TechCrunch messes up the math on sexism - <AUTHOR> http://crazybear.posterous.com/techcrunch-messes-up-the-math-on-sexism

<comment><USER2> The lengths to which this article goes to construct a model sympathetic to the author's views are incredible. It takes data showing a greater variance among males than females:

\- in mathematical ability

\- among schoolchildren

\- on a standardized test

and generalizes them to:

\- many different types of abilities

\- among the Y Combinator applicant pool

\- on the Y Combinator application process

Not only that, but by its end, the article is postulating a model in which literally one in a million people have sufficient aptitude to be accepted by Y Combinator - whether they're interested in it or not!

Even if you grant the author all of those assumptions, plus the risk aversion thing, you're only down to 13% women, three times what TechCrunch says Y Combinator actually accepts. I guess you could add another independent 99.9th percentile ability requirement, but then you're talking about one in a _billion_ people being Y Combinator worthy. Or you could try to find a different, more tilted risk aversion statistic -- but at that point I think we'd be cherry-picking citations to fit a conclusion.

So, sure, if you accept a whole raft of dubious assumptions, you can explain the 4% acceptance rate by aptitude alone. But enough dubious assumptions can explain almost anything.

<comment><AUTHOR> _Not only that, but by its end, the article is postulating a model in which literally one in a million people have sufficient aptitude to be accepted by Y Combinator - whether they're interested in it or not!_

Why do you feel this is unreasonable? Do you think there is some huge pool of people good enough for YC who just don't get in? Maybe the true numbers are 1 in 100,000, but I'd be surprised if they are much higher than that.

In any case, I'm not attempting to claim my assumptions are correct. The only point I'm making is that small differences in underlying probability distributions can have large effects in the composition of people accepted into a _highly selective_ program.

I.e., Eric Ries is making the fallacy of the excluded middle: "either aptitude/preference differences are huge, or else they don't explain much." This is simply mathematically incorrect.

<comment><USER3> I thought you had a point. Professional basketball comes to mind, where it's incredibly unusual for someone to be of "normal" height. A height difference gives you an advantage which I suspect creates a positive feedback loop (advantage leads to more enjoyment, which leads to more practice...etc) and remains a significant factor even when all other things are equal (like innate talent).

<comment><USER2> _advantage leads to more enjoyment, which leads to more practice...etc_

I actually agree with you here. This is why I think things like sexist/marginalizing presentations at conferences are a big deal: a hostile environment seems to me a lot more likely to achieve this than possible differences at the bare fringe of the aptitude spectrum.

<comment><USER3> FWIW: I'm female and I'm very aware of the chill effect when, say, in an online forum some guy says something hostile about women/a woman and gets a group high five out of it (massively upvoted and that kind of thing). In such cases, it is not uncommon for me to feel like saying something like "there's some truth to that but there's another side to that story as well" only it's obvious that the other side is not welcome information and trying to present it won't accomplish anything constructive. In other words, I am keenly aware that if it were a neutral, not emotionally charged discussion, I have additional information which might cast light on the subject for the guys and might even be helpful to them but there is no hope of being heard, so I keep my mouth shut rather than borrow trouble. And I'm a rather loud mouthed brassy broad, so I'm sure the chill effect has an even stronger ability to keep your typical woman quiet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would think that math aptitude has very little to do with developing great products and companies, so I don't understand this argument. It doesn't even have much to do with many types of programming.

<comment><USER5> Whether it's math aptitude or an aptitude in some other tangentially related field, I think the idea is that men in general tend to have more variance in their distribution, though the mean ends up being about the same.

"Small differences in the distributions of men and women don't allow you to predict much about any individual trait of a randomly selected individual. But when you limit yourself to the far tails of probability distributions, they do. "

So, he's saying that by being more selective for a field that men have greater variance in, you're more likely to find more men at the far tails.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure if this article is trying to say that those small differences account for the differences between the percentage of men and women in YC, or if it's just disproving the mathematical aspect of the TechCrunch article.

I'm not saying either of those articles is right, but clearly none have shown why that difference exist.

</comment><comment><USER3> Does anyone know the two following stats:

What percentage of _applicants_ to YC are female?

Acceptance rate in terms of applicant pool for each gender? (ie "10% of all male applicants are accepted vs 14% of all female applicants" -- and I chose to skew it that way intentionally because I am betting if there is a gender based selection bias it is probably in that direction)

These statistical analyses are meaningless outside of that context. If it just so happens that only 4% of the applicants are female, then why should the gender balance of final selections be any different from that?</comment>


Paul Graham On Two Kinds of Programmers and Painters - <AUTHOR> http://cycle-gap.blogspot.com/2009/08/paul-graham-on-two-kinds-of-programmers.html <comment><USER2> Maciej Ceglowski, who is posting in this thread but evidently too modest to blow his own trumpet, wrote what seems like the definitive response to Paul Graham On Painting back in 2005: <http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm> .

<comment><USER3> I never bothered to refute that at the time, but as a matter of fact practically everything he says there is mistaken. E.g. that no one painted alla prima till recent times, when arguably the most famous exponent of this style is Franz Hals, who worked in the early 1600s.

It's a strange situation. If someone writes an essay attacking you, you either have to respond, in which case you're letting someone else pick your topics, or you have to ignore it, in which case people who don't know any better may be convinced by it.

Though I'm not willing to use up an essay to refute someone, I will in a comment thread:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=984217>

One thing I still wonder about is whether this guy actually believes what's he's saying, or whether he's deliberately trolling. He seems reasonably smart. How could he not have heard of Franz Hals? On the other hand, who would try to keep a troll going for 4 years?

<comment><USER4> Frans Hals is actually my favorite painter, so if people take nothing else away from this thread, I would urge them to go check that shit out.

The exact quote I was responding to in my essay:

"When oil paint replaced tempera in the fifteenth century, it helped painters to deal with difficult subjects like the human figure because, unlike tempera, oil can be blended and overpainted."

In support of which you now cite... Frans Hals, a sui generis painter who worked _two hundred years_ later. I'm surprised you chose him over El Greco, who at least is within two centuries of the time period under discussion.

It's been entertaining watching you try to walk your various misstatements about art history back in this thread, but I am somewhat surprised by this habit of calling people who poke holes in your writing "trolls", given that you are the author of a celebrated taxonomy of online argument that places name-callers among the lowest of the low.

Weenis.

<comment><USER3> Actually Franz Hals was my counterexample to your statement that no one painted alla prima till the 19th century. There are lots of others I could have picked (Fragonard for example) but I figured the most famous example of the style would do.

My support for the statement that oil paint allowed painters to blend and overpaint is the example I gave earlier:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentimento>

[http://www.escholarship.org/editions/data/13030/d9/ft1d5nb0d...](http://www.escholarship.org/editions/data/13030/d9/ft1d5nb0d9/figures/ft1d5nb0d9_00061.jpg)

Van Eyck, who was such an early user of oil paint that for much of history he was considered the inventor of oil painting, is also one of the standard examples of overpainting to correct mistakes. How much more conclusive evidence could one want?

<comment><USER4> In your essay, you implied that people were painting _alla prima_ during the Renaissance, that Renaissance painters would start from a rough sketch directly from the canvas, and that they could repeatedly rework parts of the picture.

You can link every Dutch master you want without making your argument any less bogus.

Here's what I actually wrote:

"The allusion a sketchy, iterative style of painting that used to be called "alla prima", where you block shapes in in oil paint and then swoosh them around the composition as the painting progresses, perhaps repainting entire sections of the picture. This is the way Graham and I were taught to paint, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with painting in the fifteenth century."

If you want to refute me, show me the Renaissance master who painted directly onto a blank canvas, starting with a "blurry sketch" and iteratively refining it into a finished work, like Hals, or Manet, or Rubens, or Bob Ross, rather than working with underdrawings and thin glazes of color.

You can't, because no one painted like that then. But talking about painstaking preliminary design and a sequential, pretty rigid method would have been inconvenient for the purposes of your essay.

<comment><USER3> _In your essay, you implied that people were painting alla prima during the Renaissance, that Renaissance painters would start from a rough sketch directly from the canvas, and that they could repeatedly rework parts of the picture._

Let's check. These two paragraphs are everything I've written about the use of oil paint in the fifteenth century:

        It helps to have a medium that makes change easy.
        When oil paint replaced tempera in the fifteenth
        century, it helped painters to deal with difficult
        subjects like the human figure because, unlike tempera,
        oil can be blended and overpainted. (Taste for Makers)

        What made oil paint so exciting, when it first
        became popular in the fifteenth century, was that
        you could actually make the finished work from the
        prototype. You could make a preliminary drawing if
        you wanted to, but you weren't held to it; you could
        work out all the details, and even make major changes,
        as you finished the painting. (Design and Research)

These are pretty uncontroversial statements. Neither implies that artists started painting whole paintings alla prima from day 1. They say oil allowed artists to work out details and make changes after they'd started. And here is van Eyck doing that ca. 1430:

[http://www.escholarship.org/editions/data/13030/d9/ft1d5nb0d...](http://www.escholarship.org/editions/data/13030/d9/ft1d5nb0d9/figures/ft1d5nb0d9_00061.jpg)

I didn't (obviously) use Franz Hals to support my statements about the use of oil paint in the fifteenth century, since he worked in the seventeenth. I gave Hals as a counterexample to this claim by you:

        This is not how people painted with oil until the
        19th century.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Cézanne could not draw, he makes the same drawing mistakes that every one makes in introductory drawing classes." This is not the case. Cézanne could draw exceedingly well. Drawing != photographic representation.

<comment><USER3> Obviously in this context I'm talking about drawing in the sense of rendering.

