thing just seems to be logging parts of your web activity: a privacy can of worms to be sure, but not a HTTP violation.

<comment><USER17> Agreed, but tracking is different than sharing. Nobody's going to complain that your web server logs GET requests (well, not from an HTTP standpoint, at least), but posting that information to your social networking profile is a little different.

That said, there are certainly very similar cases out there already. For example, when you read a thread in many forums (vBulletin, at least), it updates your public (or semi-public) profile to say you were last seen reading that thread. I've never particularly cared for that either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> As if the rest of the web plays by the protocol rules. How about Amazon (and most other e-commerce sites) showing you the list of last viewed items? User state is obviously changed by GET requests. That's the reality of modern dynamic sites and I don't see any practical problem in this.

FoF (Fear of Facebook) is a really popular game these days :)

</comment><comment><USER19> There is no violation of RFC 2616. Two points:

1\. The implementors RFC 2616 is concerned with are: (i) of the server involved in a connection, (ii) of the client to that connection, and (iii) of the network that joins the two. Facebook's involvement as a server ended before these connections became live, and so is not one of (i)-(iii).

2\. The notion of safety here is in the sense that inserting arbitrary get requests into a sequence of transactions between client and server will not change the semantics of those transactions. It does not have anything to do with what code the user might have asked the browser to run on receipt of the results of a GET request.

See, e.g., Mozilla's documentation of HTTP: _A safe method is a method that doesn't have any side-effects on the server_ , from <https://developer.mozilla.org/en/HTTP#Safe_methods>

</comment><comment><USER20> Next up: Why web server logs violate HTTP.

</comment><comment><USER21> Maybe this will educate Users, the reality is that these actions have side effects already. They track you everywhere you go with cookies and create a profile of your surfing behavior. The Facebook like button is so wide spread and they know every site you visit.

I would be very interested in my Facebook database dump.

<comment><USER22> _Maybe this will educate Users_

I think that running around shouting "HTTP Protocol Violation!" will likely be counterproductive. The average user doesn't care about the purity of HTTP Protocol verbs. Heck, I'm a developer and I don't care that much.

<comment><USER21> I mean that their behavior has side effects, not the violation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This could matter in real life if prefetching web pages sets off frictionless sharing. Does anyone know if it does?

<comment><USER11> No.

Prefetching a webpage doesn't execute the JavaScript.

GET itself is still safe. But web browsing != GET requests

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> [https://developers.facebook.com/docs/beta/opengraph/tutorial...](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/beta/opengraph/tutorial/)

A quick look over the tutorial, it seems that a HTTP POST is actually made to declare that an "action" (e.g. read, watched, listened) took place.

You would also need to be authenticated into Facebook and the app would have to be authorized to post the action as others have pointed out.

</comment><comment> T-R In regards to violating HTTP, Frictionless Sharing isn't in any way different from every other non-RESTful service/site on the internet. Facebook could have just as easily implemented the same service RESTfully (not violating HTTP), and it wouldn't be any different.

GET requests have the stateless/idempotence constraint so that they're cacheable, and timing between requests, out-of-order requests, and multiple requests don't become an issue. The 'accountability' referred to in the post is about users of the API - they shouldn't be expected to be aware of server state/side effects, in the same way that users of a function call shouldn't be expected to be aware of its implementation/side effects. It's an engineering constraint - it's not about honorably keeping end-users unaccountable for reading your webpage.

</comment><comment><USER25> I bet it violates more than just a networking protocol.

</comment><comment><USER26> _A big reason for this is that it breaks a fundamental contract of web interaction, in place since the beginnings of the web, that users have come to rely upon._

How have users come to rely on GET? Ok, it makes a useful "Would you like to resubmit this action?" popup when you click the back button. And it can be useful to prevent XSF attacks. But neither of these is really relevant to frictionless sharing. Really the only thing I can think of that may be problematic is the possibility that spammers might be able to use it for spam. But then again, I'm pretty sure I violate HTTP on a daily basis. Maybe I'm one of the bad guys.

</comment><comment><USER27> Does a URL shortener violate HTTP when it offers analytics on GET links to the public?

I think the OP should understand that HTTP is a leaky abstraction.

GET requests always have some side effect, either on the server end or the client end.

Server A and Server B.

A GETs B's data and and offers a mutated version of it, which B GETs, and further mutates. Side effects with no POSTS! This is natural too, in a distributed environment, since each agent should be responsible for mutating its own state, rather than have B POST something to A. You can't abstract this dynamics into HTTP, but you can use HTTP to handle the underlying communication mechanics, like caching and authorization.

</comment><comment><USER28> What a bunch of nonsense. 'GET' must be idempotent, that is all.

Facebook is big enough that all sorts of sophists are going to come out of the woodwork and make plausible-ish arguments against everything they do. The motivation to do this isn't that it is good or something, it's because if you can say something bad about facebook, your comment can become news. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be scrutinized, but it also doesn't mean that we should pay attention to stupid articles like this. Or does the 'andothernoise' author think that collecting analytics 'violates http'?

<comment><USER29> But with frictionless sharing it isn't idempotent, right? If I refresh a page I'm reading it'll show up twice in the ticker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Nice find, but I don't really think this is violating anything. It's against the HTTP Spec, sure, but you give it permissions to post stuff on your wall for you.

This reminds me of this guy I met a few months ago who was freaking out about the fact that he saw his facebook profile photo and some of his friends' photos on some website and he was all like 'facebook has sold my information to this website'. Took me a while to convince him what was going on. Please let's try not to make non tech savy people freak out by this kind of allegations.

</comment><comment><USER31> Like it's so hard to differentiate between a GET that user was not responsible for and which didn't complete, to the one the user was responsible for. As long as facebook makes it easy for an user to turn off an app that's spammy or the one that knowingly posts "I read an objectionable content", I think we are fine. Agreed, apps have more power but as long as users and Facebook have more, they will behave and internet will become a better place.

