Startup Serves Up Chicken Produced From Cells in Lab - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/startup-to-serve-up-chicken-strips-cultivated-from-cells-in-lab-1489570202 <comment><AUTHOR> After not eating meat for over 20 years due to the environmental and ethical concerns over how it's conventionally been made, I was lucky enough to be at the tasting described in the WSJ article. I wrote about it here: [https://medium.com/@sethbannon/i-just-ate-meat-for-the- first...](https://medium.com/@sethbannon/i-just-ate-meat-for-the-first-time- in-20-years-214d0f875568)

<comment><USER2> I wish the tasting was done with simple preparations, so we can read about how it tastes compared to regular meat. After all, even pastured chicken tastes wildly better than conventional chicken.

<comment><USER3> > After all, even pastured chicken tastes wildly better than conventional > chicken.

As a farmer who used to raise pastured chicken, I was always happy to convert people to what real chicken is supposed to taste like.

<comment><USER4> Is the difference simply that the meat is meat from a well fed, exercised chicken vs. a force fed obese monstrosity?

Kind of like eating me vs. eating an Olympian.

<comment><USER3> I pastured Cornish Cross, which is the standard broiler barn chickens. They are genetically predisposed to pack on as much muscle in as short a time span as possible. By the time they're ~ 9 to 10 weeks old, they are waddling giants, and I'd definitely not characterize them as exercised. :)

That said, the difference that being able to forage green grass and insects in the short period they were out on pasture (usually 4-6 weeks, weather dependent) was so remarkable in terms of the flavour and the texture of the meat, that we're effectively ruined for eating any other non-pastured chickens. The fat was rich and velvety, the dark meat was meaty and deep in flavour; everything was just moist and juicy and delicious.

We didn't do many on a yearly basis (about 1000 +/-), and I was primarily using them for fertilizing pasture that I was grazing with our dairy herd. The fact that they were spectacular eating was just a side benefit.

If you're ever able to track one down, I'd highly recommend giving one a go.

<comment><USER5> And as a quick point out, the feed conversion ratio [1] on poultry is pretty stellar. Anywhere from 1.5-3.5:1 is normal for feed:body weight increase.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio)

<comment><USER3> Cornish Cross in particular are fantastic at converting feed into weight gain. In 10 weeks, you can go from a fluffy little ping pong ball sized chick to an almost 10lb live-weight bird. It's often unwise to raise them past that age, because the rate of weight gain puts so much stress on their internals that they'll frequently keel over from a heart condition. By the 8 to 9 week stage, they're already so heavy that they can only take a handful of steps because having to plop down and have a rest for a bit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Though I'm a meat eater, I have a strong suspicion that the arrival of high- quality meat alternatives will cause a societal shift away from eating meat to the point where it would become rare. As it is, giving up meat is a huge decline in quality of life and its easy to rationalize meat consumption.

It needs to be actually comparable in quality and the price needs to come way down though first. It's easy to imagine a future where the _best_ meat is actually grown in this way and is nonetheless cheaper than more environmentally friendly than raising animals.

And of course, then it becomes possible to build meats that correspond to no actual animal

<comment><USER7> How is it a huge decline in quality of life?

<comment><USER8> Meat is the easiest form of high quality protein. Not everyone's digestive system is amenable to high quantities of non-meat protein sources or to high- carb diets.

<comment><USER9> How is it easiest? Perhaps most accessible how society is currently setup, but beans, tofu, etc are all good for you, plenty of vegan body builders rely on them.

This "high quality" protein myth is garbage.

<comment><USER10> This is what drives me crazy about vegans.

Sorry, it is easier to eat meat. The protein IS higher quality, easier to digest and more balanced. Eating nutritional yeast and balancing your legumes, tofu and other protein sources to get a proper assortment of B vitamins and amino acids IS harder.

Not saying it's not healthier, not saying is not more ethical, not saying anything except it IS easier. Stop lying.

<comment><USER11> > This is what drives me crazy about vegans.

Do you think all vegans are the same? There is no need to make a huge generalization about a group that is so diverse.

> The protein IS higher quality, easier to digest and more balanced

I've never seen anyone claim that meat is easier to digest than plants. Do you have a source?

In terms of quality, you first need to define quality and that depends on your goals. Whole plant protein comes packed with fiber, while animal protein comes packed with cholesterol, IGF-1 and saturated fat. If your goal is to prevent heart disease and cancer through dietary means, plant protein is higher quality.

> Eating nutritional yeast and balancing your legumes, tofu and other protein > sources to get a proper assortment of B vitamins and amino acids IS harder.

This statement makes it clear that you don't know much about vegan diets. This is usually a concern I hear from pre-vegans or people who have been vegan for 2 weeks.

> not saying anything except it IS easier. Stop lying. If I was ever worried > about getting all 9 essential amino acids in a single meal (believe me, most > vegans don't think about it), I would eat beans and rice, or lentils and > potatoes, or edamame, or tempeh, or quinoa, or hummus and crackers, or a > peanut butter sandwich, or tofu. For me, this is a lot easier (and cheaper) > than preparing meat.

If you've been eating meat for 20 years, it will be easier for you to keep eating meat, no one is disputing that.

Now, eating out is definitely harder as a vegan, but like the parent said, it's because the way society is currently setup, not because meat is easier to produce.

<comment><USER10> > Do you think all vegans are the same? There is no need to make a huge > generalization about a group that is so diverse.

True, I should have qualified this. It's only a subset of vegans who frustrate me this way.

> I've never seen anyone claim that meat is easier to digest than plants. Do > you have a source?

Really? Google "is meat easier to digest than vegetable protein". It literally has millions of results.

> In terms of quality, you first need to define quality and that depends on > your goals. Whole plant protein comes packed with fiber, while animal > protein comes packed with cholesterol, IGF-1 and saturated fat. If your goal > is to prevent heart disease and cancer through dietary means, plant protein > is higher quality.

Yeah, I get this argument. It's why I'm eating vegetarian or vegan at least a few times a week these days.

> This statement makes it clear that you don't know much about vegan diets. > This is usually a concern I hear from pre-vegans or people who have been > vegan for 2 weeks.

I'm going by discussions such the ones in my vegan cookbooks, similar to this one:

[http://veganhealth.org/articles/protein](http://veganhealth.org/articles/protein)

> If you've been eating meat for 20 years, it will be easier for you to keep > eating meat, no one is disputing that.

That was the crux of my argument: it is NOT easy to be vegan, stop saying it is. It is arguably better. Healthier _and_ more ethically sound. But my vegan days have much more time-consuming shopping, cooking and prep days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So why are all the engineered meat startups targeting pretty common meats that are fairly low cost? Why not a something like tuna which is endangered and can sell at a really high cost per pound. Take the Tesla strategy and build for a high-end exotic market that can sustain a high-margin first then get into position for the wider, lower margin market.

<comment><USER13> One meat startup went into high-end leather: [http://www.modernmeadow.com/](http://www.modernmeadow.com/)

Another algae-to-make-food company went into high-end oils for cosmetics: [http://www.solazyme.com/](http://www.solazyme.com/) (and some other industrial things, from what I see now)

<comment><USER12> The leather is interesting, you sidestep the food regulatory domain and customer food safety assurance work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> For those that can't get past the paywall...

[https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Fa...](https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fstartup- to-serve-up-chicken-strips-cultivated-from-cells-in-lab-1489570202)

<comment><USER15> Nice trick. Does this via-fb work on all WSJ articles?

<comment><USER16> Here's a javascript bookmarklet I just made that will break the WSJ paywall using this trick.

javascript:(function()%7Bwindow.location %3D ("https%3A%2F%2Fm.facebook.com%2Fl.php%3Fu%3D" %2B encodeURI(window.location.href))%7D)()

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There's also Beyond Meat, which is textured vegetable protein run through a complicated extruder with hot and cold sections. This gives it most of the appearance and physical properties of real meat, at least at the burger level. That's much simpler to make than growing meat from cells.

Beyond Meat ought to be a low-price product, but it isn't.

<comment><USER18> NPR's "How I Built This" podcast had an interesting interview with the founder on how they got started and the challenges they've faced/face. [1]

[1] [https://play.google.com/music/m/Dj4goozcgwvlcixxhx2pekacws4?...](https://play.google.com/music/m/Dj4goozcgwvlcixxhx2pekacws4?t=Live_Episode_Beyond_Meat_Ethan_Brown_- _How_I_Built_This)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> At $9,000 per pound of meat, this is not going to be replacing real meat from animals anytime soon. Chickens are already highly efficient when it comes to converting feed into edible meat. I'm skeptical that cell culture will ever be able to come close to the same level of efficiency.

Cell cultures need to be sterile, the sugars, growth factors, and other nutrients used need to be highly refined. These are not requirements that are likely to change in the foreseeable future.

<comment><USER20> > this is not going to be replacing real meat from animals anytime soon

Put your prediction on PredictionBook? It's a great way to keep track of your predictions, and learn to be calibrated (e.g. to have about 80% of your predictions-of-80%-likelihood be correct, which doesn't come naturally to people).

[http://predictionbook.com/](http://predictionbook.com/)

<comment><USER21> Huh, that actually looks pretty cool. Are there any stats on e.x. how often someone's "80% correct" predictions are actually true?

<comment><USER22> I don't know if you can view your stats in comparison with the average user, but once you have some predictions that have ended up right/wrong, you get a nice little graph showing your calibration. For example: [http://predictionbook.com/users/gwern](http://predictionbook.com/users/gwern)

Assuming I'm reading it right, the perfectly calibrated guesser would trend towards a straight line going from 50 on the left to 100 on the right.

