Ask HN: Is it fair game to downvote someone's comments indiscriminately? - <AUTHOR> I have noticed comments on another HN account being consistently downvoted, once or twice, about 24 hours after they were posted, regardless of the comments' content and the subject matter of the OP. This has been going on for several months.<p>There may be a number of reasons someone or some group of people would employ this tactic, but is it "fair game" with respect to HN's policies and the sensibilities of HN's readership? <comment><USER2> I've noticed the same thing on reddit for as long as I can remember. Obscure comments that are polite, useful, and avoid controversial topics routinely get down to 0 or -1 points.

I know this is all rather meaningless, but something about it is very upsetting to me and I always upvote such comments.

On that note, I like the Stack Overflow model: you have to pay reputation to downvote.

<comment><USER3> StackOverflow actively deletes content and does so without mercy. That's a more important part of the utility of its model than the mechanics of downvotes. And flagging costs nothing except a daily flag, and the reward for good flags is more flags.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You can always write dang at email@example.com when you spot stuff that might be circumventing the rules.

<comment><USER5> What if it actually is dang/HN that's responsible for these downvotes? I think the downvoting is a new version of "rankbanning" mechanism. Users that are anti-immigration reform are rankbanned on HN (this means that no matter the number of votes on the post, their comments fall down in the page. Users like eli_gottlieb, larrys, etc. are rankbanned for these various reasons; some people detected this and called HN on it, and I think their response is to make a new system which auto-downvotes users... then it makes it seem like their comments are organically falling down the page, rather than being targeted by rankbans.)

<comment><USER6> Got a link to the call-out regarding the rankbanning? I've never heard of that happening.

<comment><USER7> [https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/11/03/heres-why- pa...](https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/11/03/heres-why-paul-graham- probably-owes-me-an-apology/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Rampant, indiscriminate downvoting is one of the main reasons I generally dislike reddit and prefer HN. There's a natural decline to subs over there, as anything or anyone who deviates from mainstream opinions gets downvoted into obscurity.

I'm just a casual reader, and I have no expertise on HN's policies, but it definitely offends my sensibilities to see anyone gaming this system.

</comment><comment><USER9> HN should have built in mechanisms that prevent downvote sprees.

May I ask whatthe username is? (Feel free to email me if you don't want to make it public).

</comment><comment><USER10> As far as I know, HN's only policy regarding downvotes is that you shouldn't complain about them when you get them.

Although what you describe might expose some flaw in their brigade/voting ring detector, the site and the culture appear to be far more concerned with stopping indiscriminate upvotes than downvotes (which is understandable, given the financial incentives for startups and entrepreneurs to want to game the system.) With downvotes, the more the merrier.

Edit: reading this thread, i'm wondering whether being able to delete posts after they've been replied to isn't a bigger problem than downvoting. That and drive-by edits.

</comment><comment><USER11> One approach if you notice this (aside from contacting mods of course) is to up-vote the comments...

</comment><comment><USER12> Lots of nerd jealousy exhibits itself via downvoting. I'm sure it's based on insiders and outsiders. I'm also sure many try to repress ideas that might be competitive to their own. I've seen this happen and this is repulsive. Change needs to happen on HN.

</comment><comment><USER13> You will be punished if you criticize communism and angular.js among other subjects where political correctness and idiotical consensus have more weight than reason. The kool kidz rule with an iron fist, and they know no mercy.

<comment><USER10> The thing is, despite what many people here seem to think, HN doesn't really have a consensus. If it did, it wouldn't be as paranoid about the Eternal September effect as it is, as one of the symptoms of Eternal September is users not agreeing with and following the consensus set by older members.

What HN does have is a number of mutually opposed consensuses each believing the others are destroying the site by astroturfing and posting irrelevant nonsense. So yes, if you criticize angular.js and communism, you might be punished. But if you criticize capitalism and praise front-end frameworks, someone else will have their knives out for that as well.

<comment><USER14> You do realize that you're trying to provide a calm, reasonable explanation to a party who believes HN is plagued by communists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does karma play a part in the YC selection process?

Restated: who cares?

If any prospective hire told me their handle under the notion that karma indicates anything useful, I'd show them the door.

EDIT: Exactly.

<comment><USER16> I'd be surprised if it was just to see one's karma points. Reading the actual comments would be more useful.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, sure. I'm in Illinois, so I can discriminate based on political ideology... totally valuable.

EDIT: My point is this can be a bad idea.</comment></comment></comment>


Don't read TechCrunch - <AUTHOR> http://nicharalambous.com/2012/12/03/dont-read-techcrunch/ <comment><USER2> _I've learned that glorifying money raising is a massive mistake_

This, in my opinion, is what the metaphor of not reading TechCrunch stands in for. Each article celebrating a round of fundraising has a backstory about an entrepreneur who has less ownership of their company. Often that backstory is that they have less or even no control.

Jobs took outside funding. Gates did not. Both acted like jerks in the 80's. But nobody could fire Gates because nobody had the shares to bring in an outside CEO to Microsoft.

Fundraising is a two edged sword. It should often be accompanied by both congratulations and condolances.

<comment><USER3> They had very different circumstances:

Bill Gates was the son of wealthy parents, his father was a partner in the law firm Preston Gates & Ellis, his mother was on board of directors for First Interstate BancSystem and the United Way.

Bill got a sweetheart deal from IBM, in part due to his mother serving on the United Way board with Jon Opel, chair of IBM.

Steve Jobs was adopted by Paul Jobs, a mechanic and a carpenter, and Clara Jobs, who was a payroll clerk for Varian Associates. Neither of his adoptive parents had the opportunity to attend college.

Jobs sold his minivan and Wozniak sold his HP scientific calculator to initially fund development of the Apple I.

If you have the option of being born to parents with extreme wealth and connections, I highly recommend it over fundraising.

<comment><USER2> One may dismiss Gate's success as due to the resources of his parents. However, Microsoft was not his first foray into entrepreneurship. I suspect that bootstrapping was always the plan. Just as Apple always anticipated taking venture capital.

Jobs had the good fortune to be raised in Silicon Valley. Had he been in Topeka, there would not have been a viable market of hobbyists for Apple I kits. Then again, he wouldn't have known Wozniak who actually built the damn thing, either.

Luck played a factor in the fortunes of both men.

The funding of Gates and Jobs is a parable. The extended version includes the prodigal son's return.

<comment><USER3> I don't completely disagree with you, a good start in life and tons of money doesn't guarantee you future success, but luck alone doesn't pay the bills either, that takes money.

You can have a great viable market and if you don't have the money to build the widgets, you are stuck pounding sand.

BTW if Wozniak hadn't met Steve Jobs, he might have spent the rest of his days working at HP, being one of hundreds of brilliant engineers nobody has ever heard about.

Woz is many things, but he is not --and was never-- an ambitious corporate leader. Wozniak built the Apple I and Apple II but it was Steve Jobs that built Apple Inc.

<comment><USER3> As for Gates, I would never dismiss him.

He took advantage of his connections and built one of the biggest, most influential software companies ever.

He then stepped back at the height of his career, listened to his wife, and the two of them built a very innovative philanthropic organization.

There are plenty of rich kids that don't accomplish anything, Gates wasn't one of them.

<comment><USER4> "There are plenty of rich kids that don't accomplish anything, Gates wasn't one of them."

Very true!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I agree, don't read techcrunch.

Unless you're interested in startups generally.

Or if you want to learn about new companies.

But really only if you're interested in learning about hot new spaces in trends, yea then it's ok.

Or if you want to see what external thought leaders have to say, reading on the weekends is ok.

But don't read it for funding.

Unless you're looking for funding, then maybe it's ok to read it to help you narrow your investor pitch focus by seeing who is active and wear.

But certainly don't read it for product. Yeah, that'd be stupid.

Unless, and only unless, you want to see what early adopters who see more new products in a month then most people do in a year have to say about new technology, trends and spaces.

On second thought, yea read TechCrunch.

Just be a good enough entrepreneur to know that reading or not reading TechCrunch won't make or break your company, and is a really lame scapegoat.

The only thing that will make or break your company is you and your idea.

