Christian Mingle must let LGBT singles use dating site after losing court battle - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/news/trending/christian-mingle-same-sex-dating-lgbt-lawsuit-california-1.3663871 <comment><USER2> So they have been ordered to implement additional features into their website to make same-sex matches possible, for types of users they don't want on their site in the first place? I don't think that's right.

<comment><USER3> What if it was a dating website that didn't allow African Americans or Jewish people on the site?

Now what if it was a physical establishment? Say, a whites-only lunch counter?

Of course, some hold the position that no anti-discrimination law should be applicable to a private business. If so, at least that's ideologically consistent, though IMO historically naive.

But if you allow for such laws IRL, so to speak, then extending those same laws to the online sphere is, I think, perfectly rational.

<comment><USER2> Your examples are not applicable because, as far as I understand it, they would have to implement additional features to allow for same-sex matches. There's no "no gays allowed" code on their site. Your examples are examples of active exclusion, while this is a case of missing inclusion.

I don't think it's right to force them to implement this additional code. If they had active anti-homosexual code it would be a different matter though.

<comment><USER4> The fact that the service was implemented such that it only matched men with women, and women with men, could be interpreted as 'active anti-homosexual code'.

On the other hand, one could argue there LGBT singles weren't excluded in the first place -- the site just provided a less than satisfactory service for them. I think this situation is very comparable to face-recognition technology that fails to work properly with people with dark skin, and voice-recognition technology that functions poorly with certain accents.

It's desirable that these services and technologies are equally accessible for everyone. To make this a legal obligation may effectively speed up this process. It also risks slowing development by restricting the use of incremental releases.

<comment><USER2> I'm a programmer and in my opinion "active code", in this context, implies there is actual code expressly written to fulfill a task (i.e., to not allow homosexuals to match). While in this case, substantial parts are missing (e.g., everything that is required to allow the site to fulfill the needs of LGBT* users).

Should we call something that does not even exist "active"?

Edit: after thinking about it for a bit, I'm quite sure the site probably actually _does_ have at least one clause written, somewhere, to make sure only men + women match. Simply removing them wouldn't result in good UX though :)

<comment><USER4> I program too. I get your perspective, I think. If we looked at the site's source code, we (probably) wouldn't be able to identify any specific lines of code that were actively anti-LGBT.

To see the complainant and the court's perspective, look at the functionality of the site at a higher level. What does it do? It lets people match up for dating purposes. LGBT people - a specific historically-discriminated-against group - could find this as a useful service too. But the site software lacks the necessary functionality to enable this -- and it doesn't need to be this way.

So where's the 'active' exclusionary code? There in the program, considered as a functional whole, not located at any more specific location.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Cult of ZFS - <AUTHOR> http://www.smbitjournal.com/2014/05/the-cult-of-zfs/

<comment><USER2> This article is garbage; the author gets many points blatantly wrong.

RAID5 = RAIDZ, RAID6 = RAIDZ2? No.

Absence of fscks replaced by scrubbing? No.

I would go on, but you can't fix this article.</comment>


UK MP to Google: 'you do do evil' when it comes to tax - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-05/17/google-amazon-tax <comment><USER2> Perhaps it makes me an evil fascist, but I really don't see the big deal in trying to avoid paying taxes, assuming you're doing so legally. Liberals tend to attach some sort of moral component to how much money you give the government, as in if you try to pay less than what they perceive to be your "fair share" (usually some unreasonably high number) then you must be evil.

As if governments have any sort of decent track record on spending intelligently.

<comment><USER3> I think it's the general sentiment that companies avoid things like paying taxes by skirting around the rules through means available to them due to their wealth and status. While a smaller company isn't going to have the resources at their disposal to gain such advantages.

I guess it's similar to how it people feel like celebrities and executives can always avoid going to jail for things that a regular person would almost definitely end up in jail for.

Or more succinctly, laws aren't perfect and corporations abuse those imperfections.

<comment><USER4> I agree it's the sentiment, but I'm not sure how many of those means are only available due to wealth, and how many could be used by many small companies if they knew about them. It's not like creating a company in a tax haven is particularly hard or expensive.

<comment><USER5> Some of the schemes are pretty complicated. Routing the goods and money and paperwork needs to be done carefully to ensure you're still legal.

Hiring KPMG, Deloitte, Earnst & Young, or PWC isn't cheap.

And we have a really weird system here. These big four firms sent some of their accountants to help the government create tax laws. They then exploited the loopholes in the tax laws they had created.

([http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/apr/26/accountancy-f...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/apr/26/accountancy- firms-knowledge-treasury-avoid-tax))

EDIT: Here's some discussion of the PAC report that's more balanced: (<http://www.ion.icaew.com/TaxFaculty/26745>)

<comment><USER6> _And we have a really weird system here. These big four firms sent some of their accountants to help the government create tax laws. They then exploited the loopholes in the tax laws they had created._

Said "weird" system actually aligns with their incentives perfectly. Create a system of laws that _can_ be exploited, but only through the advisory services of accounting professionals like themselves. Complexity creates exploitation opportunities, which results in more monetary rewards for themselves.

<comment><USER7> _Create a system of laws that can be exploited, but only through the advisory services of accounting professionals like themselves._

Right, but the weird part is that the government is complicit in this. They have no such incentives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Multinationals have no choice. Tax avoidance and jurisdictional arbitrage are standard competitive advantages since the 60's when capital controls were evaded by the banks and the 80's with the politically-backed corporate boom.

The problem will never be solved by private companies. It requires political leadership and global cooperation.

That $32 trillion in offshore tax havens ($12 trillion actively managed by international banks) will keep growing otherwise, as governments and society increasingly cannot pay for what they previously spent, let alone the future...

<comment><USER9> And it's particularly hilarious the UK complaining about it since they are one of the biggest enablers of tax avoidance in the world. Bermuda and the Isle of Man, for instance, make a complete mockery of British politicians who complain about offshoring.

(Speaking as someone who works in financial services in London).

<comment><USER8> Yup, it is also a British bank, a pre-cursor to HSBC that created the first shadow banking system.

The UK has by far the largest network of control over tax haven jurisdictions, with the exception of the mighty Delaware.

<comment><USER9> Exactly. You don't see that mentioned very often in the papers, though...

If Google and Amazon are evil, then so are half the "British" banking and insurance companies. It's common practice to channel profits and off to countries like Bermuda to avoid both tax and regulation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Worse than companies who avoid taxes are the people who see it as admirable that they can get away with it.

It's a problem that needs to be fixed in the culture and governance of a people, not in Google itself, since attempting to assign any civic duty to a multinational is probably laughable. Singling out Google probably doesn't do too much good, except maybe to make people think of "favorite company X"'s role in society.

Worst of all are the "all taxation is theft" Libertarians. Multinational corporations at least don't live in the society they espouse trashing. Ben Franklin also hated the "all taxation is theft" crowd, and believed that _failure_ to pay taxes due is _theft_ from the rest of society:

 _"The Remissness of our People in Paying Taxes is highly blameable; the Unwillingness to pay them is still more so. I see, in some Resolutions of Town Meetings, a Remonstrance against giving Congress a Power to take, as they call it, the People's Money out of their Pockets, tho' only to pay the Interest and Principal of Debts duly contracted. They seem to mistake the Point. Money, justly due from the People, is their Creditors' Money, and no longer the Money of the People, who, if they withold it, should be compell'd to pay by some Law._

 _"All Property, indeed, except the Savage's temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions, absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents, and all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity and the Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it._

<comment><USER11> In today's society huge corporations have shareholders which demand and actually have the right to sue if a company does something which does not maximize profits.

I agree with you that it is morally wrong and the companies are severely hurting the countries and the citizens that helped get them started. It's congress who must step in to pass laws which close the loop holes which cost our government and it's citizens trillions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If I headed a big corporation, I would optimize taxes too and at the same time, wish that the laws wouldn't allow me to do that. Why should I be the only stupid one and give my competitors advantge?

I absolutely agree with Warren Buffet on this: he uses the legal loopholes while arguing against them. I think it's the most ethical position. At first, it may seem as hypocrisy, but in fact, it's absolutely understandable and logical.

<comment><USER13> >I absolutely agree with Warren Buffet on this: he uses the legal loopholes while arguing against them. I think it's the most ethical position. At first, it may seem as hypocrisy, but in fact, it's absolutely understandable and logical.

Unless Buffett is giving away that money for good causes then he is a hypocrite. Actions carry far more weight than words.

<comment><USER12> AFAIK, he _is_ giving lots of money away and lives relatively modestly. But even he didn't, I'm not convinced that it would imply hypocrisy.

<comment><USER13> None of that means he is giving away as much as took in tax loopholes. I haven't read any official news story that Buffett is doing this. It's also quite possible he's doing so without publicly acknowledging it. However, I doubt it because he's rarely weary of giving a statement or interview even in his advanced age.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> They (Google, Amazon, MS, Apple, and every other large multinational company) don't have a choice, their competitors are doing it and stockholders could possibly sue for not preforming standard tax avoidance methods.

A company losing billions just to make a questionable ethical point (which most people don't even care about) isn't really worth it.

The only way to prevent the "double-Irish" and such schemes is for the US government to step in and close the loophole. American taxpayers and business help fund these large companies and get them on their feet, then we allow the company to funnel all of their profits through other nations, that needs to be fixed.