<comment><USER6> That doesn't make your statement any less false. It might suit your metaphor for that to be the case, but facts are stubborn things dude. Pretty good rendering here <http://www.greatmodernpictures.com/drawinggal15lg.jpg>

What about this one? Look like someone making mistakes in introductory drawing class to you? [http://www.art- wallpaper.com/4056/C%C3%A9zanne+Paul/Sketch+a...](http://www.art- wallpaper.com/4056/C%C3%A9zanne+Paul/Sketch+after+Pigalles+Love+and+Friendship-1024x768-4056.jpg)

How about this? Beginner rendering perhaps? [http://amica.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/AMICO~1~1~3...](http://amica.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/AMICO~1~1~35400~99964:Sketch- of-Anatomical-Sculpture-- rec?sort=INITIALSORT_CRN%2COCS%2CAMICOID&qvq=q:AMICOID=CMA_.1958.14.a+;sort:INITIALSORT_CRN,OCS,AMICOID;lc:AMICO~1~1&mi=0&trs=1)

The problem is you can't quite bring yourself to admit that you picked a really bad example. You wanted someone who's technical deficiencies were made up for by their conceptual skill, and you chose someone who could draft their ass off and also had an incredible ability to choose fantastic things to produce.

<comment><USER7> I think he means things like this:

[http://www.navigo.com/wm/paint/auth/cezanne/sl/cezanne.coin-...](http://www.navigo.com/wm/paint/auth/cezanne/sl/cezanne.coin- table.jpg)

The color is wonderful, the objects are wonderful, but they are hovering above the table and the fruit on the platter is painted like it's going to roll out. The perspective isn't right either.

Does anyone else feel uneasy if they see a painting with wrong perspective? It totally destroys the beauty for me.

<comment><USER8> You need to understand that this is entirely a subjective opinion. There are forms of art where accuracy is prized, but in any kind of modern art, any rule can be broken if the result is interesting.

Are you saying you like none of Picasso's later work? Or even Dalí's?

<comment><USER7> There is no way to judge art other than by subjective opinion.

> There are forms of art where accuracy is prized, but in any kind of modern > art, any rule can be broken if the result is interesting. > Are you saying > you like none of Picasso's later work? Or even Dalí's?

I do like Picasso's and Dali's work and also Cezanne's work. I even like the picture I linked to. But this is the key part:

> if the result is interesting.

I don't see how the wrong perspective and tilted platter add to the appeal of the painting. It seems to be an accident.

<comment><USER8> Fair enough.

Certainly for me, a tilted bowl of fruit that defies logic is more interesting than a boring bowl of fruit. It still doesn't fascinate me _incredibly_ , but it at least adds something worth thinking about. I'm not that well-versed in painting, however, so perhaps somebody more enthusiastic than I can explain to both of us what makes Cezanne so awesome?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _He was terribly frustrated he was like this guy who had all kinds of ideas, but he couldn't articulate them with his hand._

I've experienced this. Since several years ago I've had tons of idea's for startups I'd like to create. Problem was, I had a business/finance/network engineer background and had no way of actually building anything. It's extremely difficult being stuck like that. Ambitions are polluted by your own limitations.

Three years ago a few close friends and I decided to develop a video game using XNA for Xbox 360. We were three programmers, two artists, and myself who handled game design (not a coder). It was a simple game. Basically, you were a guy on a board with a bat and would melee with others, trying to knock them off the board. It was sorta like Nintendo Hockey crossed with Super Smash Brothers in a top-down 2D view. Long story short, the programmers lost interest and the project died after two years of part-time work. The two artists and I were more or less helpless in trying to finish the game, so we had to abandon it.

This was a year ago and I was frustrated. I came to the realization that in order to build something, you need to have the idea, and you need to have a means of building it. So I ordered a bunch of books and started to teach myself how to program. Thats enabled me to work on a new startup.

Now I can see things much clearer having the ability to write code. That frustration of not being able to build your ideas, or having their destiny out of your control, is completely gone. It's empowering. This quote really rings true to me now:

 _The best programmers are the ones that combine in one head both the ability to translate ideas into code and having the ideas. Just like the best artists have both the ability ... (have) a great hand._

</comment><comment><USER10> cmon pg, your interpretation of Cezanne is like Caravaggio talkin about Lisp.

<comment><USER3> Can you give an example of something I said that you think is false? Or is this just a sort of reverse argument from authority?

<comment><USER4> False statements you have made about art:

"The paintings made between 1430 and 1500 are still unsurpassed." (easy refutation - go to sistine chapel, look up).

"What made oil paint so exciting, when it first became popular in the fifteenth century, was that you could actually make the finished work from the prototype."

This is not how people painted with oil until the 19th century. It was a very expensive medium requiring careful preparatory work, sketches, and so on.

"Most painters start with a blurry sketch and gradually refine it." - completely unsupported.

"Line drawings are in fact the most difficult visual medium" - yes, carving marble is much easier.

"When oil paint replaced tempera in the fifteenth century, it helped painters to deal with difficult subjects like the human figure because, unlike tempera, oil can be blended and overpainted." - again, this is how oil paint was used much later. At the time it was painted in thin, transparent layers that did not allow the kind of reworking you learned four hundred years later in art class.

And now we have 'Cézanne can't draw" to add to the list.

Many of your other statements about art fall more in the 'not even wrong' category - fatuous generalizations based on your own tastes, but presented as deep insights about the world.

So it is a little disingenuous of you to keep asking for people to point to specific places where you are wrong. The wrong is diffusely and uniformly distributed.

<comment><USER3> Actually you're mistaken in all 6 cases:

1\. _easy refutation - go to sistine chapel, look up_

You're claiming that the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is better (not just as good, but better) than everything Leonardo and Bellini ever painted. The number of art historians who'd agree with that statement is zero.

2\. _This is not how people painted with oil until the 19th century._

[http://static.squidoo.com/resize/squidoo_images/-1/draft_len...](http://static.squidoo.com/resize/squidoo_images/-1/draft_lens2016901module10642403photo_1217059430hals- malle-babbe-detail_.jpg)

3\. _completely unsupported._

Your counterclaim is likewise completely unsupported. But anyone who wants to settle the matter can choose any "how to paint" type book published in the 20th century, and they'll see that was considered the default technique.

4\. _carving marble is much easier_

Carving marble requires more specialized training, but the kind of difficulty I was talking about was how critically viewers judge the result. They are tough on sculpture too, but I think they are as tough on line drawing. The less there is, the more closely it's examined.

5\. _At the time it was painted in thin, transparent layers that did not allow the kind of reworking_

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentimento>

[http://www.escholarship.org/editions/data/13030/d9/ft1d5nb0d...](http://www.escholarship.org/editions/data/13030/d9/ft1d5nb0d9/figures/ft1d5nb0d9_00061.jpg)

6\. If you want to offer any actual counterargument about Cezanne's drawing, feel free.

<comment><USER4> Wow, you really want to do this?

2 - I like Frans Hals too!

3 - Yes, that's how painting is taught now, to the kind of people who read 'how to paint' books.

4 - Nice weaseling.

5 - Notice how those carefully fixed errors show _fully-drawn_ hands, feet, etc., rather than a cloud of "rough drafts" like you would see in a painting done in the modern style? Another nice demonstration of the point that oil painting was not a fluid, iterative medium in its first few hundred years.

6\. Try one of the numerous image links in the thread.

As for 1, Aaron Swartz sent us both this quote the first time you and I had this argument, and I'm surprised you've forgotten it. It's from Graham Larkin, curator of the National Gallery of Canada, whom he asked to adjudicate your claim:

""By even the most conservative standards (which your buddy seem to be applying), you'd need to go at least a few decades further, into the High Renaissance. Julius II's didn't even start commissioning Michelangelo's Sistine Ceiling and Raphael's Vatican Stanze (School of Athens &c) didn't start until 1508. These works don't exactly represent a decline, except by Preraphealite standards which would judge them as over-sophisitcated and lacking in primitive simplicity.

(That's IT: your friend's a Preraphaelite! Well history is not on his or her side; such Victorian predilections are a mere blip in the history of Western aesthetics.) The generation after the giant Raphael (and the giant Durer in the North) is a much better candidate for cultural and artistic decline--a story complicated by Michaelangelo's inconvenient longevity. Historians have often pointed to the 1527 Sack of Rome as a downturn in artistic ferment, or at least in the unparalleled ascendancy of Italy. I would add that Western painting of around 1500 can scarcely be separated from the other visual arts, including the still-young (to the West) technology of print, brought to incredible levels of sophistication by Durer and others in precisely the post-1500 decades. One wonders whether your friend meant "1500" or "like, 1500.""

Of course, Dr. Larkin gets one thing wrong. You're not a pre-Raphaelite, you're just a big ole weenis.

<comment><USER11> Weenis? Really?

From what I can tell, Mr. Graham, at best, might be wrong about a handful of (evidently fuzzy) facts about painting. I do not see the logical bridge from that to his status as "big ole weenis." That's disappointingly puerile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think it's important to recognize that the creativity/implementation distinction isn't going to be universal across all your skills, even within something as seemingly specific as programming or drawing. Maybe you have an easy time reasoning about mutable data structures, or maybe you are particularly able at capturing light and shadow. If you can recognize which things are strengths and deliberately extend _all_ of the things you are good at into an overall creative vision - a cumulation of your ability that takes those strengths to the "next level" - then you'll go a lot farther than you will just trying to shore up the weaknesses.

(That said, you can become good at just about anything with carefully cultivated passion and a dash of smarts.)

</comment><comment><USER13> seems to me that, if this makes any sense, the interesting question is: why can't you have both?

given that selection for "great art" is over a large number of people, why can't you find someone that is gifted in both areas?

perhaps one somehow counteracts the other (for example, you are praised for "mechanical skills" and so never learn "abstract thinking")?

or perhaps the market values the combination of "poor mechanical skills" with "great abstract skills" because it places the latter in strong relief?

or perhaps you do get people who are both (gerhard richter is the best example i can think of), but that's not enough to meet demand? (or meet fashion?)

or perhaps the numbers just don't work out - the population is just large enough for one or the other, but not both?

or, finally, perhaps the whole basis of the post is, in fact, false?