<comment><USER6> I think you meant to write

> Unless you're interested in startups (that Arrington has a personal stake > in) generally.

> Or if you want to learn about new companies (that Arrington has a personal > stake in).

et cetera.

<comment><USER7> This to me is the reason not to read TechCrunch (or at least to read it with a healthy dose of scepticism - even more than usual on the internet).

I'd expect any aspiring entrepreneur to understand the benefits and trade-offs of the different models for raising funding in the way I'd expect anyone looking for thousands of dollars for anything to understand the strings that are attached to it.

The real problem with TechCrunch is that it operates in an unclear space between journalism and PR (even more than usual) which makes everything on there questionable.

<comment><USER8> Hear, hear!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I agree TC dishes a lot of rubbish of late. But at the same, the author looks to me like a headline hogger. I'm not really convinced by his reasoning.

<comment><USER10> His reasoning is basically "don't read TC because in the times I did read them, I focused too much on them and not my own endeavors...something that's completely MY fault."

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Long ago I was such a heavy Tech Crunch reader that I was in the top 5 most liked commenters (below MG and Arrington) back when they still used Disqus.

<http://i.imgur.com/1lgnC.png> Yep that's me. I was in deep.

TC is both good & bad and a LOT of things to different people:

1) TC is for people who dream about becoming entrepreneurs and are seeking reasons or a "push" to motivate themselves to finally dive in.

2) It's a platform for validation and lifestyle glorification (what Fox News is to Republican party). It can lead to both encouragement and ignorance. It's highly Silicon Valley oriented and its addicted readers are mostly wanna-be- entrepreneurs (myself included, no shame here) who wish they were in Silicon Valley working on a startup. The same way celebrity wanna-bes browse celebrity sites all day, wantrepreneurs (like me) would browse Hacker News, Tech Crunch, Digg, and (the old) Reddit. Even though you couldn't be there in "the action" you could read about it and pretend and daydream. Pathetic but hey, emotions are emotions.

3) After a certain amount of time Tech Crunch becomes unhealthy for you. It portrays an extremely unrealistic view of startups, companies, and success. And ingores everything else. Because failure is a journey that can lead to success and all things by default fail, glorifying success is damaging to entrepreneurs. TC is great for initial motivation but afterwords if you don't let go of it you'll start to take on its unhealthy attitude towards business. It's like getting a 12 year old fashion loving girl a subscription to Vogue, it might be encouraging at first but if she falls in too deep she'll start taking on Vogue's obsessions. Before you know it she'll be 40 pounds underweight, with bleached blonde hair, and $12,000 worth of shoes.

4) TC over-rewards VC funded startups and ignores inventors, designers, hackers, projects, bootstrapping, and non web businesses. To Techcrunch, success is getting funded or acquired. It focuses on the end-product not the journey. And for entreprenuers that's just a trap for perpetual day-dreaming. Fantasizing about success without ever working towards it.

5) TC is also a status symbol and oligarchy. OMG you got on TC!!! Holy Shit you're going to get so many users and VCs are going to call you and your server might crash... Piss off Arrington and you'll never be on TC. To be on Tech Crunch means you have been approved and accepted by an elite group of Silicon Valley journalists who can make you famous. Once Arrington & friends left after the AOL aquisition there was no more elite group to seek validation and fame from. TC went downhill in popularity and visitors.

I feel like TC was initially designed for investors with its generic "who got funded" articles but was later re-purposed as a lifestyle glorifier. Which lead to a jump in traffic, Arrington becoming the Godfather of Silicon Valley reporting. And TC transitioned into a fame-machine. Got acquired by AOL. Arrington left, friends followed. No more elites, just a news site now.

 _FYI: I left TC long ago when I outgrew it. The initial encouragement wore off & I wasn't getting anything out of it. I've started outgrowing Hacker News as well. I finally dove in, risked $2,000 made my first 2 products, and am selling them on Ebay. [http://www.ebay.com/sch/purplevioletka/m.html?item=330829651...](http://www.ebay.com/sch/purplevioletka/m.html?item=330829651471&pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4d06fbde0f&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2562) (shameless link) _

<comment><USER12> > _I've started outgrowing Hacker News_

For those who feel that are outgrowing HN, I'd recommend reading only those posts with more that 150 upvotes:

[http://talkfast.org/2010/07/23/a-cure-for-hacker-news- overlo...](http://talkfast.org/2010/07/23/a-cure-for-hacker-news-overload/)

<comment><USER13> For those who would like to use HN's built-in threshold feature:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/over?points=150>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I stopped reading TC years ago. Was sick of the petulant whining by egomaniacs like Arrington, Tsotsis, and the crown prince of pussies MG Siegler.

<comment><USER15> Made me lol. Siegler openly admits to lying in the articles he writes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The article body doesn't support the headline.

A more appropriate title would be the second last line of the post:

> It's good to have context but becoming obsessed and consumed with what TC > and other startup blogs and websites report on is problematic.

But that would have made the post a whole lot less interesting and click- worthy.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'll just point out here that nobody holds a gun to people's head and says "Read TechCrunch, or else!" Think about that.

Complaining about the content of Techcrunch is akin to complaining about how pornography portrays women. In both cases they are low barrier to entry markets, with a group think driven customer base. TechCrunch is the way it is, because it gets the most page views that way. If it starts deviating off that path into the kind of content 'you' (and by you I mean the critical thoughtful reader) might like, well it is quickly corrected by the connoisseurs of startup porn. TechCrunch has no more control over the editorial direction of the web site than the Government accounting office has over the budget.

Phil Lemmons used to run Byte magazine, waaaay back, and it was the 'cool' computer magazine that was above it all. Except it was slipping into becoming a magazine about the IBM PC and its compatibles. I complained, others complained, there was a unity of concern. I got to talk with Phil at the Byte Magazine booth at the Comdex show in Las Vegas and he explained that editorial control was a slippery thing. You could push against the 'bulk' of what people wanted to read but you couldn't push so hard that you left that audience behind, to do so was certain death, so he spent his time putting in enough PC articles to keep the 'bulk' and the other articles to keep the 'faithful'. It was an interesting balancing act.

A web site like TechCrunch is in an even more precarious position, people don't even pay to subscribe. So they are very much at risk of losing their readership if they stray too far from what they want. They can try to lead them, but ultimately they are at the mercy of their readers.

What this means is that complaining about Techcrunch's Editorial direction is not as powerful as starting your own web site (or patronizing one you like) which is more to your liking.

</comment><comment><USER18> If he'd read Techcrunch he would have read about Cloudflare and Varnish and other things that keep his site up during HN/Reddit appearances.

<comment><USER19> Ha

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Don't read Techcrunch, but still want to keep up with tech news? Try <http://skimfeed.com>.

You'll get a broad overview of the days tech news, without the fluff or bias of an individual news site.

<comment><USER21> Thank you for that blatant advertisement for your site! Am I the only person who downvotes the most blatant self-promotion on sight?

<comment><USER20> This is a hacker community. We make things. It's what we do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> You've absolutely nailed it!

I stopped reading TC a few years ago. However, you made a very interesting point about focusing on your own context and not benchmarking w/ other startups, wise words.

</comment><comment><USER23> I suspect reading TC and the like satisfies ones entrepreneurial drive through a false sense of being "in the game" and actually leads to less (or no) effort being put into building something. I've noticed this on myself in the past as well as on others that seem so keen to read and share entrepreneurial howtos, know all the dos and donts but ultimately end up being evangelists for entrepreneurship and not taking it up themselves. I stick to HN these days and tend to ignore the various YC stories unless the company in question appears to be doing something cool. OTOH, I'm sure the startup news buzz can be useful in the short term, but I suspect long-term (ab)use of these blogs just bums people out (and leads to anxiety and a feeling of being unfit for the scene if you haven't raised millions and were featured on TC). The focus on funding is also artificial and serves not the hacker but the VCs (it's also more glamorous and fit for pop-culture blogs).

</comment><comment><USER24> What applies to the OP doesn't apply to everybody. The benefits of reading techcrunch depends on what your interrests are.