</comment><comment><USER32> The worst HTTP violator by far is the little "up" arrow I didn't click to upvote this article.

</comment><comment><USER33> Using this argument, essentially every website that uses Google Analytics violates HTTP. The GA javascript triggers a GET request every time you visit a page that it's installed on, and the GET request has the side effect of recording your visit.

</comment><comment><USER34> Most web servers "violate http" in this way when they log the fact that they served the GET request. Very little is done on the web without some side effects.

</comment><comment><USER35> this is like complaining that someone is violating the "breathe in through nose and out through mouth" rule laid down by Mr Miyagi in The Karate Kid.

</comment><comment><USER36> If you are truly concerned about this happening behind your back (rather than making a comment about how easy it is to not recall adding something), you can contact me (neilblakeymilner at fb.com) and I will try connect you with someone who might be able to help you find out when you did it and whatever other information might be attached to that event (I don't really know what, if any, we keep on that event type).

</comment><comment><USER37> Maybe this will educate Users, the reality is that these actions have side effects already. They track you everywhere you go with cookies and create a profile of your surfing behavior.</comment>


Ask HN: How secure is Protonmail really? - <AUTHOR> ... and should I move my custom domain over to it for email? <comment><USER2> I can't actively say too much about the security of Protonmail.

However, I do know a lot of people that know the founder (Andy Yen) socially and they all uniformly think he's a scumbag. (Doing things like going to car shows with a junker saying that his nice <insert car here> is in the shop, other generally sketchy/manipulative actions.)

Overall, I'd say Protonmail is good at being a hype machine and while there may be some technical correctness in what they're doing, it's not a business you'd want to rely on.

<comment><USER3> How is showing off a junker at a car show a manipulative action?

<comment><USER4> May not be manipulative, but it certainly speaks to Yen's state of mind.

<comment><USER5> Insecure about his junker car?

So what?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Regarding security I can't say much, if you plan to use the e-mail professionally I would recommend another provider, as it's still not possible to bulk export e-mails (after many years of asking for that feature). For me, data security includes availability, and if I can't export my e-mails periodically I'd say it's not really secure.

</comment><comment><USER7> ProtonMail appears to be secure so far but a couple of weeks ago there were some accusations levelled against ProtonVPN by PIA. While a lot of it was debunked but anyone pursuing the thread would be left with a bit of cynicism.

But here's the caveat, no matter how transparent they are or how many white papers they publish, there's no way to verify what is actually behind the hosted service. If your threat model includes a nation state then anything short of self-hosting would be risky. If your threat model involves getting away from google and trackers then it should be safe bet. For that matter even other providers like Fastmail or Zoho would be a good choice.

</comment><comment><USER8> Only the ProtonMail web client is open-source. Their mobile apps are still closed-source, even though ProtonMail has been advertising themselves as "open source" since 2015.

September 17, 2018: _" Our apps are planned to be open source by the end of the year. Your patience is greatly appreciated."_

[https://protonmail.com/blog/indiegogo-anniversary-four- years...](https://protonmail.com/blog/indiegogo-anniversary-four-years/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Not sure what you mean by 'secure'. If you send a person an email with ProtonMail, it defeats all the security that ProtonMail has (unless it's to another PM email). You should only rely on yourself for security. Start using PGP and demand that all your friends/relatives use PGP. Only sign in through Tor, use different emails for different services, etc.

You can't rely on a company to provide you security or privacy.

<comment><USER10> _> Start using PGP and demand that all your friends/relatives use PGP. Only sign in through Tor, use different emails for different services, etc._

Good luck with that. Security that no one uses isn't security at all. Placing those demands on everyone else in your life is going to result in fewer emails, not more secure emails.

<comment><USER9> > Placing those demands on everyone else in your life is going to result in > fewer emails

Sometimes this is a good thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It isn't a matter of whether it's "secure" or not. The problem is that their security model is based around JavaScript code being pushed to your browser where all the "cryptography" will happen. Yes, maybe your e-mails are actually encrypted. But let's think that for example their servers get compromised, by exploiting whatever vulnerability they have, or even one of their employees gets phished. The attacker will be able to serve you a malicious JavaScript file and get your passphrase and decrypt all your e-mails.

This risk is real even in the hypothetical world were everyone uses ProtonMail, but in the real world you have a bigger risk: most people don't use ProtonMail and the risk of your e-mail being included/forwarded whatever to a "plaintext" service is really high.

I would recommend to avoid ProtonMail and other e-mail services that claim to be secure, and stick to end-to-end solutions like Signal/Wire/WhatsApp.

</comment><comment><USER12> The issue with ProtonMail is that they rely on having your private key and doing cryptography in a browser. That basically defeates the "end to end" aspect which, in my opinion, is a serious matter.

</comment><comment><USER13> I've considered using it but saying nothing of the quality of the service itself, I saw it as a bit of a surveillance goldmine for anyone with an interest in monitoring people that use secure email, and you have to trust them absolutely, which is impossible for me so their selling point is rendered moot.

</comment><comment><USER14> I can't say whether or not Protonmail is secure, but I'll warn you right now OP: this is a bit of a loaded question on HN. Don't expect a straight answer.

</comment><comment><USER15> They were hacked a few months ago, though I'm not sure what it entailed. Service was down for a couple days on and off.

</comment><comment><USER16> "... and should I move my custom domain over to it for email?"

What are you trying to achieve? What are your goals?

</comment><comment><USER17> Nothing is secure

<comment><USER18> That wasn't the question</comment></comment>


The iPhone 5C Isn't For The US; It's The iPhone For The Rest Of The World - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/20/the-iphone-5c-isnt-for-the-us-its-the-iphone-for-the-rest-of-the-world/

<comment><USER2> I think this is a great strategy for Apple as an Apple shareholder. It will still be a good phone, and it opens up a whole new market for them. They aren't going for the low end $100 junk android phone market. Just aiming at the middle for places that don't subsidize phones.