They also have a way-too-addictive game where you can practice calibrating your confidence on a bunch of trivia questions: [http://predictionbook.com/credence_games/try](http://predictionbook.com/credence_games/try)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Mass production of economical, safe, "vat-grown" meats can't come soon enough.

<comment><USER24> Wonder what would happen to the tons of soybeans/corn currently raised as animal feed in that case though...

<comment><USER25> Is that a problem or a good thing. We currently suffer from deforistation due to agriculture. If those feilds could be reforested that would be a good thing. Of course pure capitalism doesn't allow for that, but with a little government intervention (aka, buy up the unneeded feilds) or economic decay (feilds become abandoned due to their lack of value ;) ) then reforestation could occure.

Or there could be solar panels put there, or the corn could end up producing the input to the vat. Or hemp could be grown there which could be used as a construction material, or ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> One of the points missed here in the discussion thread is that over and above ethical/moral animal wellbeing concerns we need this as quickly as possible because antibiotic use in livestock is one of main contributors to antibiotic resistance.

</comment><comment><USER27> I've fantasized about the Musk-esque projects I would take on if/when I have some money, and this is near the top of the list. Cultured animal products, without the cruelty or inefficiency of raising conscious, normal animals, has the potential to push humanity forward economically, morally, and healthfully (couldn't hurt to provide more nutritious options).

I wish that there was more of a focus on milk, because milk production is arguably the most cruel of them all, and it also seems to be more feasible, considering it's a homogeneous liquid solution. Granted, synthetic milk is getting some attention, too: [http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/genetic-engineering- synthetic-milk-...](http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/genetic-engineering-synthetic- milk-may-be-next-after-synthetic-meat-1471878)

</comment><comment><USER28> Given all the discussion about vegans here, I dread the day when a high percentage or, god forbid, majority of the population start looking down on those dirty, pesky, meat-eaters that ruin the environment and "won't anyone please think of the poor animals?".

Honestly artificial meat sounds like a repulsive idea an i'd never consider eating it regularly, maybe just taste as a curiosity.

I like my steaks rare, I like the taste of the juice that's left by the blood in the steak. I like to see the red in the meat.

Some vegans reading this will think I'm a horrible person. Others will think themselves better people than me because they are not enslaved by meat. Honestly, I find this much more repulsive than the way animals are treated in farms.

</comment><comment><USER29> To me it sound an over-engineered solution to a simple problem.

We need less meat from better raised animals. We need to understand that animals are an essential part of a balanced agricultural system. We do not need more food-industry.

</comment><comment><USER30> we've reached peak meat, it's impossible to feed the whole population meat past 10bn due to there not enough land, and if only grass fed meat/etc is consumed there is only enough land for 1bn.

</comment><comment><USER30> why is there no brand of tofu marinated with actual chicken. there's no inbetween eating meat and not eating, there should be a "% meat" brand.

</comment><comment><USER31> You know what's a cheaper, better way to make chicken meat? A chicken....

This is a solution in need of problem

</comment><comment><USER32> So the selling point is that consumers can be lab rats right now?

</comment><comment><USER33> More frankenfood. When will we learn ?

<comment><USER34> Learn what, exactly?</comment></comment>


The Five Myths of Healthcare Startups - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/five-myths-healthcare-startups-mark-tsimelzon <comment><USER2> I have limited experience with that field. It looks right to me, though. I'll add that metaprogramming has untapped potential far as interfacing with the legacy systems. Code the prototype in a familiar language, carefully enter it into a transformation system (eg Semantic Designs, Racket Scheme), and generate a robust version of that nonsense you'd rather not write yourself. There's still work to do the initial transformation rules and/or integration. However, it pays off as you don't have to do it again.

</comment><comment><USER3> The same logic applies to fintech. The opportunity comes from the incumbents using outdated technology and concepts.

<comment><USER2> Yep. I can't wait to see them devour SWIFT's customer base. :)</comment></comment>


IPad Mini production has kicked off - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/03/ipad-mini-production-has-kicked-off-says-wsj-7-85-inch-lcd-screen-no-retina-display/

<comment><USER2> Sounds nice, but the way the market in consumer electronics is going, it's about time for Apple to do something disruptive. This seems like a "me too" move, unless it has features we don't know about.

<comment><USER3> >Sounds nice, but the way the market in consumer electronics is going

How is it going?

>it's about time for Apple to do something disruptive

How many disruptions do people need? The iPad is 2 years old!

Some people get bored so easily they won't be satisfied until we reach the Singularity!

<comment><USER4> >How is it going?

In terms of screen size, everything is shrinking. 10 years ago, the hottest product was the LCD panel TVs. Consumer electronics were reaching new heights with bigger and bigger screens. The LCD TV/PC market is now saturated. Almost any CE company can make a decent LCD/PC, but making a great smart phone, not just in terms of hardware spec, but UI/UX is much more difficult because of the space constraints. HP got their asses handed by the market with Palm (remember that?) but they still recognize that mobile/smaller screens are the future. Now CE is trending towards wearable computers. People want information at their finger tips, they also want a flawless Siri/Google equivalent. In about 10 years, CE will be reading our minds and voice/keyboard entries will be seen as a barbaric task. Devices that need power will be charged using solar or wireless charging. (why are we still plugging things into walls?) Google is doing interesting things with Glass and self-driving cars.

>it's about time for Apple to do something disruptive

Apple is trending towards a great design firm with a tech focus. There are no bleeding edge products in their product portfolio.

Apple could disrupt the market by entering into emerging CE categories like 3D printing, wearable computers and robotics. I've seen some amazing products built by startups, if Apple invests their $100 billion cash reserves to into these categories, I can see them lasting another 30 years before teleportation and intergalactic travel become the norm.

The iPad mini, meh.

<comment><USER5> > Google is doing interesting things with Glass and self-driving cars.

> There are no bleeding edge products in [Apple's] product portfolio.

I see these as two different companies having different ideas about what to do with unreleased products - Apple hasn't even announced an "iPad Mini" which is apparently starting production, and Google has announced products with a time- to-market measured in years (if they ever arrive).

I don't know what "big ideas" Apple's working on because they've decided not to tell us, but I at least give them the benefit of the doubt that by the time we see discussion about a product, it's much more likely to be released, and soon.

<comment><USER4> > I don't know what "big ideas" Apple's working on because they've decided not > to tell us, but I at least give them the benefit of the doubt that by the > time we see discussion about a product, it's much more likely to be > released, and soon.

While I mostly agree, the average CE customer probably already knows what a iPad mini looks like. Google Glass is something that is foreign to the same person and Google is educating potential customers about their product. Apple doesn't need to do that and that is why they are doing well in terms of monetary value. Self-driving cars cannot be kept secret because of all the government regulations and road testing, which involves exposure to the public.

Just from my own experience, Apple hasn't impressed me from a technology standpoint on the past several products released. Specifically:

\- The "new" iPad

\- iPhone 4S

\- iPhone 5

From a monetary and stockholders standpoint, they have been absolutely dominating the market. Apple stores make over $6,000/sqft, Tiffany's is 2nd with $3k. [1]

> I don't know what "big ideas" Apple's working on because they've decided not > to tell us, but I at least give them the benefit of the doubt that by the > time we see discussion about a product, it's much more likely to be > released, and soon.

It's a double edge sword, they keep everything under wraps until they have something to show, but the build up of anticipation doesn't usually meet my expectations. e.g, #shutupandtakemymoney.

I think sooner rather than later, the rest of the public will catch on and demand more innovation from their CE manufacturers.

[1] [http://www.asymco.com/2012/04/18/apple-stores-have- seventeen...](http://www.asymco.com/2012/04/18/apple-stores-have-seventeen- times-better-performance-than-the-average-retailer/)

<comment><USER6> Apple only releases a new product line every ~3-5 years (iPod 2001, iPhone 2007, iPad 2010), so you shouldn't expect to be blown away every year.

<comment><USER4> I think the release cycle of new product lines are much longer for Apple. The jump from iPod to iPhone was significant from an innovation standpoint, but it can be debated that the iPad is just a bigger iPod touch (released in 2007). So it's been roughly a 5-6 year cycle of a new product line. We're ending the cycle soon, and everyone is only talking about the iPhone 5 and iPad mini. As far as I know, the rumor mill has not given the public any kind of notion on what's next.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If this is true and it releases on October 17, just a few days before Windows 8 and Windows RT tablets hit the market on 10/26, some manufacturers might have just a week to adjust prices to react. I don't expect them to do it anyway, but it will be fun to watch the markets in a few weeks.

</comment><comment><USER8> Been looking for ~7" tablet as reading device. 7.2-8" diagonal is about size of regular book printed on A5 (two pages on A4 as booklet) which I find good balance between portability and readability. Nexus 7 is almost perfect fit but has major issue(at least from what I've seen) - pdf rendering is very rough making reading/navigating books experience inconvenient. Hopefully rumored ipad mini would be better candidate, one worry though is no "retina"/high resolution which imo would be major drawback.

Anyone could share experience of reading technical books/sci papers on nexus7?

</comment><comment><USER9> A smaller iPhone the size of the current iPod Nano would be nice. I just can't figure out a solution to the keyboard input problem.

<comment><USER10> Just give Siri some time then the keyboard problem will be solved by its removal.