<comment><USER8> Yeah, Paul is talking up his ass.

Afraid I don't know enough about programmers or painters to spout names, but in any other artistic medium you've got a mix of all types. I'll use film as my example because film's a medium in which you have a hundred people working together, and very elaborate roles evolved to let people do exactly what they want to do.

Some directors function as merely directors. They decide what they like, and they have other people execute. But other directors _can_ and _do_ insist on controlling other parts of the creative process. I'm not a fan of James Cameron, but the guy writes, directs, and edits his movies, and he's very involved in set design as well. Some props he insists on making himself because he doesn't trust anybody else to do it right. So there's a guy who knows _what_ he wants to do, and is also capable of the incredible technical feats required to pull it off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Of course, in reality, most people aren't exactly these two extremes, great implementer and great innovator. Everyone has both traits in different amounts, and if you have a functioning team, they can be split up unevenly.

In this way of looking at things, I'll freely admit to being more of an implementer. If someone asks for what they want, I'll do my best to make the software do it in a way that's efficient and delights the user.

Given vague instructions, I'll do my best, but with mixed results.

But when I team up with someone who always has new ideas - I can actually sort through them, figure out which ones will work, which ones will meet the goals, and synthesize them into great product. Most people can't do that with their own ideas.

I think the original quote - and it's short, not a full essay, so this criticism is mildly unfair - elevates the innovator too much over the implementer. When in reality, you win when you have both, that know their own strengths and limitations, and are grateful for the other. I produce better work when I pair up with an innovator, and so does he or she. And the two of us will dominate over a dual-innovator team.

Also, realize implicitly in everything Paul Graham says, you can add the words, "For a startup technology company." That's what he knows, that's what he values. There's a lot of work out there that needs implementers, and innovators would be frustrated, unsuccessful, and miserable at. Don't feel threatened if you're not Paul Graham's Ideal Entrepreneur/Programmer. I'm not. I'll never be extremely rich, most likely, but I'm happy, good at my job, valued by my company. I say this because opinions like this caused me a _lot_ of self doubt in my early twenties, and they turned out to not be the accurate predictor of DOOM that I feared. If you're smart, and willing to do a good day's work, success is out there - not at a company run by someone like Graham, but he wouldn't have success at a company for you either.

</comment><comment><USER15> I posit the transcriber interpreted Cézanne phonetically.

</comment><comment><USER16> > When you put the stuff on the wall in a room full of other paintings, it > looks like there's a spotlight shining on his paintings and other ones have > been sprayed with a light coating of mud.

What is this due to? Cezanne's skill with color? Or something else?

</comment><comment><USER17> What in the world is wrong with his style sheet? Why is the entire post emphasized?!

<comment><USER8> The emphasized part is a quote. It just happens to be a long blocky quote, so it looks merely like a bold post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> If only hacker sketches on a napkin looked like this:

<http://tinyurl.com/y9b5n2d></comment>


Metrocoin - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/metrocoins/metrocoin

<comment><USER2> (Dumb Question) How is this different from bitcoin?

And is it based on the same principles?

<comment><AUTHOR> The significant difference is that it is Metrocoin. The fundamentals and guidelines are focused on Growth</comment></comment>


First look at 37signals big rewrite of basecamp - <AUTHOR> http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3087-basecamp-next-a-peek-at-early-iterations-of-the-projects-screen

<comment><USER2> It made me feel better, as I struggle from time to time with design, to know that even companies with as much focused design talent as 37signals tweak stuff endlessly, and that clean designs don't spring fully-formed from their heads. Everyone iterates.

<comment><USER3> _clean designs don't spring fully-formed from their heads. Everyone iterates._

Kind of a strawman, though?

<comment><USER4> What do you mean?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Really liked the video styling, showing the evolution of a design. Something as simple as a few icons, its rare on a project you get to put that much time into it. I'm a bit excited they are going to do more project boards like Trello or Jira Greenhopper

<comment><AUTHOR> Think they hired a videographer recently, presumably to do this very sort of thing.

<comment><USER6> Yep, Shaun Hildner:

<http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3041-welcome-shaun-and-emily> <https://twitter.com/shildner/status/162600458559565824>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Thats a really pretty illustration of the concept that "failed" designs are the most important part of the journey to the one that works. They've certainly explored a vast number of disparte approaches, excited to see where it ends up.

</comment><comment><USER8> Does remind me of Trello a little with the project board. Looks neat though.

<comment><USER9> We did this thing called Sortfolio a handful of years ago, too: <http://sortfolio.com>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> As a designer the images dont seem to have a very clear evolution so its difficult to tell why things were changed. It sort of frusterates me to watch this video because, while I respect evolutionary editing and design -- this feels like a lot of versioning for no clear reason.

I'm sure thats not the case -- but its what it FEELS like.

<comment><USER9> It's a one minute video just sharing some of the discarded designs. There's a reason behind all of it, but showing the reason(s) wasn't the intent of this video.

<comment><USER10> Then what was the reason for the video? I guess I'm genuinely missing the point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> When I am reading about BP Next or viewing this video, I get the feeling that this "move" has something to do with Wunderkit launch <http://www.wunderkit.com/>. Be it the timing, be it the coloured backgrounds on the video, etc. I don't know exactly why, but I get the feeling.

And I am saying this, despite being a huge fan of 37s, their products and their philosophy (as demonstrated in their books and SvN). I have read everything they have written and I am a paying customer.

I also feel, however, that BP Next would be one more great product from 37s.

<comment><USER12> I'm sure they respect all the competition, but I don't get why they would feel specially threatened by Wunderkit. I've tried it and it's feels so cluttered compared to 37signals products.

Seems more like this iteration has been going forever, and they're just ready to launch.

<comment><USER11> Pablasso, we will never know for sure.

But strategically wise, I can see a threat from Wunderkit to Basecamp. Wunderkit is trying to bring a BP-style project management product (evolved) to a mass-market. It is not going for the geeks, designers, etc that BP has mostly as its clients. It is going for the mass and thus a recent article has mentioned them as "a Facebook for the workplace". After all, their first product (Wunderlist) has 1.5M users and reached 1M users in 275 days(!). Finally, a previous comment in HN frames 37s move in a nice way:

"This is very Apple. If somebody is going to cannibalize our market anyway, we prefer to do it ourselves." (by armandososa) <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3506546>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> And that's why they get rich with software hackers thinks its easy to write your own.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is an exceptionally well-handled video. No matter what the end result there will be a contingent that says "Didn't 37 test this?!", and you can show quite a bit of thought went into the process.

Excited to see what Basecamp evolves into, but I doubt it can lure me from Trello. :)</comment>


Sweden rejects Assange appeal to drop arrest warrant - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32688063?ocid=socialflow_twitter <comment><USER2> From:

[https://storify.com/anyapalmer/why-doesn-t-sweden- interview-...](https://storify.com/anyapalmer/why-doesn-t-sweden-interview- assange-in-london)

        > the next step in the Swedish proceedings is to conduct a second
        > interview with him before making a decision whether to formally
        > charge him ... If a decision is taken to formally charge him,
        > Assange would face trial within two weeks of that decision
        > being made.  It is difficult to see how this could happen if
        > the final interview takes place in the Ecuadorian embassy in
        > Knightsbridge.

I wonder what's changed in the eyes of the Swedish prosecutor. I seemed to remember they were coming under some other deadline?

<comment><USER3> There's a five-year limit for some of the charges (but not all), from memory. As he turned out to be quite willing to wait it out, they are looking to retake the initiative.

<comment><USER4> Beyond that, the courts has been quite clear that the Swedish prosecutor _must_ move forward with the case or it would be dismissed. The Supreme Court decision uses the recent decision by the Swedish prosecutor as the primary argument for rejecting the appeal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cannot be long until he would have had a better deal by going to the police, confessing everything (even if he didn't do it) and served his time.

Sitting in some embassy for years, without any possibility of having this time count towards a possible sentence.

<comment> mike-cardwell I imagine there are advanages to not being a convicted sex offender.

<comment><USER3> A high-profile one at that, given that his face was already all over the general news services.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> its simple. guy is guilty probably. sweden is tough on that kind of thing. its got nothing to do with the leaks.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for your valuable contribution to this thread.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Many comments here fail to see the difference between:

A: lack of certainty of being extradited to the US

B: the certainty of not being extradited to the US

Many comments claim A, but logically Assange needs B.</comment>


Jason Calacanis launches a startup incubator - <AUTHOR> http://blog.launch.co/blog/welcome-to-the-incubator.html

<comment><USER2> Calacanis really has optimized the whole vertical integration for this sort of thing.</comment>


WebAssembly in Redex - <AUTHOR> https://www.asumu.xyz/blog/2019/04/29/webassembly-in-redex/ <comment><USER2> > PLT Redex is a domain-specific language designed for specifying and > debugging operational semantics. [1]

[1] [https://redex.racket-lang.org/index.html](https://redex.racket- lang.org/index.html)</comment>


What do you think about hackathons? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-pros-and-cons-of-a-hackathon

<comment><USER2> Expand your connections, learn, socialize...

</comment><comment><USER3> Just a social aspect to it, but can be good. meet someone or meet a new employee-founder, recruit people.</comment>


Ask HN: Sails.js or Loopback? - <AUTHOR>

Which one is better for creating an Angular app with Android and iOS clients? Both claim to offer some level of automatic websocket support. Do one of these frameworks do a better job at that? Is one more 'production ready' than the other? <comment><AUTHOR> Update: I wound up building a sample project in both this weekend. For what I was trying to build (a robust, scalable API) loopback was much better. I wasn't as interested in generating server side rendered pages, although you can do it in loopback since its just built on express. Loopback seemed much better for making a serious project with monitoring, devops, debugging, deployments and less 'magic'. Sails definitely wasnt bad; it is more popular and its docs were a little better, but ultimately I had to dive into the code in both frameworks, and loopback's codebase was easier to understand. If you're developing primarily an API in node.js I would definitely recommend it.