The people who want the latest and greatest will still be happy to get the top of the line, and the people who are currently buying 4's with contracts will be happy with this one.

Apple's market share in the US is ~40%. Their market share overall is ~15%. This is a play for the international market, and I think it is a good one.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't see how this is different from cutting the price of the 4S, except it'll have the same screen size, resolution and new connector to match the 5 and 5S.

That's an entirely sensible thing to do, but why does the whole blog world think it signals a big drive down market from Apple?</comment>


Ask HN: Good Teaching Materials for Precalculus Mathematics? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for online teaching materials for learners of secondary school mathematics, generally any subject from what is called "prealgebra" in the United States (topics such as ratios and proportions, simple use of literal variables, coordinate graphing, etc., which are often late elementary topics in other countries) to "precalculus" (trigonometry, functions, matrices, and other school mathematics that precedes calculus instruction). I'll share some examples of good exposition with thought-provoking problems in a comment to this post, and I welcome all of you to share more suggestions. I observe that many HN participants who have children are eager to make sure their children have a good mathematical education. <comment><AUTHOR> Browsing around the Web, I've found a number of useful materials young learners or for their teachers about the mathematics that Americans might consider "middle school" or "high school" mathematics. Here are some examples of downloadable materials:

An amazingly clear and thoughtful textbook from the state government of Kerala, India, available not only in the English version linked below, but also in Malayalam, Tamil, and Kannada.

[http://www.education.kerala.gov.in/englishmedium/mathseng/te...](http://www.education.kerala.gov.in/englishmedium/mathseng/text10.PDF)

A guide for teachers to the most critical issues in mathematics education at the early secondary school level.

<http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/>

The Mathematics Pre-service Teachers Need to Know is a detailed discussion of how teachers of even earlier topics can get ready to lay a good foundation for learners to learn secondary school mathematics topics.

<http://hub.mspnet.org/index.cfm/13083>

The Singapore Math series cover these topics well. The various textbook publishers have permitted some sample pages to be shown from sublinks on the North American distributor's website.

<http://www.singaporemath.com/Secondary_math_s/22.htm>

Some college-level teachers who teach prealgebra topics in remedial classes have put together impressive lecture notes.

<http://ms.yccd.edu/~jb2/Prealgebra/fm.pdf>

What other resources like this do you like?

</comment><comment> b-man You could try Khan's academy, it is very cool IMHO. <http://www.khanacademy.org/index.html#Pre-algebra>

For teaching materials, try cnx

<http://cnx.org/content/col10615/latest/>

I would try out something in the LOGO philosophy also (scratch, etoys and so forth). The web is flowing with rich material, so get a shovel and dig up.

I Hope you find some gems.

</comment><comment><USER2> Here's a favorite of mine I loved visiting when I was in middle school: <http://coolmath.com></comment>


Google Buys Local Restaurant Reviews And Recommendations Company Zagat - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/08/google-buys-local-restaurant-reviews-and-recommendations-company-zagat/

<comment><USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2974271></comment>


Ask HN: DEFCON? - <AUTHOR>

Are you going to DEFCON? (http://www.defcon.org/) Have you been before and decided it wasn't worthwhile? I'm curious what "good hackers" think about it. <comment><USER2> I am not a "good hacker" but I know a few, and they say it's filled with wannabes.

</comment><comment><USER3> Went a few times - last one I went to was probably ~2001. It's a fun party in Vegas with some bright//interesting people.

No clue if//how it has changed.</comment>


Risks of Astronomical Future Suffering - <AUTHOR> https://foundational-research.org/risks-of-astronomical-future-suffering/ <comment><USER2> That was pretty bad. It seems to have the idea that _the goal_ is to minimize suffering, even animal suffering. Well, the optimal way to do that is by the extinction of all animals capable of feeling pain. That seems to be a reasonable solution to these people!

Seriously, they regard spreading animal life to other planets as a bad thing because the animals will feel pain. No mention of the fact that there will be many more of them, that animals will live who otherwise would not. No, the focus is that those who live will suffer, and that's bad. They shouldn't suffer, even if the price of "not suffering" is "not existing".

I am unable to comprehend such a limited view. Into each life some suffering falls; that does not make life not worth living.</comment>


Consumer Reports changes course and now recommends new 2016 MacBook Pro - <AUTHOR> https://9to5mac.com/2017/01/12/consumer-reports-changes-course-and-now-recommends-new-2016-macbook-pro/ <comment><AUTHOR> "Consumer Reports went on to share their new results for the tested systems. On the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar they saw 15.75 hours of battery- life, for the 13-inch MacBook Pro without Touch Bar they saw 18.75 hours, and for the 15-inch MacBook Pro they saw 17.25 hours."</comment>


TED Talks joins Netflix's stable of streaming content - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/blog/gadgetreviews/ted-talks-joins-netflixs-stable-of-streaming-content/29044 <comment><USER2> This is a great offering for people like my dad: he's a smart guy who would love TED talks, and he uses Netflix daily. But he would never go out of his way to discover content such as this on his own, in part because it's not centralised, but mostly because he really dislikes using computers. Getting this kind of stuff on Netflix is a huge boost to discoverability, and I look forward to seeing what else they will offer next—online learning, perhaps?

<comment><USER3> Out of curiosity, what device does your father use for Netflix? My elderly relatives have significant difficulties using any of the Netflix clients other than the iPad app.

<comment><USER4> My grandfather likes watching YouTube videos, but even the simple Apple TV interface was too difficult for him (remembering all the remote buttons, mostly). I know it's very simple, but it was just too much for him.