The reason raising money is such a dominant info is because it is considered as an indirect proof of business soundness. What other objectivable info could be you use for that ?

Regarding a problem of focussing and keeping delivering, TechCrunch can't be blamed for that.

</comment><comment><USER25> I get the feeling that this is a really extreme piece of advice, perhaps made so to make a punchy Hacker News headline (or simply out of being fed up!).

I believe that everyone regardless should read widely and as widely as possible, but for entrepreneurs and technologists I believe it is part of the job description, too.

Extremes are almost never the right thing. If you're fat, is it best to cut out all fats from your diet? No. If you're info-overloaded, is it best to cut yourself off from the Internet? No. If you're interested in startups, should you read TechCrunch and forget everything else? No!

If you're feeling a bit too tied up with keeping-up anxiety from following slightly glorified versions of other startups' progress, is it best to cut yourself from what can be a useful and valuable source of content?

I say no - just moderate and keep it broad and wide, like everything else in life.

</comment><comment><USER26> I stopped reading TC a long time ago for all the reasons mentioned plus their site is so full of widgets, it keeps crashing on my iPad 1 (not a lot of sites accomplish that, well done TC).

I also like to avoid Pandodaily as much as possible. Is there a HN extension that can filter out these submissions for me?

</comment><comment><USER19> They have some great marketing and business guest posts by Mark Suster, James Alutcher, Nir Eyal, and several others. A little entertainment with the occasional insightful post isn't the worst thing. Just ignore the many posts on funding and you won't have AS much distortion.

</comment><comment><USER27> Stopped reading it awhile ago. It doesn't portray the reality for most startups and tech companies and I think gives the wrong impression that you need to be heavily funded to be successful.

</comment><comment><USER28> I've been meaning to stop reading TC, but the question is what do I replace it with? Already read th Verge, Ars Technica...found that TechDirty covers a lot about what I'm concerned with

<comment><USER29> I've added PandoDaily to my list -- which contains the same sources you've listed.

<comment><USER30> Only an opinion, but PandoDaily seems to have adopted the _worst_ parts of TechCrunch. It's practically VC backed advertising.

<comment><USER28> I don't want another TC type, I've found I've become tired of hearing who was acquired or who raised how much

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I used to work for a company that got Tech Crunched every few weeks. We had lots of money in funding, but had practically zero traction. And our 'app' was pretty much smoke and mirrors. There were a handful of competitors that I felt had a much better product, yet we were the ones who always had articles on TC... Makes you wonder. I don't work for that company any more, but when I did, I suspected that our CEO was paying TC to promote us, or something of that nature.

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm reading TechCrunch regularly before entering the startup scene. Nowadays, I'm not reading it like before.

TechCrunch may provide misleading information for some. But when you're in a "startup" situation, you know will know what is right and what to believe in.

On other side, TechCrunch may mislead you, but they can be a good source of inspiration. They are talking about acquisitions, fundings, and successes. Why not use them as your inspiration? Strive hard, to achieve those.

</comment><comment><USER33> Reading TC (or any other startup related resource) is kind of procrastination. It's not bad, you get kind of a feeling of the market but usually if just relying on those sources you are too late to the party and it's stops you from doing stuff yourself. You should

\- do, build stuff 80% of your working day,

\- meet other likeminded people 15% of your working day,

\- and read online resources like this one 5% (TC is rather one of the bad ones)

</comment><comment><USER34> I've stopped reading many of the Aol blogs. HuffPo, TC, Engadget etc., Never liked HuffPo, but I remember Engadget and TC used to be very good.

<comment><USER35> Pretty great documentary called Page One on Netflix about the NYTimes that has some running commentary on modern journalism.

There's a clip with David Simon (The Wire creator, former editor of the Baltimore Sun) arguing with Ariana Huffington about the legitimacy of HuffPo's encroaching empire.

<comment><USER34> Thanks for the tip. Will watch it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> TC is now just a series of re-written press releases with very little in the way of opinion. The opinion is still there, just to a lesser extent and is camouflaged but all of the other copy they post.

I still give it a look every couple of days to make sure I haven't missed anything but I certainly don't value it the same as I used to when the old team were there.

</comment><comment><USER37> I only read TC when their linkbait titles end up on the frontpage of HN.

Stopped following their feed, once I came to the same conclusion as the OP: being overly funded is (almost) the only way to go get featured on TC, these days. The times of roaming the edges of startup-land and posting about the nitty gritty startup struggles are long forgotten.

</comment><comment><USER38> Those were the days when the news was about the startup itself, not the financial value of it. We are living in a time where companies are valued by their annual turnovers instead of profits. So, totally agree to what he says, don't read TechCrunch. Focus on your startup, the value you provide and the profit you make.

</comment><comment><USER39> Besides the conflict of interest, I find the fact that a significant portion of their articles are about themselves, or other tech journalists, extremely irritating. Like when a documentary is about the filmaker making the documentary instead of the subject matter.

I wish people weren't so obsessed with celebrity.

</comment><comment><USER40> TechCrunch has mostly good writers, gets many stories first and writes about topics germane to the tech startup community. I'm guessing most of the hate is driven by distrust or dislike of leaders.

Raising money is not remotely and end result but is clearly an important milestone for a growing business.

</comment><comment><USER41> Exactly.

A few of my posts on HN on that: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4852081> <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3538189> \- that was an year ago!

</comment><comment><USER42> As somebody who's been pretty successful with fundraising, I can relate... the only things that matter are customers and revenue, and fundraising is just one tool to get there. Necessary for some business models, admittedly, but there's many business models you can choose from.

</comment><comment><USER43> Better yet, read only posts that are useful to you. Often thought leaders, IE Mark Suster, would release some tips on TC and reading them can help you become more successful. New companies may also have services that can give you an advantage.

</comment><comment><USER44> There is nothing inherently wrong with reading TC - if nothing else, it gives you a better feeling what your vision/goal might be. With that said, what you need NOT to do is follow it blindly. Use it for what it is: a news medium;

</comment><comment><USER45> "when douglas crockford went to paypal, they churned out their normal thin tosh, but topping it off: thinking java and javascript are the same thing (since been corrected)." - from Chris, one of the commenters.

Damn. That's pretty inexcusable!

<comment><USER46> ...This is the second Java/Javascript mixup I've seen on TC in the last two days.

The first one was here - [http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/30/why-enterprise- apps-are-mov...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/30/why-enterprise-apps-are- moving-to-single-page-design/). The third subheading originally read "Transitioning Developers From HTML To Java."

The worst part? These two articles aren't even by the same author. So TechCrunch has multiple writers that don't know the difference.

<comment><USER45> Damn. That's a bit nutty. So they obviously don't hire devs-turn-journalists. Probably cost too much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I don't read TechCrunch because it's not worth reading. It's not helpful to me. It may be helpful to others.

Although TC sometimes feels like a tech-tabloid, I do believe it serves a better purpose.

</comment><comment><USER48> TechCrunch is like People Magazine. Old Arrington was entertaining, but let's be real about it -- it's just a regular news site that hit on some key points for a niche market.

</comment><comment><USER49> I think the comment should be "don't believe techcrunch" ... rather than "don't read techcrunch"

There's a lot of value in keeping a pulse of what's going on. But you need a filter ...

</comment><comment><USER50> I used to read it when it started.

They used to only have about 5 articles a day, and then only post the next day.

Once they removed that limit I stopped. I use that filter on most sites except for HN.

</comment><comment><USER51> I stopped reading it when Mike A got all dramatic and made it all about himself. Haven't gone back but I'd imagine it can't be any worse than it was then.

</comment><comment><USER52> 100% on point.. No one has ever gone down the exact same path your going down. What works might not work again and what never works might work once..

</comment><comment><USER53> Wrote a Response here -

<http://statspotting.com/2012/12/read-techcrunch-daily/>

</comment><comment><USER54> I don't. For a while now. And advise the same.

</comment><comment><USER55> Are there better alternatives to TC - without drama, fluff etc? Mashable is not good, RWW is just okay.

<comment><USER56> VentureBeat.com. Very strong reporting in a few areas, with staff who previously worked at San Jose Mercury News, WSJ, etc.