</comment><comment><USER2> I used Sails.js for about an hour one time. It was completely broken. The docs were just plain wrong, the code was a mess, and the core developers were clearly swamped. Lots of unanswered issues. It was a nightmare.

I haven't used Loopback, but I can emphatically say "no" to Sails.

If you need websockets, check out [http://socket.io](http://socket.io)

<comment><USER3> Did you try version 0.9.x? 0.10.x has been a lot better, the docs have also gotten a complete revamp. I'm building my SAAS product in it and haven't found any dealbreakers. Still quite some gotcha's, I'll give you that.

<comment><USER2> I gave up for reasons above, but the reason I've never looked back is that Node wasn't the right tool and the Sails developers didn't have a philosophy I could agree with.

My problem with Node is that it's really hard to learn a code base and really hard to debug. In other languages, I can CTRL+click to get to definitions of classes and methods. I never realized how important that was to me until I was trying to read the Sails code. It was like following a maze.

I now use Node as a very simple API layer when performance is absolutely a necessity, but I don't start with it. There's a reason there's a new [x language]-to-JavaScript transpiler announced on HN every day.

As for the developers, I was just disappointed that they would ship something so broken. It would be better not to publish it at all, or to keep it on the dev branch, than to publish it in that state. I also like to use libraries with lots of third-party activity, and it seemed like only 2 people were committing to the Sails code base.</comment></comment></comment>


Why Are So Many of the Framework Classes Sealed? (2004) - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ericlippert/2004/01/22/why-are-so-many-of-the-framework-classes-sealed/ <comment><USER2> Yeah, Eric is wrong about this.

His argument boils down to, "If we let chefs have any knife they wanted, they'd choose the ones that cut most efficiently and proceed to cut themselves! We can't have that, now can we?"

In practice, it wasn't a huge problem, but there were times when getting around it was just a waste of my time.

<comment><USER3> I think the more important chunk of his argument was the downstream dependency; you now aren't testing your interfaces against all expected usage in the code you're writing, you're now building it against the expected usage of any and all arbitrary code now and in the future.

As well as, as soon as you unseal it, then you have to assume it's being used somewhere, and you're suddenly dealing with a much more exposed and expansive API to maintain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What is this inheritance demand for subclasses to be signed by a key, and what language enables that?</comment>


Apple announces CarKey, which will let you wirelessly unlock your car - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/22/21299182/apple-carkey-ios-14-13-digital-key-unlock-car-iphone-wwdc-2020 <comment><USER2> Big point

> The first car supported will be the new 2021 BMW 5 series, which comes out > next month.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm sure they will respect their customers' privacy.</comment>


Decentralized Web Primer - <AUTHOR> https://www.gitbook.com/book/flyingzumwalt/decentralized-web-primer/details <comment><USER2> Could be that I'm just really out of touch, but I need at least one paragraph saying "What is this?" (and ideally also, "Who is the target audience?" \- or "Why would I be interested in reading this?")

<comment><USER3> I'm with you on this one. I had to Google all of this for a few minutes. This is my best interpretation below. I hope others will come in and correct my silly mistakes. (Disclaimer: I'm not a programmer and English is my 2nd language):

"So you know how people use BitTorrent to distribute big-budget Hollywood movies with occasional mediocre storylines? What if you could distribute your own data on a similar P2P network, but view it directly in a web browser (among other HTTP clients)? You suddenly turn your seed box into a "web server". Plus, you can stream videos on it too. So your home computer is not just a "web server", it can act as your own "Netflix" server to publish your home movies. And you could do it in a secure fashion. You would need a few protocols (eg IPFS), concepts (eg Merkle Trees), and some freely available software to make it practical, easy, and secure. These tutorials will show you how to get all of those things working together to publish & stream to the world."

Watch a demo of this @ 7:00 in this video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CMxDNuuAiQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CMxDNuuAiQ)

<comment><USER4> While he doesn't touch on IPFS iirc, this talk by Mathias Buus is what got me excited about decentralization: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tf14VpeHlE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tf14VpeHlE)

He does a great job explaining e.g. Merkle Trees in a practical manner that made me immediately go "Wait, I could use this for X and Y?!"

Recommended watch!

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the recommendation. Positively great talk and you are right it inspires a lot of usecases. Speaking as someone who had heard about Merkle trees but never looked into the details of what they were about, this talk was absolutely worth watching. Regarding IPFS there was a question at the end about the difference between IPFS and the stuff he talked about so it's briefly talked about by the speaker then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This looks really interesting and I look forward to reading it but IPFS is not the only player in the decentralized web game. One only needs to start typing "IPFS vs" in Google.

Perhaps "An IPFS Primer" would be a better title?

<comment><USER7> I agree, it seems disingenuous to describe IPFS as the only way to implement a decentralized web. For example in our group we've explored the idea of essentially a decentralized Merkle tree where the document id's are resolved via P2P gossip, like in early versions of Gnutella.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "The Decentralized Web" is the WWW system Tim Berners-Lee invented and that we're all using right now. It relies on the DNS and HTTP protocols. This new IPFS-based decentralized web is interesting but it's not even a measurable percentage of web traffic today. Far from being "The".

What we need more than anything is to actually realize the beautiful dream TBL had for the WWW. HN is one great example but there should be a million more.

<comment> loup-vaillant No. The web as it works right now is naturally centralised, for a simple reason: the bandwidth costs on a server is proportional to the size of its audience. This is why we need YouTube to begin with, instead of millions of people posting their videos on their personal page.

There are other factors of course: firewalls, asymmetric bandwidth, security issues, technical ignorance… But the client-server model does play a significant role.

If you want a truly decentralised web, you need to modify a couple things: get rid of HTTP, and use a P2P protocol instead. Generalise IPv6 and get rid of NAT. Give people symmetric bandwidth. Make secure software that is simple to implement, simple to use, and hard to misuse (it's not that hard dammit, just look at qmail).

<comment><USER9> > This is why we need YouTube to begin with, instead of millions of people > posting their videos on their personal page.

People can post videos to their own hosted pages already. We "need" YouTube because 1) people generally don't want to host anything, and 2) it provides connectedness (search, related videos, subscribers, etc).

P2P makes the first issue worse. The second issue is a problem of data federation, not client/server systems.

<comment> loup-vaillant > _People can post videos to their own hosted pages already._

No they cannot. Here's an example: what if make a nice tutorial, put it on my web site and submit it here and r/programming? If the thing is well done, people will download the video, and the sheer amount of requests may be enough to render my site unresponsive, simply because I don't have the bandwidth.

So If I ever make a video, there's a good chance I host it to YouTube. Despite my reluctance to feed Alphabet. Even though I already operate a server.

> _1) people generally don 't want to host anything_

People want to publish stuff —that much is obvious. They want to avoid hassles if possible. And they rarely think about what centralised hosting entails.

That doesn't amount to "don't want to host anything". Granted, hosting stuff yourself is a major hassle these days. It doesn't have to be, though.

<comment><USER10> You can easily get more bandwidth though, it's not that it is somehow forbidden. You just don't want to pay for it. That is what youtube gives you: 'unlimited' video hosting bandwidth (and improved discoverability) in return for the opportunity to play their ads before your video. The bandwidth costs also don't magically disappear with IPFS, it is just a convenient way to make other people pay for it.

In order of increasing independence you could choose to: \- Host it on youtube, with the benefits and disadvantages you already mentioned. \- Host it on a public S3 bucket and link to it from a HTML5 video player on your web page. You pay for only the storage and bandwidth used. \- Keep the video on your own server, but pay a CDN to cache it for you. Actual bandwidth use of you server is now very low again. \- Host it on a (big) server in a colocation center. You would typically buy bandwidth in advance though, so you want to be able to roughly predict how much you need. \- Contract with a fiber laying company to lay a dedicated fiber line from the nearest backbone to your home. (Alternatively, a large microwave connection) Buy several 100Gbit NICS to go with it and negotiate peering agreements with the major networks.

Most people don't want the hassle and cost of the latter options, but they are very possible and very legal. In your example with the programming video, if a ton of people want to see it then somewhere along the chain a lot of bandwidth is going to be used and it is _not_ free. All you do is shift who pays for it.

<comment> loup-vaillant > _You can easily get more bandwidth though, it 's not that it is somehow > forbidden. You just don't want to pay for it._

Exactly, I'd like my _viewers_ to pay for it. There are limits to my generosity, after all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How hard to censor is IPFS? It would be quite disappointing if we managed to switch everyone over to IPFS, and in the end, after all that effort (and the compromises we'd have to make compared to simply using centralized content), governments would remain quite effective at censoring IPFS content.

Could ISPs throttle or block IPFS content, for instance? The developers should start assuming some extremely aggressive environments, like China, and then go from there, because honestly, we don't know if 20 years from now a lot more governments would see China's censorship as a role model to follow. We're already seeing multiple countries in Europe considering it to stop "extremist content", the IPSs in Canada are now banding together to block pirated content, and the US is probably not going to be too far behind after the repeal of the net neutrality rules. And those are just the "democratic" countries. It's obviously much worse for Middle Eastern or African countries already.

So I just hope the IPFS developers will always try to develop the platform from an extreme resilience point of view.

<comment><USER12> From what I gathered by reading the whitepaper mass censorship is extremely hard to accomplish.