However, he knows how to use his iPhone to play music and use AirPlay to stream it to a stereo (Airport Express). So I showed him how to AirPlay to an Apple TV and now he doesn't need to know anything about how to work the Apple TV (as long as he changes the input, the Apple TV will automatically wake up as soon as it receives an AirPlay stream).

Basically, if your relatives like the iPad app, just have them continue to use that and then send the video to an Apple TV via AirPlay.

<comment><USER5> To learn more about HNers' experience with Apple TV, Boxee, Roku, etc I created a poll: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3713059>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wonder what makes Netflix more desirable with this partnership. TED content is free AFAIK. Some benefits I can think of:

\- Making TED content more accessible across devices/platforms? (Netflix has better device reach)

\- Applying Netflix's categorization and recommendation algorithm to TED's vast content.

\- As the article said, grouping related videos for longer viewing, but I am not sure how good it would be.

I think this is just a value add to existing customer, but I want them to figure out a way to add more movies.

<comment><USER7> For me, it's simply that I can easily watch TED content on my TV without having to airplay it from my iphone / ipad.

While the free TED talks would never be a reason to _subscribe_ to netflix in the first point, they do increase the value of the platform by providing ease of access.

It's nice when all of your content (free or paid) is available in one place.

<comment><USER8> Buy a Roku, Roku has a TED app.

<comment><USER9> Without search it is nearly impossible to use.

<comment><USER5> That may be true for the TED channel, but they claim a searchable interface for their Netflix channel: <http://www.roku.com/netflix-partner>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Really, I'm not this positive in my outlook. But I find it ironic -- if perhaps a bit naive -- to think that Hollywood's rampant, myopic self-interest might end up "forcing" the public into the arms of better quality content.

All those "History" and "How Things Work" and the like shows on cable have proven quite popular. (And "Mythbusters", with its enhanced entertainment factor.) Maybe not just Netflix, but aggregate culture, is onto something, here.

<comment><USER11> I don't think it's naive. Many people are getting fed up with the substandard crap that mostly comes from the studios anymore and are demanding something better. Hollywood does not have a monopoly on talent. Spend a little time on Vimeo and you can see that there are some terrific filmmakers and storytellers out there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is great. I've seen nearly all of them already but it should widen it up to a lot of people. It's really interesting to see what was exclusively web based content moving onto Netflix. Also netflix seems like the one of the least evil content delivery companies out there right now and I'm glad to see TED endorse them.

</comment><comment><USER13> Word on if this is American netflix only? This interests me a lot but I'm a foreign subscriber

<comment><USER14> They appeared for me in Canada yesterday.

This site[1] seems pretty reliable about finding new items as they're added to Netflix, and I find it easier than using Netflix's own "new" page. If you're in the US (I know you aren't, TheCapn, but it's good info), you can replace "can" in the URL with "us". I don't think there's a UK version (yet?).

[1] <http://can.whatsnewonnetflix.com/>

<comment><USER15> Thanks for the link AgentConundrum... that's definitely easier for sure.

It's just a shame that the Dirty Deeds movie that the site is linking to on IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes is another movie with the same name, that's apparently nowhere near as good as the actual one that is 'now available'. Well, I thought it was pretty good at least :)

<comment><USER14> Interestingly enough, I noticed the same thing regarding a movie called "Project X" recently. The cover (and Netflix link) were to a Matthew Broderick movie from the 80s, but the rest of the information shown was for a movie from last year with a 25% RT rating.

I sent an email to the guy behind the website telling him of the error and suggesting that maybe there need to be a few sanity checks (release year +/- 1, cast, etc.).

He responded pretty quickly, and lamented that the problems are due to the limited information he gets from Netflix Canada:

> _When I get new releases from Netflix, I actually don't even get the release > year, just the movie name, summary, and box art, and then I try to > extrapolate as much as I can from that. I usually just keep a close eye on > it and fix the errors as I see them._

His email did state that he's found another way to get more information, but that he's had to rewrite a lot of the site because of it. He's beta testing now, and hopefully it will be live relatively soon.

For now, I just try to be mindful of the limitations of the site, and if a movie looks vaguely interesting, I'll check it out on Netflix and/or directly on RT myself.

You've actually just accidentally save me from falling victim to this trap again, since I saw Dirty Deeds on the feed today, but dismissed it based on the extremely low RT rating. I guess even knowing about the problem doesn't always save you from being influenced by it. Either that, or it had a lot to do with looking when I got up at 7am today, and was still too groggy to think.

<comment><USER15> That's good to hear that he's working on a better solution. I had a really quick look and couldn't see a way to email him so I didn't bother.

To be honest I wouldn't have noticed either except for the fact that I remember seeing Dirty Deeds as new last night on the actual Netflix app and exclaimed "Awesome! I have to watch that again!", then started to second guess myself when I saw the rating...

Thanks again for the link, though: I'll use it more for the information than the ratings.

<comment><USER14> > _I had a really quick look and couldn't see a way to email him so I didn't > bother._

It's at the very bottom of the page, under all the ratings:

> _Questions / comments can be directed to email@example.com._

It's sort of a footnote, so it's probably easy to miss.

> _I'll use it more for the information than the ratings._

The ratings, from what I can tell, are correct more often than they're not. If the ratings look good, and you're interested in the movie, I'd say go for it.

A coworker once told me he doesn't pay attention to bad ratings anyway. He said that if a movie gets a good review, then it's probably at least worth watching because people were finding good things to say about it. If it gets negative reviews, it could just be that it wasn't what the reviewer was expecting or wasn't up to _their_ particular standards. Think of Watchmen: that movie was heavily advertised as an explosive action superhero movie, but those bits are a very brief tangent on an otherwise slow moving character study. It's a good movie, but a lot of people were probably pissed off when they saw it. Still more were probably pissed off because it didn't live up to the book in their minds.