<comment><USER11> Never gonna happen, even if the speech recognition were without flaws. Talking to your device is not a viable input method whenever other people you do not want to disturb are around. That doesn't make voice recognition useless (I think it's very useful), but it also doesn't make voice recognition a viable keyboard replacement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So the iPad and iPhone are retina, but this iPad mini will not be retina? Surprised that a technology author would assume Apple would take a step backward like that.

<comment><USER13> Why do you think a retina display would be more likely?

<comment><USER14> The most recent three generations of iPhone, one of iPad, one of Macbook Pro, and one of iPod touch have all been Retina.

I looked at a 3GS the other day and had a "this display looks like shit, what's wrong?" moment before I remembered. That's not how Apple wants the first encounter with an iPad mini to go.

<comment><USER13> It may be necessary if they want to hit a certain price point. Competitors are at the $200 mark and that's with razor thin margins. I understand that the screen is an expensive component and I wouldn't be surprised to see it be lower res, especially since it'd be marketed as a cheaper/lower tier device.

<comment><USER14> Apple has consistently avoided cheaping out to compete in the lower-end market.

Consumer and press response would probably be "Apple has fallen off the wagon, they're making crap now", not "Apple's moving into the lower-end market".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> so let's see we have iphone, retina, iphone5, ipad, ipad retina, and now mini ipad. does that count as fragmented?

<comment><USER16> No. A product line of 3-5 products with minor variations each (with/without retina, 3 capacity sizes, two colors) is hardly "fragmented".

Contrast, say, Sony's offerings.</comment></comment>


Easy cluster parallelization with ZeroMQ - <AUTHOR> http://mdup.fr/blog/easy-cluster-parallelization-with-zeromq <comment><USER2> Worth mentioning that the cluster tools in IPython implement basically the same system as he ends up with, plus lots of other functionality and it is using ZMQ as the backend as well. If you've got a small to medium sized task (I'd say less than 500 nodes is a good number) to run on your cluster ipcluster is pretty great. Even when I have a proper queuing system like SLURM or PBS in place, I still often use ipcluster on top.

[http://ipython.org/ipython-doc/dev/parallel/](http://ipython.org/ipython- doc/dev/parallel/)

<comment><USER3> I'm curious on how you use ipcluster on top of pbs

<comment><USER2> If you mean the practicalities of how to use it, they describe it a bit here [http://ipython.org/ipython- doc/dev/parallel/parallel_process...](http://ipython.org/ipython- doc/dev/parallel/parallel_process.html#using-ipcluster-in-pbs-mode) .

If you mean how have I used it specifically, I've used it to do a variety of things. Ranging from recreating what was described in the original post to using it as an ad hoc MPI replacement. I find it's handy for managing jobs that have some coupling (and so aren't easily suited to running via the features of the batch system), but aren't tightly coupled enough to warrant the suffering of having to write MPI-based code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> ZeroMQ is amazing. A few years ago I built a prototype project for a client that basically was fail2ban but scalable. It monitored nginx logs and broadcasted some information, and workers did the rest. Most of the data was in memory and passed around, and communication was done via ZeroMQ. It was done this way so that we could split the heavy-load components off the server and into workers, and allow the server to simply do it's job: tail nginx logs and act upon ban requests from workers. It was amazing, sadly I never completed it and deployed it on a production environment but from initial tests, it outperformed fail2ban by a lot.

</comment><comment><USER5> I had fun reading - thx. I found the solution of "requesting workers" interesting. My first reflex to the round robin argument was - a better load balancer but the requesting worker made that totally not necessary! I wounder what negative sites sutch architectures may have?

</comment><comment><USER6> Nice article. I hope to see a benchmark of it on a less parallel problem with low-latency network hardware. Maybe a comparison of that against a vanilla MPI or parallel framework. We'll get to see what its real overhead is.

<comment><USER2> It's a bit hard to compare to MPI, which is considerably lower level and is oriented towards tightly coupled compute clusters. MPI is more about passing around data structures and not so much about dispatch and execution of independent tasks, which is more of a distributed computing type endeavor. You can build something like this on top of MPI (and I did once as an experiment), but it is tough to compare them directly since they are designed on different assumptions.

<comment><USER6> Fair point. I've been out of cluster computing for years so what do you think would be comparable?

<comment><USER7> Somewhat tangential, but you may be interested in this essay on "HPC is dying and MPI is killing it" [http://www.dursi.ca/hpc-is-dying-and-mpi-is-killing- it/](http://www.dursi.ca/hpc-is-dying-and-mpi-is-killing-it/) . There were many comments here on HN, at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9335441](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9335441) . The essay also has a couple of followups. It really is an excellent essay.

The author suggests GASNet, Charm++, and several other things that would be comparable to MPI.

<comment><USER6> That's an excellent essay. I agree with about every point. I worked MPI over ten years ago. It seemed like an assembler language for cluster computing: something for raw efficiency or to hold us over until we get a _real_ language. I was playing with Cilk and other parallel tools then. _Much_ better but little adoption or optimization.

The examples given in Spark and Chapel show how much better it can be. Such methods deserve much more investment. The bad thing is that the DOE labs are clinging so hard to their existing tools when they're in the best position to invest in new ones via huge grants they have. They built supercomputing before anyone heard of the cloud. Their wisdom combined with today's datacenter engineers could result in anything from great leaps in efficiency to something revolutionary. Yet, they act elitist and value backward compatibility over everything else. Starting to look like those mainframe programmers squeezing every ounce of productivity they can out of COBOL.

I think the change will have to come from outside. A group that works both sides with funding to do new projects. They either (a) improve MPI usage for new workloads or (b) get the alternatives up to MPI performance for HPC workloads. Then, they open the tool up to all kinds of new projects in both HPC and cloud-centered research (esp cloud compute clusters). Maybe the two sides will accidentally start sharing with each other when contributing to the same projects. Not much hope past that.

<comment><USER7> "They built supercomputing before anyone heard of the cloud."

Minor historical pontification on my side: The term 'cloud' is only the current term for an old idea. Before cloud there was 'grid'. Before that was the Amoeba OS and other distributed OSes. Long before that, a 1960s hope for Multics was that it would be:

> ... a utility like a power company or water company. This view is > independent of the existence or non-existence of remote consoles. The > implications of such a view are several. A utility must be dependable, more > dependable than existing hardware of commercial general-purpose computers. A > utility, by its nature, must provide service on demand, without advance > notice in most cases. A utility must provide small amounts of service to > small users, large amounts to large users, within very wide limits. ... > [http://www.multicians.org/fjcc3.html](http://www.multicians.org/fjcc3.html)

That's shortly after the CDC 6600, and before the DOE really got into the supercomputing business.

In any case, I don't know the politics of supercomputing, and my experience in that field is even older than yours. When I look at current clouds systems, and try them out, I throw my hands up, because they don't handle the types of architectures I use in my research. I do compute-heavy work on medium-sized data, with algorithms that works best with stateful nodes in a boss/worker system. Luckily for me, I don't need low latency, so building something on top of ZeroMQ is good enough for what I want, and easy to do.

<comment><USER6> Exciting to see someone that remembers all those good, old systems! I've been studying them in recent years to solve modern problems that... they already solved. Yeah, some of the techniques go way back. To be honest, I've been thinking of re-implementing a version of Globe toolkit with modern security engineering techniques to deal with our Internet apps issues.

What do you think of that? Worthwhile to leverage such an architecture?

<comment><USER2> > Exciting to see someone that remembers all those good, old systems! I've > been studying them in recent years to solve modern problems that... they > already solved

I saw a presentation from one of the VPs of Cray at ORNL. He spoke on the current wave of GPGPU and how similar it is to the old massively vectorized architectures in supercomputers (in particular Cray ones, since he was from Cray) from the late 70s through the early 90s. Apparently they've been able to leverage a lot of their old code in the Cray compilers for their newer GPGPU features.

<comment><USER6> Bam! Another example of people applying lessons of the past to make the present so much easier. Glad for them. Unsurprising with Cray given they're quite innovative and led the way in SIMD processing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great writeup. Perhaps slightly less clean, you could cut the messages in half by having the available report the result as well (empty in the initial case).

Is the worker idling between replying and receiving new work? In other words, does ZMQ enable overlapping, say always having two outstanding requests per worker?</comment>


How much information can you cram into 140 chars - <AUTHOR>

Are some languages more suitable for tweeting? Like Chinese(char per word?) or Fins(long words?).
Hw mch cn u str whl kpng th txt rdbl?
How much data can you store when giving up readability? <comment><USER2> Depends. Can I gzip it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, if you think you can get binary data across the Twitter api. Otherwise you'd have to base64 encode it :D

<comment><USER2> You can post binary via Twitter, yes.</comment></comment></comment>


The Pmarca Guide to Startups, part 4: The only thing that matters (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://pmarchive.com/guide_to_startups_part4.html <comment><USER2> "There is one high-profile, highly successful software entrepreneur right now who is burning through something like $80 million in venture funding in his latest startup and has practically nothing to show for it except for some great press clippings and a couple of beta customers -- because there is virtually no market for what he is building."

Anyone know who this was now?! hehe

</comment><comment><USER3> Groupon is a great counter to consider in terms of the product-market fit theory. Few companies have ever had the product-market that Groupon had "Groupon is so effective that Mason claims Groupon now has 35,000 companies clamoring to be on its roster. Only one in eight applicants makes the cut." [0]

Instead a better model is to think about having a great product in a great market has phase 1. But if the company can't create a moat it still dies. "One problem with the Groupon model: Anyone can replicate it. More than 200 copycat sites have sprung up in the U.S., with another 500 overseas, including 100 in China."[0]

[0] [https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0830/entrepreneurs- groupo...](https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0830/entrepreneurs-groupon- facebook-twitter-next-web-phenom.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> For those who might be unaware, "pmarca" = Marc Andreessen, formerly of Netscape, now a heavyweight VC with A16Z.