> _Could ISPs throttle or block IPFS content, for instance?_

They wouldn't know what was IPFS and what was regular encrypted TCP, the only way I can tell IPFS traffic apart in wireshark is the port number. Once ISPs start blockings random encrypted connections people will get mad when their games or other applications stop working.

If we are talking about bad actors in the IPFS network, I reccommend you read their whitepaper. They layout a clever karma based system for incentivizing nodes to help others and punishing nodes that misbehave.

<comment><USER13> > They wouldn't know what was IPFS and what was regular encrypted TCP

The extreme conclusion of state-sponsored censorship is not a black list or DPI. It is a white list. It is easy to restrict traffic to a small set of addresses that are rigorously monitored for any ability to proxy non- conforming traffic. Everything else would get dropped on the floor.

IPFS and the like sit too high in the OSI layers to combat state sponsored censorship in the long-run.

It makes me wonder what the target market is. If this ever got big, it would just trigger the next step in the arms race it is incapable of sustaining

<comment><USER14> I'd think it would support grafting in chunks of the merkle dag via usb drives, etc. Otherwise, I don't understand the claims about disconnected operation and breaking the dependency on the internet backbone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't have any experience with IPFS so I just downloaded the client and ran `ipfs daemon`. It's been using 500-1500Kbps down and 200-500Kbps up for the last 15min or so. It also has 330+ open connections. Is that expected? It seems a bit aggressive for idling. No message on the console indicating what exactly it's doing either.

<comment><USER16> By default every node acts as DHT server. If you have easily reachable node this is fairly typical load. You may opt-out from serving DHT requests by adding --routing=dhtclient parameter to the daemon.

<comment><USER15> That did it, thank you! For now that's more manageable to start learning about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Decentralization is frequently sold as a means against censorship: if we use a decentralized system such as IPFS, we don't need to have a DNS hierarchy to serve content, so it is no longer viable to block a particular domain.

But as long as we have ISPs and a common communications architecture, if we start using a content-addressable system, doesn't that help censorship? As a censor, I jump from having to censor all domains that may serve one particular document (which is difficult, as we can see with pirate bay), to just having to force ISPs to block urls with the hash of the document that I want to censor.

So we go from having to jump among domains, to having to jump among content hashes, which seems much less practical, isn't it?

In my mind, until we have some sort of mesh network with efficient cache systems, the decentralization topic seems (to me) that is providing answers to the wrong questions.

<comment><USER18> I think by default IPFS also doesn't even replicate content. So you don't even have to block hash lookups in the whole network but just take down the one host that currently has the only replica.

<comment><USER19> By default IPFS replicates content. That's it's main feature.

<comment><USER18> Pretty sure it used to be that you have to deliberately pin content that you want to share on your node. Else nodes that accessed it will throw it out of their cache if they don't need it anymore.

Maybe they changed the behavior in the meantime though, but IPFS didn't permanently replicate uploaded content in the past without some deliberate user action.

<comment><USER19> Yes, you have to pin to keep it, but you download it and begin serving it automatically every time you load something. You can continue serving that for a while after -- specially if you're not downloading many other things after.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> One thing I've never understood is how IPFS would serve dynamic content. Like imagine building amazon.com on IPFS how would that work? Every single page served would have Different hash, because the content is always changing.

<comment><USER21> The next step after DAGs is CRDTs.

They have a research page on this: [https://github.com/ipfs/research- CRDT](https://github.com/ipfs/research-CRDT)

One of them is us ([https://github.com/amark/gun](https://github.com/amark/gun)), David reached out the other week, now we're trying to find time to discuss with Juan how to best integrate.

<comment><USER22> That's exciting that Gun is looking up adopt CRDT. Is that what you are saying? A real open source competitor to Google Firebase.

<comment><USER21> Thanks! GUN is already a CRDT (it is a generalizable CRDT on graphs), which is why IPFS is chatting with us. Our CRDT has an emergent property of composability though, which lets other specialized CRDTs be implemented on top in just a few lines of code (take this example, of a counter CRDT: [https://github.com/amark/gun/wiki/snippets-(v0.3.x)#counter](https://github.com/amark/gun/wiki/snippets-\(v0.3.x\)#counter) ).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > To build the HTML, PDF, epub and mobi versions of the book with one command, > run ./build-book.sh

Is it built as a one page anywhere already? Seems weird not to include this by default.

</comment><comment><USER24> Here's a pretty cool talk on the subject as well by Andre Staltz. It's nothing groundbreaking, but just simple facts he puts on the table to show what the current situation is.

Highly recommend.

[https://youtu.be/qZDJ1z0apVk?t=7786](https://youtu.be/qZDJ1z0apVk?t=7786)

Disclaimer: I helped organize the event where this talk is from.

<comment><USER25> Thanks for sharing this talk - it inspired me to study and get into these new developments more; now I'm ready to read in depth the book Decentralized Web Primer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The biggest advantage of centralization is the ability to delete something from the normie web and have it deleted.

Granted, nowadays you have things like the internet archive, but I don't see normal people going along with IPFS for dynamic content like social media as long as you cannot delete things.

<comment><USER27> Yeah, one of the problems with content-addressable systems like IPFS is that they don't support the "right to be forgotten". And I've heard a lot of big supporters of content-addressable systems arguing that's a good thing, because links never break. But I don't like a world where I can't take down my own blog post[0], only unlink it from my home page.

[0]: Yes, I'm aware anyone can host a copy of my deleted page. But it will be served on a different URL, and it takes extra work to do, unlike IPFS or similar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Not sure but didn't get any information about how the data is stored between the nodes. Does each node keep full state and synchronize when connected to the network(similar to blockchain), or is the data split between available nodes? Could someone clarify the storage part?

</comment><comment><USER29> Unless your project needs censorship resistance, you can probably ignore this.

<comment><USER30> Well, my personal project as a voracious reader and critical thinker _does_ needs censorship resistance on behalf of a diversity of authors who wish to publish their thinking.

<comment><USER29> Who is trying to censor you?

<comment><USER30> Not me, authors I may read.

<comment><USER29> Which authors? Who is trying to censor them?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Poor name. The web is already decentralized.

</comment><comment><USER32> The one who comments below does not live in China.</comment>


The Fireplace Delusion - <AUTHOR> https://samharris.org/the-fireplace-delusion/ <comment><USER2> Rocket stoves might be a way out of this, since they produce nowhere near as much smoke as a conventional fireplace. That's because the airflow around the wood in a rocket stove is mostly laminar rather than turbulent.

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

<comment><USER3> But since you can't see very much of the fire they're also not going to be very desirable for "recreational" use at the author puts it.

<comment><USER4> But they could help alleviate smoke exposure in poor countries where people have to burn wood because they can't obtain or afford cleaner fuels.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For those looking for the entire referenced article, Woodsmoke health effects: a review. Author: Naeher LP [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.510...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.510.4296&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

</comment><comment><USER6> Am curious as to what the so-called "clean" alternatives are: coal, nuclear? A full lifecycle analysis of renewables such as solar and wind, may also not compare favorably with wood, remember that wood is a also a renewable energy source. In some parts of the world, notably Europe, forest cover has actually been expanding, so its far from clear that wood is all that bad. The individual health impacts are clearly bad with current wood burning technology, and it is probably not something that one should be doing in high density urban centers, but on the whole, it seems far from proven that wood is worse than say photovoltaic panels [https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2014/11/1411...](https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2014/11/141111-solar- panel-manufacturing-sustainability-ranking/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Am I the only one here which hates smoking neighbors? Cigarettes, wood, I'd rather live next to a drummer than next to a smoker any day. I can't possibly stand the stench of smoke, and just now I moved apartment only because of smoking neighbors. If it were up to me, releasing any kind of smoke from your house should be illegal.

I find it way more disgusting and rude than just believing in religion. At least most people don't actively hurt other people's health by believing in religion. (and when they do, that's a line I can't accept).

<comment> Joe-Z Nobody likes smoke! The whole premise of the article is screwed because of this weird assertion that people somehow like to breathe the smoke of burning wood for comfort.

Me personally, I don't know if the heavy smoking or the drum playing neighbor would be worse but it's both environmental pollution and thus should give you a stake in determining when it is and when it's not okay to expect their neighbors to deal with the consequences of their hobbies

<comment><USER8> Anecdotally, everyone whose opinion I've had occasion to discover enjoys breathing the air around a wood fire, though it might be more accurate to say that they enjoy the smell and warmth of the inhaled air, and don't seem to regard the negative effects in the moment. I've always known there are people who find it displeasurable regardless of the health effects, but I'm not aware of any in my personal circles, and am surprised to see that you think "nobody likes smoke" in the context of wood fire smoke.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> Joe-Z I don't get one of the three premises the author is making: Nobody likes a campfire for the smoke, right?

I mean, I get the whole 'now let me tell you why what you love is actually a bad thing'-experiment, but latching it onto wood-smoke, which I'm pretty sure nobody would miss, seems kind of disingenuous.

<comment><USER9> People certainly don't like being the ones that have the plume of smoke blown into their face, but they still treat that as merely a minor annoyance.

If you asked a group sitting around a campfire if they enjoyed the smell of the smoke when it wasn't being blown in their face I would expect the majority to say yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I experienced none of the resistance he assumes. As someoone who smoked cigarettes and looked at tobacco, wood is just similar stuff, but bigger, give or take. And the smoke bites in the lungs in an even worse way (though I would assume cigarettes have additional stuff that make the smoke seem easier on the lungs while making it even more toxic). So why should I have a problem believing that? And I always loved fire, I love the smell from a distance at least, but hey, gasoline also smells nice, and I'm not sniffing that either.

I just haven't thought about it actively, but if you had asked me "what do you think is more harmful, cigarette smoke or wood fire smoke", I would say "I have no clue, and I suspect it may also depend on wood type, but the way you're asking makes me suspect wood is worse".