Why doesn't congress step in? Are they being paid not to? Does nobody see a problem with public officials being paid by large corporations and organizations to vote for a law which might be against the best interest of the nation and the majority of it's citizens?

</comment><comment><USER14> This would be the same Margaret Hodge who appears to have her own tax avoidance issues that she refuses to clarify.

<http://www.scribd.com/doc/113892078/Priti-Patel-Letter>

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/businesslatestnews/966839...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/businesslatestnews/9668396/Margaret- Hodges-family-company-pays-just-0.01pc-tax-on-2.1bn-of-business-generated-in- the-UK.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> So tell me UK government, how did you miss for SO long Jersey and Guernsey few km from your coasts? Oh and within EU, the Netherlands and the little trick about reselling trademarks that allows IKEA to be a f __ing non profit company and pay 0% tax ? Should I go on ? Luxembourg, Switzerland, Liechtenstein ?

If you allow it, deal with it and don't whine like this.

</comment><comment><USER16> So fix the laws to prevent this type of tax avoidance, else all companies will use these tax avoidance schemes, like they are doing right now.

Which begs the question why these 'loopholes' exist in the first place, and why they aren't quickly plugged.

This was rhetorical question, the politicians keep these loopholes in the system at the behest of these massive corporations and rich individuals who bri... lobby them to do so, and then they put on these shows to make it seem as if they are actually trying to prevent it.

<comment><USER17> When you fix the loopholes, you create other ones that are maybe harder to see and more expensive to achieve. So over time fixing loopholes makes the tax system more and more complicated, and hence more expensive to run. And loopholes will continue to be found, but perhaps only be reachable by richer and richer entities.

<comment><USER18> When the tax law has reached that point, it's time to gut it and start over with a simpler system with fewer or no exceptions based on strange criteria. Then you put in requirements that makes it incredibly difficult to add in exclusions, exceptions, deductions, and the like to the system.

But of course politicians won't do that. How else would they get on TV grandstanding about the evil corporations in our midst? Politicians use the tax loopholes the same as corporations do, just for different reasons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 Are there any estimates as to how much tax Amazon and Google would have paid to the UK if they didn't partake in these maneuvers?

</comment><comment><USER19> great video about the whole corporate tax game <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4o13isDdfY>

also showing parts of the discussion with Google, Amazon and Starbucks in Parliament.</comment>


Why is NOAA withholding climate documents from Congress? - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/why-noaa-withholding-climate-documents-congress-155626185.html <comment><USER2> This quote did not wash with me.

"...Because the confidentiality of these communications among scientists is essential to frank discourse among scientists, those documents were not provided to the Committee," the agency told Nature. "It is a long-standing practice in the scientific community to protect the confidentiality of deliberative scientific discussions...."

If Hillary Clinton has to air her dirty laundry as a paid official then other paid Gov employees, which includes NOAA, have to as well.</comment>


You are probably a felon. - <AUTHOR> http://www.threefelonies.com/Youtoo/tabid/86/Default.aspx <comment><USER2> Also clear examples of why you should never have a "friendly" conversation with anyone in law enforcement for any reason. There are so many illogical laws that are written against casual actions you would have no idea what you've done, but the cop knows exactly what will work against you. Oh and they are allowed to lie to you - you in return are not allowed to lie back.

People are often purposely charged with felonies so they can be negotiated down to misdemeanors but even misdemeanors can carry surprising sentences if a judge decides they don't like you.

</comment><comment><USER3> "There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law- abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted and you create a nation of law-breakers."

</comment><comment><USER4> Some of these are pretty stupid

>If your son is being investigated for drugs charges and you destroy the evidence did you know that you might be considered a felon!?!?

No shit...

>If you create a website that links to extremist websites you may be investigated as a terrorist!

:|</comment>


Google offers patches to fix Chrome, $20K to crack it - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/security/138613/google-offers-patches-fix-chrome-20k-crack-it <comment><USER2> So, crack 5 patches a year and I roughly hit my current income?!

<comment><USER3> I think that's the goal. $20k + value of doing the right thing is hopefully greater than $$$ that organized crime would pay you.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Bykrs.com log, schedule and share maintenances jobs for your motorcycle - <AUTHOR> https://bykrs.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I'm building this site from scratch I'd love to receive some feedback, you can use and abuse this account, username -> showhn password -> showhn [https://bykrs.com/signin.php](https://bykrs.com/signin.php) cheers</comment>


Show HN: Kondoot - Watch LIVE a day in the life of a startup - <AUTHOR> http://kondoot.com/kondoot

<comment><USER2> So what makes you guys different from justin/ustream/stickam?

<comment><USER3> We do have the public broadcasting like Justin.tv and UStream but we also have a focus on creating networks of friends that you can chat with and video call.

When broadcasting you do have the option of opening it up to the world like the other sites but you can also limit the broadcast to just friends or even just specific people.

More stuff in the works but we can't really talk about it yet :-P

<comment><USER2> I saw the comment re: wowza, you guys aren't going to use p2p over rtmfp? Seems pretty essential if you want to nail the person to person calling with Flash.

<comment><USER3> Yeah the video guys are working on that at the moment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The chatbox went too funny after two guys did the chair race <http://i55.tinypic.com/257pshy.png> seem to be busy fixing the issues now - <http://i51.tinypic.com/2rh4a4o.png>

<comment><USER3> Yes. Perhaps there should have been more programming and fewer chair races :-P

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Using their tech to show us them building their tech. This works on so many levels. I'm waiting for the Inception theme to start playing.

<comment><USER3> Funnily enough we do have Mind Heist (the trailer music from Inception) playing in the office :-P

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Ok guys, it's been an interesting day and now we are heading off to bed. Thanks for zany chat antics over the course of the day ;-)

<comment><USER6> Great work

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> We did something similar to this at tinychat a long time ago. Lifecasting definitely isnt for me :)

Nice site, good luck with it.

<comment><USER3> Thanks. Good luck with your next venture ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hi guys. I'm a founder and just signed up to say hello and answer questions that people might have.

</comment><comment><USER8> Not bad but the guy in the black shirt didn't dance and now I hate it.

<comment><USER3> Hey, you can always broadcast a dance!

PS. I'm not the guy in the black shirt :-P

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm helping to setup their AWS infrastructure.

</comment><comment><USER6> Cool site guys. When did you launch kondoot?

<comment><USER3> The new site has been live for two weeks. We are still working out the rough edges but it's been fun and there are plenty of new things coming out soon!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> these guys seem to like each other

Anonymous: yes u u twat joseph: the beaver look alike marknel: apparently i stink benhoad: french shower there... marknel: that was punishment i thi nk :S emil: yes u do Anonymous: still a twat emil: he didnt have shower for 2 weeks Anonymous: smell bastard marknel: sif two weeks Anonymous: i love u really mark marknel: thanks mate <3 you too :P joseph: the smell usally come fro m emils arse

<comment><USER10> We need chat snaps like bash.org :P That'd be awesome to have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> what do you use to stream the video? flash p2p?

<comment><AUTHOR> Wowza backend and flash client

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is such a cool idea!

</comment><comment><USER13> wow! awesome idea. i never knew that you tube & twitter had a love child :-P</comment>


Throw 1; < don't be evil - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/ig/cp/get?hl=en&gl=

<comment><USER2> Even better: onload="window.lol&&lol()"

I imagine that this is JS intended to be loaded via XHR only.

<comment><USER3> I was just talking to the guy who added window.lol last Friday. It stands for something that actually made sense in the context of the project, though I forget what exactly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Don't be evil ? Google ?

Apparently their exception handling does't work very well :)

</comment><comment><USER5> WTF is that?

<comment><USER6> Presumably on the google website the script is loaded via an xmlhttp request which then strips the initial text and evals the rest. By added the initial throw 1; they prevent other sites from including the script, since it won't do anything.

<comment><USER7> Indeed. See this: [http://google- gruyere.appspot.com/part3#3__cross_site_script...](http://google- gruyere.appspot.com/part3#3__cross_site_script_inclusion)

<comment><USER8> Cool site. I've never seen that before. Learn about web security by breaking it.

<comment><USER9> What about hackthissite.org?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Search Works - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/insidesearch/howsearchworks/thestory/ <comment><USER2> I missed most of the content on this ... page ? Exhibit ? Installation ? whatever it's called, because it told me to scroll, I did, and I scrolled through a bunch of what looks like empty space and arrived at the end ("and that's how search works"). The user is apparently supposed to stop and watch some animation at certain places, but it's not clear where to stop scrolling.

Perfect example, near the top there's some text about "It's made up of over[........] 30 TRILLION[.........] INDIVIDUAL PAGES[........] and it's constantly growing." But there's nothing to indicate that I should stop somewhere and wait for some more text to show up.

Maybe they should limit how far down you can scroll by setting the height of some element, and only increase it when the animation is finished.

Edit: the key problem here isn't the "scrolling makes things happen" gimmick that's popular lately. the problem is that it starts certain animations or fade-ins some time after I've already skipped past an apparently blank space.

<comment><USER3> I gave you a +1 because I had the same "scrolling issue".

After your comment I noticed a lot of comments on the same issue, so I decided to try it again. The second time I noticed that a blue arrow flashes at the bottom of the screen after all the content has populated, almost promoting you to scroll down. I suppose most everyone, including me, initially scrolled to fast to even see the first "arrow/prompt". Despite the discovery of the prompt feature, some of the issues remain. Example, wondering how far to scroll down before stopping (maybe pgdn?), and wondering which parts of the "page ? Exhibit ? Installation ? whatever it's called" are interactive.