<comment><USER5> For those too young to remember Netscape, this means he was the guy who made the first two web browsers that made it outside of academia and into widespread use. As a result, there are web tags we use because he (or his employees) put them in. JavaScript was created at Netscape, too.

<comment><USER6> ehm... Also the guy to guise opposition to net neutrality as just being fervently anti-colonisim

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This:

"Personally, I'll take the third position -- I'll assert that market is the most important factor in a startup's success or failure."

seems to be at potential odds with what I've seen Marc say in a lot of recent interviews he has done. Over and over again, he'll very specifically focus on the people being the single most important thing, when he discusses what matters the most.

For example, he reiterates this point about people again the other day ("most of what we do is evaluate people"), in this excellent Bloomberg interview podcast:

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/2017-05-19/interview- wi...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/2017-05-19/interview-with-marc- andreessen-masters-in-business-audio)

<comment><USER8> He may be adjusting his message for the audience.

When he wrote this blog series, he was writing for entrepreneurs, and specifically entrepreneurs that a16z might want to fund. When you're an entrepreneur, a.) you can't do anything about the people anyway, because it's _you_ and you can't exactly get rid of yourself and b.) one way that you _can_ improve the founding team if you are it is to make decisions that will put you in a big market that needs what you're making. And entrepreneurs that listen to that and heed it will be good candidates for the service that a16z is offering, which is support in scaling a company to take advantage of a big market.

When you talk to the press, you _always_ want to talk about people first, because you come across as callous and nerdy otherwise. Journalism is all about finding the human angle; if you frame what you do as "we find good people and support them", you get a lot more public support than if you frame it as "we find unexploited market opportunities and exploit them."

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> As one might expect, these sort of oversimplifications are make great headlines, but aren't usually actionable. Data and metrics which validate hypotheses like this should be the standard we strive to meet.

See also: The only thing that matters is oxygen - unless, of course, you are anaerobic.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think this is totally true, and often consider it myself when thinking about the startup I work for. I use it as kind of a north star in decision making to make sure we don't lose our way. The way I think about it is solutions are for consultants, products are for problems. And if you're really lucky, you're solving a problem people don't know they have yet just before they become aware. When you build this way, you get sucked along by market inertia. I thought about this a lot when I worked at DigitalOcean. I think we did a great job because we cared, but in the back of my mind I always kinda wondered if we had to, the market was growing faster than we could have addressed it at.

</comment><comment><USER11> Striking similarity to Sun Tzu's advice: know enemy, and know youself. There's a special emphasis in "The Art of War" that you can't win, even in full strength, if the enemy doesn't expose some weakness. Here Marc rehashes this very idea, that your preparation isn't enough. Instead, to meet enemy's weakness is critical. This ancient idea doesn't require any exceptional intelligence to understand. The hard part is actually discern this weakness, or market.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is a much better version: [http://pmarchive.com/guide_to_startups_part4.html](http://pmarchive.com/guide_to_startups_part4.html)

<comment><USER13> Ok, we'll change to that from [http://web.archive.org/web/20070701074943/http://blog.pmarca...](http://web.archive.org/web/20070701074943/http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/the- pmarca-gu-2.html). Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> What if they were all necessary conditions of success, and each insufficient by themselves? One of the main reason startups fail is founder conflict (lack of team), and many teams have trouble building something that actually works (lack of product). The market can't "pull the product out" of a dysfunctional group of incompetents.

</comment><comment><USER15> For people trying to navigate that page:

Part 1: [http://web.archive.org/web/20070704165700/http://blog.pmarca...](http://web.archive.org/web/20070704165700/http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/the_pmarca_guid_1.html)

Part 2: [http://web.archive.org/web/20070625210316/http://blog.pmarca...](http://web.archive.org/web/20070625210316/http://blog.pmarca.com:80/2007/06/the_pmarca_guid_2.html#comment-73277060)

Part 3: [http://web.archive.org/web/20070702024023/http://blog.pmarca...](http://web.archive.org/web/20070702024023/http://blog.pmarca.com:80/2007/06/the- pmarca-gu-1.html)

Part 4 (this): [http://web.archive.org/web/20070701074943/http://blog.pmarca...](http://web.archive.org/web/20070701074943/http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/the- pmarca-gu-2.html)

Part 5: [http://web.archive.org/web/20070701154836/http://blog.pmarca...](http://web.archive.org/web/20070701154836/http://blog.pmarca.com:80/2007/06/the- pmarca-gu-3.html#comments)</comment>


California poverty rate highest in U.S. when housing costs factored in - <AUTHOR> https://la.curbed.com/2018/9/14/17856870/california-poverty-rate-housing-cost-of-living <comment><USER2> This suggests that poverty rates do not consider the important factors required to accurately assess if someone is able to afford life. Which surprises me. Why wouldn't cost of living be included in a term that by definition refers to the ability to cover the cost of living?

<comment><USER3> It's why you should be skeptical of the "X% of people globally have been lifted out of extreme poverty in the past X years" stories.

<comment><USER4> Don't confuse extreme poverty and poverty.

Extreme poverty is defined as: "a condition characterized by severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education and information. It depends not only on income but also on access to services."

Generally, I'm skeptical of adjusting for cost of living when you have housing prices as you do in the bay area. You still have options to move away.

<comment><USER5> yeah, as long as you don't care leaving the place you grew up in, your family and friends, not to mention having to actually figure out another place to go, find a job, get a new place (including deposit).

Easy.

<comment><USER6> A lot of people don't seem to realize that the bay area is an actual place with a non-transient population, not just a venue for tech workers to establish themselves.

<comment><USER7> We don't live in a society that gives you a birthright to the building you're born in. I'm not sure why we should have a birthright to a geographically delineated number of them.

<comment><USER8> You're right that people being displaced by gentrification don't have a birthright to continue living in their neighborhood. The problem is that the people displacing them _do_ have a birthright - the birthright to anyone's neighborhood, anywhere in the world. Do you also feel like that is a problem, or do you only object to "birthrights" for poor people who depend on their neighborhood for support and sometimes survival?

<comment><USER7> They don't have a birthright to a place any more than those displaced. Do you honestly think the displacers want, more than anything else, to live in a very expensive apartment in San Francisco? If they have some birthright to "anyone's neighborhood," why aren't they all living in mansions on the beach? The only birthright we agree on is the right to resolve disputes according to the rules of our government. Money provides a way to mediate the situation where two people want the same thing without them having to shoot each other over it. I much prefer the model where the mode of competition is economic benefit rather than "ability to be born in a good position."

<comment><USER8> > _I much prefer the model where the mode of competition is economic benefit > rather than "ability to be born in a good position_"

Great! I also support economic competition as well as leveling the playing field by limiting the unfair advantages of being born in a good position.

Of course, as you probably know, social mobility is at historic lows in the US. This means people born into wealthy families are most likely to remain wealthy, and people born into poor families are most likely to remain poor. By your own argument, that is a problem because it shifts competition to "ability to be born in a good position".

Therefore it seems that we agree after all!

Unless of course you're not being intellectually honest and are using big words like "economic competition" only when it supports your pre-existing ideology.

<comment><USER7> You've completely changed the subject. I meant position in a literal, not figurative, sense.

Weird accusations of intellectual dishonesty aside, we do agree on economic mobility but that wasn't the topic at hand. Economic mobility doesn't mean "give the most valuable apartments in the United States to the lower class so they can live there because they don't want their lives to change."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think 19% really understates the scale of the problem. If you removed all the subsidies and the housing subsidies and enormous programs, I would imagine, that number would be even higher.

I really wish they would go into the root causes of what's causing all this hardship. Too often, these articles don't cover the real causes and just cause knee-jerk emotional reactions. Without knowing the true cause, we can never address the real problem: An imbalance between the number of jobs and the housing availability. Either housing supply has to increase or all those FB/Google employers bringing in employees from out of the state and outside the US, need to stop doing that in areas that don't want to grow.

The hardships we face here in CA are all self imposed. Voters and their politicians enacted each and every single regulation that's prevented housing from being built over the last 50 years. It doesn't have to be this way. There are other places that grow just as quickly and don't have these problems: Houston, Dallas, Austin. Austin's already getting worse due to all the anti- housing folks moving there (ironically whilst escaping CA housing problems). Chicago has over 2 million residents, with great housing and very little government intervention/regulations. CA can learn a lot from those states and cities.

<comment><USER10> _Either housing supply has to increase or all those FB /Google employers bringing in employees from out of the state and outside the US, need to stop doing that in areas that don't want to grow._

How are areas to make this determination? By democratic vote? At what level, the almost invisible local electorate? Maybe I'm cynical about the level of corruption in local politics here in NY, but call me skeptical.

And what communities don't want new jobs to materialize? It brings infusions of cash, even if housing demand goes crazy as a consequence. A depressed housing market, if you remember the landscape in 2008, caused a lot of strife.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > _Accounting for housing costs, California has nation's highest poverty rate_

I assume that the underlying study breaks the population down into quintiles or deciles based on income and then looks at spending on housing for each group, but it's not clear from the article.

If you simply compare average income to average housing costs you're going to get a skewed result. A software engineer living in the Bay Area could be well over the national average for housing (40% or 50% of income, maybe more in some cases) but they're definitely not contributing to an increased poverty level.

Another way of looking at this is that California's poorest counties are in the Central Valley. I suspect this is also where California's cheapest real estate is at.