Ironically, TC has hired away several VB writers.

<comment><USER55> thanks. any idea why? more money? visibility?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I boycotted TechCrunch for two reasons: 1) Quality of journalism degraded 2) Michael Arrington sold TC

</comment><comment><USER58> TC died when AOL bought it (AOL kills all things it touches) and the @Arrington left.

</comment><comment><USER59> i see at TC as guide for trends , best practices for start ups, of course there will be challenges, it's upto you, how do you want to handle them, blaming TC or not reading TC you will miss few things man!

</comment><comment><USER60> The only reason I read (skim) TC is to get a feel for what's hot. That's it.

</comment><comment><USER61> I agree with this so much I upvoted this post before I even read the article

</comment><comment><USER62> At first, I thought this was someone under the svbtle network. Then I realized it was a lame ripoff wordpress theme. Whats even worse is that a company, obox themes, is selling this ripoff for $60 a copy, and claiming they came up with the clean minimialistic design.

</comment><comment><USER63> Agreed. 95% of the stories on TC are about fundraising.

</comment><comment><USER53> but is it not important to know what's happening in your space? How will you move in the right direction or pivot right ?

<comment><USER64> There are probably much better news sources for most industries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> As recaptcha.net says: stop TC, read books.

</comment><comment><USER66> My problem with TechCrunch (which I don't read regularly, because reading about unqualified hucksters getting $8-million acq-hire welfare checks for IUsedThisToilet apps is not going to improve my life) is that it seems like an attempt to create the old, broken social regime within the new one. Instead of focusing on _potential_ , it seems to document the whims of these wizard- priests called "venture capitalists" who, as a class, don't seem to be doing better than they would if they selected startups randomly.

For example, if you think velvet-rope parties at SxSW are a good thing, you're not a technologist and you don't belong in this century. Technologists want to make the world inclusive and prosperous, not exclusive and shitty.

<comment><USER67> I have nothing against TechCrunch but if that's your _main_ news source on startups, you have a problem.

I attend a _lot_ of entrepreneur events, Startup Weekends, etc and one of the common threads is the navel-gazing or me-too startups. If I have to sit through yet another "social sharing for X" or "group-curated Y" presentation, I'm going to kill someone.

They focus on the follow-on startups and think "because so-and-so did it, I can too!" instead of actually looking at the problem and trying to understand it. They appear to be startups for startups sake.

If you read TechCrunch as if it's the center of the world, it's easy to get into that mindset. Instead what you have to realize that it is a tiny piece of the whole world and will never cover 99.99% of the startups out there who are solving major life-changing, make-everyone-rich sorts of problems.

Go out, kick ass, and don't worry about what that 0.001% of the world is up to.

<comment><USER68> >They focus on the follow-on startups and think "because so-and-so did it, I can too!" instead of actually looking at the problem and trying to understand it. They appear to be startups for startups sake.

I saw this mentality when I went to a Mountain View meetup (for a semi-related hobbyist group). One young woman there was a nurse (or related medical professional) and announced that she wanted to get involved in a startup, and could someone point her in the right direction. Immediately a group member asked her what kind of start up and she looked completely surprised by the question and said "something in medicine ... front ... end?"

I've also gone to a Startup Weekend where something like 95% of the ideas were things I had literally thought of myself already but dismissed long ago because of obvious problems, or that the proposers couldn't answer the most basic questions about. When it came time to cast our three votes, one of mine was basically to say "not really exited by this, but ahead of virtually everyone here".

<comment><USER58> That's why you should go to startup weekends :) Just start up or shut up, as they say. (Do they say that? If not, they should :))</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The B&N fallacy - <AUTHOR> http://www.baldurbjarnason.com/notes/the-bn-fallacy/

<comment><USER2> "Anybody who thinks that a 300–400 dpi 4–5 inch smartphone isn't a first class reading device hasn't laid their hands on one."

I have an iPhone with Retina display.

I still read on my eInk Kindle.

<comment><USER3> I've got a Kobo e-ink device, an iPad 1, a Nexus 7, a Nexus 4, and a Nexus Galaxy.

The best device for reading novels IMO is the Nexus Galaxy. Most of my reading is done in bed, lying down, and for that the OLED screen and one-handedness of the small device wins by far. OLED is a lot better than LCD in the dark because there's no backlight glow.

In bright light the eInk is obviously a better screen, but I still believe that a 4.5" screen is a better size for reading novels than a 6" one.

<comment><USER4> One advantage of a dedicated e-ink device is the lack of distraction. I go to bed with my iPad and end up checking email, browsing the web, playing a game. I go to bed with my kindle, and I actually get some reading done. The Paperwhite also works great in the dark.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I stopped reading when the author wrote:

        > Anybody who thinks that a 300–400 dpi 4–5 inch
        > smartphone isn't a first class reading device
        > hasn't laid their hands on one.

The author's inability to understand how the experience of reading on paper, e-ink, and a smartphone differ automatically nullifies any analysis he might have had.

<comment><USER6> Well the author doesn't understand a lot; he wanted to talk about a quote but it doesn't help when you aren't right on the technology. The suggestion that B&N needs to focus on building a better a ebook reader and should license someone else's is downright strange. No one buys ebooks because the quality of the application on their smartphone isn't very good, buy them because of the content network behind them. Additionally, the author doesn't understand an ODM can't license what you have built to someone else. One of the advantages that Kindle and Nook have over other tables is their builtin content distribution network. That is the reason they can offer the tablet at all at the prices they do.

<comment><USER7> > _The suggestion that B &N needs to focus on building a better a ebook reader > ... is downright strange._

Most people misread the article. That point was something he said others have said, AND IS WRONG.

Please read the sentence AFTER those bullet points:

 _Those are all good but I'd argue that doing this wouldn't solve B &N's problem in the long term._

His real bullet points are later.

<comment><USER8> _Most people misread the article._

If "most people" misread something, the problem is very likely in the article.

<comment><USER7> Yes, those bullet points were quite poorly introduced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't see any market evidence to support these statements. The Kindle, Nook, and ereaders in general have sold like crazy. Many people can and will read on smartphones/tablets, but almost nobody prefers long-form reading on a backlit device to an ereader (that's excluding comics and textbooks).

As Amazon continues to push the price frontier lower and lower, the ereader will become practically an impulse buy. One can already purchase an Amazon Kindle, the top name in the business, for $50-70. That's 1/3 the price of the cheapest decent tablet.

People make comparisons to the iPod, how it was the best dedicated music player before it, too, was cannibalized by the smartphone. And the same goes for the low-end point and shoot. However the ereader is different in that it is based entirely upon a technology (eink) which has made nearly zero appearances in other devices. Until there is a tablet that can switch to eink mode, there will always be a market for dedicated readers.

As for Barnes and Noble, it's never easy to compete with Amazon and as far as I'm concerned that's all there is to it.

<comment><USER10> "Many people can and will read on smartphones/tablets, but almost nobody prefers long-form reading on a backlit device to an ereader (that's excluding comics and textbooks)."

I agree that e-ink is probably superior for reading but it's going to get harder and harder to find customers who _only_ want to read on their devices.

"As Amazon continues to push the price frontier lower and lower, the ereader will become practically an impulse buy. One can already purchase an Amazon Kindle, the top name in the business, for $50-70. That's 1/3 the price of the cheapest decent tablet."

True but the price point of other devices will also become impulse buys so ereaders will still be competing with tablets etc.

"People make comparisons to the iPod, how it was the best dedicated music player before it, too, was cannibalized by the smartphone. And the same goes for the low-end point and shoot. However the ereader is different in that it is based entirely upon a technology (eink) which has made nearly zero appearances in other devices."

Right, iPod was based on a different technology (digital media) and the point and shoot was based on a different technology (digital image capture). Smartphones/tablets added both and now those markets are diminishing. How does this make ereaders different?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11>
      > Changing that would require firing everybody who
      > currently works on the Nook and building a new,
      > isolated and insulated, business unit elsewhere,
      > preferably on the other side of the continent,
      > and treat it like a well-funded startup.