>page ? Exhibit ? Installation ? whatever it's called

I too was unsure what to call it, but if they listen to the feedback, I think "whatever it's called" is really awesome and could be a legitimate substitute to the ppt platform. At least I would be interested in making a few presentations with it.

<comment><USER4> >I too was unsure what to call it, but if they listen to the feedback, I think "whatever it's called" is really awesome and could be a legitimate substitute to the ppt platform. At least I would be interested in making a few presentations with it.

Agreed, I like it. It looks like the stuff that goes on in futuristic movies, with a lot of things happening on the screen and no one is really looking at anything particular but it's impressive. This has a potential. Who's up to make this WIC software?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The most interesting thing there is the live view of the most recently deleted webspam. I wonder what blackhat SEO firms can learn from that to better avoid the filters.

<comment><USER6> Exactly. And someone somewhere writing a script to hammer that screenshots to collect as much as he can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's nice overall, but the timing for making items appear is a little slow. I was past most headers by the time they appeared, and I don't think I scroll too incredibly fast.

<comment><USER8> It might be your machine/browser/os. The same thing happened on my laptop (OSX/Chromium), but it worked fine on my desktop (Arch/Chromium).

<comment><USER9> If you read the top voted comment for this post (as I write this), it describes the same experience though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> thx matt and the google search team for doing this. it's nothing new for technically inclined people, but every little bit helps. helps for what? teaching people to worry about the right aspects of search and the impact on their business, instead of worrying about bullshitphrases that were planted in their head by a SEO agency key account or a blogpost from 2008. so well yes, thx for doing this. i will send it to my clients (and tell them to click on the bubbles, even though they don't look clickable)

now an anecdote (because i feel like telling one): this week started for me with an interview that finally got published [http://werbeplanung.at/news/marketing/2013/02/interview- mit-...](http://werbeplanung.at/news/marketing/2013/02/interview-mit-franz- enzenhofer) (it's german) in that interview i claimed that

* 80% of everything written about SEO and Google is bullshit

* that all the rumors, tipps and trends are actually hurting business

* that we should treat SEO as a numbers based craft of constant optimizations

* instead of the esoteric bullshit art it is currently

* and, if search traffic is important for the success of a business, they must rid themselves of external (agency) dependencies and develop internal structures

nothing to far fetched i think. everybody knows the SEO vertical is full of bullshit, i just took some time to estimate a number (based on a random sample of collected blogposts (that at least one person tweeted about))

yeah, i got a lot of angry emails, skype messages, linkedin messages, xing messages after the interview was published.

most of them mentioned at least one of these words

      * pagerank
      * whitehat
      * blackhat
      * grayhat
      * linkjuice
      * panda
      * pinguin ...

so yeah, thx google for educating people about search. keep up the good work.

<comment><USER11> Your 80% is based on what exactly? A tiny sample size. Please if you don't have solid data don't quote percentages it just encourages people to spread the number like it's a fact, which it isn't.

If you read the right sources a majority of seo advice is correct.

Www.seomoz.org [http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrust...](http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.co.uk/en/uk/webmasters/docs/search- engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf) Www.inbound.org (homepage stuff that has been voted up.)

<comment><USER12> >> If you read the right sources a majority of seo advice is correct.

That's a contradiction. If you have to read the right sources, then by definition the majority of advice is not correct.

<comment><USER11> Why does it mean the majority of advice is not correct? That is a myth.

<comment><USER13> Because the majority of advice is coming from the _wrong_ sources

<comment><USER11> You say majority like its fact. Its not.

Here is a list the top 100 seo blogs, find the BS in there. www.branded3.com/seo-blogs/

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Has anyone deciphered the fat-mustache diagram in the "Query Understanding" circle? It's in the Algorithms section.

At first I thought it was supposed to represent a Gaussian-like probability distribution. But when I clicked on it, the resulting animation showed a series of such distributions getting flattened by some kind of distribution- flattening hydraulic press. The accompanying caption: "Gets to the deeper meaning of the words you type."

If I was confused before, now I was completely lost.

How is deeper meaning represented by distribution flattening? I'd think it would be just the opposite, raising probability mass around the likely meanings, not spreading it out into a uniform distribution over all meanings.

Baffling.

If anyone has figured it out, please do share.

(Maybe I'm taking the diagrams too seriously.)

EDITED TO ADD: New option: If you don't have any clue what it means either, come up with an entertaining _yet plausible_ story that fits the hydraulic- press-vs-mustaches animation and share that story instead.

EDITED TO ADD: Example: At Google's new eco-friendly data centers, NLP computations are performed by genetically enhanced inchworms. Difficult queries, however, can cause the inchworms to get cricks in their backs. In such cases, Google's innovative back-massager descends and restores the inchworms to their preferred position (prone), from which they can return to their computations with renewed vigor.

<comment><USER15> You're taking diagrams too seriously.

But the way I interpreted it was, before, the query was short, scrunched up, and slightly ambiguous. The algorithm them lengthened it, representing expanding it to find the deeper meaning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't know what to take from this.

That search is very complex (I knew that, but not with this technical detail).

 _Or_...that Google is trying very hard to maintain user interest with gimmicky shows of why it's cool and cutting edge and necessary.

Not that Google isn't those things...this just seems like an unnecessary expenditure of time. We know it's complex Google. Improve some other features and stop shutting others down instead of making these web 2.0 animations.

<comment><USER17> I too find this completely void of any useful information.

There are many things that are still broken in search; I talk about one specific experience here:

[http://urgeous.com/p87t3aaa40g-for-some-queries-all- first-10...](http://urgeous.com/p87t3aaa40g-for-some-queries-all- first-10-results-on-google-are-spam)

("For some queries, all first 10 results on Google are spam").

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Interesting that they show the approximate number of searches / second at the bottom. Is that an otherwise publicly available number?

</comment><comment><USER19> I was halfway through before I realized that some of the content was clickable.

Very nice page, though.

</comment><comment><USER20> Their characterization of their spam procedures is grossly misleading. They do not send emails to most people that have been penalized, nor do they give clear instructions on how people can fix their sites.

Thousands of small sites were killed by Panda for no good reason, and have little hope of getting their traffic/incomes back. Google's spam policy is skewed heavily in favor of large sites and their own properties.

<comment><USER21> Didn't read that way to me. Doesn't it say that the webmaster tools page is the primary way to get notifications?

Crap factor = %advertising on page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I keep checking every so often, but searching for "this phrase" or +absolute +requirement is still broken. Even "Verbatim", isn't. If they can't even get simple search right, who would trust them with anything more?

<comment><USER23> Do you have some example queries to debug?

<comment><USER22> I wish I had saved the results every time over the last few years that Google showed me a page it claimed had what I was looking for, when neither searching the visible text or even the source code of the page produced any such string. I am sure that it's happened to me hundreds of times by now, if not thousands. For a long time, it was surprising and ranged from annoying to infuriating. Now I just sigh and accept it as the cost of Googling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Scrolling is really becoming the new thing in UX design. It's an interesting contrast to the 'movie-like' flash animations of a few years ago that required no interaction on behalf of the user.

<comment><USER25> _Scrolling is really becoming the new thing in UX design._

Am I the only one who finds it irritating as hell to scroll when it renders slow? I don't think this is the end game. There has to be something better.

<comment><USER26> It's not only you, I found this irritating as well.

<comment><USER27> Since forever, Chrome has been doing scroll at less fps than Firefox, where I can read comfortably while scrolling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> They left out the part where they index your emails and choose items you agree with over items you don't :)

<comment><USER29> I think you're joking, but just for those that don't think that, we don't actually do that.

<comment><USER30> I don't remember if hotmail used to run ads.

<comment><USER31> It did and they were display ads. Incredibly distracting.

At one point the "homepage" of Hotmail was a huge ad space, stories from MSN, and a tiny link to "Inbox."

The new Outlook is so much better. If Hotmail had evolved that way earlier, I would not have switched to Gmail.

<comment><USER30> So it is a bit hypocritical of MS talking about ads in gmail. But again where those ads contextual?

<comment><USER31> The "Scroogled" campaign has nothing to do with products or customers; the point is to broaden the PR base for Microsoft's ongoing campaign to convince the feds to initiate anti-trust proceedings against Google. That is why they hired a political PR executive to create the campaign.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> 38,800 requests/second according to their estimation.

<comment><USER33> Seems I'm not the only one who found that interesting :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Is this just PR for Google? Would rather see a more technical approach - although great for forwarding to clients when asked :)

<comment><USER35> Apparently, perhaps the 'scroogled' campaign is having an effect.

However it does give a better insight into the challenges of building a search product. It is a series of really challenging problems. So many people take search for granted these days.

<comment><USER34> Yes and no - 'scroogled' is bring up stuff like - selling ads based on context - but are you paying $20/year for outlook.com email? Gmail is free and pretty awesome (haven't gotten spam in years).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Whoa... really, 100 MILLION gigabytes to store "The Index"? Wow. That's big.

<comment><USER37> aka 95+ petabytes.