<comment><USER12> Good point. To elaborate on it:

> If you simply compare average income to average housing costs you're going > to get a skewed result.

Particularly because averages give skewed results given outliers, which there surely must be. (Particularly with wages, I imagine, someone can be _hugely_ overpaid (like 1M vs. 100k), but you can hardly be 900k underpaid because then you'd be making negative money.) The median value makes more sense when one does not want to be affected as much by outliers.

Not that comparing the median housing price to the median income is necessarily a correct or complete view; I just noticed that we're talking about averages which are even worse for this purpose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> California is the highest state; DC is the highest of the regions listed at 20.2% vs California's 19% [2].

Also interesting to note that the rate in California has been dropping over the past few years - 20.6% avg for 2013/2014/2015 [0], 20.4% for 2016 [1], and 19% for 2017. The national supplemental poverty rate is relatively flat over the same time frame -- 14.3% in 2015 and 13.9% in 2017

[0] [https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...](https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2016/demo/p60-258.pdf)

[1] [https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...](https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2017/demo/p60-261.pdf)

[2] [https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...](https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2018/demo/p60-265.pdf)

</comment><comment> swingline-747 Might be right. I chose to live in a Vanagon Westfalia rather than pay the extortion rates for Valley rent. Single-family homes far from employment are around $1M. In other states, such homes go for $90-300k. This implies around 90% of the value is in the land.

Basically, if you're not actively working in tech or servicing tech companies, it doesn't make any sense to remain in the Valley. On retirement, definitely also move somewhere else because it's a pay-to-play game.

<comment><USER14> > Basically, if you're not actively working in tech or servicing tech > companies, it doesn't make any sense to remain in the Valley.

From a game theory perspective, certainly not. The danger is: what happens when all the tech employees suddenly don't have any Uber drivers, any paramedics, any supermarket vendors, hell any cleaning personnel any more? When their homes get raided by criminals because cops cannot afford living in SV any more? When their kids have nowhere to go to school?

That's the thing why the Free Market does not work for basic human necessities. If the Free Market would do its job Walmart and Amazon employees wouldn't be forced to top their "wages" up with food stamps and other social benefits.

<comment><USER15> The free market handles these factors just fine. If Uber can't find any drivers in the bay area they'll up their prices and pay drivers more. If municipalities can't find people to provide government services, they'll increase wages. That's why BART janitors pull six figures.

<comment><USER14> > The free market handles these factors just fine.

Then do tell me why companies like Amazon and Walmart get away with, essentially, state subsidies for their employees and why in many parts of the US teachers complain about being massively underfunded, to the point of Oklahoma switching to 4-day school days so teachers can work on the side to earn money?!

<comment><USER15> Amazon and Walmart don't receive subsidies. Their workers receive subsidies. You may be tempted to ask, "why don't we make Amazon and Walmart pay wages that put workers above the poverty line?" The likely answer is that this would put the companies at a competitive disadvantage and they would end up laying off much of their workforce to stay in business. And now the government is paying an even bigger unemployment subsidy to these former workers.

As for Oklahoma, that's the voters making the decision that cutting school hours is a better choice than to increase teacher spending. Sure you and I don't agree with this choice, but elections say Oklahoma voters do.

<comment><USER16> To paraphrase Morty, "That sounds like getting subsidies with extra steps."

<comment><USER15> Then let me spell it out more explicitly. Some company pays their employees $10 an hour. This isn't enough to get by on, so the government give each of them an extra $2 an hour to spend on necessities (I know, most welfare systems don't pay out hourly just bear with this example). Who is helped by this extra money? Not the company. If you cut the welfare, the company's profits (or losses) remain exactly the same. Their workers will lead worse lives and experience greater hardship. The workers don't find other jobs. If better paying jobs existed they would have taken them already. Thus, it's not a subsidy for the company. It's a subsidy for the worker. Eliminating welfare has zero impact on the company's profits.

This is why making companies pay tax penalties if their workers are on food stamps is a terrible ides. It'd make employers more wary of recipients of welfare, thus making it even harder for poorer minorities, single mothers, etc. to find jobs. And not to mention, it'd create further incentive to outsource or automate these jobs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> oh, the joys of traveling thru real life tent city on your way to Comic- Con/E3, real culture shock to people from Europe.

<comment><USER18> Presumably attendees from Calais or Paris experienced slightly less culture shock.</comment></comment>


What happened at Go Daddy on Sept. 10, 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://inside.godaddy.com/inside-story-happened-godaddy-com-sept-10-2012/

<comment><USER2> _In the event of Sept. 10, however, the hardware was not able to fit the entire forwarding table, which was 210x their normal routes into the FIB memory, and the routers fell back to "software switching mode."_

Why was the entire forwarding table 210x their normal routes? Is that a normal expansion due to the exponential nature of a fully (or substantially) connected graph or did something Very Bad happen and GoDaddy effectively DOSed their forwarding tables?

If (a), then GoDaddy missed the fact that they had nearly exhausted their FIB table physical size. This is easy to do and understandable.

If (b), they the article has not come clean why they had a massive, unexpected forwarding table size increase.

</comment><comment><USER3> The point is: do we actually care?</comment>


Google+ bug exposes non-public profile data for 52M users - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/12/google-bug-exposes-non-public-profile-data-for-52-million-users/ <comment><USER2> What I don't understand it is how this happens if you get a testing process carried on. In a company like Google you would expect a lot of people trying to test and hacking things out projects to are meant be public interfaces</comment>


Ask HN: Should everyone speak English at a company? - <AUTHOR>

I want to ask what other peoples opinions on this are before I talk to someone.
I am working in a tiny conference room. There are 8 of us in here. 5 Indian that speak Hindi with each other 24/7, 2 Chinese that speak Chinese 99% of the time between each other, and then there's me. I feel so awkward just being here, everyone talking with each other like they're best friends.
Monday. Elevator. I ask my coworker how her weekend was. "Oh it was alright, just watched some TV, you?" I already know this is a bullshit response.
Her Indian coworker asks her how her weekend was, and then they just go off for like 2 hours between each other in full on Hindi. <comment><USER2> Is the language the actual issue?

That is, how is this different than if one group of people constantly talks about what their fantasy football team is doing, and another constantly talk about celebrity gossip, and you care about neither sports nor celebrities?

The example you gave isn't mutually exclusive - "watched some TV" followed by two hours of discussion might be "watched the Indian equivalent of House of Cards over the weekend and now want to talk about it." You wouldn't have seen it, nor know the relevant political background to make sense of it. Would you spend several hours during work to coach a near stranger on US politics, in order to describe the TV show you just watched?

Speaking of which, how are they able to talk for 2 hours in a small room without distracting anyone else? You're likely exaggerating, but is your frustration that you're feeling lonely/isolated, that the room is too small for the number of people in it, or something else besides just that you don't speak Hindi or Chinese?

Getting HR to force everyone to speak English isn't really going to help anything.

<comment><AUTHOR> Those are conversations I can potentially join in on and listen in on. I have no idea if these people are talking shit about me, and by result of them talking in their mother languages, they relate with one another more, giving me no chance to anything with them since I can't understand a word they are saying.

I'm not exaggerating, do not assume I am. These are my work conditions. They talk. All day, every day.

Right now I'm just some random team member cramped in a tiny room full of strangers for the next year, me, being the only one that doesn't share a common tongue with them besides English.

What a silly example, no I wouldn't coach them on my entire fucking culture to talk to them about a TV show. Giving a response like "Just watched some TV" means they want nothing more to do with you, because nobody ever "just watches some TV" during the weekend.

I highly doubt she sat there, for 3 fucking day, plastered to her goddamn screen.

It has now created a culture of one liners between me and them, like if I want to say something, the entire team stops talking, then waits for what I say, then resume their crap.

I'm requesting to be reassigned to a new project if they can't speak English, or I'm quitting on the spot. Working in a complete vacuum is the absolute worst, it's gotten to a point now where I am becoming a bother for simply interacting.

<comment><USER2> I said "exaggerating" because there are very few jobs where people can work in a small conference room and can chat for two hours straight while working, and not have that affect their work quality.

I did not mean to imply that all she did was watch TV. I'm saying that your example wasn't enough be meaningful to others not in your circumstances.

Billions of people around the world somehow manage to work in multi-lingual, multi-cultural environments, so requiring a mono-lingual work environment can't intrinsically and always be the best solution.

Based in what you've said, you don't even want your co-workers to spend 5% of their time speaking a non-English language, for concern they will be talking shit about you during that time.

If you've never worked in a place with few other English speakers, then I can see how that would especially bother you. I mostly ignore the Spanish, German or Arabic I hear, but then again I also grew up in a multilingual neighborhood of the US.

The key part when you talk to HR is the "working in a vacuum" aspect, and not specifically the language. Otherwise it's much easier to say that you're the one who's culturally intolerant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> More than language at times, it is usually cultural differences as well. You gave the example of elevator chit chat. I think it might have more to do with the fact that your Indian/Chinese co-worker might not have a lot of common things to talk about. For example, sports. A typical american likes american football or baseball at least knows enough about it talk to another american. Someone from another country may not relate to this at all unless they are actually following the sports (a lot of them do of course). So sometimes they are not sure what to say and hence go with the usual "weather" or "watched TV" chat.

Having said this, I personally think that it is rude to talk in a language in work settings that someone else does not understand even though you may not be talking to/about them. However, many times, the people doing this do not realize it is rude (again due to cultural differences). They will think "what the heck, I am talking in my mother tongue to someone else, why does he/she care". They do not realize that it might be making the other person uncomfortable.