Either way, I've been using that site since before the RT integration, and it was always useful. I check it every couple of days and add interesting things to my list/instant queue. It's nicer, to me, to have a textual list of new movies in chronological order than it is to have graphical listings by genre where new things get drown out by less recent, but still "newish" listings in the genre.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> _SQUEE_ I've been watching the TED Talks that are available via YouTube on my Xbox 360 lately. I could watch them all day long :)

</comment><comment><USER17> It is funny that Netflix doesn't seem to be serving up relevant content to me. Discovery is just not that good yet. Everytime I visit the site, I have to go digging. Maybe (and I'm hoping) its just this selection problem. I hope they add more (good) titles to streaming, and fix this discovery issue.

I wonder how much licensing fees factor into them hiding good content vs. playing it up to show that they are still relevant.

<comment><USER18> "Still relevant"? What is threatening Netflix right now? Hulu maybe, I guess. If you really like TV shows, and _paying_ to see ads.

I'm also an Amazon Prime member, but their streaming catalog is abysmal -- I mean, it borders on embarrassing. I check it every now and again when Amazon uses the home page to tell me all of the 'great' new content they've added, but going back to the Netflix comparison, by that benchmark, it doesn't even come close.

I've never run into an issue with them hiding content. I'm not sure to what you're referring. They didn't plaster Iron Man 2 all over the landing page when it became available?

You can more or less watch the views flood in on instantwatcher.com anytime a 'modern' movie is released on streaming. It shoots to the top right away, which makes me think that, for most people, finding the 'good' content is not an issue.

<comment><USER19> > What is threatening Netflix right now?

Hostile rights holders who are forcing their catalog to shrink. Continually whittling away the streaming catalog's value is Netflix's biggest problem, not competing services.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't get it...can't pretty much any device capable of running Netflix also run Youtube?

</comment><comment><USER21> I really, really want Netflix in Germany. What politician do I have to bribe?

<comment><USER22> <http://unblock-us.com> (ssshhhhh...)

:)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Been watching them for months on Roku... No subscription fee required.

<comment><USER24> I have tried to watch TED talks on my Roku, but the quality is terrible. Many of the videos (especially the older ones) freeze, cannot be rewound, and have audio sync problems. According to the Roku support forums, the TED channel is an unofficial hobby project maintained by a Roku engineer in his spare time. He says the video problems started after ted.com changed their video formats. He can't afford to pay for transcoding/serving of Roku-friendly videos.

<comment><USER25> Could you give me a link to the forum thread?

We now have an official channel on Roku: [http://blog.roku.com/blog/2012/02/28/get-inspired-with- the-o...](http://blog.roku.com/blog/2012/02/28/get-inspired-with-the-official- ted-channel-on-roku/) \- but I'm not sure if the quality is still terrible?

I'll test it out myself, but any feedback/steps to reproduce would be more than welcome.

<comment><USER24> Thanks for the link! I didn't know an official TED channel had been released.

Note that most of the comments on that Roku blog post describe the same audio sync and video freezing problems I experienced (and that have been reported in the Roku forums since early 2011).

Here is a (May 2011) Roku forum post from Dylan Doxey, the developer of the unofficial TED channel. And I was mistaken: he is neither a Roku nor TED employee.

[http://forums.roku.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=39328&st...](http://forums.roku.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=39328&start=15)

      The previous TED channel was based on the TED RSS feed and assumed that all the
      videos would be Roku compatible. Sadly, starting some time in April 2011 TED
      stopped publishing videos in Roku friendly encoding. After being flooded with
      support requests, the TED people contacted me and asked me to make it clear on
      the channel description that the TEDTalks Roku channel is not built or
      supported by TED. They also said, "We're working on the encoding issues that
      are causing the poor performance on Roku; this platform just wasn't on our
      radar when we built our encoder."*

      Just to be clear, TED is no longer publishing videos in a Roku friendly format.
      If some long period of time goes by, I may consider downloading the videos,
      re-encoding them, and re-hosting them. However, I'm not sure my humble server
      will support hosting video files for some 55K+ channel subscribers. The TED
      servers are much more capable of handling that kind of demand.*

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The whole talks, or the 10-minute dinguses they have on ted.com?</comment>


Firefox 4.0 (stable) available for download on Mozilla's FTP - <AUTHOR> http://www.webupd8.org/2011/03/firefox-4-stable-available-for-download.html

<comment><USER2> Every single time a new Firefox version is about to come out, someone jumps the gun and writes a blog post like this, linking directly to a single Mozilla FTP server. Usually, they're actually linking to a release candidate anyway, but as a matter of practice, you should use the links that Mozilla provides on the Firefox download page in order to take advantage of their system of mirrors (e.g., [http://www.mozilla.com/products/download.html?product=firefo...](http://www.mozilla.com/products/download.html?product=firefox-3.6.15&os=osx&lang=en- US)).

<comment><AUTHOR> These actually work:

OSX: [http://www.mozilla.com/products/download.html?product=firefo...](http://www.mozilla.com/products/download.html?product=firefox-4.0&os=osx&lang=en- US)

Win: [http://www.mozilla.com/products/download.html?product=firefo...](http://www.mozilla.com/products/download.html?product=firefox-4.0&os=win&lang=en- US)

Linux: [http://www.mozilla.com/products/download.html?product=firefo...](http://www.mozilla.com/products/download.html?product=firefox-4.0&os=linux&lang=en- US)

However, they're the same as RC2 (sha1sum confirms). Not uncommon though for Mozilla to release a RC as stable version without any modifications besides the version bump.

<comment><USER3> If the version was bumped, the sha1sum ought to be different no?

<comment><USER2> Once it hits RC stage, version bumps are in the filename only.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hi, I work for Mozilla. Firefox 4 will be released tomorrow, March 22 (Tuesday).