Isn't that exactly what B&N did when they created the original Nook? I can't find a link, but I'm pretty sure that they literally set up shop in California and designed the thing like a startup.

<comment><USER12> You are correct

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The author structured his article as a rant and it shows, so I won't respond to every point. The central premise of his post is that B&N is in an innovators dilemma situation and will find it impossible to build ereaders. Then the author suggests it should build a reading app instead and just plow all its resources into that. Except it would have no content network behind it. Ergo:

>>Or, if B&N can talk publishers off the DRM ledge and onto the watermarking perch, they could just switch to using iBooks when on iOS and have a book delivery app that doesn't do anything but notify people when new books are ready to be copied into iBooks.

Wow, why isn't this guy CEO? So in other words Amazon and B&N should get rid of their delivery networks and build a better reading application that will compete against apple which has:

1) a device 2) a content delivery network 3) a proprietary delivery format that they can add new features to 4) a builtin application

And the value proposition is the reader app is better? Well, it if its you don't need to do anything the author suggests. You just need to improve your e-reading application.

The author confuses needing to understand where the market is going with making up a fantasy world where nothing you have done to support your existing business should be accepted.

<comment><USER7> > _So in other words Amazon and B &N should get rid of their delivery networks > and build a better reading application..._

On the contrary, he says that's what B&N should _not_ do. My guess is you misread the bullet points in the middle of the article as being his recommendation, when in fact they're another set of bullet points he says are mistaken. His final set of bullet points are the real ones, wherein he says B&N and Amazon should discontinue tablets _and_ reader applications, and make better storefronts, letting Apple or third parties make the better reader.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> eInk is easier on the eyes than the highest resolution display available on any smart-device. I have half a dozen smart devices and still choose to read (books, not comics or web-pages) on my eInk device when given the opportunity.

<comment><USER14> eInk devices are also crazy-light, even compared to a paperback, and the battery life is measured in weeks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I feel like I stumbled into a stuffy country club to find this guy sitting cross-legged in a leather chair with a monocle and a cigar. After a long diatribe about how he wouldn't be caught dead in my jeans and t-shirt attire, he decides to relate his feelings on B&N.

The smugness is palpable, although I'm catching some points and have issues with others, I'm not allowed to speak until he's said his peace. At one point, I'm told that since I didn't ask a question when he mention "value network", I'm immediately told I know nothing about it and therefore required to listen to him site a book I've already read.

Finally when it is all over and done, when I finally have a moment to parlay my rebuttal, I let him know he's missing a number of points and confusing some issues. But instead of listening and countering, he waves his hand and stamps out his cigar. And as he walks away mutters "Arsehole" in that under-your- breath manner that is still loud and obviously intended for you to hear.

As I turn back, I see that a card has been placed on my chair. It informs me who this monocled figure was that felt the need to not simply inform, but belittle me and my opinions. Then on the back is inscribed, "But of course you already knew who I was..."

Although, it's true I don't fully subscribe to his points. The way this piece was written made me feel I wasn't allowed to have a dissenting thought. It's like he went out of his way to deny you your critical thinking, and therefore difficult to take seriously. Just my couple cents...

</comment><comment><USER7> @mikecane: In your Fallacy of the B&N Fallacy response, you quote and reply to bullet points baldur is already saying are fallacy. I'm copying my comment[1] on that HN post here:

\--

mike cane, you excerpted the wrong bit of the original article:

• _Create a first rate storefront+reader on Android and the web._

• _Shift more resources into the iOS app and make it better than anybody else's._

• _Perform a series of commerce-oriented experiments, e.g. subscriptions, bundling, in-book payments, etc._

The bit you quoted and respond to is what he said _other_ people's advice was.

Note the sentence AFTER those bullet points: _"Those are all good but I'd argue that doing this wouldn't solve B &N's problem in the long term."_

The actual advice was to exit the app business entirely:

• _Discontinue the tablets._

• _Milk the e-ink cow until it topples over._

• _Make an awesome storefront._

• _Discontinue the reading app and license somebody else's._

\--

1\. Crosspost of <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5299419>

</comment><comment><USER16> I agree, mostly because the technology is finally there for a multi-purpose device to be a first-rate reader. You need high resolution, low enough weight for pleasant one-handed use, and decent scale (both size and aspect ratio). In B & N's defense, their current 9" model is far and away the best thing on the market for hitting all these sweet spots (it's about 10% lighter than the comparable Kindle and has a slightly wider screen). But yeah, a "retina" iPad mini is going to kill the dedicated reading device.

Aside: I'm a big e-ink fan (I've owned 4 generations of Kindles) and heavy reader that's slowly being brought around to the value of hi-DPI LCD screens. For all the explanations of e-ink's virtues, I think the main advantage was the lack of aliasing and other artifacts that text suffers on sub-200 dPi screens.

</comment><comment><USER17> He thinks amazon should be scared their ODM will replace them, but the ODM doesn't have a brand, doesn't have services, doesn't have a digital storefront to sell with. You could throw a clone of the Kindle on the market right now for a lower price, but without amazon selling it and services to feed it content, it isn't going to go anywhere. Heck, there were countless e-readers that didn't make it before amazon.

</comment><comment><USER18> Um, B&N should keep making hardware and they probably will. They are doing well and have a built in market. If they lose hardware, they won't have a strong enough software distribution mechanism and will lose by default to Amazon.

It would be stupid, bordering on insane to give up the one good thing B&N has going for it. Without Nook, B&N is Tower Records. Nook software is pointless without hardware, same as Kindle software.

<comment><USER19> A question is how much Microsoft wants to be in the business of making Android tablets... [http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-barnes-and-noble-joint- ventur...](http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-barnes-and-noble-joint-venture- finalized-and-named-7000005252/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I hope nobody is surprised to find that B&N's management is not incompetent and has made the correct decision: B&N can't become a viable player in e-books and e-book reading devices, much less media and media playback devices in the broader sense, which is likely required for success.

Bookstores will continue to decline, but there is a place for the last man standing. College bookstores are dominated by B&N and focusing on where you are winning is a good decision.

At best, Microsoft could buy Nook and the B&N e-book infrastructure and turn it into a software component for Windows 8 devices. At worst, it's doomed to not become viable.

If Nook does become viable it will do so mostly outside the US.</comment>


The Birth of Visual Basic (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://www.forestmoon.com/BIRTHofVB/BIRTHofVB.html <comment><USER2> This is the most complete and interesting account I've seen about the beginnings of VB from the Microsoft side. I don't know how I missed it until now, but I'm glad it was posted here.

Source and disclaimer: I'm the "Ruby development 'wizard'" mentioned in the article. Apparently I helped the VB team learn how to code for Windows! I didn't know that until now, but I'm glad I could help.

To amplify on a few points in the article...

The discussion of Custom Controls is right on. There was a myth that the reason Visual Basic was extensible through the VBX interface and custom controls is because Bill Gates insisted it. That's only partly true.

Bill's role wasn't in getting custom control support _added_ to the product. It was to make sure that it wasn't dropped.

The support was always there. After all, when we coded the original set of controls, we needed _some_ kind of interface for them, and it was obvious and planned all along that this interface would be open for others to build controls of their own.

Actually they weren't called "controls" originally. Alan was going to call them "waldos", named after these:

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

I couldn't make sense out of that name, so I ended up calling them "gizmos" instead. And my little "Gizmo API" was what later became the VBX interface.

Scott also mentions the original "lines and arrows" Ruby interface, where you would drag an arrow to connect an event emitted by one object to an event target exposed by another object. He's right that this ended up not being a usable programming model for VB.

But recently I tried out Unreal Engine 4's Blueprints feature. It was very reminiscent of what we were doing back then! But of course the Unreal team put in all the additional work to actually make this a usable feature - we never took it that far.

<comment><USER3> >"lines and arrows" Ruby interface, where you would drag an arrow to connect an event emitted by one object to an event target exposed by another object. He's right that this ended up not being a usable programming model for VB.

Fascinating. It's interesting that the modern Qt Creator IDE (for C++) has something similar for its signals & slots mechanism. It has the ability to draw a line from the "signal" (event) of one control to the "slot" (event handler) of another.