<comment><USER38> 100 million gigabytes = 100 petabytes ~= 88.8 pebibytes

100 million gibibytes ~= 95 pebibytes

<comment><USER39> I see the value of this distinction, but I can't shake the feeling that a word used for years has been co-opted by marketing and replaced with something that sounds silly when spoken out loud.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> There are some good facts and numbers hidden in rather toy explanation:

1\. Spam detection is automatic

2\. There 6 types of spam

-Unnatural outbound links (link selling)

-Content copy/manufactering

-Keyword stuffing

-Forums/user generated spam

-Parked domains

-Sites hosted on spammy DNS

-Different content humans and bots

-Hacked sites

3\. Google is removing as many as 50K spam sites per month, they get 8K reconsideration requests

4\. Google's machine learned relevance model may be using about 200 features

</comment><comment><USER41> > By the way, in the 47 seconds you've been on this page, approximately > 1,813,260 searches were performed.

Aren't these just some random numbers that they pull out of the air?

<comment> alok-g That would be about 38K searches per second. Does this include Google instant searches?

Google search results show a time value for each search. E.g.: About 2,210,000,000 results (0.12 seconds). Is this time machine time per search? This number is often around 30 ms, give or take a factor of two. If so, each machine can handle about 30 searches per second. If so, 38K searches per second need about 1000 machines. Sounds a bit too low... so my interpretation must be wrong at least somewhere.

<comment><USER42> You didn't define 'machine'. If the 'machine' is Google's supercomputer grid cloud cluster, then yes, each search takes 30 ms of machine time.

<comment> alok-g Is there any publicly known information about what the 30 ms number means (or alternatively what the machine is)? Given 30 ms number and the number of searches per second, the number 1000 means something; I just don't know what.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> A beautifully designed page more than anything else

</comment><comment><USER44> Nice scroll-UI! Took some time to see the clickable items. Interesting bits about spam pages.

</comment><comment><USER45> An awful way to learn anything.

</comment><comment><USER46> The better people understand their tools, the more effectively they can use them.

</comment><comment><USER47> "We write programs & formulas to deliver the best results possible."

No kidding.

</comment><comment><USER48> Some of the live listed 'spam' pages appear to be genuine to me.

</comment><comment><USER49> Answer: It uses a bunch of skip lists.

Source: I do hacking on top of lucene.

</comment><comment><USER50> vijay: very interesting link. thought it was interesting, despite the obvious slant.

</comment><comment><USER51> This is not how search works!!

</comment><comment><USER52> This is brilliant !!!

</comment><comment><USER53> "We write programs & formulas to deliver the best results possible"

There's a slight oversight, it should be: "We write programs & formulas to deliver the most profitable results possible for this quarter"

<comment><USER23> This is completely false. The effect on revenue is not used to make launch decisions for ranking changes.

<comment><USER20> So when Google's Panda update killed tons of user-generated-content sites like Mahalo, eHow, HubPages, etc., and greatly improved YouTube's (which is 99% garbage) rankings, that was pure co-incidence?

What about when Google rolled out universal search only after buying YouTube?

<comment><USER21> I don't miss any of the crap content factory sites. Do you?

<comment><USER20> Nope, and I wouldn't miss YouTube's crap factory site from the SERPS either.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google unleashes deep learning tech on language with Neural Machine Translation - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/27/google-unleashes-deep-learning-tech-on-language-with-neural-machine-translation/ <comment><AUTHOR> So maybe combine this with DeepMind's recent breakthrough in human voice reproduction, to build an agent that can translate speech in real time and bye bye human translators too ?</comment>


Uber drops fares for SF Taxi strike - <AUTHOR> http://blog.uber.com/2011/06/20/uber-drops-fares-50-for-sf-taxi-strike/

<comment><USER2> It's bizarre that they're trying to spin this as pro-taxi-driver. I can't tell if they really believe taxi drivers would be happy with them for doing this, or if they're just cynically positioning themselves as "for the people" to erode public support for the union (or score PR points from public disdain for the union, I guess).

<comment><USER3> Their drivers aren't taxi drivers in the sense that they don't drive medallion cabs. Medallions in major cities are a scarce, and outrageously expensive on secondary markets. Uber's interests here are aligned with their drivers, not traditional hackney carriage drivers.

Edit: I'm a dope. See child.

<comment><USER2> Right, but the text of this blog post claims in multiple places that they're supporting traditional cab drivers somehow.

"Taxi drivers are going on strike, and while they circle City Hall in hopes of getting a better deal..."

"...making sure ordinary folks can get around the city while the taxi drivers strike to get a fair deal."

"Furthermore, we want to put a word of support out there to the hard working taxi drivers in San Francisco..."

As far as I can tell, the reality is that they're deliberately undercutting the strike and profiting by it. Which may or may not be justifiable (I don't know anything about the strike), but it's certainly not supportive.

<comment><USER4> They're supporting the drivers, not the medallion owners, who are the ones renting the cabs to drivers 6 days a week at an outrageous markup and preventing the city issuing any new medallions. The average taxi driver, who does not own a medallion, gets screwed by the current arrangement and would be far better off working for Uber IMO.

<comment><USER5> > not the medallion owners, who are the ones renting the cabs to drivers 6 > days a week at an outrageous markup and preventing the city issuing any new > medallions.

Umm, no. The medallion owners are NOT preventing the city from issuing new medallions. Yes, the medallion owners have consistently convinced the relevant authorities to not issue new medallions, but the responsibility for that choice rests with said authorities, not the current medallion owner.

If you can't figure out who is responsibile, you can't fix things....

<comment><USER4> Anamax, you can't say the government exists in a vacuum when business is often buying the votes in the regulatory body. I do not like the way city hall is run either, but it's a two-way street.

<comment><USER5> > you can't say the government exists in a vacuum

I'm not saying that govt exists in a vacuum. I'm saying who is responsible for what it does.

> I do not like the way city hall is run either, but it's a two-way street.

No, it's not. The way City Hall works in SF is entirely the responsibility of the voters of SF. As long as they insist on setting it up so it can be bought off, it will be, and that's their fault.

No, it isn't the fault of the people buying. Not one little bit.

<comment><USER4> Yes it is partly their fault, because they are the ones corrupting the political process at the electoral level. There are so many different factors that go into electing people at city hall, and the public is no more a monolithic entity than the government. Rather, it includes multiple groups some of whose interests are aligned on some issues and conflict on others. The electorate can't, and shouldn't, build the entire election around the taxi issue; that would be irrational. But it's not obvious what the most effective leverage point for change is; this is a basic lesson of public choice theory.

The people buying influence (and today, holding the public interest hostage by blockading city hall) are also a part of the problem. You can't sensibly object to rent-seeking and then give the rent-seekers a free pass when they kick back some of their extracted rents in the form of political lobbying.

<comment><USER5> > You can't sensibly object to rent-seeking and then give the rent-seekers a > free pass when they kick back some of their extracted rents in the form of > political lobbying.

I'm not objecting to rent-seeking; that would be like objecting to gravity.

I'm objecting to folks who set up opportunities for rent-seeking and then complain when it happens. I'm blaming folks who set up said opportunities for the rent-seeking that occurs.

<comment><USER4> Once again, the electorate is not monolithic, but highly fragmented. To pretend otherwise is to endorse the divide-and-conquer approach of professional lobbyists. Whenever someone proposes reforms it's billed as an attack on freedom, whenever someone complains about the absence of reforms, it's billed as the electorate's own silly fault. This has been pointed out to you before, and you're an intelligent person, so I think it's rather disingenuous of you to keep trotting out the naive form of the argument.

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

<comment><USER5> > Once again, the electorate is not monolithic, but highly fragmented.

That's irrelevant to my point.

I'm not making a public choice theory argument. Yes, public choice theory discusses rent-seeking, but it isn't the only basis for doing so.

<comment><USER4> It's entirely relevant; your whole argument on the notion of unitary agency. Public choice theory explains why this line of reasoning is fundamentally flawed. If you don't understand this then all I can suggest is that you spend some time thinking it over, because you have certainly not articulated a coherent argument in defense of your position and I grow tired of explaining the obvious.

<comment><USER5> > It's entirely relevant; your whole argument on the notion of unitary agency.

No, it doesn't, even if your argument requires that it does.

Yes, some folks support structures that make rent-seeking easy while others oppose. In both groups, you have folks who want govt to provide a particular good and some folks opposed. All of thse are still responsible for the resulting rent-seeking, even though clearly they're not "unitary".

> I grow tired of explaining the obvious.

You haven't explained anything. You've dropped a buzz-word that is only tangentially related and made some false assumptions.

I like public choice theory, but it isn't a complete explanation of everything in govt. In particular, while it talks about treating govt as an economic problem, it makes some assumptions about govt that aren't necessary.

<comment><USER4> So the people who are opposed to rent-seeking are just as responsible for the phenomenon as the people who are supportive of it, even if the former have voted against it. Riiiiight.

<comment><USER5> There are lots of ways to oppose rent-seeking. One is to oppose situations where it is inevitable. The other is to support measures "intended" to limit it. Since the latter don't work, said support is meaningless.

And yes, an unsuccessful opposition bears some responsibility.

Surely you're not arguing that all responsiblity is the same....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I definitely understand the cabbies' concerns about prices, but this is huge for Uber. As the cabbies seek to shorten the gap between taxi prices and Uber prices and shut down for an entire day, Uber swoops in with a huge customer acquisition push. This won't be the death of the cabs, but I'll love to see how Uber makes out on the deal.

<comment><USER7> I hope they're advertising it enough that people who have never heard of Uber actually use them.

<comment><USER6> That's an excellent point. I don't know what kind of advertising Uber is actually using, but my Twitter anecdata says that there's already starting to be a nice bit of viral push to go with it. I really hope it'll be significant, because I absolutely love Uber and I'm planning on fully supporting them tomorrow.