P.S: I am an Indian who moved to the US many years ago.

</comment><comment><USER4> No. Asking people to speak English only is racist.

Edit: here are some links from Wales:

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-13080586](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk- wales-13080586)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, but now I am a complete outsider to my team because they all decided to speak in their mother tongues. It is NOT racist. I'm quitting my job, or they will learn to speak English, because I can't work with a team that wants to have nothing to do with me because I'm not from their country.

The official tongue here, and the company, is English. When you're at WORK, speak it.

<comment><USER4> What country are you in?

Your responses seem unusually aggressive.

Edit: canada - the official languages are English and French. You would be unable to do anything if they were all speaking French.

You say there are two groups. One group speaks "Chinese" and the other group speaks "Hindi". So one group doesn't know what the other group is saying. You (rather paranoically) say that they may be talking shit about you. That's true, but the Indians may be talking shit about the Chinese and the Chinese may be talking shit about the Indians.

<comment><AUTHOR> Either way, it completely divides our team and that is not right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Everyone should speak the _same_ language. That language does not necessarily have to be English.

</comment><comment><USER6> I can see that it can be lonely for you. However, I do not see that your coworkers are doing anything wrong.

</comment><comment><USER7> As an Indian, this is a topic of conversation even inside India. For example, the place I worked for in Bangalore had people who spoke to each other in Hindi, another bunch that spoke Tamil, Telugu, etc. When there was a common need, of course they spoke in English or Hindi (when everyone understands it). But to each other, people speak in their vernacular.

For someone to whom English is a second language, it doesn't come naturally to converse all the time in English - they probably think in their vernacular and translate it into English all the time they talk to you. Asking them to converse among themselves in English just so the lone English could understand their Shah Rukh Khan gossip is unrealistic.

</comment><comment><USER8> Use your work situation as an opportunity to learn some Hindi and Mandarin.

<comment><USER9> Great plan. And useful if you later on move job. You have another useful skill.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm surprised the Indians were speaking Hindi to each other; India is linguistically very diverse and two random Indians running into each other (without knowing where each other is from) would probably speak English, often even within India.

I work in an English-speaking office that is 95% Chinese (and I'm the only non-Chinese on my team), my Chinese is marginal but I make it a point to interject English into conversations even if I have the slightest idea about what is being discussed. But otherwise, I'm used to it.

</comment><comment><USER11> You can argue that given how English is the default language of programming it makes sense to stick to it when discussing programming-related things. That applies to sciences too to a lesser degree. Anyways - first I'd suggest to get close to these people. If they really like you they'll have a good reason to speak English (-;

</comment><comment><USER12> Yes.

I work for one company and we're a multi-language team. If needed, we all speak in english. No one complained. Actually meetings start depending the main actor, if he/she an english speaker, then we all start to talk in english. Actually we speak in spanish, catalan, english and italian.

</comment><comment><USER13> Yes. I definitely think everyone should speak the official language local country while at work. That's English for US and Mandarin Chinese if you're in China.

I think speaking different languages at work can create a us vs them atmosphere that's not good for a healthy work environment.

<comment><USER2> The US doesn't have an official local language. Some states do. For example, Hawaiian is an official language of Hawaii.

Also, several states are de facto bilingual.

And then there's South Africa, with 11 official languages.

So I don't think your views are really all that generally applicable.

<comment><USER14> Yet it is the defacto language. It is the language you need to speak if you wish to be successful (in general, of course there are outliers.) regardless, that's not really the point. It is difficult for a team to function properly if they're not speaking the same language. I know I wouldn't like it if my entire team spoke something other than English most of the time. I would feel like an outsider.

<comment><USER2> The point is the poster wrote "the official language", which is flawed logic that reveals more of the poster's lack of knowledge in how the world works than gives any meaningful advice. (The first two of the three words in that quote don't apply.)

What you describe is a different scenario. For example, one of my clients was a company in Sweden. Almost no Swedes were in the team. The de facto language for the team was English, even though Sweden's official language is Swedish. The poster's logic would insist that everyone speak Swedish (or one of Sweden's minority languages), even though everyone knew English. While you would say that's fine.

I've also worked for an Austrian company where nearly everyone spoke German most of the time. (Not all of the time; unlike the main thread, I did have chit-chat and work-related conversations. But coffee breaks and lunch were mostly in German.) Okay, I was the outsider. I'm also the outsider when people talk about bands, movies, and sports, since I know so very little about those topics compared to most. That's life?

<comment><USER14> Agreed, grandfather was wrong to say "official language" (not really "flawed logic", just wrong.) It's just being pedantic though; I knew what he was getting at.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> IF they can AND are polite AND wish to include English speakers. Don't sweat it, learn Hindi fast if you really want your head filling with TV trivia etc etc etc etc etc etc

</comment><comment><USER16> Not necessarily English, but at least the same language.

I think it will harm the team cohesion otherwise.</comment>


New Jersey Votes to Block Tesla's Direct Sales - <AUTHOR> http://recode.net/2014/03/11/it-happened-new-jersey-votes-to-block-teslas-direct-sales/ <comment><USER2> This is what pg tweeted earlier today:

 _Banning Tesla is an index of the corruptness of state governments as banning Uber is of city governments._ ([https://twitter.com/paulg/status/443469758369767425](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/443469758369767425))

A very astute observation, as usual.

<comment><USER3> PG is off the mark here. Companies like Uber explicitly ignore the existing laws and regulations. In the case of Tesla, the ruling just passed.

<comment><USER4> Can you tell me why you think PG is off the mark ? Tesla is a company marketing a product that people want. If people want Tesla their elected representatives should not and cannot stop them from exercising their choice. Passing laws to prohibit people from buying something available in the market is an index of corporate interests using money to buy favors from elected representatives i.e. an index of corruption. Do you have any claim to support your argument other than a blanket statement "PG is off the mark here" ?

<comment><USER5> Because the rules for cab companies actually serve a purpose--they actually ensure that there is some minimum level of service that the consumer can count on in terms of service, fares, non-discrimination, insurance liability, etc.

If services like Uber and Lyft simply decided to be a cab company with excellent technological underpinnings, people would have been quite happy with them and they would have been quite profitable. And they could have blown most cab companies out of the water. Buying up inefficient operators, consolidating them, and bringing them into the modern world of technology is a really good business plan.

Uber and Lyft are in trouble because they wanted to be _exit strategy_ profitable rather than simply profitable. And they decided to do this by ignoring all of that icky stuff like liability insurance, commercial licensing, and following the law. In addition, Uber and Lyft tend to want to ply their trade in areas which are already profitable to cab companies rather than taking over areas that are underserved. If they were brokering rides in areas that can't get cabs easily, they would have lots of defenders.

There is a big difference between laws that actually protect consumers vs. laws that protect middlemen. The fact that pg can't see the difference is a pretty big issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's how we got here:

1) Money buys political influence (duh!)

2) Most cities have small tax bases, where car dealerships are a very large part of the tax base. City managers want a larger tax base to help fund their plans.

3) Thus, car dealerships & local politicians have aligned incentives.

4) So, local laws (zoning, advertising, etc) favor car dealerships.

5) Higher offices are filled from the pool of local politicians, as they move up the food chain.

6) Those politicians remember their contacts @ the dealers, who helped fund/launch their careers, & they remain aligned with them in passing laws empathetic to dealer's interests.

Of course, legitimately, car dealerships have HUGE capital investments (fast aging inventory, large chunks of prime real-estate, staffing costs). Would YC ever want to get into the traditional dealer space? No friggen way. Too risky & doesn't scale.

And, nobody really buys a car without a test drive/showroom. So, nearly any "online" sale is cannibalizing the dealer's investments.

So, we need to have some kind of online buying system where you MUST enter in a dealer showroom code before buying, & they get some commission, as they DO offer real value here folks.

IMO, the whole consumer retail system is going to evolve into "showroom + online buying" in a fair system soon.

<comment><USER7> Hmm, Apple does this just fine, but Apple isn't franchising the stores, they just comfortably run them at a loss. The fact that the dealerships have independent owners may make that more complicated. Your system seems reasonably sensible.

And you wouldn't _have_ to enter a dealer showroom code, your dealer would just give you a code for a "special discount" \-- this is how businesses already track which of their ad campaigns are paying off.

<comment><USER8> Do you have a source for Apple running their stores at a loss? I doubt that actually happens.

<comment><USER9> They don't run them at a loss. They're the most profitable retail stores in the US (on a per square foot basis). At least they were in 2012. Since sales haven't really gone down much, that's probably still true as Tiffany's (next best) was about half of Apple's.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I hate dealers, every time I buy a car it is always a stressful experience. Dealers are trying to cheat me on every my step.

Last time I was via PenFed Car Buying Service, got a "guaranteed" web quote:

Got the dealer:

Sure, we will honor the price. But all of our cars have door guards installed - that's $500 extra. We just don't sell the cars without door guards.

Got the contract for the car:

Some extra maintenance plans included for an another $900, forced to remove them. Oh and the dealer made an another mistake for $1000, couldn't add up two numbers together (damn liar). An hour later got a fixed contract.

Got to the financing guy who is trying to sell me extended warranty and gap insurance for about an hour.

And that's over 6-7 hours at the dealership... /vented

<comment><USER11> you are comparing the purchasing experience of a high end car (tesla) against a low end one.

<comment><USER12> I've purchased a $60,000 BMW and they still tried to sell stupid crap.