But you don't need to wait to download it - if you are running Firefox 4.0rc2, then you are running the exact bits that we plan to ship as 4.0 final. Download the RC from <http://firefox.com/rc>

<comment><USER5> It seems like a waste of bandwidth for it to have downloaded a 12MB (roughly) update just to change the version info. Are there any plans to implement a Chrome-like binary diffing update system, now that Mozilla is moving to more frequent releases?

<comment><USER4> If you are running RC2, you won't need to download _any_ update, because there is no version info to change. All the version numbers in the release candidates just say "4.0".

Mozilla already uses binary diffs for updates, and we already release security and stability updates about once a month.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for pointing that out - I was wondering about why I was seeing 4.0 since yesterday when it updated itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You should really wait until this hits their front page. The FF front page still has 3.6.15 as the latest.

<comment><USER8> I don't understand why we should wait. Why?

<comment><USER9> I think he was directing that statement more at the article poster saying that it is generally better to wait for a company to get everything in order and ready for an official release than to try to scoop it and post links to unrelated blogs that have further links to unofficial mirrors.

If you want to get a copy of Firefox 4 before tomorrow morning, I applaud and welcome you. You can download the RC2 which others have mentioned is identical to the final release, or you can use one of the links above to the mozilla website.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Time savers:

Mac (en-US): ftp://mozilla.fastbull.org//mozilla/firefox/releases/4.0/mac/en- US/Firefox%204.0.dmg

Win32 (en-US): ftp://mozilla.fastbull.org//mozilla/firefox/releases/4.0/win32/en- US/Firefox%20Setup%204.0.exe

Linux x86_64 (en-US): ftp://mozilla.fastbull.org//mozilla/firefox/releases/4.0/linux-x86_64/en- US/firefox-4.0.tar.bz2

Linux i686 (en-US): ftp://mozilla.fastbull.org//mozilla/firefox/releases/4.0/linux-i686/en- US/firefox-4.0.tar.bz2</comment>


Use Google+ to Improve Your UI - <AUTHOR> http://pixify.com/blog/use-google-plus-to-improve-your-ui/

<comment><USER2> One interesting difference: Google just uses <div> for their buttons instead of <a> tags or even <button>. They also don't set cursor: pointer (the hand) for them.

Any UI people want to comment on the best practice for cursor styles? I always figured pointer should be used for all buttons or links that have an action attached.

<comment><USER3> This is absolutely terrible for accessibility. Screen readers will not handle these buttons properly leading to a significantly more difficult experience. James Edwards actually talked about this at The Highland Fling conference a few weeks back.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point on accessibility. Anyone have links to making your UI accessible (including buttons)?

<comment><USER4> Here's a pretty good introduction on ARIA which is what Google uses to make their web sites accessible: <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/scriptjunkie/ff743762>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> These look good to me (apart from the previously mentioned issue of not actually using <a> tags or similar), but where's the license on these? Neither the site nor the download includes any license information.

</comment><comment><USER6> almost identical to the particletree buttons from almost 4(!) years ago [http://particletree.com/features/rediscovering-the-button- el...](http://particletree.com/features/rediscovering-the-button-element/)

<comment><USER7> I like the buttons described there. They were also rolled into blueprint css as the 'buttons' plugin.

[https://github.com/joshuaclayton/blueprint- css/tree/master/b...](https://github.com/joshuaclayton/blueprint- css/tree/master/blueprint/plugins/buttons)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Well done. Backpacking an existing fad to get visibility from early adopters on your project. Case study in excellent blog-marketing.

Thanks for the buttons too~

</comment><comment><USER9> No, no, no! Please don't let GMail and G+'s new look become a new fad. The white space around every element is very wasteful and obnoxious. Not everyone has huge resolutions and those that do don't appreciate having to scroll several times just to see past the first 4 or 5 entries in a list view.

<comment><USER10> I like the "flatter" UI design overall, but I agree on the whitespace. Especially in Gmail. I wouldn't mind a flatter phase going through The Internets, as I think it's less distracting, but I entirely agree. Less wasteful display of data, please.

I would be interested in any info people may have as to whether such a large amount of whitespace does or does not improve user's understanding/use of sites. I like dense displays, but I'm also willing to learn how to use more powerful tools, as I value the efficiency.

<comment><USER11> Yes the extra whitespace in gmail is good. Just read TuFte's book on ink-to- information ratio. Good stuff

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It looks pretty nice but the use of background gradients is inconsistent. The buttons with a background image have no gradient but the other buttons do.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice catch. Know of an easy workaround to this?

<comment><USER2> You can use multiple backgrounds in CSS3: [http://snook.ca/archives/html_and_css/multiple-bg-css- gradie...](http://snook.ca/archives/html_and_css/multiple-bg-css-gradients)

Lots of details here and some catches to look out for (mostly browser support).

<comment><USER13> Warning: Multiple backgrounds can lead to LOTS of waste in the CSS (defining gradients over and over) if you aren't using sprites for those icons (and setting all of them at once).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is it me, or does this theme look similar to jQueryUI?

<comment><USER15> Reminded me of the aristo theme which I quite like <https://github.com/banzor/Aristo-jQuery-UI-Theme>

<comment><USER16> C'mon, at least link back to the original ;)

<https://github.com/taitems/Aristo-jQuery-UI-Theme>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> For the love of god people, please stop using the Silk icon set. It's had a good run and it's time to retire it.