<comment><USER7> Wouldn't it make more sense for Uber's supporters to avoid using them tomorrow, thus freeing up more of their fleet for potential new converts?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> not sure if promoting this to existing customers was a good idea for uber. They sent me the marketing email. I'm a happy customer. But i didn't realize their prices were 2X cab prices. Now that is stuck in my head every time I call an uber

<comment><USER9> They are pretty open about the fact most fares are around 2x that of a normal taxi.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> That's a downright twisted use of the word "solidarity".

<comment><USER11> Yeah, if they're going to be scabs, and undermine the leverage that striking creates, they should at least be up front about it.

<comment><USER4> 'Scabs'? The taxi firms have bent over backward to keep competition out of the market, and now you're saying they should get solidarity because they want to hold consumers hostage to their monopolistic demands? Consumers who already pay more for their cabs than in any other US city?

<comment><USER12> Thank you. "Scab" is inappropriate because a scab is someone who works for the company that the strike is against.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The taxi strike is described at [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/blogs/cityinsider/detail?entry...](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/blogs/cityinsider/detail?entry_id=91202)

"From noon to 2 p.m. on Tuesday, taxi drivers are being urged to park their cabs to protest the practice of charging drivers 5 percent of every credit card transaction, the consideration of an electronic tracking system and an idea to put more taxis on the street."

<comment><USER14> Heh, they're opposing more cabs on the street? Well _there's_ a surefire way to endear your cause to the people of the city...

<comment><USER15> I'm not going to comment on the taxi regulation system in SF because its pretty ugly. But the drivers have to drive for about 15-20 years to win a medallion. SF is changing this process and wants to start _selling_ medallions for about $250,000. If you're at the top of the list (ie you've been waiting 15 years) you get first chance at buying a medallion but you're SOL if you don't have the 12K deposit.

If I were someone near the top of the list but hadn't been saving up I'd be pretty pissed too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So why are Uber fares higher than taxis on a typical day?

<comment><USER6> A few reasons.

Convenience:

* There's a very easy-to-use app to request a driver that shows the locations of nearby cars and an estimate on how long it'll take for a car to arrive. No need to try and flag down a cab or call a company.

* Payment is done via stored credit card info, so no need to worry about paying at the end of the ride. No need to worry about tip, either.

Comfort:

* The town car is far more comfortable than a normal taxi. Nice seats, ample leg room (and I'm a large guy), no ads, actually useful air conditioning.

* There are magazines to read, if that's your thing. Some of the cars seem to be wifi equipped (one of my drivers has told me that that car had wifi, at least).

Experience

* They definitely ride the line between limo and taxi, to the point where I can't help but laugh. The driver even hops out of the car to open the door for you!

Really, if you're in SF, it's worth checking out Uber at least once.

<comment><USER17> > The driver even hops out of the car to open the door for you!

I loved this the last time I used uber. The driver went as far as to hold out his arm for me to lean on while I was getting into the car, which was a great help because I was having unpredictable dizzy spells all morning long. Then he drove like a maniac so I could get to SFO in time to catch my flight, and he deposited my luggage next to curbside baggage check. Taxi drivers generally don't go that far, they'll just haul your bags out and leave them on the road in my experience :(

Not to mention I had over two dozen taxis, most of them empty, ignore me as I spent a futile 15 minutes to hail a cab on Market Street before I gave up and used uber. Not my problem if they don't want $50, and uber was only $65 in comparison..

<comment><USER18> They've been known to fetch water and provide chocolates.

<comment><USER17> The drivers I've come across tend to have water bottles already set out, as well as snacks, mints, gum, Starburst and more sitting around. That's just a side perk :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> i wondered if this was as gray moral area, but I couldn't find a single reason why this hurts traditional cabbies.

In fact, the fact that uber has the cabbies' back in terms of serving the city, makes it a win-win situation for everyone involved except the target of the cabbies' strike cries.

If you are a cab driver and you're upset by this marketing gimmick, holler.

</comment><comment> kai-zer Why would you drop prices when there is no competition? Makes no sense. Basic supply and demand.

<comment><USER6> Gouging may be good for a day (assuming there weren't other good transport options, which is simply untrue in SF), but it sucks as an acquisition method.

My experience with Uber was essentially: (1) "Hey, it sounds great, but that's a bit pricey. It can't really be worth it, can it?" (2) Decided to take someone to dinner via Uber because it was more impressive than a cab. (3) "Hey, this is actually pretty cool and totally worth it." (4) I'm now a repeat customer, even when traveling alone.

In my eyes, the key is that they need to find a step (2) for a more general case. Having a day where there are no cabs might be a small push, but having a day where there are no cabs and Uber is the price you would have paid anyway is absolutely killer.

Short answer: Long-term thinking is better for them than short-term thinking.

<comment><USER20> I was going to post nearly the same thing. It may upset the strikers, but it's a brilliant business move by Uber to snag some customers that may not have given it a shot otherwise, and turn them into repeat users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Bloody scabs! At a time when unions worldwide need solidarity and they're undercutting them. Nice one. I guess this is the lovely caring capitalism we've been hearing about.

<comment><USER4> Fuck the unions. They've half bankrupted the city already and are well on their way to completing the job. Uber does not owe the medallion owners a damn thing, and neither do the people of SF. They've made out like bandits for years by keeping the market deliberately undersupplied and inflating prices. Now we have the most expensive cabs in the US and you can't hail one outside of downtown for love or money. It's hard to get cab _in_ the downtown area. I have no sympathy.

<comment><USER12> _Uber does not owe the medallion owners a damn thing, and neither do the people of SF._

There is something owed the medallion scumbags, but it hasn't been in fashion since Paris 1793.</comment></comment></comment>


Japan's ninjas heading for extinction - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20135674 <comment><USER2> Maybe they are lying about not having successors. If I were a sneaky ninja, that's what I would do, have a secret heir.

<comment><USER3> That makes a disturbing amount of sense. What would the need to ninja be in modern times though?

<comment><USER4> Ninja are fundamentally political tools. As long as we have politics, someone will be interested in their services, I am sure.

<comment><USER5> Not really, unless you broaden the definition of a ninja to everyone who does sabotage, for example those who sank the Rainbow Warrior on behalf of the French government: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior>

So, sabotage and assasination - yes, but more modern techniques replaced those of ninja.

<comment><USER6> For me it's not as much the tools used (since the techniques of seaking around places should still be the same) but the mindset behind. So maybe there's no demand for classical ninjas now. For Ninjas using Ninjutsu skills and modern tools at the same time, I think there is as much demand today as ever (on a international scope, in Japan I can't tell).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Reminded me of one the best games on the C64... <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ninja>

</comment><comment><USER7> Minor correction on the article, it's been said that they actually seldom wore all black, as that would make you particularly conspicuous. It's more likely they wore an appropriate costume that would allow them to 'hide in plain site' if needed

<comment><USER8> Indeed. What's really interesting is that the convention of wearing black is thought to have come from bunraku theater, where the stagehands wore black and were "invisible" by convention.

<comment><USER9> For an example of modern day "puppetry" on Japanese TV.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYWvygAbolM>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nothing but Pirate propaganda.

</comment><comment><USER11> Those guys aren't ninjas and they aren't dying out. Blackwater has hired lots of ninjas.

A ninja is just some dude who gets paid money to get dirty using the best tech and skills available at the time. If they had Glocks in the 15th century ninjas would have been popping caps in Samurai ass. They threw metal stars and swung swords because that's all they had.

The BBC must have been really desperate to report on some anachronistic pajama wearing idiots.

<comment><USER12> Well...

False. There are a lot of nuances and factors to the definition of a "ninja" - the historical use of the skills of ninja as a political/insurgent tool of subterfuge and assassination is one aspect.

However for those involved in bujinkan for a long time - it is about mastery of movement.

The principles of movement taught by bujinkan are lightyears ahead of what you see in most martial arts. They are also subtle ad complex and easily confused.

BJJ is the modern Tae Kwon Do - the McMartial Art of our time.

There is a lot more to Bujinkan than comparing it to mercenaries.

Bujinkan teaches you how to actually be a better and more complete Human. It is much more than what the surface history teaches.

(I have been in Bujinkan for 20 years)

<comment><USER13> I agree with samstave. I have been practicing Bujinkan for over 15 years. It is more about body awareness and economy of motion than learning how to hurt someone in multiple ways. There will always be the Ashida Kim's of the world.

Bujinkan is also not just about Ninjutsu. It is actually a collection of 9 different martial arts ryūha under one school. Only 3 of the ryūha are considered Ninjutsu or Ninpō ryūha. Of the other 6 ryūha some were of samurai family origins.

In Bujinkan there are those tend to focus on the whole ninja aspect and they don't tend to last too long. Then there are those who start out interested in the ninja aspect of the martial art and find an amazing system that has a whole lot more to offer than black Gis and tabi shoes.

<comment><USER14> I'd be interested in learning more from an armchair. Any suggestions? I'm pretty familiar with martial art philosophy in general, so it's more the specifics that I'm interested in.

<comment><USER15> You could read some of Hatsumi's books, or Jack Hoban's...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> See the 15th episode of <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Weapon> for a little more on Masaaki Hatsumi

<comment><USER17> That episode of Human Weapons was really funny to watch. It was even funnier watching my friends roll their eyes in disgust.