I've seen several demos[1] highlight this operation but I don't know anybody that actually follows that procedure. They'd rather just type in the text editor: _connect(src,SIGNAL,dst,SLOT);_

[1][http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtyCM4BTbYo](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtyCM4BTbYo)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's an interesting story but it's told as a "person A did this, Person B did that, and Person C had this idea, etc." Maybe it's a consequence how my brain works but any time I read that type of recap, I forget everyone's name and the other trivia 5 minutes after I'm done reading it.

When revisiting technology history, what tends to stick in my mind is the context and industry forces prevalent at the time and the story doesn't have that.

So my recollection of context in 1990 would include...

1st: The prevailing method of writing Windows programs in 1990 (the Windows v3.0 & v3.1 era) was the raw Win32 API. That meant the 'C' Language WndProc(), giant switch case statements to handle WM_PAINT messages. Basically, all the stuff taught in the thick Charles Petzold book.[1] This was very tedious and complex type of programming. It was not friendly to corporate aka "enterprise apps" aka LOB "line of business" type of programming. (Java would arrive on the scene 5 years later but I didn't see a lot of corporate adoption until v1.3 which was year 2000.)

2nd: You had a large base of old-style DOS text mode developers for line-of- business apps using programming languages such as dBASE III, Clipper, FoxPro, and other 4GL tools, etc. The typical skillset of those programmers did not include the C Language.

In 1990, Windows 3.0 was becoming popular as a platform for corporate desktops and businesses wanted to write apps for it.

Visual Basic v1.0 hit that perfect sweet spot for a bunch of refugees from the DOS text mode 4GL languages to write Windows programs. They didn't have to learn the low-level C language or mess around for months with the Petzold book. Visual Basic had this ingenious abstraction called "forms" that hid the WndProc() monster and its messy switch case statements. It was a huge transformation. It was phenomenal how VB "democratized" the programming of Windows apps. A bunch of ISVs sprung up that built their business around Visual Basic.

The recent parallels to VB as an "inviting tool for newcomers" might be PHP replacing a lot of CGI+PERL and maybe JQuery eliminating a lot of low-level Javascript getelementbyid(). Today, when I look at the iOS and Android landscape, I still haven't seen anything (Titanium? Xamarin?) that grabs mindshare the way VB did back in 1990.

[1][http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Windows-3-1-Charles- Petzol...](http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Windows-3-1-Charles- Petzold/dp/1556153953)

<comment><USER4> I'm a corporate neckbeard. Probably the opposite of everyone here. And a lurker, so hello!

I work for a company that ignored the industry trends, we picked a winner with "Petzold style" win32 as you put it. We have a 800kloc 20 year old codebase for a LOB product that hasn't had to be rewritten four times due to the abstraction of the hour being changed. No VB, MFC, no ATL, no Winforms, no C#, no WPF, no ASP, barely any COM.

The biggest irony of all of our intentional ignorance of technological progress is that our software works _100% perfectly_ on Wine on OSX and Linux. It also compiles with GCC under mingw32 and works natively on ReactOS bar a few problems with the OS.

Do all these magical abstractions and platforms do you any good?

I'm less convinced every day.

You're right about mindshare though and as a vendor, that is what pays the bills.

Going to fire up textpad, nmake, windbg and write some code now...

<comment><USER5> What's the learning curve like for a junior developer joining your company to work on this 800kloc product?

<comment><USER4> Well I was the last hire in 2004 and we don't have anyone junior in our 3 person team so I can't answer that really other than a ballpark figure.

A good win32 programmer with sector experience could probably jump straight in. Someone with no experience of win32 and the sector would probably be 6 months of work for them and us which isn't a problem.

We interviewed one guy in 2010 who was a "rockstar" win32 and C# programmer (apparently) who wanted a pile of cash and came well recommended. We dumped him on a machine with notepad and the windows SDK and documentation. No visual studio. He didn't even get a message box on the screen. We just paid the guy who was leaving a pile more cash and I suspect that was his ploy anyway.

That's our only problem!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> VB was about getting stuff done. Ugly, awkward, convoluted, nowhere near a real programming language. But, the things you could build. Fast. In no time, you had something that worked, installed anywhere, no approvals, no app- stores, no complicated deployments. Microsoft miserably failed to scale it to the web, and with some efforts - to mobile. They just drove developers away, and till today we do not have a similar tool for the semi-developers, the hobbyists, the lawyer who wants to make some app for his office.

<comment><USER7> > Microsoft miserably failed to scale it to the web

They did, in form of the abomination called ActiveX. Back in the heydays, it was the Java and Flash in terms of exploits and 0wnage.

Obviously the worst thing was that ActiveX applets allowed raw access to the win32 API (or any other external DLL which could be used with the FFI of VB). No one signed their applets and everyone clicked "accept and run"... and on DOS-based OSs like win95/98/98SE/ME or XP (which set up the primary account as admin) this basically meant local r00t on the web.

<comment><USER8> I think many did sign their applets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm a high school teacher, and I'd love to hear from some people who know Visual Basic well. I teach an intro programming class each year, and I currently use Python. I occasionally get students who have had a previous class in Visual Basic at another school. These students tend to think they already "know programming", but after two or three weeks in Python they start to tell me they're learning all kinds of concepts they didn't know about, and they say they're enjoying programming in Python more than Visual Basic. There are lots of variables in their experience though, so it's hard to tell exactly what is making programming more interesting to them.

My questions:

\- Do you have any thoughts about people being introduced to Visual Basic as their first programming language?

\- If one group of students are taught Visual Basic well, and another group is taught Python well, will all students come away with a decent grounding in programming?

I don't ask that as a language flame war, I'm honestly curious about how programming in the VB environment compares to languages I'm more familiar with such as Python, Java, C etc, especially for students who have no previous background in programming.

<comment><USER10> Are we talking VB6 or VB.NET?

VB6 is... old, and feels old. It barely allows object oriented programming and doesn't have first-class functions, so you're pretty limited to a procedural sort of paradigm. The IDE is clunky. For example: error handling is done with explicit GOTOs (ugh) and "On Error Resume Next" lets you simply skip past errors(!!!).

VB.NET is basically a friendlier-looking version of C# and is therefore not nearly as bad as VB6, has a real modern IDE, etc.

Python feels like a playground where you can explore; VB6 feels more like you're on a rail and the moment you fall off everything will break.

<comment><USER11> _" On Error Resume Next" lets you simply skip past errors_

Is that very differently from "except: pass" in Python, though? Most languages allow you to skip past errors, the problem with VB was the culture of the users who didn't treat that as a red flag, not the language feature itself.

<comment><USER10> On Error Resume Next is actually weirder than an empty error handler. If Python errors halfway through a try/except block, it will skip the rest of the block. If you On Error Resume Next, VB will literally just proceed to the next line and keep executing.

And since you don't need to indent the block that comes after On Error, it's easy to miss that line...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _The Silent Majority: Why Visual Basic 6 Still Thrives_ (2012)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4085372](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4085372)

[http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/magazine/jj133828.aspx](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/magazine/jj133828.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER13> Very cool. I learned to program on VB6. I was a really amazing product for it's time.

</comment><comment><USER14> Visual BASIC 1.0 for DOS was the first one I learned. I was working for a community college and they had a BBS for Tradewars and other stuff. My supervisor and I tried to write a Tradewars game in Visual BASIC.

Later on we got the Windows version and it was fun writing Windows applications with it.

I got a job later on because I knew Visual BASIC and MS-Access 1.0 had just come out with Access BASIC that was like Visual BASIC and in 15 minutes I made a database in MS-Access to keep track of a record collection to get the job.

Visual BASIC really peaked at 6.0 after that Visual C# killed it, Visual BASIC.Net isn't as good as the Classic Visual BASIC.

I still work on VB 6.0 projects from time to time. I owned all Visual BASIC versions from 1.0 to 6.0 and I have the 2002 and 2003 etc versions on DVD that I barely used.

I find Python and Ruby to be replacements for Visual BASIC.