</comment><comment><USER17> Just wanted to say thanks for providing this - it's already been helpful</comment>


How likely is it that Google Glass ends up like Google Wave (i.e., canceled)? - <AUTHOR> http://news.dice.com/2014/10/27/google-glass-dying/

<comment><USER2> It has been mentioned on HN before that there is a strong chance that Google Glass will become Enterprise only or die. I lean that way, as it seems like all of the new pushes with Glass are for enterprise-ish projects like integrating it into UCI med school [http://news.uci.edu/press-releases/uci- school-of-medicine-fi...](http://news.uci.edu/press-releases/uci-school-of- medicine-first-to-integrate-google-glass-into-curriculum/)

Also, contrary to the reactions about Google Glass, most of the personal smart watch reactions have been pretty positive. Unlike Glass which brought up a bunch of "Ew I'm not wearing that" reactions, the Moto 360's complaints are things like "I wish the battery was longer" or "I hate that it tells me to get off my butt and walk" or "The connection to the charger is a bit frail"

</comment><comment><USER3> Honestly, the price for Glass is too high for people who could potentially actually make good use of the product. Get it down to the cost of the frame + maybe a Chromecast or even figure out how to make it adapt to any frame and then your average person will figure out something to do with it.

Maybe.

It could also be a product in search of an actual problem.</comment>


Ask HN: What should I bring to Startup Weekeend? - <AUTHOR>

The Startup Weekend site recommends "laptop, power cord, business cards, camera, a second monitor, keyboard, and lots of creative energy!"<p>What else? <comment><USER2> caffeine + pencil and paper to do quick sketches, model the db, architecture, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> excellent points. and post-it notes and a bunch of pens too.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should a startup own its data or be a layer on top of third-party data - <AUTHOR>

I'm asking myself if a startup should own its data (text/pictures/videos) or use data from third-party like twitter/fb/flickr/etc and act as a layer on top of those services.
A lot of people are telling me that it's near impossible to grow a user base when you want your user to post a subset of the data they usually post on mainstream social network.
What do you think? <comment><USER2> Data is worth money. Anyone can build features using data. Data is worth money.

Data is worth money.

Data is worth money.

We are in the age of information, not the age of pretty UIs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Pretty UIs can be copied... big user base and data can't!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Keep in mind there can be a middle way. You can build on top of other people's data using your propietary algorithms, to generate even more valuable data. Example: SEMRush - they scape keyword data to build a data on keywords your competitor is ranking for.

</comment><comment><USER4> Your value is in the verbs (designs, code, insights, user relationships, partner relationships). Nouns (data) are interchangeable, flowing, always changing. Invest in the verbs.</comment>


Why I'm Leaving Google Hangouts - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/duncan-bayne/duncan-bayne.github.com/wiki/Why-I%27m-leaving-Google-Hangouts

<comment><USER2> Hi Duncan - another option is matrix.org - we're similar to XMPP although at the same time different: Matrix is effectively an eventually consistent DB with open federation and pubsub semantics - it's all about synchronising state, whereas XMPP is about federated messaging - sending stanzas around rather than synchronising conversation history.

In fact in Matrix we don't even have the concept of sending a message over federation - the only thing you can do is to synchronise the history datastructure.

We don't see Matrix as undermining XMPP: if you want decentralised conversation history then use Matrix. If you want fast stateless message passing, use XMPP. Infact, we're building an XMPP<->Matrix bridge, so that XMPP can federate with Matrix - so it's not like we're fragmenting things further. The point for Matrix is to try to _defragment_ all the different protocols out there.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've updated the getting started link to [https://xmpp.net/directory.php](https://xmpp.net/directory.php) after feedback from Lloyd Watkin ( [https://github.com/lloydwatkin](https://github.com/lloydwatkin) ) and intosi ( [https://github.com/intosi](https://github.com/intosi) ).

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't see any mention of any Hangouts or XMPP issues over at [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google).

</comment><comment><USER4> LOL, best to program and host stuff yourself than rely on an ad agency like Google.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a middle road, though: pay for a service that uses open protocols. That way a) you're not the product, b) you can interop with other open services, and c) you can migrate in the case of failures.

That's why I'm with Fastmail :)</comment></comment>


Design legend Milton Glaser: "Design has nothing to do with art" - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/823204/graphic-design-legend-milton-glaser-dispels-a-universal-misunderstanding-of-design-and-art/ <comment><USER2> This is very anachronistic and factually untrue. Design has only been a commercialized and institutionalized occupation for the later part of the modern era. Before then the roles were reversed. Art before then was always the heavily institutionalized and rigid practice. An artist studio during the renaissance was more akin to a factory with highly educated staff churning out stylized and "functional" artwork for church and state. This all changed in the 18th and 19th centuries when the artist became more associated with bohemian life and the mode of production and the art market changed (became more privatized and merchantilism expanded). Design and architecture on the other hand changed from something that lowly "craftsmen" and random educated people engaged in on a hobby basis into a regulated industry. This processes got crystallized with the ideals of modernism and functionalism in the early 20th century. Ideas which prevail to this day.

</comment><comment><USER3> I love that this article thinks the oracle has spoken, even though qualified designers disagree with Glaser.

From Design as Art by Bruno Munari:

> The designer of today re-establishes the long-lost contact between art and > the public, between living people and art as a living things. Instead of > pictures for the drawing-room, electric gadgets for the kitchen. There > should be no such thing as art divorced from life, with beautiful things to > look at and hideous things to use.

Even Glaser's own office on 32nd street says "Art is Work" above the door! I thought he was a "Graphic design legend"?

</comment><comment><USER4> Design is about solving problems in a particular medium.

It's staggering the number of young graphic designer divas out there that believe are making art.

<comment><USER5> But what about the aesthetic part ?

<comment><USER4> What about it?

Aesthetics are part of the problem that needs to be solved.

<comment><USER5> People are quoting Jobs, hinting that design means "mechanics" (in an abstract sense) rather than looks. But, as a kid first, looks was most of what design meant for me, and even today, after graduating, it's still a very special part of anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> True enough. True enough in that many designers need to toss off their pretensions and embrace the idea that they are problem solvers first and foremost. And design, whether for ads, product, or UI/UX, is not some dream career where you get to have have a steady paycheck while maintaining the creative freedom of a studio artist. If most people find your design difficult to use, or it causes them visual discomfort, then it is a failure and it needs to be re-thought. Design is somewhat subjective, but not that subjective.