The two dudes tried to bust in on a training session, swaggering in, and didn't know how dumb they were being. They got passed on to someone else who was amused by all of this. And obviously did not have enough footage to do what they wanted, so they had to backfill it with nonsense.

You're better off tracking down Chris Crudelli's _Mind, Body, Kick-Ass Moves_. Hatsumi liked him enough to personally play with and terrorize him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I like the sidebar to the submitted article, "Western ninja-inspired nonsense." Popular culture references to Japanese _ninja_ are not likely to be accurate descriptions of _ninja_ technique. I first read about _ninja_ ( 忍者 ) in the very interesting book _Asian Fighting Arts_

[http://www.amazon.com/Asian-Fighting-Arts-Donn- Draeger/dp/08...](http://www.amazon.com/Asian-Fighting-Arts-Donn- Draeger/dp/0870110799)

in the 1970s. I think the Western sources have always exaggerated the most glamorous aspects of traditional Japanese culture and neglected the day-by-day realities.

<comment><USER17> Oh yeah. Draeger ... Heheh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Or that's what they want you to think...

</comment><comment><USER20> I thought that ninjas were a myth?

</comment><comment><USER21> I thought they were peasants who armed themselves instead of some well trained assassins...

<comment><USER22> Yes that is my understanding of their history. Peasants who were being hassled by the Samurai and so developed these skills for defense. Later they moved on to doing jobs for hire.

<comment><USER23> Myth, unfortunately (for it does make a good story). There were many different clans in a certain mountainous region of Japan that we retroactively classify as "ninja". Many of them were, in fact, samurai. Other individuals from that region didn't have claim to familial titles that would make them samurai, but offered their services in combat and were often rewarded with land grants in return, making them samurai.

You see, "samurai" was just a word for the gentrified upper class at the time. It wasn't until later, after unification that a caste system came into existence and "samurai" became associated with special clothing, top knots, and the right to wear (but not use) swords.

[Source: I was a Japanese language & history major at one time, and studied a number of years in the Bujinkan.]

EDIT: Okay, partial myth. Peasants who armed themselves fought for hire does describe the humble origins of some schools. It was the "peasants hustled by the samurai" part I was responding to as a myth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Bullshit. They're just getting better at hiding.

</comment><comment><USER25> I prefer to be a Samurai over a Ninja.

</comment><comment><USER26> Finally, an article about _real_ ninjas. :)

<comment><USER27> If they are having trouble finding work, perhaps they should learn Ruby.

<comment><USER28> Well, they'd better hope they're _rockstar_ ninjas if they want to get a job.

<comment><USER29> _(skype disappearing ninja icon)_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> On the plus side, pirates are still going strong.

<comment><USER31> Lol I actually spilled my tea :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Aww poor ninjas. It must totally suck to, you know, die like that.

</comment><comment><USER33> My wife is Japanese, and her first name is Yumi. I'll just leave it at that.

<comment><USER34> Her name doesn't necessarily mean "bow", though. "Yumi" is a reading of many first names, like 裕美 (something like "full of beauty") or 由美, which are more common than 弓 (bow).

<comment><USER33> I know. I was being silly.</comment></comment></comment>


Palm Pre review: AP thinks it beats the iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31093797/

<comment><USER2> Competition is a good thing. This will ensure that Apple/RIM/etc... stays on their toes and vice versa. Hopefully in the end us consumers will benefit.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's nice to finally have some hands-on reviews, but the press has been effusive in their coverage of the Pre since it was first announced in a Palm slideshow. I'm eager to hear some user (particularly iPhone and G1 user) testimonials -- especially once they realize the Pre is incapable on an API level of reproducing their favorite apps.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> imo the app store is a great differentiator for the iPhone. This will make it very difficult for other phones to beat it (at least in the near-term)

<comment><USER4> I agree with this. The iPod was a nice mp3 player, but its domination is due to the iTunes/iPod combo. I think the Appstore is going to do the same thing for the iPhone.

Either way I'm loving the press the Pre has been getting. Competition means better products for us all.</comment></comment>


Mixed Feelings - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.04/esp.html

<comment><USER2> For anyone interested in how the brain operates, including its ability to adapt to new sensory input, I highly recommend Jeff Hawkins' book On Intelligence: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Intelligence>

</comment><comment><USER3> > The brain, it turns out, is dramatically more flexible than anyone > previously thought, as if we had unused sensory ports just waiting for the > right plug-ins.

It can't be that easy. It seems way too convenient that we do some DSP on our sensor equipment, put it next to the brain and suddenly we are conscious of some new sense. Maybe we could sense the new property somehow, but they better have some awesome results if they want me to believe that we will get something as detailed and perceptually unique as one of our natural senses.

That said, though...this is really cool and someone should make equipment like this so I can use it.

<comment><USER4> The cortex is very flexible. It has uniform structure: the same type of hardware that processes vision, processes also abstract thinking and memory and sense of touch.

I have worked on a prosthesis system like the ones mentioned in the article. It substitutes vision with audition. My version works on a mobile phone.

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3171226.stm>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Rather interesting, especially if you are familiar with Jeff Hawkins' research.

</comment><comment><USER6> I want one!

<comment><USER7> There are pictures of it here:

<http://feelspace.cogsci.uos.de/en/technology_01.html>

<comment><USER6> Ok let me rephrase that: I want smaller unobtrusive version of one!

<comment><USER8> anyone want to help make one??

<comment><USER7> If you actually do take a shot, I'd suggest using much smaller vibrators (or maybe even very very weak electrodes directly on your skin). As long as you can be consciously aware of the buzzing or electric shocks, no matter how tiny, you will go ahead and develop the "direction sense". Using bigger vibrators will only waste electricity.

<comment><USER9> Plus you wouldn't need such a large power pack.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: I'm confused by my success given how horrible a student I was in college - <AUTHOR> Hi everyone,
It goes without saying that I was never a hugely academic person.  To that point I took a year off to work in SV my junior year of college but later decided to finish my CS degree, barely.
I've been able to navigate my career in ways that I cannot regret though, comprising of multiple strong internships at tech startups in Boston, about a year at Amazon (turned out to be a horrible culture fit) and now at a blistering fintech startup in New York.
If I was to base my ability and "potential" for success on my academic record in college, repeating classes and graduating with a 2.9 GPA it seems like I'd only be slated for QA work?  I should add that I was diagnosed by three different psychs and one neuro-psych with ADD Inattentive Type at 22 (great timing).
Does anyone else struggle with the guilt of their poor academic past shadowing their current success and improvement?  If so, what do you think changed in your perspective / approach to self study?
Thanks everyone, stay healthy :-) <comment><USER3> My goal was to be _happy_ and I've also been wildly successful. I code a few hours a day on fun projects.

The first semester of college I was on a National Merit scholarship. After that, I like to say I was on the Dean's "other list". :-) I was kicked out of college (electrical engineering) - twice.

I'm smart but not super smart. I do think my brain works differently that most. It comes up with the non-obvious answers _first_. Example: I was in the hospital and the nurse said: "I'm going to change your [wound] dressing." I immediately answered with the first thing that popped into my head: "Lets go with the raspberry vinaigrette this time."

 _Does anyone else struggle with the guilt of their poor academic past shadowing their current success and improvement? If so, what do you think changed in your perspective / approach to self study?_

I don't feel guilty at all. I got where I am a different way and I never thought about college after I graduated.

</comment><comment><USER4> Because college isn't the real world. That's the simplest explanation.

<comment><USER5> I was thinking this today. In college/school, you can score an A+. It is even possible to do it for everything. Accomplishment is so easy to measure.

In the real world, there is no A+. Not even being Bezos, founding Stripe, or playing center forward for Real Madrid. The A+ concept doesn't exist.

<comment><AUTHOR> This has always resonated with me and it's a big reason I think people who are "good" at school stay in academia. It's a consistent and reliably good measure of "I'm good at this thing" however damaging to society it is for those people to never do more than climb ladders...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why do you feel guilty? You need to explore that feeling if you want to rid yourself of it, and you _should_ rid yourself of it. You can't change the past.

I do identify with that feeling, however. I was never a great student.

Before university I had poor grades and only took standard level courses. I frequently didn't even complete assignments. I spent most of my time being a computer nerd. I was accepted into a great university solely due to my "impressive" extracurricular experience: running computer nerd clubs at school, programming for fun, tech internships.

In university I had little trouble doing well in CS courses. In the beginning, they were easy to pass without even trying. In the later years, the CS courses were hard, but I enjoyed them. They actually gave us a considerable amount of freedom to direct our own study.

My non-CS courses were a different matter - I nearly failed two my first semester. It was harder to coast at uni, so it forced me to become a decent student. I graduated with a 3.5, which was much better than I ever could have imagined.

But really, the important takeaway is that I hate school in general and I always will. I have known this innately since I was a child, forced to sit in a chair indoors when I wanted to be outside in the woods. I love learning, but I don't like being told what I should learn, and what I should do, and especially what hoops somebody else wants me to jump through. I don't care if I am failing/succeeding to measure up to anything but my own criteria. That is my true personality, and I think I am fine to be that way, so I don't feel guilty, or harbor regrets about my past school performance. It took me some years to accept myself in this way, and I hope you will be able to as well eventually.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing your story and thoughts. For me, a lot of it is wishing I didn't have to "catch up" with certain mathematical or statistical concepts I now run into with side projects and find super interesting.

I'll definitely heed your advice and work on getting past my prior failures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Undergrad GPA lower than yours. Also wildly successful.