</comment><comment><USER15> vb.net is an odd language. Pretty much useless in a way because it's just a less powerful, oddly-syntaxed C#, after using it for a year at one point. Not a bad language but offers very little that C# doesn't, and is missing some. Handles statement was very nice though.

<comment><USER16> "...it's just a less powerful... ...c#..."

How so? I use both (my largest C# project was Nokia Maps, largest VB.Net project is my own database + sync engine, at ~110kloc, spread across Windows Desktop, Windows Phone and WCF sync engine). I've not come across any shortcomings in comparison to C#. Granted I'm using the free editions of Visual Studio, and avoid any third-party components or code. What am I missing?

<comment><USER17> I _think_ you can probably achieve the same results with VB compared to C#, but at the cost of writing more code or slower performance.

<comment><USER16> VB.Net is about as verbose as C#. There can be no perf differences because they both compile to the same bye code. Assuming the dev knows what he/she is doing when optimising for perf in either language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> For all the vb.net detractors, I'd suggest you this blog post "in defense of vb.net"

[http://bugsquash.blogspot.com.ar/2013/02/in-defense-of- vbnet...](http://bugsquash.blogspot.com.ar/2013/02/in-defense-of- vbnet.html?m=1)

<comment><USER19> Even though I'm a C#/F# programmer, I'll offer a better defense of VB.Net:

* Method resolution (I actually prefer C#'s but I can see the advantages of VB)

* XML Literals

* Many more query comprehension operators than C#

* Don't have to put `Select` at the end of a query comprehension expression

* Filtered Exceptions (coming in C# 6)

* Ability to call module functions without fully qualifying the name

* The `WithEvents` and `Handles` keywords

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is there something that replicates the VB experience for the web? Something really easy for a new developer to pick up and build a form based business application without worrying about HTML/CSS/Javascript, etc?

<comment><USER21> Asp.net web forms, my favourite web framework. It's bundled with visual studio.

<comment><USER20> Thanks. Is it free or requires a paid license?

<comment><USER21> There is a free version

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Surprised to see no comments about Delphi in this thread, as it's quite related to VB in terms of power, applicability, platform, etc.

</comment><comment><USER23> VB was a crappy language because of Basic, but if you could get over that it was a really nice IDE for rapid prototyping I loved the forms paradigm. I wonder what people consider the current leader in this area.

<comment><USER24> It's still VB [http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index....](http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html)

For 'rapid prototyping' of a website, I guess that would be Wordpress.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is there something like Visual Basic for the web ?

</comment><comment><USER26> Interesting that the name Ruby was already claimed (like Go). I guess no one in Ruby On Rails thought to check.

<comment><USER27> Wikipedia puts Ruby at 1993. I think it's reasonable to assume that Matz hadn't heard of a project that started not much earlier.

"I guess" you didn't think to check.

<comment><USER28> And I don't think the people "in" Ruby on Rails named Ruby!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I hella coded VB5/6\. Before that, QBASIC4LIFE</comment>


Conway's Game of Life using canvas - kirk-r http://gol.kirkrichey.com Yet another Javascript implementation of Conway's Game of Life using canvas. <comment><AUTHOR> This is pretty darn slick, I did a similar thing a few years ago with Tetris and canvas, when I was first learning JS: <http://www.benjamincoe.com/tetris/></comment>


China did it again: US Government Computers Hacked to Expose 21.5M People - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/10/us/office-of-personnel-management-hackers-got-data-of-millions.html?emc=edit_th_20150710&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=66028313

<comment><AUTHOR> The US government is now vulnerable to identity fraud and blackmailing at an unprecedented scale. Hopefully the tremendous technomilitary apparatus will innovate to produce new identity-verification systems to compensate for this damaging loss.</comment>


Fox Business Article on starting a business in these hard economic times. - <AUTHOR> http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/starting-business-recession/

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm actually mentioned in this article! Way to go DrChrono.com!

</comment><comment><USER2> lucky!</comment>


DeepMind to Work Directly With Google's Search Team - <AUTHOR> http://recode.net/2014/01/27/more-on-deepmind-ai-startup-to-work-directly-with-googles-search-team/ <comment><USER2> It's difficult not to get caught up in the excitement around Deep Learning. The unsupervised nature of it at its best really does seem to approach human levels of learning (if not intelligence).

Also, I thought this was hilarious:

 _In a 2011 interview that predated DeepMind, co-founder Shane Legg said he gave only a 50 percent chance that human level-machine intelligence would exist by 2028._

ONLY?!? By 2028? That is a pretty radical prediction. Indeed, Legg says there is a 10% chance of human level intelligence by 2018, and 90% by 2050[1].

Legg has multiple papers published in the field of measuring machine intelligence, so I guess he has a pretty good view of the field.

If that 2028 prediction is even close to correct then I think setting up an ethics board now probably is the correct thing to do. ( _the notion that DeepMind asked that Google create an internal ethics board as a condition of the acquisition, as reported by The Information, had some AI researchers griping_ )

Edit: Legg's posting on his blog in 2011 deserves to be read:

 _I've decided to once again leave my prediction for when human level AGI will arrive unchanged. That is, I give it a log-normal distribution with a mean of 2028 and a mode of 2025, under the assumption that nothing crazy happens like a nuclear war. I'd also like to add to this prediction that I expect to see an impressive proto-AGI within the next 8 years. By this I mean a system with basic vision, basic sound processing, basic movement control, and basic language abilities, with all of these things being essentially learnt rather than preprogrammed. It will also be able to solve a range of simple problems, including novel ones._

[1] [http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/691/shane_legg_on_risks...](http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/691/shane_legg_on_risks_from_ai/)

[2] [http://www.vetta.org/2011/12/goodbye-2011-hello-2012/](http://www.vetta.org/2011/12/goodbye-2011-hello-2012/)

<comment><USER3> Our ethics are far behind our tech and have been for a long time. Maybe we should make ethics courses mandatory for science degrees, because most tech people just subscribe to a worldview they pick in high school or college, and never do any critical thinking about their own projects.

<comment><USER2> I think most science degrees have some units relating to ethics. I know my computer science degree had something called something like "computing in society" that kind of tackled it.

But the questions regarding - say - what to do with predictions from a super- intelligent sentient AI weren't really addressed.

I think one problem is that anyone attempting to address those questions in a serious fashion risks being branded a crackpot.

<comment><USER4> The MIRI folks (intelligence.org) are trying to address exactly that, though I'm sure some consider them crackpots.

<comment><USER5> Their former incarnation as the Singularity Institute _were_ crackpots. Luke Muehlhauser has done a hell of a lot to make them a more serious organization.

The Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University also work on this stuff, with plenty of mainstream credibility.

<comment><USER4> EY is still just as involved as he was before, no? Vassar having left probably helps with the crackpot perception (I do not personally have an opinion on the matter, I just know that that's the impression he gives many folks). But given that you used the plural "crackpots", I'm wondering if perhaps there were other folks you think MIRI is better off without? No need to name names, just curious.

(I agree about Luke, he's a great public face.)

<comment><USER5> Generally, I would say they crossed the line from Crackpot to Legitimate when they switched from:

"We are the only people on this planet who have ANY understanding of THE MOST IMPORTANT PROBLEM EVER and the only way you puny humans can catch up is to indoctrinate yourselves by archive-diving our blog, and the only way to SAVE THE WORLD is to send us all your money before the monster can eat you."

to the new message, which is:

"This is a serious problem which could have dire consequences. We believe we have a plan for dealing with it, but have stopped claiming to be the _only people on the planet_ who can deal with it. We are going to be publishing various portions of our plan as peer-reviewed papers and broad discussions with the informed public of mathematicians, which means we are admitting to being mere mortals who in fact have peers. We are also collaborating with this other organization, who are part of one of the world's premier universities. While we still take donations, we're going to stop demanding you send us _all_ your money."

Overall, I am still waiting for them to get _even less_ cultish before I'm willing to donate any more than the price of a Harry Potter novel, but I still find LessWrongians to be one of the most _downright fun_ bunches of nerds to hang with on the entire internet.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I used to hang out at the NYC LW meetup a lot, it was a lot of fun.