(By all means, maintain an artistic practice. I do. Just don't make me, as your boss, pretend that you are Rothko when you're at work.)

</comment><comment><USER7> "Design is not art" in a sense that while design tries to sell a product, art sells just itself. Fine.

However, it's a very broad generalization that can be easily proven wrong. A great design sells both the product and itself. Some Jaguar models come to mind, or the Eiffel Tower as another example. If you think the Eiffel Tower is not functional, I have another one for you: The Shard in London, one of my favorite buildings, is more of a work of art than just a skyscraper.

Design should be functional, but it doesn't mean it shouldn't be a work of art if it sells well.

</comment><comment><USER8> Glaser says that you become clearer about the distinction between design and art as you get older. Fair enough, but this doesn't mean you are getting a clearer view of some fundamental ontological difference between the two. It's just a commonplace empirical observation that the activities/industries are different.

Can an object be both design and art? Definitely. Is art definitively identified by being purposeless? Not really.

The old name for graphic design was, after all, "commercial art."

</comment><comment><USER9> > "In businesses, schools, offices, even newspapers, design is often > associated with the art department. That's a fundamental misunderstanding of > the aim of design."

True.

> "When art and design are confused, the designers' domain becomes limited to > style and appearance."

But then constraining art to style and appearance is also a misunderstanding of the aim of art... Coming from a designer of his caliber, it is unlikely he meant to say that. All the same, words like "art" or "design" don't have fixed definitions.

</comment><comment><USER10> Artists that work commercially design. You think Pixar isn't making designed products? Or Nintendo? Or every act on the Billboard charts?

Yes, art made off the cuff does happen, and it's a great way to engage yourself creatively, and sometimes you have some great happy accidents. But anything more structured involves oodles of design work.

Edit: And yeah, this is probably most aimed at (graphic) designers who want to excuse themselves from designing. But it points the finger in the wrong direction.

</comment><comment><USER11> I am no Apple fan but Steve Jobs had it - design is how it works.

</comment><comment><USER12> Art asks questions, design provides answers.

</comment><comment><USER13> What a great article. /s</comment>


The Inappropriately Excluded - <AUTHOR> http://polymatharchives.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-inappropriately-excluded.html?m=1 <comment><USER2> I make no comment about the "science", but it certainly does jive with reality.

Outperform joe average in an intellectual pursuit, and he'll pat you on the back. Outperform the middle of the pack in the gifted class--people who've built their entire identity around being "smart"\--and my God! watch the knives come out!

</comment><comment><USER3> Garbage. See my comments there: it's bad math, and worse research. No longitudinal study like Terman or SMPY ([https://www.gwern.net/SMPY](https://www.gwern.net/SMPY)) of high-IQ types has ever supported his claims. High IQ is an (unearned) privilege and a huge advantage for things like going to Harvard Medical. As Murray puts it, "life is yours to lose". (So what does that say about people with high IQ who gravitate to Mensa or blog posts like this to complain about their failures in life...?)

<comment><USER2> I'd take a step back here. With phrases like "garbage" and "(unearned) privilege", this has obviously pushed a more personal button than poor methodology.

I just know from the (admittedly) small sample I am familiar with, it lines up perfectly.

The middle-of-the-roaders all became attorneys, executives, top bureaucrats, etc--precisely as foretold. The outliers--the ones who could still clean everyone's clock while hung over and half asleep--all ended up in markedly less glamorous circumstances: secretaries, clerks, pot-head househusbands, librarians, gigolos, and the perpetually unemployed. I'm not sure I'd call it a tragedy though. They all seem happy enough where they are.

edit: I grew up pre-internet. Post-internet, this may be a moot crisis. With all of the opportunities it has to offer for independent study, perhaps those secretaries and clerks would have become scientists and mathematicians?

<comment><USER3> It pushes a personal button because the sheer intellectual dishonesty in service of poisonous self-pitying disgusts me. That the mathematical flim- flammery is so obvious (ah yes, let's just assume that every subset of a normal distribution is also a normal distribution, that definitely makes sense...) and so blatantly assumes its conclusion just makes it even more offending.

> I just know from the (admittedly) small sample I am familiar with, it lines > up perfectly.

That's too bad, because it's wrong. For example, the SMPYers, all of whom are almost certainly smarter than even those who could 'clean everyone's clock', are enormously successful, and the ones who could clean the other SMPYers' clocks are even more successful. This is all pre-Internet, too.

<comment><USER2> I could understand getting that worked-up over a science with some kind of objective basis, but this is psychology we're talking about! Might as well get mad at a Tarot reader for pulling the cards in the wrong order.

That, and SMPY isn't a particularly compelling example. 1972-1997 is prime- time for computing, megacorporations, cold war military-industrial complex, and college educations all-around. Hard to imagine a more provident time to be a mathematically precocious youth! Looking at this in a broader slice of history, a comparison to the lives of men like Ramanujan or Heaviside would be more fitting.

Perhaps the " _Inappropriately Excluded_ " from the article just haven't lucked into their own personal force-multiplier yet. Gates and Buffet were having some discussion on how well they would have fared under more primitive circumstances. Gates's answer was something along the lines of " _lion food_ ". I think that is a fair answer.

edit:

> " _sheer intellectual dishonesty in service of poisonous self-pitying_ "

If this article set you off, I can only imagine how you deal with politics. ;-)

<comment><USER3> > That, and SMPY isn't a particularly compelling example. 1972-1997 is prime- > time for computing, megacorporations, cold war military-industrial complex, > and college educations all-around. Hard to imagine a more provident time to > be a mathematically precocious youth! Looking at this in a broader slice of > history, a comparison to the lives of men like Ramanujan or Heaviside would > be more fitting.

SMPY covers the same time period as much of the anecdotal or self-selected evidence he invokes. What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>