So thanks for the PSA, but I'm not sure what the point is in regards to religious believers.

> that should give you some sense of what we are up against whenever we > confront religion.

What does that mean? It should give me an idea, but it doesn't, so spell it out. All this teached me is that I am vastly different from personal friends of Sam Harris. I could have guessed that, too.

edit: You could shorten it all to " _Wood fire smoke is very toxic, yet most people refuse to believe that because they find it very comfy, despite any evidence you present them with. That should give you some sense of what we are up against whenever we confront religion._ ", and it would be obvious that the actual point is just left as exercise to the reader.

<comment><USER11> It sounds like you are already an "atheist" of the wood burning debate, in which case the metaphor isn't intended for you and it's understandable you didn't relate.

I think shortening it would lose the effect on the intended audience. Your proposed replacement doesn't really contain any compelling evidence, so someone who does enjoy fires can easily dismiss it without getting the point. I think it's a good summary having read the article but not really enough to get the point across for the intended audience.

<comment><USER10> > It sounds like you are already an "atheist" of the wood burning debate

As Sam Harris wrote

> _We love everything about it: the warmth, the beauty of its flames, > and—unless one is allergic to smoke—the smell that it imparts to the > surrounding air._

That describes me. As a kid I _loved_ playing with fire, a lot.

> _I am sorry to say that if you feel this way about a wood fire, you are not > only wrong but dangerously misguided._

I am happy to confirm that even after knowing that it's toxic, the above facts don't change, it just means I would probably not indulge in it. I changed my position regarding this on a dime, without the least resistance, while Harris was still talking abour troubles I did not experience, -- I didn't already have it. If it "sounds" that way to you, then simply take my word that it's not true. This is the first time I heard of this, and I was paying attention to my feelings just as instructed. I detected new information, but no resistance. Then impatience as it seemed there might be no point, then amusement when there was none. I can be very convinced of something and still not _identify_ with it, maybe that's the reason.

> _I have discovered that when I make this case, even to highly intelligent > and health-conscious men and women, a psychological truth quickly becomes as > visible as a pair of clenched fists: They do not want to believe any of it._

If it's some kind of "psychological truth" \-- supposedly general and not individually different for each of these persons about none of whom we learn any detail -- so what is it? You say "intended audience" \-- what are its features?

Sam Harris spends a lot of effort on the padding and decoration, but none on the actual meat, that's what I see. If the truth is that "people can't accept new information when it contradicts something they like", then I hereby proved it wrong. I'm not sure why his anecdotes, with not one conversation recorded, would make a valid point that can't even be spelled out so it might be falsified, but my experience falsifying what the point (whatever it may be) is based on, just doesn't count because I'm not "the intended audience". That's fine, but I still overheard it, that's why I responded ^^

> _Of course, if you are anything like my friends, you will refuse to believe > this._

So is that the psychological truth, being "anything like", or "totally unlike someone"? Fine, so I and Sam Harris are "nothing like" his friends (since he wouldn't be able to write the blog post if he "was committed to living in a world where wood fire smoke is not toxic"), so that's the one positive claim, and even if it's true, it contains no information, no signal.

> I think it's a good summary having read the article but not really enough to > get the point across for the intended audience.

If you know what that point is, can you spell it out? What does this analogy tell us about "confronting religion", much less what does it tell us that would have a constructive effect on doing that? That religious people are just normal people? If there's more than that, what it is it? What does the stretched out version of my "summary" add?</comment></comment></comment>


No One Programs Any More - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2008-10.html?#e2008-10-23T21_58_04.htm

<comment><USER2> I wonder if this is a Java problem. My impression is that most intro comp sci classes now teach Java. Meanwhile, all the scientists I know work in Python, Perl, C, Matlab, Mathematica, or LabVIEW. Last I knew, there were even quite a few FORTRAN holdouts.

Why should scientists respect a comp sci intro class built on a language and a set of design patterns that reek of the cube farm, when all of their actual work is done using languages and systems that they will inevitably have to teach to themselves because nobody offers a formal course?

Surely the need to impress the math department is a great use case for an introductory course in Lisp or Scheme. Not that this is an original idea or anything.

<comment><USER3> I think this quote from an ACM interview with Donald Knuth in answer to a question on the future of programming sums up the problem of the current state of programming nicely:

"I'm worried about the present state of programming. Programmers now are supposed to mostly just use libraries. Programmers aren't allowed to do their own thing from scratch anymore. They're supposed to assemble reusable code that somebody else has written. There's a bunch of things on the menu and you choose from these and put them together. Where's the fun in that? Where's the beauty in that? We have to figure out a way we can make programming interesting for the next generation of programmers."

reference: <http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1378715>

<comment><USER4> Typical bottom-up thinking. While I do enjoy rolling my own libs from scratch from time to time, the availability of a lot of reusable, well-documented, well-designed code have permitted me to tackle, as a single person, projects that would not have been possible years ago.

I wanted to create a 3D data visualization app just for kicks a while back. Guess what, I didn't have to roll my own OpenGL graphics libs, nor my XML parser, but I still had a blast putting it all together, and being able to focus on UI (the main motivator for the project) instead of the nitty gritty behind the scenes.

I think it's valid to have some concern about coders becoming _less capable_ at low-level code-from-scratch principles, but I don't think it's fair to say that the library-centric development today is less _fun_.

<comment><USER5> Knuth thinks in algorithms, not solutions. In his day, people were constantly inventing new algorithms--if you've never done it before, you should at least be able to guess that it's a big rush. That's what Knuth thinks of programming as: a series of completely new inventions and associated rushes.

What he's actually trying to say was that, as a usefully large number of algorithms for everyday tasks have already been discovered (optimally, even!) and codified into "libraries", people are running out of (easy) things to invent, and so aren't getting that rush as often. What was needed, in his mind, was a replacement for the rush, as that was what he saw as the raison d'etre of programming; being a mathematician himself, it was probably the only reason he programmed at all!

Of course, we've gotten on just fine without the rush. "Programming" as solving problems has continued to flourish; Knuth's "programming"--really referring to the scientific method applied, as it should be, to Computer Science--has quieted. It used to be that every programmer was a practicing computer scientist by necessity, just as every astronaut is currently an astrophysicist by necessity. When "platforms of discovery" (computers being one, the vacuum of space being another) mature, the need (or ability) for their practitioners to be involved in the creation of the theory underlying the field diminishes. This doesn't mean the field "dies"--it merely segregates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Given where the NSF's funding is _actually_ going, I chalk these statements up to a backlash against the trend of more people doing small amounts of programming as part of their "real" work. Scientists tend to view programming as more of a chore than an art, but it's still essential to getting real, relevant work done.

It's clear to any of these researchers that a program just amplifies your own efforts. From a distance, it may appear that an academic rival is letting the computer do all the thinking. That just wouldn't be fair, would it? If the computer can't think, isn't it better to just publish great thoughts in raw form, and let some benighted industry worker do the calculations and data entry?

Obviously, no. Thinking programmatically is different, and allows a researcher to answer new problems -- in any field. Even psychologists and sociologists crunch statistics on population groups: collecting and encoding data is tedious and time-consuming. Traditionally, surveys are filled out and crunched by hand; but looking at the massive amount of data available on social networks, for example, just crawling and aggregating that data could yield much better information than manually roping in 130 undergrads at your own school. Or you could splash a task out on Mechanical Turk to analyze the Turkers themselves. This would be big, and it would upset a lot of academics who built their reputations on traditional methods, and perhaps blew off computational research as a fad a decade or two ago.

</comment><comment><USER7> Why not require a programming course for physicists and mathematicians? I think part of the reason is this: programming (badly) just isn't all that hard. Programming (badly) is a skill that most smart twelve-year-old kids can easily teach themselves, and most mathematicians and physicists who didn't program as kids are still quite capable of picking up (bad) programming skills as they need them.

Programming well is a much harder skill to learn, but it's not something that you'd pick up from an introductory programming course anyway, and besides, good programming is overkill for most scientists anyway.

</comment><comment><USER8> projecteuler.net

If there was ever any doubt about what programming can offer mathematics, ProjectEuler would dispel that. I say give the students an intro book on Python and point them at ProjectEuler.net. If they enjoy math, curiosity will do the rest. I agree that programming isn't necessary for every mathematician, but it offers so much potential for exploring numbers that any math students not introduced to programming is at a huge disadvantage.

</comment><comment><USER9> What about things like solving the 4-color problem? Even within pure mathematics there are plenty of cases where programming is useful. There would probably be more if the average math PhD had better programming skills.

Definitely Java is not the right way to go - for a mathematician I'd recommend something more like Python or Mathematica.

<comment><USER10> There is very little room for computing in pure math research. The Four Color Theorem is still an exception and not just because mathematicians can't program. That said this is irrelevant because the article is about the undergraduate program. Only a minority of undergraduate math majors end up as PhDs in math. The rest do something else. Sadly some of them end up teaching high school or as actuaries (no offence). If they want to do something else but still math related then yes, they definitely need a programming course!

<comment><USER11> GAP? Pari/GP? Mathematica? Magma? There is much room for programming in modern pure math research. In fact, I think we will end up seeing much more computer- aided-math than you think.

<comment><USER10> >>GAP? Pari/GP? Mathematica? Magma?

Are you suggesting these as tools for mathematicians? Now what is supposed to happen? They have to find problems for these tools? It should be the other way around...

<comment><USER12> It's called experimental mathematics. It's gathering data about known structures to make conjectures about all structures satisfying certain properties.