There is a strong correlation between academic rigor and success, but there will always be outliers like us.

Natural talent, social skills, blind luck, network, etc. are all important factors in determining success.

No reason to feel guilty, but also realize people could read this post as a humble-brag.

"I worked a lot less hard than you, but I'm more successful" is not a statement a lot of people will take well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comment, I feel like I should've edited the post to include that I don't mean in anyway to brag. College in a lot of ways was a very painful and turbulent time for me.

Granted, I'm still horrible at FAANG style coding interviews and had a period of 4-months being out of work after leaving Amazon. Not looking for pity, just adding context :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sup, same boat. Terrible at college and "successful".

The worst feeling was hanging with peers that you felt they were way beyond your skills and seeing how everything was "natural" to them.

Yesterday it was the fifth anniversary of my college graduation. One of my frequent dreams is that I didn't graduate because I failed a course. Strange, since college was not even that demanding for me; one of my best friends was brilliant and he let me piggyback the hardest projects.

The main difference I see between people like us and other highly accomplished academic developers is that we deliver (since we are highly pragmatic) and we are enjoyable to work with (our guilt overcompensates with empathy).

Yet, I had studied 10x more in the last 5 years (post-graduation) than in college. My mind matured significantly, and luckily it had developed a sense of natural curiosity for computer science, programming, design, finance, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> > The worst feeling was hanging with peers that you felt they were way beyond > your skills and seeing how everything was "natural" to them.

This is what is most painful for me. In high school I was hailed by my friends as "highly adept at science" and we got into all kinds of crazy - <USER2> somewhat educational mischief. For context, this group of friends came together after we all competed and placed in the first division of the Intel ISEF engineering competition. I was one of the only people in the group who didn't go to Stanford, MIT, get a full ride to U Chicago or go on to become a neuro-surgeon (I'm completely serious, one of these friends completed pre-med in two years and med school in 4).

Maybe my friends were astronomically more intelligent than me and I've picked a bad point of comparison. But the most painful thing to watch in college was others seemingly effortlessly pick up complex math and CS intuition while I struggled and even with help, at times failed miserably.

Though, to your point. Surprisingly with a few years post-college under my belt - my mind has sharpened and become more focused and driven than I ever could have imagined being in college. If anything, something I understand now is that it's futile to try to anticipate what I'll be doing or what kind of person I'll be farther into the future than 2-3 years at most.

Thanks again for sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Well, I guess there are a variety of reasons for that. I mean, maybe you just didn't... gel with those particular courses or professors responsible for teaching your computer science at that particular university.

That wouldn't necessarily mean you were bad at the subject. Just that you didn't learn well in that particular environment.

Alternatively, if you've got ADD and find it hard to maintain focus, maybe you just didn't care to work as hard in college as you then did in the internships and roles you took on afterwards. We've all had companies and organisations where we've been good/bad culture fits (like Amazon as mentioned in your post). Perhaps your college/classes were a poor fit as well.

Alternatively, it could simply be an age or maturity thing. I'm sure many people here would do much better at school or university if they returned today, simply because they'd take it a bit more seriously and have more years of experience under their belt.

</comment><comment><USER9> Your career performance is not only depending on you, but also on the overall job market demand. For example, absolutely brilliant physics PhD are struggling to get jobs in their fields, while mediocre developers are making six figures out of college. So, it's likely that you're just average, but lucked into an very hot job market. Congratulate yourself on a smart career choice :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your thoughts on the matter. To be clear, on a good day I consider myself average with a wildly varied set of interests. Oddly, knowing elixir (as much hate as it gets here on HN) has landed me one or two positions alone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Conversely, I know people who were wildly "successful" in college/university and struggle to find financial success. Heck, I was one of them for nearly a decade post-university.

<comment><AUTHOR> In hindsight, what do you think lead you astray? Curious if you took an academic route, associating more education with greater skill or just focused on the "wrong" thing?

<comment><USER10> I had to get the first job I could, had no time for internships nor networking, and had no role models or guidance on how to succeed financially. Lack of a support system made any kind of time investment very hard financially as bills and hungry mouths don't like to wait. Had I less financial responsibilities, I could have taken a lower paying but higher potential job.

The longer version: had a kid at 15. Lived in the middle of nowhere (which I love[d]) and finding ways to earn money was hard. Grew up poor. I graduated high school towards the top academically and got a full tuition scholarship to a university. My girlfriend and shortly thereafter wife (we got married shortly after high school and moved into our own place in town) had to graduate high school a year late. She did most of the supporting of our young family waitressing while I did some student work at the university. One gig was working PHP with a buddy making about minimum wage at night. Eventually got a BS in business admin with a minor in CS. Worked in insurance first because it hired immediately. I had looked into tech, but at the time, pay was not very good and required moving to a population center. Turned out with insurance, I could not earn enough fast enough (it takes time to build a book of business) so I started at a potentially higher paying role in financial services and washed out. Did odd construction work as I got a teaching credential. The pay still sucked. We were not even scraping by: every month we even further negative in our bank account. The only things that helped were the occasional website or utility I built for someone and the hope that after several years of teaching that our base salary would finally exceed our meager living. Got cut from my district during the layoffs. Toss in a couple more kids along the way. I put out two resumes: one for teaching and one for programming based on the work I did as a student and the few websites and utilities I made. A recruiter reached out and I got some tech interviews. Landed a sweet start up gig at nearly 2x what I was making as a teacher. This was the first time ever that we could start really saving, but the majority was going to paying off debts. The commute was about 40 minutes, the same as when I taught. Then the office moved further. Then again. Then again. The commute was 2.5 hours one way at that point. Then I went fully remote. Nearly a decade later and Im still with that same company. I out-earn what I ever could have as a teacher, principal, or super intendant. I've grown with the company from a couple dozen folks through hundreds of hires, an eventual IPO, through acquisition of a couple smaller companies and through being acquired. I am now a principal engineer and team lead for our part of a multi-thousand person, global company. I've enjoyed nearly everyday of work since being hired and wouldn't have it any other way.

A rough start. But opportunity met preparation and we were lucky.</comment></comment></comment>


What They Never Told You About Handling B2B Transactions - <AUTHOR> http://www.userscape.com/blog/index.php/site/comments/what_they_never_told_you_about_handling_b2b_transactions/

<comment><USER2> Great summary!

One note of correction regarding W-9 and W-8 forms: Those forms are only required if your company intends to pay United States taxes. If your company is located outside of the United States and you have absolutely no U.S. presence (so, no equipment, employees, operations, etc.), that form is not required.

We often have U.S. customers ask for our W-9 and they are sometimes confused when we explain that companies outside the U.S. do not get dinged by their I.R.S. Referring those customers to check with their accountant if they remain in doubt has always cleared things up.

</comment><comment><USER3> In Europe inter-bank transfers are free (unless there is a currency change) which can make them a better option than checks as they are quicker.</comment>


Five startups from Norway - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/20/norwegian-startup-scene/ <comment><USER2> From the article it seems more like "go somewhat bigger but still tiny" then "go huge".

Government aid programs have failed to generate startup scene basically everywhere they were used.

I think buulding a real startup scene is a long process, starting with a few companies that breakout, a good culture and the willingness of private capital to invest. It is layers and layers that build upon eachother until a critical mass is reached.

<comment><USER3> Didn't Silicon Valley grow out of a collection of companies doing defense contracts and research grants?

Regardless, you're right that it does take a lot of time. For Silicon Valley it took multiple decades.

But it does seem to me that the nordic startup communities are growing very rapidly. There's cause to be optimistic. For Norway one of the problems is that the vast majority of new investment is still in oil and gas. And I suspect that community of engineers and investors are more likely to grow into a community centered around subsea and other marine activities even after oil becomes unprofitable.

What nobody has mentioned yet is that Norway has a healthy semiconductor and electronics design industry. There are some exiting startups there that people often forget about.

<comment><USER4> One thing I always wonder is why startup cities always seem to be so bloody expensive. SF is the classic case looking at Europe, London is probably the biggest center, and the wages / costs there are close to twice of many parts of the UK. Norway ain't cheap either. I suppose Berlin is relatively cheap and has a big startup scene.

All those costs must make it far more expensive to build something.

<comment><USER5> Startups go where most people want to live (to get talent) and where the most investors live. Those usually are big urban centers that are increasingly expensive because in the past two or three decades people decided they want to live in cities again.

<comment><USER4> Not sure everyone that lives in places like London wants to be there, but its where the well paid jobs are. I would be quite happy in the mountains, but there aren't any tech related jobs there..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As a rule every time a piece comes in the news about some place being "the next startup scene", it usually doesn't work out that way. It is usually driven by PR due to some tax advantage being put into law or local municipality providing grants or something like that.

<comment><USER7> I remember this with Barcelona (or somewhere in Spain) which was building some kind of Silicon Valley hub that was supposed to be the startup capital of Europe.

<comment><USER8> It's a shame that Barcelona isn't the startup capital of Europe. Amazing weather, beautiful streets, close to other major European cities, lots of great food. SV will always win on weather against other cities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Toronto last week -- so a new plce featured each week: [https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/12/toronto-is-poised-to- becom...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/12/toronto-is-poised-to-become-the- next-great-producer-of-tech-startups/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Speaking as a Norwegian living abroad, I feel like one of the most important barriers (more important even than capital) to domestic startup success is a failure-averse culture. We have a ways to go before we're on par with the US in this regard.