<comment><USER13> Only logical - if you've got $60000 on BMW you've probably got more money to spend on stupid crap, so why not try to get it out of you? ;) They'll always try it, but the decent ones won't try it again after you say no.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Holy crap. Is this for real? Dealers are one half of the rotten pie that is the car industry, just let the dealer industry die already. Much like the music business tried fighting digital music only for it to completely take over, the car industry eventually will change to a different model that isn't reliant on an industry lubed up in snake oil and shady business practices.

Extended warranties, sneaky extras and premiums added to your contract, the amount of crap you have to endure when buying a new car these days is horrendously deep. If only more car companies sold directly and allowed you to buy online like Tesla does, I know the lobbyist motor dealerships group would never let that happen though.

No wonder the car industry is in the toilet, it's killing itself and Elon Musk is one of few people trying to change things and he's met with resistance: typical.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is also the state that doesn't allow self-service when you pump gas in your car.

<comment><USER16> Thank you bane for saying what the rest did not (84+ comments).

Middlemen gotta get theirs.

Big Oil, Big Auto. Why would they have a problem with electric cars?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I would love to hear what kind of rationale can be given for banning a car company from directly marketing and selling its own products to consumers.

<comment><USER18> The short answer: very few state legislators have auto manufacturers in their districts, but every one of them has car dealers.

<comment><USER19> Nice. Protectionism and trade wars between US states.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Tesla has a showroom at Short Hills mall in NJ. You can go in, check it out, test drive the car, and then order online. While it's really telling about NJ's government, I don't think it'll impact Tesla or its customers.

Also, I love how the article title reads "New Jersey Votes", as if the citizens got a vote in the matter.

<comment><USER21> Ugh, the Short Hills mall. The _ultimate_ rich mall. _Of course_ they have a Tesla showroom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The article is a bit misleading. It makes it sound like direct sales were legal in NJ (and so presumably the only reason Ford and Chevy and Toyota and the rest did not do them is that they did not want to), and the politicians are now stepping in to make a new law to stop Tesla.

In fact, it looks like direct sales have been illegal for a long time, but the law is poorly worded, and can be read in a way that bans direct sales for Ford, Chevy, Toyota, and most other major car manufacturers, but does not apply to manufacturers like Tesla, who _only_ sell direct.

What the new law is doing is saying that the old law is meant to apply to all car manufacturers, not just Ford, Chevy, and so on.

</comment><comment><USER23> Whats to stop a NJ resident from going to NY to purchase a Tesla direct? Is their a a big financial penalty for doing so when registering? What is to stop a grey market of NY residents reselling them to NJ consumers if so? This makes no sense.

<comment><USER24> Nothing. Just as there's nothing stopping an NJ resident from buying a Tesla on the Internet from her home.

It's just to annoy people who don't know what they want. They can still do test drives in NJ, but can't talk about pricing, options, financing options etc.

<comment><USER25> > Just as there's nothing stopping an NJ resident from buying a Tesla on the > Internet from her home.

And when Tesla creates a Oculus Rift based VR showroom? What if there was a fancy VR showroom in the mall where several different vendors could show there wares - would Tesla be the only company banned? It'd be fun watching that battle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Why aren't auto manufacturers jumping on the idea of selling directly to the public? Do they get some benefit from middlemen that Tesla doesn't, or is it just because they are so established doing things one way they won't consider other ways?

<comment><USER27> It's for the same reason that movie distributors don't bypass theaters by selling directly to the public. Originally, it was hard to distribute cars, and car manufacturers didn't want to make the investment to open little retailers everywhere. So they offloaded the risk and capital requirements to third parties, who could customize themselves to the markets they were in (what inventory to carry, where to locate, how to advertise, etc). Then those dealerships became their main (only?) source of revenue. Now they're beholden to their main sales channel. If they started selling cars directly, the dealerships revolt (like a labor strike - what do they have lose here?) and cut them off from revenue for a month. Similarly, theaters very explicitly refuse to show movies that are directly release to the public, which means, for the moment, that those movies won't make any money, and thus movies aren't released that way.

That's a scenario no upstart car company would ever enter into willingly, so Tesla of course didn't. And eventually, companies like Tesla will increase the pressure on all car companies to sell directly, and the dealership cabal will collapse. But in the meantime, that's a lot of tied hands.

Adding legal barriers through lobbying makes all of that worse, of course.

<comment><USER28> _It 's for the same reason that movie distributors don't bypass theaters by selling directly to the public._

Your understanding of the history of movie distribution as it relates to theater ownership isn't quite right. You can read up more here: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_booking](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_booking)

In a nutshell, distributors (i.e. movie studios) owned the major theater chains until 1948, when the Supreme Court demanded that theater production and distribution be separated from exhibition (i.e. theaters).

<comment><USER27> Thanks. I guess I didn't mean to suggest the history was the same (I know almost nothing about the history of theaters), just the current situation. So sorry for the poor paragraph organization. I will stand by my assessment of the status quo, though. I remember a few years ago, theaters refused to show a Soderbergh movie because it was being released simultaneously on DVD and the theaters.

Not a great article, but here's a reference: [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20060118/195200.shtml](http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20060118/195200.shtml)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I wonder what requirements are placed upon dealers. In theory, Elon Musk could just open up his own "Elon's Teslas" shop and voluntarily sell the cars for no additional markup. There'd be some additional overhead, but it'd still be a much nicer arrangement overall than the current one I bet.

<comment><USER30> In Texas they have Tesla stores that only offer test drives. Then, you buy it online in the shop from Cali.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I think someone is paying someone else off. The automotive lobby is big and powerful.

<comment><USER32> Public choice theory explains the situation quite well.[1]

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> What's stopping Tesla (or Elon Musk) from starting a new dealership corporation that happens to sell Teslas?

<comment><USER34> Apparently it's fine in New York though. Can you somehow just buy one in New York and drive it back? It's not too far away.

<comment><USER35> That depends where you live in NJ.

<comment><USER36> I'm guessing the number of people that can afford to buy a Tesla in NJ and can't make it to NY to get it is very small - for the current slate of Tesla cars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I didn't realize this was so common:

> Tesla has won recent legislative battles in states like Washington, Ohio, > New York and Minnesota, but states such as Texas, Arizona and Virginia have > retained or added laws limiting the company's ability to operate stores.

</comment><comment><USER38> Here we have a new industry everyone wants, a US product people want that gets high awards, innovative, inspirational and lawmakers go and block easier ways to sell it. Is this how we are going to compete on new industries and alternatives?

This is the same middle man battle going on in other industries, years of legacy middle men. Dealerships will still exist and Tesla won't kill them, let them play.

</comment><comment><USER39> Next up: New Jersey prohibits registration of cars bought direct.

<comment><USER40> Next up: New Jersey prevents people from pumping their own gas. Oh wait...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> That's the state where it is considered too dangerous for you to fill up your own car with gas, right? So one's expectations of that place's lawmaking sanity should be already pretty low, and these expectations are now confirmed.

</comment><comment><USER41> Anyone know if they've considered the most logical route:

If you sell direct, no dealers. If you have dealers, you can't sell direct

In all of Tesla's battles, I haven't seen this brought up.

</comment><comment><USER42> Isn't this "Bridgegate" Christie?

</comment><comment><USER43> Looks like Tesla is going to convert it's sales centers to "showrooms"

I have to admire Tesla for standing up to this corruption.

<comment><USER26> Does that mean you can go in, look at and test drive a car but not purchase one, then you go home and order one online?

<comment><USER44> Yes, that's how they operate in several states.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I thought, that the US are the land of free market?

Sometimes, it just seems to me the land of free market for those that can afford it?

<comment><USER13> Are you a time traveller from the 18th century or something? The good people in Congress have worked for centuries to not let free markets remain too free - otherwise where the good people in Congress would get the votes and the campaign funds, if they couldn't tweak free markets to benefit this or that interest group? Of course, the good citizens are universally (within tiny margin of error commonly called "those crazy libertarians") cheering this since they belong to one or other interest groups. The fact that while they are screwing others with one special interest law other screw them ten times with another ten special interest laws so at the end everybody ends up being screwed ten or eleven times eludes their attention and will probably continue to do so for many many years.

<comment><USER45> No, I am from Europe, and in Europe we are told, that the US is the holy grail of free market ... in the US, everything is better as in our countries, and that is the reason, we have to shape them by this role model of freedom and Democracy! That is also the reason, we constructed the EU with all its strictly democratic possibilities for corporations to screw up the European commission and don't have to deal with stupid local politicians that always have some doubts (European commission has never doubts, that corporations have the right thing to say ... as long as they are big enough and can afford it ...) -- btw. we also have the European parliament, but the constructors of the system had the foresight to give them no ability at all to come in between the right things and the commission -- the European parliament is somewhat for the EU what the Queen of England is for the British. Costly, but has nothing to say, that the Commission did not dictate.

But thank you for the little insight into the political system. Though I don't understand to much what this Congress, Senate and whatsoever are all about ...

<comment><USER13> >>> in Europe we are told, that the US is the holy grail of free market

The same forces opposing freedom in Europe exist in US. The US Constitution sometimes slows them down (esp. in regards like freedom of speech, which in Europe is commonly restricted) but they still claim many successes.

Then again, there's probably the difference in approaches in Europe and US. US constitution starts with "We the people" and the EU constitution project starts with [1] "HIS MAJESTY THE KING OF THE BELGIANS, /.../, HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN OF THE UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND" and so it goes on. Then again, it was rejected, so maybe there's hope yet :)

[1] [http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/instree/euroconstitpreamble.htm...](http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/instree/euroconstitpreamble.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> What's next, the governor blocking lanes on the George Washington Bridge to get back at a political opponent?