Not to mention that, even outside of experimental math, there are plenty of pain-in-the-ass calculations that computer algebra systems make so much easier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> i remember my graduate level class on simulation (engineering course, not math/cs)

we had first assignment on generating 10000 random numbers

a guy fired up excel, generated rand in one cell, dragged to the bottom 10000, and _gasp_ printed it

It was fun looking at flickering monitor, and humming laser printer - after a while, i felt sympathy for those devices

it took me less than 5 loc in matlab ... and being friendlier to trees as a bonus :D

and no, it's not a community college ... rather a top research engineering school ... but hey, things like this happen a lot

<comment><USER6> Hey, it's still faster than a handful of dice and a blank notebook. Sometimes the point of a course's first assignment is to show students how wrong their preconceptions are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If fewer people "program" any more perhaps it is because more people "script" then ever before.</comment>


Air Force tests two turboprops as potential A-10 "replacements" - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/06/air-force-tests-two-turboprops-as-potential-a-10-replacements/ <comment><USER2> Part of the problem is the missions the Pentagon imagines itself in, versus the missions they wind up in. Dreaming of fighting a high-tech peer is one thing, but we've spent 15 years needing close air support for ground troops under fire from irregular infantry who are themselves in light vehicles or under minimal fortification (ie behind rocks or in regular buildings). And when your weapon for that is a single high-end bomb from a plane that costs tens of millions of dollars and is flying too fast to actually see the battlefield... well, that's a recipe for ineffective air support, collateral damage, and friendly fire deaths, not to mention some outrageous costs and a lot of air time on planes that cost a lot to maintain.

But another problem with American policy is a need to keep American casualties to a minimum, to the point of being the overriding directive.

So from a combat perspective, a good solution is light, low-cost planes that can fly from very rough airstrips close by, armed with a light cannon that can shred buildings, light armor, and other low-intensity cover, and fly slow enough to make in-the-moment decisions from visual inspection by a human pilot. But such a plane is a tempting target for inexpensive, widely available shoulder-fired missiles, or even old-fashioned flak. And then casualties go up. This isn't WWII anymore. America won't tolerate high casualty rates politically for problems that are not existential threats to our nation.

And a cheap low-tech plane solution also has to slot in somewhere between drones (expensive but effective), and the helicopter gunships that have had the mission since Vietnam.

So instead, we're going to keep using hammers to swat flies, because we might need hammers against Russia someday and we're rich anyhow.

<comment><USER3> > Part of the problem is the missions the Pentagon imagines itself in, versus > the missions they wind up in. > So instead, we're going to keep using > hammers to swat flies, because we might need hammers against Russia someday > and we're rich anyhow.

It's the basic game theory: you have to be prepared in wars you don't want to happen, exactly because you being prepared for them prevents it.

Preventing conflict by developing ways of measuring outcome of a potential conflict without actually acting it out is a technique that's been used by animals way before humans came along.

<comment><USER2> Mutual Assured Destruction has been more effective than high-tech planes at preventing wars between major powers.

<comment><USER3> MAD prevented a full-on nuclear war. Fighter planes and other high-tech equipment have helpved preventing proxy wars in a lot of hot regions around the globe.

<comment><USER2> We've been in proxy wars pretty much nonstop since MAD became a thing.

<comment><USER3> This is true, but in no way contradicts or disproves my point.

<comment><USER4> Well, it makes it seem that "preventing" means something different to you than it does to me.

Perhaps you could clarify your point a bit?

<comment><USER3> There are a lot more of proxy countries that don't go to active war and act out conflicts in a diplomatic manner – but you almost always don't notice these situations. Appealing to proxy wars that do happen is a survivorship bias.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> People will chime in about how the AF only likes shiny new fast jets, but the issue is not infatuation. The AF has to plan to perform against near peer opponents with good air defense systems, fighters, etc. So they'll usually be force by this into choosing something that is overkill for blowing up huts in Afghanistan. A small turboprop sounds great for low cost flight hours etc, but put it up against any modern AD and it's toast. You can try to mitigate this problem by having a high/low mix, (F15/F16), but that doesn't save you much money, and the AF has seen that the high usually ends up getting whacked for the low, and then ending up with lower performance. The Navy had the same problem with the F-14/F-18 mix. The F-18 was "good enough" for low intensity combat, but is inadequate for many other deployments.

<comment><USER6> It absolutely kills me to argue against the F-14 especially after reading that every single one of them were turned into scrap to keep parts out of Iran. However... Tomcats had a long full life, were maintenance hogs, and had outlived their mission. Ouch, it hurt to write that, but it's probably true. The Rhino's (Super Hornets) are very capable.

<comment><USER7> The f14s mission went away. If you are worried about a sophisticated opponant attacking your carrier, a heavy fighter-interceptor is no longer a defense against modern missiles. It was a great plane for a job that no longer exists.

If you are really into weapon history, the Phoenix missile was originally meant for an airforce super interceptor, think an armed version of the SR-71. It was meant to shoot down Valkyrie-class supersonic bombers carrying nuclear weapons. That scenario never developed, but the navy took the missile for blue water battles defending carriers. Arguably, the f-14 was only so big and powerful because it needed to haul a radar capable of servicing the missile. Phoenix was never useful in mixed environments where friendlies might be in range because that wasn't part of the original intention. It was meant for killing big/fast things approaching in open sky, not picking out Migs over Syria.

<comment><USER8> It didn't help that it's flagship weapons system was made obsolete by politics.

<comment><USER6> It was interesting to read on the F-14 Wikipedia page that Iraqi pilots would often completely avoid engaging with Iranian Tomcats. Just the threat of the AIM-54 was enough to maintain air superiority.

"They performed well, but their primary role was to intimidate the Iraqi Air Force and avoid heavy engagement to protect the fleet's numbers. Their presence was often enough to drive away opposing Iraqi fighters. The precision and effectiveness of the Tomcat's AWG-9 weapons system and AIM-54A Phoenix long-range air-to-air missiles enabled the F-14 to maintain air superiority"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> At this point, I wish that the fixed wing close air support mission would revert back to the Army. The F-35 is never going to be able to fill that role, and the Air Force seems really reluctant to devote any resources to the mission. The ability of the A-10 to linger in the area is not matched by any potential replacement.

<comment><USER10> Agreed. Attack helicopters plus some fixed-wing assets with long loiter give plenty of flexibility for various kinds of CAS missions. And all this should really belong to the Army (and Marines [1]) instead of the Air Force, which desperately wants to stay high, fast and stealthy.

[1] And the entire DoD needs to re-think about how and why we're usually deploying Marines on land, for typical land-based missions that are the main remit of the Army.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Currently there is an agreement between the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Army [1] that the air force will control most fixed-wing aircraft and the army most helicopters. I think this is completely dumb and should be dispensed with right away. The air force could then relinquish the A-10s and any future ground support aircraft like (hypothetically) the Super Tucano to the Army if the Army cares to pay for it.

This would help ameliorate the current situation where the Air Force seems compelled to try to cancel every airplane that's not the F-35.

[1] Apparently this originates in the "Johnson-McConnell agreement of 1966" \- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson- McConnell_agreement_of...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson- McConnell_agreement_of_1966)

</comment><comment><USER12> I recall being on a weekend drill, camping and during the day we had A-10's flying low overhead, fast. I could see them looking up past the pine tree cover above us. Someone then told me it was just one A-10!

<comment><USER13> They've trained above our farm for decades. I would be surprised if there were "just one". They typically have a two-plane echelon, with the trailing "wing" separated by a fair distance. I suspect this formation allows the wing to respond when the leader draws ground fire.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think the crucial problem is that the cost is borne by the Air Force but the benefit goes to other branches. This is a classic externality in reverse.

</comment><comment><USER15> I will support the most extravagant and unnecessary new aircraft program the MI complex wants to push forward, PROVIDED that the resulting machines stay exclusively on US soil and in US airspace. Versus immediately being sent thousands of miles away to defend Israel, Europe, Japan and/or South Korea.

</comment><comment><USER16> Somehow it very much resembles German's Stuka WWII fighter plane, both in appearance and role.

<comment><USER17> The very old Russian Su-25 looks very similar too and still seems to be doing well in the Syrian skies.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_Su-25](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_Su-25)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why doesn't the Army consider a "regional-turboprop" gunship? Something 1/3 the cost, and requiring 1/3 - 1/2 the crew, of an AC-130?

The don't need the howitzers, just a couple of M61's and a couple of the rocket pods.

</comment><comment><USER19> Maybe we could use John Boyd spinning in his grave as a kind of power source to reduce costs?

</comment><comment><USER20> Nothing can replace the A-10. Just make more of them. The more the better. A-10 saves the day baby. <3<3

<comment><USER21> The GAU-8, everybody's favorite reason to love the A-10; the autocannon the A-10 was built around, is obsolete. 30x173mm can no longer kill what it was meant for killing, and what it's _actually_ killing in practice today can be killed just as well by 25x137mm.

If you built a new plane around a GAU-12 you'd get pound for pound more killing. Lighter smaller ammo means more of it, and trust me 25mm will kill anything you might plausibly be killing with 30mm in this century.

Don't worry though, I'm pretty sure the USAF is too arrogant to actually adopt a turboprop airplane, so the A-10 will likely be with us for the foreseeable future...

<comment><USER22> > 30x173mm can no longer kill what it was meant for killing

The GAU-8 can no longer kill top-line Russian armor? Source?

<comment><USER23> The GAU-8 was designed to punch thru 76mm armor at 300 meters. [1] The Russian T-90 tank has armor thicker than 500mm. [2]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAU-8_Avenger#Specifications](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAU-8_Avenger#Specifications)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-90](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-90)

<comment><USER24> For a bit I thought you might have used the wrong leading digit but it's true:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rfyeR- YaJw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rfyeR-YaJw)

<comment><USER23> Not directly related, but I recently enjoyed this video comparing the latest models of the USA Abrams & Russian T-90 in a tank battle smackdown.