<comment><USER11> Import Icelanders?

<comment><USER10> I know this is a tongue in cheek remark, but it's not about the individuals - it's about how society at large (and importantly, potential investors) views past business failure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why should people move to Norway? Software developers don't really earn more than elsewhere in Europe while the cost of living is drastically higher.

<comment><USER13> Forget Norway. Kenya!!!

[http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/kenya](http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/kenya)

<comment><USER14> Ha. A real blast from the past.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Norway has one of the highest taxes in the world. Combined with labor laws that are somewhat biased in favour of the employee.

Wouldn't it be hard to create a scene like that in a socially developed country. Large wages would mean ridiculous taxes, so it would be very expensive to attract talent and workforce, based on wages alone(think Bay Area in the US). What about iterating quickly, which involves hiring and firing people quickly as well? If I'm not mistaken, in the US you can fire people on the spot, but that's not the case in Europe and Norway. You have strict labor laws, notice periods, the whole shebang. Won't that be an extra burden for startups?

edit: spelling

<comment><USER16> Norway's taxes on personal income are just marginally above the OECD average [1], which places it somewhat above the US, but not particularly high for a developed country. The idea that Norway is particular high tax tends to come from the marginal tax rate, which indeed is higher than the US, but the threshold is also high.

Norwegian corporate taxes are low, at 25% corporate income tax [2], well below the OECD average, while US corporate taxes are one of the highest in the world and by far the highest of any OECD country [2] [3].

> What about iterating quickly, which involves hiring and firing people > quickly as well?

Then hire people on contracts. Nothing in Norwegian law prevents you from hiring and firing at will as long as you don't make people think you're hiring for a position that is meant to last.

[1] [http://taxfoundation.org/article/comparison-tax-burden- labor...](http://taxfoundation.org/article/comparison-tax-burden-labor-oecd)

[2] [http://stats.oecd.org//Index.aspx?QueryId=58204](http://stats.oecd.org//Index.aspx?QueryId=58204)

[2] [http://taxfoundation.org/blog/us-has-highest-corporate- incom...](http://taxfoundation.org/blog/us-has-highest-corporate-income-tax- rate-oecd)

<comment><USER17> There is no problem firing people in Norway as long as you have a real need to reduce the workforce, or even reduce the headcount in one profession and at the same point increase in another (like in restructuring). This is easier in Norway than many other European countries, especially in Southern Europe.

What you can't do is to fire someone because you don't like them or fire someone while you at the same time is hiring for positions the individuals you are firing are qualified for.

While what you say about contractors are only partially right. If the contractors are hired as individuals, they can legally claim a permanent position after working there for three years. If they on the other hand are engaged through a consulting company or similar, that will not be the case, since then the contract is between two companies. If the consulting agency does not have other contracts available, they can downsize.

<comment><USER16> I'm norwegian, and have run companies (and done consulting) in Norway, so yes, I'm familiar with the limitations, which is why most contractors are hired through companies - whether personal AS's or an agency. When I was working that way I don't think the idea of hiring someone on a contract basis personally was something anyone ever brought up, exactly for this reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Alternative title: The situation is improving, 5 start-ups from Norway

<comment><USER19> We were going to go with "The Norwegian Startup Scene", helpfully provided by the URL slug. (Those often contain a more neutral title, as if they feel guilty for the clickbait excesses of the headline writer). But your phrasing is more concrete, so let's try that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> TechCrunch has become the in-flight magazine of technology. How many of these marketing pieces are meaningful for anyone involved in the technology community? Moving on...

</comment><comment><USER21> What will they call it? Silicon Fjord? Silicium Dal?

</comment><comment><USER22> Anybody have some insight on what it usually takes to qualify for landing a startup gig in places like Norway/Amsterdam? (With regards to language requirements/work permits/referrals/etc.) With each passing day I find myself more interested in European startup scenes.

<comment><USER23> If you have an EU nationality the paperwork (getting a SS number, a tax card, registered residence) will take maybe 3 hours of work once you have a signed contract. I've been through it and it's surprisingly agile.

I don't know about non-EU nationals, though I know people from the US and Canada who managed to get an EU nationality because of their grandparents and simply used that to avoid worrying about visas and all. That said, the companies will be very helpful if you need assistance with paperwork so you should be fine when it comes to it, though I doubt you'll need the help.

About the language, English will be fine for nearly any tech company.

That said, I'd also check out Berlin and Copenhagen; big startup scenes there.

Never worked in The Netherlands so I can't speak for Amsterdam, sorry.

<comment><USER22> I truly appreciate the guidance, thank you. I'm originally from Romania and speak English, Romanian, Spanish, and some French. Multiple people have been mentioning Germany as an alternative so I might look into that more as I have family there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> As someone from the industry living in the north, I get the impression that the biggest obstacle to this is the seemingly much larger startup scene just ~500km away in Copenhagen. It's likely my experience is biased in some way but I seem to have a lot more contacts and startup job offers from companies based in Copenhagen than anywhere else around here, and I have lived in both places in the past 3 years. I get the definite impression that its proximity is pulling a lot of resources away from mostly Oslo.

<comment><USER24> > _that its proximity is pulling a lot of resources away from mostly Oslo_

I can confirm that, some companies I interviewed with in Sweden had Norwegian roots/owners. Two reasons: Sweden is cheaper and is part of EU.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Work in a startup around here. Will try to be back to this thread a couple of times tonight if anyone has general questions. (it's 17:24 around here now.)

</comment><comment><USER26> Cool to see some focus on the Norwegian startup scene !

We just delivered a new site for Oslo Innovation Week, and are currently working on the new Staaker website, who is mentioned in the article.

I'd say Flare ([http://iamflare.com](http://iamflare.com)) and Unacast ([http://unacast.com](http://unacast.com)) is worth keeping an eye on as well.

</comment><comment><USER27> > Leveraging the luxury of having a small startup scene — necessarily so, the > whole country only has a population of 7m

Not quite: The population is closer to 5,215,000 [0].

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

</comment><comment><USER28> > _(...)and seeing the government working with the startup scene (...) is > refreshing_

I've always felt jealous on the US startup culture, where you get investments. In Norway, I feel it's more like you apply and get small grants. But looking at this article things have gotten better.

What concerns me the most about our startup scene, is the scale. A successful startup in Norway can only reach 5 million people before it has to be modified to fit a new country with different language, regulations and customs. In the US, you can reach tens of millions, and when the app has grown big enough us Norwegian will accommodate and get used to the app, not the other way around.

<comment><USER29> > What concerns me the most about our startup scene, is the scale. A > successful startup in Norway can only reach 5 million people before it has > to be modified to fit a new country with different language, regulations and > customs. In the US, you can reach tens of millions, and when the app has > grown big enough us Norwegian will accommodate and get used to the app, not > the other way around.

And that's one of the biggest advantages the EU is supposed to bring, but which several countries are still blocking. You can read over 200 million people in the EU just with an English product, and if the single market was done better, it'd be very competitive with the US.

Instead, we're seeing Britain leaving, and potentially the EU breaking apart completely.

<comment><USER30> _> potentially the EU breaking apart completely._

You can see it like that, or you can see it the other way around. This is pretty much make-or-break, put-up-or-shut-up time for EU integration. The Lisbon treaty is finally biting. You can't be "mildly pro-EU" or see it as "simply a trade union" anymore; you either go all-in with fiscal and legislative harmonization, or you go home. Italy and Greece were the first to go all-in; Britain might be the first to go home. The next decade is a tipping point one way or another, and it might actually be the beginning of the "real" federal EU a lot of people have been asking for 40 years.

<comment><USER31> Greece and Italy didn't have much of a choice... they essentially were collapsing and lost a portion of their sovereignty to stay somewhat afloat.

<comment> T-A Italy is one of the founding members of the EU, so I am a little puzzled by this statement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Honestly, the "startup scene" for tech companies is everywhere. You can start a company anywhere so geography isn't wholly relevant.

</comment><comment><USER33> "Go huge" for some reason sounds like incorrect grammar. Is it correct?

<comment><USER34> it's not proper english, but it is common real world vernacular.

'go big, or go home' being a very common phrase.

[https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=go%20big%20o...](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=go%20big%20or%20go%20home)</comment></comment>


Samsung heir convicted, sentenced to 5 years on corruption charges - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/samsung-heir-convicted-sentenced-to-5-years-on-corruption-charges/ <comment><USER2> He has been in jail pending sentencing. It's a hell of a coincidence that Samsung, when not run by a founder's heir, is doing better than ever.

</comment><comment><USER3> Former president in jail since earlier this year. Will probably end up in conviction, too.</comment>


Ask HN: Is cryptocurrency-mining-specific hardware useful for Deep Learning? - <AUTHOR> I am seeing a lot more components touted specifically for cryptocurrency mining, and in particular I am intrigued by motherboards that support many GPUs[0].<p>Does anyone have experience building "Deep Learning rigs" using these (or similar) components? Are there any pitfalls to be aware of?<p>[0] eg. https://www.techradar.com/news/best-mining-motherboards <comment><USER2> Don't do this. Putting GPUs on x1 or x4 links will probably tank performance.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Wes, long time no chat (I'm this guy: [http://wmf.editthispage.com/discuss/msgReader$5703](http://wmf.editthispage.com/discuss/msgReader$5703)).

Thanks for the response. Would the performance hit affect both inference AND training?

Why does the performance hit _not_ affect cryptomining?</comment></comment>