<comment><USER47> This isn't relevant to this discussion, you're not helping.

<comment><USER36> This isn't relevant to this discussion, you're not helping.

<comment><USER46> We must go deeper.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> What are the regulations around setting up a dealership?

\- Can Tesla set up a proxy dealership whose only job is to take the order and send out a receipt of purchase?

\- Can dealership be purely online?

</comment><comment><USER49> Its surprising to see why Auto Manufacturers uniting against this , reaching directly to Customer without middle man must be really good for them too , isnt it ?

</comment><comment><USER50> IANAL, just wondering whether these state laws conflict with the constitution's commerce clause. Has such legal theory ever been tested in court?

<comment><USER51> What is the conflict? Unless there's a federal law that says that auto manufacturers can sell direct to consumers in states, I don't see what conflict there could be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> This is madness. Tesla's model of selling is simply better; it is cheaper to the customer and cuts out unnecessary middlemen.

</comment><comment><USER53> Corrupted law bought by car dealers. How can public accept such obvious corruption?

</comment><comment><USER54> they could sell them in the Apple store. Solved.

<comment><USER55> They could call them novelty spinning-rims mobile device rechargers or something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Ah god

</comment><comment><USER57> It could also be because people are waking up to the irrational exuberance in the tesla stock. Imagine selling all these cars but not actually delivering them.

<comment><USER58> wait, what?

<comment><USER59> obvious short is obvious</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook stopped GZIPing it's JavaScript SDK - <AUTHOR> https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js is coming across without GZIP at the full nearly 200KB.
Double checked with https://checkgzipcompression.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fconnect.facebook.net%2Fen_US%2Fsdk.js
Surely something is wrong? Some of their other libraries are coming across fully uncompressed as well. <comment><USER2> Is that a CDN though? or do they expect the developer to download and serve it themselves?

</comment><comment><USER3> I just noticed this issue yesterday as well.</comment>


Jeopardy-Playing Watson Computer System Could Revolutionize Research - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=jeopardy-playing-watson <comment><USER2> > What Watson doesn't do is attempt to mimic the human ability to use common > sense, make leaps of logic or imagine the future....

Pretty much sums up why I'm disillusioned about Watson and all the hype it's receiving. Don't get me wrong, it is a huge engineering feat, and pretty incredible, but doesn't seem as "revolutionary" as it's made out to be.

Am I missing something?

<comment><USER3> No, you're spot on. However, this sort of thing in the past (previously chess, the engine vs. a horse, etc) has sparked a wave of this _kind_ of thing, which perhaps draws attention to automated logic reasoning in a way that is away from the traditional public tendency to lump all of those things (common sense, leaps of logic, imagination) in with automated reasoning. That could be beneficial, especially if we want to explore it as a tool. It is a stunt, but if anyone would be able to start these kinds of conversations, it would be IBM.

<comment><USER3> Just curious, was this not a constructive set of statements?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, I accidentally pressed the downvote on an iPad when viewing your comment. I had meant to upvote you. I've upvoted this other comment of yours, though, to make up for it. Sorry for the trouble.

<comment><USER3> I've certainly done that! RTs on twitter mobile web too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A couple of comments:

1\. Every completely new technology (and this is truly new) has lots of low hanging fruit to pick which are not obviously at first glance. Jeopardy was a test application and publicity source, but where the real-world applications are, we don't know yet. But it's a safe bet there'll be at least a couple of domains that will be completely revolutionized.

2\. The great benefits of AI, like those of computing in general, aren't in AI-only applications. We won't have black box factories any time soon, just as we don't have black box financial systems or medical equipment. The benefits come _always_ from the synergy between human and machine.

So the argument that Watson isn't a _real_ AI doesn't hold water (true Scotsman anyone?). It's an awesome tool, with the potential to work with humans closer, better and on a larger scale then what we have now.

</comment><comment><USER5> _"Jeopardy-Playing Watson Computer System Could Revolutionize Research"_

you don't say</comment>


Guitarist Has Brain Surgery, and Strums All the Way Through - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/21/world/africa/south-africa-guitarist-brain-surgery.html <comment><USER2> This reminds me of a video I saw of an opera singer performing whilst being operated on (brain surgery).

Right at the 2:45 mark his singing becomes garbled because (I presume) the surgeon 'touches' a part of the brain involved in singing. His singing recovers later on in the video.

Have a look for yourselves: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j70on4v3M4E&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j70on4v3M4E&feature=youtu.be&t=150)

<comment><USER3> Amazing and disturbing. The recovery is welcome. The moment you highlight looks like a stroke but isn't of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Most people have heard of this "method" of performing invasive brain surgery (so that the surgeon knows he/she's not messing with the patient's ability to play the guitar, which may be linked to other abilities etc.).

But I've literally never seen a story where they did this, and they found that the patient stopped playing the guitar/stumbled playing it/played better than ever before.

So what happens in any of those cases?

1) If they stop playing ? Does it mean they have 'damaged' a part of the brain ? Can you actually fix it ?

2) If they stumble/forget parts of the tune? Have you partially damaged the part of the brain that's responsible for that muscle memory?

3) If they suddenly become Hendrix? Have you found a way to turn mortals into gods with a metal stick ?

I'd think the distribution leans heavily towards 1) than 2) or 3).

But I've never seen any (1, 2 or 3), either they don't occur (i.e the surgery is just routine without any adverse effects) or I've not bothered to dig that deep into medical journals.

Any links would be appreciated.

<comment><USER5> My wife does these surgeries. I'm not going to ask her for journal citations on Christmas, but paraphrased answers:

1\. You use electrodes to interfere with each piece they are are going to resect, and see if it interferes with the task they are having the patient perform. This is a mostly non-destructive way to test before doing something that damages the brain. It is not completely perfect for a bunch of complex reasons, but it works pretty well.

2\. It's somewhat more complex than that (especially "the part of the brain that's responsible for that muscle memory"), but the goal is to identify the regions you want to avoid removing _before_ you damage them.

3\. "Becoming Hendrix" doesn't happen, but it's common for people to be able to perform the task in question better post-surgery than before. The reason for this is simple: you do these surgeries because the tumor is very close to the region whose function you want to preserve, and it tends to be interfering with the normal operation of that region already due to that proximity (if it _wasn 't_ interfering, you would try to delay surgery until it was). Removing the tumor removes that interference.

<comment><USER6> Not exactly the same but there are a few documented examples of people developing astonishing creative abilities as a side effect of degenerative brain disorders:

[http://brainblogger.com/2012/09/23/what-is-creativity-art- as...](http://brainblogger.com/2012/09/23/what-is-creativity-art-as-a-symptom- of-brain-disease/) [https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/unraveling- bolero](https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/unraveling-bolero) [https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/131/1/39/346188](https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/131/1/39/346188)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Slightly related anecdote. I was in a coma for a month just over a year ago which left me with moderate nerve damage in my fretting hand. I'm still working on adapting my technique to better suit my condition. Initially, at least for a few months, I had trouble remembering any theory at all, but felt like I could improvise better after my coma, as weird as it sounds.

Funnily enough, even though my alternate-picking speed isn't the same, my legato playing has improved a ton. I'm not sure why this is. Perhaps something to do with the nerve damage and how the muscles have "reset" since then.

Any other musicians here recovering from an injury? What have your experiences been like?

<comment><USER8> Had to relearn after breaking my fretting hand in a hairy motorcycle accident. Worse at chords, but better at blues and country style rolls now. I feel much of the change is just due to the reset in my playing due to a long break and some forgotten habits.

I seem to recall hearing that Frank Zappa would 'quit' guitar every few years to approach it fresh. Perhaps there is somehing to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> My wife went through this about a year ago. They do this because brain cancers are so invasive that you basically want to remove as much brain matter around the tumor as possible with minimal functional deficiency afterwards. This is a tradeoff because it means they would want to take more, but cannot due to the functional impairment. They stimulate the brain with electric probes to find the coherent structures within the brain. This technique is actually quite old, pioneered in Canada over 50 years ago, and proliferated recently at UCSF. It is a miracle to those with benign cancers, but in most cases prolongs life by months not years unfortunately.

<comment><USER10> interesting you mention UCSF. I just met someone working in the lab that is doing this research, and was astonished to discover patients are awake during brain surgery for this exact reason; to discover and preserve the parts of the brain most critical to certain areas of life -- areas that differ person to person.

She also said each brain looks way different. Some a grey, some are pink.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> A bassist and brain surgery - the setup of the joke is almost perfect.

Does anyone knows if they tinker in the wrong part how much damage will be done/recoverable from? The brain should in theory rebuild the missing links eventually...

<comment><USER12> The old technique last time I was reading about this was the stimulate areas with an electrode before doing any work there. The electricity would disrupt the function temporarily so the surgeons would know that that part was integral to whatever function they were attempting to preserve.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> All metal bands making music videos need to step it up.

</comment><comment><USER14> My phonetics and phonology professor used to be a clinical linguist at a big hospital.

He did similar stuff, consulting with surgeons before the operation, in order to minimize damage to speech areals.

</comment><comment><USER15> Reminds me of surgery banjo player Eddie Adcock underwent to deal with a tremor that interfered with his playing. It was quite successful.

</comment><comment><USER16> Next level: Make someone play Asturias by Isaac Albeniz

<comment><USER3> Not sure I agree at all, since most of that piece is muscle memory, something very different from improvising jazz.</comment></comment>