<comment><USER23> Forgot link to video => [https://youtu.be/nnJCYK2F2N0](https://youtu.be/nnJCYK2F2N0)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> tl;dr : Replacements in mostly uncontested deployments, with a focus on a relatively inexpensive and easy to maintain aircraft, with additional roles as recon and trainer aircraft. NOT an all-out fleet replacement for the Warthog.

<comment><USER5> Not sure why you're getting downvoted. None of the replacements (nor the A-10) are survivable in an area protected by fighters or modern SAMs. In the 80's, A-10s were expected to last less than a few weeks in Germany had the balloon gone up.

<comment><USER26> That seems fine considering all the wars the US has fought in the last 50 years or so have been ridiculously asymmetrical. The USAF has to prepare for a war against technologically equivalent countries, but it also needs to do a much better job at preparing for the wars _it 's actually fighting right now_.

<comment><USER5> Ah, I think the USAF is doing a fine job with what it's been dealt with. It's made a few procurement decisions that have been a bit questionable, but much of that was driven more by the Executive Branch than the Pentagon.

Airpower is really quite limited. Boots on the ground will always be required, and that's something the US has grown tired of providing.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The reason Zoom calls drain your energy – BBC Worklife - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200421-why-zoom-video-chats-are-so-exhausting <comment><USER2> I work remote and I've had years of working this out. What works really well for me is to take a super laid back posture to the meeting. Just fancy free. Speak relaxed and slowly almost like you'd expect The Dude Lebowski to. Nobody's gonna talk over you. Your point will be heard. And any details can always be caught in an email or DM later.

If I had to guess why, I think speaking slower and more chill hides away latency effects, and subconsciously causes people to listen more carefully. The cadence of speech also makes it more clear when you're about to say more vs. When you're done talking. It also just relaxes you and gives you more time to formulate the next string of words.

And I don't mean sound like an idiot stoner or offensive jerk. You're just on a beach. Phoned in to be a subject matter expert. And once you've done your part it's back to your book and Margarita. Just noodly relaxed body. Yeah that's it.

<comment><USER3> I really appreciate this advice, and I plan to try this out tomorrow. I know that I have a tendency to speak quickly, and I have been including verbiage to indicate when I'm done talking to prevent people from interrupting. Just a simple "that's it" or asking a question at the end has been helpful for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Video is the problem.

I worked at one of the earliest IP based Video Conferencing companies back in the early 90's. The video wore us out. We did video all the time for 3 years.

I've been working from home consistently since 2008, 3 different companies, and we never use video, it's all audio conferencing, except maybe for an all hands meeting where the company leaders are talking about something important.

If find video tiring and a waste of time. The video isn't good enough, or big enough to pick up facial "clues", and since people aren't in the same room body language is totally different.

Turn off the video everyone, and you'll be much happier.

Get a really good stereo wireless headset, that way you don't need to worry about feedback or sounding like you are in an echo chamber. My headset lets me roam all around my house, and since it's stereo I can listen to music between meetings.

<comment><USER5> Agreed: been working from home a long time (25+ years) and I just never do video chat; I say high with video on and then switch off. It makes all the difference. I always take the call on my phone, so I do not see others either (if they insist on doing video).

<comment><USER6> When you switch the video off the others usually roll their eyes. When you talk people are only shaking their head from left to right while making thumbs up hand signals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > _Video chats mean we need to work harder to process non-verbal cues like > facial expressions, the tone and pitch of the voice, and body language; > paying more attention to these consumes a lot of energy._

Welcome to the everyday experience of non-neurotypical people in every single meeting you've ever had with them.

</comment><comment><USER8> The problem is that you can't make eye contact.

The one exception is FaceTime in an iPhone, FaceTime subtly edits your eyes to make it look like you're looking at the camera and not down at the screen. But it doesn't work with separate webcams, and no company uses FaceTime.

<comment><USER9> I never realised that about FaceTime. I am surprised that other "big" names in video conference market never thought of that...

<comment><USER10> Pretty sure they realized that but they also realized that iPhone can do that due to its FaceID 3D scanning sensor.

Good luck getting non nightmarish results without it.

Maybe once ML models are trained well enough we can expect good results without FaceID.

<comment><USER8> Even without FaceID, knowing the exact geometry of the screen and camera can get you really close, which is something you can only get reliably with a vertically integrated product. Meanwhile there is no possible way for Zoom to know exactly where my webcam is on my monitor without a cumbersome setup and calibration process.

Edit: nope, I was wrong, they used FaceID sensors. [https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.macrumors.com/2019/07/03/io...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.macrumors.com/2019/07/03/ios-13-attention- correction-facetime/amp/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> We have a control, people who have remote worked for years.

This jumps everywhere on reasons, but experienced remote workers should start getting 'Zoom fatigue' for some of these reasons.

And experienced remote workers should have already identified some of these reasons.

Or it's a new technology we are a few weeks into using and that's tiring.

</comment><comment><USER12> Something that more people need to do with remote calls is wait after asking a question- about a few seconds or so. Unmuting can take a second and one might wait just a bit to make sure no one else starts speaking.

</comment><comment><USER13> And also your data</comment>


The AP Will Sell You a "License" to Words It Doesn't Own - <AUTHOR> http://laboratorium.net/archive/2009/08/03/the_ap_will_sell_you_a_license_to_words_it_doesnt <comment><USER2> this makes little sense. as far as I can make out he's pasted some words in and is suggesting the AP has copyrighted it.....

That sounds like he isnt using the system as intended and is trying to use it to unfairly add to the evilness of the AP's new ideas.

No dice matey.</comment>


The Continuing Silence of Bourbaki (1997) - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxtYXJpb3Rlcm9zYWxlc3xneDo2ZDdkOWRjNWM5NjIxYzQ2 <comment><USER2> Interesting timing, there's a new Bourbaki volume coming out in a few weeks, the first one in decades: Topologie Algébrique, Chapitre 1 à 4.

<comment><USER3> [http://images.math.cnrs.fr/Un-nouveau- Bourbaki.html](http://images.math.cnrs.fr/Un-nouveau-Bourbaki.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > in accordance with mandatory "retirement" at age fifty.

I've never understood the obsession that a lot of mathematicians seem to have with age restrictions (e.g., the Fields medal).

<comment><USER5> Mathematicians, and I am one, are obsessed by and seek to exploit seemingly arbitrary yet otherwise convenient numbers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The first time I heard of Bourbaki, no one knew who the members were. They were quite anonymous.

You couldn't claim it on your list of published works and anyone who cites Bourbaki is citing the group, not you individually. The tremendous energy that they put into an anonymous work seems contrary to the publish-or-perish mindset in academia of today.

<comment><USER7> Feynman thought they were everything that science should reject. It seems that knowledge used to be better before internet. (new math == Bourbaki)

One of the actual members is Pierre Barthelemy [http://passeurdesciences.blog.lemonde.fr/pierre- barthelemy/](http://passeurdesciences.blog.lemonde.fr/pierre-barthelemy/) they seem to originate from ENS and elite school in France.

According to Pr Gleik they "engineered" math so that not another Poincaré would appear again. A french mathematician that based his reasoning to geometry at the dislike of yet another academy that thought talent should not despise the recognition earned by the experts. And Poincaré made clear he despised the formalism fanatics and the french school of math.

So they pushed what Feynman called an hyperverbose reformed version of math that would rather focus on being objectively "scientifically correctly expressed" by being able to manipulate formalism instead of having intuition that could ridiculed the best.

They said that Mandelbrot owe them a lot, and Mandelbrot just fled these people without really caring because he thought geometry was important and these people were kind of pedantic.

The message of bourbaki in one "lemma" is _never draw_. A drawing is always a special case and no drawings of schema will ever lead you to build strong abstractions. Formalize everything.

It kinds of looks like modern computer science fights between the craftsmen vs the tools/language/frameworks/methodology fanatics.

And for an extended understanding of the mechanism of how Bourbaki's 'new math' and other amazing formalism makes it to the top of the educational offer in California a little light on still standard practices is necessary: it is all about the best choice possible

Judging Books by Their Covers Richard P. Feynman [http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm](http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm)</comment></comment>


NDAs are unnecessary because ideas are worthless - <AUTHOR> http://b.lesseverything.com/2008/6/30/ndas-are-unnecessary-because-ideas-are-worthless <comment><USER2> I have so many ideas that I've stopped writing them down. Maybe I should start again just to show how many I have.

What I really need is time to build just one (more) of them.</comment>


Abundance is killing us.  the innovator's dilemma - <AUTHOR> Excerpt from this article below.<p>http://www.businessinsider.com/too-much-free-stuff-is-destroying-america-2016-2<p>"Here's the perfect business idea for this environment: Open a Hundred Dollar Bill Store™. You sell hundred dollar bills for ninety dollars each. You'll lose ten dollars per transaction but you'll do a trillion in revenues in year one. Maybe you show an ad to everyone who walks into the store and you break even. User growth with be on the order of 1000% per month. A billion users. You'll be the biggest IPO of all time when Goldman's underwriters get wind of that growth rate. Go public and let someone else worry about a competitor selling hundred dollar bills for eighty-five. <comment><USER2> This is the post that businessinsider takes from: [http://thereformedbroker.com/2016/02/25/abundance/](http://thereformedbroker.com/2016/02/25/abundance/)

Someone else submitted this earlier today: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11177389](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11177389)

Thanks for the link. Here's the quote I like:

"No one cares how many actual business models get wrecked in the process. How many useful jobs are lost in the process. The new fixed income or currency trader on Wall Street will never need health care, or take a vacation or grab a female co-worker's ass. It's a chip on a server. Much cheaper to employ, much easier to manage.

"Automate everything, outsource the rest – it's cheaper for the customers. "But now there are no customers left, no one has the money to be a customer anymore."

...

""Let's take a product or service that people used to charge for, make a worse version and give it away for free!" Why would we do that? "Bro down.""</comment>