I agree that the second message is better in pretty much every way, but I'm not sure they're mutually exclusive in that I think they fall on different parts of the "what we say publicly <\--> what we believe" spectrum. Though I'd agree that they seem to have moderated a bit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What I am really curious about is the difference between Deep Learning using RBMs, PCA, Factor Analysis, Bayesian graphical models. All of them seem to treat a numerical problem in different ways. I'm particularly interested in the identifiability of the equations (and introduce some constraints to do so).. or else you have multiple (infinite) solutions. As far as I can tell, the deep learning is basically a multi layer RBM with greedy optimization at each level. Maybe that is good enough for text summarization or robotics, but in a mathematical sense depending on your starting vectors you can arrive at different local minima. In physical dynamical systems we are typically interested in the global solution from which we do further analyses to prove stability etc... Bayesian networks have loopy belief propagation, and of course PCA/SVD require strict linear independence.

<comment><USER7> There's a bit of confusion around this, but "deep learning" is nearly interchangeable with "neural networks". So PCA, for instance, isn't deep learning (which definitely doesn't make it bad, it's just definitionally not deep learning ie not a neural network).

Now, as far as the difference between PCA and eg an autoencoder (which is similar to an RBM, but different--both RBMs and autoencoders are "deep neural networks")--well, PCA just learns a linear mapping. You can stack PCAs on top of each other I guess, but it is functionally equivalent to a single layer. So it makes certain assumptions about the behavior of the data--specifically, that it's linear.

A neural network layer calculation looks like this: nonlin(Wx + b) A deep neural network forward pass looks something like this:

W3 .* nonlin(W2 .* nonlin(W1 .* INPUT+b1)+ b2) + b3)

Nonlin can mean a variety of things. Usually tanh, sigmoid, or max(0,x). If you remove those nonlinearities, it basically becomes like PCA, like a model that learns a linear mapping. When you have those nonlinearities, you get a non-linear mapping which, theoretically, lets you address a wider variety of problems.

But yeah, if you want to learn about deep learning, just learn about neural networks. It's the same thing.

Also, re: your point on local minima--on the upper end of experiments that have been done, you've got over a billion parameters. 10 million parameters would be on the relatively small side. I think it's reasonable for there to be a variety of possible solutions to any given problem, and the whole idea is that we're using models that are very flexible due to their high capacity. The problem historically has been using the capacity effectively. However, regularization methods like dropout help a lot, and I've found it's easier to think of neural networks as "feature learners". Each one of those neurons is theoretically a feature its learning. And even still, if you look at the features that are learned by convolutional nets (which are easier to visualize due to their being used on vision problems), they tend to arrive at similar features even though it starts from fairly different initializations.

<comment><USER8> > if you want to learn about deep learning, just learn about neural networks. > It's the same thing.

Hi, could you explain this further? From my limited understanding, couldn't deep learning be achieved without neural networks? If we define deep learning as something like automatic feature extraction on one level of hierarchy in order to aid classification at a different level. I understand that you are saying that neural networks are the most common tool used, however what is the reason for this -- couldn't one also stack the results of other algorithms (decision trees, SVM, etc.) into a hierarchy of features?

<comment><USER7> Sure. In 100% of articles you've seen in the last few years re: "Deep learning", it's about neural networks. It's not that neural nets are magic, it's just that stacking them has been called "deep learning" and that's the name that seems to be sticking. I'll even be cynical and say neural nets got such a bad rep by the 90s that they needed a new name.

Re: stacking SVMs and decision trees for feature hierarchies: I guess you could (maybe), but you'd get worse results than if you used neural nets. And definitionally it wouldn't be deep learning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here's what I said when the story first came out:

"I'm not so sure their technology is as futuristic as everyone thinks it is. If I had to take an educated guess, I would say it's some powerful AI that makes their knowledge graph smarter. Currently Google's Knowledge Graph uses more structured data sets and depends on a mechanism like this: [http://www.zachvanness.com/nanobird_relevancy_engine.pdf](http://www.zachvanness.com/nanobird_relevancy_engine.pdf) But the real challenge is to make the knowledge graph update in real time and take meaning from something as unstructured as a blog post or an email. And to do something like that requires some really unique AI."

This is most likely what they are going to be implementing: [http://www.zachvanness.com/nanobird_relevancy_engine_vision....](http://www.zachvanness.com/nanobird_relevancy_engine_vision.pdf)

<comment><USER10> why repeat an empty comment? It's clear that you don't really have any knowledge of, or insight into state of the art machine learning, so I don't see the need to paste in what you've already said. It's very hard for those not familiar with the field to see when something is novel, much of ML looks "obvious" to a typical developer.

As for Google's KG, updating the model in real time isn't really necessary, knowledge doesn't typically advance emails or blog posts at a time. They already have that in their search, knowledge is something that is mutually agreed upon and takes some amount of consensus. Using the structured sources (like freebase) is much better than trying to do dependency parsing on some blog post and try to make sense of it. Powerset tried that and it didn't work then, and won't work for at least a few years. ML advances not in leaps and bounds but rather by little pieces of the puzzle falling into place. The biggest thing to happen to the ML world isn't algorithms or fast computers, but the abundance of data available. Like pagerank, the more data it has, the better it works, the same is true of ML systems. Google has more data than god, and it is through this they will push the frontiers of AI - along with IBM and the others working in this field.

<comment><USER2> _Using the structured sources (like freebase) is much better than trying to do dependency parsing on some blog post and try to make sense of it. Powerset tried that and it didn 't work then, and won't work for at least a few years._

Evidence extraction from unstructured data is a pretty active area of research. Clearly structured data is "better", but the issue with many structured sources is they don't accurately represent knowledge.

For example, answering "What is the capital of Israel" and/or "what is the capital of Palestine" really depends on both who is asking and who is answering. Unstructured data is generally good at showing controversy like that.

<comment><USER5> >For example, answering "What is the capital of Israel" and/or "what is the capital of Palestine" really depends on both who is asking and who is answering.

Wow, did _you_ just ever open a can of worms.

Legally speaking, the capital of Israel is Jerusalem, and the capital of Palestine is currently Ramallah. These are also the _practical_ capitals, in the sense of these cities containing their respective national governments and institutions.

Things only get thorny when you start trying to ask about what capitals are _recognized by other countries_. Then you start getting nonsense answers, like the capital of Israel being in Tel-Aviv (then why isn't the Knesset there?) and the capital of Palestine being nonexistent due to occupation (then where does the Palestinian Authority govern from?).

For legal and practical purposes, there are answers to these questions. People are just embarrassed to contradict their own politics by speaking these answers aloud. So if we're talking about knowledge extraction, if I were Google, I would give the legal and practical answers. Telling someone the capital of Israel is in Tel-Aviv may be politically correct in some places, but it won't get them to the state office they need to visit.

Anyway, consider me to be wearing my flame-proof suit.

<comment><USER2> This is exactly my point (to be pedantic Palestine actually claims Jerusalem as its capital too).

<comment><USER5> Palestine can claim all it likes: their government offices are not physically located in Jerusalem, and the location of those offices is what a Search user needs to know.

<comment><USER2> Interestingly, Google says the capital of Palestine is Jerusalem.

I'm not at all sure the location of government offices is a good metric to base that answer on. The Netherlands and South Africa are good counter- examples (each separate the legislative and official capitals), and I suspect there are plenty more[1]

(I didn't downvote you, BTW)

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Google will soon be able to predict your searches before you. It would require a mix of this kind of technology and all the data it already has, and will have, on its users.

This acquisition is just another step in this direction.</comment>


Does Google hire people without post-secondary education? - <AUTHOR> Super good programmers right out of high school but don't plan on going to College nor University. <comment><USER2> [http://www.businessinsider.com/google-hiring-non- graduates-2...](http://www.businessinsider.com/google-hiring-non- graduates-2013-6)

<comment><AUTHOR> "After years of looking at the data, Google has found that things like college GPAs and transcripts are almost worthless in hiring. Following these revelations, the company is hiring more and more people who never even went to college."</comment></comment>